Uncle Dong is a real artist, there are some excerpts from the text in the documentary
1 Fear of lost memories
--What do you fear most
--Losing my memory. Memory is what we are. I think your very soul and your very reason … to be alive is tied up in memory. It is the precious, original memories that define our lives and those memories that we spend forever chasing after those easier childhood memory. Those moments, when gears of the heart really change, and that could be being discovering some work of art. It could be some massive traumatic experience that happens. It could be some tiny moments, a fragment of moment. And in some way, that's really what the process of songwriting is for me, It is the retelling of these stories and the mythologising of these stories. To lose the faculty of memory is a massive trauma within that world obviously
2 The desire to be someone else
I think on some level we all want to be somebody else. And we all look for that transformative thing that can happen in our lives. And I think most of people find it in some way or another and that's a place that they can forget who they are and become somebody else. It is really that moment that you can be somebody you want to be
3 Our story
Who knows their own story. Certainly, it makes no sense when we are living in the midst of it. It is all just clamour and confusion. It only becomes a story when we tell it and retell it. Our small precious recollections that we speak again and again to ourselves or to others. First, creating the narrative of our lives, and then keeping the story from dissolving into darkness
4 About bad weather in the UK
You know, I can control the weather with my moods, I just can't control my moods is all
5 Uncle Dong's song has soul
The song is heroic, because the song confronts death. The song is immortal and bravely stares down our own extinction. The song emerges from the spirit world with a true message. One day, I will tell you how to slay the dragon
6 About ideals
All of our days are numbered. We can not afford to be idle. To act on a bad idea is better than to not act at all because the worth of the idea never becomes apparent until you do it. Sometimes this idea can be the smallest thing in the world; a little flame that you hunch over and cup with your hand and pray will not be extinguished by all the storm that howls about it. If you can hold on to that flame, great things can be constructed around it; things that are massive and powerful and world changing. All held up by the tiniest of ideas.
7 Uncle Dong's outlook on life and art
In the end, I am not interested in that which I fully understand. The words I have written over the years are just a veneer. There are truths that lie beneath the surface of the words. Truths that rise up without warning like the humps of a sea monster and then disappear.
What performance and song is to me is finding a way to tempt the monster to the surface, to create a space where the creature can breakthrough what is real and what is known to us. This shimmering space, where imagination and reality intersect, this is where all love and tears and joy exist
This is the place. This is where we live
View more about 20,000 Days on Earth reviews
