Sunset on a rain-splashed road: summit of Siglap Hill. I took this one after church today. In the course of the mass, found out that my parish actually numbered 10,000 strong. I had already known that the parish of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour is the largest in Singapore, but imagine the scale of it: 10,000 parishioners! And every weekend, there are apparently 48 catechism classes (Sunday school, in other terms) with 1,500 students - and the church still has to turn away some prospective students. That's the equivalent of your average secondary school population. Of course, not all the students are at the church at the same time, but to have 1,500 names on the roster is still pretty impressive.
Of course, the number of parishioners really shouldn't have any fundamental impact on your personal faith, but it does make a difference whether you're among a handful of congregants during a mass, or whether the service is standing-room-only. Being among more people, you are less self-conscious, in the way that people would cheer much more when among likeminded fans than when watching a match alone on the telly. You don't feel so sheepish in expressing the intensity of your feelings.
Which, in itself, may be a good or bad thing. Take, for example, Yawp. Sat in for this performance-poetry event on Friday night with JY, and bumped into Wiggy, so at least the company was good. And in the same way, the performers took the fact of so many self-professed performance poets in the same place as license to do some pretty bizarre and, frankly, idiotic things. But it's something that I guess you can expect from an event that calls itself "Young Adult Writers Perform". For Young Adults, read: intensity borne from inexperience. And "writers" are rarely good at performing. And naming oneself after Beat Generation poem awakens pretentious ideas of tabacco, alcohol and dope fuelling half-conscious lyrical exhortations in a dim, smoky salon - a notion that is hopelessly idealistic in an environment where the most intoxicating substance available is hysterical laughter.
Some of the pieces were pretty awful. The younger performers were rather blatant with their themes, so their material was more like advertising than poetry. Older performers fumbled with material on love, lust and sex, even going far enough to demean and cheapen themselves, in the process making the audience (or me, at least) feel soiled. But all this clumsiness and exuberant preening was, I believe, all done in innocence, and one cannot begrudge young people for being young. The worst performance, I think, was from the renowned poet-judge they invited down. And I will venture to name him since I think his behaviour warrants such criticism. Cyril Wong may be a published poet, but the material he read last night still stood out for its childishness and simple-mindedness. Some of the words may have been nice (and some were pretty laughable - I know peers who I feel can write better), but if the ideas that lie behind them are unremarkable, what are nice words but ornaments and trinkets? And least of all, having your works published doesn't give you enough of a standing to demean other people's works. Criticise, yes, but don't condescend. This, I generalise hesitantly, may be the big problem with Singapore's writing scene as it exists now. It's filled with celebrities, rather than artists, holier-than-thou narcissists whose quirkiness is carefully cultivated for its PR value. Even his can't-be-bothered attitude with Yawp (which I honestly can't fault him for per se) struck me as scripted. And if you call yourself a poet, then it's clear that poor manners isn't a result of limited vocabulary, or of limited experience, but of a character trait.
That being said, though, I must also add that there were some surprising moments on Friday night. There was a piece using rush-hour MRT rides as a metaphor for proximity and alienation which had pretty good ideas (though "You decided to paint the rails/ With yourself" kind of shattered the mood in a big way); they justifiably won the top prize. The guest performers were good too. An entertaining parody of The Raven, a rapper who I thought was the best poet of the whole night ("My hands on your.../Hands, on your.../Hands, on your..."), and a guitarist-and-poet duet who did a great performance of a self-composed poem, Atomic Jesus (there's a term to remember). For four bucks, it wasn't catastrophic, I guess.
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The next step is beginning. The admissions package from Columbia arrived today, and the welcome website for the class of 2012 was also launched a few days ago. So, finally, comes the time to choose accommodation and meal plans, and to apply for the student visa, and to settle terms with URA, and get myself pleasantly enmeshed in the administrative grunt-work to prepare for August. It is exhilarating, finally indulging in the process that I had put off for two years. Considering what my future room will look like. Thinking about what I will eat. Imagining who I will meet. Looking at pictures, reading descriptions, and trying to build an impression of the unimaginable future on these small details.
The next step is beginning. And it is already April!
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