A girl graduating from RJC in one of the Humanities classes thinks that Taiwan is a peninsula. This, after doing a research paper on the territory's indigenous peoples. For a gaffe like this, I hope it's a result of stupidity. If it's a result of laziness then there is so much less hope for self-betterment.
*
So here we are, eighteen hours away from departure. Bags are packed, tickets are booked, and it is, once again, the time of breathless anticipation for the journey to start. Soph isn't the first one to remark that I could have put too much planning into this trip. But I think planning is only bad if you want to stick assiduously to it. In that way, I think I am organised, but not a control freak. I mean, you definitely need some planning to make sure that you're not going in blind, and to minimise the possibility of something bad happening, like your getting lost and missing the check-in timing at your hotel in the next town. But alongside that you need to have the flexibility and spontaneity to accept circumstances that pop up, to take advantage of the moment. The way I see it, the plan is a baseline, a starting point that guarantees a minimum level of enjoyment and discovery. In the best case, it should be a catalyst that helps you to exploit any surprises that happen, rather than to blinker you so much that you miss golden opportunities. But that's a skill that only travelling experience can bring. The balancing point between organisation and flexibility is elusive, and fluctuating.
But anyway, Australia - the last time that I was there, I was seven years old. I remember parts of the theme parks along the Gold Coast, and Brisbane City. I remember vividly that Brisbane Airport was so small that our plane had to park itself out away from the terminal, and what a novelty it was for us to disembark right onto the tarmac! It was my first plane, and it was a 747, and seeing that huge machine poised on the ground has been an image that stayed with me, all this while, a golden standard of air travel, the epitome of arrival. There is something marvelous about standing out in the cold in a different place and looking up at the amazing vessel that has carried you across the lands and the seas on the backs of unimaginable forces.
I envy my people staying in Australia - Soph and YS. But this is something beyond the general envy that I have for anyone who isn't staying in Singapore at the moment, and is knee-deep in the tides of the wider world. These two people have something more, a pride in their location that people in other parts of the world don't have in such remarkable quantities. They frequently mention the landscapes and sights of Australia in their correspondence, and, as unique as their sights are to Australia, their delight at the physical location too is unmatched. Of course, that is not necessarily to say that Australia is a better place to live than anywhere else. But the environment does set it apart as a good place to life.
There's something about the new continents (by this I mean the continents to which large-scale human settlement is a relative novelty - in other words the Americas and Australia) that exudes promise. It's like being on a frontier - not just the philosophical frontier that marks out the edge of experience, but also a physical frontier, where the thrill of anticipation is made tangible. I guess it's all that space, all that space that's empty of people and their works, as exciting as a blank page under a poised pen. That's why Australia and the Americas have this atmosphere of great potential waiting to be realised by someone who dares to become its catalyst, and are poised, as they are in my mind's eye, on the edge of the future, while Europe and Asia, despite their powerful impetuses for development and advancement, are weighted by history and firmlyrooted in the past.
So - Australia. Here we come, in a little more than eighteen hours. It is good to travel again, and this time to travel without the eventual return being a spectre hanging over the journey that is like a promise to the end of a dream. After all these years, finally I come into a time when I have the time and the money to travel like we've always wanted to, and that is good, and portentious like the start of a new golden age.
*
I apologise to anyone reading this who finds it tedious. It's the influence of Iyer reasserting itself. Nowadays, my days start with a chapter of The Lady and the Monk in bed before breakfast, and wandering the imagined streets of Kyoto with him feels like reuniting with an old friend. The book itself is one of his early works - only his second published book. But somehow, he always seems to engage some part of me, something that goes beyond plot and is more fundamental than style, though it uses these two means to communicate. It is some sibilance on a spiritual, philosophical level. And reading Iyer feels like talking to him, in the kind of conversation that only old friends can have after a period of time apart.
And for those who are reading, thanks for your patience. It feels good to know that other eyes are running over these words; temporally distant, geographically separated are reader and writer, but this is communication nonetheless, until a time when we can meet again, face to face. I hope that this continues to entertain and provoke. And stay tuned for despatches from Down Under.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Monday, November 26, 2007
How do these things come together to form a spontaneous and immediately captivating harmony? A message on a box: "14 June 1894 - As I was approaching Ovsiannikovo, I looked at the lovely sunset. A shaft of light in the piled up clouds, and there, like a red irregular coal, the sun. All this above the forest, the rye. Joyful. And I thought to myself: No, this world is not a joke, not a vale of ordeal only and a passage to a better eternal world, but one of the eternal worlds, which is good, joyful, and which we not only can, but must make finer and more joyful for those living with us, and for those who will live in it after us."
And, at the bus stop opposite the Cathedral, across the rumbling road, I spy a lady and a man in the doorway to the nave, talking earnestly, heads together, as a film camera and boom microphone hover over them. Another man in black t-shirt and cap holds a clapboard casually. What are they saying? What am I seeing? And how is it that I can read meaning from their unintelligibility?
And this morning, in bed with a new book, the scent of new paper like a promise, a commitment, and I begin to read: "As I began to climb, the noise fell away, and the crowds started to thin out. Soon I was far above the town, alone in a world of lanterns. For on this, the Night of a Thousand Lanterns, lights had been placed beside every grave, to lead departed spirits back to Buddha. And I, somehow, without knowing it, had found my way alone into an ancient graveyard. For many minutes I stood there, in the company of ghosts and shivering lights."
Sometimes, the pattern that I can see out of the chaos, the pattern that makes itself so evident without my calling it forth at all, is so compelling that I have to stop and admire it. Beauty that is so unlikely, and so arresting, that it is portentious like a miracle and privileged like a blessing. Times like this make you fully aware only of the present, of everything you experience, and of its transience, its temporality - well, what of it?
*
Finished Winterson's The Stone Gods yesterday on the train downtown, and read the last pages in Borders, where I had bought it in the first place. The book ends predictably; she has used echoing narratives before, where characters quote each other throughout the book, invoke the past or a future that is yet to be, make a Gordian knot out of the timeline. But in her latest book she throws out any effort at a linear plot, which I think is a mistake. What made Gut Symmetries so compelling was in part because the plot was still linear, even though she bent the timeline way out of shape. Everything fitted together so nicely at the end, into a neat linear timeline that highlighted a beautiful pattern, and this craftsmanship was a testament to her skill. But The Stone Gods is perhaps too postmodern for my taste - the temporal knot that I see at the end is inelegant, confusing, haphazard, like a device used out of pretentious intentions rather than for an artistic purpose.
But she does make an interesting point, in the end. After all that humanity has done to itself and to its planet, if we were given a second chance, we would commit the same mistakes again. Humanity cannot learn, even if it remembers; human nature is intrinsically self-effacing, self-destructive. And second chances would only be squandered, again and again; we cannot change what we once were, and what we will therefore always be. "Everything is imprinted with what it once was," she writes. And yet, this is not a doomsday declaration, because you have to take all our art, our compassion, our worth together with our depravity and destruction. If the grand historical arc of humanity inevitably tends to apocalypse, then at least individuals can act out lives of love and sympathy, or art and respect, of understanding and aspiration, against this backdrop of condemnation. And perhaps these individual moments of epiphany make all the great pain of the human collective worthwhile.
*
Been doing up some work for my old teachers, going through their students' CCA testimonials. I can understand if some current students will feel offended by the thought of this, and demand that teachers, real teachers, do the editing of their testimonials instead. I can only say, understand that the teachers are also confined by the temporal laws of physics, and among all the tasks they have to do to look after your welfare, this is the least important.
I have some philosophical objections with the way the testimonials are done. They are written by students for themselves, but presented in the third person, which I think is an inexcusable sleight of hand, amounting to fraud. It allows people to blow their own trumpet and make it sound like someone else's testimony. Of course, it is likely that if the teachers wrote the testimonials it would sound bombastic and congratulatory too, but how can you allow yourself to be so superlative towards your own achievements if you know that you are blowing them way out of proportion? Reading the testimonials, you'd think that a CCA would fail if a single ordinary member didn't attend every session diligently. You'd think that an actor has as much responsibility in bearing the school name as the President of the Student Council. We may live in a postmodern world, but to accept these viewpoints is to abandon all functional concepts of proportion and perspective. This constitutes self-delusion on an alarming scale.
But such is the state of affairs that the system demands of teachers more work than they are humanly capable of, and we settle for the next best alternative. But it makes me shudder, thinking about how so many young people are making themselves out to be so great and capable, when in reality they can't even straighten out their own grammar. And as if that was not bad enough, they can't even straighten out the spelling, let alone the places to put the words they write. One even managed to misspell her own name. Twice.
Don't even get me started on what I think about the people who actually believe what they are writing. It's too depressing.
*
In other news, planning the trips, and it's almost time to begin. Leaving for Australia on Thursday, and I hope that the company proves to be fun, because I reckon we'd end up spending more time travelling than actually visiting any single place. Time is, as always, the problem.
Against this, there are the reports of the five Singaporeans who drowned in a freak dragon-boating accident while on vacation. And then there are reports of ethnic unrest bubbling up in KL. And investigations continue for a murder of an American student on holiday in Italy. The modern lore makes travel out to be so glamorous - this stepping out of comfort zones, throwing yourself wholeheartedly and without possibility of repreive into a new culture. The cloying and seductive tastes of a new place, a new experience. But this comes up hard against the realities of the unknown, the freak chance, the unforeseen development. We have all these grand plans to travel, but we really are playing with such high stakes, aren't we? The prestige of exploring still comes with the danger of trauma, injury or death, although we no longer sail up the Congo with Marlowe.
And, at the bus stop opposite the Cathedral, across the rumbling road, I spy a lady and a man in the doorway to the nave, talking earnestly, heads together, as a film camera and boom microphone hover over them. Another man in black t-shirt and cap holds a clapboard casually. What are they saying? What am I seeing? And how is it that I can read meaning from their unintelligibility?
And this morning, in bed with a new book, the scent of new paper like a promise, a commitment, and I begin to read: "As I began to climb, the noise fell away, and the crowds started to thin out. Soon I was far above the town, alone in a world of lanterns. For on this, the Night of a Thousand Lanterns, lights had been placed beside every grave, to lead departed spirits back to Buddha. And I, somehow, without knowing it, had found my way alone into an ancient graveyard. For many minutes I stood there, in the company of ghosts and shivering lights."
Sometimes, the pattern that I can see out of the chaos, the pattern that makes itself so evident without my calling it forth at all, is so compelling that I have to stop and admire it. Beauty that is so unlikely, and so arresting, that it is portentious like a miracle and privileged like a blessing. Times like this make you fully aware only of the present, of everything you experience, and of its transience, its temporality - well, what of it?
*
Finished Winterson's The Stone Gods yesterday on the train downtown, and read the last pages in Borders, where I had bought it in the first place. The book ends predictably; she has used echoing narratives before, where characters quote each other throughout the book, invoke the past or a future that is yet to be, make a Gordian knot out of the timeline. But in her latest book she throws out any effort at a linear plot, which I think is a mistake. What made Gut Symmetries so compelling was in part because the plot was still linear, even though she bent the timeline way out of shape. Everything fitted together so nicely at the end, into a neat linear timeline that highlighted a beautiful pattern, and this craftsmanship was a testament to her skill. But The Stone Gods is perhaps too postmodern for my taste - the temporal knot that I see at the end is inelegant, confusing, haphazard, like a device used out of pretentious intentions rather than for an artistic purpose.
But she does make an interesting point, in the end. After all that humanity has done to itself and to its planet, if we were given a second chance, we would commit the same mistakes again. Humanity cannot learn, even if it remembers; human nature is intrinsically self-effacing, self-destructive. And second chances would only be squandered, again and again; we cannot change what we once were, and what we will therefore always be. "Everything is imprinted with what it once was," she writes. And yet, this is not a doomsday declaration, because you have to take all our art, our compassion, our worth together with our depravity and destruction. If the grand historical arc of humanity inevitably tends to apocalypse, then at least individuals can act out lives of love and sympathy, or art and respect, of understanding and aspiration, against this backdrop of condemnation. And perhaps these individual moments of epiphany make all the great pain of the human collective worthwhile.
*
Been doing up some work for my old teachers, going through their students' CCA testimonials. I can understand if some current students will feel offended by the thought of this, and demand that teachers, real teachers, do the editing of their testimonials instead. I can only say, understand that the teachers are also confined by the temporal laws of physics, and among all the tasks they have to do to look after your welfare, this is the least important.
I have some philosophical objections with the way the testimonials are done. They are written by students for themselves, but presented in the third person, which I think is an inexcusable sleight of hand, amounting to fraud. It allows people to blow their own trumpet and make it sound like someone else's testimony. Of course, it is likely that if the teachers wrote the testimonials it would sound bombastic and congratulatory too, but how can you allow yourself to be so superlative towards your own achievements if you know that you are blowing them way out of proportion? Reading the testimonials, you'd think that a CCA would fail if a single ordinary member didn't attend every session diligently. You'd think that an actor has as much responsibility in bearing the school name as the President of the Student Council. We may live in a postmodern world, but to accept these viewpoints is to abandon all functional concepts of proportion and perspective. This constitutes self-delusion on an alarming scale.
But such is the state of affairs that the system demands of teachers more work than they are humanly capable of, and we settle for the next best alternative. But it makes me shudder, thinking about how so many young people are making themselves out to be so great and capable, when in reality they can't even straighten out their own grammar. And as if that was not bad enough, they can't even straighten out the spelling, let alone the places to put the words they write. One even managed to misspell her own name. Twice.
Don't even get me started on what I think about the people who actually believe what they are writing. It's too depressing.
*
In other news, planning the trips, and it's almost time to begin. Leaving for Australia on Thursday, and I hope that the company proves to be fun, because I reckon we'd end up spending more time travelling than actually visiting any single place. Time is, as always, the problem.
Against this, there are the reports of the five Singaporeans who drowned in a freak dragon-boating accident while on vacation. And then there are reports of ethnic unrest bubbling up in KL. And investigations continue for a murder of an American student on holiday in Italy. The modern lore makes travel out to be so glamorous - this stepping out of comfort zones, throwing yourself wholeheartedly and without possibility of repreive into a new culture. The cloying and seductive tastes of a new place, a new experience. But this comes up hard against the realities of the unknown, the freak chance, the unforeseen development. We have all these grand plans to travel, but we really are playing with such high stakes, aren't we? The prestige of exploring still comes with the danger of trauma, injury or death, although we no longer sail up the Congo with Marlowe.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Been getting on with Winterson's The Stone Gods, and am nearing the end with the impression that it's not as good as Gut Symmetries. She writes like she has a responsibility, which makes her terribly self-conscious. The turns of phrase that made me so enraptured in my first Winterson now seem so contrived, as if she were an amateur trying to emulate another artist, which happens to be her younger self. The themes are in the same vein as the rest of her work - love, apathy, science, free will, what makes life worthwhile, and above all, communication. But there really is nothing new, and she doesn't manage to innovate on her past techniques to offer a new take or maintain the old sharpness. The book is more sci-fi than old-school literature, and not very compelling sci-fi at that. It looks like we're approaching the end of a brief, intense intellectual relationship. Somehow my first Winterson was the one that still leaves me with the deepest impression, and I'm beginning to think that she'll never top that for me, and it's better to leave Gut Symmetries in pride of place and be done with it, rather than to keep reading Winterson books and being disappointed.
What still draws me to this particular story is not something that is specific to Winterson. In it she describes a post-apocalyptic world, what she calls Post-3 War, which is the aftermath of a nuclear war triggered by the polarising effect of the War on Terror. And it's the idea of a post-apocalyptic era that is captivating. Imagine...this great, decadent world with all its wonders and weaknesses, its miracles and depravities that feed off each other, combat each other and sustain each other, reduced to a smoking ruin. Imagine humanity robbed of its epic hopes and epic evils, reduced in a fundamental way to just surviving. It is this narrowing of hopes, this shrinking of horizons, the fall from a high place of both benign and malign greatness that is captivating. It is the idea that we were capable of so much, and yet we only chose to destroy ourselves.
And it's not just destruction. The element of choice is the clincher. Seeing cities burn and populations cut down by a meteorite, by alien invasion and by freak weather may have its poignant moments, but what really grips me is when people decide to destroy themselves. When people deliberately choose war when they know the likely outcome. When they choose decadence and eschew sacrifice. When they choose themselves at the cost of everyone else. It's the waste that strikes me; the squandering of not only your own unbounded realm of potential on the pure basis of existing, and not only the unseen and unseeable future with all its promise and peril, but also the legacy of the past, the achievements that were built up over centuries only to be lost at the cusp of a moment. It's the fragility of humanity, and the brutality of how we treat our unique legacy, that is fascinatingly terrifying. As such, the wilful squander of a single life can be more moving than an act of chance wiping out the planet.
Waste, I think, is the fundamental vice. Translate it up through levels of intellect, make it more sophisticated and elaborate, and you get crime, oppression, murder, war, the end of the world. At the root of it all, I think, is a perception that waste is tolerable, that it is acceptable. But it is not, isn't it? It's becoming increasingly clearer that we can't keep wasting energy, resources, land, the environment. The warnings are out - Earth could turn into a wasteland. But beneath that, at a more essential level, I think there are certain things that cannot be wasted, that cannot be let go so easily for a temporal reward that is negligible in the greater scheme of things. The precious, rare things that can't be wasted are time, trust, sincerity, meaning and comprehension. There is too little of these, too little for us not to treat them carefully, to cherish them and protect them and nurture them.
*
Been looking at various people's photo albums on Facebook, that ultimate friend-espionage tool, as Joel aptly calls it. Focusing on the people that are not here at the moment, and their travels in the great wide world out there. Christmas is coming, and travel plans are developing, and I am wondering where else they will visit next - Reykjavik, Kathmandu, San Francisco, Wollongong? The place names that have the charms of a magic word, the promise of new territories and experiences lying beyond the borders of one's imagination. The prospect of enrichment, or expansion, of learning and comprehension. The conjugation of novelty into appreciation, delight and respect.
I have the itch to go somewhere again, and am grateful that I am going to Australia in a week's time. Finished planning the itinerary for our Australia trip, and am in two minds on how useful it is. On the one hand, planning it has necessitated me doing quite a bit of research, making sure that I'm not going in blind, and giving us a framework to fall back on and propel the trip forwards. On the other hand, planning every day beforehand doesn't leave much room for spontaneous discoveries, moments of epiphany, that kind of romantic thing. It's the difference between what I want to happen, and what can happen. And in the middle somewhere lies the experience of our trip. It's the usual dilemma - how much should you leave open-ended, and how much should you plan, to ensure a baseline worthwhile experience without precluding the possibility of something truly wonderful and out-of-this-world happening?
And after Australia, planning a short hop up to Malacca, and then next year perhaps a hop to KK and a longer trip to Vietnam with the guys. Big plans, and now, it's within our power to realise them. It's a heady time, this. The prospect of becoming something of a traveler after all this time. And the hope that this travel will be done with people who will catalyse it into something even more delightful and worthwhile than we can imagine.
What still draws me to this particular story is not something that is specific to Winterson. In it she describes a post-apocalyptic world, what she calls Post-3 War, which is the aftermath of a nuclear war triggered by the polarising effect of the War on Terror. And it's the idea of a post-apocalyptic era that is captivating. Imagine...this great, decadent world with all its wonders and weaknesses, its miracles and depravities that feed off each other, combat each other and sustain each other, reduced to a smoking ruin. Imagine humanity robbed of its epic hopes and epic evils, reduced in a fundamental way to just surviving. It is this narrowing of hopes, this shrinking of horizons, the fall from a high place of both benign and malign greatness that is captivating. It is the idea that we were capable of so much, and yet we only chose to destroy ourselves.
And it's not just destruction. The element of choice is the clincher. Seeing cities burn and populations cut down by a meteorite, by alien invasion and by freak weather may have its poignant moments, but what really grips me is when people decide to destroy themselves. When people deliberately choose war when they know the likely outcome. When they choose decadence and eschew sacrifice. When they choose themselves at the cost of everyone else. It's the waste that strikes me; the squandering of not only your own unbounded realm of potential on the pure basis of existing, and not only the unseen and unseeable future with all its promise and peril, but also the legacy of the past, the achievements that were built up over centuries only to be lost at the cusp of a moment. It's the fragility of humanity, and the brutality of how we treat our unique legacy, that is fascinatingly terrifying. As such, the wilful squander of a single life can be more moving than an act of chance wiping out the planet.
Waste, I think, is the fundamental vice. Translate it up through levels of intellect, make it more sophisticated and elaborate, and you get crime, oppression, murder, war, the end of the world. At the root of it all, I think, is a perception that waste is tolerable, that it is acceptable. But it is not, isn't it? It's becoming increasingly clearer that we can't keep wasting energy, resources, land, the environment. The warnings are out - Earth could turn into a wasteland. But beneath that, at a more essential level, I think there are certain things that cannot be wasted, that cannot be let go so easily for a temporal reward that is negligible in the greater scheme of things. The precious, rare things that can't be wasted are time, trust, sincerity, meaning and comprehension. There is too little of these, too little for us not to treat them carefully, to cherish them and protect them and nurture them.
*
Been looking at various people's photo albums on Facebook, that ultimate friend-espionage tool, as Joel aptly calls it. Focusing on the people that are not here at the moment, and their travels in the great wide world out there. Christmas is coming, and travel plans are developing, and I am wondering where else they will visit next - Reykjavik, Kathmandu, San Francisco, Wollongong? The place names that have the charms of a magic word, the promise of new territories and experiences lying beyond the borders of one's imagination. The prospect of enrichment, or expansion, of learning and comprehension. The conjugation of novelty into appreciation, delight and respect.
I have the itch to go somewhere again, and am grateful that I am going to Australia in a week's time. Finished planning the itinerary for our Australia trip, and am in two minds on how useful it is. On the one hand, planning it has necessitated me doing quite a bit of research, making sure that I'm not going in blind, and giving us a framework to fall back on and propel the trip forwards. On the other hand, planning every day beforehand doesn't leave much room for spontaneous discoveries, moments of epiphany, that kind of romantic thing. It's the difference between what I want to happen, and what can happen. And in the middle somewhere lies the experience of our trip. It's the usual dilemma - how much should you leave open-ended, and how much should you plan, to ensure a baseline worthwhile experience without precluding the possibility of something truly wonderful and out-of-this-world happening?
And after Australia, planning a short hop up to Malacca, and then next year perhaps a hop to KK and a longer trip to Vietnam with the guys. Big plans, and now, it's within our power to realise them. It's a heady time, this. The prospect of becoming something of a traveler after all this time. And the hope that this travel will be done with people who will catalyse it into something even more delightful and worthwhile than we can imagine.
Friday, November 23, 2007
The Virtual Life
Spending a lot of time these days in the virtual world. Watching many videos about the newest game releases because me and Greg are thinking of building a new computer - well, to be exact, he's thinking of building it and asking me to invest in it. And listening to him talk about the latest technological leaps, about processors that have shrunk yet again to an almost quantum level, or quad cores and dual graphics cards, or seventeen-inch screens, it makes me almost want to build a machine too. Almost - I'm really not much of a hardware person. If my machines start to fail me, I'm more likely to adapt to the failure and learn to live with it than to repair it. Software, though, is a different cup of tea.
Anyway, we've been looking at computer games, and it strikes me how much effort is put into games artistically. It's the next big innovation after the cinema. Spent an afternoon happily watching all the cut-scenes from the Halo games, and it's a really detailed and immersive storyline, stuff right out of the movies. And some of it is really emotive, on a fundamental, low-level way. Not exactly poetry, it doesn't pull any punches in the plot, but even if it doesn't do it delicately or with much finesse, it pulls at heartstrings.
And then there's Mass Effect. The most beautiful sci-fi game that I've ever seen, and it's amazing in the amount of customisable content that is in the game. Many games, especially RTS, boast non-linear gameplay, as in every time you play is a different experience, and you have many means to achieve a goal. But when it comes to FPS games, a lot of the choices you make are really obvious binary choices, and plot flows are predictable. The amount of freedom you have always felt like part of a mechanical predetermined system. But with Mass Effect, they created a really immersive galaxy, where every detail matters, and they simulated conversations really precisely, right up to animating body language. So you really have to pay attention, and nuances and details really matter.
And look at this:
In this video, every scene with a human in it is generated in-game. If you change the look of your character (right down to the amount of blush on her cheeks, or the height of his cheekbones, depending of your fancy) before starting, the appearance of the character in the opening cinematic will change too. And look at the textures, and the naturalistic movements, and most stunningly, the completely believable banter! It's breathtaking in its imaginative investment, and mesmerising in its capability to catalyse the player's own imaginative scope.
Anyway, like I was saying, been spending a lot of time in the virtual world, and not just online and in computers. Also been watching a lot of movies (as those of you who've had the patience to read will have noticed), reading a lot (both fiction and TIME), keeping up with the news, and attending a play. Doing a lot of observing, absorbing information, enjoying, appreciating. And I have to say that it feels really good, all this enrichment and expansion. But I think I'm fast approaching the point where I'll be wanting something concrete to do. To go from passive observation to active application. To make time scarce again, and make actions matter.
Was down at school today grabbing a set of school graduation certs to vet through. Giving our old teachers a hand, considering the mountain of certs that await checking and their sheer lack of manpower. And it's something to do, you know, but not exactly glamorous stuff that you'd want to put on your CV. Was talking to Kats after getting the certs, and discussing how long the enjoyment of the vacuity of time can last. And the danger, isn't it, is that you grow too comfortable with this state of mind, and can't let go of it when time ultimately runs out. But the paradox is that once you start working again, you'll look back at these times of emptiness wistfully - no matter how much you tell yourself not to. And this time, when we start working again, we probably won't have the chance to be so carefree until we retire, which is an unimaginably long time away, like life in a different galaxy.
The way to appreciate this fully is to take a philosophical, metaphysical perspective, and realise that even the pining for work in a time of emptiness is a luxury, and the pining for freedom in the midst of temporal commitments is a privilege.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Ikiru
I haven't written such long posts before, at least not as often as I seem to be doing now. It's a habit that's carried over from the days of handwriting, I think, when I could write wherever I wanted, as long as there was time and graphite to spare. There is something satisfying in the way that the written word accumulates on paper, and the way the journals coalesce into something substantial, as if distilling thoughts and condensing ideas out of the fog of consciousness. It's far more satisfying, I think, than seeing your history build up on a blogging site. And I realise that not many people nowadays have the luxury of reading through such long rants everyday. Well, I hope to entertain, but above all I want to write!
Watched Akira Kuroshawa's Ikiru yesterday, and it was amazing. Started out rather awkwardly, rather forward compared to the Fellini and the Bergman that I watched earlier. But the film was like a Murakami story, somewhat dreamy, frank and direct but with a haze around the edges, a wistful yearning underpinning everything. And the Japanese artists do caricature and imagery so well - there were moments that were positively poetic, in how the composition of the monochrome tones came together with the soundtrack and the words.
There was the scene in his bedroom, after Watanabe learns that he has stomach cancer and only six months left to live. He goes blindly through the little rituals of getting ready to go to bed, as if in a daze, muscle memory animating a stunned body. He winds his watch out of blind habit, then winds his alarm clock as if in preparation to wake up at the start of another unchanged day. Then he catches sight of his Civil Service certificates acknowledging his twenty-five years of dedicated, distinguished obscurity. And, overcome by despair, or fear, he dives for the covers.
Then there is the scene in the bar, where he drowns his bitterness with the more distracting bitterness to be found at the bottom of a bottle of sake. Watanabe confides his fears and frustrations in a passing writer, the alcohol and the sleeping pills he gives to the writer (was he planning a quiet suicide?) seeming to unhinge his habitual reservation. Then a scene at another bar, where he plays one of those old machines where a ball drops down a slalom course of cartwheels and posts. The colours whirl, the writer leans in: "this vending machine of dreams and infatuations".
There was another very striking scene, when Watanabe and a young female colleague are sitting in a high-class restaurant. In the foreground, she demands to know why he is practically stalking her on a daily basis. He in turn tries to explain why he finds her so captivating, but ultimately is incapable of finding the right words to express his hunger for her vitality and vivaciousness. In the background, a large gathering of teenage students prepare to celebrate a friend's birthday, their shouts and cries piercing the couple's sombre conversation. And when Watamabe comes to his epiphanic moment, and sees clearly what he must do, and is seized by a sudden burst of compelling necessity, he runs down the stairs past the girl who is climbing up to a chorus of "Happy Birthday". The parallel, the contrast, is obvious.
There are some other memorable motifs - Watanabe is attached to many antique images, such as the official stamp that he wields like a totem. And his younger colleague nicknames him the "mummy". His face is also a powerful image, the face worn with wrinkles, and yet the eyes burning and bulging with such determination, fascination and fear. The characters almost get run over by traffic several times - almost, as if they were just about to be bulldozed by life's inexorable progress, indifferent to their own dramas and revelations. There are only two English songs in the film, the "Happy Birthday" and a little ditty that two au pairs shriek out hideously on Watamabe's first night out on the town. And the theme song, his mournful rendition of "Life is brief/ Fall in love, maidens...", appears twice, once in a drunken moment of piercing lucidity at the start of his stand against obscurity, and the second time posthumously, just before his death as he takes stock of his achievements.
Watanabe is, throughout the film, plagued by an inability to communicate his fundamental realisations about the nature and meaning of life. "What I mean to say," he stmbles, and other times, bleats repeatedly, "in other words...". He cannot even find the opportunity or the means to tell his own son about his fatal cancer, and when he dies, it is a mystery to everyone. In desperation, he almost manages to break through his linguistic block in the restaurant scene, but his audience was not in the right state of mind to receive his message. And in the end, he resolves to craft a legacy for himself with the work of his last days; actions speak louder than words, and only actions can produce a message loud enough to survive the white noise of time passing.
But drinks are a means to release hindered powers of expression. Watanabe and the writer speak most truthfully when drunk, and he sings his song most evocatively when drunk. At his wake, drinks release the inhibitions of his civil-service colleagues, and opens the door to the truth about his motivations in his last days, stripping away the layers of politics and bureaucracy. In inebriation, they approach a truth about meaning that they cannot act upon when sober. Drinks release lucidity, but absolves people from remembering.
It was sometimes over the top, sometimes uncomfortably incisive, sometimes comical in its absurd tragedy, but always the film is frank and clever, and beautiful in its crafting. It's not a difficult film to watch, but it is very rich in style and in meaning. My first Kuroshawa, and I recommend it to everyone, and I eagerly look forward to more.
*
And here's a line from 8 ½ that stuck with me when I was shuttling through the film commentary. It takes place near the end of the film, and I think this is the single most pivotal point in the development of Guido's character. It is when he first expresses his core problem, and shows just how aware he is of his own dilemma.
GUIDO
Watched Akira Kuroshawa's Ikiru yesterday, and it was amazing. Started out rather awkwardly, rather forward compared to the Fellini and the Bergman that I watched earlier. But the film was like a Murakami story, somewhat dreamy, frank and direct but with a haze around the edges, a wistful yearning underpinning everything. And the Japanese artists do caricature and imagery so well - there were moments that were positively poetic, in how the composition of the monochrome tones came together with the soundtrack and the words.
There was the scene in his bedroom, after Watanabe learns that he has stomach cancer and only six months left to live. He goes blindly through the little rituals of getting ready to go to bed, as if in a daze, muscle memory animating a stunned body. He winds his watch out of blind habit, then winds his alarm clock as if in preparation to wake up at the start of another unchanged day. Then he catches sight of his Civil Service certificates acknowledging his twenty-five years of dedicated, distinguished obscurity. And, overcome by despair, or fear, he dives for the covers.
Then there is the scene in the bar, where he drowns his bitterness with the more distracting bitterness to be found at the bottom of a bottle of sake. Watanabe confides his fears and frustrations in a passing writer, the alcohol and the sleeping pills he gives to the writer (was he planning a quiet suicide?) seeming to unhinge his habitual reservation. Then a scene at another bar, where he plays one of those old machines where a ball drops down a slalom course of cartwheels and posts. The colours whirl, the writer leans in: "this vending machine of dreams and infatuations".
There was another very striking scene, when Watanabe and a young female colleague are sitting in a high-class restaurant. In the foreground, she demands to know why he is practically stalking her on a daily basis. He in turn tries to explain why he finds her so captivating, but ultimately is incapable of finding the right words to express his hunger for her vitality and vivaciousness. In the background, a large gathering of teenage students prepare to celebrate a friend's birthday, their shouts and cries piercing the couple's sombre conversation. And when Watamabe comes to his epiphanic moment, and sees clearly what he must do, and is seized by a sudden burst of compelling necessity, he runs down the stairs past the girl who is climbing up to a chorus of "Happy Birthday". The parallel, the contrast, is obvious.
There are some other memorable motifs - Watanabe is attached to many antique images, such as the official stamp that he wields like a totem. And his younger colleague nicknames him the "mummy". His face is also a powerful image, the face worn with wrinkles, and yet the eyes burning and bulging with such determination, fascination and fear. The characters almost get run over by traffic several times - almost, as if they were just about to be bulldozed by life's inexorable progress, indifferent to their own dramas and revelations. There are only two English songs in the film, the "Happy Birthday" and a little ditty that two au pairs shriek out hideously on Watamabe's first night out on the town. And the theme song, his mournful rendition of "Life is brief/ Fall in love, maidens...", appears twice, once in a drunken moment of piercing lucidity at the start of his stand against obscurity, and the second time posthumously, just before his death as he takes stock of his achievements.
Watanabe is, throughout the film, plagued by an inability to communicate his fundamental realisations about the nature and meaning of life. "What I mean to say," he stmbles, and other times, bleats repeatedly, "in other words...". He cannot even find the opportunity or the means to tell his own son about his fatal cancer, and when he dies, it is a mystery to everyone. In desperation, he almost manages to break through his linguistic block in the restaurant scene, but his audience was not in the right state of mind to receive his message. And in the end, he resolves to craft a legacy for himself with the work of his last days; actions speak louder than words, and only actions can produce a message loud enough to survive the white noise of time passing.
But drinks are a means to release hindered powers of expression. Watanabe and the writer speak most truthfully when drunk, and he sings his song most evocatively when drunk. At his wake, drinks release the inhibitions of his civil-service colleagues, and opens the door to the truth about his motivations in his last days, stripping away the layers of politics and bureaucracy. In inebriation, they approach a truth about meaning that they cannot act upon when sober. Drinks release lucidity, but absolves people from remembering.
It was sometimes over the top, sometimes uncomfortably incisive, sometimes comical in its absurd tragedy, but always the film is frank and clever, and beautiful in its crafting. It's not a difficult film to watch, but it is very rich in style and in meaning. My first Kuroshawa, and I recommend it to everyone, and I eagerly look forward to more.
*
And here's a line from 8 ½ that stuck with me when I was shuttling through the film commentary. It takes place near the end of the film, and I think this is the single most pivotal point in the development of Guido's character. It is when he first expresses his core problem, and shows just how aware he is of his own dilemma.
GUIDO
Could you leave everything behind and start from zero again? Pick one thing, and one only, and be absolutely devoted to it? Make it the reason for your existence, the thing that contains everything, that becomes everything, because your dedication to it makes it last forever? Could you?
...No, this guy here, he couldn't. He wants to grab everything, can't give up a single thing. He changes his mind every day, beacuse he's afraid he might miss the right path. And he's slowly bleeding to death.
CLAUDIA
So this is how the movie ends?
GUIDO
No, this is how it starts.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Reawakening
This is turning out to be a really grand weekend. Saturday started in grand fashion with the movie binge at Kats's place. We started with Frederico Fellini's 8 ½, and it was a fantastic film. The blurb sells it as the greatest film about film of all time, and the actual product didn't disappoint one bit. I recommend it to anyone who has eyes and ears - this is a film to open the eyes of your eyes and unplug the ears of your ears.
In the film, director Guido is seeking refuge in a stylish health spa, trying to gather his thoughts and ideas for his newest, autobiographical, film. He is followed by his entire production team who is anxious, no, positively desperate, to begin shooting the film, even though Guido himself has no idea how to string the various scenes from his life together into a coherent film. So the film is an engaging and fascinating series of jumps between the haggling and maneouvrings of the production team and actors eager to be on the cast, Guido's own fantasy-like memory sequences that show how he envisions individual scenes without showing how they all fit into the coherent plotline of a movie, and that gray area in between, when he daydreams and sometimes hallucinates wistfully about how he would like the real world to more closely resemble a world in which he is in total creative control and is unopposed and unhindered by the mere effervescence of human interaction, expectation and obligation.
The film is delicately wrought, exquisitely balancing different viewpoints like a brilliant book, and giving the impression of saying something powerful while remaining ambiguous about what it is actually saying. The irritating peripherals of the creative process, as embodied in the pragmatic considerations of his production crew and actors, seem petty, only encumbering his creative vision. One gets the sense that he views his daydreams and stylised recounting of his memories as the core of the enterprise, and pragmatic considerations can burn. But then as the film progresses one gets the creeping sensation that he is merely being vain in making this film, indulging himself in a self-aggrandising spectacle, and inflicting his self-absorbed enterprise on his coworkers and prospective audience. Gradually the importance of the memories too begin to erode, and one is left with the very postmodern feeling that nothing really matters anymore. Guido cannot make his life story fit into a progressive plotline that shows them inexorably shaping him into a successful human being, cannot squeeze meaning out of the clutter of his past.
Another point was that Guido was too proprietary with his memories. Unwilling to throw away any aspect of his life, determined to portray it in all its glorious entirety in the film, Guido is driven to include irrelevant and peripheral events that only serve to disrupt the progressive storyline that he seeks. He is reluctant to cut out any of his old acquaintances from the narrative, leading to a proliferation of anciliary characters and the cluttering up of his story. This, then, is the height of self-indulgence, his essentially egotistical hoarding of disjointed memories. This also makes his prone to dwelling in the past, mulling over what he sees as past successes and refusing to deal with the present consequences of past mistakes and decisions. The film then becomes a type of escapism for him, a symbol of refuge from the present and, even more scarily, the future.
This, of course, adds to his inability to communicate with other people around him, and his inability to engage with the present in general. His production team does not know or understand what he is trying to do with the film. His wife cannot tell when he is telling the truth, and resorts to the conclusion that he must always be treated as a liar. He talks most openly with his Muse, an imaginary actress that serves as a catalyst or sounding board for his ideas, but at the same time further reinforces his handicap in communicating those selfsame ideas in a comprehensible form. It raises the old problem of how an artist is supposed to balance the need for the immediacy of spontaneous experience against the need for detachment in order to create a meaningful portrayal of that spontaneous experience.
Stylistically, the film was beautifully made, with its rich tones in monochrome, its epic-scale sets and exquisitely constructed dream sequences. The people and places are all beautiful in an elegant, prewar setting, and this of course lends itself to the feeling of romantic nostalgia that makes clinging to the past so attractive. The symbolism was richly layered and carefully designed, and it makes you bemoan the notion that movies aren't made like that anymore. Structurally, the film is a feat of idea-engineering that is as awe-inspiring as an architectural masterpiece. The complexities and convolutions of self-reflexive and ironic storytelling is balanced by a captivating and incisive humour that makes this film compelling to watch, that makes its enriching ideas easier to comprehend, that makes its ambiguities and problems attractive to the intellect.
Definitely there is more to this film than what I write here; definitely it warrants another watching. But this kind of writing is also an indulgence in itself, and I have more to write about. Maybe another time, I can take a slower walk through the intricacies of this film.
*
So, after 8 ½ came The Battle for Algiers, reckoned to be the first documentary film ever made. It was significant in its time, I guess, in that it personalised the threat of terrorism, making a faceless threat something human and comprehensible in human terms. The most important aspect, I think, was that it showed the motivations and intentions of both the terrorists and the paratroopers sent to crush them, and both are ennobled by reason. The film, I guess, is a statement against bigotry, a caution to understand your enemy in order not to underestimate his weaknesses or overestimate his scruples. And once evil has a human face it is not so easy to come to unsympathetic sweeping conclusions.
But essentially I think The Battle for Algiers was a war thriller. As is the case with documentary films, it was prone to simplistic ambiguities, fashionably poignant but overused ideas like terrorists not being wholly inhuman, the inexorable escalation of conflict to include innocents, and the waste of war that is inflicted in the name of honour and self-defence by both sides. In its day, the movie was possibly ground-breaking in the portrayal of these ideas, but I think that it's a testament to the genre's success that these tried-and-tested platitudes have come to become the genre's greatest contribution as well as biggest weakness in the discussion of the justice of war.
It si a fashionable idea, isn't it - that both good guys and bad guys can be noble, that audiences can be manipulated into sympathising with people that in real life they would be disgusted by; that audiences can find themselves uncomfortably rooting for the bomber about to blow up a bar filled with teenage revelers. The better films have become adept at playing with these weaknesses and hypocrysies generated by a weak and lazy moral code in the audience. That is not to say that this is a deplorable thing - on the contrary, people should think like this more, I think. But when the films use this device out of habit or obligation, when they make the audience uncomfortable but don't pique them into thinking about the source of their discomfort more deeply, it's like taking a bungee jump - pleasantly scary but assuredly safe. The discomfort becomes ironically a source of comfort for the audience, a superficial and fashionable feeling that lets you soothe your conscience and say that at least you think about the issues, even if you never do anything about it.
*
Also watched The Pillowman that evening. It was the first play in too long - and it was excellent! A very creepy plot, about Katurian, a story-writer whose tales have gruesome and sick twists involving things like children killing parents or strangers maiming children out of a twisted sense of justice. His brother Michael, sort of a retard, takes it upon himself to act out some of the child murders that Katurian wrote, and they get arrested by the police. The play shows their interrogation, and Katurian's search for comprehension behind, first, why the police object to his stories, second, whether Michael did kill those children, and finally, how guilty is himself of his brother's killings.
It was a very, very rich plot, in the same way that Fellini's self-reflexive film had an intricate and complex storyline. The obvious self-reflexivity of the play becomes a central problem, and the audience follows Katurian's reasoning as he tries to extricate the reality from the plotlines of his stories. He wonders how much of their predicament is true; whether the police are framing him, fabricating a story of his guilt; whether his brother can be trusted in his bumbling, well-meaning spirit; whether his writing is essentially fiction or autobiography; whether writers are only responsible for creating the stories, or are also culpable of the thoughts they spawn in their readers. Katurian struggles with the dissolving boundary between reality and fiction, in a very postmodern way, but also very sensitively, with intense emotion, compassion powerfully contradicted by revulsion, guilt vying with a sense of justice for supremacy.
Some of the stories written into the plot by Katurian are also very good in and of themselves. The "Three Gibbet Crossroads" struck me; it goes like this:
A man wakes up from unconsciousness to find he is chained in a gibbet at a crossroads with two other criminals, similarly in gibbets. He knows he is guilty of a crime, but he cannot remember what his crime was. He sees a skeleton in one of the gibbets; a sign declares the man was a rapist. The other gibbet was occupied by an emaciated old man, who was a murderer. The first man calls out to the old man, asking him to read his own sign and tell him what he was guilty of. The old murderer looks at the man's sign, and, disgusted, spits on him.
A group of nuns walk past, and say some prayers over the skeleton. They give some food and water to the murderer. But when they come to the man and read his sign, the life drains out of them and the walk away without a word, stony-faced. Next a highwayman comes along. He examines the skeleton dispassionately. Then he goes to the murderer and breaks open his lock, setting him free. Then he comes over to the man, and reads his sign, and dispassionately draws his pistol, shooting the man through the heart.
The man cries out with his dying breath, "Please, tell me what I've done!" But the highwayman walks away without a backward glance, and the last thing the condemned man hears is the highwayman's derisive laugh.
Then there is the one about the Pillowman:
There was once a Pillowman, made entirely out of pillows. He was a good-natured, kind-hearted sort, but he had a terrible job. He would go around the world, seeking out people whose lives had been so horrible, and they had been so thoroughly broken, that they wanted to commit suicide. He would seek them out, stop them at the verge of death, and take them back in time to their childhoods. There, he would tell them about the terrible lives they would lead, and convince them to kill themselves as children rather than live through the horrible years to come. He would make it look like accidents, and managed to save hundreds from horrible lives.
But there were some who refused to believe that their lives would be terrible. There was a girl who refused to even talk to the Pillowman, because her life had been so happy up to then. The Pillowman left her, tears falling from his eyes. The next day, she began to be systematically and regularly raped by a strange man, and twenty years later committed suicide by gassing herself. The Pillowman visited her again then, and she berated him for not trying hard enough to convince her to commit suicide when she was younger.
Ultimately, the sadness that he had to inflict in his job depressed the Pillowman and wore out his kindly disposition. He resolved to carry out one last mission into the past, and then he would pack it in. He travelled back into his own past and found his younger self. Then, he told his younger self about the terrible job he would have to take up in the future, going around assisting children in committing suicide. The young Pillowman, being equally kind and warmhearted, immediately resolved to spare his older self all this misery, and agreed to kill himself. The Pillowman started to fade away, and in his last moments, gratefully thanked his younger self for taking his own life. But at the last moment, he was buffetted from all sides by the screams of the children he had saved from leading terrible lives, all resurrecting and being forced to live their original lives until they reached their original destinies...
Such twisted, but also disturbingly perceptive and sensitive examinations of the complexities of human life set this play apart from many that I've seen. It is exquisite to see Katurian being tortured by the consequences of his stories, as well as the disturbing origins of his genius. These are sensitively rendered on stage as he faces police torture and the uncomprehending, jolly killings his brother made in the name of his stories. Katurian is also faced with the possible destruction of all his stories at the hands of the authorities, and he decides that he will do all he can to protect the stories, twisted and tortured though they were, as rooted and bathed in blood as they were; and ultimately he even decides to trade his life for the preservation of his stories. Of course this raises the question of whether all fiction is worth preserving at any cost; whether burning literature is a form of sacrilege against the human experience, or whether some products of the imagination are best left in the safe tenebres of ignorance.
And, ultimately, the audience is faced with the last postmodernist question: if Katurian was a story-writer, then how much of the play is reality? Is the ending a self-indulgent figment of his imagination, or a true reflection of the humanity and humaneness that exists even in the most brutal characters? In this play, these self-reflexive questions are far more up-front and central to the plot, but like Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, it is also possible to see the full implications of subjectivity examined in a subjective medium creeping up to ambush the audience's consciousness, and consciences, at the last moment.
In all, it was a good play to watch. If anyone comes across the script, or a production of Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman, I highly recommend reading or watching it. It will deeply perturb you. And though it wasn't the best, most moving play I've ever seen (Quills still holds that special place in my heart), it was a good start to a reclamation of the artistic aspect of life.
*
But I think the best part of yesterday was, as always, the people. Setting thoughts and ideas free in a spirited discussion, throwing ideas and notions around, and together appreciating the beauty and power of the craftsmanship in the various forms of art; this was something that we had lost with the end of school and the start of the long wait, and the reclaim it in such grand style, on such a large scale, was in my view a triumph. It is good to be able to think, to feel, and to talk like this again.
After the play, went with Joel to Timbre for a round of drinks and a long, long talk, the kind that dabbles in the philosophies of life, people that are away but eagerly awaited back here, hopes for the future. Here and now, on the brink of a new adventure, and with so many people no longer around, it is good to have Joel around to keep my bearings and shore up my confidence in the worth and beauty of living in this time and place. It is a stand against despair, a philosophical and moral decision not to accept the end of the golden age that school started, a conscious decision to engage with the world and, essentially, to live life. And, though our abilities may be changed, though things will never be the same again, though our thoughts may evolve, there are still some things worth fighting for, some things worth preserving and perpetuating, to be defended against the undiscerning forces of transformation.
And, after all, succeed or fail, the attempt is the important thing.
In the film, director Guido is seeking refuge in a stylish health spa, trying to gather his thoughts and ideas for his newest, autobiographical, film. He is followed by his entire production team who is anxious, no, positively desperate, to begin shooting the film, even though Guido himself has no idea how to string the various scenes from his life together into a coherent film. So the film is an engaging and fascinating series of jumps between the haggling and maneouvrings of the production team and actors eager to be on the cast, Guido's own fantasy-like memory sequences that show how he envisions individual scenes without showing how they all fit into the coherent plotline of a movie, and that gray area in between, when he daydreams and sometimes hallucinates wistfully about how he would like the real world to more closely resemble a world in which he is in total creative control and is unopposed and unhindered by the mere effervescence of human interaction, expectation and obligation.
The film is delicately wrought, exquisitely balancing different viewpoints like a brilliant book, and giving the impression of saying something powerful while remaining ambiguous about what it is actually saying. The irritating peripherals of the creative process, as embodied in the pragmatic considerations of his production crew and actors, seem petty, only encumbering his creative vision. One gets the sense that he views his daydreams and stylised recounting of his memories as the core of the enterprise, and pragmatic considerations can burn. But then as the film progresses one gets the creeping sensation that he is merely being vain in making this film, indulging himself in a self-aggrandising spectacle, and inflicting his self-absorbed enterprise on his coworkers and prospective audience. Gradually the importance of the memories too begin to erode, and one is left with the very postmodern feeling that nothing really matters anymore. Guido cannot make his life story fit into a progressive plotline that shows them inexorably shaping him into a successful human being, cannot squeeze meaning out of the clutter of his past.
Another point was that Guido was too proprietary with his memories. Unwilling to throw away any aspect of his life, determined to portray it in all its glorious entirety in the film, Guido is driven to include irrelevant and peripheral events that only serve to disrupt the progressive storyline that he seeks. He is reluctant to cut out any of his old acquaintances from the narrative, leading to a proliferation of anciliary characters and the cluttering up of his story. This, then, is the height of self-indulgence, his essentially egotistical hoarding of disjointed memories. This also makes his prone to dwelling in the past, mulling over what he sees as past successes and refusing to deal with the present consequences of past mistakes and decisions. The film then becomes a type of escapism for him, a symbol of refuge from the present and, even more scarily, the future.
This, of course, adds to his inability to communicate with other people around him, and his inability to engage with the present in general. His production team does not know or understand what he is trying to do with the film. His wife cannot tell when he is telling the truth, and resorts to the conclusion that he must always be treated as a liar. He talks most openly with his Muse, an imaginary actress that serves as a catalyst or sounding board for his ideas, but at the same time further reinforces his handicap in communicating those selfsame ideas in a comprehensible form. It raises the old problem of how an artist is supposed to balance the need for the immediacy of spontaneous experience against the need for detachment in order to create a meaningful portrayal of that spontaneous experience.
Stylistically, the film was beautifully made, with its rich tones in monochrome, its epic-scale sets and exquisitely constructed dream sequences. The people and places are all beautiful in an elegant, prewar setting, and this of course lends itself to the feeling of romantic nostalgia that makes clinging to the past so attractive. The symbolism was richly layered and carefully designed, and it makes you bemoan the notion that movies aren't made like that anymore. Structurally, the film is a feat of idea-engineering that is as awe-inspiring as an architectural masterpiece. The complexities and convolutions of self-reflexive and ironic storytelling is balanced by a captivating and incisive humour that makes this film compelling to watch, that makes its enriching ideas easier to comprehend, that makes its ambiguities and problems attractive to the intellect.
Definitely there is more to this film than what I write here; definitely it warrants another watching. But this kind of writing is also an indulgence in itself, and I have more to write about. Maybe another time, I can take a slower walk through the intricacies of this film.
*
So, after 8 ½ came The Battle for Algiers, reckoned to be the first documentary film ever made. It was significant in its time, I guess, in that it personalised the threat of terrorism, making a faceless threat something human and comprehensible in human terms. The most important aspect, I think, was that it showed the motivations and intentions of both the terrorists and the paratroopers sent to crush them, and both are ennobled by reason. The film, I guess, is a statement against bigotry, a caution to understand your enemy in order not to underestimate his weaknesses or overestimate his scruples. And once evil has a human face it is not so easy to come to unsympathetic sweeping conclusions.
But essentially I think The Battle for Algiers was a war thriller. As is the case with documentary films, it was prone to simplistic ambiguities, fashionably poignant but overused ideas like terrorists not being wholly inhuman, the inexorable escalation of conflict to include innocents, and the waste of war that is inflicted in the name of honour and self-defence by both sides. In its day, the movie was possibly ground-breaking in the portrayal of these ideas, but I think that it's a testament to the genre's success that these tried-and-tested platitudes have come to become the genre's greatest contribution as well as biggest weakness in the discussion of the justice of war.
It si a fashionable idea, isn't it - that both good guys and bad guys can be noble, that audiences can be manipulated into sympathising with people that in real life they would be disgusted by; that audiences can find themselves uncomfortably rooting for the bomber about to blow up a bar filled with teenage revelers. The better films have become adept at playing with these weaknesses and hypocrysies generated by a weak and lazy moral code in the audience. That is not to say that this is a deplorable thing - on the contrary, people should think like this more, I think. But when the films use this device out of habit or obligation, when they make the audience uncomfortable but don't pique them into thinking about the source of their discomfort more deeply, it's like taking a bungee jump - pleasantly scary but assuredly safe. The discomfort becomes ironically a source of comfort for the audience, a superficial and fashionable feeling that lets you soothe your conscience and say that at least you think about the issues, even if you never do anything about it.
*
Also watched The Pillowman that evening. It was the first play in too long - and it was excellent! A very creepy plot, about Katurian, a story-writer whose tales have gruesome and sick twists involving things like children killing parents or strangers maiming children out of a twisted sense of justice. His brother Michael, sort of a retard, takes it upon himself to act out some of the child murders that Katurian wrote, and they get arrested by the police. The play shows their interrogation, and Katurian's search for comprehension behind, first, why the police object to his stories, second, whether Michael did kill those children, and finally, how guilty is himself of his brother's killings.
It was a very, very rich plot, in the same way that Fellini's self-reflexive film had an intricate and complex storyline. The obvious self-reflexivity of the play becomes a central problem, and the audience follows Katurian's reasoning as he tries to extricate the reality from the plotlines of his stories. He wonders how much of their predicament is true; whether the police are framing him, fabricating a story of his guilt; whether his brother can be trusted in his bumbling, well-meaning spirit; whether his writing is essentially fiction or autobiography; whether writers are only responsible for creating the stories, or are also culpable of the thoughts they spawn in their readers. Katurian struggles with the dissolving boundary between reality and fiction, in a very postmodern way, but also very sensitively, with intense emotion, compassion powerfully contradicted by revulsion, guilt vying with a sense of justice for supremacy.
Some of the stories written into the plot by Katurian are also very good in and of themselves. The "Three Gibbet Crossroads" struck me; it goes like this:
A man wakes up from unconsciousness to find he is chained in a gibbet at a crossroads with two other criminals, similarly in gibbets. He knows he is guilty of a crime, but he cannot remember what his crime was. He sees a skeleton in one of the gibbets; a sign declares the man was a rapist. The other gibbet was occupied by an emaciated old man, who was a murderer. The first man calls out to the old man, asking him to read his own sign and tell him what he was guilty of. The old murderer looks at the man's sign, and, disgusted, spits on him.
A group of nuns walk past, and say some prayers over the skeleton. They give some food and water to the murderer. But when they come to the man and read his sign, the life drains out of them and the walk away without a word, stony-faced. Next a highwayman comes along. He examines the skeleton dispassionately. Then he goes to the murderer and breaks open his lock, setting him free. Then he comes over to the man, and reads his sign, and dispassionately draws his pistol, shooting the man through the heart.
The man cries out with his dying breath, "Please, tell me what I've done!" But the highwayman walks away without a backward glance, and the last thing the condemned man hears is the highwayman's derisive laugh.
Then there is the one about the Pillowman:
There was once a Pillowman, made entirely out of pillows. He was a good-natured, kind-hearted sort, but he had a terrible job. He would go around the world, seeking out people whose lives had been so horrible, and they had been so thoroughly broken, that they wanted to commit suicide. He would seek them out, stop them at the verge of death, and take them back in time to their childhoods. There, he would tell them about the terrible lives they would lead, and convince them to kill themselves as children rather than live through the horrible years to come. He would make it look like accidents, and managed to save hundreds from horrible lives.
But there were some who refused to believe that their lives would be terrible. There was a girl who refused to even talk to the Pillowman, because her life had been so happy up to then. The Pillowman left her, tears falling from his eyes. The next day, she began to be systematically and regularly raped by a strange man, and twenty years later committed suicide by gassing herself. The Pillowman visited her again then, and she berated him for not trying hard enough to convince her to commit suicide when she was younger.
Ultimately, the sadness that he had to inflict in his job depressed the Pillowman and wore out his kindly disposition. He resolved to carry out one last mission into the past, and then he would pack it in. He travelled back into his own past and found his younger self. Then, he told his younger self about the terrible job he would have to take up in the future, going around assisting children in committing suicide. The young Pillowman, being equally kind and warmhearted, immediately resolved to spare his older self all this misery, and agreed to kill himself. The Pillowman started to fade away, and in his last moments, gratefully thanked his younger self for taking his own life. But at the last moment, he was buffetted from all sides by the screams of the children he had saved from leading terrible lives, all resurrecting and being forced to live their original lives until they reached their original destinies...
Such twisted, but also disturbingly perceptive and sensitive examinations of the complexities of human life set this play apart from many that I've seen. It is exquisite to see Katurian being tortured by the consequences of his stories, as well as the disturbing origins of his genius. These are sensitively rendered on stage as he faces police torture and the uncomprehending, jolly killings his brother made in the name of his stories. Katurian is also faced with the possible destruction of all his stories at the hands of the authorities, and he decides that he will do all he can to protect the stories, twisted and tortured though they were, as rooted and bathed in blood as they were; and ultimately he even decides to trade his life for the preservation of his stories. Of course this raises the question of whether all fiction is worth preserving at any cost; whether burning literature is a form of sacrilege against the human experience, or whether some products of the imagination are best left in the safe tenebres of ignorance.
And, ultimately, the audience is faced with the last postmodernist question: if Katurian was a story-writer, then how much of the play is reality? Is the ending a self-indulgent figment of his imagination, or a true reflection of the humanity and humaneness that exists even in the most brutal characters? In this play, these self-reflexive questions are far more up-front and central to the plot, but like Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, it is also possible to see the full implications of subjectivity examined in a subjective medium creeping up to ambush the audience's consciousness, and consciences, at the last moment.
In all, it was a good play to watch. If anyone comes across the script, or a production of Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman, I highly recommend reading or watching it. It will deeply perturb you. And though it wasn't the best, most moving play I've ever seen (Quills still holds that special place in my heart), it was a good start to a reclamation of the artistic aspect of life.
*
But I think the best part of yesterday was, as always, the people. Setting thoughts and ideas free in a spirited discussion, throwing ideas and notions around, and together appreciating the beauty and power of the craftsmanship in the various forms of art; this was something that we had lost with the end of school and the start of the long wait, and the reclaim it in such grand style, on such a large scale, was in my view a triumph. It is good to be able to think, to feel, and to talk like this again.
After the play, went with Joel to Timbre for a round of drinks and a long, long talk, the kind that dabbles in the philosophies of life, people that are away but eagerly awaited back here, hopes for the future. Here and now, on the brink of a new adventure, and with so many people no longer around, it is good to have Joel around to keep my bearings and shore up my confidence in the worth and beauty of living in this time and place. It is a stand against despair, a philosophical and moral decision not to accept the end of the golden age that school started, a conscious decision to engage with the world and, essentially, to live life. And, though our abilities may be changed, though things will never be the same again, though our thoughts may evolve, there are still some things worth fighting for, some things worth preserving and perpetuating, to be defended against the undiscerning forces of transformation.
And, after all, succeed or fail, the attempt is the important thing.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Friday
Been a busy day today. It started with the finishing of On Chesil Beach. Then, after lunch, went downtown to run some errands. The nature of life as it is now is that I have the luxury of time to take the scenic route if I want to, take the time to appreciate the sights and sounds on the way. So I took a leisurely bus ride downtown starting from Bedok, on the way passing Siglap, Joo Chiat, Geylang, Kallang and Bugis. This stately progression through the streets strikes me like slow food; it is somehow deeply satisfying and heartening. It inspires an inexplicable happiness in me. And if I can find the time, I will try to capture this feeling on film if I can.
Once in town, it was down to the National Museum for the Neues Bauen (New Building) exhibit, an architectural affair replicating an exhibit of the same name that took place in Stuttgart in 1927. It caught my eye when we were looking to watch some stuff in the German Film Fest last month, and when we went to watch A Touch of Zen in the museum, we just happened to chance upon the opening ceremony for the exhibit. And it was stunning. It's amazing how modern the concepts were, even though they were articulated in the 1920s. The concrete slabs, glass curtain walls and horizontal plane windows that typify the architecture of the modern city all had roots in this movement at the turn of the century, and what we consider stylish and sleek in architecture today owes much to the boldness and innovativeness of these architects trying to test the limits of technological improvements in construction and quantum leaps in demographics.
Beyond the building styles, though, there was also mention of architectural dabbling in urban design. It's understandable, and architects should rightly consider the social and economic impact of their buildings on the urban fabric. And there were some amazing ideas, like arcologies, or massive city-buildings, different transport means separated on different street levels, vaulted terraces skyscrapers, and this amalgam of an airstrip atop a central railway station. But from this one can also discern the roots of utopianism, the separate zoning of residential, commercial, cultural and industrial spaces that has typified modern urban planning, the search for ideals such as the Garden City or the Monument City that has spawned, unintentionally perhaps, monstrosities such as Parisian banlieues, sprawling American suburbs and dust belts.
It's times like these when I think of being an architect. But I tell myself that I can't be an architect because what I design would only be castles in the clouds, unbuildable art pieces. Much better to appreciate the beauty that others manage to squeeze into functional buildings, others that make beauty in the physical surrounding into something integral with normal life, rather than leaving it as a pleasing peripheral property of daily business.
Then it was off to the Esplanade library, to pick up some films for tomorrow's binge with Kats and Joel. The latter suggested some interesting films; definitely he is more of a buff that I would probably ever be. To come across such gems as 8 1/2 by Fellini requires some serious research, it seems to me, research that I am just not motivated to do. Of course, a part of me recognises the desirability of being a film buff; this is the same part that wants to look cultured for the sake of its social value, the part who wants to be seen reading books that have suitably attractive and intellectual covers, who wants to be able to name-drop revered works in art. But among all the art forms, books still come first, and film is a relatively new hobby, having only comparatively recently been taken seriously enough to discuss at a sustained and critical level.
And, considering that it's been well nigh six months since I last went to the Esplanade (imagine that - even with all the people back in the summer, it didn't occur to me to revisit my old haunt) I took the time to try my luck again. There was the usual pretentious and perversely obvious critical commentary on the ills of modern society at the tickleart show-window at the entrance to the Esplanade underpass from CityLink. But the tunnel is now a suitably festive installation of apparently kid art. I'll be sure to take a closer look when I go there again, but compared with the more sombre and far more abstract installations that have occupied the tunnel before, this leaning towards the childish is positively refreshing.
There was an Indian dance item at the foyer, but I was drawn to the waterfront instead. The old outdoor theatre had been demolished to make way for a larger facility that would accommodate the growing crowds (in itself a good starting sign), but when construction costs spiralled up in the wake of the granite shortages, the construction company pulled out, and what was once a cherished venue full of good memories is now a boarded-up grassy patch. But there was a band performing at the PowerHouse stage downriver, and they were not bad.
It's a welcome feeling to be amidst all this energy and enjoyment again. The lights of the Friday night skyline speak something to me. The shadows of buildings rising into the night sky, cranes a-twinkle with spotlights, they speak something to me too. These energetic performers and revellers on the verge of the weekend speak to me. And they all say, Welcome back, it's been too long.
*
This week has been really artsy. Beyond the pretensions and desire to reclaim the zeitgeist of two years ago, or at least the veneer of it, there is a real sense of coming back to something precious. My reading, my writing, the arts and performances, the discussions afterwards, the nourishment and sharpening of the mind; these had been put on hold for too long, the breaks in the long wait for it to finish notwithstanding. Tomorrow has the first of hopefully regular movie binges, and in the evening, off to watch The Pillowman and say hello again to another long-lost friend: the stage.
Also started to read my new Winterson. At first glance, The Stone Gods is depressingly funny. It's a dark reflection of our future, a world in which freedom and science has driven men to extremes of possibility, to create a world of superlatives, a delightfully depraved world where everyone is beautiful but illiterate, Aryan-perfect but emotional blanks. And into this evolutionary dead-end comes a brand new world. A promise of Eden returned, that most precious of commodities - a second chance.
The question, though, is whether humanity can be trusted with a second chance. In McEwan's work, you get the sense of humanity as an earnest child, well-intentioned but bungling in a world that is complicated beyond all reckoning. People screw up because they are out of their league. But in the new Winterson, as in Gut Symmetries, humanity is the scourge of creation; the problems are all humanity's fault, and the peripheral characters that I have met so far are devoid of ambition, of higher aspirations beyond sex and glamour. She says taht brains are shrinking, and humanity is degenerating. But there is, I think, one saving grace; she herself can still love, though she cannot find a human worthy of loving and instead has to invest this emotion in a robot that is more human than anyone else. The question is thus elaborated - does humanity, despite all its degeneration and depravities, deserve a second chance because one person can still love? It's a test of forgiveness; in the Bible, one good man saved a city from God's wrath, but is it possible for one good man to redeem an entire species?
I have a feeling that my writing style will evolve over the next few days, though; Winterson's writing is always so powerful for me that I find myself inexorably emulating her style.
On Chesil Beach
This is a remarkable book - breathtaking in its sensitivity and perceptiveness, in the clarity of the message and the beauty of the style it is ensconed in. I recommend it to anyone who knows how to read - even if you aren't touched by the message, you will be taken by the technical and stylistic precision of the language and the plot.
In my admittedly narrow reading so far, I haven't encountered someone who can equal Ian McEwan's style. Some books can recapture the sense of wonder at the convolutions of human relationships, others can reproduce the phenomenon of universal sympathy for all parties of a protracted conflict, and few examine the problem of interpersonal communication as eloquently as he. But reading the best of McEwan is like partaking in a slowly unraveling miracle, a wonder of pattern. He weaves emotions and ideas linguistically and clearly, and when I read his work, I get the feeling that I really sincerely know what he is talking about. Sometimes he induces a sort of eerie déjà-vu, making me understand the intricacies of situations I have yet to experience myself. This inducing of sympathy towards an experience grasped only theoretically and not personally - that is a rare gift indeed.
His most powerful ability, I think, is to humanise every aspect of a central conflict. His best works show that very human misunderstandings, preconceptions and prohibitions interact to deepen a conflict. Society plays a big role in circumscribing the limits of acceptable interactions for his characters; it comes to the point where they are locked on an inevitable collision course by politeness and sociability, even though a radical departure from accepted practice could save the characters a lot of guilt and anguish. Thus the actions of individuals, be they well- or ill-intentioned, compounded by and interpreted in the social context, give rise to catastrophic results that no one could have foreseen.
External social conventions, therefore, play a central role in catalysing human conflicts, but that is not to say that the characters are absolved, in the postmodern sense, of responsibility for their actions. McEwan uses the characters' intentions to reveal their culpability. On Chesil Beach's Edward and Florence thus bear echoes of Atonement's Briony and Robbie; both pairs have moments when they are vengeful, and both have moments when they try to reach out to each other. Both pairs' most passionate intentions are never immune from the miscarriage brought on by the alchemical properties of the societies they live in.
But they are spared condemnation, because McEwan is careful to show the basis of their intentions. They may be susceptible to folly and impulse, or they may fall prey to a cold, logical desire to inflict an almost surgical harm on another, but at no point does McEwan allow the reader to develop the sense that his characters are acting out of a core of evil. The sometimes disturbing, and always redeeming, thing is that the reader can see himself plausibly doing the exact same things in their shoes, given their exact circumstances; and in this way McEwan harnesses the reader's own guilty conscience to redeem his characters.
In this way, therefore, McEwan manages to exquisitely immunise his characters against too-harsh blame. We hold them responsible for their mistakes and actions, but it's not a personal thing; their humanity is culpable, through no fault of their own. And this is the very sympathetic view of humanity that, so far, I have only seen McEwan carry off successfully, and not only creditably, but excellently.
In On Chesil Beach as in Atonement, the central problem revolves around an inability to express oneself. While in Atonement, this communication failure resided ironically in an aspiring writer, this failure in On Chesil Beach resides equally poignantly though, perhaps, less ironically (though this is a comparison taken in the view of prevailing social attitudes towards marriage) between a pair of newlyweds. The couple is cloistered, no, positively chained in the niceties of social norms in the dying years of the '60s, and Edward can't articulate his repressed violent and sensual nature to his chosen, while Florence is equally devoid of the necessary words to express a pathological revulsion towards sex. In the first parts of the book, we see the couple in their honeymoon suite, sitting down to dinner with the air thickening with tension, as Edward's eagerness to consummate the union is contrasted with Florence's mounting terror at the ordeal to come. This is contrasted in turn with flashbacks to their past, in which we see them growing closer in the natural fashion, going out for walks, tentative intimacy, shadows of reticence on Florence's part notwithstanding. But what strikes me is that their closeness is assumed to be natural by both parties, and is not really confirmed unambiguously by them, either verbally or physically. They take it for granted that they should be close, drawing from the conventions of society, and thus they do not disturb this socially-sanctioned serenity, even though both have issues that the other should know about. Their drifting along the conventional path brought them to the final impasse in the Chesil Beach hotel that they are honeymooning in.
As the night draws inexorably onward to the socially mandated consummation, Florence tries to take charge of the situation to abate her fears. But the only way her habits and her conscience would allow her to do so is to lead Edward towards the bed, thereby trading her security for a brief temporary respite. This perverse trade, in which she wins some breathing room for herself in the hopes that some miraculous change of heart would spawn in her before she had no more ground to give, is predictably misinterpreted by Edward as sensuous eagerness. And when the time comes, she also predictably flees from the act, unable to control a revulsion that is not her own fault, in such a way as to assure the reader that her fleeing was also fundamentally not her own fault.
In the wake of this, their exchange on the beach is an extension in a night of miscommunications. Florence tries to explain herself to Edward, but though he tries hard to remember his love for her, his humiliation and anger prove too powerful. Her anger at Edward is also juxtaposed with her continued love for him and her impression that she had failed him, cheated him in some way by running from the bed. In the light of this, her anger at Edward, the hurtful things she says, are transformed into a form of self-punishment. And in both cases, their anger at each other is somehow beyond themselves, drawn from social expectations unfulfilled. In this most personal moment of truth, one gets the impression that their complaints are not fundamentally personal; they are seemingly just products of psychologies befuddled and bewildered in the wake of an incomprehensible turn of events. Their combativeness is thus a form of self-defenec against confusion; they have their cozy and secure social model demolished from under their feet and, reeling from the shock, they inexorably, inevitably turn against each other despite their sincerely held regard for each other, like two large, lumbering ships locked into a collision course.
Out of all this, one gets a deep sense of waste. Edward certainly realises this in the closing pages of the book, when, in his old age, he acknowledges what he lost, all too easily, on Chesil Beach all those years ago. If they had met a few years later, when attitudes were changing in Britain, perhaps they could have articulated themselves to each other more freely and comfortably, thereby avoiding their awkwardness. Or, all it would have taken, McEwan reveals, was a stab of sympathy, a shout after Florence's retreating form along the shingle, and he would have been able to call her back. But because Edward's and Florence's respective viewpoints are necessarily restricted to their own thoughts by their inabilities in communication, they miss this pivotal moment, in which they both want to stay together, but neither can conceive that the other is feeling the same way. It is tragic, really, the way that they slip away from each other. Granted, their love may have been too immature in that they did not explore it very carefully or sensitively before committing to each other, but if you accept that any love is better than no love at all, then their relationship was worth saving on that basis alone.
I know that I should substantiate the points above in the usual literary fashion, with quotes and commentary. But I am too taken by the moment to indulge in rigour and convention. Certainly if I ever get to do literary criticism again, I would take another look at this book. It has been a very good and impactful read. Here, though, are some quotes that have been especially incisive on first reading:
In my admittedly narrow reading so far, I haven't encountered someone who can equal Ian McEwan's style. Some books can recapture the sense of wonder at the convolutions of human relationships, others can reproduce the phenomenon of universal sympathy for all parties of a protracted conflict, and few examine the problem of interpersonal communication as eloquently as he. But reading the best of McEwan is like partaking in a slowly unraveling miracle, a wonder of pattern. He weaves emotions and ideas linguistically and clearly, and when I read his work, I get the feeling that I really sincerely know what he is talking about. Sometimes he induces a sort of eerie déjà-vu, making me understand the intricacies of situations I have yet to experience myself. This inducing of sympathy towards an experience grasped only theoretically and not personally - that is a rare gift indeed.
His most powerful ability, I think, is to humanise every aspect of a central conflict. His best works show that very human misunderstandings, preconceptions and prohibitions interact to deepen a conflict. Society plays a big role in circumscribing the limits of acceptable interactions for his characters; it comes to the point where they are locked on an inevitable collision course by politeness and sociability, even though a radical departure from accepted practice could save the characters a lot of guilt and anguish. Thus the actions of individuals, be they well- or ill-intentioned, compounded by and interpreted in the social context, give rise to catastrophic results that no one could have foreseen.
External social conventions, therefore, play a central role in catalysing human conflicts, but that is not to say that the characters are absolved, in the postmodern sense, of responsibility for their actions. McEwan uses the characters' intentions to reveal their culpability. On Chesil Beach's Edward and Florence thus bear echoes of Atonement's Briony and Robbie; both pairs have moments when they are vengeful, and both have moments when they try to reach out to each other. Both pairs' most passionate intentions are never immune from the miscarriage brought on by the alchemical properties of the societies they live in.
But they are spared condemnation, because McEwan is careful to show the basis of their intentions. They may be susceptible to folly and impulse, or they may fall prey to a cold, logical desire to inflict an almost surgical harm on another, but at no point does McEwan allow the reader to develop the sense that his characters are acting out of a core of evil. The sometimes disturbing, and always redeeming, thing is that the reader can see himself plausibly doing the exact same things in their shoes, given their exact circumstances; and in this way McEwan harnesses the reader's own guilty conscience to redeem his characters.
In this way, therefore, McEwan manages to exquisitely immunise his characters against too-harsh blame. We hold them responsible for their mistakes and actions, but it's not a personal thing; their humanity is culpable, through no fault of their own. And this is the very sympathetic view of humanity that, so far, I have only seen McEwan carry off successfully, and not only creditably, but excellently.
In On Chesil Beach as in Atonement, the central problem revolves around an inability to express oneself. While in Atonement, this communication failure resided ironically in an aspiring writer, this failure in On Chesil Beach resides equally poignantly though, perhaps, less ironically (though this is a comparison taken in the view of prevailing social attitudes towards marriage) between a pair of newlyweds. The couple is cloistered, no, positively chained in the niceties of social norms in the dying years of the '60s, and Edward can't articulate his repressed violent and sensual nature to his chosen, while Florence is equally devoid of the necessary words to express a pathological revulsion towards sex. In the first parts of the book, we see the couple in their honeymoon suite, sitting down to dinner with the air thickening with tension, as Edward's eagerness to consummate the union is contrasted with Florence's mounting terror at the ordeal to come. This is contrasted in turn with flashbacks to their past, in which we see them growing closer in the natural fashion, going out for walks, tentative intimacy, shadows of reticence on Florence's part notwithstanding. But what strikes me is that their closeness is assumed to be natural by both parties, and is not really confirmed unambiguously by them, either verbally or physically. They take it for granted that they should be close, drawing from the conventions of society, and thus they do not disturb this socially-sanctioned serenity, even though both have issues that the other should know about. Their drifting along the conventional path brought them to the final impasse in the Chesil Beach hotel that they are honeymooning in.
As the night draws inexorably onward to the socially mandated consummation, Florence tries to take charge of the situation to abate her fears. But the only way her habits and her conscience would allow her to do so is to lead Edward towards the bed, thereby trading her security for a brief temporary respite. This perverse trade, in which she wins some breathing room for herself in the hopes that some miraculous change of heart would spawn in her before she had no more ground to give, is predictably misinterpreted by Edward as sensuous eagerness. And when the time comes, she also predictably flees from the act, unable to control a revulsion that is not her own fault, in such a way as to assure the reader that her fleeing was also fundamentally not her own fault.
In the wake of this, their exchange on the beach is an extension in a night of miscommunications. Florence tries to explain herself to Edward, but though he tries hard to remember his love for her, his humiliation and anger prove too powerful. Her anger at Edward is also juxtaposed with her continued love for him and her impression that she had failed him, cheated him in some way by running from the bed. In the light of this, her anger at Edward, the hurtful things she says, are transformed into a form of self-punishment. And in both cases, their anger at each other is somehow beyond themselves, drawn from social expectations unfulfilled. In this most personal moment of truth, one gets the impression that their complaints are not fundamentally personal; they are seemingly just products of psychologies befuddled and bewildered in the wake of an incomprehensible turn of events. Their combativeness is thus a form of self-defenec against confusion; they have their cozy and secure social model demolished from under their feet and, reeling from the shock, they inexorably, inevitably turn against each other despite their sincerely held regard for each other, like two large, lumbering ships locked into a collision course.
Out of all this, one gets a deep sense of waste. Edward certainly realises this in the closing pages of the book, when, in his old age, he acknowledges what he lost, all too easily, on Chesil Beach all those years ago. If they had met a few years later, when attitudes were changing in Britain, perhaps they could have articulated themselves to each other more freely and comfortably, thereby avoiding their awkwardness. Or, all it would have taken, McEwan reveals, was a stab of sympathy, a shout after Florence's retreating form along the shingle, and he would have been able to call her back. But because Edward's and Florence's respective viewpoints are necessarily restricted to their own thoughts by their inabilities in communication, they miss this pivotal moment, in which they both want to stay together, but neither can conceive that the other is feeling the same way. It is tragic, really, the way that they slip away from each other. Granted, their love may have been too immature in that they did not explore it very carefully or sensitively before committing to each other, but if you accept that any love is better than no love at all, then their relationship was worth saving on that basis alone.
I know that I should substantiate the points above in the usual literary fashion, with quotes and commentary. But I am too taken by the moment to indulge in rigour and convention. Certainly if I ever get to do literary criticism again, I would take another look at this book. It has been a very good and impactful read. Here, though, are some quotes that have been especially incisive on first reading:
"A month ago they had told each other they were in love, and that was both a thrill and afterwards, for her, a cause of one night of half waking, of vague dread that she had been impetuous and let go of something important, given something away that was not really hers to give. But it was too interesting, too new, too flattering, too deeply comforting to resist, it was a liberation to be in love and say so, and she could only let herself go deeper."
- p.59
"And what stood in their way? Their personalities and pasts, their ignorance and fear, timidity, squeamishness, lack of entitlement or experience or easy manners, then the tail end of a religious prohibition, their Englishness and class, and history itself. Nothing much at all."
- p.96
"...she suddenly thought she understood their problem: they were too polite, too constrained, too timorous, they wern around each other on tiptoes, murmuring, whispering, deferring, agreeing. They barely knew each other, and never could because of the blanket of companionable near-silence that smothered their differences and blinded them as much as it bound them."
- p.148
It is very rare that I have the good fortune of reading a book that portrays love so humanely. Not many authors would examine carefully what it means to be in love, what are the very human caveats and exceptions that make idealised love impossible, and what we should accept as an adequate facsimile. And lately I've been looking for someone to provide a new language that can be used to describe such a crucial feeling in individual terms, in terms that do not resort to oft-repeated formulations, conventional interpretations, or socially safe platitudes that not only do not fit the individual situation adequately, but also do not do it justice. What I was looking for was a language that was worthy of describing and communicating love in all its intricacy and uniqueness, that brought out its individual imperfections and made them part of the glorious and beautiful pattern of the experience as a whole, rather than typecasting them as anomalies to be worked out of a socially accepted framework. Most authors fail at this; love in their books may be cute and pleasant, but strike me as somehow wistful, and false. Some authors come close; Murakami especially presents strange and interesting romantic situations, but he too gives in to socially conventional devices and vocabulary in the end. Only very few remarkable writers seem to provide what I am looking for.
In the last pages of On Chesil Beach, McEwan writes a review for the quartet that Florence dedicated herself to after leaving Edward. "Then came a searingly expressive Adagio of comsummate beauty and spiritual power," McEwan writes. "Miss Ponting, in the lilting tenderness of her tone and the lyrical delicacy of her phrasing, played, if I may put it this way, like a woman in love, not only with Mozart, or with music, but with life itself." With a few obvious variations, I could say the same for this book as well. And it is somehow fitting that McEwan himself puts it better than I can.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
The Magician
Just watched Ingmar Bergman's The Magician (a.k.a. The Face), lent to me by good old Joel. He's trying to inculcate the spirit of the film buff in a few of us, and I figure that if there's a vice that I should pick up from him, then this one's first among the whole motley, exotic range. It was a brilliant experience, better, I think, than the other Bergman that I've watched so far, which was The Seventh Seal
Here you have a performer posing as Dr. Albert Vogler, practicioner of magnetic medicine. His wife is his assistant, but she disguises herself as his male protège. He is also accompanied by his witch of a grandmother, a gypsy, really, who apparently holds the secrets to unlocking the potent forces of the supernatural. And his uncle Tubal rounds out the party.
Of course, the whole illusion-vs-reality thing is obvious from the start, because of the proliferation of disguises. There's the fake male assistant, the learned doctor facade, and, by the end of the film, you even doubt that the identity of a cheap conjurer of tricks is Vogler's real personality. He is equally passionate as the master illusionist looming in the shadows like a vengeful spirit come back from the dead, and as a pathetic beggar desperate for coins for his next meal. He switches easily between these identities. Indeed, Vogler goes so far as to act dumb, and only halfway through the film does he start uttering words, the first of which is the solemn pronouncement "I hate them".
And then, there's the inexplicability of the world and science set against it on a crusade of enlightenment. Vogler is pitted against Dr. Vergérus, the medical officer of this town that they come to, and Vergérus roundly humiliates him in their first encounter in the audience of the police commissioner and a councilman. The skepticism of science holds fast against Vogler's hypnotic stare. But then Vogler regains the initiative when he fakes his own death, fools the doctor into autopsying another body, and then apparently resurrects himself to scare the doctor out of his wits. Ultimately, though, Vergérus maintains his composure; Vogler's resurrection act does not scare him into resorting to supernatural explanations to this apparently impossible scenario. Indeed, even as dismembered body parts turn up spontaneously on his desk, he has enough presence of mind to conclude that he must be hallucinating.
And ultimately even Vogler undermines his own illusion. He ends up begging the household for payment for a performance well put up. He calls it an "experience" that he enacted for the benefit of Vergérus, and effectively surrenders to the latter's skepticism. At the end, one only gets the concrete impression that both are pretenders, with their bells and whistles trying to assert that they really know how the world works. Vergérus and his diagnostic inspections, his autopsy and his intellectual musings in the face of terror, and Vogler's magnets, hidden ropes and levers, false bottoms and mirrors - both are similar in the way that both are means to indirectly interpret and manipulate the true nature of reality.
Far more fascinating, I think, on the spiritual plane is the grandmother, brewer of rat poison, medicines and most importantly, love potions. One gets the sense that she knows things, fundamental truths about the world that reside in the shadowy folds of her wrinkled face. She is utterly blunt, but at the same time also firmly rooted in her folk beliefs, so rooted that you get the impression that it must be real knowledge that gives her such confidence. She is the most convincing magical figure, with her solemnly carried out rituals of spiritual cleansing, and her potions, and even her revealed trove of gold at the end of the film.
The most interesting character, though, is Spegel the drunkard who stumbles into Vogler's path at the beginning of the film. They first mistake him for a ghost; the grandmother hears his moans in the forest and concludes that he is a zombie. Vogler finds him prostrate and drunken on the forest floor, and brings him along in their carriage, where he gives Vogler a glimpse of death, articulating the stoppage of life as it flowed from his extremities to his brain. He dies with the words "Death is..." hanging provocatively, promisingly, in the air.
But the grandmother apparently summons him back from the dead, and he turns up at the house they were staying at. He seeks out Vogler, and I think he gives Vogler the idea of resurrection scam by appearing before him alive after being bundled up as a corpse. Spegel dies a second time after a swig of vodka, and conveniently becomes the corpse that Vergérus dissects thinking that he was autopsying Vogler. And here is a disturbing question: if Spegel did not really die in the coach, then did he die for good in Vogler's arms? When Vogler lowered him into the coffin with the false bottom, was he plotting opportunistic murder? But then again, Spegel had mentioned before that he would like to be dissected with a sharp knife, so his spirit could be set free. So is this assisted suicide? In the short time that Spegel has on the screen, he says some of the most poignant lines, and it reminds me of Mercutio in R&J, where the wisest character gets ill-treated by others, and is turned into essentially a prop in their respective vendettas. It's the waste that gets to me; there is a feeling that I have to understand all that he is saying and trying to say, before he is gone entirely from the screen.
And listen to these:
Max von Sydow as Vogler
Here you have a performer posing as Dr. Albert Vogler, practicioner of magnetic medicine. His wife is his assistant, but she disguises herself as his male protège. He is also accompanied by his witch of a grandmother, a gypsy, really, who apparently holds the secrets to unlocking the potent forces of the supernatural. And his uncle Tubal rounds out the party.
Of course, the whole illusion-vs-reality thing is obvious from the start, because of the proliferation of disguises. There's the fake male assistant, the learned doctor facade, and, by the end of the film, you even doubt that the identity of a cheap conjurer of tricks is Vogler's real personality. He is equally passionate as the master illusionist looming in the shadows like a vengeful spirit come back from the dead, and as a pathetic beggar desperate for coins for his next meal. He switches easily between these identities. Indeed, Vogler goes so far as to act dumb, and only halfway through the film does he start uttering words, the first of which is the solemn pronouncement "I hate them".
And then, there's the inexplicability of the world and science set against it on a crusade of enlightenment. Vogler is pitted against Dr. Vergérus, the medical officer of this town that they come to, and Vergérus roundly humiliates him in their first encounter in the audience of the police commissioner and a councilman. The skepticism of science holds fast against Vogler's hypnotic stare. But then Vogler regains the initiative when he fakes his own death, fools the doctor into autopsying another body, and then apparently resurrects himself to scare the doctor out of his wits. Ultimately, though, Vergérus maintains his composure; Vogler's resurrection act does not scare him into resorting to supernatural explanations to this apparently impossible scenario. Indeed, even as dismembered body parts turn up spontaneously on his desk, he has enough presence of mind to conclude that he must be hallucinating.
And ultimately even Vogler undermines his own illusion. He ends up begging the household for payment for a performance well put up. He calls it an "experience" that he enacted for the benefit of Vergérus, and effectively surrenders to the latter's skepticism. At the end, one only gets the concrete impression that both are pretenders, with their bells and whistles trying to assert that they really know how the world works. Vergérus and his diagnostic inspections, his autopsy and his intellectual musings in the face of terror, and Vogler's magnets, hidden ropes and levers, false bottoms and mirrors - both are similar in the way that both are means to indirectly interpret and manipulate the true nature of reality.
Far more fascinating, I think, on the spiritual plane is the grandmother, brewer of rat poison, medicines and most importantly, love potions. One gets the sense that she knows things, fundamental truths about the world that reside in the shadowy folds of her wrinkled face. She is utterly blunt, but at the same time also firmly rooted in her folk beliefs, so rooted that you get the impression that it must be real knowledge that gives her such confidence. She is the most convincing magical figure, with her solemnly carried out rituals of spiritual cleansing, and her potions, and even her revealed trove of gold at the end of the film.
The most interesting character, though, is Spegel the drunkard who stumbles into Vogler's path at the beginning of the film. They first mistake him for a ghost; the grandmother hears his moans in the forest and concludes that he is a zombie. Vogler finds him prostrate and drunken on the forest floor, and brings him along in their carriage, where he gives Vogler a glimpse of death, articulating the stoppage of life as it flowed from his extremities to his brain. He dies with the words "Death is..." hanging provocatively, promisingly, in the air.
But the grandmother apparently summons him back from the dead, and he turns up at the house they were staying at. He seeks out Vogler, and I think he gives Vogler the idea of resurrection scam by appearing before him alive after being bundled up as a corpse. Spegel dies a second time after a swig of vodka, and conveniently becomes the corpse that Vergérus dissects thinking that he was autopsying Vogler. And here is a disturbing question: if Spegel did not really die in the coach, then did he die for good in Vogler's arms? When Vogler lowered him into the coffin with the false bottom, was he plotting opportunistic murder? But then again, Spegel had mentioned before that he would like to be dissected with a sharp knife, so his spirit could be set free. So is this assisted suicide? In the short time that Spegel has on the screen, he says some of the most poignant lines, and it reminds me of Mercutio in R&J, where the wisest character gets ill-treated by others, and is turned into essentially a prop in their respective vendettas. It's the waste that gets to me; there is a feeling that I have to understand all that he is saying and trying to say, before he is gone entirely from the screen.
And listen to these:
- "You see what you see, and you know what you know" - Vogler's Grandmother
- "A shadow of a shadow" - Johan Spegel remarking on Vogler's projected image of a Death's Head
- "One goes step by step into the darkness. The actual movement is the only truth" - Spegel again, on the verge of drinking himself to death
- "God remains silent and people speak" - Dr. Vergérus to Volger's wife
There's probably more where that came from, and there is really a lot of substance to be analysed in this work. The use of shadows and smoke, the really forward young girls and women that lead the hapless men on to erotic rendezvous, and the significance of the number three - three knocks, three thumps, for what? I have to say I haven't been so excited about a work of art, so engaged in a dialogue with the content, since I left school. It's really refreshing.
Looking forward to running over all this, comparing notes with the little film club that we're trying to cobble together. But in the meantime, here's a glimpse that shows why this film is sometimes called The Face:
Max von Sydow as Vogler
Monday, November 12, 2007
Books
I have here the fruits of an opportunity that doesn't come along often enough: the prospect of a hefty discount at Borders. And, in a surprising and somewhat eerie symmetry, this is what I bought:
On the left you see the new purchases: On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan, and in pride of place, the new Winterson, The Stone Gods. Those of you who were readers of the previous incarnation of this online journal would also find the books on the right familiar: McEwan's Atonement and Winterson's Gut Symmetries. These two pictured here are the original books that I picked up at Bras Basah for a total of $3 4 years ago on a whim, and I ended up so enchanted by them that they became my Lit S Paper texts. To think that I would be pairing these two authors again in a purchase...
The decision to buy McEwan's new book was because it turned up in the Shortlist for the Man Booker Prize. I was actually planning to buy A Murakami to accompany it, namely Norwegian Wood, but it turned out that Joel had already bought a copy. Then Thong pointed out that Winterson had come out with a new book, and, well, it seemed like the natural thing to do. And so now I am on the verge of what seems like a momentous miracle: reading two works by two authors, back to back, that had transported me with awe at their linguistic and artistic prowess so deeply and so many years before.
I'm glad that my relationship with books and the written word has survived the military years largely unscathed, and with this symmetry now, it's like a definitive statement that all is well, that nothing has changed with me in the realm of literature. And this morning, waking up to a late morning, it was with the familiar thrill of plumbing a new horizon that I opened On Chesil Beach, savouring the smooth hard cover and the crisp, fresh smell of new paper. There is something pure, innocent, and wholly sincere in opening a new book, don't you think? And if the writing, the skill of the writer is good enough, then every turning of a page is charged with anticipation of what is to come, countered with reluctance at bringing the horizon of knowledge that much closer to the inevitable end of the book. But then that in turn is balanced by my looking forward to buying a new book, and the moment when I would crack that one open too.
Give me a good book anytime. Take me to a good bookshop anytime. Read with me anytime.
On the left you see the new purchases: On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan, and in pride of place, the new Winterson, The Stone Gods. Those of you who were readers of the previous incarnation of this online journal would also find the books on the right familiar: McEwan's Atonement and Winterson's Gut Symmetries. These two pictured here are the original books that I picked up at Bras Basah for a total of $3 4 years ago on a whim, and I ended up so enchanted by them that they became my Lit S Paper texts. To think that I would be pairing these two authors again in a purchase...
The decision to buy McEwan's new book was because it turned up in the Shortlist for the Man Booker Prize. I was actually planning to buy A Murakami to accompany it, namely Norwegian Wood, but it turned out that Joel had already bought a copy. Then Thong pointed out that Winterson had come out with a new book, and, well, it seemed like the natural thing to do. And so now I am on the verge of what seems like a momentous miracle: reading two works by two authors, back to back, that had transported me with awe at their linguistic and artistic prowess so deeply and so many years before.
I'm glad that my relationship with books and the written word has survived the military years largely unscathed, and with this symmetry now, it's like a definitive statement that all is well, that nothing has changed with me in the realm of literature. And this morning, waking up to a late morning, it was with the familiar thrill of plumbing a new horizon that I opened On Chesil Beach, savouring the smooth hard cover and the crisp, fresh smell of new paper. There is something pure, innocent, and wholly sincere in opening a new book, don't you think? And if the writing, the skill of the writer is good enough, then every turning of a page is charged with anticipation of what is to come, countered with reluctance at bringing the horizon of knowledge that much closer to the inevitable end of the book. But then that in turn is balanced by my looking forward to buying a new book, and the moment when I would crack that one open too.
Give me a good book anytime. Take me to a good bookshop anytime. Read with me anytime.
* * *
In other news, will be off to watch A Touch of Zen by King Hu tomorrow at the National Museum with Joel and Kats. Now that we (well, most of us) have finished with the army, we're really pulling out all the stops with the getting-back-into-the-arts-scene gig. The classy atmosphere (it's an event organised by the Singapore Film Society in the National Museum of Singapore, which is about as ivory-tower as you can get on an army budget) aside, the film's allegedly really good. It was the first Asian film to be awarded anything at Cannes, and apparently inspired such hits as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Looking forward to some good silver screen action tomorrow.
And then at the end of the week, on Saturday, going to the old DBS Arts Centre with Ian, Thong, KHwee and Oh-san to watch The Pillowman, a play that is apparently about the deep dark recesses of the mind where fairy tales come from. It's been too long since I've last been in a theatre - if I remember rightly, the last show I watched was The Phantom of the Opera in the middle of the year with my family. Since then, I haven't even set foot in the Esplanade for all the work that we've been up to. There's another thing to rekindle - the weekly Esplanade visits.
Finally, my mum tells me that one of her friends is back from Washington DC. Unfortunately their dinner date clashes with the play, otherwise I would go along too. When I go to Columbia, I will be linking up with them for primary support in case anything happens, and it'll be prudent to touch base now. And anyway, any impression of life out of the States is welcome now!
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Well: first proper post on this blog. It still feels like a novel thing to me; usually when I'm writing in the journals, I'd do an entry every four or five days, and if we had major work to do I could go almost a month without writing anything. The thing you realise when you write with your hands is that lots of things are more important than recording the happenings of your daily life. When it takes an hour to write an entry, then you don't want to spare that time because it could be used on going out, or doing work, or sleeping. And so, as Joel puts it in his blog, when I'm not writing, then that means life is eventful.
And life has been eventful, because of all the post-ORD activities. On the day itself, went to KHwee's place for a stayover with other CHS people. It's amusing to see that despite having gone through the army experience and having left the teenage years behind, all our pranks and jokes still refuse to die off. There's a certain mode of living and communicating when you're with the guys. Whenever we're in a group it's so easy to revert back to that mode.
Then on Wednesday evening met up with Conan and Joel for some pre-Deepavali drinks at the old place, the Yard. And we talked of philosophy and, more importantly, the future, something that hadn't occured in a really long time. Life is starting to resume, and we are starting to look forward again, and it's an exhilarating feeling. It recaptures some of that excitement we had in our final JC year when we were all looking for a university to go to, and were all talking about the grand plans we had for life. Coming out of the army, it's like being reborn again, like you're being given a second chance to relive those days. In this way, too, it shows that army life was tangential to the normal continuum of our chosen paths of growth and learning.
Thursday went to my mum's friend's place for Deepavali lunch, and was reminded of my partiality towards Indian food. There's something quintessentially wholesome about a mound of rice and various curries being eaten off a leaf, something homely and fundamentally fulfilling. And then met Joel again to watch Lions for Lambs, the first movie that's come out about the Iraq war. It's a primer on the Iraq war and its issues, ranging from the usual argument on whether to bring the troops home, to wider political, philosophical, and even social points about how the war is conducted. There were some pretty incisive viewpoints raised; one particular one that stuck was the point that most of the grunts fighting on the frontline come from the segments of society most neglected by the government and the establishment, creating an ironic situation in which those most likely to defend the American way of life militarily are also those least likely to benefit from the American system economically or socially.
Yesterday met up with some of the guys from OCS. Honestly, I'd expected it to be rather awkward, because I haven't seen these dudes for close to eleven months, and so few actually do the kind of work that I did in the military. But to my surprise we managed to stay until 2am reliving anecdotes from our training days, and giving the army life a sound beating. The time spent in the military has really left its mark on everyone; that much is inevitable, I think, if you have to live through it for twenty-two months. What sets people apart is whether you manage to turn an unwanted situation into something meaningful and productive. And I think everyone has managed it in his own way; though it is rather obvious that depending on the kind of work you do, you have different priorities. Being in command on an operation definitely gives you a different perspective.
So it actually has been a week filled with fun and excitement, what with our ORDs. In fact, sometimes I think that there could be too much going on, because there hasn't been a day of the kind of complete relaxation that we dreamed about when in the army. But on a certain level I do realise that this is the way to go, a healthier way to live life. And anyway, now for the first time in four years, time is not an issue.
Anyway, for your viewing pleasure:
1, 2, 3, 4 by Feist. Wiggy was the first one to show me this vid on one of our late-night trips home, but I didn't know the title. I happened to hear it on the radio again last night, and so managed to relocate this amazing one-take video. It's mind-boggling how the choreographers managed to pull it off.
And this is Raving Rabbids 2 for the Wii. Greg discovered this on GameSpot. Where do these guys get their ideas from...
And life has been eventful, because of all the post-ORD activities. On the day itself, went to KHwee's place for a stayover with other CHS people. It's amusing to see that despite having gone through the army experience and having left the teenage years behind, all our pranks and jokes still refuse to die off. There's a certain mode of living and communicating when you're with the guys. Whenever we're in a group it's so easy to revert back to that mode.
Then on Wednesday evening met up with Conan and Joel for some pre-Deepavali drinks at the old place, the Yard. And we talked of philosophy and, more importantly, the future, something that hadn't occured in a really long time. Life is starting to resume, and we are starting to look forward again, and it's an exhilarating feeling. It recaptures some of that excitement we had in our final JC year when we were all looking for a university to go to, and were all talking about the grand plans we had for life. Coming out of the army, it's like being reborn again, like you're being given a second chance to relive those days. In this way, too, it shows that army life was tangential to the normal continuum of our chosen paths of growth and learning.
Thursday went to my mum's friend's place for Deepavali lunch, and was reminded of my partiality towards Indian food. There's something quintessentially wholesome about a mound of rice and various curries being eaten off a leaf, something homely and fundamentally fulfilling. And then met Joel again to watch Lions for Lambs, the first movie that's come out about the Iraq war. It's a primer on the Iraq war and its issues, ranging from the usual argument on whether to bring the troops home, to wider political, philosophical, and even social points about how the war is conducted. There were some pretty incisive viewpoints raised; one particular one that stuck was the point that most of the grunts fighting on the frontline come from the segments of society most neglected by the government and the establishment, creating an ironic situation in which those most likely to defend the American way of life militarily are also those least likely to benefit from the American system economically or socially.
Yesterday met up with some of the guys from OCS. Honestly, I'd expected it to be rather awkward, because I haven't seen these dudes for close to eleven months, and so few actually do the kind of work that I did in the military. But to my surprise we managed to stay until 2am reliving anecdotes from our training days, and giving the army life a sound beating. The time spent in the military has really left its mark on everyone; that much is inevitable, I think, if you have to live through it for twenty-two months. What sets people apart is whether you manage to turn an unwanted situation into something meaningful and productive. And I think everyone has managed it in his own way; though it is rather obvious that depending on the kind of work you do, you have different priorities. Being in command on an operation definitely gives you a different perspective.
So it actually has been a week filled with fun and excitement, what with our ORDs. In fact, sometimes I think that there could be too much going on, because there hasn't been a day of the kind of complete relaxation that we dreamed about when in the army. But on a certain level I do realise that this is the way to go, a healthier way to live life. And anyway, now for the first time in four years, time is not an issue.
* * *
Anyway, for your viewing pleasure:
1, 2, 3, 4 by Feist. Wiggy was the first one to show me this vid on one of our late-night trips home, but I didn't know the title. I happened to hear it on the radio again last night, and so managed to relocate this amazing one-take video. It's mind-boggling how the choreographers managed to pull it off.
And this is Raving Rabbids 2 for the Wii. Greg discovered this on GameSpot. Where do these guys get their ideas from...
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
.:resilience
This is an end, and a beginning. A movement forward, and the next step in a cycle. A conclusion underlining a continuation. Things have changed, but much remains the same.
Have been keeping busy with the revamping of the website. I hope to launch it today, as a sort of milestone to mare the end of this stage in life. In the process of reformatting it, though, I went through all my past pieces of writing, one dating back as far as 1996, and a trend of growth and development is becoming evident. In studying my own writings, I detected a trend that appealed to me, that led away from insecurity and self-affirming indulgence, to a measure of sensitivity and confidence. This is growth. This is change. And this, I think, is for the better.
And, getting my civilian IC back today, I almost did not recognise the face in the photograph. The ID photo was taken in secondary school, where concerns and anxieties had been so different. Life has been different indeed; there was no way I could have anticipated this new side of me, the side that can lead and can kill, that can grow and can mature like this. And, looking back through that passport-sized window on that long-lost card, there was a vertiginous moment of non-recognisation, an eerie and uncomfortable sense of having pried into someone else's most intimate moments.
But has so much really changed? I have always seen military life as an abberation, a temporary disturbance in a continuity of civilian life, an interruption in a process of learning and growth that I had chosen beforehand. Indeed, over the last few days it has been so easy to revert back to the civilian mindset, as if I were simply dropping back to a natural steady state. Only time will tell, I guess, how much change has been introduced into the normal flow of life. So far, for better or for worse, the change has been minimal.
But to see the army phase as a separate facet of life entirely is too easy. No matter how I try to compartmentalise it, ideas and mannerisms spill over to the civilian sphere. Over time, whether I liked it or not, I had come to slowly accept it as part of the integrity that is my life. The definite achievement of this time, I think, is that I have learned to like it despite everything, to find that particular perspective that allows me to accept the realities of the military while staying loyal to my original principles and values.
And so, while it has not been all fun, and has not been all that I had hoped for it; despite all this, it has been worthwhile. Something valuable had been made out of these twenty-two months, something enriching, fulfilling and deeply satisfying in a way that only making a true difference to real people can inspire. And that makes this whole episode, I think, something as worth remembering as the most important of my memories.
The contents of the blue journals in my collection, which have borne the weight of twenty-two months of graphite throughout this singular period, will remain for the most part as only handwritten accounts. A small portion could be turned into future writings, if the inspiration strikes me. The exception is this entry; at the end of this age of handwriting, this entry is both the last of those written in the blue journals, and the first on this new online journal.
This is the ending that establishes a link. A resolution that points the way to continuity.
Have been keeping busy with the revamping of the website. I hope to launch it today, as a sort of milestone to mare the end of this stage in life. In the process of reformatting it, though, I went through all my past pieces of writing, one dating back as far as 1996, and a trend of growth and development is becoming evident. In studying my own writings, I detected a trend that appealed to me, that led away from insecurity and self-affirming indulgence, to a measure of sensitivity and confidence. This is growth. This is change. And this, I think, is for the better.
And, getting my civilian IC back today, I almost did not recognise the face in the photograph. The ID photo was taken in secondary school, where concerns and anxieties had been so different. Life has been different indeed; there was no way I could have anticipated this new side of me, the side that can lead and can kill, that can grow and can mature like this. And, looking back through that passport-sized window on that long-lost card, there was a vertiginous moment of non-recognisation, an eerie and uncomfortable sense of having pried into someone else's most intimate moments.
But has so much really changed? I have always seen military life as an abberation, a temporary disturbance in a continuity of civilian life, an interruption in a process of learning and growth that I had chosen beforehand. Indeed, over the last few days it has been so easy to revert back to the civilian mindset, as if I were simply dropping back to a natural steady state. Only time will tell, I guess, how much change has been introduced into the normal flow of life. So far, for better or for worse, the change has been minimal.
But to see the army phase as a separate facet of life entirely is too easy. No matter how I try to compartmentalise it, ideas and mannerisms spill over to the civilian sphere. Over time, whether I liked it or not, I had come to slowly accept it as part of the integrity that is my life. The definite achievement of this time, I think, is that I have learned to like it despite everything, to find that particular perspective that allows me to accept the realities of the military while staying loyal to my original principles and values.
And so, while it has not been all fun, and has not been all that I had hoped for it; despite all this, it has been worthwhile. Something valuable had been made out of these twenty-two months, something enriching, fulfilling and deeply satisfying in a way that only making a true difference to real people can inspire. And that makes this whole episode, I think, something as worth remembering as the most important of my memories.
The contents of the blue journals in my collection, which have borne the weight of twenty-two months of graphite throughout this singular period, will remain for the most part as only handwritten accounts. A small portion could be turned into future writings, if the inspiration strikes me. The exception is this entry; at the end of this age of handwriting, this entry is both the last of those written in the blue journals, and the first on this new online journal.
This is the ending that establishes a link. A resolution that points the way to continuity.
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