Walls

I was going to read out this poem as the closing to my talk about How To Talk to Strangers at Galeri Petronas last Sunday, but decided against it at the last minute. Felt too maudlin. It's not a maudlin poem however. So here it is. I will include it in a catalogue for The Independence Project which travels to Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces in April. Once again, thanks Newt for always giving me poetry that I like and find useful.


Nazim Hikmet
'9 - 10pm'

The most beautiful sea
hasn't been crossed yet.

The most beautiful child
hasn't grown up yet.

Our most beautiful days
we haven't seen yet.

And the most beautiful words I wanted to tell you
I haven't said yet.

They've taken us prisoner,
they've locked us up:
me inside the walls,
you outside.

But that's nothing.
The worst
is when people - knowingly or not -
carry prison inside themselves...
Most people have been forced to do this,

honest, hard-working, good people
who deserve to be loved as much as I love you.

Smokin'

Sometimes when I'm out dancing late at night, I think about Asia Argento in Transylvania and feel like the hottest cat in the whole room, just being with myself. Enjoy.

(Yes, I have work to do, which I am going to do now. Meow.)

Update: I have a storm inside me. Sometimes I think I'll just dance alone in my bedroom with the lights out. I also think about swimming naked in the river with a full moon hanging above a clear sky. I wish I could go out and meet a man I don't necessarily know very well, who would match me drink for drink, argue with me, watch me dance and then take me to ______ and _______ until every last corner of the storm has blown itself out. Afterwards, we would part ways on excellent terms.

Cures

Sure wish I had me some of that super magical Nutrient Water right about now...

Count count count those bottles = number of drunken nights... (some days too)

My best friend - Drunken Post

{Two bottles of wine later...heeheehee. Still stands tho. x.}

Once, when I was giving a thank you speech, I forgot to mention the single most important person in the scheme of things. Afterwards, I felt wretched about this particular lapse. But then I witnessed it again in person, at a friend's wedding, where the bride neglected to acknowledge the person who had been absolutely central in the planning and execution of the whole wedding she-bang. It occurred to me then, that there is one person who is so central, so constant in one's thoughts, that it is inconceivable that they should ever be absent, that they should ever be ignorant of the importance that they play in one's everyday life...

That they know, always and forever, the rhythm of your days, your nights. What keeps you awake at night, crying for lost loves and unachievable heights. You think you know what keeps them going... but in your heart, you know... you are blessed. These creatures who work in accounting, in finance, in the maze of the corporate world you take such liberties in bitching about - they have navigated, triumphed even. These friends who inhabit the worlds you've created... will they ever know the meadow you've imagined for them, green and bright and beautiful, with a little house and modest fountain, leading from the past into the future...

Thinking about things that make me happy

DRESSES

On my last day in Melbourne, I was walking down Little Collins St when I saw a dress in the window. Like a deer caught in headlights, I stopped dead, inched closer and almost pressed my nose to the glass before coming to my senses. I once described my first sight of Bondi beach as a sheet of silk dyed blue by god - and there it was, personified! It was beautiful. A perfectly cut, knee-length, white silk dress whose bottom hem had been dipped into blue dye up the waist. I couldn't help myself - I stepped inside and started fondling it. The shop-person saw how obviously enamoured I was, and very nearly managed to convince me that I absolutely needed it, regardless of the price (of which we shall not speak, except to say that it was more than double the cost of a certain tattoo). Now that I'm home, I still think about that dress. I dream about it, and in my dream I'm wearing it while I walk down the beach - alone or with a close friend, or with someone I love; at the end of the walk, there's the promise of a good dinner, with several bottles of white wine and conversation deep into the night. It is very likely the dress I would wear to my (very very) hypothetical wedding. So I suppose... the shop-person was right.


ART

On my last day in Sydney, I spent the afternoon walking around King's Cross with my friend Steve Smith. We sat down in a beautiful cafe where an ancient (but incredibly sharp) old queen was holding court. I ordered an ice-tea, to which he sniffed, rolled his eyes and told me to get it myself from the fridge next door. Steve ordered something like green tea and got a latte instead. You just have to know when to back down. So we sat there with our drinks and he showed me the drawings in his sketchbook. I didn't know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't what I saw. I flipped through page after page populated with intricate, strange, deformed characters. They were tattooed, they were having passionate sex in very uncomfortable positions, they were old, young, they played music on the street, they had funny pets, they flew airplanes and lived in derelict boathouses by the sea. They were all a little scary, but wonderful, because they were so full of life. It was like the circus I had waited for all my life to come to town. If it had called, I would have stayed. Yes, I would have left all this - friends, family, country - and jumped into the page. Then and there I promised myself I'd buy a painting of Steve's one day. He doesn't know it. One day...


CURTAIN

During our second visit to Magick River in KKB, it had been raining and the river was fuller than I had seen it before. There was a little spot in the rocks where water was gushing with such force that it created a shimmering silver curtain, behind which I sat in a privacy more complete and peaceful than I have ever known. It seemed I could hear my own heart beating; and I thought I could grasp at the heart of the river too - which isn't loud or gushing or tumultuous at all (although parts of it are all those things), but is deep and quiet and powerful.


MIYAZAKI

The music, the care and craft. The slow, human pace of his films. The lack of good and evil binaries. Lightness. I read somewhere that in the Miyazaki museum, the cinemas where they screen his films are not dark, but full of daylight - because he didn't intend his movies as an escape and also because children liked it better to watch films like that. I think I would have too, as a child.


LIGHTNING

On a recent trip to Penang, me and a friend attended a performance staged outdoors on the seafront. Although the performance was give and take, as I sat there on the mat, I delighted in the wind that whipped my hair up and harried at the edges of a desire that will likely never leave me, and that is to always be in motion. I loved the setting and I loved the lighting design, which consisted of mere bare lightbulbs, swinging from the branches of a tree. I thought about people - people making things, people sitting down to watch - in the dirt, under a tree; being awake, talking and using language. After the show was over, I stood staring out to sea, above which the sky was storming. The lightning moved randomly across the sky and amongst the clouds like some divine dragon dancing on the wind. Someone I no longer care to remember once told me that he would sometimes get an erection when looking at waves breaking in the ocean. I couldn't understand then, but now I think I can. I could have watched the lightning forever.


BUSES

It was night time on the bus ride back. They had just turned off the lights and my friend let me put my feet up on his lap. I was perfectly content, half-awake, half-asleep; rocked gently by the bus, just as I used to be rocked in a sarong as a baby... on the straight road home.

Mountains

3pm on a hot Sunday afternoon, languidly flipping through John Berger's Hold Everything Dear (thanks Newty). The fan's on full blast and a little trickle of sweat is pooling at the base of my spine. I'm almost sleeping, then I read this passage:

There are certain moments of looking at a familiar mountain which are unrepeatable. A question of a particular light, an exact temperature, the wind, the season. You could live seven lives and never see the mountain quite like that again; its face is as specific as a momentary glance across a table at breakfast. A mountain stays in the same place, and can almost be considered immortal, but to those who are familiar with the mountain, it never repeats itself. It has another timescale.

I'm impossibly moved and I can't really find it in me to say why. It is like falling inevitably towards action and momentum. All it took was a word, and must be the right way to keep going.

My friend Steve Smith II

I want to tell you a little more about my friend Steve Smith. Since I returned to KL, I think about him alot. I wonder what he would look like in this city, this landscape - in a coffeeshop, in 1 Utama, in a car stuck in 6pm traffic. I wonder what he would think, and what he would say to me if we were walking side by side, as we did on that sunny day in Sydney. I wonder if he would understand me; because this place is so unfathomable, I want it translated to me by someone who seems to comprehend everything. But I have to tell you that my friend Steve Smith isn't one of those quiet listeners, full of empathy. He talks, I listen. Or we can be silent together. No, the comprehension is a way of being - when you look at a mountain, you understand it and it understands you. Mountains make us know ourselves better. My friend Steve Smith is as solid as a mountain and as clear as a bell. I think the reason I'm thinking about him so much is because I feel despair. Personal despair over the task at hand, which I realize now is action. Action is the task. To do, to work, to change, to imagine, to reach, to fail, to learn. And that's why I'm here for now, because to simply be here is to act. Hardships leave their mark, as does despair - different marks on different people. I think about despair and Steve Smith because I know he knows all about it. Yet here he is, a mountain in my mind. More bitterness in me than you'll ever find in half-century old Steve Smith. And from him I know that there are other outcomes to despair besides bitterness - wisdom, joy, strength. My friend, simply by being who he is, teaches me that despair is action denied.

Black holes

I may get some new ink to pull me out of this hole.

Two nautical stars, but one now and the other when the task is done.

Woke up feeling bad enough to pick up the phone and make an appointment, but no, Betta, no! First rule of good tattoos - wait wait wait. We'll see if I still want it tomorrow.

Making friends with night

Tilda Swinton performing Cornelia Parker's The Maybe, 1995

Drums in the night. Poom Poom Pom. You wake up and someone is sitting on you who shouldn't be there at all. But no, their voice is in your ear yet they're across the room, at the foot of your bed. It's a shadow. A buried memory seeps from the skin, it's of an old lover sleeping beside you. Forgotten but not forgiven. You wake up again, desolate big bed, empty on every side. Outside, thank god, the sky is the colour of 5 o'clock. It's time to get up.

-

I am friends with the night

when I sleep beside someone I love
when I am drinking
after I've been drinking
after the house has been full of people and rhythms all day
when I'm not worried
when the sky is clear

-

How I sleep

First of all, I have favorite clothes. Sometimes when I'm feeling particularly bad I sleep without a shirt on. My own skin comforts me. I leave one curtain blind up, so that I can see out the window. I find it impossible to fall asleep in a completely curtained room. Some people say that the morning sun bothers them, but I love it. The moon comforts me, when she's out. She looks so wise and lonely up there. The stars I love. I've always loved them. One day I'll get some tattooed on me, when I learn to be friends with the night. I sleep on my back, towards the left of the bed. I wrap my arms around myself and put both hands above my heart, one on top of the other. I hate to be held in bed, but I love sleeping beside someone. Once I woke up with my cat stretched out bodily across my neck like a living ermine scarf. I sleep very well when I have a pet in my room, especially with a cat in my bed. When he was alive mine used to curl up right in the small of my back. But I had a habit of rolling over and squashing him, so he only did it when he was really feeling like company. So with two hands above my heart, I close my eyes and try to slow my mind down. If I'm well, it takes what I estimate to be only a few minutes to lose consciousness. Otherwise, I am at it for hours, feeling like I'm driving a car up a very steep hill. Sometimes I chant a Buddhist prayer that I've known so long I can't remember where I learnt it. It's one my greatest personal resources. Here it is:

Namo tasa bhagavato arahato samma sambudhasa [3 times]
(Lord Buddha the enlightened one, the compassionate one)

Buddham saranam gachimi (To the Buddha I go for refuge)
Sangham saranam gachimi (To the monks I go for refuge)
Dhammam saranam gachimi (To the teachings I go for refuge)

Repeat these last three lines 2 times, with each line of the second repetition preceeded by 'Dutiyampi' (for the second time), and the third repetition by 'Tatiyampi' (for the third time).

Sometimes I do up to a hundred or more. Sometimes it fails. When I was younger, just before I fell asleep, it seemed I sometimes heard a great echo of my chanting, as if I was being joined by (or was joining) a whole hall filled with prayers. An image would occur in my mind of a great room with many monks sitting in it - all in robes of saffron and red. I'd usually sleep very well after that.

-

Sometimes I am very tempted to call someone and ask them to come over to sleep with me. In fact tonight's certainly one of those nights. No, nothing like what you're thinking, just sleeping. Really sleeping. Maybe one day I'll do a performance by making myself available for sleeping with. It would be called: making friends with night. Would you participate?

Back again

This is a picture I took on my last night in Sydney. Warm night, close air. I walked to the very edge of the wharf (where Russell Crowe is popularly known to have an apartment) and dangled my legs as far out as I could above the water. I could have fallen in then and the moon would've caught me in her reflection. (Failing that, Russell would've come out and saved me) I whispered some incredibly private promises and desires to the sea, which assured me that it would always be there.

The new year is pressing on and I'm mulling over secret plans, promises, commitments. The back of the house needs doing up. There's talk of a fountain of some kind but I've pooh-poohed it. Gotta bring down that recliner chair for dad. Recycling junk center comes round this weekend, so our spring clean has got to meet that deadline. Poop has promised a bottle of Chanel perfume when she gets back from France. Art meets, greets. Less pressure now, much less pressure. I'm borderline with the smokes. A drag or two still causes sweet ecstacy in my veins. I plan to remain quit this year, with a little help from friends (you know who you are). Sydney reaffirmed that I'm happiest in a palette of black, white, grey and navy blue, with allowances for the occasional colorful tight dress. Short hair will stay. Yoga everyday. More cooking, especially after watching and falling in love with Jacques Pepin on telly! This is a money-making year for Betta. According to the stars the sun is out for yet another year, and I'll have to make hay while it lasts. Can't say yet what it is I'll do, but I promise you this: it won't be what you expect.

Welcome 2008 at last. x.

My friend Steve Smith

The day breaks the heart;
night soothes it.
Driving home at night,
protected and alone,
rain refracts the city lights
making them register as pinpricks
in an inner loneliness.
I think about my friend Steve Smith.
We met randomly.
Old, old.
Tattooed - colourful.
But clear, like watercolor.
No, stronger. Maybe ink.
When some people talk
you just listen
Because it's like they're colouring in your outlines.
Trust. Friendship.
Two days in the wandering sun.
And the memory
drops like a brass coin
in the hollow night
In the city that breaks people's hearts
I think about my friend Steve Smith.

Steve Smith, [Untitled], 2006, oil on canvas, 37 x 47 cm
from Ray Hughes Gallery, Sydney

Happiness and forgetting

In his book, 'Other Colors', Orhan Pamuk devotes two short pages to happiness. Surely, he begins, it must seem vulgar to write about happiness in light of humanity's daily transgressions of violence and degradation. He goes on to describe a day on the beach with his child. He starts at the beginning - the preparation, the anticipation, and ends at the end - driving home together. Like so many things that give us that indescribable sense of fulfillment, at once deep and impossibly light, it's a ritual. Rituals (not habits), that mark our time in the clock of the world give us happiness.

Rituals of
intimacy (friendships, relationships, love, sex);
solitude (such as the one I'm performing now);
production (work); and
nourishment (putting on make-up, cooking, reading, eating).

---

Every time I look at my tattoo, I remember that I've earned it, and that sooner or later, it'll be time for the next one.

Drunken post

Home. Been avoiding this blog.

No water, no words.

No one gets it, everyone full of solutions, but no one wants to sit down and listen to me drink.

I geddit. You geddit?

I love you, baby. My city. Do you love me? x.

-

I knew it would be like this. Never forget - it's no one's fault.

Patience. Time...

'Work [Writing]... if you believe in it enough... undoes all sorrows'
- Orhan Pamuk (I paraphrase ... because I'm drunk)