Second Link (National Library Drama Centre, 3 Sept 2005)

It isn’t too often that I unhesitatingly plonk money down for theatre in Singapore, having previously suffered the cultural equivalent of third-degree burns with godeatgod and Private Parts, but Wild Rice’s Second Link just had too much going for it for me to pass up.

Last year, a Singaporean playwright chose and arranged a selection of Singaporean literature, which was then performed in KL by a Malaysian cast working with a Malaysian director. Last week, they brought that production back to Singapore and added its logical counterpart – a performance of Malaysian writing, chosen by a Malaysian playwright, to be performed by a Singaporean cast with Singaporean director – to round up the production.

I think the conceptual appeal of this will be immediately clear to someone familiar with the historical and cultural baggage which tends to unduly define relations between Singapore and Malaysia from time to time, and I’m glad to say that the concept was satisfyingly backed up by an abundant supply of craft. The complex, capricious relationship between the two countries gave the production an interesting foundation, the selected texts breathed life and nuance into the concept, and the truly impressive performers from both countries ensured that this promising experiment became a resounding success.

What was ultimately quite intriguing was how different both halves were, something that is only partly explained by the different contexts in which they were created. (Eleanor was specifically choosing Singaporean literature as a showcase for a writing festival in Malaysia. Malaysian playwright Leow Puay Tin had no such constraints, and chose excerpts from articles, interviews, folk-tales and songs, as well as conventional poetry, plays etc.)

Eleanor’s selection and arrangement evolved thematically and had, by and large, a serious, fairly contemplative tone. Leow Puay Tin’s was subtitled “Tikam-Tikam” (definition here), the pieces to be performed were determined on the spot by audience members picking numbers, and the whole thing therefore unfolded almost randomly apart from a fixed beginning piece and end piece. In terms of direction, the Singaporean cast set a slightly more slapstick tone and milked every joke in the texts for all it was worth, whereas the Malaysian cast exaggerated things a little less. The thing is, both styles were thoroughly enjoyable in themselves, and were made even more so by the very fact of their contrast.

Well-earned diplomacy aside, I will however say that ultimately I did enjoy Tikam-Tikam (the Singaporean production of Malaysian texts) more. Superficially, I wasn’t in the most energetic of moods, so the livelier production woke me up a bit. Also, I think the strong Malay cultural presence in many of the texts (something entirely absent in the Singaporean texts) just made them feel relatively more exotic to someone like me who doesn’t find being part of Singapore’s majority Chinese race very interesting.

In an excerpt from the autobiography of Abdullah bin Kadir, Sir Stamford Raffles’ translator, Jonathan Lim was a scream as Raffles speaking fluent but totally British-accented Malay. Mark Teh’s Daulat: Long Live was performed in the style of a delegation paying tribute to a sultan, but contained bitingly satirical content aimed at Mahathir and Lee Kuan Yew alike. For Lee Kok Liang’s Flowers in the Sky, where the poet finds inspiration for his Buddhist meditations as he hears the call of the muezzin from a nearby mosque, Gani Karim intoned that beautiful call to prayer as Jonathan Lim recited the poem. In Singapore, the call doesn’t go out directly from every mosque any more, they just play it on the relevant media channels. I was reminded, watching this, that I haven’t heard it since I was in Turkey, where hearing the call at dusk while the Blue Mosque was wreathed in sunset remains one of my most spellbinding travel memories.

Add to all this the personal ties that enriched my appreciation of the experience – curator of the Singaporean texts was Eleanor Wong (the best coach I have ever had), original director of the KL premiere was the late Dr Krishen Jit, for whom I bought lots of coffee, called lots of cabs, and generally did a lot of running around for when he came to conduct drama workshops at the CAP and have fond memories of – and the presence of sexy charismatic bald men on either side of the interval (Edwin Sumun from Malaysia, Lim Yu Beng from Singapore) and you have the best theatrical experience I’ve had since For The Pleasure Of Seeing Her Again. This production really, really needs to be given a more extended run, because three performances just don’t do its achievement justice.

The Observatory – Blank Walls Launch (Esplanade Recital Studio, 2 Sept 2005)

When I returned to Singapore from London in 2003, I was so depressed that I lost all my “overseas excess” weight effortlessly within a few months. During these, probably some of the worst months of my life, one particular night still stands out as atypical – it was the night I visited the Esplanade for the first time, fell in love with the place, and realized that there was indeed something Singapore could offer me that England couldn’t. (Granted, it’s now two years later and I can’t actually say I’ve discovered a second thing, but let’s not go into that.)

The visit in question was to see Kreidler in the Recital Studio. A local band opened for them. I had no idea who they were, or what people thought of them. I just listened. And was blown away.

That local band was The Observatory, and what an introduction they were to a scene I knew nothing about. I don’t know how long they’d been together at that point or how many gigs they’d done before that one, but I think they were fairly newly formed and don’t think their first album had been released yet. I found out in time to come that they were, well, pretty famous.

Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps portentously, since that night the band (and the Esplanade) seem to have been present at a number of the rare moments in my life here where I am actually content to live in the moment, in Singapore. So due to that almost overdramatically sentimental part of my psyche which assigns symbolic meaning to certain experiences of mine, they have become rather special to me for reasons which go far beyond the music they play.

This is why I was very happy to attend Friday’s launch gig on Friday for their second album, back in the Recital Studio where I suppose you could say it all started for me.

I’d heard many of the songs already at previous gigs, but almost all stood up strongly to repeated listening. My Whole Life is probably my favourite album track, though I tend to prefer Sea Of Doubts live.

The only two I wasn’t keen on were Finch, which I have heard multiple times live and have hated every time, and Olives, which I’m undecided about. It’s odd, I really should like Olives a lot more than I do because it sounds so Sonic Youthy, but it’s just never worked for me the three times I’ve heard it live. I feel stupid saying this, but Leslie Low’s voice is almost too nice for the song’s discordant guitars, and it ends up detracting from them for me. It sounds a little better on the album, maybe because his voice is louder in the mix there, but I’m still not fond of it. Having said that, I do think it took balls to pick one of the most challenging songs on the album as first single, and I do actually hope it does well. Maybe it’ll grow on me.

WOMAD 2005 / Blur About Bluegrass

At WOMAD last Saturday night, Asere’s Cuban rhythms proved too much for my cheapo OG shoes after one too many salsas with Kris (who is such a great lead that he can even make salsa-hata me enjoy it) and I later managed to spill a full cup of someone else’s abandoned JD and Coke completely down the front of my trousers, but really, a little sartorial despair was a small price to pay for the sheer nostalgia cheese joy of winding my ba-dee and wree-ggling my bel-ly to APACHE INDIAN.

It crossed my mind at some point during the night that although I’ve gone to 4 world music festivals by now (3 WOMADs, 1 awesome awesome RWMF) I’ve still not managed to see any live bluegrass, which is a big pity given that it’s one of my favourite types of world music. It’s a combination of missing whatever opportunities have arisen (I had to miss Foghorn String Band at RWMF because they played on the only night we weren’t attending), and there not being many opportunities arising in the first place. The festivals I’ve been to seem to feature South American music much more prominently than North American music, and bluegrass acts don’t seem to tour Asia on their own either, though given the popularity of country and western line-dancing here I’d think there might be a fairly receptive market.

I don’t actually know where I’m going with this, I’m just thinking out loud. If anyone out there can tell me anything about the bluegrass scene in Singapore (if there is one at all), please feel free!

Do Yourself In (The Arts House)

It’s a pity last Friday’s DYI was only a one-off event, because it had a great vibe to it that I wish I could experience again.

I’ve danced to a fair amount of drum’n’bass in my life, but till last Friday I’d certainly never danced to drum’n’bass on rich brown wooden floors in a building which used to be a Parliament. It’s a little hard to describe the small beautiful stage they had in that bar, and which the DJs played from that night, because I was generally so tripped out from the experience (and the heat) that I didn’t scrutinize it carefully enough. I think it had a sloping, almost mini-cathedralesque, wood-carved ceiling.

The music in the other room downstairs was less to my taste, though I did embarrass myself slightly by throwing a fit when they suddenly played Galang and exuberantly bounding to the DJs to say hello!! oh man I’ve loved this song for the past one and a half years but never heard it played in Singapore till now so thanks for playing it!!

How will I ever become a genuine hipster if I can’t even perfect the art of detached world-weary ennui?

I Not Kelong

Okay, just in case people are getting bored with my incessant yawping about how much I love London blah blah blah, I’ll mix things up a little with some local flava. The depression I always get upon returning to Singapore has rendered me boring and mopey for most of the time I’ve been back, but I did manage to drag myself out of my shell of self-pity enough to have some fun. In an attempt to be fair to Singapore, the next few posts will reflect that.

What Not To Read While Backpacking In Norway

Jacob goes on holiday, I lend him Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides’ light-hearted but well-written romp about a Greek-American hermaphrodite. I go on holiday, Jacob lends me Hunger, Knut Hamsun’s harrowing odyssey of physical starvation, moral degradation and mental disintegration.

Add to these contrasts the fact that Hunger is about slowly starving to death in Norway, and the fact that my holiday involved backpacking in Norway on a budget which, given that a Burger King meal cost 69 NOK (£5.94!/S$17.94!!), was necessarily shoestring, and I’m beginning to think Jacob doesn’t like me much.

But I forgive him. This would have been an impressive book even if written in 1990; when you realize it was written a century before that, before the works of Camus, Kafka and Hesse, the mind does rather boggle. And although I am, of course, dependent on reading all of them in translation, I must also mention that I found Hunger far more engaging than anything I have read by those authors. Don’t be put off by the clichéd idea of the starving artist that forms the basis of the plot – actually reading the book will remind you that things only become clichés when permitted to replace more original expression.

However, for your own wellbeing, I’d recommend only reading this after a full meal, or at least with snacks readily within your reach. Marshmallows. Marshmallows are good.

London 2005: City Walking, Earth From The Air, Fruitstock

Day Three: Saturday 6 August

While making breakfast I put on XFM and recoil at a sound so stomach-turning it can only be Coldplay’s new single. The lights may guide me home, Chris, but will they guide me to the pukebucket? I overcome this bad start by fleeing to Radio One, which is playing the far superior sounds of Atomic Kitten. Feeling whole again, I head out for the day.

I walk for the next 5 hours. This is the way I have always loved exploring London, not in walks from the nearest tube station to a desired destination, but in walks which span several tube stations in total, and enter none.

Temple, Blackfriars, Monument. The City is deserted and beautiful on a Saturday. I remember other Saturdays spent walking here. A nine-hour ramble with Russ, starting with lunch at Brick Lane, and walking through the City, along the Thames, through the Strand, to Chinatown for dinner at 10.30, and finally home to Fitzrovia. An hour with Alec in torrential rain when the skies opened as we walked to Borough Market. Newly and giddily in love, we were too stubborn to let the weather spoil our plans for the day.


The international financial centre’s just round the corner.

St Dunstan’s In The East is a stone’s throw from where Alec used to work. Wren did this one too, but unlike St Paul’s it sustained severe damage during the war and only the walls remained. Since then the tower has been restored, and climbing plants tumble over and through the walls encircling this tiny, wonderful park. One of my favourite places in London, and the world.

 

WWII Poster
Gotta love the Hitler saucepan.

I skip St Paul’s, the Millennium Bridge and Tate Modern because they’re the bits I know best, and explore the bits I don’t know. This poster outside the Britain At War museum endears me immensely.

 

I snap little things that catch my eye without being able to figure out why they do.


Hobo wuz here.

Beer cans on a bench, sickly and incongruous in Saturday morning sun.

 


Miffy?

A lighting fixture on a wall makes me think of bunnies.

 


Map between your toes.

Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s Earth From The Air photographs are on exhibition between London Bridge and Tower Bridge, accompanied by this huge map of the world for people to wander on.

 


Swimming to Mexico!

Kids have lots of fun with the map too.

 


Sleepy in Asia.

Though it gets a little tiring for some.

 


Rhapsody in blue.

One of the photographs against the glass facade of the building behind it.

 


Catch me if you can!

Children playing outside the Greater London Authority building. It’s a good day for someone who likes photographing kids and reflections of sky.

 

People lolling next to a large Working Environment sign
Lazy sunny Saturday environment.

It is at this point that I decide it’s time to get myself to Regent’s Park so I can do exactly the same thing as the people on the bench, except on grass, and with music, and smoothies, and thousands of other happy people.

 

The banner above the stage reads Hello Everyone
The main stage.

Welcome to Fruitstock, a master-stroke of marketing from the people at the Innocent smoothies company. London gets a free music festival, various worthy causes get to promote themselves to the thousands of people who come, and Innocent sell loads of smoothies (and give loads of free samples away too).

 


John squinting in the sun.

John has come from Cambridge just to meet me. Russ and Dave are here too, with lots of food. Soon after we settle down, Matt comes over and says hello. I find myself surrounded by friends on a beautiful Saturday afternoon at a free festival in the park. It doesn’t get much better than this.

 

Signposts at Fruitstock 2005
The festival with everything.

I’d have taken the picture from the left side instead, but I didn’t want someone to jump on my back and shout giddy-up. Not that such a mistake would have been likely, given my height.

 

Fruitstock moments which quite possibly amuse only me:

  • John comes back empty-handed after going off in search of a smoothie. “You didn’t get a smoothie?” I inquire. “No, it was crowded and I couldn’t be arsed.” And joyfully, I crow, “Then it was a fruitless expedition!” As everyone else collapses onto the grass in agony, I sense John beginning to wonder if that train fare from Cambridge was well spent.

  • Wandering around with John, we come across a booth promoting the “eglu” – a self-contained contraption you can put in your garden and rear chickens in. “Looks a bit cramped to spend their life in,” I remark. “These ones look quite happy though,” John observes. I am derisive – “Well of course they’re happy today, they’ve been taken to a nice festival innit?” John just looks at me.

When Nitin Sawhney’s beginning to get a bit boring, we decide dinner is beckoning, and that Chalk Farm will probably have better food options than the Great Portland Street dead zone. We are not drawn to The Engineer, a packed noisy gastropub, La Superba, which looks mediocre, or a pub serving Thai food. (Well actually, I veto that because I refuse to pay London prices for Thai food when I’m on such a short holiday.) Things are looking despondent before we see what looks like a normal pub in the distance, and our spirits lift. Upon arrival I realize it’s the pub where Alec, Matt and me once spent a very happy Sunday afternoon with jazz and pork scratchings. Things just go right for me in London, somehow. The day ends with huge lamb and mint burgers, and pints of Staropramen.

Girder (Nan Cohen)

From Girder, by Nan Cohen:

“I am a figure in a logic problem,
standing on one shore

with the things I cannot leave,
looking across at what I cannot have.”

Just A Minute From My Last Day

I did want to keep the travel entries going chronologically, but as Russ was driving me to the airport on my last day, we listened to Just A Minute in the car.

And if I wait till the last day’s journal entry to write about that, you’ll all miss the opportunity to hear Paul Merton talk on Sudoku for 59 seconds without the slightest idea what it is. Get there before a new show replaces it on Monday night!

Fuzzy Logic

While chatting with my mum on what she got up to while I was away:

My mum: Daddy and me went to Chinatown for the first time.
Me: That’s nice, did you have fun?
My mum: Yes! I bought Alec some cute cat coasters for his new balcony table.
Me: MUM!!??! He’s a guy! And he doesn’t have or want a cat!
My mum: That’s exactly why he needs cat coasters.
Me: ……