… is a new framework through which I organise my offline life and online presence.
September 2025: there’s a new revision on what I mean by my art.
Berkeley, Year 2
I’ve now spent a month in Germany. Most of my time has been spent as a regular passerby, occasionally as a beer-tasting new friend, and, unfortunately, only rarely as a paper-churning, code-pruning researcher. The latter certainly deserves more attention, of course—after all, it’s how I justify my existence to society, (this doesn’t only mean selection or review committees)—and how I fundamentally believe I should spend my time.
Yesterday, I walked around the Northern Campus of UGoettingen for the first time. I titled that workout “To Open Sky.” There were new kinds of thoughts occupying my mind, naturally. Part of me was on the lookout for good take-off spots for my drone, while another part charted an optimal path for handheld, two-player walks. Seven years have passed since I arrived at Berkeley, yet walking through the Gö campus, I felt as though I had somehow returned. As though I had returned, to the second year that I had yearned for but never got.
I’ve physically been back to UC Berkeley. Quite a few times, once just last year. And my cohort, now scattered across the world working on various things, sometimes still interact with my Instagram out of a mix of pity and nostalgia. I don’t mean that I’ve returned to the place or the people, but rather to the internal state I so tightly associate with the Berkeley Physics study rooms — maybe it’s a state of hormonal balance — what I can say is that it is a rare and delicate state of inner peace and high productivity.
Some memories keep me too embarrassed to sleep, of course. 2018 FW is certainly a less pleasant person to interact with than now. Still, I enjoyed (mostly in hindsight) a dramatic deepening of my independent thought, intensity of self-motivated exploration, and confidence in calculations and ideas. H
Also yeah, I was also reliably artistic at Berkeley. I keep my cloud drive from that year backed up to this day for a reason. Iridium Point is still working off the backlog of compositions I produced in Morrison Hall, Berkeley’s music department, and there still are a few songs left to develop.
Steady, Steady
How could I walk back on some of the aforementioned qualities … and just stayed. This is far from the first time this blog takes a critical review on how I spend my time. Any more often and it’d be concerning.
As I look back at my new wave of heavy social media use and seeking of distractions that began in mid-2022. I sense exactly a frustration at the loss of my Berkeley mindset. Part of this is subconscious and hormonal, sure, but at least I now know which directions not to tread.
I believe I will require a visit back here in the near future, but not now. This is another — the most pronounced and determined — parting message with the comfort of the old ways. To keep oneself in homeostasis — not even constant high output, just constant output — is a lifelong struggle. I thank cellular biology and physics for taking care of the more basic aspects of that, but the tricks to achieve the rest is wisdom to be sought.
Anyway, this post declares a return to my Berkeley mind state. A realisation I’m already back there, somehow; a characterisation of what it was; lastly a wish that I can keep it.
So here I am, a dedicated scientist with artistic characteristics. I’ve done stuff. I’ll keep doing stuff. Not much changed externally.
See you up ahead.
Yourong Frank Wang 