Coming Back

Had a big dose of culture over the weekend, getting reacquainted with the Singapore scene. Had read in the papers that the Singapore Fringe Festival was on, and decided to give it a try, since it was marketed as being edgy and provocative. I'd never tried the Fringe Festival before, and had the impression that it could open up a whole new side of the Singapore arts scene for me.

On Saturday, went with G to watch a concert, a doublebill, the first part consisting of a guy putting various random household sounds together and placing toys into a Steinway piano to create discord. The result was a strange, barely pleasant melange of noises. Allegedly, the piece was supposed to be a sonic conversation between objects found in the artist's living room, representing the various strains and melodies of interactions between family members. The random household sounds I did not get, for their mixture into an apparently random soundscape seemed only to make the rather trivial point that most household interactions tend to be random and unartistic. The discordant piano was more interesting, as a slow progression of chords that would otherwise have been quite pleasant was disrupted by the toys interfering with the piano's strings. I got the point about discord being seeded in beauty, about how the latter may even be rendered more poignant by the former. But I don't think the artist quite got away with the other sounds that he was trying to pass off as music.

The second half was a more conventional (i.e. recognisable) performance of electronica accompanied by piano-playing. The German group SWOD performed pieces from their latest album, and it was more interesting than the first performance because, firstly, it did not make pretensions to some abstract and tenuous connection with an ideological investigation, and secondly because it was not so novel that the novelty itself became a hindrance, distraction that interfered with the sensory enjoyment of the performance. The soundscapes that were created were at times bizarre, at times jarring, but always engaging, the artists adeptly balancing pleasantness with strangeness. Listening to their performance is kind of like drinking rum and coke for the first time: there is enough of the familiar to be reassuring, but there is a sharp tang of the novel to keep things interesting.

After that, adjourned to the outdoor theatre for one of the free performances. A singer-songwriter called Ling was strumming out covers and original numbers into the night. Her voice wasn't that spectacular, but her guitaring was quite impressive, and I have to give it to her: her ability to sing and play at the same time with such vigour is something that I cannot yet - can perhaps never - emulate. And I noticed something about the new outdoor theatre: if you sit at a particular area, one side of the theatre's sails frames the new casino quite nicely, whereas if you sit at yet another place, the old, familiar, well-loved skyline of the current CBD is framed by the sails. In this way, therefore, the new theatre forms a rather poignant bridge between the familiar and the new, and I am reminded of the times that I used to spend there in the pre-army days, while at the same time seeing that the outdoor theatre still continues to be the venue of new, memorable experiences.

And the next night, met up with P and E to watch a Fringe Festival theatrical performance, an Israeli-German production entitled 3SOME, allegedly discussing the state of Israeli-German and Israeli-Palestinian relations. There were some brilliant moments, including one sequence in which the German hunts for something that stinks onstage, and after sniffing everything around him, he starts to burrow under the rubber matting that covers the stage, effectively dissolving the stage surface, rendering what we assumed was a solid surface into something fluid, craggy and malleable. And then there was the beginning of the play, which did not seem to be a beginning, but rather constituted the German apologising for technical difficulties, then describing fantastic stage directions of what the play was supposed to be like, then getting lost in his own fantastic descriptions - then freezing suddenly, to have the Israeli jumping without warning out of a bathtub in the centre of the stage. That sent shivers down my spine.

They made a right mess of the stage, ending by tossing all sorts of materials indiscriminately, hanging a cello (to symbolise, they say, the execution of Germans' traditional angst about the Holocaust) and proposing, Lysistrata-style, a preposterous Final Solution to the Palestinian question (consisting of divine intervention in the form of a natural disaster wiping out both sides indiscriminately). In the end, though, the piece suffers from the problem of most modern art: a lack of clarity. Some parts were all too clear: I thought it was kind of artistically lazy to use the mess onstage to symbolise the untidy situation in the Middle East. Some parts were quite poignant: I especially liked how the German, paralysed by war guilt, was cowering in the bathtub while the Israeli was ranting away, carried away by his risque passions, skirting with blasphemy. But there were things that would have remained indecipherable if the artists had not explained them after the end of the piece, like the hanging cello or the mysterious story of the Israeli torturing a kitten for the fun of it.

On an unrelated note, after the show, on the train ride home, E was saying that she would not have missed Singapore as much if she had not come back over this holidays, and as it stands, going back to school is more difficult now because she has spent a month at home. She does raise an interesting point: homesickness is not a product of the duration of one's time away, but rather the frequency of the reminders that one gets of what it's like to be at home. In this respect, I think we're luckier in New York, where there are lots of distractions and fewer Singaporeans to serve as echoes of home, tantalising because they remind us what it's like without giving us the full experience of what it is to be home. I for one can't really say if I would have been happier staying in the States over these holidays and exploring the Northeastern US with WL and YR; certainly, though, I had planned to do that under the assumption that I would not appreciate being home as much as travelling. But as it turns out, being home is good, despite the terrible circumstances that brought me back. I have been happy here, and I have been able to spend good time with family and friends, both old and new. And at the end of the day, I am glad to have come back.

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Speaking of returns, went back to school today (that is to say, CHS) to visit, partly because I and Kats had bumped into Ms. C in Little India a few weeks back and she had invited us to go back to school, but also because if I did not go now, it would be another five months before the opportunity is likely to present itself again. Spent a good part of the day in school, wandering the staff room, meeting old teachers and colleagues, and then bumping, to my delight, into many old students - the people from the classes L and N, and my CSE class, and even class F, whom I'd taught for all of one month. I was surprised to find that I hadn't yet forgotten their names. The really nice thing was that they still remembered me, and though I know it really is self-indulgent and egotistical, I have to say that it really feels good to be remembered!

Walking into CHS, though, two things struck me. Firstly, the beauty of the campus itself is striking; while Columbia undoubtedly has its charm because of the glamour of its address and the uniform classical architecture of its buildings, it lacks the careful landscaping of CHS, and it certainly is smaller than my old secondary school. So, whereas my old school has about as many students as Columbia has undergraduates, CHS feels serene and open, while Columbia comes off as crowded and small. Secondly, so much of it is still the same. I'd mentioned this before: working in CHS was rather surreal because I suddenly found myself back in the physical environment of my secondary school, and amidst people whom I remembered from my time there as a student, except that now I was the one holding the red pen. The contrast of the familiar with the novel social position was striking; and today, going back again, there was a touch of confusion over whether I was returning as an old colleague or an old student.

Anyway, it was definitely good to be back, amidst an environment where I feel utterly at home, chatting with old students about the university experience and their new classes in the new year, dabbling in staff room gossip with old colleagues and teachers, talking over gelato nearby with my old colleague and friend G, meeting my old Lit teacher Mr. L, who happened to be visiting CHS on the same day that I dropped in. Coming back allowed me to remind myself of where I had come from, and also to better take stock of how much I've actually progressed from those days.

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And then, tonight, went out with family to a seafood restaurant nearby for dinner. For some reason, it was particularly windy this evening, and the red plastic tablecloth substitute flapped precariously throughout our meal, as we tucked into fried fish, sambal kangkong, oatmeal prawns, a chili crab and a steamed crab. Special mention must go to the crabs, which were laden with meat and fat with roe, and whose shells fell away with gratifying ease, to leave large, juicy, tender pieces of fragrant crabmeat that could be eaten in satisfying mouthfuls. It has been too long since I've had crabs that were that good.

My life overseas has undoubtedly been exciting. I've received so many opportunities that I find myself terrified of my own prodigious good luck. I've met many good people, made many new friends, and had many experiences that have enriched me beyond my wildest expectations. But it's moments like these, when you have the whole family together, that make all that excitement worthwhile, because it reassures you that you always have somewhere to come back to, that what you have cherished before has not been lost over time. If I could bring my whole family along to New York, that would make my life there perfect. But since that's not possible, then that impression of perfection can best be accessed by coming back, and by finding that, while many things may change over time, family does not.

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And so passes my 22nd. Another year older...and I hear that from now on in, it's all downhill, since there are no more milestones to pass until retirement or your midlife crisis, whichever one comes first. I feel decidedly old, especially when I think about going back to school, where practically everyone is on the brink of coming of age. Nevertheless, it has been a great day today, and as far as getting older goes, I can't really in all conscience ask for a better way to do it! Thanks to everyone, for all your well-wishes and messages. They've all made my day!