Monday, May 30, 2011

"Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts" by Jonathan Frazen

This is the kind of article I would love to send to a few people who I like to goad out of their self-disgruntled hermit circle, but decide not to, eventually, because who is to say I am not a coward as well?

For full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/opinion/29franzen.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2

Finally, in the mid-1990s, I made a conscious decision to stop worrying about the environment. There was nothing meaningful that I personally could do to save the planet, and I wanted to get on with devoting myself to the things I loved. I still tried to keep my carbon footprint small, but that was as far as I could go without falling back into rage and despair.

BUT then a funny thing happened to me. It’s a long story, but basically I fell in love with birds. I did this not without significant resistance, because it’s very uncool to be a birdwatcher, because anything that betrays real passion is by definition uncool. But little by little, in spite of myself, I developed this passion, and although one-half of a passion is obsession, the other half is love.

And so, yes, I kept a meticulous list of the birds I’d seen, and, yes, I went to inordinate lengths to see new species. But, no less important, whenever I looked at a bird, any bird, even a pigeon or a robin, I could feel my heart overflow with love. And love, as I’ve been trying to say today, is where our troubles begin.

Because now, not merely liking nature but loving a specific and vital part of it, I had no choice but to start worrying about the environment again. The news on that front was no better than when I’d decided to quit worrying about it — was considerably worse, in fact — but now those threatened forests and wetlands and oceans weren’t just pretty scenes for me to enjoy. They were the home of animals I loved.

And here’s where a curious paradox emerged. My anger and pain and despair about the planet were only increased by my concern for wild birds, and yet, as I began to get involved in bird conservation and learned more about the many threats that birds face, it became easier, not harder, to live with my anger and despair and pain.

How does this happen? I think, for one thing, that my love of birds became a portal to an important, less self-centered part of myself that I’d never even known existed. Instead of continuing to drift forward through my life as a global citizen, liking and disliking and withholding my commitment for some later date, I was forced to confront a self that I had to either straight-up accept or flat-out reject.

Which is what love will do to a person. Because the fundamental fact about all of us is that we’re alive for a while but will die before long. This fact is the real root cause of all our anger and pain and despair. And you can either run from this fact or, by way of love, you can embrace it.

When you stay in your room and rage or sneer or shrug your shoulders, as I did for many years, the world and its problems are impossibly daunting. But when you go out and put yourself in real relation to real people, or even just real animals, there’s a very real danger that you might love some of them.

And who knows what might happen to you then?

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Almost Left Behind



Today, I watched the fruits of 9 months of my friends' labour - Almost Left Behind. There were many individual pieces and they were sited at different parts of the Substation. It was like a traveling circus and the audience were the nomads.

It was painfully ironic that the person who I set out to see perform, was the one person I didn't get to see perform. I was stuck at another piece, which I didn't know I couldn't leave halfway, and was only able to reach her piece when it ended. When I heard the others all raving at the performance, it hit me, how yet again, I've missed being personally part of something important for her. Still, I was really happy that her performance went so well.

These group of friends, from my theatre study years, were the friends who, at one point, physically embodied my heart and soul. One of you could be my head, the other could be my toes, or my right hand, or any limb you would like. It just felt that natural. I don't know when, but at some point, I felt that the umbilical cord had been cut off. Now, whenever I see them, I feel this great wave of affection, a great deal of respect and admiration, but never that sense of intimacy again. I was really glad to see all of them on stage, performing, being in their element. Everyone it seems, is most beautiful, when they are living out the truth of their lives.

To give credit to some of the most heartfelt theatre I've watched in years, I'll write some thoughts on the pieces I had the fortune to watch:



The picture above is a shot I took from Esther Ng's video titled "I love to go a-wandering (the shanty town)". I didn't get to catch the whole piece. I found the opening very moving - swashes of primary colours started filling the screen, like waves of coloured oceans, and I loved how naturally the swashes of colour seemed to form mini amoebas - the building blocks of everything we see in this world. You could start to see all kinds of creatures in the sea-green,yellow,red ocean, and then there was a sun, and then there were stars. Everything was wiped clean. And then there was a tree. For me, I thought about the genesis and creation and I loved how the simple images/shadows in the video allowed the mind such a great space to play and exercise their imagination on. A-wandering indeed.

After Esther's piece, I went into Ng Yuhui's Storeyhouse. You were passed a torchlight, and in, you went into this deeply cramped space with nothing but a great sense of curiosity. I found this piece very well-curated, how such a small space could be so carefully segmented, with heartbreaking moments at each spot. I love the thoughts scribbled on the walls, some at different heights, which reminded me of how in our youth, we would mark our height on the walls with pencil scribbles - and those scribbles at different places and heights, made me imagine that was how one mark the growth of love in a budding relationship. This piece had such great humor and wistful sadness... she called herself a hoarder, but more than anything, in this careful sensitive compartmentalisation of memories, relationships and love, I left with the impression that she had already freed herself.

The third piece I watched was Lynn Yang's The Audition. I think this piece was the most honest of the pieces I watched tonight. We don't know the role she was auditioning for, but we didn't really need to know, because I think, in the end - that's all our life stories, figuring out what role we are playing at this particular stage of our lives. This audition was not for something, this audition was a very honest (maybe even painfully) self-examination into our deepest desires. As the "director" kept asking for her "life story", as if demanding for her to re-write her life story, there and then, to create something more tragic, more exciting, more fit for the stage - to be larger than life, but most poignantly, most of our lives are made of stuff like these - the fact that we come from happy, "normal", backgrounds and in a loving household, does not make these lives any lesser than a life with a "real" story. I found the most beautiful moment was when she was detailing her fears/mental blocks and little coloured pixels started falling down as if her life was a beautiful chaotic game of Tetris.

The fourth piece I watched was Pamela Tham's Sole Searching. This piece I felt was the best of all the pieces I watched. It was intriguing conceptually and the interplay of the actor and the lights was just plain impressive. Still, this piece was brilliant because of Pamela's immense natural charisma. She reminded me of my own batch mate, Jiehui, a natural performer as well. There's a sense of primal instinct in their acting, which is so raw and powerful, that evokes all kinds of subconscious fears and desires. She had excellent pacing, use of space, and was very true to her character throughout in her treatment of the different shoes that represented different stages of her life. The way she tenderly caressed her childhood ballet shoes, the animalistic cowboy boots, the heels she hid away, the practical and sensible teacher shoes. As an actor, she needs further vocal work, but I think she has perfect instincts.

The fifth and last piece I watched was Andrea Ang and Anitha Pagolu's In Flight. This piece was structured beautifully. The two actors have excellent vocals and control of their body - the physicality in their interactions really brought out the internal strife/struggle within. I really enjoyed how the actors could play off each other's natural physical sense - one naturally cool and sophisticated and the other with such nervous energy. I thought it was still rough around the edges, but there were moments of such poetic beauty - I felt that it was the piece that best brought out the title of this overall festival, "Almost Left Behind".

The "finale" so to speak was called "The Departure". I got to see Xijie in her mime outfit, and was deeply regretful I couldn't see her piece despite trying to queue for it thrice. She gave me a flower at the end, and my heart skipped a beat. She's really someone that reminds me of living, breathing "magic realism".

I'll be looking forward to what the future holds for all these immensely talented individuals. Certainly, the audience won't be left behind.




Wednesday, May 25, 2011

An Unposted Love Letter


I usually have a few books around my bed. They feel like guardians. I always feel protected by words. Even though, these days, I feel like I’m constantly tripping over them. Both the books and metaphorically, words.

If I’m reading a novel, I’ll usually read the novel faithfully. Trying to keep intact the world of the book. If the novel is one more of ideas than characters, with a very loose thread kind of narrative, then I usually intersperse it with short stories.

You would think that I read so much on the job, I would refrain from reading altogether. But I can’t help myself. It’s as if the tape rewinds in my head and the tight structure my brain has started coiling itself in starts to unroll – starts to transform into all kinds of brilliant dazzling colours.

I honestly recommend Doris Lessing’s Stories. It’s a collection of short stories that break my heart. I try not to be greedy. Only reading one story a day. Trying to let the flavours linger longer. There was no need for me to. The stories are so strong that they stay there, smiling at me, like old friends, whenever I return for another.

I’m only one-third into the collection. So far, the story that came closest to bringing me to tears was “An Unposted Love Letter”. It’s so wonderful that I don’t dare to even begin to analyse it –I’m just sitting here, being profoundly affected.

I’ll quote it a little, because I can’t help it, even though the words without all the other perfect words of the story does deal it a great injustice:

“I am a great space that enlarges, that grows, that spreads with the steady lightening of the human soul, and in the space, squatting in the corner, is a thing, an object, a dark, slow, coiled, amorphous heaviness, embodied sleep, a cold stupid sleep, a heaviness like the dark in a stale room – this thing stirs in its sleep where it squats in my soul, and I put all my muscles, all my force, into defeating it. For this was what I was born for, this is what I am, to fight embodied sleep, putting around it a confining girdle of light, of intelligence, so that it cannot spread its slow stain of ugliness over the trees, over the stars, over you.


I release you to go to your joys without me. I leave you to your love. I leave you to your life.”

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

a whisper of a sigh



I'm always most tired when I'm with him. I believe it's because I let myself be most vulnerable. I had the kind of tiredness, the long drawn kind of tiredness, that ends with a whisper of a sigh. My world felt like it was being held up by the thinnest of threads, so fragilely drawn tight, that I felt if I let myself slacken for a moment, even if just for a second, the world would fall down. Like london bridge. Like humpty dumpty. Like all the nursery rhymes in which we play-act pain so gleefully.

He changed the channel on the radio. It switched to the Kings of Convenience cd. The radio went, "Go easy on me..."

My shoulders loosened. The world didn't fall down.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Captain Sunshine

My rabbit, taking over the world, one butt at a time.

Larkin: Letters to Monica

'We cannot be
Elsewhere than here –
And yet, just so
May others stare
On our casual scene,
And cry for pleasure
At the out-of reach
Enchantment there
Where we have been.’

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Macbeth: Rock Concert Style

I watched Macbeth at Fort Canning Hill yesterday. We arrived late and had to figure out how we were going to find a free patch of grass for the 7 of us. We did, we stretched out and waited for the action to begin.



Honestly, it's very difficult to put on a Shakespearean play - more than having a strong directorial vision/concept for how you would like to present the themes of the play, more than having costumes that would visually match the directorial vision - you have to respect the words. It's important to have a good sense of rhythm or the words will just die out in empty fury. Most of the actors left me with the impression that they did not understand the iambic pentameter. I think Macbeth and Macduff stood out with their words being able to echo through the hills and create some tremors in my heart. The rest, well, is best passed over in silence.


The Three Witches toiling and troubling

Still, much credit, goes to the stage designer. The gothic grey building was crisp and stark, so simple, yet it evoked associations of historical images of power - I could see the Parliament House, the ancient Greek pillars, a castle, a majestic tomb - how apt considering the deaths that would be played out on this somber stage. The simple palette allowed the colours to really shine through - the lovely shade of royal blue during King Duncan's reign, to be swiftly changed by the crimson red sea of flags for Macbeth's reign. The stand out scene by far was the Dining Party scene when Macbeth starts to show the public how the guilt and madness within is starting to cripple him. Oh, the sight of the blood soaked Banquo sitting silently in his seat, haunting indeed.

Other than that beautiful tableau, the play was extremely uneven. Still, I appreciated the message: when traitorous men are in power, it is the honest that are treated like traitors.

Singapore theatre, please rock on.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Sunset

Today, I left office just in time to see a sunset.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Tweet!

H gave me these knowing how much I love birds. They make me so happy. I'm so thankful for the people I've met in my life in all their wondrous capacities. It makes me feel that this world has infinite possibilities and as I lived more of my life I'm starting to realise how we all resist labels - we are just who we are. Strangers one moment and kindred spirits the next.



Sunday, May 8, 2011

Historic Change in Status

On Thursday, my oldest friend became a mother. I became a god mother. On Saturday, I voted for the first time. On Sunday, History was officially made in Singapore.

A heart once stirred cannot be unstirred.

Mothers' Day in Pictures





Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Politics

It seems everywhere you go, everywhere you turn, there it is - politics. There are no politically correct answers, refreshingly, perhaps - because we are now re-defining the correct answers. I'm very tired of the bashing that is going on, the anti-insert Party rhetoric. Let's try and speak in positive formulations instead. Don't tell me how much insert Party sucks, tell me what you believe in, tell me what you want Singapore to be.

Monday, May 2, 2011

This makes me cry a little

I want you and you are not here. I pause
in this garden, breathing the colour thought is
before language into still air. Even your name
is a pale ghost and, though I exhale it again
and again, it will not stay with me. Tonight
I make you up, imagine you, your movements clearer
than the words I have you say you said before.

Whereever you are now, inside my head you fix me
with a look, standing here whilst cool late light
dissolves into the earth. I have got your mouth wrong,
but still it smiles. I hold you closer, miles away,
inventing love, until the calls of nightjars
interrupt and turn what was to come, was certain,
into memory. The stars are filming us for no one.

- Miles Away, Carol Ann Duffy

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Still naive and innocent

"I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.” – Anais Nin


From G's blog