Lady of silences
The bro in the flying van met her in an elusive, evasive form recently.
I have her by my side constantly, but sometimes, I read too much into things, and
my theories confuse her.
A neighbour we grew up with will soon declare, "She is now mine! Forever!"
___________________
This is for you, if you read poetry to get pass/over/through the hump.
For you, if you also have a secret playground in your head
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Excerpt, "Ash-Wednesday. 1930"
Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
--- from, "The Wasteland and other poems" T.S. Eliot.
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Best Singapore Short Film nominee 2005 !
Written, produced, directed, and scored by the unknown but talented Jacen Chen, "Tak Giu" is an earnest, funny and moving piece of work.Synopsis :::
" "Tak Giu' (15mins, Singlish/with English subtitles) is an indie film which follows the journey of 3 soccer-crazy boys. Having taking up the challenge of a friendly soccer match, the boys realize that it is not easy to find a good, free public soccer field in Singapore…..if there’s any at all. Through their journey they encounter obnoxious care-takers, locked-up fences, deterring weather and a persistent policeman. Will they be able to find their dream soccer pitch?"
There's a pretty nifty spoof of a recent Nike football ad near the end of the film.
Jacen dedicated "Tak Giu" to Singaporean football during the rolling credits. Here, I'll dedicate this viral publicity blog to all dreamers who hang on to their aspirations.
Jacen, we'll see you at your premiere.
: )
Your breathless purr.
"We were supposed
to come together... "
Your breathless purr...
I remember your scent. Fresh from the shower. Damp towel.
The wet.
hair.
Moist.
skin.
Soft.
lips.
It sounded so much sexier, the first time you whispered that sentence into my ear.
But now, it rings hollow in my head, as I stare at the quiet Cavanagh bridge before me.
1896.
"Let's start...ALL OVER AGAIN..."
(I remember that devilish smile.)
The smooth.
nape.
"Come together."
That was our plan. Two tickets. Your hand in mine.
Sunset. Starlight.
Beachside.
Boat ride.
Your...
I pause. And reach into my pocket.
Your plane ticket is now, merely, a crisp piece of cardboard.
A crisp, floating, piece, of,
cardboard.
Romantic rubbish, in the clean Singapore river.
Romantic rubbish.
I control the urge to indulge in a snide smirk.
Let's go.
I walk, over to the other end of the Cavanagh bridge. I keep walking, past the grand hotel entrance, the valet-parked luxury rides, the candle-lit couples.
"Walking past.
1896
Something historical. Romantic. Rubbish in the river."
The words floated around in my head, like that perished ticket.
Pictures.
Aahh..
I remember.
Your dress.
Left shoulder.
Pale.
Luscious. Auburn curls.
1896.
You wink and hand me your heels. I turn and bow, and hold them in my left hand.
Then I grin.
A grand swipe! A squeal.
"If I lose this bet, I'll carry you across the bridge."
Midway, I stopped, and we kissed.
Nimble at first. Then nefarious.
That was the first time, I heard your breathless purr.
Those dead poets
We are really only writing one story.
Mine, was about a young man’s search for his place whilst drifting through a Kafkaesque world.
Of course, a story has many points of view.
I remember R’s words ---
“This course has nothing to do with knowledge acquisition. It has to do with shaping your perspective on life...”
I remember him saying, “The future of Singapore cannot be built on a single reality. Because we live in a globalized world, one solution cannot cure all ills.”
Of course, ardent academics would be quick to argue against the absolution that we live indeed, in a globalized world. But R’s deconstructivist introduction to the laden values in his "Journalism Deconstructivism" module might have been just as apt a description for the learning process we went through in our mass communication degree program.
Reading the research essays I’ve written in my journey through media communication studies, I realize my ideologues have inadvertently centered on the dialectical forces at work in feminism, consumerism, and globalization.
Feminism.
Consumerism.
Globalization.
What was the common thread that ran through my research and writing process?
A search. My search. For personal identity. Both conscious and subconscious.
What does it mean to be a feminist?
What does it mean to be a man?
What does it mean to be a Singaporean?
What does it mean to be a citizen?
What does it mean to be oppressed? What does it mean to be liberated?
What does it mean to oppress?
What does it mean to liberate?
Knowledge acquisition brought me perspectives and new questions, but provided no answers.
“It all depends on how you see it….”
How do I see? What do I see?
In a post-911, tsunami-washed-out world, I tried asking myself, “who? where? when? what? how? why?”
“Who are you?” I asked myself, as I silently walked through the air-conditioned shopping malls, looking at the seductive skins I could inhabit. Listening to the Chinese New Year ditties beckoned thoughts of an auspicious and festive, rather than a bloody or Republican, red.
“Who am I?” I asked myself, as I pondered the ramifications of feminism on my gender identity; investigated how imbalances in the global media structure would affect my world view; and tried to understand how material possession and consumption was supposedly a symbolic discourse between me and my ideal self.
The Installment Plan looked scary…but also strangely beguiling.
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Installment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation,
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he Happy? The question is absurd.
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.
--- W. H. Auden, The Unknown Citizen.
But on a whim, I prayed and screamed out loud with Lawrence.
For God's sake, let us be men
not monkeys minding machines
or sitting with our tails curled while the machine amuses us, the radio or film or gramophone.
Monkeys with a bland grin on our faces.
What if it was our own life flashing before our eyes like an Oscar Awards ceremony Best Picture nominee trailer?
With vivid colours, defined contours and magnificent edits.
[F]ar more sophisticated devices have begun to appear on the scene, above all, video systems and micro-computers adapted for domestic use. Together these will achieve what I take to be the apotheosis of all the fantasies of late twentieth-century man—the transformation of reality into a TV studio, in which we can simultaneously play out the roles of audience, producer and star. . . .
Every one of our actions during the day, across the entire spectrum of domestic life, will be instantly recorded on video-tape. In the evening we will sit back to scan the rushes, selected by a computer trained to pick out only our best profiles, our wittiest dialogue, our most affecting expressions filmed through the kindest filters, and then stitch these together into a heightened re-enactment of the day. Regardless of our place in the family pecking order, each of us within the privacy of our own rooms will be the star in a continually unfolding domestic saga, with parents, husbands, wives and children demoted to an appropriate starring role.
—J.G. Ballard, "The Future of the Future"
The story has to continue, because the search continues. But what do I type in Google? (Or is there a better search engine?)
Christie Rosen tells me we have gone from Broadcasting to Narrow-casting to Ego-casting. With R.S.S text feeds, I can now read only what I wish to receive. With blogs, I can choose to write only what I choose to perceive. There is a strange possibility provided by technology --- I can customize content I consume, to the point where everything that comes in is only stuff that I believe in.
“Question everything.”
Said R, the man with a tie and a pair of glasses, our lecturer, when he introduced himself at the very beginning of his course.
“Question everything. But believe in yourself.”
Offered T, together with his pink, purple and black head of spiky hair at the end of his New Chaotic Technologies module.
But who am I?
A moderate? A left? A right? A modern man?
I see the winks.
There is a sense of play. There is a sense that I must seize the day, like those dead poets.
Semper Fidelis
On the day I made my debut as writer/director/producer for an actual full-30-minutes M channel 8 program, my faery good friend got attacked in a freak episode over in Melbourne.
It was a beautiful way to start her Friday. That is, if you define "beautiful" by Beetlejuice's dark zany sense of humor.
That's the way life always seems to be, isn't it? The good with the bad. The bad with the sad. The sad with the mad.
The faery good one (
aka the pokemon hamster smile girl) had just suffered through a horrid Wednesday and Thursday and, Friday's random street assault was icing on the cake like flies on defecate.
Wed.
PSYCHOTIC FRIEND KILLS FAERY WITH RECKLESS DRIVING.
Well, that would've been the headline, if the faery good one had perished in that free ride she hitched from T-Wreck (who for entertainment's sake, we'll gladly call "PSYCHO" in this space).
While giving her a ride to school, PSYCHO asked the faery good one if she would attend his ex's wedding dinner with him.
The faery good one had accepted PSYCHO's earlier invitation to the wedding, assuming it would simply be about turning up at the ceremony ("where everyone sits quiet to watch and leaves after throwing rice at the bride on her way out.")
The faery good one didn't see the switch from "ceremony" to "dinner" coming. Or maybe she did, but was too soft and kind-hearted to reject PSYCHO outright without giving him a chance to kill her.
Anyway, the faery good one eventually decided it wouldn't be worth her time and effort to dress up and attend that wedding dinner with PSYCHO.
It would be a real waste of time; a real farce, because the Faery good one had two important opinions about PSYCHO's Ex.
1) She's a Bitch.
2) She's PSYCHO's Ex-Bitch.
SO, moving on with her sane decision to NOT attend the wedding dinner, the faery good one declines the dinner invitation while PSYCHO was still driving.
This faery, you see, had the powers to bring creative beauty into the world, but she couldn't predict that PSYCHO would suddenly go crazy after hearing her decision, and start on a reckless driving spree.
C'mon. The Lady Faery said "NO." So Back off!
NOOOOO~!!!! MUST DRIVE LIKE A PSYCHO TO PROVE I AM ANGRY MAN.
Ermz, you not angry man.
You stupid man.
Stupid man no girl like.
Divinity eventually intervened because too many faeries have been lost in New York, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Taiwan and North Korea. Some have gone into recluse in Akihabara but only the Otakus have the press credentials for that story.
PSYCHO, as mad as he was in his display of road rage, was probably a meek mouse who really couldn't afford to pay for repairs.
I say this because
1) It takes one Meek man to know another
2) When a big vehicle came along and blocked his way, what did PSYCHO do?
Did he
Proceed to floor the accelator and send the faery, himself and his car towards immediate destruction?
No
Like a whopped-ass chi-huahua, he chose to FLOOR THE BRAKE PEDAL instead, and then curse out loud at the faery good one.
The faery good one would've loved to stay in PSYCHO's car and engage him in conversation. But PSYCHO, unlike Meekia, has never read a single line of "Kafka on the Shore" before.
So the faery good one proceeded to do what was the next best, safest thing. OPEN THE DOOR AND RUN LIKE HELL.
The last time she ran as fast was when her mum forced her to go get boob implants. That's another great story, for another time. And I have press credentials for this one.
But for now, we'll go on to talk about what happened to her on...
THURSDAY!!
FAERY BECOMES SOCIAL ESCORT!
Not that there is anything disrespectable about selling mental, emotional and physical companionship for money. It's just that Faery Land's a conservative place and the faery good one simply had no desire to socially escort anyone who couldn't fly an F16 Fighter Jet.
[Meekia, on the other hand, would do it in a heartbeat at the right price. (Anarchists, Postmodernists and Third Wave Feminists, please smile dumbly at your screen in agreement.)]
On Thursday, a Dog asked the faery good one if an evening of watching people execute superHuman feats to French music would be lovely. Dog had tickets to SuperHumans-Under-the-Sun, a corporate event sponsored by the people who make you overpay for everything.
Superhumans Under the Sun! The faery good one was intrigued. For a moment, she thought Divinity had sent Dog along with this invitation to make up for the life-threatening mess that was Wednesday.
But her happy bright pink balloon was burst in a Lacoste heartbeat** when she heard Dog add,"There might be a gathering of people who make us overpay for everything, after the Under-the-Sun-Superhumans show. I'll like you to be my social escort."
[**Only people who have seen the Lacoste tvc for "A Touch of Pink" will get this]
The pumpkin carriage, and the stilettoes from New York 5th Avenue, vanished right before her eyes.
Woooooooe...... : (
Me want to be princess invited to ball.
Me no want to be ball.
bouncebounce in your hands for free Chicket.
"RUFF!! RUFF!! RRRRRRUUUGGGFFFF!!! GRRRRRR!!!"
Snarled Dog, making a big fuss about how his ticket to Under-the-Sun failed to magically turn into a *Chicket.
(*From the Meekia-Qoonster Dictionary that brought you Webibi (My web baby: An online project i dedicate a lot of love and effort to),
Chicket --- A free ticket that helps u nail a great date with a chick. Meekia got hitched courtesy of chickets.)
The Faery good one already has a quiet dog named Spooteeny, and didn't need a noisy one in her house. So she said a big wormy "NO" to the lame Chicket situation, and went on with her life.
Little did she know LIFE as she knew it, nearly ended on....
FRIDAY!!
FAERY GETS ATTACKED WHILE VISITING VINTAGE STORE!!
There are homeless people in Melbourne.
There are crazy people in Melbourne.
There are people with heavy make-up in Melbourne.
Someone probably homeless, totally crazy, outrageously plastered with make-up, attacked the faery good one, early Friday morning.
The faery good one was minding her own business, heading down to a nearby vintage clothing store, when a mad woman assaulted her physically for no rhyme or reason.
The mad woman ran over and started hitting, shoving, and scratching her.
Personally, I would've loved for the faery good one to have kicked her ass like Uma did everyone's in "Dangerous Liaisons," oops, i mean, KILL BILL.
But she didn't kick any ass this time. She merely swung her brolly back in retaliation and missed.
In all good fortune however, she escaped eventually with her clean beautiful face unscathed.
Realising how lucky she was, she then sent an elf all the way over to Slick City. The elf was very distracted by the big durians he saw down by the river, but he managed to remember the message he was supposed to bring to The Greedy One, aka Meekia.
---------------------------------------------
The elf whispered in my ear,"The faery good one says, 'My luck must've really run out for the week. 2day, I got attacked by a stranger on the street. N it's not even midday yet!' ....end of message."
I knew the message was from the faery good one, because only the elves she sends are dressed in these cool vintage clothes with cool stitchings. It worried me to know she was attacked in broad-daylight on the streets. But since she could send the elf over, I figured she was, at least, still breathing and had two working fingers.
So I shifted my focus back onto the job at hand -- directing the ongoing shoot -- and hoped she would live to tell me she's really ok later that night.
And alive she was, that evening, as she described her survival.
Alive, but a little sad and shaken.
I wished I had a few more magic tricks up my sleeve.
Maybe another joke. Maybe a funny jab that would give every awful incident that came up a sweet strawberry twist.
but alas,
= Semper Fi =
was all I could muster.
"Always Faithful."
She asked me in exasperation, "ya, but stay faithful about WHAT???!!"Well, stay faithful in the fact that the only sure thing you can bet on, is Impermanence. And because of that, good things will surely come around.Maybe it's just Divinity's bizarre way of flushing out the faery good one's bad luck for the year early, instead of dividing it into small bits throughout the year, a cramp here, a pimple there, a cut here, a dropped dollar there.So that when you return to Slick City in autumn, it'll all be swell.
Hey, faery good one,You ask me how I keep up...
Well im not sure. The only thing i know is,
this one's meant to cheer you up.= )
Lost and Foundanaaa
Trying to catch up with your faery good friend (who's just touched down safely in Melbourne less than 20 hrs ago) via online chat,
while trying to
1) conduct a phone conversation with a respectable Chinese doctor, AND
2) explain the discovery of a screwed-up work situation to your girlfriend who's also online,
is, difficult.
My cerebral synapses fire off English responses through my keyboard, while I try to speak cool crisp Beijing-accented Mandarin into the phone.
The phone, pressed between my left shoulder and left ear, giggled while my left hand tried to type.
My right hand pauses in awe at this silly sight, and then quietly and slavishly started scribbling down important things the Chinese doctor had to say about the modern Chinese medicine program's script.
This in a nutshell, summarizes the want-to-do-it-all-at-the-same-time greediness I suffer from.
Greediness, leads to suffering. Let that be your wisecrack this week.
Inexplicably, I almost always get myself into situations where I have to juggle sex, love, friendships, work, studies, sanity and vanity in tornado fashion.
So far, me being the lucky bastard that I have been, things have all been a tiny bit more successful than screwed up.
At least that's what I presume, from retrospection. The faery good friend agreed with the "tiny bit more successful than screwed up bit." I'll get round to that in a while.
Let me talk about the closely related-to-retrospection "Introspection" first.
Don't worry I get involved in introspection too. It's a sick hobby.
"Introspection," ladies and gentlemen, that scary cousin of "retrospection," is devoid of nostalgia and sentimentality in my strange opinion.
"You're too hard on yourself" the faery good friend typed.
I smile. She is a tad more generous with comforting words these days. Being mellow suits her. But I'm expecting a fire-storm somewhere down the line when she returns to hot and wet Singapore.
We la-leh-lor Singaporeans, together with the 38 degrees heat and the 98% humiditiy, will be right here waiting to test her mettle.
"You are just impatient" she remarked, that night we drove out for cocktails, but ended up with coconut ice-cream.
That night,
I told her about feeling lost in my career choices. I also told her about the current projects I was involved with. She concluded I was "doing well" in a message she sent me last night when she touched down safely in Melbourne.**
(**I gave her two brollies via MSN. Yes, two measly tiny supposedly humourous pictures. And joked that brollies would come in handy if the plane couldn't stay in the air. Ya, that was real lame. I concur.)
"Was wonderful to catch up with u whilst I was back. Good to see you doing well," Sent the faery good one, via www.sms.ac.
Hmz...I spent quite an amount of time that night doing some silly aspirational-class whining and her conclusion...?
I was doing well.
I, was,
doing well.
I was?
Well, actually, yes. I WAS and AM doing well!
I arrived at that conclusion myself however, around a week after that night, and a couple of days before that message arrived. Reading Buddhist books and grasping the concept of "impermanence" helped.
The faery good friend sent the message last night when I was already sound asleep, worn out from a day of script-grinding.
So it was fun this morning, to see the message in my handphone. It felt pretty good to start my day seeing the faery good one's SMS alchemically coincide with what I felt.
You're not screwed, or lost or wasted. You're ok! You're fine! Old Man!
I smile.
She didn't say those words. She didn't have to. It would've been a waste of time.
I indulged a little in the whining that night over the coconut ice-cream. And as usual, her incisive bits and pieces brought some sense and sensibility back into my world.
Of course, it's a tad self-congratulatory, I'll concur again, dear reader, to say,
"Hey, I'm doing pretty well."
But c'mon, better a bit beguiled, than steeped in existential angst, right?
You disagree? Maybe it's the Prozac NOT talking. Why did the depressed artist cut his ear off? I don't know. Gogh figure.
haha.
Wait sorry,
Lame joke distraction alert.
Yes. Lost and Foundanaaa (say da~naaaaa~ with that Japanese "aahh, that's life isn't it?" relaxed Zen demeanour).
I lost something. A simple inner peace. and Found it. and it made me happy.
It was nothing more than a nitwit playing mind games with himself.
Why did I meander on for so long in this blog entry?
All I wanted to say was, Life's good. The faery good one's good. I'm smiling, and I'm grateful.
Latching on to the Long Tail
Picture courtesy of Project MayaIt's fascinating how academics in media communication studies have latched on to recent blogging trends, while mainstream media organizations continue to breathe dust,
lumber behind and risk irrelevance.There is an enlightened minority though, that are jumping on the bandwagon.
Courtesy of
Mrbrown.com, I found out that
The Observer has started its own blog. Here's what the online editor of this
new part of the blogosphere had to say.
"
The blog has been officially live for a whole 36 hours now and so far we are quite pleased with the response. Some kind people have said nice things about us. Naturally, some people are sceptical. The most common reservation seems to be that we are in bad faith - that this is not a real blog but rather a cyncial (and/or misguided) piece of corporate brand extension.
What can we say? (Somehow I think "er..no it's not, please trust us" isn't going to do the trick. Although, "please give us a chance, read the blog for a bit and decide later whether or not we are being straight with you," might help.
But on the question of what exactly is a blog, and more pertinently, whether or not an 'old media' institution is necessarily precluded from having one, I, as the Observer's online editor, have a view:
* Grabs online editor's hat, pulls it firmly onto head, adjusts it at a rakish angle. *" --- Continue reading what the humble, rakish-angled-hat-wearing-one has to sayMeanwhile, if the politics between mainstream journalism, monolithic media juggernauts, and personal blogs don't interest you one bit,
here's a blog on the NBA scene that has garnered widespread respect from hoop fans around the world.
I don't think Lang (the chief author of the site) has ever outrightly declared
The Links an actual blog though...
Either that, or I might've missed that particular update in which he did. Anyway, it doesn't matter at all, what, or how Lang (or anyone else for that matter) labels the quirky, fun and insightful information he brings to NBA fans as a sportswriter for Sports Illustrated online and the SLAM hoop mag.
Call it a Blog. Call it The Links. The Long Tail. The Browntown. The Sammyboy Quickie. Whatever.
JUST BRING IT TO US, The Mouse-Browse Generation, FAST, and drenched in entertaining jazz.
