Me: Morning work, night work. Shit la. Grumblemumble. [gulps down dinner at lightning fast speed yet again before rushing to meeting]
Parent: Yeah, wat to do, you want like dat wat. Why don't you get a life. [emphasis mine]
Me: *Speechless* 0_O
UPDATE: Sigh. 1:40am. The essay I'm writing has all the conviction of a peanut. Nay, smaller. Pine nut, then.
----
Do you find yourself inadvertently using this phrase?
'It is a question that poses many challenging questions...'
Can we say: Trying My Darnest To Fill Up Word Allowance in an Intelligent-sounding but Ultimately Vacuous Way?
In the evening
I lie on a newly paved road
in my country
The sky
is an upside down bowl
with a calm sea hung in it
Heat of the sun
held in the road
warms my back
I'm roasting naked
on a man-made river
heading to the mountains
leading to the cities
all the way home
I hug the road
as I've never before done
As it hugs the earth beneath
beaten down by the sun
which hangs in the sea
in the sky above me
As I wait for it to fall -
the sea that will take me nowhere
because it is home,
I wonder
how did it get there?
... the label on me would read:
S______ C____
Age:2__ (still considered young in artist terms)
Identity: South East Asian, post-colonial
Status: Unknown-Emerging
Art: Site-specific new-media performative conceptual
Level of polity in work: Medium
Bankability: Unpredictable
Physical attractiveness: Not great, not bad either. Ho hum.
Overall biennial suitability score: about 6.5 (artist needs biennial more than biennial needs artist)
PS. Kudos to 28th Sao Paolo Biennial for having the courage to interrogate its own system, goals and function in a more than token way. Fantastique!
Montien Booma: Perfume Painting, 1997, 100cm diameter**This review appeared in Off The Edge magazine, MAR2008 Issue 39
***Images from Kakiseni.com
Since forming in early 2004, artist collective Lost Generation has produced projects that genuinely posit alternatives in Malaysian art discourse. ‘Alternatives’ not only as in opposition to a constructed (imagined) mainstream, but also in a generative sense that enlarges the debate for us all, especially regarding the role of independent art practice.
Their latest project Bangun is no exception. Held over three evenings in February, it was a site-specific event featuring 25 international and local artists. The site was a sprawling complex of three vacant buildings next to Lost Generation Space, a bungalow in Robson Heights that the collective rents and operates as an art space.
In an article on kakiseni.com, writer Zedeck Siew observes that ‘Lost Generation Space’s contribution was that they provided us with an excuse to explore this [abandoned] space’.1 It is true that in a project like this, art cannot be seen independently from the context it has consciously inserted itself in. In Bangun, the former is indeed overshadowed by the latter.
Rather than critique the works individually, it may be more useful to use them as a lens through which to focus a discussion on abandoned buildings, and how they affect the way we understand and live in the city. To do this, I’d also like to refer to two texts. The first, Terrain Vague by architect and critic Ignasi de Sola-Morales Rubio2; the second, Ghosts in the City by Michel de Certeau.3
NOTICING
Bangun isn’t the first project to deal locally with the subject of abandoned buildings. From 2000 to 2003, Simryn Gill traveled the country photographing empty apartments, incomplete projects and mini ghost towns. The result was a collection of 116 images published as a book titled Standing Still. The images are as haunting and poignant as you imagine, but are also immensely, elusively beautiful. Similarly, many works in Bangun almost revel in the desolate aesthetics of the abandoned site. Ilham Fadhli Shaimy fills holes in the rotting floor with plaster from toy cement mixers. Dean Linguey frames little stalagmites formed by water dripping from a leaky ceiling with shards of found glass. Tan Wai Ding gathers broken electric fixtures and arranges them into a maze on the dusty floor. In the ultimate homage to ready-made beauty, Teh Leong Kwee simply places a makeshift frame over any picturesque surface – a mouldy bloom here, a stain on the wall there.
It is interesting how the sad dilapidation of this site been treated with nothing less than celebration and reverence. Note how LGS positions the event: ‘Bangun in Bahasa Malaysia means Wake up! Attention! In this project the artists are saying - Wake up and notice the abandonment of buildings (bangunan) in KL!” The word used here is ‘notice’, not ‘save’, or ‘halt’, leaving the motives of Bangun richly ambiguous and open to debate.
Why this attraction to the aesthetics of decay? Could it be that we do not in fact look at abandoned buildings in an entirely negative light? This is what Sola-Morales Rubio suggests in his essay Terrain Vague. He writes that these spaces are ‘places where the city is no longer’. They do not house anyone, they are not monitored, they do not produce anything – in short they are everything that the city isn’t, a ‘negative image’ of the city. Not negative as in ‘bad’, but more like the inverted mirror of our beloved and fragmented KL. This inversion produces a void or absence, which also represents possibility and potential – that of things happening differently than what we have been made to believe by those who chart the development of this country.
Walking through Bangun on a rainy evening, the whole place seemed porous – some corners letting in the rain and sun, holding both in rotting wood and plaster; other corners underground blanketed by an irredeemable silence and darkness. As Sola-Morales Rubio suggested, this porosity seemed to me ‘as much a critique as a possible alternative’ – to the steady proliferation of this or that jaya, to the highways and shopping malls and the whole sterile time-space grid of Malaysia Wasasan
REHABILITATION
While some artists let rotting chaos creep up and become part of their works, just as many seemed to devote energy towards caring for their space. Tobias Richardson’s hanging sculpture revolved silently in a little room the artist spent a substantial amount of time cleaning and repairing. Haley West did likewise to what appears to have been a former kitchen – wrapping up debris in plastic as ‘gifts’ for viewers to take away, as well as hanging golden tinsel off a creeper on the wall. Aliza Ayob planted bright pink plastic flowers on a piece of barren lawn.
These efforts may be seen as attempts at rehabilitation. But for what sake and for whom does this rehabilitation occur? Just as an abandoned building may not be seen in a completely negative way, so rehabilitation cannot be taken only to mean something good. To rehabilitate something is to not only love and care for that thing, it is to also change it irrevocably. Certeau writes that spaces like Bangun’s site do not only have a history, they ‘function as history’. ‘Ghosts in the city’, indeed. Like ghosts these spaces exist in the present, yet elude it. Like ghosts, what does it mean to take them and turn them once again into places for the living? How should we go about it?
Both Certeau and Sola-Morales Rubio agree that these ghosts should not be exorcised violently, but be placated with continuity. Why? Let us put it this way: why, if they cared so much about its disrepair, did the Bangun artists not invade the site like an army of ants and make it habitable again? Could it be from a barely grasped suspicion that to fully ‘rehabilitate’ (clean, clear, renovate, improve) the place would mean returning it once again to the homogeneity of the city – to the real estate market hungering for ‘heritage rich’ sites, to the empirical logic of progress and development?
Certeau: ‘Whatever framework in which this ‘salvational’ will is inscribed, it is true that restored buildings, mixed habitats belonging to several worlds, already deliver the city from its imprisonment in an imperialistic univocity. However enamel painted they may be, they maintain there the heterodoxies of the past. They safeguard an essential aspect of the city: its multiplicity.’
The value in Bangun lies not so much in a rallying cry to ‘save the buildings!’, but in calling attention to, and subsequently adding to this multiplicity of the city. It opens up many spaces – both physical and metaphoric – to questions, debate, thought, perhaps even action. This is how art acts.
Bangun – Abandon Project, 1 – 3 Feb. Produced by Lost Generation Space. For more information: www.lostgenspace.wordpress.com
1. Zedeck Siew, Houses on the Hill, 2 Feb 2008
2. Ignasi de Sola Morales Rubio, Terrain Vague, Anyplace, ed. C.Davidson, MIT Press, Cambridge Mass, 1995, pp118-123
3. Michel de Certeau, Ghosts in the City, The Practices of Everyday Life Vol2, Uni of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1998 pp133-143
Interesting how China, the world's growing superpower, seems equally as intent as the USA has been on murdering language.
Yu Heping, spokesperson for the Chinese office of public security says: “In Tibet and surrounding regions, armed groups are preparing themselves to battle for independence. These, at the instigation of the Dalai Lama, intend to use suicide bombers to carry out their attacks and destroy our nation’s social harmony”.
So now the Dalai Lama, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, is instigating suicide bombing attacks. Note in the above short statement: 'armed', 'battle', 'instigation', 'attacks', 'destroy', 'suicide bombers'. Make no mistake, this is the slow churning of language against reality - like water against rock. Already the world will begin to see the rock as something that it isn't. Suddenly the Dalai Lama is a terrorist. But worse, far worse, is when the rock begins to believe itself to be something it isn't - that's when it changes shape. That's when a peaceful, pacifist people strap explosives to their bodies and walk into crowds.
John Berger: 'it takes about six half-truths to make a lie.' That's on our side of the wall, I guess. What happens on the other side of the wall (the side of Superpower) is inversion: 'it takes about six half-lies to make a truth'.
I have heard the Dalai Lama speak. Every word sounded like a clear bell in troubling times. I have no doubt he knows the way - he will wait, or act, or speak, with his customary wisdom and compassion. Superpowers believe in the politics of profit and power - they will attempt to divide, in order to rule. They set the limits of power and room to move. But in the politics of truth, there is no need for division between religious doctrine and political will. To resist Superpower, we must become water, not rock.
Today, when you're feeling stressed, remember the Dalai Lama's pragmatic advice: "Try to slow down, breathe in happiness, and breathe out suffering".
Does that sound like someone who instigates suicide bombers to you?
Sigh, this blog is becoming the repository of all the things I really want to do. But sk'rang, mana ada masa? And headspace? Furgeddaboutit.
My label, my little baby that I'm nursing, is 'Maturin'. The few moments in the day not taken up with work or worrying about work is spent designing (mostly in my head) a line of limited edition bags. There will be one unisex shoulder/messenger bag, one women's shoulder bag, 2 clutches, one soft purse and one wrist-strap purse for when you go out but don't have any pockets (we've all been there, eh girls?). I have little sketches on bits of paper everywhere, and I find I tune out of less-than-scintillating conversation to continue my idle constructions, which have spilled out to an even more limited edition clothing collection - a short skirt, a t-shirt dress, a dress, a shirt and a t-shirt. The dresses have hoods on them. I like hoods because they protect and look pretty fly. The bags are all plain cream canvas on the outside, and lined with highest quality navy blue satin. Topstitching, pin-tucks, piping will feature heavily. Also handmade ceramic buttons, dice hanging from zippers, knots and braided rope for the handles. A 5-piece line of jewelery consisting of ceramic knots joined with braided silk rounds out Betta Sim for Maturin's first collection called 'Galapagos'! Secret evening launch party by the seaside - only dorks and geeks allowed, a certified un-cool event. Free-flowing rum. Best-dressed mermaid gets a Maturin dress for free! OMG. All 100 percent hand-made in Malaysia. No outsourcing to China! When when when? I know you want it too.
Second collection is 'Traveling Circus'.
Sigh. Someone get me a second life.
Malaysian audiences - you gotta love us. We are so enthusiastic; it's all so new to us. Ivory tower? What tower? Wherever we are, art = touch. We LOVE to touch. For us, a gallery is like a petting zoo. Therefore if you find yourself amongst a crowd that is poking, prodding, stroking, rubbing, fondling and peeling off bits of paint from the art, chances are you are in a Malaysian art gallery. We might be a little uncivilized, but at least we're charming. We're also persistent. If you tell us 'please don't touch', we wander innocently to the other end of the room and do it again; if you ban us from the gallery, we'll just go to another one; if we break something, we run away quickly or give you that irresistible i-didn't-do-nuthin puppy-dog look.
Therefore, in honour of all Malaysians, I would like to propose an exhibition in which everything can be picked up and played with. I think we should work with our audiences, as sometimes they know more than we do. There is a reason why popping bubble wrap is a stress reliever. Think about how much fun you will have conceiving that touchable painting or stroke-able sculpture. Like a sponge, your art will be soaking up all that love. I say yes, yes to touching!
Just don't expect that Picasso exhibition to tour here anytime soon.
I smell your ghost
A shard
or a maybe splinter
expands under the skin
hairsbreadth bruise
It passes
I walk on
Old stars, new night
Arms greet me
hold me
in it.
The Dalai Lama is still one of the sane and human faces in the global political circus.
For those who think Buddhism is a passive belief and cannot reconcile political resistance with the concept of detachment from worldly affairs, generally we can be said to look at it this way: if you can help, then help; if you can't, then at least do no harm. We cannot let oppressors do what they want willy-nilly, because to allow them to do that is bad for them. We continue to take the path of love and compassion towards our fellow human beings, but we are certainly not passive. I think this concept can be easily applied even if you are not a believer.
Remember that the Dalai Lama is seeking autonomy for Tibet, NOT independence. He is willing to deal with China on those terms. I feel this is the right path. It is clear that this is not simply about preserving sovereignity, it's about preserving culture, knowledge, language and the way of life of an entire people - now that's something worth fighting for. It MUST NOT be allowed to lenyap begitu saja.
Vastly incapacitated by a hacking cough and what is likely the cumulative effects of uninhibited worrying, I'm once again in that slightly embarrassing condition of not being able to do anything at all - that is, including sleep, eat and/or work.
The thing with this condition is that you find yourself working on another time-scale, while the world flows on around you. Phone calls come in, some demanding, others enquiring; emails, messages, chores, reminders, meetings, proposals, favours. Your watch and calendar become objects of tyranny. Time is parcels. You pack more into some than you can afford to. Loved ones usually get the smaller ones.
This evening, I decided to take some of those parcels out of circulation entirely. I switched off my phone, shut down my computer and went to the book shop. Time and again it happens, but I never spot it as soon as I should - the reason why one feels that writing has suddenly become so terribly difficult is because one has stopped reading altogether. Walking between bookshelves is like walking amongst of a pride of benevolent lions. There was Borges, speaking from the grave with his voice as precise, elusive and complex as a difficult perfume. Pamuk and Auster, magicians at the height of their powers. Le Guin, wise and fiery - sympathizing with but suffering no fools; knowing the importance of naming something right. Anais Nin, so recognizable it's difficult to look at her, but somewhere in that limpid wandering is finely tempered metal thread. An attentive magpie could tease it out like a worm, only to discover it makes up a web (or a net?). John Berger - compassionate, powerful, wonderful. And of course, my old friend of the sea Patrick O'Brian - well I went home with him tonight.
I guess, to walk amongst lions is to feel the continuity of time, in the sense that all time-scales are contained in it. Somehow or other even this particular one - the time-scale of 2am in the rainy month of March 2008 I can't sleep or work and I am running out of time - fits in there. Yes, fits right in there with the time-scale of I am waiting for my husband to come home, and the time-scale of two people dreaming in the desert, and that of when will I know when my visa is approved, and on and on...
There's time. There's plenty of it.
The Steve Smith I'd like to buy (if it wasn't already sold):
Song Writing
The Second Coming (Pat. Pend.)I hate that fucking tag function on Myface. I know privacy is an illusion, but I need my fragile fictions to keep me going.
You know what there's no longer enough of in the world? Mystery.
Bleh. I have a thousand damn things to do. I'm getting a scotch to kill this damn cough.
I'm so strung out, stressed out. Too much other work, not enough time for my own. On the back burner:
This coming sunday I'll be performing with M.S. and a few others on Jalan Bukit Bintang, in front of Maybank. As usual performing on the street makes me quite jittery. We visited the site today, and it's a great space: hawkers, beggars, loiterers. I think the general reaction to our little event will be: WTF.
I will be performing a very simple action called 'River'. A long sheet of paper will be laid out on the ground. With me at one end and M.S. at the other. We start in the middle, each holding our end of the paper flat in front of our faces. We put the paper to our mouths and using our tongues, we make a slit big enough to fit over our heads. We fit the paper over our heads and each moves back so that the paper is stretched out again. We continue to dissolve the paper with our mouths from each end until we meet in the middle and our mouths touch.
It's not much. Just a way to cross distance, without language.
-
I want to follow my mother in her Tai Chi routine. We will be attached loosely by strings - she is teaching me, and I am learning as best I can - to be patient, to understand her, to observe and follow without judging. But I am also teaching her - to be patient, to understand me, to accept a child as her shadow.
My father? LOLS. We'll be side by side and I try to match him drink for drink. Just kidding :) No, with my father it will probably be something to do with food.
-
I've made sails out of sieves - useless for sailing, quite good for storytelling; now it's time to make the bones of the ship. Long slats of wood, maybe carpet, maybe paper. Words as the grain...? Blue silk somewhere. I don't know. It's unclear. Home, this is home. A shipwreck. An anchor - your love. Tattoos - marks and signposts.
...the new Ministry of UNITY, arts, culture and heritage is just fucking stupid. Is this the government's version of lateral thinking?
Any one of these okay aso wat:
Ministry of Unity and Internal Security
Ministry of Unity and Human Resources
Ministry of Unity, Trade and Foreign Affairs
Ministry of Unity, Forestry and Agriculture
Ministry of Unity, Youth and Sport
Ministry of Unity and Islamic Affairs
Ministry of Unity and Transport
Ministry of Unity, Women and Welfare
So, janganlah keep unity just for the arts! The honour is too great.
Someone please start a Miss Unity pageant. Tudungs compulsory.
Hanging with M.S. again the other night, he told me some bad news - that his grant application for the international performance art festival he was planning in Myanmar had fallen through. Commiserations for this perplexing, depressing blow took the form of dinner and beers.
Smoking some criminally strong cigarettes (thanks z.), our conversation stumbled and flopped around broken language. Silences were punctuated with random, gratuitous cries of 'beyond pressure!', raised glasses, cheesy laughter. It was so totally geeky I'm glad no one else was there to witness it.
Somewhere along the way we managed to have bouts of furious back and forth about performance, language, access, economics and power. A light started to shine on that confused part of my mind that's been pondering on relative inequalities - reflected in all levels of living in the world, and thrown into stark focus when two artists like me and M.S. interact. In between the market, national and global politics, biennial fever, superstar curators, supernova artists, criticism, writing, professional careers - where is art?
Here is art. The importance of M.S.'s proposed festival of performance art - Beyond Pressure - is this: one, that people who are not in Myanmar have access to different ways of looking at what is happening there now, which I am certain is nothing like what's in the media; two, that it creates from within a space in which people who are in Myanmar can take part in the representation of themselves, a reaffirmation of their place in the global community. Here is art - that beyond day to day survival, we can resist the pressures from within and without that insist on keeping us where we are: firmly in our places in the first or third world, firmly dependent on a feudal system of global economy.
This is not about inequality and a futile attempt to level it. This is about representations - access to an alternative system of representation can profoundly change the way we look at (and act in!) the world. An example close to home: who amongst us middle-class Malaysians has not harboured thoughts of suspicion and fear towards immigrants from Myanmar, Bangladesh and Indonesia? And if it's not suspicion and fear, then isn't it a profound discomfort underpinned by guilt and a sense of helplessness each time you're served by a waiter for Myanmar and you know she has no rights in the eyes of either her employer or our government? This is where art comes in and does what nothing except art can do - it presents an alternative. Beyond the language of politics and NGOs, which in many ways reaffirms conditions of inequality even as they attempt to allay the symptoms of it, there are other ways of approaching and getting to know each other.
Performance. We were talking about how there seemed to be difference in approach. For convenience we were throwing around the category 'west' with total hubris, like a beach ball - how a 'western' approach to performance seems to invest hugely in language and text, evidenced in how more meaning is put in to the text of a performance instead of the action. True. Many times I catch myself conceiving of a work using language first, then the image emerges from that, almost as if seeking a way to illustrate the text in my head. Looking at M.S.'s work, it's different. The action/image holds the meaning, and is the starting point. The action is long, pregnant, complex; usually no text accompanies it. Why is it important to identify this difference? Because the way we access power in the artworld (manifest as connections, market value, etc) is through the 'western' (there's that beach ball again) system of language and text. Where and how a performance is written about perpetuates it as a commodity (lets call it nothing else) in a global value system that may have absolutely nothing to do with the very MOMENT and PLACE in which that performance was enacted.
What this is means is the degree to which you are valued (critically and commercially - although the two seem interchangeable these days) depends on your access to this system of language. For a country like Myanmar, the access is almost nil. Why no Burmese artists at Biennales? Why relatively few (but steadily growing) number of Malaysian artists? This isn't a question asked from the outraged position of the marginalized, rather I ask it instructively. Let's not kid ourselves. It may be one day we'll see Malaysia represent strongly at Biennales all over the world. It may be one day we'll have our own. Beyond glamour and recognition, what would it mean? It's high time art regained some of its teeth and courage; it's high time biennales take an honest critical position about themselves by putting the system of biennales squarely at the center of its own curatorial concern. Back to why I think it's imperative that Beyond Pressure performance art festival is held in Myanmar: it helps us to invent a new language of performance - both in the action and the word - that sheds light on how to believe in an art that goes beyond market politics and power. I want an art that lives, breathes and acts in the world today. It's possible, and it's important. It's not a utopian challenge, but one of resistance.
Beyond pressure! Cheers!
Random virtual outburst. Stress gila. Deadlines deadlines. Gotta get them balls painted and a bad kink has mysteriously appeared in my right shoulder blade. I forgot what a godawful long process it was to get them made. Don't use your hands for 5 months and this is what happens. Pffft. Poo. Lalalalala. Ok nicotine time, baibai bitches.
...critical lattices!
As in, 'the work relies on the critical lattice of blablabla to make sense of what is happening in blablabla today.', or, 'this exhibition creates a sort of critical lattice which supports the notion of blablabla, yet allowing room for certain blablabla to fall to the ground.'
You wait and see, it's the next big thing in art writing! Use it today!
Tonight I saw the moon reflected in a window above me as I sat below in conversation, in community. Noticing her hanging there in her solitude made me smile inside. I'm always comforted by the moon. She is very content to take part by observing quietly from a distance, but the light of her touches everything in the most intimate way.
I think I am addicted to my work because through it I can be fraternal. I want an art that reaffirms the human need for communication and contact - something I find so difficult in my personal life. Sometimes the longing for independence registers as sort of fatal flaw in my character, something to be overcome - like addiction, or shyness. We won't talk about the source of it. Although recently I was told about my maternal grandmother, who never I met. She decided one day she would like to leave her family and live her own life, and that's exactly what she did, leaving behind four children, including my mother. Am I anything like her, I asked. You have no idea how much, said my mother...
I am quite sure it's a question my mother has asked of herself too. But she stayed, that's the difference. I am not positive it was an entirely happy choice, but to speak of things in simple terms like 'happiness' is quite useless here.
There is progress. The tattoo resolves certain complexities for me in ways I can't fully explain. As time goes on I hope I'll add more. My art is a powerful crutch, but these days I feel very positive about it being more than that. Like light from mother moon, it's an extension of me, not some surrogate or vessel. Each day I heave my art closer to me; each day we both become more real and our qualities manifest in each other. One day it will no longer be a crutch, but a tool, and a weapon.
And I remember what Goenawan Mohammed wrote: 'In truth, it is not possible to say, I choose independence, but at the same time I do not choose danger... I cannot only choose a creative life, and not be prepared, like Adam, to be expelled from blissful paradise into the restless world of creation.'
Oh it's been awhile since I did one of these. Sorry poop I came home and had more that's the bad effect of having a house well supplied with booze. Hmm. Lets see. We were trying to recreate the dynamics of friendship with venn diagrames. I asked, how about garments and friendship?
\
'I wouldn't wear a shirt forever'.
'Do you ahve something from when I first met you?'
'Yeah it's a blue polo shirt'
'OMG THAT SHIRT'
'Yes.'
So that object from when I first met you has lived as long as our friendship. The older the friendship the older the object. I really remember that shirt.
If you give it to me, I'll make a new garment that tells the story. This particular shirt would become a dress in soft navy blue cotton. It would have a red satin lining. Cloth covered buttons and pin tucks along the shoulders. You could walk a hundrend miles in this dress, maybe a thousand.
... I felt my insides seize up in aesthetic revolt
... it makes me fairly pant with apathy
... well, haven't seen THAT before
... this is more boring than an activist gathering
... this video footage is making my brain melt. OMG it goes on for another 20mins.
... well that was mercifully short
... why do people perpetrate this shit
... this artist statement makes me want to draft my own will
... it hurts my eyes
... this sculpture has an aura of malevolence about it
... someone arrest this artist for aesthetic assault
... did I stumble onto some graduate show
... maybe the catalog will help me understand it
... at least the review will only be 800 words. The anecdote will already take up a third.
... everyone seems to love this. Is it just me?
... being truthful about this might get me fired.
... what would John Berger do to this painting?
... I will persevere through this artistic adversity.
... this installation is making me depressed
... ohhh. I'm getting that 'bad paintings' feeling again.
... phew. I need a scotch
... well people didn't understand Ulysses, either. Maybe I should try harder
... why do I keep going to these artist talks. They sure make me depressed
... I'm sure the quality-to-trash ratio is worse somewhere else
... if I have to look at another painting show I'll lose the will to live
... wanker
I guess I could go on forever. But I've already generated enough bad karma. I'm sure you enjoyed it too, bitches.
Sewing
I've been doing an inordinately large amount of sewing. Changing buttons here, cutting a new collar there. There is a tight black dress I am deciding the hem on - a couple of centimeters means the oh-so-subtle difference between slutty and sexy. One of two shows planned in the second half of the year will definitely be about clothes, I think. The other will be about muteness and silence. Which subject for which show, that's the question. It's all about timing. They are not very far apart. I will have to let things cook a little longer. We are only in the tracking stage in terms of hunting muses - the full-speed chase is a way off.
Writing
I have been writing and writing, singing for my supper. It's getting a little easier. But I haven't read anything fun in a long while. It's probably time for another dose of Patrick O'Brian. Leavemealone *mumbles*, I know I am lowbrow I am proud of it.
Listening to Chinese and Malay radio
The past elections really hammered home the importance of language for me. How in a different language something takes on an entirely different... texture. To tell you I love you in Chinese, what a door to a paralell world we might live in. So when I say a show about silence and muteness, I mean that I think I want to use sign language, or other types of communication that are not written or verbal. A progression of How To Talk to Strangers. More strategies. Yes.
Thinking about economics
If the capitalist mainstay is 'Minimum investment, maximum profit', then if we are thinking about resisting capitalism, should we think 'Maximum effort, minimum change'? This isn't new. Francis Alys talks about it in one of his interviews, and his 2002 work 'When Faith Moves Mountains' is underpinned by this idea. 'I guess today political correctness has been replaced by economic correctness', he said, when asked about criticism he received for orchestrating an ostensibly 'useless' gesture (moving a sand mountain one foot to the left) that required immense labour from hundreds of volunteers. There's a really interesting exhibition of Cuban artists called States of Exchange in London at the moment that looks specifically at economics. I like the show alot. Precisely the sort of utilitarian discourse that is needed right now. I wish one of the Biennales would have this as the curatorial brief. We need more strategies and ways of imagining to combat the numbing effects of global consumerism. John Berger also refers to this again and again in Hold Everything Dear.
Thoroughly dissatisfied after going to two openings yesterday. Maybe because there was no booze at either one. My bitching (remarkably consistent; one might even say tediously repetitive, if you were feeling ungenerous) in chronological order:
Betta: I know it's a new Malaysia, but the art is the same.
H: You need to give it time.
Betta: I want it NOW.
H: Well you can't have it now.
Betta: Feh.
Betta: I know it's a new Malaysia, but the art is the same.
Z: Art is irrelevant, you're in the wrong profession
Betta: I know, I would have made millions selling my body. Dammit.
Z: You sound really confident about that.
(Betta *unsaid, but certainly thought at the time*: shouldn't I be..?)
Betta: I know it's a new Malaysia, but the art is the same.
L: Hahahhahahh. heeh.
I'm very happy about the changes n all but I really miss my computer. I can't do any work. Also realize that plenty of past writing, edited video and general unrecoverable information is gone 4EVA. Serious worry about where to get back all that pirated software that was wiped out along with the hard disk. Ho hum. Why didn't I back up, you ask? Fuck off.
My life is a traveling circus
with lions
and tigers
and monkeys
and mermaids
and a fire-breathing serpent.
I have caravans
and costumes
and feathers
and rhinestones
and stage paint
and..
leather whips.
I've got a bearded lady,
happily married
and a professional clown
who is an alcoholic
I have poets
they're all marvelous
and a fortune teller
speaking in cryptic verses
The trapezers are all gay
and squabble alot
We eat by campfire
and love by moonlight
My life is a traveling circus
a very happy nightmare
I love it
and so will you.
For the first time in my life I feel at peace with myself and the country I was born in. Yesterday night Jerome hugged me and said: now you don't have to leave, Sharon. Tears started flowing when he went on to say: we can tell everyone else that they can come back.
They can come back...
I just don't have any words to express how I feel. I am so relieved and grateful. Finally, finally people who we can trust to listen to us. Sivarasa has the kindest face in the whole world, and when Elizabeth Wong smiled at me my heart just melted. Yes, it is a reaffirmation of all the hard work, love and effort poured into living here day to day. Yes yes yes. I feel so happy; I don't want to rest, I want to work!
And I don't want to leave. Can you believe it? Oh my god... I've waited so long for this. *sob*
Ok I gotta go pull myself together now. X.
It's 3pm the day before Elections. I shall tell you that the sun is shining outside with rain clouds not far away on the horizon; that I'm alone at home writing this, and that this is a moment of blessed privacy. Soon, I'll get into my car and step into the communal chaos of an election campaign.
Being an artist in Malaysia, you're always wondering about your own usefulness. It seems there's an outer realm of reality (can we say politics?), and then there's an inner world of unassailable privacy in which you create (could we call it art?). The two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. In fact, things get interesting when they overlap.
I don't know much about politics, but I do know quite alot about imagination. Now, I can't be sure, but it seems to me that imagination can't exist without privacy. One strange effect of this election period that I have observed is a steady taking over of the communal into the private. What I mean is, when you write, you'll think about who is reading; when you act, you'll wonder what it's for. You think bigger than yourself. You attach to a community, a team, a party. Your ballot resurrects and reaffirms your place as a member of society.
This past week has confirmed in me, stronger than ever, the place of imagination in every part of life and society. Without it, it means that no one has a space in which to be themselves. We become issues, and worse, language dies for us. This is the one thing I'll hold on to as I step out to vote, because it makes me calm to think that voting need not be divorced from imagination. That in spite of all the campaigning, voting is a deeply private act. In that moment I'll act as myself and not for any party or person. It's worth more than 'making it count', and imagination accompanies every X like a hope or a prayer.
...to a pair of sailor shoes. Well, Sailor Jerry shoes, anyway.
I haven't worn sneakers in years. Feeling some ballet flat fatigue, I found myself poking around the Converse store and saw these Sailor Jerry tattoo flash ones. Instant love. I mean, 'Death Before Dishonour'... don't you feel chills? The lowtops are good too, and probably a little more to my true tastes. Didn't have my size unfortunately, which is probably a good thing. My bank account doesn't feel too healthy lately.
Enjoy.
You grow two hearts all day
one to keep full
the other to stay empty
And tonight when you can't sleep
you'll clutch to your chest
one or the other
and say, this is me:
I choose the heavy - fraternity
or the hollow - free.
Well, that way
you're either sinking
or you're floating
That's what two hearts are good for,
for being in two places at once.
But you need to have just one
for walking
working
loving
and living
- properly, that is.
And you need to remember
one heart
has four chambers
connected by echoing hallways.
And you need to know
this heart is a city
in all the cities you'll ever walk in
...Yes, even this one
in which you loathe the days
that breed dualities
and love the nights
that dissolve them.
Yes in this city
I'll put the sun in one chamber
the moon in the other
rain in the third
and the last,
I'll keep for you.
In this city
I'll have only one heart.
For z.
These lines were written by someone in prison:
Part of you may live alone inside,
like a tone at the bottom of a well.
But the other part
must be so caught up
in the flurry of the world
that you shiver there inside
when outside, at forty days' distance, a leaf moves.
and so were these:
To think of roses and gardens inside is bad,
to think of seas and mountains is good.
Read and write without rest,
and I also advise weaving
and making mirrors.
Advice from someone who knew all about passing time and being locked up. I'm listening, Nazim; I'm listening, listening. And this freedom tastes sweet in my mouth - to be enjoyed now, tonight even. Free, for example, to stay one step ahead of sleep, to look out and see the moon above the roofs of houses, to add a few more words to this night before the sun comes up. Free to imagine no prisons, ever, concrete ones, yes, but especially those that aren't.
The Black Sheep (1969)
by Augusto Monterroso
(trans. from Spanish by Marion Iverson)
Many years ago in a faraway land there lived a Black Sheep.
It was shot.
A century later the sorry flock raised an equestrian statue to it, which looked very fine in the park.
So from then onward whenever a black sheep appeared it was quickly shot so that future generations of common sheep could also practice the art of sculpture.
----
Alica Keys:
don't you know that the next day is never really guaranteed?/so every time you're near me/love me like you'll never see me again.
... to the sailor shirt that got away.
On the way out with Poop for drinks, we stopped by the boutique next to our usual watering hole which sells out-of-season designer wear. The presence of sailor shirts was extraordinarily apparent. There was one by Marni - dark green-brown with three big navy buttons down the front. Lovely, but not as crazy-beautiful as this one by 3.1 Phillip Lim. The pictures don't do it justice. 100% silk and organza with completely insane transparent pouf-ey sleeves. The top yoke was a series of perfect, over-sized pin-tucks:
Here, this picture shows it better.
Just in case you don't get the obsession, here's a third, in exquisite black where you can see the back. This one is the dress version, but imagine it cut off at the waist and you have Is it or is it not the ultimate sailor shirt - to be worn only on the most special occasions, or just for yourself when you want to feel very beautiful.
How sinfully I covet this garment. At 30 percent off the off-season price, I could just afford it, and I would have done it too, if only they had had one above a size zero. If I had a flat chest it might have worked. I would not mind having no breasts, just to wear this shirt. You really had to put it on to understand. Ah, t'was not to be...
The other day I hung out with Burmese performance artist M.S. Our languages had blips and squeaks in it, but we seemed to do ok. He gave himself his name, and it means 'rain drop'. If I named myself... I'd be... Stephen.
Yes.
He was telling me about a performance art festival he was planning in Myanmar, in conjunction with Asiatopia (Thailand) and Jogja performance art festival (Indonesia). What are you naming it, I asked.
'Beyond Pressure', he said.
I was a fan then and there.
That's where I'm going, and you're coming with me - beyond pressure. Fuck everything else.
TBSSFS (Too bad.So sad.Fuck shit) I missed the screening of Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books at KLPAC last weekend.
The Tempest is without doubt my favorite Shakespeare play. My dream is to one day do the entire set, costume and art design for a production of The Tempest, to be staged by the sea. It must certainly be a sea in Asia. Oh oh I feel all warm and fuzzy just thinking about it. That will be worth living for I think. I would have to build a shipwreck, an island, and fairie costumes. The production would be focused around these colors: navy, black, white, grey and cream (which also happens to be my own wardrobe, no coincidence). That checkered cloth I saw in Bali would be the basis for the costumes. OMG Goth Tempest. The island? Utterly desolate, created from mounds of shore debris; modeled after the Galapagos of course. Maybe I will just make all this stuff anyway. Sounds like a good six-month project... incidentally, the length of time of an upcoming residency in Penang. Hmmm. It sure is a crazy idea...
UPDATE: It might just work as an installation. Maybe the script could be acted out on video, in sign language - another recent obsession. The whole 'play' would be silent. Oh...
Whenever I feel bad, I always think of Mishima:
'At no time are we ever in such complete possession of a journey, down to its last nook and cranny, as when we are busy with preparations for it.'
Did you know his favorite author was Thomas Mann? Incidentally, Thomas Mann was quite glowing about Herman Hesse's Glass Bead Game, a book I have attempted to read three times. In vain. This failure annoys me beyond anything. I tell myself I am not ready. Just as I'm not ready for Virginia Woolf, except maybe Orlando, and that because of Tilda Swinton and because Borges describes it as 'sparkling'.
Mishima. Never before and never again will there ever be words as elegantly violent. Here was someone who really understood cruelty - cruel love, cruel beauty, cruel silence; even how art can be cruel, un-redemptive. After watching the biopic Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, I was devastated for days. Even now, this pathetic hollowness I find myself in recalls the profound abyss of his work and his life - calls like a false note to his true one. He wrote so beautifully, with such feeling for the sensual world. I think at heart he was a gentle person. It might have been a different life and a different art in another time, or place. But it's lesser artists like me who ever have those kinds of thoughts - always thinking elsewhere, never looking at things where and how they are.
That's why I think about Mishima. He tempers these ridiculous vapours of mine into something sharp, like steel:
'Animals don't need knowledge or anything of the sort to make life bearable. But human beings do need something, and with knowledge they can make the very intorelableness of life a weapon, though at the same time that intorelableness is not reduced in the slightest. That's all there is to it.'
In the year one, our tutor brought us to an exhibition. I can't remember the title, but there was this phrase somewhere: 'White is the colour of pain', or maybe it was 'The colour of pain is white'. I remember the artist's name as if I was there now - Mladen Stilinovic.
It was the first exhibition where I really learned to look. I could have picked a far worse place to start. I remember his whites had hues and textures that I had never imagined. I remember the freshness of my own gaze; not knowing anything about art. I realize I'll never look at anything that way again. Knowledge, once acquired, only deepens. But I remember what it feels like. An exciting, private, almost erotic awakening... and I can picture the creamy light of the gallery on that day, years ago.
I have never been able to capture in my own work even a shade of that heightened experience. Attached to a tactile and sensual world, I still like things too pretty.
Sometimes you may have read a passage by a writer you think is excellent, and you realize that not one word or sentence in there is superfluous. The best of anything is like that - no sleight of hand.
---
I've been waiting for an image to get clearer and clearer for a show in August. It's been brewing at the back of my head. Circles, from a fixed point.
The bottom of the sea is death, the surface, life.
---
Behold the sad lil puppy
Pining away for the sea
It should have been born
With gills and flippers on
But twas not to be
-E.H.
To a new sailor shirt.
Waitaminute didn't I post something exactly like this just a couple of weeks ago? Ah well. So many sailor shirts to own and love, you know?
This one is thin cotton in light, light mint green. Beautiful pleats down the front. This shirt reminds me of my favorite ice-cream flavour. Probably something I will wear when stuck writing or making art, it's that kind of smart, quiet garment - you know, like the girl in your class who never said a word but was always reading something really interesting. Good quality stitch work all round, considering the price. I think the bottom hem is a little too long though - I might have to bring it up a couple of inches, maybe shape the corners so that they are rounded.
Betta is a happy fish. x.
drinking
bathing
smoking
waiting
working
waiting
reading
drinking
waiting
'like looking up suddenly from here
to impossible stars fading'
'and you put one word in your left shoe,
and one in your right, and you go walking'
'Things I never knew I loved'
'I never knew I liked
night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain
I don't like
comparing nightfall to a bird'
waiting
'and where you live is where you'll be buried
and when you dream it's where you were born'
'My need to transform reality was a necessity, as important as three meals a day or sleep'
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters was directed by Paul Schrader
'The trouble with Malaysia is that we don't act like we have that kind of power'
waiting
'and here I've loved rivers all the time
motionless like....' *can't remember
'and I know you can't wash in the same river even once
I know the river will bring new lights you'll never see'
'his poetry like a compass, traced circles, some intimate, some wide and global, with only the sharp point inserted in the prison cell'
'There are seven levels of despair - one for every day of the week.'
'I just remembered the stars
I love them too'
'Stack in me the unaccountable fire'
'In the city in which I love you
no one comes to meet me'
'Make my various names flock overhead
I will follow you'
'I didn't know i liked rain'...*something something...
*can't remember
I'm still waiting. Perhaps if I move around from one place to another in my house it will be better. I can take a walk around my housing estate. I can read Castle Waiting which I really seemed to like last night.
Nobody's fault.
B. loves oysters. I love B.
Sock munkey loves Oscar. Very much.
I love when photos look exactly like how you yourself are seeing double.
I love beer. Bali beer.
I love my papi.
Drugged and wrecked by flu medication, fighting a deadline, I'm sure you won't begrudge me a little gratuitous descriptive fun, dear reader. And Georges Perec would forgive me too, because he did it first (and best) of course.
First of all, the desk. It's small, but dense; very tough because it's made of teak. It comes apart in a few places to enable easier transport. I put it next to the windows in my room, so that I can look out and see the neighbours' houses opposite - a soulless view. My desk is like a little cocoon filled with all manner of ingenious nooks and crannies. I feel very at home and work very well sitting here.
I have been writing intensely for a few days so I have built up a carapace of personal debris. Useful books are scattered at my feet like silent but faithful cats - Borges' essays, one by John Berger, numerous issues of Off The Edge and a reader from a course I did years ago in university, Traces Left in Cities. Oh, and a dictionary. Countless used tissues are proof of my sickness and bloom everywhere like awful germ-infested flowers. I have just made myself a coffee in a nondescript floral mug. Some typed out poetry that Newt sent me sits just above eye level and comforts me whenever I look up. John Montague: 'I'll tell you a sore truth, little understood/It's harder to leave, than to be left: To stay, to leave, both sting wrong./You will always have me to blame, Can dream we might have sailed on; From absence's rib, a warm fiction.'
I sometimes read that last word as 'friction'.
Off to one side is my eternal nemesis, my constant weakness: cigarettes, a lighter and a used ashtray.
The white cotton blinds are down, filtering the evening sun. It's one of my particularly terrible conceits to imagine them as the sails of a ship.
When I was in Bali I bought a type of hand-woven cloth in a rustic, checkered design. It is my new love and I wrap it around me sometimes when I work. It inspires and protects. Don't you love a basic article like fabric rendered precious and personal through artisan-ship? Here is this piece of cloth, made of threads, pulled from cotton, dyed in vats, time woven into the warp and weft. Flaws reaffirm from where it came. I love to know where things come from.
I'm writing about abandoned buildings. Two interesting ideas I have from Traces Left in Cities:
One, that these spaces are the places where the city has left. They present for us not only a critique, but an alternative. (Ignasi de Sola-Morales Rubio)
Two, that we are attracted to these spaces because they preserve for us that essential aspect of cities: heterodox multiplicities. (Michel de Certeau)
And with that, I think this is a good point to get back to my work.
Isn't there some fable/myth/legend/fairy tale that silences a maiden by putting a flower in her mouth? Where did I read that...? A red rose, wasn't it? Something about a curse... all you get is flowers when you speak, or was it insects and toads... two ugly sisters... some evil gnome trapped his beard in the crack of tree...etc. Argh. I can't get a hold of it. Anyone?
Today
it's getting harder and harder
to be loved
don't you think?
On the street
in the room
we all feel new
back to not knowing anything
back to sharing your own solitude
little moments scraped together
parceled out with someone else
some for you
a little for me.
Loving
is resistance,
burning.
It's what's needed.
You do loving.
Being loved on the other hand
seems slightly ridiculous maybe?
No one deserves it
You don't do anything
You be loved.
No, it's not easy.
FURTHER FURTHER UPDATE: Yeah, I will never be one of those domestic goddesses; grace under pressure cookers. Everything is (almost) done, but there was a lot of shouting and stolen moments of solitary wine-drinking in between.
FURTHER UPDATE: Why don't. they make those. fucking curtains. the right lenght
UPDATE: Stress is when a parent is on your back about 2 tins of abalone as if it's a life or death situation
There is so much to do for Chinese New Year!New curtains!New cushions!Clean the fish tank!
Clean the back of the house!Paint the fucking gate!Change my sheets!Wash my clothes!Dust the shelves!Arrange the booze!
Make the rice paper rolls!Learn the reunion dinner recipes!Send out open house invites!Draw the map to open house!
Finish writing reviews before holiday starts!
AGHHH. I am coping by having glass of wine and illicit cigarette at 4pm. Very Bridget Jones.
John Berger once wrote to you, in his grief over losing a friend. I understand why. Now I write to you too, not in grief, but in simple loneliness. At 2am on a quiet night you speak to me. I bow my head in humility; with an exhausted, but lighter heart I go to sleep, comforted by your words.
Invitation
Nazim Hikmet (1902 - 1963)
Galloping from Far Asia and jutting out
into the Mediterranean like a mare's head
this country is ours.
Wrists in blood, teeth clenched, feet bare
and this soil spreading like a silk carpet,
this hell, this paradise is ours.
Shut the gates of plutocracy, don't let them open again,
annihilate man's servitude to man,
this invitation is ours.
To live like a tree single and at liberty
and brotherly like the trees of a forest,
this yearning is ours.
...to a new sailor shirt. Besides feeling like something to have adventures in, it's also as soft and comforting as an old pillow case. Two sizes bigger so I can slouch in it. Don't think I will be able to resist putting it on before Chinese New Year... if I don't wash it, still counts as 'new', doesn't it? >_<
UPDATE: I NEVER WANT TO TAKE THIS SHIRT OFF! >_<
I like to be aloof. Aesthetically, if you put something ugly next to something beautiful, it makes the beautiful thing appear more so. This constant interplay between ugly and beautiful creates a challenging, complex thing to look at. Lately, even when I'm alone I want to be elusive and aloof, even when there's no one looking. It must be because I'm utterly, utterly bored. Imagine, self-perpetuating versions of yourself as a diversion from this crushing, soul-defeating, consumerist life. It's so self-indulgent it's disgusting. That's why I love the sea so much, because it puts you in your place. There will never be anything more beautiful and savage and mercurial than the sea, no, least of all me. It is devastatingly humbling. The only other thing that compares is friendship, and other bonds of love. I don't mean the coy little games or stupid dependencies or associations of convenience - actual friendship, and loyalty. When I experience this (manifest as straightforwardness, kindness, regard), there is no need to constantly reinvent and maintain my pathetic individuality.
... I dreamed about you last night. It was nice. I only had a day, and I had to do all this stuff. I needed to go and get tattooed, then I had to get a haircut from Jamie at Sweet Caroline in South Yarra (let's go short-short Jamie, I'm ready! I said), and then I had to go my favorite bar to drink and meet new people. It was a great day, then I woke up.
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.
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.
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)
{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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tilda Swinton performing Cornelia Parker's The Maybe, 1995
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.
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.
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.
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)
