the first string/the overture

1

"If love has a face, it would be yours."

I wrote the phrase myself, but I wonder whether you realize it or not, it is written in a form of quote. I find it very strange indeed, to quote myself, but again, I wonder. Is it not strange for people to think that theirs are authentic? All of us are thieves, plagiarists if you allow me.

If each of the word that we utter can speak for itself, we would have been damned by now. As you came to a realization now, I wonder, what is authenticity itself?

For a long time, I was deluded by the interpretation of authenticity. I thought of it as a form of originality. Thus, upon my belief, I disembarked on a long, exhaustive genealogical journey to search for an origin, in its most primordial state. I thought of it as a soul-searching adventure. An idiot, I was.

Pardon my foulness.

After a long while, with all the devastation and disappointment, I was slapped by a strong blow of realization. History is a foul creature. It lingers around you, circling you from above like a vulture waiting for its prey to take its last breath. History always shows itself. It reminds you that it has always already been there: walking beside you, clinging to your arm like a girl who's madly in love; or creeping behind you, like a man who's madly frustrated from a rejection. History will not let you walk past it unnoticed.

But history is also ashamed of itself. Often than not, it would conceal a part of it, peeling its skin bit by bit onto the forgotten; and the repercussion that comes after that will cast us into oblivion, too deep to recuperate. Thus, the shame of the history will always remain shrouded, if not secret. In doing so, it leaves us a child to raise: a historical burden!

As we write our path accordingly to the narrative that history allows us, we must be aware of the lost narrative that it conceals; for history was never born, it created itself from the womb of a barren god. Life is a death sentence itself. We keep on living by forgetting; and as we grow old enough, too immersed with the memories to forget, history will throw a dice.

Almost!

I have to pardon myself once more, for I was too emotional and almost trapped by history's strongest weapon: memory. Where have we got off just now?

Ah, yes. I was devastated.

By shattering my belief, I was thrown into severe madness. It is normal, I think. Human needs something beyond their comprehensions, too great for them to achieve, an ideal, or a projection of a being that they can never be. Human is a submissive creature that bows to anything they could not comprehend. They admire it, fear it, and reproduce it in a form of obligations.

It is normal, I am sure of it. I had lost my god.

Losing my reverence, I came to disrespect myself. You see, faith is the essence of a human, and without it, human will stop itself from existing. After some excruciating periods, I had once again found my faith. It was darkness that handed god to me.

For the love of god, my god, that contains me and contained by history; nothing has an origin. As literal as it sounds, I'm afraid it is not what you think of. The quest for an origin had long distracted human from its most genuine task, that is to live. It is a trap set up by history in order to compel human to stay in a regretful dismay, to loath their fate, while history holds its dice and laugh upon us.

Be very aware. History is flux. It created itself, remember? Something that is created from nothing is never immortal. It needs to fix itself occasionally. Thus, at a certain juncture of history, there will be a rupture; and at that particular moment, the door for the lost narrative will be opened.

Since nothing is authentic, sentences, like history, are all but mere structures. Structures that persist themselves as immortal, yet malleable. Bend them with words if you must, twist them with prepositions, for you are an alchemist of yourself. Authenticity is deemed by you. It is an interpretation, and for an interpretation to sustain itself, it must be distinct with others; and what is authenticity but a mere representation of uniqueness? That human, and all other things that exist, have their own notion of existence.

As Kundera opposed the established norm of a tradition, in his reply to Roth's question, who asked it on behalf of the perplexed people, "There is enormous freedom latent within the novelistic form. It is a mistake to regard a certain stereotyped structure as the inviolable essence of the novel."