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Saturday, July 5th, 2008
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5:28 pm - baaaaack
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I'm back. Stockholm was beautiful. There's so much work to be done.
If there's one thing to learn from the Swedish it's to dispose of the fat and retain only the necessary.
There are many extraneous things in my life. Deadweight.
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| Sunday, June 22nd, 2008
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7:40 am - doldrums byebye
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I eat one meal a day, sleep at 9 am, wake up at 6 pm.
I haven't shaved, haven't been out of the house in days, all I do is read and write and read and write.
A few days ago, I received a package in my mail. It was signed by 10 dear friends. A card said 'SMILE!' Inside was a wallet--to replace the one I lost at St Petersburg, and a Muji camera.
And just recently, we celebrated Ash's birthday. I am glad I came late, because I managed to stay out of most of the photos. The one taken by Jason made everyone a red-eyed animal at the Night Safari, while the Polaroids look like they should be in a Tracey Emin artwork. I saw one with the candles half-melted on the cake--it was hilarious. The candles looked like stalagmites.
And Junfeng drew a beautiful portrait of Ash as a baby. I also want to draw but I can only draw vixen.
I've had emails also from people I've never met in real life. But they have been an enormous source of comfort and solace.
I remember once Haresh telling me: "Your depression will not outlast the universe."
This morning I drew again. I have a semi-beard now. It is the ugliest thing I've seen, but maybe I'll let it grow so that it can gloat at Shou who took 3 weeks to grow his sliver of a moustache. Heh heh.
Anyway, inspired by Jason's Night Safari photos, I decided to doodle the following *ahem* tribute to my friends.
I was running out of space, so things got squeezy as I continued drawing.
The baBOOn isn't supposed to be so fat.
The panda isn't supposed to be so...ok it is.
I wanted to draw lioness but I really wanted the mane.
The lynx is twirling hair at the back of his head.
The wolf is 'mabuk already'.
The wolf and the vixen lying under the sheets is purely incidental; I was too lazy to draw hind legs.
At least three of my friends are rodent-identified.
I think the monkey comes closest to the actual subject.
All right, time to stretch and draw open the curtains.
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| Wednesday, June 18th, 2008
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2:25 am - zombie
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I'm sorry if I've been ignoring phone calls.
I don't know where I am right now, but I know it is far away from where I used to be.
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| Saturday, June 14th, 2008
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5:47 am - self-pitying rabbit series 2
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| Friday, June 13th, 2008
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5:50 am - hermitage
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| Thursday, June 12th, 2008
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6:16 am - primary school composition
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| Wednesday, June 11th, 2008
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1:50 am - moscow/st petersburg preview
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I have close to a thousand photos and it's such a bother to sift through all of them, so I thought I'll just give a glimpse for the moment...
Dusk at the Red Square, Moscow.
In front of the Moscow Art Theatre with Ivan and Swee Lin. Its logo is a seagull, a reference to Anton Chekov's play.
Lions in the ring, Moscow Circus.
A white night in St Petersburg, the Venice of the North. Check out the moon!
St Isaacs' Cathedral, St Peterburg. Eyebleed icons.
Church of Our Saviour On The Spilled Blood, St Petersburg. How's that for a drama name?
The Hermitage, St Petersbug. Catherine the Great's former retreat, now one of the most beautiful museums in the world.
The Mariinsky theatre in St Petersburg, where we watched a performance of Tosca, with Maria Guleghina in the title role. Breathtaking.
And of course, St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow. Some buildings are so iconic all you have to do is pose next to them and you'e got a postcard shot.
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| Sunday, June 1st, 2008
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11:21 am - from moscow with love
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Couldn't resist cheesy title.
Beautiful day today, cold but sunny.
Went to the Kremlin, the Red Square, St Basil's Cathedral, the Moscow Circus...where I saw lions and superhyper poodles! Haha.
Happiness is a species of forgetting. Someone is gradually getting evicted from my head. One of these days the bliss will be in realising I've spent days without once thinking of said peson.
Now I want to go to the street where Tolstoy wrote Anna Karenina.
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| Friday, May 30th, 2008
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12:21 pm - because (thirty)
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Because I was leaving for a cold country.
Because I knew I would wait for messages from you, each one a blast of heat from home, each one emblazoned with your smile.
Because every message I have reviewed in the 'Sent' folder in my phone, echoes the same line over and over: 'are you thinking of me?'
Because I was exhausted by my lack of indifference to your indifference.
Because poor R, who I dated to forget you, but who ended up being what you were not, an anti-you, an undeveloped negative.
Because there comes a point one day when the admonishment 'you're not doing enough' becomes 'you're just not good enough'.
Because self-loathing started calling my name and it was hard not to turn around in acknowledgment.
Because the manner in which I was indulged seemed at times like careful diplomacy—just enough suggestions to keep the dialogue going, but no binding resolutions in case I leave the table.
Because the answer was in the non-answers.
Because you say status quo, I say...limbo.
Because fastening your cufflinks for you filled me with an absurd kind of happiness.
Because that happiness was at your mercy.
Because it is bitter, and because it is my heart. (apologies Stephen Crane)
Because I liked you better
Than suits a man to say,
It irked you, and I promised
To throw the thought away.
(from A. E. Housman)
Because what had started in spite of myself, I could also end—in spite of myself.
Because I could not put my heart on the line for fear it would be sliced in two.
Because every time a branch sprouted I would hang on it a bauble of hope—what branches, what baubles—they were twigs, my baubles were made of lead.
Because once I saw my bookshelf merged with yours; the books mingling, flirting, quarreling, learning to live with one another.
Because in a dream once I had run my hand through your hair, saying, ‘It’s grown longer since I last saw you’; now I recall this being a scene in a Taiwanese film I once watched alone in a theatre, tears streaking down my face.
Because it pained me to close the cab door on you, to see your uncomprehending eyes, pained me much more than the sight of you waving to me, waving me off, as if to say, ‘I’ll be all right on my own’—of course you will—but of course.
Because for you, about you, to stand in for with you.
Because this is a kind of penance for not noticing you all the times you stood in my sight; now I notice only you, against which all else is mist.
Because when you wore a T-shirt with a Coca-Coca logo saying 'Cocaine', and I wore one with an Adidas logo saying 'Addicted', I had believed it meant something—
Because I put my faith in such signs.
Because—why of course it meant something, now looking at it—I’m the one who's hooked, the needful one.
Because love is a drug for which you either secure the supply or learn to go cold turkey.
Because everything you did mattered to me, mattered too much, each breath you exhaled stirred a windchime, ripened an ember, rippled the skin of water.
Because when I told myself I would do anything for you I forgot the caveat: except wait indefinitely.
Because I would rather miss you like this than keep missing what I want you to be.
Because it's late, we have work tomorrow, you close the door carefully, it shuts with a soft click, you are gentle with doorknobs, you have always been gentle; and patient; and kind; before I leave, I touch the door, I stretch my fingers out, press my palm against it, maybe your back is now leaning against the door, maybe your back was always a closed door; I leave behind a mark only moonlight could make visible, a transparent layer of skin, tomorrow's dust.
It's all over now. Good night and goodbye ****. Thank you for everything.
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| Thursday, May 29th, 2008
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7:43 pm - the end...
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...and then he vanished, into the thickness of the night.
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| Saturday, May 24th, 2008
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1:41 pm - a blaze of colour
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From Anton Chekov's 'Three Sisters':
OLGA. Today it's warm, we can even have the windows open - but the birch trees are still not in leaf. Father was given command of a brigade and left Moscow with us eleven years ago. And I remember it all distinctly, at the beginning of May, just at this time, in Moscow already everything is in flower, it's warm, everything is flooded with sunlight. Eleven years have gone by, but I remember everything there, as if we left Moscow yesterday. Good God! This morning I woke up and I saw a blaze of colour, I saw the spring, and gladness bubbled up inside my heart, and I desperately wanted to be where I came from, in my native land.
It's 7 degrees in Moscow. I'm leaving on Friday. Brrrrr...
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| Friday, May 23rd, 2008
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1:10 pm - incest
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I'm doing a workshop on Monday and I'm discussing Boo's 'Keluar Baris' and Brian's 'Imelda'. Too bad I can't do any of Zihan's for the particular themes we have for the workshop--on National Education one. : P
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| Thursday, May 22nd, 2008
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7:08 am - racialised singapore
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I was randomly surfing when I chanced upon a review of the Singapore Shorts 2008 finalists. I know I shouldn't get myself into blogspats, because they are such a waste of time most of the time, but there was something about this particular post which was waving a red flag at me. I'm putting it here, but I'm not going to identify the originator of the blog post (I don't know him personally, by the way). I'm just curious as to whether some of the opinions he expresses are representative of the way most Singaporeans think (i.e. subscribing to cultural deficit theses, believing that there are such things as 'community problems') or whether they are just a minority viewpoint. It scares me sometimes how many people are in the grip of such ideologies.
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Monday, May 19, 2008
19th May '08
So I was at Sinema at Old School last night to catch the Singapore Shorts Finalists. Actually, it was because I wanted to see Keluar Baris, till I realised it is only 16 mins long/short and was being screened with a couple of other local short films. [irrelevant part snipped]
It was quite interesting, to say the least, seeing local productions (other than Jack Neo's, which, really, are getting quite wince-worthy) speaking of issues you can relate to. Nationalism through local landmarks, juvenile delinquency (or as some may see it, the typical issue of a particular community), stupid kids who don't know anything (really), human emotion and, for the main reason I came, the local institutionalised prison system.
Keluar Baris is a must-see for all who have gone through NS. Or should I say, [irrelevant part snipped] those who have gone through the worst part of it. It really really felt like what the movie attempts to, and succeeds to a considerable and laudable extent, express. How many of our young men have gone through the most testing time of their lives through a single, cold-worded, smelly letter.
3 comments:
alfian said...
I quote:
"...juvenile delinquency (or as some may see it, the typical issue of a particular community)"
I have little doubt that you're referring to 'My Home, My Heaven', a short film about Malay youths, partly set in a correctional facility.
I find your comment to be incredibly racist. I take umbrage with the use of the word 'typical'. And I don't think you've successfully deflected personal responsibility for the statement by saying 'as some may see it'.
Alfian.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008 4:01:00 AM
********** said...
I don't think we should mince our words. I was referring to that short.
Why else do you think the film depicted a particular family?
I am, by no means, saying that all Malays, or even most Malays are problematic. All I am saying is that, just like our own ministers agree and are working on, the Malay community, through their own fault or not, IS the one that sees the most juvenile delinquency, premarital pregnancies, glue sniffing, etc, etc, etc by percentage. This is a fact.
I see it as a problem the community is facing and is trying hard to solve. But while they are working on it, some may see the members of that particular part of society as problematic. This is inevitable. You can accuse people of being biased, racist even, maybe even charge them for sedition (which, by the way, is supposed to refer to governmental dissent), but all you'll be doing is suppressing the overwhelming sentiments.
Wouldn't it be better to work on SOLVING the problems than jumping in sensitive excitement that people around are being "racist"?
Wednesday, May 21, 2008 10:08:00 AM
alfian said...
I was going to rebut you point by point but I realise I don't have the luxury of time.
All I want to say here is that there are many ways to look at the film. One can try to look at the situations the boys find themselves in to be a result of their class, instead of racial backgrounds. As a matter of fact, the film wasn't even really about delinquency, but asked some profound questions about ethics and stereotyping.
If you'd remember the story at all, the main character took the rap for his brother. I think this, for me, was the main point of the story: that even such a 'bad hat' had his own moral compass. With all due respect, I doubt that the filmmaker wanted the film to portray a quintessential snapshot of a 'typical' Malay community.
Unfortunately, the laws on sedition in this country has often been abused and as you would know by now extends to racial and religious incitement as well. I am deeply against any form of state intervention in mediating inter-racial relations.
Your foregrounding of race in the film 'My Home, My Heaven', for me, represents a highly racialised reading. I retract what I said about it being 'racist'. When I watch 'I'm Not Stupid', I don't say it's about the abusive parenting practices of a particular community, when I watch '15' I don't say it's about the drugs-and-tattoo lifestyle of working-class eyesores from a particular community. I just hope that you extend the same grace to a film like 'My Home, My Heaven'.
Sincerely,
Alfian. : )
Thursday, May 22, 2008 5:04:00 AM
************************************
Maybe there's two final points I'd want to make, and the first pertains to the statement, "Wouldn't it be better to work on SOLVING the problems than jumping in sensitive excitement that people around are being "racist"?"
It seems to imply that somehow, simply because I am a member of the Malay community, then I am responsible for 'solving' these 'community problems'. As I am neither a form teacher, a warden at a Boys' Home, nor an officer with the Ministry of Community, Youth and Sports (neither of whom need to be Malay), I don't see how I can possibly tackle the problem of delinquency. I don't know whether these are the kinds of taken-for-granted assumptions borne out of having years of self-help groups and patrician minority MP's exhorting their respective communities to 'pull their socks up'.
The other insinuation is that I am somehow in denial of the 'problems' faced by the Malay community and am hypersensitive to well-meaning attempts to show me the 'hard facts'. The 'hard fact', rather, for me, is that I just don't see what these 'problems' have to do with me. Which is another way of saying that I refuse to be implicated in any kind of discourse that seeks 'racial' explanations for certain kinds of sociological phenomena.
The second point and the more important one for me is that I hope such reactions from (non-Malay) members of the public will not deter the director, Md EySham Ali, from tackling such themes in the future. If you make films about minority communities, there's always going to be the burden of representation. And it is precisely this fear that 'other communities' might read your works as coming from an autoethnographic, as opposed to a personal-aesthetic, perspective that causes some filmmakers to shy away from certain subjects and strive for 'positive', sanitised and often ultimately hollow depictions.
Arthur Miller once said that 'generalisation is the death of art'. No doubt this was a call for artists to seek for the concrete particularity and the sensuous detail in their works. But one could apply it to the practice of reception as well. Generalising a work like 'My Home, My Heaven' as a 'commmunity problem' film is also to hasten the 'death of art'. It creates a judgmental regime where minority artists will only dare to wash clean laundry in public: telling stories increasingly repetitive, superfluous and threadbare.
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| Monday, May 19th, 2008
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11:29 pm - another interview
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1. Will the allocated funds of $23 million per year be able to achieve the ambitious objectives of stage three of the Renaissance City Plan— creating distinctive homegrown content, making the arts financially viable, and engaging the heartlanders?
• Yes
• Likely
• No
• Doubtful
• Maybe
And why?
Doubtful. Because the arts happens to be an activity where an infusion of capital doesn’t necessarily guarantee desired results. The money is just one aspect of the equation—it has to be coupled with a genuine political will to liberalise existing regulations that stymie all forms of expression.
For each of these targets, I can name one potential challenge that no amount of financial investment can solve.
1) Distinctive homegrown content: this has been happening for years, but time and again the ‘local’ has been denigrated via anything ranging from the ‘Speak Good English’ campaign to context-free, unrealistic comparisons with the artistic scenes in other countries (ie, why can’t we have our own Broadway?).
2) Making the arts financially viable: This rests on the expansion of the domestic market, but I don’t think it’s going to happen soon at the rate schools are sidelining the study of literature in their curriculum.
3) Engaging the heartlanders: Who are the ‘heartlanders’??? We should be very careful about homogenizing this group as one with presumably lower levels of art appreciation, whereas the really issue might be one of access—high ticket prices, unfamiliarity with arts venues etc. Also, when Drama Box wanted to stage Forum Theatre in the heartlands (a piece called ‘Trick or Threat’), they were denied a license for performing outdoors and were told to stage it at an enclosed space instead—which is counter to any strategy of ‘engaging heartlanders’.
2. If you were responsible for spending the $23 million, what is the foremost thing you would do with it?
I will pump the money into archiving and documentation. I will give full funding to a publication like FOCAS, which NAC pulled the plug on, because we desperately need arts journals that can engage in informed criticism of what gets produced in Singapore. We can hold talkback sessions with audiences, etc, but it is only with these publications that we can deepen arts appreciation. It’s such a tired refrain, but we need these arts magazines, arts journals, because the level of arts journalism in Singapore is not only thin but also monologic.
I will also work with publishers to fund the publication of all the scripts that are produced by our various theatre companies. I would also encourage more writing on the arts. For example, I would tie up with NUS FASS and NTU HSS to award book prizes to the best honours theses that tackle Singaporean film, theatre, literature. All these can then be consolidated and published as papers.
3. What do you think is the key to making an arts venture financially viable?
Sponsorship is one of them. But then again I’m not so certain ‘financial viability’ is the ultimate aim for many of us in the arts sphere. Maybe the idea of a ‘career’ in the ‘artistic or creative industry’ might have a certain rhetorical appeal to people who want to enroll in arts schools. And maybe by projecting this idea that it is a ‘financially-viable’ endeavour, the government can attract students (including overseas ones) into its various arts institutions. But I’m still convinced that a lot of art still requires public funding (and here I’m very careful to call it ‘public funding’ and not ‘state funding’).
4. What is the latest local arts project you are working on now? In what practical ways can some of this additional fund filter down to help with the project, or people you are working with at the moment?
I’m working with Ivan on the Singapore Theatre Festival, a playwright-centred biennial festival to be held this August. It is a resolutely homegrown event, as we are focusing on original works by Singaporean (and Malaysian) playwrights. It’s a big risk, because we’re not relying on the ready-made appeal of tried-and-tested canonical works. I think this is something that could benefit from some money from the RCP.
5. What do you think is the best way to help “engage the community” in the arts scene?
With W!ld Rice productions, we always hold what is known as a ‘Feedback Friday’, where there’s a Q&A at the end of our Friday performances. This is not unique to us, of course, I know the Necessary Stage holds Q&A sessions as well. W!ld Rice has also been conducting forums in conjunction with their plays. For the Singapore Theatre Festival in 2006, we organized forums discussing themes ranging from stayers and quitters, social undesirables, and political renewal. We invited speakers who were not necessarily part of the theatre community, including Workers Party chairman Sylvia Lim, AWARE president Braema Mathi, academic Lucy Davis, sociologist Kwok-Kian Woon, and filmmaker Martyn See.
6. How has the past RCP stages benefited you as an individual in the arts scene indirectly/ directly? If it hasn’t benefited you, what could have been done, in hindsight?
I think it’s difficult to tell, because the RCP is like a masterplan and then that gets broken down into actual detailed practices. I’ve received some travel grants that has allowed me to watch stagings of my works in Stockholm and Berlin, so that has been useful.
7. At what stage do you think Singapore can truly be called a Renaissance City?
When it abolishes the death penalty, the Political Films Act, the Internal Security Act, the Official Secrets Act and the Newspaper and Printing Presses Act. A quote by Rustom Barucha is instructive: “I don't want this 'freedom' in the theatre, if there is no freedom outside the theatre. This theatrical 'freedom', I would argue, is illusory, and merely feeds into the privileged domains of civil society, which the state is only too happy to subsidise for the propagation of its cultural capital."
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7:01 am - stay tuned
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| Sunday, May 18th, 2008
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5:15 pm - just looking
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One incisor slightly out of joint. The thin white shadows on the skin left behind by spectacle arms. A dimple, like an afterimage (or two?). Swinging arms, a clapping gesture, the French cuffs. A constellation of moles. Something about the waist and the hips. Sunkissed shins. The origin of the voice--somehow not the throat, not the chest, not the cranial sinuses--so where? But where the voice lands? Is answerable.
My eye roams like a camera from an aeroplane. This is an aerial reconnaissance. What does it mean to notice someone in this manner? To map you in my memory. Or just out of an uncontrollable impulse. No idea what I'm looking at, but I'll take a picture anyway. One day, assembling these images, I'll figure out who you are. Or maybe, the inquisitive gaze: to discern is to play at a game where that someone is unconsciously revealing himself. To be frustrated at the borders that the hungry eyes cannot breach: the curve under the ankle swallowed by shoes; the V of the neckline, the collars white as seagulls; the hem of the bermudas, shifting like tidelines while sitting or standing.
I look hardest when you can't see me. The casual gaze can now linger, palpate against your form. I look hardest when you're walking in front of me. But there is much less to look at. What is most beautiful is what is most oblivious. What is oblivious reveals so little of its beauty.
And thus did I eroticise the back of your neck.
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| Thursday, May 15th, 2008
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11:50 pm - zdravstvuyte
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That's Russian for hello.
I know. It looks like I just randomly typed it on the keyboard.
As I'll be operating the surtitles for the Moscow performance of 'Generation/s' I thought I'd familiarise myself with the Cyrillic Russian alphabet.
It's quite crazy because I feel sometimes I'm looking at mirror images of letters--like 'N' and 'R' for example, which are pronounced 'ee' and 'yah'. And then there are those letters which are counterintuitive to anyone more familiar with the English alphabet: 'B' is 'V', 'H' is 'N', 'C' is 'S', 'Y' is 'U', 'X' is 'H'...yikes.
Oh, but am so looking forward to going Moscow...and St Petersburg!
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3:34 am - apa benda tu?
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OMG I just realised that blurty authentication codes, required when you want to post comments, are infernal.
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| Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
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8:27 pm - bookworm in the labyrinth, the labyrinth in the bookworm
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I told Chia Meng last night that the most eventful part of my day was visiting the National Library to return books (before supper with ***). I know I have a whole bunch of people to meet up with, and stuff to write, but there's something irresistible about walking down aisles with your head cocked to one side, tracing your fingertip across spines, hooking a finger on the edge of a book, letting it tilt and then fall into the cup of your hand. Yesterday's haul includes:
1) Theatre Life! A History of English-language Theatre in Singapore through The Straits Times (1958-2000), Clarissa Oon
2) World Cinema: Critical Approaches, ed. by John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson
3) Southeast Asian Identities: Culture and the Politics of Representation in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, ed. Joel S. Kahn
4) Other Malays: Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism in the Modern Malay World, ed. Joel S. Kahn
5) Only Connect: Sino-Malay Encounters, Wang Gungwu
6) 3 poetry books by Mary Oliver, Adrienne Rich, Charles Wright
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8:20 pm - how
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Loss
-----
How shall we speak of our loss?
An open mouth, in the act
Of opening, caught in the act
Of being a mouth.
Into this scene, introduce
Floodwaters.
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