House music sets the beat of my journey through the mega city of Hong Kong. Hong Kong and house music fit better together than any city I’ve tried to set house to (London, Cape Town, Warsaw, Paris, Detroit). Hong Kong is a pulsating organic ecosystem strengthened with steel and cement. This city, with its many beautifully contrasting layers, sync up just like house music’s many sounds do. House music’s electronic beats may seem wholly artificial to some. But the heart, the soul, the emotion of house music comes from its Motown heritage. House music was created to keep people dancing, to allow people of color and women to showcase their struggles and then forget them in euphoric expunging, to cleanse their souls and retain their humanity. House music, like Hong Kong, doesn’t behave, breaking you into a sweat, drawing you to certain places. In a city your body makes decisions that your mind isn’t aware of, you move because you must, just like dancing. You go off onto unexpected beats and streets but you never leave the track or the city.
The music of my soul is Motown, created by my city and perfected by the genius of few. The music of my soul is hip-hop, poetry narrating a solo journey. The music of my soul is house, my senses soothed by the repetition, the layers and its thematic yearning for love.
I’ve been in Hong Kong for a week and a half. My journey every morning to school takes me from the City, traveling on the metro and then on a bus through the jungle to my seaside school. I must find a place to live, to put down roots. I’m deciding between living in solitude amongst the sounds of a village, with my school just a shout away, or in the city whose solitude I found suffocating before. But listening to the sounds of house music on my commute, so perfectly matching the sounds of Hong Kong and my soul, I know where I belong.
To be developed: taste, sight, smell, touch
The Weft 