Tuesday, May 31, 2005

The Faraway Tree

I remember many happy afternoons reading Enid Blyton's "The Faraway Tree" when I was a kid. Right at the top of the tree are places such as Topsy Turvy Land or nightmarish places run by tyrannical principals (well, headmistresses).

At Toa Payoh Lorong 8 (the PAP GRC side of the road) , by a block of upgraded one-room flats, is the extended living room of several families living there. The half-naked kids with their half naked fathers and their half-naked friends sit and chat the night away under this tree.

PICT0049

Every few days, the menagerie of plastic gods and retired toys change their places, or are joined by new friends. Some days, there is a corner where the 8 immortals hang out with a fake Barbie (is Barbie ever real?); another corner where a couple of porcelain cats sit with the Goddess of Mercy and Mr Frog; and another spot where a plastic giraffe (tall even for a plastic toy), the laughing Buddha and the ubiquitous old fisherman (I had 2 of those in my old house!) gather.

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On behalf of my neighbours, I invite you to visit this not too faraway tree.

Thursday, May 26, 2005

Found in Transit

We had just got back from Tokyo when the movie was first released in Singapore. We had watched it, not for the critics' positive reviews, but just to catch the Tokyo cityscape. Ah,Tokyo wonderland (Sneaker heaven for James)! Yesterday we gave in to the $19 DVD at HMV.

The movie's website declares "Everyone wants to be found". I guess whether we speak the same or a different language, somehow, between 2 persons/cultures/entities there is always that slimmest of space where our words and meaning would often go missing in transit. Movies, missed opportunities and misunderstandings all tell us that maybe that space can never to filled. So our translations,interpretations and gestures, the messages we send out - they will never quite reach our intended audience in their entirety.

universal peace 2
CalcuttaJesus
Top: I've Seen the Doctor! Bottom: From Jesus to a Guru (Click to view larger image)

But I think it's not always this lonely or romantic. My experience of translation tells me instead that for everything that may be lost, something else new is always found.

For e.g. It did seem like an odd name for a clinic "Universal Peace". This was a clinic we had chanced upon at the Toa Payoh Central one day. What would a clinic called "Universal Peace" cure? Wars? Battle Scars? Hatred? Bigotry? But before you run away with these grand thoughts, "universal peace" is really just a rather literal translation for "TaiPing" (Tai Ping Yi Yao Suo). Somehow in Chinese, calling a clinic "Tai Ping" doesn't seem so strange -we assume the Chinese to be melodramatic anyway. But in translation, we find again the ambition of "Tai Ping".

Another time, somewhere in Marine Parade, James and I saw this message scribbled on a wall. We took first a photo of it and printed it 3R size. The already illegible writing was now more so. Oh well. That's what is the writing on the wall. And there's a story somewhere in there... a ghost story, a prostitute's (from Calcutta?) tale, a religious parable.

So don't despair, my friends! For everything that is lost, something else new is always found. And in the spirit of optimism, let me declare this true for more than just words and meaning, but also dreams, love and good restaurants (though never money lah).

[Another shameless plug: Like the paintings you see? A2 prints are available]

Monday, May 23, 2005

I/you am/are nothing without you/me

[Warning/Apology: This is a long post, plus it doesn't have pictures or drawings for now! An accompanying drawing will be uploaded only later.]

Maybe I remember wrong, but I think my first encounter with the idea of "co-option" was in Cherian George's Singapore the Air-Conditioned Nation: Essays on the Politics of Comfort andControl 1990-2000. The argument goes that the ruling party/government has dominated whatever intellectual millieu of this country by co-opting the voices of the intellectuals. This co-opting can be literal - by recruiting individuals into government or even politics. The co-opting can be literary or linguistic - by absorbing the critical words or works into the official imagining of Singapore, the Singapore "canon", hence neutralising, or sometimes distorting its language or meaning.

All this sounds abstract (though, at the same time, I am sure I have over-simplified many things); even irrelevant to the lives of many Singaporeans - you, I, he, she, us, them. Instead, Cherian George has written many cogent essays on how the pursuit and provision of comfort over-shadows our quesions about the political process - and I recommend the book.

Where all this started for me was at this afternoon's screening of Singapore Gaga by Tan Pin Pin at the Singapore Art Museum. It was there where this issue of "co-opting" or being "co-opted" arose.

My thoughts from the 55min film are still disorganised. Partly because I have been up the past 3 days rushing a short story (but more on this later), and also because they are somewhat mixed up with my thoughts frm a talk we had attended on Friday about "Documenting and the Document", organised by p-10 as part of their Exchange05 series with artists, researchers etc (still more on this later!). I will just list some of my responses to the Singapore Gaga screening and its Q&A session: [If you haven't watched the film...maybe these comments won't make much sense?]

1. A young but already accomplished writer was the first to raise this issue of "being co-opted". He asked if Tan Pin Pin was worried that her film would be "co-opted by the establishment". He cited the reviews in ST Life! as an example, where the reviewer had praised the film's representation of Singapore's multi-lingual and multi-racial landscape as being truly representative. Tan Pin Pin, I think, gave a mature response, that while she may worry about interpretations and "mis-interpretations", she also accepts that her responsibility as a film-maker is not to dictate audience's responses and that the diversity of views (even mis-interpretations) is part and parcel of an on-going dialogue (my words). I think the young writer who asked the question has much to learn from the generosity, graciousness of this response. (Though, perhaps, he has reasons I will never know.)

2. This, as well as the film's depiction of individual eccentricity (again, the term "eccentrics" was used by this young writer), led me to wonder whether the film does not "co-opt" the personal as the national/public. Of course, all published works and all art make public, in different degrees, the domestic, the private, the intimate. Many questions from the audience were about the title, and I think rightly so. Tan Pin Pin said that her earlier choice for a title was "I am nothing without you" (or "You are nothing without me", she joked) - as a sort of cliche and drawing on the love song "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights" which brackets the film. She decided on "Singapore Gaga" after testing the earlier title on some friends, and finding it possibly too "obscure". I prefer the obscure approach, always! For by taking on "Singapore", the film I think assumes a different voice - or rather, invites a certain response. Responses about "the establishment", "the eccentrics in Singapore", "the marginalised"... (tired and tiresome terms!)

3. I had sensed that while these were definitely issues/concepts/realities the filmmaker confronted, the motivation and the heart of the film lies still with the personal and the relational (between persons first, then between communities or ideologies or classes) - the relationship first between the filmmaker and the subject on which she trains the camera's eye. I must applaud Tan Pin Pin for doing this so effectively: to bring the national/public to the realm of personal instead. She summarised it with two phrases/words - "yearning" and "anger and bitterness". She said that while the project had started as a collection of "sounds" she was fond of in Singapore, she soon discovered that the sense of "yearning" lay behind many of the sounds and stories. The question which she sought to answer, not explicitly, was "what was it that kept people going." "Yearning" is something that cuts both ways - never to have, and a hope to have. To yearn and to desire (whether for a past, a better future, success, recognition, God's peace etc) is what keeps the people she records going, but also what makes for the anger, the sadness, the despair, the bitterness. And the film is powerful because the filmmaker shares in this ambivalence (hmmm, ambivalence is probably not the right word...).

4. The most touching scene or story in the film for me was that of Yew Hong Chow (harmonica master). And hearing Tan Pin Pin describe her sessions with Yew Hong Chow as her favourite explained why. Yew and Alex Abishinegan (sic?) would play a duet of the harmonica and guitar, respectively, for Tan Pin Pin, though Yew spoke no English and Abishinegan no Mandarin. And it is his absolute dedication to the instrument and its music that moves - the "obscurity", if you will, of his expressions of yearning. And it is the relation of the filmmaker to another artist, or to another dedication, that allows the story and images and sounds she records and interprets to move, and not just to argue.

5. If we cannot engage the personal, the political has no relevance, no reference point, no power, maybe no meaning. After all, audiences are persons first. But in all this, I I reveal only my own bias.

If you want to catch the film, it will be screening at the Substation on 1-3 July05. Or check the Singapore Gaga website for details.

Yearning for other sounds by Singaporeans? Sad is the Man.

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Escapist, Regressive Thoughts

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Title painting of a series featuring un-coloured people, mostly children (A3 posters available! hohoho!).

James and I, we've wondered for a long time now whether there ought to be some invention (one of those mystic Rambaldi inventions that someone from ALIAS would most certainly have in a handy syringe) that can stunt the growth - physical and mental - of a child. They are best to be injected with the formula sometime between the age of 1 or 2, just before they are actually conscious of their own self. Then, they still sing secretly to themselves on trains. And when they catch you watching them, they are a little stunned, aware suddenly that there is a reality beyond themselves. Their reaction is usually to shut their own eyes or hide their gaze from you - as if not seeing is the same as not existing. (When a baby/teenager lizard realised that it was discovered, it stood very very still for the longest possible time, its dark eyes returned my murderous stare but blankly, hopeful that I would think it is part of the white while. Rrrright.) Between the age of 1 or 2, they are still a little like animals, only not very furry.

Don't want to grow up? Avoid The Ice-Cream Bell Rings

Sunday, May 15, 2005

The Ice-Cream Bell Rings

Weddings are occasions I avoid. Not that I ever harbor any ill feelings towards the to-be married couples, it is just the thought of having to provide an account of your life in the past few years to old school mates, ex-boy/girlfriends, acquaintances of friends etc. Lives touch, which otherwise were meant to remain separate...Contrary to the spirit of weddings and unions, of course.

Last Saturday was not a wedding I could avoid. He was a dear friend from university and, I confess, there was the lure of seeing the Church of St Mary of the Angels. As it turned out, it was a pretty solemn wedding, and WOHA's strangely medieval architecture (despite the contemporary, voluminous hall) only added to it. At the door, I discovered that a couple of old friends from university are now separated. It didn't seem so long ago that I had helped take photographs at their wedding. Familiar faces who have put on a kilogram or 5 have also acquired toddlers and cars and toddlers and pearls and cardigans and - have I already said toddlers? All this was a little too predictable, no? So when the ice-cream man the couple had hired for the reception started to ring his bell, I couldn't wait to get out of its hearing range.

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"How we have grown up!" I only wished that this could be exclaimed with a different wonder.

Saturday, May 14, 2005

Downgrading for Upgrading

It is all too easy to lament the pace of change in this country. Issues of memory and amnesia, national identity and heritage...these are tired things to talk about, so we continue to produce tired poetry and art in their passionate defence.

However, our neighbours over in Toa Payoh Lorong 8 continue to show that there's no need for all this nostlagia.

PICT0110 PICT0113 PICT0118PICT0121 (From topleft: Happy in a corner / Feeling Down / Danger Keep Out; Good Luck Welcome / Still Happy in a Corner - Photographs by James)

Thursday, May 12, 2005

Starry Wings, Angel Wings (T-shirt Designs)

Toa Payoh Lorong 8, a narrow 2-lane road, serves as the border between 2 electoral wards. On the one side is Potong Pasir, under the care of Singapore Democratic Alliance's Chiam See Tong. On the other side is PAP's Bishan-Toa Payoh. The disparity between the 2 neighbourhoods cannot be more glaring. Potong Pasir, with its giant trees (their heavy branches in a sleepy slouch), naked void decks and spontaneous gardens, boasts the best BBQ chicken wings in Singapore (made by our pal, a Jacky Wu lookalike), the coolest Ah Peks in retro trainer suit jackets, and some of the loudest rats. PAP's Toa Payoh has colourful tiled life lobbies and void decks, sapling fruit trees whose growth seemed to have been stunted, and the best-cared-for bunch of stray cats ever (their supermarket catfood delivered daily at 9).

Now that "upgrading" works have started at the Toa Payoh flats, the 2 neighbourhoods finally have 1 thing in common - dust. Indiscriminate, dust from age and dust from hacked-up cement traverse Lorong 8, mingle, mix and even settle.

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In the same way, we live on the Toa Payoh side of the road, but cross over almost daily to Mr Chiam's quainter, livelier and seemingly happier ville to have our chicken wings, cheng tng and oldenlandia drink. So like most of our countrymen and, now, dust, we therefore can have our chicken wing and eat it.

Of course, all this political romanticism & posturing is just a prelude to our shameless sales pitch for T-shirts designed by James (click on the photos for a larger image).

Inspired by our favourite BBQ chicken wings at Potong Pasir, "Starry Wings" (model: groucho James) and "Angel Wings" (model: me...with a disturbing balding patch!?!) come in girl, S, M, L and XL sizes. T-shirts are made to order only. $28 including postage ($2). "Sunset Dream" (see 9 May 2005 post below) is also available on an unbleached cotton tote bag. Email us with your order, specifications or queries. Or just email us, ampulets@yahoo.com.sg.

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Sept Update - We've finally made our first batch of T-shirts. Interested to see how they look like? Click here to see "Starry Starry Wings".

Nov Update! - Angel Wings are here! They are not quite the same as in this picture. We done a RGB remix for our 2nd batch of t-shirts. Click here.

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

If You Train, Don't Drive

At the ripe old age of 31, my complete lack of knowledge about and enthusiasm for driving surprises many. Cars - symbols of industrialistcapitalistcolonialist america! And as the president of the environment action group in my junior college days (an 8 member-strong incarnation of Captain Planet, determined to recycle every scrap of torn love letters and mis-applied lecture notes our peers so carelessly discard), perhaps a small voice of protest still remains.

Most probably it's just laziness. Plus the truth is, drivers miss out on so much that happens on public buses and trains. Well, nothing actually HAPPENS on buses and trains. Arrivals and departures. Conversations on the mobile phones. Many gameboy battles lost and won. Lovers doing some public loving. But mostly naps...people dozing off, dreaming private dreams. Nothing happens, and everything happens.

Kidnap Droolpeacefully kidnap

Just last week, we attended a conference on taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao Hsien as part of the SIFF's retrospective on him. Taking the cue from Hou's latest film, Cafe Lumiere, the first paper used Hou's scenes of train stations and train cabins to trace what really is the writer's own personal jresponse to cinematic sublimity and quiet. The writer made an interesting observation: that every time cars appear in Hou's films, it's a sign that something bad is going to happen. Trains are the location for occasions of silent, almost transcendent, love and union. Once inside cars, lovers break up, all relations crumble.

lovers napI repeat: Take the train. Don't drive.

Monday, May 9, 2005

Sad is the Man

James bought The Observatory's 'Time of Rebirth' when it was released last year. I only listened to it recently, and I must say... wow. OK, i admit, it was the album design that first impressed me (i wished i had designed it, ah i would be so proud. Kinetic should be so proud).

The 2nd track has been in my head most. Killing time/killing time/long is the passage of time/sad is the man/with an absent mind. // so sad is the man/sad is the man/who lives by the sea/
blind news sad news
sad news 2 spread the news
sunset sunrise killng time/killing time/older the sea gets each day/sad is the man/who has walked away

If indeed we are wasting away each day, disappearing (starting from the fingertips?), there is no romance of the lyric, girlish lulling and numbing song, the promise of a chorus or refrain. And whatever pity, generously given, makes us poorer. So much for sadness! I'm gonna take a shower instead, sleep and wish for a nice flying kind of dream.

Saturday, May 7, 2005

Sunset Dream

A painting I did some 3 years ago. The intention was to do a series of paintings on the adventures of a pet rabbit, set free. Haha, only managed to complete 2 paintings of that series - the rest are still nesting in my mind. James and I were at Bishan Park one Sunday evening when we saw a small crowd around a tree, staring at a white rabbit panting with fear. 2 metres away was a watchful cat. Both rabbit and cat lay quiet in the grass. What a dangerous world! And as dusk approached, would not the rabbit (abandoned or freed - is it only a matter of perspective?) desire a sail boat, cottony clouds, carrots and safe, creamy, warm bosoms?

Sunset Dream

Thursday, May 5, 2005