father & son

 it's one of those days where I feel so angry but have no one to blame except myself.

a day where thought holes beckon you to fall into, it's so easy - one thing leads to another and suddenly every thought that pops into your head is tinged with negativity, pessimism. 

why can I not be more open? more comfortable?

when I feel uncomfortable - why is my instinct to flight, to run away? Why can't I stay in the position? 

Like yesterday, I asked someone over. I don't even really like them very much, physically that is, I don't feel much of a spark. What a strange thing, because really they are completely fine. Like, they're a nice person. And interesting. But I don't find them physically attractive, except when they send me nudes. And then I have an interest because it speaks to a sexual appetite that I always regret taking cues from. 

And they wanted to have a photoshoot with me, and I don't know why but that made me feel so uncomfortable about myself. Like, I don't feel very good about my body or my face or anything, and being photographed by someone whom I've only met once, that didn't feel good to me. Still, I hemmed and hawed, expressed my doubts, but eventually said yes because it's cool and something I'd be interested in doing.

Yet, I don't feel comfortable having him in my bedroom, which is my own intimate space. where I feel most myself, and most free. And I feel fraudulent sort of indicating interest with him yet feeling like I don't want anything to do with him. I don't even know where it all stems from? It's awful. 

I'm stressed!  I'm probably overthinking things!

AAhahaAHAHAHaaaaaAAAAAAAh

two slow dancer

its the time of night, where my synapses are so slow to react that my brain starts to interpret sound as slower than what it actually is. do you know what i mean?

like sonically, im listening to two slow dancers, cause its a mitski kinda night. and i know the tempo of this song, i know its a slow song, but its like my brain said to my ears okay now interpret everything at 0.75x speed, you know?

im so tired. i feel at once like i ought to rise to the occasion and apply for university - fling myself unequivocally into investing in my own future. i mean, it's my future - so why am i so unexcited by any of it?

i know applications are but a means to an end, but i am struggling to see the potential in that end, i am struggling to really get excited. granted, that may be because my brain can't process anything or that it's 4.42am, and i just tried to do sat practice math and completely flunked the test. but, still. its not easy to get excited about university for me. maybe i will soon.

 i wanted to write a post about the body, but i'll do that tomorrow.

august wilson

Was it like a red carpet unrolling? Was that a scary moment?
No, it kept me safe, in the sense that I was never finished. I never had to worry about what my next play was going to be and come up with an idea. I would just pick a decade and go: Okay, the ’60s—and I would think about stuff from the ’60s. Because I hadn’t finished, I was never scared about anything, it was just: Okay, let’s move on to the next one. It was all one work, and I hadn’t finished, so I couldn’t stop and rest on my laurels or be satisfied or wonder about where it’s gone. I didn’t know what was going to happen in the play, I just started with a line of dialogue or with a feeling. I work like this—in collages. I just write stuff down and pile it up, and when I get enough stuff I spread it out and look at it and figure out how to use it. You get enough stuff and you start to build the scene and you don’t know where the scene’s going, and you don’t have any idea what’s going to follow after that.

But once you get the first scene done (or it might be the fourth scene in the play), then you can sort of begin to see other possibilities. Just like working in collages, you shift it around and organize it: This doesn’t go here; that speech doesn’t really belong to that person, it belongs to this person. So, very much like Romare Bearden, you move your stuff around on the pages until you have a composition that satisfies you, that expresses the idea of something and then—bingo—you have a play.

AND

And we managed to stay alive. I mean because, shoot, we make do and can do.
Well, it’s the community. You can’t survive by yourself. Look at the Eskimos. They live a very harsh life up there, and in order to survive they have to be a community. They have to share everything, even share their wives, because there’s no way you can survive by yourself in that harsh environment. In order to survive you need a community of people who can support you. And we’ve always been those people that rise up in the face of adversity. And a lot of times it’s the power of song that will get you through whatever situation. I’ve found that black Americans, whenever their back is pressed against the wall, so to speak, they always go to an interior light that connects to this African spiritual strength. They ultimately, in whatever way it comes out, sing a song, because when the old folks sing, “Everything’s gonna be all right…” it was all right—that’s what made it all right. They braced up under whatever the conditions were and managed to survive them and move forward to the next experience. The more experience you have of survival and the more adversity, the stronger you become. Jane Hirshfield, who’s a poet, said in one of her poems: “Flesh grows back across a wound more strong than the simple, untested surface before.” It’s a test; the flesh grows across the wound and is stronger than it was before, because you have managed to survive the test.

are two of my favorite segments of this wondrous interview - or really, conversation, between Suzan Lori Parks & August Wilson. 

https://www.americantheatre.org/2005/11/01/the-light-in-august-wilson-a-career-a-century-a-lifetime/

balik kampung "review"

from my goodreads:

Balik Kampung - "return to village" - a phrase that's existed in the aural landscape of my life since I was little. In many ways, returning to Singapore after being abroad is difficult. There is disconnect, there is confusion about what building a home means, and whether the country I find myself moving through is still that - my home? This is something I struggled with coming home on my breaks from school, and though there was normally a period of adjustment, I always found it funny how as soon as I'd begun to adjust to life here, it was a sure sign that I was a few days away from leaving again - it was one of those quirks I felt life played for me, one I had to smile and take. Coming home again for National Service, I knew it would be the case that I'd be leaving again anytime soon, and settling into Singapore has taken time and genuine concerted effort. It's not just about going out, doing things, meeting friends: it's about the way you approach those things, a mindset. It's unlearning my distaste for things in Singapore that weren't westernized, teaching myself to untangle a view of interesting from my ideas of Western society. Examining and reinterpreting an aesthetic sensibility that I didn't even know was being dictated to me. All this and much more is required to look at this place with brand new eyes. One of my favorite ways to see has been through my commitment to reading Singaporean literature. And in this way, Balik Kampung 2A: People and Places, has not disappointed.

What a veritable delight, a smorgasbord of gifts, that this book leaves its reader. It's funny - in one of the author's notes, where they detail their connection to the place they've written about, they write how funny it is to them to gander to the East Coast of Singapore and feel like they are in a completely different world. I have often felt the same way too - how small Singapore is and yet how many places have I never laid my feet in? Luckily for me, this book helps me do some of the work of exploring a country I've spent most of my life living in. It provides a map of Singapore - and then generously fills in every contour, every space, with characters, who have rich emotional interior lives: they have hopes, dreams, thoughts, irritations, loves, and more. I so thoroughly enjoyed reading these stories, not only because reading short stories always leaves me amazed by the talent of writers to assemble something so simple and concise, but packed with so much depth. Thinking back now, I can recall such delight I took in reading of wonderful idiosyncratic characters, so specific, so believable, that they jump off the page. I think this is the blessing of reading local literature: they help me to take what I regard as mundane in my brain, and they make it important. They take something as simple as the clouds rolling by and make it beautiful - teaching me to make it beautiful too. It's the depictions of Singapore in it's earlier days, the descriptions of playgrounds, kitchens, libraries, all these spaces so familiar to me; and filling them with the magic of imagination. I can't stress enough how fulfilled I feel reading this book. Reading it brings up so much for me to ponder and reflect on: my relationship to our helper at home, how integral a part of my family she is, and how anguished I'd be if she left, yet acknowledging that she came into our home in order to support her own family overseas. This is just one example of the way this book has made me think deeply about my life here and the country I inhabit.

These stories ache with longing, with struggle, with hardship - but also an understanding that this is what living is all about, and they give Singaporeans the space to be; to live their lives just the way they already are. I am so thankful to live a life with them in it. In reading this I am returning to my village, happy to be going back.

ms. touchburn

for/to hayley, 

i.

it was hayley’s birthday a few days ago.

as I lay down in bed, listening to The Marias,

and before, when I’d found old photos - 

old in the sense of just one year,

the memories began to flood back.

one by one. they are vivid, and enriched in mood and feeling. 

some triggered by memories of photographs i’ve taken

or that i’ve seen. and these images reproduced in my mind

trigger more memories in turn.

dialogue is rare, but i see it all in a grainy, hyper-colored state

like old super-8 footage. 

I thought I would try and collate, some of these

images- visuals, trigger points.

words. That might bring up, some clarity, some

memory. in the future. when I cannot remember anymore. 

ii. 

i am unsure of how best to categorise these

i thought perhaps chronologically.

but i think it might be best, to instead track my 

mental path, as i leap from memory to memory.

the question is then: where to start?

so: here are what i’ve already remembered. and let’s see,

where each thread takes us. 

iii.

hayley massaging juan da at the car table after he requested a massage

glasses on, business face on, game face on, serious, beautiful hayley

(image). 

walking down from the max bell one afternoon,

post village gathering - we’re talking about environmentalism,

and sustainability. which has sprung up because of that day’s VG. 

she invites me to her room for a chat, where we continue - 

she remarks on the distinction between the voice i have whilst speaking in vg

and the one I use in everyday conversation. 

something like: “oh normal theo is back”or maybe it was “your other voice is back”.

and then afterwards we sat in her room: she told me about her petrol label project, and the man who ran it. 

and we looked at her wall of hot men. with emma and ani. 

sitting in the sun, in may. 

on a bench on east house lawn.

a meeting about sustainability. my mind distracted.

hayley: “is your mind here? i feel your distracted”. 

so attentive.

cougar ridge in the snow in second year,

crying over laila and dried mango and bulk food in le dep, and 

customer service woes. we aren’t paid, people. its a service.

hellish restock trips.

one particularly where desiree left the car to pick up jack/michael.

and we sat and spoke about my theatre piece - 

and who it was about.

and my conundrum about maybe doing it for the person it was about.

hayley was the best person i ever did my piece for.

all the pauses right, all the silences long enough. 

i think i performed that way because i trusted her. 

on cas week to cape scott. hayley and i speaking: and i say how much i love being busy,

and i talk about maybe blogging.

and she says she’d love to read it. 

well here we are hayley! I’m late starting it. but here we are. 

one dinner in first year,

we both talk about our feelings,

i think spurred by how

tired i was feeling about people seemingly not caring enough

to properly listen. frustrated by the surface level, which i hadn’t breached.

hayley said: no. lets talk then. whats going on.

and we shared our feelings (anonymously) but still, so beautiful. 

i remember sitting on the fallen tree near the soccer field, and seeing hayley run by. 

i remember standing in line with her in the caf as she spoke about going to edinburgh with her theatre piece.

i was blown away by this fact!

she would often braid my hair. 

i always asked her.

i found her with my comb,

in her room after lunch,

in the caf,

in the maxbell,

during le dep meetings. 

she did the braids the best!

( i always worried my hair was so disgusting and oily/ which it totally was )

she never said anything.

legend.

probably washed her hands really well right after though. 

iv.

lastly,

i visited her in new brunswick.

she waited across the bridge for me. for nearly an hour, i was delayed.

we caught up in a mad rush, her mother interrupted us to say:

you gotta look at the sunset.

we watched an awful movie that night.

something with noah centineo. 

she said: “i can’t believe theo chen is sitting in my home”

we walked to watch the sunset. on the way she walks to her job at parlee.

i can still remember it, low tide. 

she said again “your voice just changed”, or something like that. 

we talked about her love, my love. 

what had happened. what was to happen.

of plans, of nholva, of the summer, of ottawa, of the page system. 

we drove to see myriam, went hiking in koushibouguac, 

many mosquitos. 

smoked a joint, hayley’s first! watched bandersnatch.

when i freaked out, she calmed me down. that movie is a terrible one to watch

whilst on any substances at all.

terrifying.

hayley driving is beautiful.

especially when she makes the wrong turn, sees a car heading straight at us,

and pivots onto the grass. next to the road.

legendary. again.

i remember we shared a grimace about the communists of pearson.

and spoke for so long about so much

all the way to myriam’s

we ate fried seafood galore.

and then had delicious strawberry shortcake. 

and then we swam at parlee - i saw the inside of the amazing lifeguard house.

i also froze to death.

into moncton, where she showed me around.

we had dinner with myriam,

we saw a gorgeous theatre

and went backstage! where she met the director. 

we ran to see the turtle street art.

because my train was almost there.

only to get to the station,

to find it delayed.

where we sat - 

she braided my hair one last time as the sun drooped in the sky.

she told me,

not to be scared about university.

or the future. or the other things i was scared of.

she said to me. 

and i watched her through my train window,

pearson white long sleeved shirt,

shorts,

boots.

and i smiled. 

and i teared up.

and i waved goodbye. 

and that is what i can last remember of her. 

(addendum)

v.

I’m sure there might be more.

i hope reading this in the future,

helps me to remember all the other things.

happy birthday hayley. 

fetch the boltcutters - fiona apple

It is a rare gift when you engage with a piece of art that has such a precise emotional depth contained within that it so deeply resonates with your own personal experience. The last time I can remember this happening was on the song 'Nobody' sung by Mitski on her album, Be The Cowboy, which I first listened to on my friend Fen's bed, maybe around midnight, coming off a high. I listened to it on repeat all of the next few weeks, replaying it for most of my 5 hour flight from Vancouver to Montreal days later, letting the disco beat seep into my blood stream and feeling the warmth of connection to her loneliness conveyed over an almost flippantly groove. It was not until returning back to school a month later, walking up the wooden stairs to the Max Bell, singing the song into the cold air where I finally heard the line 'I've been big and small/and big and small/and still nobody wants me'. Whatever Mitski's intent behind these lyrics (which I later found out was a reference to her relationship with her body & her weight), I found in those lyrics affirmation and catharsis. I related it not to weight but to the amplitudes of my personality: outgoing, flamboyant or guarded, shut-off. and the personal balance I felt I needed to strike when it came to the two sides, in order to get people to like me. It has been a year and a half since this connection occurred, and listening to Fiona Apple's newest album - Fetch the Bolt Cutters, I feel it again.

This album is alive, in ways unlike anything else I've really heard. The percussive beats that run through it, that command your attention and ear from the minute the opening notes sound, they breathe and signal that this album is like a beast that will not stop until it is finished saying what it needs to say, and this beast - it rattles and stamps, crazed. Listening to this album makes me feel connected to the physical space around me. While Apple bangs on the surfaces of her house, so do I. When she wails, so do I. She has managed to compose these bizarre, sonically disparate, but completely digestible tracks. They're so complex and complicated that they require listen after listen just to grasp the basics, and each listen bears new gifts - whether in a previously misunderstood lyric which are so precisely written that once grasped can be mined for meaning and interpretation. I am in awe of her.

The album has songs and themes that I can't immediately relate to - there are songs about the power of women told to hate each other not doing that exactly. There are songs about the singer's rape, about her abusive ex-partners. The strength of these songs, and why I like them, are not so personal, but just simply that when I listen to them I feel like I'm listening to something completely new, and my ear loves it. She's crafted these rhythms and melodies and hooks and choruses and verses that are so mind boggling that they actually get stuck inside your head.

The album just has unreal and unbelievable moment after moment. I love the introduction to "I Want You To Love Me' - the segue from percussive line into piano is sublime. Her avant-garde tilt of experimentalism at the end, the lyrics which punch one at a time, taking swings. "Next year/it'll be clear/this was only leading me to that" - perfectly expressing the pained irritation of hindsight. Of knowing you'll be okay but not feeling okay in the moment. It's just, completely spectacular.

I've been listening to this album on repeat. I hope to be able to write about it more sensitively and with more clarity soon. I'm no music reviewer so as I write this I need to remind myself not to go overboard with the pressure on myself. I can write however I like. It doesn't matter.

In fact I should take my cue from Fiona Apple. She clearly doesn't give a fuck, and she marches to the beat of her own drum (or metal butterfly that she picked up while wandering). She does whatever she wants, without any second thought for what anyone else might care about. And I think that's amazing.

Finally - the bolt cutters. She's explained that the album is sort of a call to arms - for all of us to take the bolt cutters and set them onto the gnarled barbs and wires that surround us, and for me I picture them surrounding my heart. She says fuck what society tells you to do, fuck what you've internalised from other people, fuck whatever isn't making you happy, fuck that all. She says take the bolt cutters to that shit, really just completely get rid of them, and just be happy. And honestly, how can you not do exactly as she says?

so guys - fetch the fucking bolt cutters. That's what I'll be doing.

the cold. (night blog 1)

I am very cold.

I can't ascertain the current air temperature of the bomb shelter I work in. It doubles as the security control center, and houses lots of servers and computer things, hence the cold. I've been awake since 4:30 am, after barely managing to fall asleep on a camp bed, maybe just past 1. I am swathed, or maybe swaddled, in two sweaters (a hoodie & a wool turtleneck), my uniform, and two blankets covering the lower and upper halves of my body. My military issued Nalgene-esque bottle doubles as a hot water bottle.

It's grimly painted only because I abhor waking up in the middle of the night, much less with less than 8 hours sleep, and even less so when I need to be attentive.

As I fell asleep last night, I thought about starting to make blog posts while on night shifts, which I have every other day. It's awful but for the fact that it's practically the only alone time I get anytime I'm in base. I've a fool proof method for drifting off to sleep, which involved focusing your mind on only two things: visually imagine a screen of white, angelic blank white if you will, and aurally focus on one repetitive white noise. Sometimes I will be able to hear the very stillness of a room, that little buzz that you pick up on when no other sound can be identified? Magical. I've always had an overactive mind, but when I started having trouble sleeping, it was because my mind jumped and raced from thought to thought without pause. So I developed this way, because it works for me. I am still awful at practicing proper mindfulness, in any other context "bring yourself back" would make me cringe with bad memories.

My best ideas seem to come to me in between the moment I tuck myself under my blanket and when I finally drift off, so I think I'll make it a bigger priority to lay down and think before making myself sleep.

I think writing these posts will be two-pronged in their benefit (if not more). Firstly, I'll be able to practice writing anything which I sorely need. I've always read the adage that the only way to write is to do it with regularity. So far I have struggled to even fulfill this basic tenet. Secondly. it will actually warm up my body since I'm forced to move my fingers. Here's hoping this works out.

And what will I be writing about? Well absolutely anything. Hopefully just one thing a day. Minimally, just one thing a day. I want this to be distinct from a diary, in style, tone and content, since I already keep a diary, which I've taken to writing in daily since isolation measures began.

Tomorrow, I think I will write about running, or perhaps the of migrant workers in Singapore, their systemic disenfranchisement which has lead to their current appalling treatment in COVID-19 times.

I don't think I will share this link with anyone until I am satisfied that I'll stick to it. Already it took me an hour and a half to even think about something to write, though perhaps that's the whole point of this... to think...