Frédéric, Misun, and the boys are moving to France to explore a new business venture. To say goodbye to everyone, they rented out a karaoke bar and had a party. The night was a cacophony of sound, for the kids were given free reign of the dance floor and ran around in circles, while the adults took turns singing and eating.

This is my first “5×5″; a video of five vignettes at five seconds each. It’s a helpful guideline for putting together footage that doesn’t necessarily have a consistent theme. It’s also very restrictive, as five seconds is barely enough to see what’s going on in a particular clip, and that means you really have to find the essence of action. I generally don’t make 5×5s because I always have a story to tell, but in this case, it’s fun just to see how people sing. This is very different from the Chinese karaoke parties I was witness to as a kid, where the adults take their singing very seriously, so everyone is very quiet, attentive, and quite rehearsed.

The one who stole the show was Akio, who had heard Frédéric, Misun starting a duet of Ne Me Quitte Pas, took the microphone from Misun, and started repeating the line he had just learned.

I told Frédéric, “It’s amazing that you’re not nervous up there”, and he told me, “I just said to myself that I want to have fun, and it wouldn’t be fun if I didn’t sing, so I wasn’t nervous.” I wish I could do that.

It hasn’t stopped raining since I woke up this morning, and now it’s dark, with only the streetlamps and their reflections in the puddles for light. It’s cold outside.

This is a good thing.

I feel like the eponymous character in Onegin. Sitting on the balcony in the dead of winter, waiting for a letter. His servant, handing him a stemmed glass of vodka, asks him to come inside because it’s cold. “I like the cold” he replies, as he resigns himself to his fate.

He walks down the streets of Saint Petersburg, and his motif comes in on the piano, followed by strings. FADE TO BLACK.

A stoic face to the world. Can I say stoic? I like stoic.

These titles are getting harder and harder to write.

And I want to say that I’m melancholy, but I’m not. But I’m not giddy either. My emotions aren’t black and white. They’re a mixture of ups and down. I don’t know what to say when I don’t know what I’m feeling or what comes next.

I’m just waiting. Passive. Yielding.