East Coast Afternoon

The weather’s been moody the past week with sulks and squalls every now and then, and on Saturday in the car on the way to Pasir Ris every drop of rain seemed to think it was a kamikaze pilot seeking final glorious death on the windscreen, but yesterday, yesterday it was breathtakingly sunny, and I got lured outdoors.

The Marine Parade library’s one of the best ways to enjoy a beautiful day – tall glass walls let the light in, but air-conditioning and frappucinos protect you from the heat. On a Monday afternoon you escape the Sunday crowds, but there are just enough people to give it a contented buzz, more than enough comfy chairs to go round, and no queue at the Starbuck’s. I was disciplined and kept my four book limit in mind when scouring the shelves, instead of the way I usually end up staggering around with over ten books, most of which I later have to discard sadly, and settled down happily for the next two hours or so.

Final choices: The Passion (Jeanette Winterson), The Eye In The Door (Pat Barker), and the Lonely Planet guide to Turkey. I still had Let’s Go Greece 2001 on my card from two weeks ago, so that made four.

While waiting for the bus, I took a patriotic picture – the walkway in the public housing estate was festooned with flags in preparation for National Day, which is on 9 August. Lately our public housing estates have been looking more and more like condominiums, but the old building in this one does actually correspond with more typical ideas of “public housing”.

At my bus stop I decided it was still too pretty outside to go home, and walked to Katong Shopping Centre for black economy delights. If you’re Singaporean, you’ll know what I mean by this. If you’re not, let’s just say that in certain stores here they sell lots of flat shiny things with lots of other people’s intellectual/artistic property on them for very low prices. At least, that’s what I go there to buy. I daresay the middle-aged men in certain sections of the shops trying to conceal their salivation and callused right hands were after pleasures neither intellectual nor artistic.

I took the long way home, walking along the entrance to the expressway, and was conveniently informed that when I leave here for London on August 31, it’ll only take me 9 minutes to get to the airport. I love this home, but I still can’t wait to get back to that one.

An Equal Music / Galatea 2.2

An Equal Music is worth the read if you love classical music or are a classical musician, and even more so if, like me, you just happen to be a lapsed violinist/pianist living in London with a hankering for Vienna.

Having said that, I should clarify that you may not necessarily like the book after you’ve read it. You may, for example, get completely pissed off with the “classical musician psyche”, which I identified with occasionally, but more often than not was slightly stupefied by. This is possibly one of the many reasons why I gave up classical music for debating, where people are just as dysfunctional but at least a little more rational.

One thing I did understand completely in the book was the protagonist’s devotion to his violin, not merely as an exceptionally sweetly singing member of its class of string instrument, but as a unique entity in itself – the feel of it under his chin, the bounce of light off its varnish. The smoothness of its neck under the skin of his thumb as he goes from first to fourth position. Force me to choose between slashing my arm with a knife or slashing my violin and I will unhesitatingly and willingly make myself bleed. The fact that it lies long-neglected and lonely in its case as I write this makes no difference to what I’ve just said, although it does make me feel painfully guilty.

Galatea 2.2 was fascinating, but less of an easy read. Again, it dealt with ideas I personally like reading about, so if you tend to be drawn to variations on the Pygmalion myth, artificial intelligence, academia, the passions of reading and trials of writing, then this one’s very much worth a try. I actually found it far more moving than An Equal Music, and found its characters (even the computer) decidedly more multi-faceted. Oh, I should add – apart from all the things listed above, it’s also about where life and love seep into cracks between the compartments, and why that ultimately makes it so difficult to learn the human condition without living it yourself.

Agaetis Byrjun

Agaetis Byrjun is everything I hoped it would be and more. It is gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh (brownie points for anyone who can identify the quote, which is from a book I’m rereading right now and loving even more than I ever did before). Thank you thank you thank you to Terry, who now joins Jeremy in my extremely short list of musical benefactors (people who give me albums which would be problematic or rather expensive to obtain otherwise).

Colin Lust

Colin lust has reached a dangerous high after watching Pride And Prejudice (again) over the weekend with my mother and sister, and taking my mother to see Bridget Jones’ Diary on Tuesday.

At this point I can only think of three things that reduce me to gibbering idiocy: fantastic music, Mulder & Scully love, and gorgeous men. I must say this hints at disturbing levels of residual adolescence.

In my defence, I suppose it can be said that other things merely move me differently – intense happiness, cerebral pleasures and the sight of beauty (other than gorgeous men) render me quietly blissful. This doesn’t necessarily translate into more mature behaviour, because it’s often the sort of shining-eyed don’t-speak-either-because-you-haven’t-the-words-
or-because-you’re-scared-you’ll-wake-up-from-the-
wonderful-dream joy that five-year-olds do better than anyone else, but at least it isn’t noisy.

Singapore’s Fault

Damn Singapore and its low CD prices. I’m spiralling out of control.

Tuesday:

  • Mahler’s 5th/Solti/Chicago Symphony Orchestra (S$14.90)
  • Stereo MCs: Connected (S$18.90)
  • Aimee Mann: Bachelor No. 2 (S$17.99)

Wednesday: I had a couple of hours to kill in between lunch and holiday planning with Yan Bin and dinner with Saffry, and think I actually managed remarkable restraint for such circumstances.

  • Brahms’ 4 symphonies, Tragic Overture and Variations/Sanderling/Dresden SO
    (S$21.99 for three CDs!!)
  • REM: Murmur (S$17.99. Just one of many shocking gaps in my CD collection which I’m gradually trying to fill)

Thursday: Thank God I had lindy-hopping at 7, or it might have been worse. Half an hour is all I should ever allow myself.

  • Cocteau Twins: Stars And Topsoil (S$19.90)
  • Adiemus: Best Of (S$13.90)

And it’s not over. Borders has all these at S$17.99, and I am sorely tempted:

  • Sebadoh: Harmacy, Bakesale (which one first?)
  • Red House Painters: it doesn’t have a title but the first track’s called Grace Cathedral Park
  • Fugazi: Red Medicine, End Hits, In On The Kill Taker (I don’t have any Fugazi albums, yes, more shocking gaps, I know.

Smoke And Mirrors (Neil Gaiman)

Urgh of the day, courtesy of Galatea 2.2 (Richard Powers):
“You cut up monkeys?” I whispered to Diana. “Rhesus pieces?”

The other book I finished yesterday was Smoke And Mirrors, and let me just say that if I were Neil Gaiman, no child of mine would ever be allowed to read any of my writing (except the books specifically meant for children) until they were at least 15 and I was satisfied they were emotionally stable.

He has a knack of finding the nightmare elements that lurk in everyday life (and in the wonderings of any imaginative kid lying awake in bed) and fleshing them out from fringe dwellers of reality to full-fledged, card-carrying members of the Scary Things Which Really Exist, Really community.

Perhaps I’m assuming an overly-protective parental persona here, but I still remember 15-year-old me eying clowns and dolls (except if they were Barbies, in which case I’d have fond memories of childhood haircut cum decapitation afternoons) with trepidation, and all this without watching It or Child’s Play, mind you.

But it’s not so much that I think reading Neil Gaiman would terrify a child, because that depends on the child, I guess. I think what bothers me is that the suggestion a child gets from reading Neil Gaiman is that nothing is ever quite what it seems. That there are dark undertones to everything, that bide their time and lie in wait for the unfortunate and unwary. And I think that childhood (and, perhaps, old age) are the rare times in life that you should be allowed to embrace certainties. You can always trust Mummy. Snow White was good, the mean queen was bad. Your jack-in-the-box isn’t evil.

Ironically, one of the reasons Neil Gaiman is one of my favourite writers is precisely this ability he has to subvert the order of things, to cast menacing shadows on familiar objects. And that’s why I thoroughly enjoyed Smoke And Mirrors. But I wouldn’t read those stories to a child.

I wonder what bedtime stories have been told in the Gaiman household.

Behind Scenes

I’m thinking there might have been a conversation something like this behind the scenes from Mariah Carey’s new video:

Director: Okay, Mariah, we think you’re really gonna like this one. We’re thinking this new video should break new ground, ya know, push the envelope, burst outta the box, yadda yadda buzzword.
Mariah: You want me to wear even less clothes than usual, act dumber than ever before, and generally just be the ultimate American white trash whore?
Director: Exactly. There’ll be race cars and lots of booty shakin’.
Mariah: Kewl.

Dear Mama

My mother called me yesterday during her lunch break. She’d come across a cheap CD sale and was wondering whether I wanted anything. I got her to read out CD titles, and stopped her eagerly when she read “Outkast. With a K. Stankonia. I have no idea which is the artist and which is the album.”

Just to make sure, I got her to read out track names, so my fifty-nine-year-old mother was standing in this CD store reading “I’ll Call Before I Come” and “We Luv Deez Hoez” into the phone. I don’t think she quite knew what she was saying, but I hurriedly told her it was the right CD before she got to “Gangsta Shit“.

Girlish Glee

All right, I confess. I am sometimes girly.

After watching Shakespeare In Love on HBO the other night, and talking to my sister who’d just watched Bridget Jones’ Diary, I was filled to the brim with girlish gleeeeEEEE (I can never resist Gilbert and Sullivan references because they’re always such fun) and decided I just had to see Colin Firth in proper glory (why does he keep playing fat cuckolded loser types in Fiennes brothers movies?), so I watched Pride And Prejudice, fast-forwarding through non-Colin bits, compressing five hours into two and a half, then looking desperately through the bookshelves for Pemberley, literary abomination that it is (please stop writing Jane Austen sequels, Emma Tennant, you’re just not her), just to have new Darcy scenes to imagine Colin in…