Betta Under The Radar
A broken on-line papier machine
Sunday, January 29, 2006
On the other side of goodbye
Someone left yesterday leaving me on the other side of goodbye. How strange it feels not to be the one who leaves. The trip to the airport, having a last coffee, all feels like an elaborate stage game - later we will go home and laugh about it. But at the gate when they go, what a surprizing wave of desolation, real and physical. Then back to the car, drive back to a city that hasn't changed, alongside an evening sky that renders all doubts into startling clarity, and the whole of it belonging entirely to myself, but only for the duration of a lit match. "And then you miss a person so much". The city mocks you by staying the same - always slightly out of reach - though it knows things are different, because she's no longer here.
Labels: friends
¶ 2:40 PM 0 comments
Friday, January 27, 2006
The Chance to Go To Sea
Someone tell me that this is a bad idea?
http://www.globalcrewnetwork.com/ ¶ 4:47 PM 3 comments
http://www.globalcrewnetwork.com/ ¶ 4:47 PM 3 comments
Leaving your comments
Following some complaints that people have not been able to comment on the blog unless they are a member, I have changed my settings so now you may shower me with your love, or flame me to your hearts' content.
Would someone please test this out by posting answers to the following mini-trivia questions:
1. Please invent a name for 2 fictional animals (in pseudo-latin for you hard-cores), followed by a brief description of said animal, OR
2. Answer this question with 'yaye' or 'neigh':
Q: As a loyal and supportive friend, would you hide a body for me?
(Only honest answers, please)
Thank you very much.
Betta. ¶ 1:30 PM 3 comments
Would someone please test this out by posting answers to the following mini-trivia questions:
1. Please invent a name for 2 fictional animals (in pseudo-latin for you hard-cores), followed by a brief description of said animal, OR
2. Answer this question with 'yaye' or 'neigh':
Q: As a loyal and supportive friend, would you hide a body for me?
(Only honest answers, please)
Thank you very much.
Betta. ¶ 1:30 PM 3 comments
How To Be a Visual Artist in Malaysia
*Remember: If you're not an artist in Kuala Lumpur, you don't count. (If you're an artist in Perak, you count a little)
1. Go to art school. Have as much fun as you can. It's all downhill from there.
2. Learn not to believe people who are optimistic about your financial future. Yes, it is as bleak as you suspect.
3. Get used to the idea of working a shitty part-time job for 5 ringgit an hour to finance your passion. Yes, for the rest of your life. Or until you 'make it'. (Haha)
4. Have you always relied on your parents for food, clothing and occasional bail-outs? Well at least some things'll never change.
5. Smile as your successful friends buy a new car/get married/talk about clothes sales. Remember these are the people you can borrow money from.
6. Did you borrow money from friends? You can lessen the humiliation by joking hollowly about it being a future investment. They can feel a sense of fulfillment by having had a hand in your 'making it'.
7. Depression is your friend.
8. Alcohol is your friend.
9. It is not morally wrong to wish for a rich boy/girlfriend, leech off them for the duration of your ill-fated relationship and then deride them for not being 'deep' enough.
10. Please, for the sake of your sanity, rid yourself of the illusion that being an artist will get you laid. That only happens to architects. Sucks to be you. Wrong career choice.
11. Get to know mamak food really well. You will find yourself eating it on a regular basis. In time, you will be able to identify items on the menu of maximum nutritional value and minimum cost.
12. If you want to 'make it', you should do at least one artwork about race relations in Malaysia. Be sure to offend every religious and ethnic group with well-worn stereotypes and mask your deep ignorance of current affairs with a Baudrillardian sense of irony and futility.
13. Always avoid talking to Dr. Jolly Koh, unless you're bored. If you are an installation artist, prepare to be told you are worthless.
14. Posture arrogantly in a 'ram-you-damn-you-capitalist pigs' way in your art, but suck-up to collectors in real life.
15. Indulge in vehement, unfocused bitching about Valentine Willie Fine Art, but still sell your work there for RM 10,000.
16. If your work is censored or you are detained under ISA, you are god.
17. You will be asked 'what do you do' with annoying frequency. It is not morally wrong to lie and say 'I work for my father'. You could also say 'I'm an artist' and then laugh hysterically.
18. Dream about leaving this god-forsaken rock. It is the one thing that will keep you going. Once you are happily installed in another country, you can love it from a distance and make work about your cross-cultural experience.
19. White people still hold the key to your successful career as an artist.
20. Collaboration is the new Hirst. Jalaini Abu Hassan is the new Syed Ahmad Jamal. Wong Hoy Cheong is the new Wong Hoy Cheong. Kakiseni is the new Balai Seni Lukis. Commenting on Kakiseni is the new Free Speech. Off the Edge is the new Kakiseni. Iraq is the new America. The local police force is the new George Bush. Thank god for ISA as a constant source of 100 percent genuine angst.
21. Money is your enemy. You will fight it the rest of your life. Or until you 'make it'. (Haha) You're not addicted to drugs, you're just self-medicating. You want to have children? What the fuck is wrong with you?
NEXT SOON (OR NEVER): THE TYPES OF ARTISTS
1. Go to art school. Have as much fun as you can. It's all downhill from there.
2. Learn not to believe people who are optimistic about your financial future. Yes, it is as bleak as you suspect.
3. Get used to the idea of working a shitty part-time job for 5 ringgit an hour to finance your passion. Yes, for the rest of your life. Or until you 'make it'. (Haha)
4. Have you always relied on your parents for food, clothing and occasional bail-outs? Well at least some things'll never change.
5. Smile as your successful friends buy a new car/get married/talk about clothes sales. Remember these are the people you can borrow money from.
6. Did you borrow money from friends? You can lessen the humiliation by joking hollowly about it being a future investment. They can feel a sense of fulfillment by having had a hand in your 'making it'.
7. Depression is your friend.
8. Alcohol is your friend.
9. It is not morally wrong to wish for a rich boy/girlfriend, leech off them for the duration of your ill-fated relationship and then deride them for not being 'deep' enough.
10. Please, for the sake of your sanity, rid yourself of the illusion that being an artist will get you laid. That only happens to architects. Sucks to be you. Wrong career choice.
11. Get to know mamak food really well. You will find yourself eating it on a regular basis. In time, you will be able to identify items on the menu of maximum nutritional value and minimum cost.
12. If you want to 'make it', you should do at least one artwork about race relations in Malaysia. Be sure to offend every religious and ethnic group with well-worn stereotypes and mask your deep ignorance of current affairs with a Baudrillardian sense of irony and futility.
13. Always avoid talking to Dr. Jolly Koh, unless you're bored. If you are an installation artist, prepare to be told you are worthless.
14. Posture arrogantly in a 'ram-you-damn-you-capitalist pigs' way in your art, but suck-up to collectors in real life.
15. Indulge in vehement, unfocused bitching about Valentine Willie Fine Art, but still sell your work there for RM 10,000.
16. If your work is censored or you are detained under ISA, you are god.
17. You will be asked 'what do you do' with annoying frequency. It is not morally wrong to lie and say 'I work for my father'. You could also say 'I'm an artist' and then laugh hysterically.
18. Dream about leaving this god-forsaken rock. It is the one thing that will keep you going. Once you are happily installed in another country, you can love it from a distance and make work about your cross-cultural experience.
19. White people still hold the key to your successful career as an artist.
20. Collaboration is the new Hirst. Jalaini Abu Hassan is the new Syed Ahmad Jamal. Wong Hoy Cheong is the new Wong Hoy Cheong. Kakiseni is the new Balai Seni Lukis. Commenting on Kakiseni is the new Free Speech. Off the Edge is the new Kakiseni. Iraq is the new America. The local police force is the new George Bush. Thank god for ISA as a constant source of 100 percent genuine angst.
21. Money is your enemy. You will fight it the rest of your life. Or until you 'make it'. (Haha) You're not addicted to drugs, you're just self-medicating. You want to have children? What the fuck is wrong with you?
NEXT SOON (OR NEVER): THE TYPES OF ARTISTS
Labels: art
¶ 10:24 AM 5 comments
Monday, January 16, 2006
The Fourth World
And I looked upon the true sea - the sea that plays with men till their hearts are broken, and wears stout ships to death.
Joseph Conrad
When the Ice Age ended, the ocean levels rose and the lower ground became ocean floor again, submerging any record of the pioneers' coastal civilizations. The land bridges disappeared under higher seas, and the people who had ventured to Australia and Tasmania each evolved independently, cut off from contact with the rest of the world until modern times.
Thomas Suarez, Early Mapping of the Pacific (2004)
If a person asked my advice, before undertaking a long voyage, my answer would depend upon his possessing a decided taste for some branch of knowledge, which could by this means be advanced. No doubt it is a high satisfaction to behold various countries and the many races of mankind, but the pleasures gained at the time do not counterbalance the evils. It is necessary to look forward to a harvest, however distant that may be, when some fruit will be reaped, some good effected. Many of the losses which must be experienced are obvious; such as that of the society of every old friend, and of the sight of those places with which every dearest remembrance is so intimately connected. These losses, however, are at the time partly relieved by the exhaustless delight of anticipating the long wished-for day of return...
Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle (1839)
___________________________
Working Title
"Fourth World"
The Site
The Australian High Commission sits in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, on a street opposite the Twin Towers. My first memory of the place was when I applied for a visa to study in Melbourne. One is admitted through two glass sliding doors and then greeted by a wide concourse area. You go upstairs where your application will be processed and if all goes well (it usually does) a sticker is put in your passport. For this reason I have always thought of the High Commission as a sort of portal to another life in another place. The very beginning of a journey with an inconceivable outcome.
Now, about four years later, I am back living and working in Kuala Lumpur. The journey is over, and I am to create a piece of work in the very place I started from! It has not altered in appearance, but I am wholly changed. The ticket of that outward journey has led me back to where it was first issued to me.
Proposed Work
The work I propose for this exhibition is a large-scale installation taking up much of the right side (from the direction walking in the entrance) of the High Commission. It will consist of near full-size representations of a suite of sails from a square-rigged sailing ship. These sails are not to be made from the usual canvas, but from heavy green netting - the type that is used in scaffolding, that you may see shrouding any number of half-built high-rises around town. The sails are hung from the ceiling and weighted down by clear little bags filled with raw concrete. They face the floor-to-ceiling glass wall that makes up one side of the space. The audience walks amongst the sails, and if they look up they will see layer upon layer of green, much as if they were upon the deck of a ship.
Just beyond the aforementioned glass wall is a narrow space about 1.5m wide that separates the interior of the High Commission from the outer wall of the building. To me, this is the most poignant of in-between spaces, caught between the outside and the inside, perfectly in limbo. I propose that its floor should be filled with sailing ships, cast in concrete from small-scale models. Like ghosts or dreams these small ships are caught within the space, within view but separated from the interior of the High Commission and from the audience.
Conceptual Scope
To my mind, a ship is like a tiny country floating on a vast expanse of ocean. It always departs from and arrives at a specific place, but in the course of the journey it belongs wholly to itself. I offer these ships not as a nostalgic recalling of the romance of an age long past, but as a way to rethink how we might define ourselves should we find ourselves afloat, away from the familiar territory of bordered lands, our laptops and luxury cars. What positions would we find, what hopes would we cling to for the unseen shore, and what would compel us to cast ourselves adrift upon an unknown and vicious sea?
Although we have a clear idea of what defines the first, second and third world (having indeed pinned these down on a map), the term 'fourth world' is still vague. Perhaps we might think of the fourth world as the condition of being afloat, of not belonging to any particular territory. Rather than a world defined by the concreteness of land, it would be a world defined by the uncertainty of the ocean. For a long time the sea has retreated from our consciousness. Yet we continue to speak of things in terms of flows and floods - the increased flow of information and the overwhelming flood of people. As it rises steadily from year to year, it would seem that the physical sea is in accordance with our theories and practices of globalization. It might not be long before the sea returns once more to the forefront of our day-to-day reality.
Yet quite apart from a physical state, 'the fourth world' could also be an internal world of thoughts and emotions. With this in mind, I have made my sails from green netting, and they can never catch any wind. Rather they serve as filters, or sieves if you like, that facilitate the flow of intangible things - ideas, dreams, humanity, languages - many of which flow back and forth through a diplomatic place like the High Commission. This work is much to do about the movement of these intangible elements, and how a great journey of the imagination may be evoked even with very real and concrete construction materials. However land-bound and enclosed one may be, movement and transformation occurs as long as the mind is free.
Joseph Conrad
When the Ice Age ended, the ocean levels rose and the lower ground became ocean floor again, submerging any record of the pioneers' coastal civilizations. The land bridges disappeared under higher seas, and the people who had ventured to Australia and Tasmania each evolved independently, cut off from contact with the rest of the world until modern times.
Thomas Suarez, Early Mapping of the Pacific (2004)
If a person asked my advice, before undertaking a long voyage, my answer would depend upon his possessing a decided taste for some branch of knowledge, which could by this means be advanced. No doubt it is a high satisfaction to behold various countries and the many races of mankind, but the pleasures gained at the time do not counterbalance the evils. It is necessary to look forward to a harvest, however distant that may be, when some fruit will be reaped, some good effected. Many of the losses which must be experienced are obvious; such as that of the society of every old friend, and of the sight of those places with which every dearest remembrance is so intimately connected. These losses, however, are at the time partly relieved by the exhaustless delight of anticipating the long wished-for day of return...
Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle (1839)
___________________________
Working Title
"Fourth World"
The Site
The Australian High Commission sits in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, on a street opposite the Twin Towers. My first memory of the place was when I applied for a visa to study in Melbourne. One is admitted through two glass sliding doors and then greeted by a wide concourse area. You go upstairs where your application will be processed and if all goes well (it usually does) a sticker is put in your passport. For this reason I have always thought of the High Commission as a sort of portal to another life in another place. The very beginning of a journey with an inconceivable outcome.
Now, about four years later, I am back living and working in Kuala Lumpur. The journey is over, and I am to create a piece of work in the very place I started from! It has not altered in appearance, but I am wholly changed. The ticket of that outward journey has led me back to where it was first issued to me.
Proposed Work
The work I propose for this exhibition is a large-scale installation taking up much of the right side (from the direction walking in the entrance) of the High Commission. It will consist of near full-size representations of a suite of sails from a square-rigged sailing ship. These sails are not to be made from the usual canvas, but from heavy green netting - the type that is used in scaffolding, that you may see shrouding any number of half-built high-rises around town. The sails are hung from the ceiling and weighted down by clear little bags filled with raw concrete. They face the floor-to-ceiling glass wall that makes up one side of the space. The audience walks amongst the sails, and if they look up they will see layer upon layer of green, much as if they were upon the deck of a ship.
Just beyond the aforementioned glass wall is a narrow space about 1.5m wide that separates the interior of the High Commission from the outer wall of the building. To me, this is the most poignant of in-between spaces, caught between the outside and the inside, perfectly in limbo. I propose that its floor should be filled with sailing ships, cast in concrete from small-scale models. Like ghosts or dreams these small ships are caught within the space, within view but separated from the interior of the High Commission and from the audience.
Conceptual Scope
To my mind, a ship is like a tiny country floating on a vast expanse of ocean. It always departs from and arrives at a specific place, but in the course of the journey it belongs wholly to itself. I offer these ships not as a nostalgic recalling of the romance of an age long past, but as a way to rethink how we might define ourselves should we find ourselves afloat, away from the familiar territory of bordered lands, our laptops and luxury cars. What positions would we find, what hopes would we cling to for the unseen shore, and what would compel us to cast ourselves adrift upon an unknown and vicious sea?
Although we have a clear idea of what defines the first, second and third world (having indeed pinned these down on a map), the term 'fourth world' is still vague. Perhaps we might think of the fourth world as the condition of being afloat, of not belonging to any particular territory. Rather than a world defined by the concreteness of land, it would be a world defined by the uncertainty of the ocean. For a long time the sea has retreated from our consciousness. Yet we continue to speak of things in terms of flows and floods - the increased flow of information and the overwhelming flood of people. As it rises steadily from year to year, it would seem that the physical sea is in accordance with our theories and practices of globalization. It might not be long before the sea returns once more to the forefront of our day-to-day reality.
Yet quite apart from a physical state, 'the fourth world' could also be an internal world of thoughts and emotions. With this in mind, I have made my sails from green netting, and they can never catch any wind. Rather they serve as filters, or sieves if you like, that facilitate the flow of intangible things - ideas, dreams, humanity, languages - many of which flow back and forth through a diplomatic place like the High Commission. This work is much to do about the movement of these intangible elements, and how a great journey of the imagination may be evoked even with very real and concrete construction materials. However land-bound and enclosed one may be, movement and transformation occurs as long as the mind is free.
Labels: art
¶ 9:31 PM 0 comments
Sunday, January 15, 2006
Old Faithful
I ask you a question. Does a pint of guinness (thanks, L.) in one hand and a super-strength cigarette (thanks, P.) in the other necessarily make for better writing? Well we are going to find out.
I sit down to write the proposal for the upcoming exhibition. Actually I am not looking for better writing so much as easier writing. It is well and good to write for other people, that comes out as smooth as double churned butter, or the chee cheong fun at Chow Kit wet market. When it comes to my own work, it is agony. This is the hardest part of all. You see, between you and me, I have no idea whatsoever what I am about for this exhibition. I have half-baked notions of ships, scaffolding, seas, sail building and muddling up a world map, but that is it. The problem is sounding like I know exactly what I am doing.
So this stage always requires a helping hand. If I wasn't such a control freak I'd hire a ghost writer, but things being as they are, the guinness will have to do. As I take joy in pointing out, guinness is practically a meal in itself. Bonus - no need to scavenge for food. In fact, I feel it taking effect now. So see y'all later. ¶ 3:04 PM 0 comments
I sit down to write the proposal for the upcoming exhibition. Actually I am not looking for better writing so much as easier writing. It is well and good to write for other people, that comes out as smooth as double churned butter, or the chee cheong fun at Chow Kit wet market. When it comes to my own work, it is agony. This is the hardest part of all. You see, between you and me, I have no idea whatsoever what I am about for this exhibition. I have half-baked notions of ships, scaffolding, seas, sail building and muddling up a world map, but that is it. The problem is sounding like I know exactly what I am doing.
So this stage always requires a helping hand. If I wasn't such a control freak I'd hire a ghost writer, but things being as they are, the guinness will have to do. As I take joy in pointing out, guinness is practically a meal in itself. Bonus - no need to scavenge for food. In fact, I feel it taking effect now. So see y'all later. ¶ 3:04 PM 0 comments
Monday, January 09, 2006
FAILURE
I am making a piece of artwork and I have misjudged every single step of the way. It is a resounding failure and I am completely disgusted. It is also a very expensive failure, having bought a fair amount of fine wool jersey imported from Japan.
I have yet to swear on the blog, but I will do it now:
FUCK.
I have yet to swear on the blog, but I will do it now:
FUCK.
Labels: art
¶ 11:21 PM 0 comments
Saturday, January 07, 2006
Things You'll Do Just Because You're Bored
Strike up a dictionary
Blank out all the words of pain
Find out all the spaces
In between the rain
Start out racing
With an unsuitable man
Go home broken
Just because you can
Take up smoking
Again for the third time
And quit again forever
When you're feeling fine
Never lasting longer
Than the word forever
Leaving your mouth
And the way it lingers
Learn a world map
All the seas between
Dream up the unknown
Though its all been seen
Then throw away the keys
And take the longest way
Drink away the night
And sleep away the day
Court the highest payer
Then spit on their reward
All these things you'll do
Just because you're bored.
Dedicated to E.H.
Blank out all the words of pain
Find out all the spaces
In between the rain
Start out racing
With an unsuitable man
Go home broken
Just because you can
Take up smoking
Again for the third time
And quit again forever
When you're feeling fine
Never lasting longer
Than the word forever
Leaving your mouth
And the way it lingers
Learn a world map
All the seas between
Dream up the unknown
Though its all been seen
Then throw away the keys
And take the longest way
Drink away the night
And sleep away the day
Court the highest payer
Then spit on their reward
All these things you'll do
Just because you're bored.
Dedicated to E.H.
Labels: B.A.P.
¶ 12:42 AM 0 comments
Friday, January 06, 2006
Bounty
In preparation for an exhibition, a number of books and perhaps an artist or two will haunt my studio. It used to be quite easy locating these sources - all it meant was a pleasurable foray in the city or university library, lugging home the selection like a pirate with treasure. These days however, I hang out at MPH or Borders, taking notes discretely or reading as attentively as I can if I don't have pen and paper. (Staff at MPH will stop you if they see you copying anything out of their books. Besides, half of them are wrapped in plastic). In a very rare instance, after much hand wringing and consideration, I will buy a book that I feel is absolutely necessary.
Where I once had a sea of words, now I have trickle.
Which is not necessarily an entirely bad thing. It forces you to be more ingenious, far more focused, much more creative with filling the gaps in information. And it also gets rid of the danger of over-reading, which in my mind, is the first step towards artist's block, as you become enamored of other people's ideas, and forget your own.
Once in awhile, you will have some serendipitous meeting with a piece of work, like an obscure illegal DVD or a loan from a friend's book collection. People also give me books and burned music, which sometimes hits the mark, and sometimes misses it totally. Today I stumbled across a good, stout little second-hand book store called Payless Books, on the 1st Floor of Amcorp Mall.
(The dog is in her corner and having a dream. She twitches and bares her teeth at some internal threat)
So this bookstore. Clean, well-organized, a reasonably good range of books and honestly cheap. I would say some serendipity is involved here, because I walked in and at once found what I believe will be all the books I need for my upcoming exhibition. The list is:
Longitude : The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, by Dava Sobel
The Voyage of the Narwhal, by Andrea Barret
Post-Captain, by Patrick O'Brian
and Issue 61 of GRANTA (a literary journal published 4 times a year). Guess the theme. Yup, The Sea.
Total cost: RM 50
Together with a very expensive (the pocket has yet to recover from the shocking blow), but truly beautiful book that I bought - Early Mapping of the Pacific, by Thomas Suarez and Paul Auster's Collected Prose (also Annie Proulx's The Shipping News - a gift from P.), I feel perfectly well-equipped with words and ideas. These things are like my armor. Without them I would find it difficult, almost impossible to create anything. With them I enter into a battle with myself, the surviving bits of which will result in an exhibition of all-new work come April. Touch wood, touch wood, touch wood.
(By the way, did you know that 'touch wood' is a phrase with naval origins? It's because the ships were made of wood, see? Sailors would say something to the effect of 'Looks like clear weather' and then thump the wood under them, which of course was their ship, the one true thing they could rely on. Sorry, couldn't resist.) ¶ 1:09 AM 0 comments
Where I once had a sea of words, now I have trickle.
Which is not necessarily an entirely bad thing. It forces you to be more ingenious, far more focused, much more creative with filling the gaps in information. And it also gets rid of the danger of over-reading, which in my mind, is the first step towards artist's block, as you become enamored of other people's ideas, and forget your own.
Once in awhile, you will have some serendipitous meeting with a piece of work, like an obscure illegal DVD or a loan from a friend's book collection. People also give me books and burned music, which sometimes hits the mark, and sometimes misses it totally. Today I stumbled across a good, stout little second-hand book store called Payless Books, on the 1st Floor of Amcorp Mall.
(The dog is in her corner and having a dream. She twitches and bares her teeth at some internal threat)
So this bookstore. Clean, well-organized, a reasonably good range of books and honestly cheap. I would say some serendipity is involved here, because I walked in and at once found what I believe will be all the books I need for my upcoming exhibition. The list is:
Longitude : The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, by Dava Sobel
The Voyage of the Narwhal, by Andrea Barret
Post-Captain, by Patrick O'Brian
and Issue 61 of GRANTA (a literary journal published 4 times a year). Guess the theme. Yup, The Sea.
Total cost: RM 50
Together with a very expensive (the pocket has yet to recover from the shocking blow), but truly beautiful book that I bought - Early Mapping of the Pacific, by Thomas Suarez and Paul Auster's Collected Prose (also Annie Proulx's The Shipping News - a gift from P.), I feel perfectly well-equipped with words and ideas. These things are like my armor. Without them I would find it difficult, almost impossible to create anything. With them I enter into a battle with myself, the surviving bits of which will result in an exhibition of all-new work come April. Touch wood, touch wood, touch wood.
(By the way, did you know that 'touch wood' is a phrase with naval origins? It's because the ships were made of wood, see? Sailors would say something to the effect of 'Looks like clear weather' and then thump the wood under them, which of course was their ship, the one true thing they could rely on. Sorry, couldn't resist.) ¶ 1:09 AM 0 comments
Monday, January 02, 2006
Get Out of the Box
The sky tonight is gorgeous. As clear as you could wish, and every star is visible, cheap diamonds on a black velvet cloak.
I sit outside writing this, looking at it. I was recently given a book by Indonesian poet Goenawan Mohamad. I loved it at once and a verse comes to mind:
Akulah Adam dengan mulut yang sepi
Putra Surgawi
yang damai, terlalu damai
ketika bumi padaku melambai
I am Adam of no word
Heaven's child
at peace, too much at peace
when the earth beckons me
That's right. How easily I let myself be floated away by the atmosphere of a cool night after a whole day of incessant rain. Beer and nicotine running in my veins and I am perfectly, perfectly sedated. I will never make revolutionary work, I'm afraid. I'm too easily soothed.
I have tendencies though. Everyone has tendencies.
Over drinks with T.W. I was told of a dream she had about me. It was so vivid that I vowed to write about it. I hope I have transcribed this accurately:
I am dressed as a clown. My face is white and I have a huge, red, painted clown's smile. I am stuck in a small box on the floor, which in turn is a type of sticker photo booth. I seem determined to have my picture taken and printed. I am horrifying because despite my painted smile and clown's costume, I look very angry. I am trapped behind the box. T.W. yells at me "get out of the box!" I am apparently incredibly stubborn and refuse to do so. I want my picture taken at all costs.
Thoughts? I don't really know what to make of this. Deep down I suspect it is probably a fairly good representation of my situation now. I like metaphors like a kid likes candy, but to be honest I am really disturbed by the image I appear to have generated in the dreams of someone I care about. I have given a close friend a freaky clown nightmare! My refusal to 'get out of the box', even at her behest, strikes a particular chord.
At this time with the sky hanging like a panorama of possibility above me, I resolve to escape from all boxes as soon as I can, pictures be damned! Sometimes other people know you better than you know yourself. Maybe I am not as fearless as I think, far from it.
I sit outside writing this, looking at it. I was recently given a book by Indonesian poet Goenawan Mohamad. I loved it at once and a verse comes to mind:
Akulah Adam dengan mulut yang sepi
Putra Surgawi
yang damai, terlalu damai
ketika bumi padaku melambai
I am Adam of no word
Heaven's child
at peace, too much at peace
when the earth beckons me
That's right. How easily I let myself be floated away by the atmosphere of a cool night after a whole day of incessant rain. Beer and nicotine running in my veins and I am perfectly, perfectly sedated. I will never make revolutionary work, I'm afraid. I'm too easily soothed.
I have tendencies though. Everyone has tendencies.
Over drinks with T.W. I was told of a dream she had about me. It was so vivid that I vowed to write about it. I hope I have transcribed this accurately:
I am dressed as a clown. My face is white and I have a huge, red, painted clown's smile. I am stuck in a small box on the floor, which in turn is a type of sticker photo booth. I seem determined to have my picture taken and printed. I am horrifying because despite my painted smile and clown's costume, I look very angry. I am trapped behind the box. T.W. yells at me "get out of the box!" I am apparently incredibly stubborn and refuse to do so. I want my picture taken at all costs.
Thoughts? I don't really know what to make of this. Deep down I suspect it is probably a fairly good representation of my situation now. I like metaphors like a kid likes candy, but to be honest I am really disturbed by the image I appear to have generated in the dreams of someone I care about. I have given a close friend a freaky clown nightmare! My refusal to 'get out of the box', even at her behest, strikes a particular chord.
At this time with the sky hanging like a panorama of possibility above me, I resolve to escape from all boxes as soon as I can, pictures be damned! Sometimes other people know you better than you know yourself. Maybe I am not as fearless as I think, far from it.
Labels: friends
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