The fresh perspectives of a child will save even the sidewalk from attrition — Romain Gary
I learnt this phrase from a friend from France who turned up at my weekly circus. We talked about haiku and I mentioned about the naive perspectives of children being one of the most beautiful things about it, and he told me about this quote. I found it poignant and decide to illustrate it.
Every day I wake up less and less sure of myself — I open my email inbox with my breath held, expecting to be disappointed. Expectations were met. No response from any of the jobs I have applied at.
Every time I write I become less and less sure of my ability — I used to think that being capable got you places, and I was sure that I was pretty capable. Now am I less confident that that is the case, or that maybe I’m not that capable after all.
And then I realise that perhaps what I need is a fresh perspective to stop this attrition of the self and of the mind. I left college with a font of hope and optimism, and thought that sufficient to last me till I transition into the next phase of my life; where I start working. I guess I did not consider that this transition might take longer than I expected, and hoping to merely brave this foray with what I had would not be sufficient.
I will need to renew my view on how I take each day that does not bring me the news I so fervently wish.
I don’t know how to paint. I just hack away with pencil and brush and call it ‘fauvism’. I never took art classes, learnt how to correctly apply shades and lighting to colours. In the end, I just lighten where I think light should be and darken where I think darkness should be.
I made this painting (acrylic on canvas) a while ago, with an aim to create beauty from my mind. I think of the two most beautiful things in my head: butterflies and flowers.
There is beauty in budding, blooming, and withering. The idea of growth, blossom and death fascinates me, and perhaps in part inspired by the lyrics of one of my favourite songs.
狂い咲き命を燃やす 揺れながら The life that blooms off-season burns as it trembles
お前は夢見る You are dreaming
この世界は美しいと この胸に This is world is beautiful in my heart
きっと咲いてる It is surely blooming
True, the lyrics don’t make much sense, but the beauty of the image in which they conjure is something I’ve enjoyed for a long time, and it has helped me see beauty in many things, because things are surely blooming. It’s been a source of optimism for me, to see beauty amidst blight. Even if things are ugly on the outside, you can always count on the world to be beautiful in your heart.
I’m not a big fan of long poetry. I admire people who do write them, and sometimes there are some that catch my eye, but for the most part I like my poems clean, smart and above all, short.
There is something beautiful about making the most out of scarcity. As I see it, we are born into this world and we are bounded by the limitations of our resources and our bodies. But yet we can achieve so much with so little.
I’ve once read that Coleridge once said that in a poem every word counts, but Poe went one further and said that not does every word count, but the position of each word counts too. Applying frugality to word choices makes one more aware of the effect of each word used.
How long is too long? Long enough to drive home what you need to say. Anything else that merely shows off the skill of a writer can almost be considered masturbatory. While it is hard to create the perfect rhyme to agree with meter and image, etc., it is a lot harder to convey a message with a paucity of words.
–
The words unsaid are the ones that
ring loudest.
Unfettered by noise,
they sing directly to the heart.
The images unseen are the ones that
are sharpest.
Neither myopia nor senescence
will diminish visions viewed by the mind.
I was thinking about how recently in the United States, the Defence of Marriage Act (DOMA) and Proposition 8 (Prop 8) were both declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States. What this means is that same-sex married couples can officially be recognised as ‘spouses’ in the eyes of the law and be eligible for federal marriage benefits, and that people in California can now legally marry.
There is a very distinct separation of between the government and the courts in the United States. This allows the courts to strike down laws set up by governments that apparently do not reflect the will of its people (the Constitution). Unfortunately that is not quite the case in Singapore.
Even though Singapore has a constitution, the Constitution does not seem to be supreme. It is of popular opinion that the government and the courts are one and the same. Even Wikipedia has noted that parliamentary sovereignty is the de facto characterisation of the legal system in the country. As such, the will of the parliament is often the will of the law, it seems.
In Singapore, under its penal code, there is a statute, Section 377, that criminalises sex “against the order of nature.” Its subsection 377A states that any male person who, in public or private, commits against any male person any act of gross indecency shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 2 years. This effectively makes homosexual sex illegal.
Section 377 was repealed on October 2007, but its subsection 377A was retained. On the decision, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said that “Singapore is basically a conservative society…The family is the basic building block of this society. And by family in Singapore we mean one man, one woman, marrying, having children and bringing up children within that framework of a stable family unit.”
Decriminalising homosexual sex is not going to break up families. Not that we’re even debating on the same stage of same-sex marriage as in the United States, but cracked.com has helpfully outlined how legalising gay marriage affects society (hint: it does not affect you in any way). Decriminalising homosexual sex is not going to cause heterosexual or homosexual couples to suddenly want to commit bestiality, or any of the slippery-slope arguments pitched by proponents of the legislation.
If the government wishes to focus on the family as it claims, why can’t having two mothers or two fathers make a good family? Surely they are just as good as any mother-father pair family, or single-parent family? There are tons of research that show that same-sex parents families do just as well, if not better, than different-sex parents. I would think that having two parents would provide for the children better than a family on just one income. If the government is so concerned about “family units,” then perhaps they should consider making adoption legal for homosexual couples, and allow them tax and national benefits as well.
If the focus is that it is the will of the people not to accept homosexuality because they are conservative, even if the government were to decriminalise homosexual acts of sex, it is not going to stop the homophobia that permeates the country. Repealing 377a is not going to stop the cries of “bapok” and “ah gua” on the streets, just as outlawing racism in Singapore is not going to stop the mutual jeerings of “ah pu neh neh” and “munjen” in the neighbourhood.
But at least we can offer equal protection to everyone, regardless of sexuality, from persecution from the law.
Never mind that the community is conservative, never mind that the majority have yet to accept homosexuals as social equals, but at least decriminalising homosexual acts of sex would be one less guillotine hanging over their heads.
What is the purpose of the government? If the government says it is there to reflect the views of the people it serves, then, well, the seething dissent from the masses these days from unpopular bills such as the move to regulate internet news is the exact opposite of representing its population.
If the government is there to lead by example, why couldn’t the government lead by example on this front, and set a precedent for reducing victimisation of its own people?
There is a disconnect between some laws of the land and its people; just because things are law doesn’t necessarily mean that the mindsets of people will automatically change. The outlawing of secret societies did not magically make people stop subscribing to the ideas that gangs offer protection and fear; it merely drove them underground. It was the eventual modernisation and improvements to policing that left all but a handful still loyal to the idea of organised brotherhood. Singaporeans are slowly accepting homosexuality more are more, regardless of whether the law decrees it or not.
So the courts might as well do the right thing, and the set the go-ahead for love without fear of persecution.
Last year, around the period of Singapore’s National Day, I wrote a piece on how Singaporeans are liking each successive new National Day song less. Well National Day is coming up again and predictably, there is yet another new song.
Whether or not the locals liked it can be easily summed up in the following parody video.
For those who can’t read the subtitles to the part at the back of the video, I provide a more accurate and closer translation:
“Oh-oh-oh” your mum’s head! Are you done already? I’ve already told you I can’t, yet you still go “Oh-oh-oh-oh.” You completely disregard whether people can stand it or not. You “oh” one more time, I’ll kill you!
Needless to say this year’s song is not well-received.
Singapore is one of the few countries where nationalism is strung proudly on a pole and waved in your face and played to your ears. Nationalism in other countries are rarely worn on one’s chest, because the tacit knowledge that one loves one country is sufficient. Sure, you have Americana, Japanese wave flags on the palace grounds during the Emperor’s birthday, et al, but they are hardly a concerted effort by the government to promote it. The last time I checked, North Korea was the only other one doing it.
One of the ways Singapore does it is by coming up with a new theme song every year to celebrate the nation and to foster ‘national spirit.’ It began in 1986 and after 1987, took a hiatus before coming back in 1998, where every year after that a new song is written. The music is rather catchy, and they’re played all over the country; on television, on the radio, in schools, on the train stations, but the lyrics are rather… shall we say nationalistic.
Here are some choice lyrics from National Day songs in the past till present.
You and me/ We’ll do our part/ Stand together/ Heart to heart/ We’re going to show the world what Singapore can be/ We can achieve, we can achieve — 1986, Count on Me Singapore
There was a time, when people said that Singapore won’t make it, but we did/ There was a time, when troubles seemed too much for us to take, but we did — 1987, We are Singapore
This is Home, truly, where I know I must be/ Where my dreams wait for me/ Where that river always flows/ This is home, surely, as my senses tell me/ This is where, I won’t be alone/ For this where I know it’s home — 1998, Home
Stars and crescent shine on me/ Make us more than what we can be/ All our dreams come true/ As we all grow stronger — 2000, Shine on Me
Where I belong/ Where I keep my heart and soul/ Where we are one big family/ I want the whole world to know/ I want to shout it out loud/ That this is where I know I belong — 2001, Where I Belong
There’s no place I’d rather be/ You’ll always be a part of me/ And even though I’ve roamed the world/ It’s still my home I long to see — 2007, There’s No Place I’d Rather Be
You get the idea.
Do they just simply not like the tunes? While the past few years’ official National Day songs were not well-received, other smaller efforts by regular people were preferred over the official ones.
I think it might be something more complex than people not just liking the tunes. Firstly, National Day song lyrics are incredibly cheesy, and Singaporeans know it. When we recall our favourite National Day songs, it is never for its lyrics, but ones that sound nicest to us. Sure, we hang our flags, we tune in to watch the telly and fireworks on National Day, but I think it is a stretch to say that people fervently subscribe to the content contained in the lyrics.
And when a government-led effort to try to rap out nationalistic message in the songs, I think that people feel it’s overkill. It’s trying too hard to make nationalism seem cool. Anyone remember the public service announcements in the form of raps by local comic icon, Phua Chu Kang?
Those weren’t cool.
It’s bad enough that the words, along with the tunes, of National Day songs are stuck in our heads. They sure are stuck in mine for the most part. Thanks, Singapore. There is no need to try to put on a veneer of ‘cool’ in addition to trying to be catchy.
And so, as part of my, er, patriotism, here are some suggestions on how to make your National Day songs work
Drop the rap.
Forget big choruses, focus on just one or two singers. Don’t be afraid to reuse older, popular singers. They are half the reason why people even bother to listen to the songs. (The other half is because we’re forced to)
Themes that are good: Home, friends and family, being together, fun and laughter.
Themes that are bad: Singapore overcoming adversity, how mighty Singapore is, showing people we can achieve.
The tunes must be simple and hummable. Have you ever heard commercial jingles with complex arpeggios? I think not.
The songs must be within the reasonable ranges of regular humans. We don’t all have five octaves of pitch.
Slow songs are meant to evoke longing and wistfulness, faster songs for vibrancy and liveliness. Play mix-n-match with the Nationalistic jingoism with the appropriate tempo.
Children singers are a hit-or-miss.
Combine all these… and you probably get 1998’s Home. Which I admit, is probably my favourite. I still cringe whenever I have to think about the lyrics, but then I just hum/sing it and pretend the words are no more than just words.
I tried making my own char siew, or Chinese barbecue roast pork, for the first time today. People usually buy them because nobody owns a spit and a fire pit, but I learnt that you can actually cook it in the oven, and char it on the stove top!
Given that I now have a batch of char siew, a natural dish to make with it would be what is known as “Sorrowful Rice” or 黯然销魂饭. The dish is essentially regular ol’ char siew rice, or char siew over steamed white rice, with a side of a sunny-side up and some vegetables.
“Sorrowful Rice” is actually the name of a dish from a movie, God of Cookery (食神).
In it, the protagonist Stephen Chow competes in a competition and strives to create the most delicious thing he’s ever tasted. He reaches into his sorrow and memory of a woman, who made him a bowl of char siew rice when he was downtrodden, and she supposedly took a bullet for him. With that, he created the “Sorrowful Rice.”
The sorrow is apparently onions.
I reach into my sorrow and create my own “Sorrowful Rice.”
Grandma, you never got to see me graduate college. You never even got to see me off as I left for New York later that year. You never got to see me do the ‘triumphant return.’ I have yet to return, and it seems I am becoming quite the prodigal son. Will you still be proud of me, even if I am struggling to make something of myself and having racked up a colossal collegiate debt?
What will you say, if you learn that I do not wish to return to the land where you are buried?
On 28th May, 2009, at around 5 AM, you passed away in the hospital. I remember, because I wrote it down.
I also wrote down having heard you cry when Great Grandmother died. It was really painful.
A grandson should never live to see his grandmother cry. Or any old people cry.
I wrote that down in my logs. In my mind, it seemed impossible that you were one to sob uncontrollably, for you were my stoic grandmother; frustrating at times, but always well-meaning and grandmotherly.
I also remember, and wrote down when your youngest son, my uncle, passed away. By traditions and customs, you were not allowed to attend his wake. I can only imagine what grief it must be — grief I didn’t want to imagine, because I remembered the grief you had at Great Grandmother’s funeral.
Many times whenever I am doing something, I would think, “What if she could see me now?” And then I remembered that you can’t, and I am reminded of the finality of death.
Uncle (叔叔), I wrote down what you told me when I visited you on 12th April, 2008.
The first few things he said to me were, “Is the army stressful?” and then he went on about how I should learn to take things easy and learn how to let things go. However I feel that it was more for the benefit of himself, as if he were repeating these to remind himself exactly what he has to do.
But he seems ailing in his road to recovery. He doesn’t wish to pick himself up, saying how exhausted he is and all, and all he does is lie in bed. He doesn’t move much, not even to leave the room or to sit on a sofa. That is bad.
Hope he perks up soon? I’ve even offered going out with him for photography as bribes.
What I did not write down, but I always remember was when you asked me that day, “So what are your plans for college?”
“I’m probably going to apply for college in the United States,” I said.
“That’s nice. What are you going to be studying there?” he asked.
“Journalism.”
“Journalism? That’s good. I wanted to be a journalist too when I was younger, but I never studied hard, and I couldn’t be one. You should study hard and become one for me.”
You passed away a week later.
I graduated journalism school, but I have yet to find a job in journalism. I am going to keep trying, uncle. With the memories of that robot dinosaur you gave me as a kid, and also that toy guy that you disabled the recoil feature for because it scared me, I will become the journalist you couldn’t be. I could not keep the promise to go do photography with you, but I will try my darndest best with this one.
I should ease up with the onions. This is too much sorrow for me.
About a month and a half ago, I graduated with my bachelors from New York University. It was a pretty grand affair. The Yankee Stadium was awash with a sea of purple and camera flashes, and while a sizeable portion of the student body was not impressed that their commencement speaker was David Boies, the lawyer who got Prop 8 overturned, I thought it was pretty rad.
However, I just could not muster up the enthusiasm to enjoy the ceremony. Around me, friends were congratulating each other, high-fiving, taking pictures of themselves in graduation regalia.
I just didn’t feel it. People were telling each other, “We did it!” But, what is it about “it” that we did that is so worth congratulating?
Perhaps I was reluctant to be ending a period in my life where I didn’t have to worry about finding jobs and entering the “real world?” Perhaps I was unhappy to be leaving friends I’ve made in my four years?
No, not really. University for me has always been a gateway for me to enter the world of journalism. I practically entered college with my major declared. No fudging around classes, wondering what life was going to be for me when I left college — no, I did college for what lies after. I was eager to start my foray into professional journalism. And no, while I had a handful of friends at college, my closest friends in the city were mostly outside of college (circus, online communities, etc), and the close friends I made in college are still in the city anyway. Also, it is not as if I am one to bemoan having to leave people behind; after all I am not stranger to uprooting myself. I left a lifetime of friends and family 9000 miles behind to be here.
What I was not enthused about was of the zeitgeist of “We did it!” What was particularly hard about college that surviving it made it an ordeal worth congratulating? A student who puts in conscientious and regular effort into his or her school work will find that making it to graduation is not that big a deal. Perhaps we now live in a culture where “keeping up the good work” has become a rarity and that one who displays it should be congratulated.
Or perhaps I grew up in a culture where such things are expected of you. Insert Asian stereotypes here, but verily making it to the finishing line doesn’t turn heads, doesn’t make eyelids bat. Distinctions do. I was not a spectacular student, and I even lapsed at school work at times, but I can say that I consistently put in effort in college, and I came out okay. I didn’t graduate with Latin honours, but my grades were not abysmal (3.5 out of a 4? I’ll take it.). I am sure if I put in more effort, I’d have gotten better grades and all that but that is no more than a numbers’ chase.
One’s path in college, no matter the classes taken, is predictable. One is expected to put in a certain amount of work into it, and at the end of the day, you come out unscathed and meeting expectations. Do we congratulate people for meeting expectations? Maybe we do, but people at graduation make it out to be such a big deal it is as if people enter college with the expectations that they are all going to flunk out, and that having made it to graduation actually is exceeding expectations.
Why would anyone want to enter college expecting to fail anyway?
What I would say “We did it!” to would be more of the unexpected things one does in college; things that a student endeavours at his or her own risk with no idea what the outcome would be. Things I would celebrate are:
Making the effort to immerse myself in the local cultures, such as having performed at the Howl! Festival
Learning to extend myself in ways I’d never have done back home, such as forming friendships online, etc
The common denominator of the above seem to be about forging and integrating into communities, and they don’t seem like much, but these are things that were quite unknown to me back home. Going to gaming meetups from Reddit groups? Would never even have touched Reddit back home. Talking to random poi spinners in the park and subsequently being introduced to the local scene of fire spinning and circus arts? People scarcely even publicly practice circus arts, and that’s not to say that there are very many.
In comparison, having done these as a student was above and beyond what I felt was expected of me as a student. The true growth came not understanding of linguistics and journalism in the classrooms, but from what I made myself do outside of them.
This evening, as I was sending out more job applications, I decided to make myself a cup of hot cocoa (technically, I made Milo, which is chocolate malt). After a while, I looked at my mug, and I realised that I could see the reflection of the ceiling lights off of the rim of the mug. I decided to look closer and then I noticed the edge of foam that looked like it was climbing out the side of the mug. Other things I noticed were that where spoon touched the liquid, the area around it was slightly darkened, and that the shadow of the top of the mug formed a neat crescent that bisected the cocoa.
I’ve never stared so hard at a mug of cocoa before, and I reckoned if I could see all these individual layers of detail, I must be able to illustrate them out.
I spent a long time trying to replicate each feature accurately: its colour, its location, its details. But after a while, staring so hard at these features, I started to forget that they were actually part of a mug of cocoa. In my excitement at being able to see fine detail, I forgot what the whole thing was.
Have I been similar in my job search? Although I’m trained in journalism and my speciality is international news, focusing only on getting positions that will land you where you were trained to do might have you forget that what you really want to do is write. Maybe applying for business writing isn’t a bad thing. Maybe writing about technology isn’t an end-all (But heavens forbid you write for the New York Post). What you need to be doing is to be moving, because you (I mean me, this is me speaking in second-person again) are currently being stagnant, and that needs to change.
Like what you teach people in unicycling, “Always keep moving. If you stop, you fall.” I should learn to take my own advice more often.
Persisting in fine-graining my search yielded the above snazzy illustration of my mug, but the hot cocoa turned cold, and became slightly less satisfying on this rainy, rainy evening.
I’ve been unicycling and spinning various stuff for about 10 years now, probably. I’ve spun in Singapore, and I’ve spun around the United States. I’ve seen buskers in the Czech Republic and in Germany as wells. One thing that always struck out to me was how similar Asian performers are with one another, but markedly different from Western performers, who are similar amongst themselves.
Let me show you two videos from the Olympics of unicycling, UNICON.
The above two videos show the winners of UNICON 16, Kazuhiro Shimoyama (Japan) and Janna Wohlfarth (Germany), of the Freestyle Expert category, Male and Female respectively. Notice the vast difference? Shimoyama does a lot of pirouettes, and is generally a lot more dance-attuned and rhythm-attuned to the music that’s playing. Wohlfarth, aside from the Marge outfit and the Simpsons soundtrack, looks more like a showcase of all the nifty skills she’s learnt.
And that actually quite sums up the difference between Western and Eastern performing. If you think I’m generalising, here‘s a link to the performance of Haruka Sato and Ryohei Matsuda (Japan), Pairs Expert, where Sato also came in second for Freestyle Expert, Female. And to compare, here‘s Philipp Henstrosa (Switzerland), who came in fourth in the Expert, Male category in UNICON 16, but this video is from UNICON 15. You’d see that the generalisations I made still pertain.
Such similarities transcend unicycles. Having been in New York for a while, other (Western) spinners never fail to be amazed by my movements, even though the tricks I’m doing are relatively simple. I can’t do a stand-up wheel walk or do a unispin or a flip; I can’t even do a hyperloop on a poi, but I do move my body a lot, and always in reaction to the music that’s playing. To me, music sense is very important to me, because it shows the audience how your mind and body interprets its surrounding and the music to the best of the limitations imposed by the props one is using and of one’s body.
In the spinning world, such a dichotomy is one of ‘Tech’ and ‘Flow’. ‘Tech’ is the pursuit of technical skills, the equivalent of stunts or tricks. They usually have a name, like “Rubenstein’s Revenge” or “Reverse Wheelwalk” or the ilk. Tech spinners tend be grounded on the spot and they let their skills speak for themselves. ‘Flow’ is simply movement. They don’t even have to be graceful and fluid; popping and locking while performing is a form of flow. It is the natural progression of the body as applied to the prop that gives flow its meaning. You can’t name ‘flow moves’, else it would be named something like “Hip-wiggly-thing-as-I-round-my-shoulders”. Less cool-sounding than tech moves.
Also fundamental difference, you can teach tech, but you can’t really teach flow.
I mean I do wish I were actually more skilled in tech. I always tell people “Nah, I just go flow simply because I’m bad at tech.” Which is not completely incorrect; my tech skills are very limited. But I do wonder why it seems almost racial that Eastern spinners tend towards flow (even if it’s crazy, mind-blowingly hard Japanese flow) whereas Westerners tend towards hard skills. I’m sure there are tons of tech-versed people who are trying to marry tech and flow, but the number who succeed, well. I’m not so sure.
When I was in primary four (fourth grade), I took part in a haiku competition on Children’s Day. It was also World Haiku Day or something, and everyone in school had a chance to participate. I submitted three, complete with drawings to go with them. One was about a spider, one was about a pig, and I can’t remember what the last one was.
I actually won something. I won a set of colouring pencils from Japan, with a Mickey Mouse motif. I was also given a book on haiku from children around the world. As a kid, I looked at the pictures more than I looked at the poems from children who were my age.
As I grew up, I would revisit the book every now and then. I also did something that I would never have done as a kid, and that was read the foreword and introduction. It was in Japanese, but there were translations. The foreword said to the effect of “Haiku by children are always the most precious things. They say things as they see them, and that is surely the true essence of haiku.” (I don’t have the book with me right now, I’m just writing from memory.
And that is quite true. If you look at haiku these days, people think as long as you keep the 5/7/5 syllable (or mora, in Japanese) structure, you basically have a haiku.
The above is a t-shirt design from this online store Threadless. Haikus sometimes don’t make sense on sight, but like any poem, sometimes readers have to work at them to get them. This ‘haiku’ has nothing more to it than a buffoonery of what a haiku is. People sometimes think that because the structure of haiku is so simple, the only way to be smart and outstanding is to be clever with words.
But traditionally haiku is visual poetry for the mind. The words are unassuming, but in the images they conjure, they reflect, capture and convey some truth in the natural world. Let’s look at a famous example, Bashou’s “Old Pond”.
古池や蛙飛び込む水の音
From Wikipedia, it translates as: An old pond, a frog leaps in, water’s sound. All of them simple images but powerful.
The haiku book I had said children see these images best. Have we as adults lost this ability forever, to see the natural with simplicity of mind and words? Maybe if we try hard enough, we might realise that perhaps what seem lost to time is merely buried and forgotten, but a good shovel and with some arm work, we might possible recover it.
The fresh perspectives of a child will save even the sidewalk from attrition — Romain Gary
The Hexacoto 