Welp, That’s All She (Officially) Wrote
(It Is I. I Am She)
一般來說，我的網誌不會用中文來寫——我寫得太慢，錯誤太多。但是，我知道台灣朋友一直閱讀英文很麻煩，所以我這一次也寫了中文版本。要是你想讀中文，請拉到最下面。
很感謝田詠綸和台大國際華語研習所的王楚蓁老師協助修改這個禮拜的中文版本。
The pictures are different in the English and Chinese portions of this post. Feel free to scroll through for some fun ones!
The fateful day has arrived. The bell has tolled. My number has come up. My research grant concluded at the end of March and, with that, my contractually obligated life as a blogger is over.
You see, the original reason for this blog is that the grant that has been supporting me for the past 10 months of my life requires a public outreach component. As I was applying, I said to myself, “Blogs seem easy enough. Academics love blogs. I’ll just write an easy, beloved-by-academics blog.”
I never anticipated that this project would become a rather all-encompassing, Sisyphean task. But over the past 10 months, the (almost) weekly imperative to produce this blog has become one of the rhythmic pillars of my life. (Here I would be remiss not to mention the incredible generosity of Professor Chen Chun-bin 陳俊斌 and his doctoral advisee Yang Chia-Wei 楊嘉維. Their unfailing willingness to meet every week at my host institution, Taipei National University of the Arts 國立臺北藝術大學, and to provide advice on potential avenues for research, tips on upcoming talks and concerts, and feedback on my progress and writing, has been the other anchor of my time here. These two individuals have provided a humbling, year-long masterclass in professional and personal care. I am endlessly grateful.)
In hindsight, that rhythm has been critically important. The great gift of this year’s research grant is exactly the fact that it has given me the freedom to chase down the leads I want, to jump down every rabbit hole I see, and even to take jaunts across the country to listen to daytime talkback sessions with directors and artists. After two years effectively spent locked in my Chicago apartment during COVID, in which it often felt as though my research would be terminally on hold, this kind of freedom has been nothing short of miraculous.
But complete freedom is also tricky. As so many of us discovered during COVID, days can rapidly descend into a formless morass, the passage of which becomes increasingly blurry as undifferentiated time continually runs into itself. To have a weekly deadline, however malleable, has been a gift that has helped me organize and prioritize the activities in an otherwise chaotic 168-hour calendrical cycle. (If this organization and prioritization sometimes failed to reach the level of unalloyed success, well, nobody and no blog is perfect.)
Finally, a huge part of being able to stick even loosely to the publishing schedule I set myself is you. The fact that there are people who have perused even the smallest portion of this blog’s 37 essays, 155 photos (selected and edited from among thousands that I have compulsively taken during my time here), and 94,159 words (but who’s counting?) is yet another debt of gratitude I have racked up over the past year, one that I slightly fear I will be paying down for the rest of my existence.
So What’s Next?
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, my days as a contractually obligated blogger are over. And if I'm honest, this writing project started out as a bit of a chore. But over time, it has turned into a place where I am able to collect my thoughts and research experiences in a semi-organized fashion—a critical activity for this chronically hapless taker of field notes. The result is sometimes long and meandering (apologies in particular for my last two grotesquely proportioned posts), and sometimes more simply a whimsical record of the places and people, the pets and events that I want to remember down the road. Some of this will end up in my dissertation, some of it will simply live on in the ether. I hope that there has been enough variety to keep things vaguely interesting, at least some of the time.
If you enjoy reading these missives, however, I have some moderately good news for you. (For those of you who have grown to dread my roughly weekly communiqués, please allow me to offer my condolences in advance.)
I have decided to keep Unmusable going, at least in the immediate term. This is in no small part because I still have some blog topics that I haven’t written up. (I know you’re all itching to hear about grannies in a park dancing to the mellifluous strains of a man in a white suit bedecked with Christmas lights and armed with a karaoke machine, or about the literal, actual concentration camp on a small island that is economically dependent on drunken spring breakers.)
That said, my publishing schedule—admittedly already lax over the past couple of months—will have to slow down. This is partly a reflection of my post-research reality. Just as I am grateful to the US Department of Education for their support over the last 10 months, I am equally grateful to the generosity of the Blakemore Foundation, with whose support I returned last week to the International Chinese Language Program (ICLP) at National Taiwan University for one 👏 last 👏 quarter 👏 of Chinese classes. ICLP is an intensive enough experience (and I am a slow enough reader of Chinese) that I simply won’t be able to keep up the almost-weekly pace of the past ten months. Instead, I will be aiming for one post every three to four weeks.
That situation probably won’t be changing even after ICLP is over. You see, next year is the year that I will be splitting my time fairly evenly between writing my dissertation and procrastinating from writing my dissertation by hyperventilating in the direction of my computer screen. What this means is that I will need to repeat the feat of roughly 100K words in roughly 10 months, only this time with far fewer pictures and far more boring prose.
Keeping this blog has provided an invaluable space for talking through the problems that will show up in my dissertation, and I assume that this will hold true for future projects as well. As such, I hope to keep Unmusable going for the foreseeable future (although, if I’m honest, I will probably take a hiatus as my dissertation-induced panic and bile inevitably reach pathological proportions, hopefully right around this time next year!)
As a result, there will probably be more photos of random archival documents over the next year, and fewer photos of llamas. That said, I’ll still try to keep things varied as I dive into ever deeper dissertationy waters. And, as always, I’m grateful in advance for any and all of you who are willing to check in on my progress reports from time to time—it means the world to me.
欸，她正式寫完了
（是我。我是她）
部落格終於畫上了句號。三月底我的研究獎學金到期了，於是，獎學金要求的部落客生活也隨之結束了。
我共你講，我原來想寫部落格的理由無他，就是因為這十個月補助我的獎學金要求我做一種「公共推廣」的計畫。申請的時候，我告訴自己：「寫部落格應該比較簡單。學術人都愛部落格吧！我就寫個簡單的、會受學術人青睞的部落格」。
我從來沒想過，這個計畫會演變成一個無所不包、薛西佛斯巨石般的任務。不過，這十個月來，（幾乎）每一個禮拜都必須寫部落格的責任也成為了我生活節奏的骨幹。（在此，我要向北藝大陳俊斌老師和他的博士生楊嘉維表達最誠摯的感謝。他們每週都撥冗指導我、給我介紹非聽不可的音樂會或演講，還在研究上給我非常寶貴的建議和反饋，我們三個人的定期會面是我在台灣這一年來另一個精神支柱。他們兩位在專業和為人上展現出的大師風範，我獲益良多，感激不盡。）
如今看來，這樣的生活節奏對我實為重要。在台灣這一年來最寶貴的就是身處於此給我帶來的自由，讓我能盡情追求與探索，也能輕易地在全台來去自如，聆聽導演或藝術家平日大白天的各種座談。跟疫情時我因封城而得關在芝加哥的公寓裡相比——那個時期我時常擔憂我的研究中斷的情形會一直持續下去——現在能夠享受這樣的自由真不可思議。
不過，太過自由也有風險。跟很多人一樣，我在疫情中也領悟到，日子過得太寬鬆反而很容易陷入困境（因為時間的邊界變得越來越模糊，無法區別的日子不斷疊在一起）。每一個禮拜都有發部落格文的任務是一個讓我找回優先順序的寶貴禮物，沒有這個期限就沒辦法梳理每週亂七八糟的168個小時。（儘管有時無法至臻完美，哎呀！人無完人，部落格也是嘛！）
我之所以幾乎能遵守這個每周的自我約定，最大的原因就是有你們這些讀者。到目前，這個部落格累積了三十七篇文章和一百五十幾張照片（這些照片是從我在台灣拍的成千上萬張照片中選出來的）以及九萬四千一百五十九個字（但有誰在數呢？）。只要這個部落格有讀者，不論多寡，對我來說，都是一輩子無法報答的恩情。
部落格的下一步
我前面提到了，我寫部落格的初衷是因為獎學金單位的要求，既然期限已到，我作為部落客的責任已了。說實話，一開始寫這個部落格，每個禮拜都寫一篇文章真是一種苦差事。但是，經過了這一段時日之後，這個部落格漸漸變成了我累積觀察和研究成果的一種組織手段。對於我這樣不太喜歡寫田野筆記的研究者來說，這是必不可少的機會。用這個寫作方式有的時候會帶領我走入曲折的路徑（特別抱歉最近兩篇巨長的文章），有的時候我也想藉由這樣異想天開的方式來紀錄未來可能想記得的人事物和寵物。我可能會把這些紀錄的一部分會放進論文裡；其他就會在網路上某個角落存留下來。希望，到那時候，這裡的文章仍讓你覺得還算有趣。
如果你喜歡閱讀我以上所寫的內容，那麼我要告訴你一個好消息。（越來越怕每一個禮拜都收到我的電子報通知的人，那麽，請容我先向你提前表達歉意。）
我決定至少在短期內繼續寫 Unmusable 這個部落格。其中比較大的因素就是，我有還沒寫完的話題。（我知道，你們可能比較想讀到在公園中跳舞的阿姨和一個男人，這個男人穿著上面掛滿 LED 節慶燈泡的白色西裝，透過卡拉OK機給阿姨們提供跳舞的配樂。或許你對這個話題不太感興趣，那也不用擔心，你可能會想讀到我去綠島旅遊的紀錄！）
我承認部落格文接下來這幾個月的發布頻率會變得比較寬鬆。這是因為我現在的情況跟之前幾個月的不太一樣，速。一方面，這是因為博士研究必須面對的現實——我衷心感謝美國教育部這十個月來的補助，也同樣感謝 Blakemore Foundation 的補助，可以讓我上個禮拜回歸台大華語研習所來上最👏後👏一個👏學期👏的中文課。因為必須以中文課優先，所以我目前的安排是未來每三四個禮拜發布一次。
這個學期中文課結束之後，也許不會發生大的變化。各位讀者，我明年只有兩個主要的計畫：第一是把博士論文寫完，第二是使用關於論文的恐慌來避免寫論文。也許我明年必須再寫個十萬字，未來部落格能插入的照片少多了，能寫的也可能無聊多了。
繼續更新這個部落格讓我探索博論時有更多的彈性，也帶來更大的空間。。在可預見的未來，我希望可以繼續寫 Unmusable 這個部落格（不過，說實話，寫博士論文到了明年的這個時候，可能給我帶來的恐慌會達到最高點——那時我大概會休息一下。）
最後明年也許會有更多來自檔案室裡文件的照片，會相當缺少草泥馬的照片。但不用擔心——雖然明年必須把精力集中在論文上，但我會儘量保持部落格的多樣性！
還有，有像你們這樣願意找時間來讀我所寫的進度報告的讀者，讓我心懷感謝。