I will be taking a break.

Just finished two large concerts. Tiring.

Mind, body and soul are in convalescence. Trepidation of that which must come, insecurity and an all-too-familiar sense of inferiority have thrown open the doors for a relapse of damaging emotions. The prognosis is grim, but one must soldier on.

I thought about Shimmy, oddly enough, when I played the Rachmaninov. And you, always you.

----
I will not be blogging regularly for some time. I hope, however, that I will be able to delight readers with a few choice updates from time to time.

In the meantime, there is Facebook.

much as I

hold this country dear, I refuse to watch its extravagant exercise in kitsch, poor taste and propaganda.

Here's a poem by my dear friend Rayner which explores the larger issues are hand. It was written in two days and published in haste, partly at my behest, for there was the advantage of timeliness to be had.

(If you like it, do upvote and comment on his original post on Facebook.)


On National Day, 2009

August is the crudest month,
festooning lamp-posts with dead banners,
dulling memory and desire, stirring
tired people
HEART TO HEART
HAND IN HAND
REACHING OUT
heart in hand
hand in mouth;
collective delusion.
April kept us warm - sweltering -
running for the blessed air-con,
defying nature
with a little touch of Siberia.

*

Subtexts keep us alive,
help us remember who we are -
This is home, truly
(kid you not)
Where I know I
(am legally bound to) be;
Where my dreams wait for me
(in my bunk after I'm back from outfield)
Where the river always flows
(damn RCOs give you crotch-rot).

But there are many amnesiacs
in Singapore. Where there's money,
it pays to forget.

*

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT
Got Girl Got Boy, Stop Fucking.
Tie Your Tubes, Then Carry On.
Don't Tie Your Tubes, We Need Your Babies.
Gays: Don't Fuck, We Only Want Your Money.

no self-contradiction at all.

*

I heard two housewives chatting -
Did you know, my last maid cheat my money
when she go to the market
so I send her back - Aiyah that's nothing;
I caught my last maid talking
to another one from her homeland,
so I dun let her go to market anymore,
Budden one day dunno why she fall down
while cleaning the windows! Aiyoh, bopian,
get another one lor. Lucky thing
corona say accident.

*

Does your heart bleed too?
Or are you one of those who,
after dining at Ministry of Food,
clubbing at Ministry of Sound,
wrinkle your noses at the Banglas
on the bus from the Ministry of Smell;
they who built your flats, your offices,
your lifts that stop on every floor
on the sweat of their broken backs
in the hope of buying a better life
one-tenth as good as your own?
Did you forget their humanity?
Did you stop to count the cost
of broken lives, O Singapore?

No, careless sentimentality costs money;
self-doubt is a loss-making business.
Didn't you learn that in your management course?

No, I studied arts,
the best way to disappoint my parents.

*

I see flags hanging along corridors,
under windowsills, twisted into
vague memories of themselves by the wind.
Don't they look like bedsheets? -
red blood, five white dots and a smear of man-seed
from the few times the newlywed couple
tried to make love for the greater good,
the survival of the motherland,
the smear when he didn't know how to do it.

In sex-ed the motherland only taught him not to have sex;
presumably divine inspiration
or porn would take care of the rest.

*

And under the grey fog of a Sumatran haze,
A crowd flowed by the Singapore River, so many;
I had not thought money had undone so many.
Unreal City, dry-eyed in the air-con
trooping out for lunch and a coffee
one desperate hour, one desperate scramble
past the quaint-hatted Japanese tourists
posing with the quaint-hatted bronze statues
of bronzed rickshaw-pullers, coolies,
now long dead; a grotesque spectacle
proudly brought to you by the STB,
in collaboration with the EDB.

*

You never give me your money,
You only give me your funny poems.

*

Who will sing of you, O Singapore?
Who will tell the stories of the land,
the million useless things -
the old Tembusu on the grounds
of the shadowed yellow house at the junction -
when the few scattered survivors from old Singapore
are gone? Who will hear the echoes
of the past in the names
of places that all look the same?
Singapore you killed Calliope
and the clay of your soil
and the bricks of your flats
are red with her blood
and the blood of the people you forgot.

*

The URA's motto: Leave No Headstone Unturned.
I still remember the serene peace
of Bidadari, the scented breeze
under the age-old trees;
it was the breath of a place
that knew its time had come.

*

Singapore I waited in the corner
of the Japanese tourists' photographs,
daring your river to swallow me whole
and make me forget.

But no Lethean waters came to meet me,
only the still waters that one man's vision calmed,
and people dead to me flowing past me
on their way to oblivion and yesterday;
they know where they're going.
They wear the same quiet optimism -
a death-mask.

And when they die, they leave behind
nothing. No memories, no whiff of regret,
no sadly-missed sweet breath,
just a chequebook and a jar of ashes,
stuffed into a maze of urns stretching
up and away as far as the eye can see.
When they die, who will sing of their stories?

*

Sweet river run softly,
there is no one left to listen.

-- Rayner Teo

Brian Leiter on

Thio Li-Ann's now popularly derided 18-point letter:

'Her English is of startling poor quality, which raises another question about how in the world she was invited to be a visiting professor.'

I feel like I'm in the History Boys.

Aspirations to/delusions of grandeur, check. Chummy oh-we're-fucked revision, Crippingly-low odds of success, check. check. Teenage turmoil, check. Self-esteem at rock-bottom, check.

... what I'm missing, however, is the schooling (ooh lollipop ladies and secretaries), inspiring teachers (and scooters), intellectual revelation, (homo)sexual tension, (promised) blowjobs, and all that jazz.

I still have the programme booklet that you got for me from London. Funny how I never seem able to be rid of the past.

Reflections upon determinsm, check.

peggy-o

The late great Jerry Garcia with a heart-rending performance of Peggy-O. A song with much of the old magic in it.

Heartfolk folk, infused with blues and country. Beautiful. And there is nothing quite like a song about despised love, spite, and burning towns down on a Sunday morning, is there?



As we rode out to Fennario
As we rode out to Fennario
Our captain fell in love with a lady like a dove
And he called her by name pretty Peggy-O

Will you marry me, pretty Peggy-O
Will you marry me, pretty Peggy-O
If you will marry me, I will set your cities free
And free all the ladies in the area-O

I would marry you, sweet William-O
I would marry you, sweet William-O
I would marry you, but your guineas are too few
And I feel my mama would be angry-O

What would your mama think, pretty Peggy-O
What would your mama think, pretty Peggy-O
What would your mama think if she heard my guineas clink
And saw me marching at the head of my soldiers-O

If ever I return, pretty Peggy-O
If ever I return, pretty Peggy-O
If ever I return, your cities I will burn
Destroy all the ladies in the area-O

Come stepping down the stairs, pretty Peggy-O
Come stepping down the stairs, pretty Peggy-O
Come stepping down the stairs, combing back your yellow hair
And bid a last farewell to your William-O

Sweet William he is dead, pretty Peggy-O
Sweet William he is dead, pretty Peggy-O
Sweet William he is dead, and he died for a maid
And he's buried in the Louisiana country-O

As we rode out to Fennario
As we rode out to Fennario
Our captain fell in love with a lady like a dove
And he called her by name pretty Peggy-O

-- Trad./Jerry Garcia

so the production's

over, I've just finished a concert, and am preparing for another. Thank goodness for Facebook, or you would have thought that I had been wiped off the face of the earth, eh?