Saturday, October 22, 2011

Carrot's Book Launch

This morning, I went to Carrot's book launch. I haven't read her book yet, but D and I excitedly bought it before the writers started speaking about their works - this slim tome that seemed far heavier than its actual weight.

What hit me this morning, besides more inspiration in my head than I've felt in a while, was the existence of so many different tones in this world. Each speaker spoke in what was undeniably, their intrinsic voice, and with the way they emphasized words and even the words they chose, it brought out so much character.

The first speaker (not the actual author) was male, incredibly earnest and boisterous and delivered a rich text. The second speaker read out his own work and it felt incredibly personal and private, as if you had uninvitingly found yourself in the middle of a lover's quarrel. The third speaker was a woman whose written words took on a completely different character from how she was in real life - yet it wasn't disconcerting, and actually kind of gelled after a while, you could see, I think, how her natural bluntness in real life eased into an honest, yet forgiving, poetic voice.

The fourth speaker was M, Carrot's representative, and she was, in my objective and completely unbiased opinion, the most brilliant. M has such a lovely voice that seems to spring out to your ears. I felt she gave a different texture of Carrot's words, there's that sharp consciousness in M's tone, that world wry humour, that inner knowledge, that gives Carrot's words a surprising edge. I imagined how it would sound in Carrot's own voice, and I think Carrot's tone is more wistful, more hopeful and more indulgent. I loved both interpretations (M's one and Carrot's imaginary one in my head, or at least how it sounds in my head when I read her works).

The last speaker was a playwright, and there's something about the way she enunciated her words, that while entertaining never completely felt fully genuine, as if she was always performing.

So, it was extremely interesting to see how people spoke orally as compared to how they spoke with their written words. Someone once told me that I speak exactly like how i write, I was surprised at this for I don't think it's often for the two sides of myself to come together at once.

I am not a dog/ But you are the moon

Robert Frost once said that all metaphors
break down somewhere.
I call you a lion,
But you are not a lion,
You will not eat me up and
Spit out my bones.
I call you many things,
But clumsily
So you do not hear the truth in them.
Many like to use the metaphors
Of a key, a room, a door,
But you won’t even give me the pleasure
Of a door-knob.
If our relationship can be called love,
I am the dog barking at the moon,
I am not a dog,
But you are the moon -
and there will never be enough metaphors
to cross the distance between us.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Robert Frost - Education by Poetry

Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, "grace" metaphors, and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, "Why don’t you say what you mean?" We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections—whether from diffidence or some other instinct.

- from Robert Frost's speech "Education by Poetry"

Thursday, October 6, 2011

The Beauty We Find When We Aren't Looking






There is a reason why I write rarely. I can find lots of pretty justifications - (1) Work is such a big part of my life and I can't write about Work as Work is Confidential, (2) I write so much as part of my Work that I can't write anymore in my free time - kind of like a comedian who doesn't tell jokes in his personal life or a Cook that does not cook family meals and (3) the ever trusty, classic Writer's Block.

The truth is less pretty. The truth is that I'm afraid I can no longer write anything beautiful. I am scared of producing personal words and realising how plain they are, hence how plain I am. I am afraid, I guess, of facing myself. I paused here for a while and contemplated if I should delete that line - "I am afraid, I guess, of facing myself". There is always the desire, however hard one tries to suppress it, to paint one's self in a good light. In this novel in which we write, who of us are writing as if we are the bad guys? Or more precisely, does any of us imagine ourselves as one of the minor characters in the novel - maybe that secondary character who was at the dining table and told one joke - and that's it - that's all the role he'll ever play.

But I do force myself to write. To make it an activity, a habit even. Everyone has a different mode of self-reflection - but we all need that mode. If one does not live consciously, one perhaps does not live. One is just an apple, waiting to ripen and to fall off a tree. And, so, let's abruptly transition now, to a reflection of my Penang trip in August!



When I recollect it now, the first sentence that pops into my head is: Penang is such a dusty town. I remember the first cab ride from the airport to town, it's always full of anticipation. You watch the windows with such intensity, it is as if you imagine a dinosaur is going to come down the road at any moment - yes, at any moment, don't blink! And then, we arrived at our hotel, and immediately the heat hits me and than the DUST. Penang makes me feel like it's an old dusty cowboy-like town, except instead of cowboys and sheriffs, we have incredibly talented hawkers and taxis waiting to rip you off.



And then, the next thing that hits you is that you feel anachronistic - you feel out of sync, you feel out of time. It is as if you were a modern person walking around in 1960s, or however I imagine 1960s to be - which is slightly peaceful and off-coloured. So, we dropped off our bags, and we started wandering around Georgetown as if we were time-travellers, wandering into our childhood. Oh, it really felt like my childhood - when everything around me felt so old and established, and I felt eternally small and young. Oh, the buzzing cars and motorcycles and the streets that felt like puzzles to cross. And all the different mosaic floors. It was, in all sincerity, beautiful. Beautiful in the way you spend an afternoon in your Grandma's house - it is everything you have grown up with, it is not exciting but it is so real that you feel that if you paused, completely pause for an instant, it is as if you are capturing a moment that would stay with you for as long as you believe in simple things.



We had a reason for going to Penang. Besides the cheap flights and the fact that we could double our spending power, we came to Penang because we wanted to see fireflies. I've never seen fireflies in my whole life. Although sometimes, I wonder, if I did when I was young, or I was merely imagining beautiful little lightbulbs now in my memory, kind of like imaginary childhood friends, but in this case, imaginary childhood fireflies.

So, we waited eagerly for the driver to come pick us up for our long journey to some secluded part of a forest, around some secluded mangrove swamp/river. This was a real journey of faith - because not only must one trust the driver will not abandon you at some remote corner, one must believe in fireflies in this world in which we constantly erode. There were constant warnings of not getting your expectations up too high - fireflies won't come up when it rains, their habitats have been destroyed over the years, there are hardly any left. On the first night, it rained. It not only rained terribly, the windows of the car that came to picked us up got jammed. Hence, we were stuck in this car that was getting rained in. Literally. We aborted the first journey.

The second time, the weather appeared well. I prayed to see the fireflies so badly, I must have sat cross-legged and cross-fingered all the way. We did get to see it in the end. No words can describe that feeling when you first realised THOSE are fireflies. And, you realise, there's so many things left in this world that can make you feel like a child again - to make you stand in awe of the world and want to cry. And I thank God for all the magic in this world. At the start of the boat journey into the darkness, the kids in front of us cried: Are we there yet? Mid-way through the journey, the kid cried: Why are we still here? The kids didn't really appreciate the fireflies. In fact, the people who appreciated them most were the three precocious teenage boys that directed our boat. I found the expression of their faces really beautiful - it was pure joy. No matter what they grow up to be, I hope they always remember that for a few nights (however many), they drove a boat in the darkness, and loved finding fireflies.




At the end of our trip, I asked him what was the best part of the trip for him He said, "Old Trafford Burgers". It was this special stall that only opened late at night, two streets down from our hotel. The Old Trafford Burger was a gigantic burger with four slices of meat. Even today, he speaks of it in a tone of awe.

For everyone else, just keep your eyes open as you wander in Georgetown. Don't miss Love Lane. There's nothing on this lane. Absolutely nothing. It doesn't even seem to lead anywhere. And that's why I love it.

To have lived like Steve Jobs

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. - Steve Jobs


The speech Steve Jobs gave to a graduating batch of students at Stanford University still rings so true, inspirationally and beautifully. Indeed, the mark of a Great Man.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma-- which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. - Steve Jobs


The truth is can we be brave enough to lead the live we want to seek? There is also a fear of finally having the courage to do what you really love and realising that you aren't good at it. An arrow straight to the heart. But, if one never takes that first step out of that door, one will be eternally shut in. Coasting through life, living at the shallow edges - kind of like the safe part of the sea our parents always made us stay at. Don't go too close to the waves. Don't let yourself get carried away.

But how I miss it! That wild abandonment and the fresh salty taste of the sea. How the salt gets in your eyes and it hurts. But it's alright, you just shed a few tears and you are all ready to jump back in again. And, you come up, in your clothes, terribly unsuited for the ocean, and you just lie on the sand, with sand in all kinds of uncomfortable places (haha!) and let the sun and the wind do its magic and hug you dry.

We did it so often, jumping into the sea in our school uniforms, that the ends of my long hair got so dry. But again it was alright, I just cut it short and felt as free as ever.

Life is not about reaching an end point. In a way, it's not about achieving something. Life, sometimes, is about breathing. And when you forget to breath, or when you fail to realise you've been holding your breath, holding it all in, for such a long time... oh my dear, you have been forgetting to live. But it's alright, you just shed a few tears and you are all ready to jump back in again. Yes, you shed a few tears and you are all ready to jump back in again.