逸: The freedom that lies beyond rest, and future plans for this blog
Inspired by China Has No ‘Aesthetics’ and interactions on Substack, I took a detour from the planned history post and instead wrote about 逸.
The meaning of 逸 can’t quite be translated into English, for there’s always a negative connotation attached to the idea of “running away,” even if you’re running toward freedom, toward yourself.
The first draft of the essay was much longer, but before publishing, I decided to take out most of the personal experience portions that I felt were distracting. Still, in writing it, especially the parts that weren’t published, I feel lighter, having given myself permission to be free. It’s not overindulgent to enjoy myself in my pursuits of the Four Scholarly Arts purely for the sake of my own self-satisfaction.
Since the main writing lives on Substack, I’m wondering if there’s a point for me to keep posting on my website as well. The original plan was that evergreen content lives on my website for the sake of discoverability, while Substack serves as a newsletter. But instead, the Substack experience has led me to write deep-dive essays. The intellectual conversations, the discovery of interesting people and ideas, all keep inspiring me.
Perhaps my website can be more of an organizational repository categorized by topics and chronological history, linking back to Substack articles. It’s where my art can live in a more managed portfolio style than what’s on Instagram. Maybe one day a webstore.
The Substack newsletter was supposed to be where more private thoughts and writing process notes go, but in practice those kinds of things live more comfortably on my website, which ironically is the less public-facing side of my writing. Actually, I don’t think anyone is reading this at all, haha. There’s a freedom that comes with that. Something called 逸.
And so we come full circle once more.
逸: The Missing Word We Need to Reclaim Ourselves
