Chopin's concerto

Trail-end of autumn. The cold is making its presence felt and the evenings are arriving earlier. Soon winter will be here. Been listening to Chopin's piano concerto. A late-autumnal, winter piece of melody, quiet and melancholy, and of memories. This is the concerto that led me back to the edenic realms of classical music. The concerto that accompanied those lonely, frustrated, sad and barren times in Singapore, when I didn't know what I was doing with my life, my time, and I couldn't wait to leave that place. This concerto was, and still is, a great source comfort and refuge. There and then. Here and now.

if i were to remember my youth

I would have to call up both the age and the year, like two sides of a doorframe, before I could enter the memory room. Which is difficult and confusing because the year begins in the beginning of the year (pardon the tautology), and my age begins at its end (not my fault either). Then there are 365 days in a year, 24 hours in a day. That's a lot of hours to remember, memories to store. Yet when I call up the age and the year in my mind, what appears are just that few fleeting images in blurry black-and-white and sepia. What are they, these few lines? 


18: on the cusp of adulthood, opening my eyes to life beyond my sheltered, provincial life. 19: clubbing like crazy, lapping up all the attention accorded to the simple fact of my youth. I was a bastard to someone and broke his heart. 20: feeling like an adult already, suddenly, yet life put on compulsory hold. 21: the first time I heard my heart break; I celebrated my birthday with my 3 best friends from secondary school, all of whom are still my best friends today. 22: consolidating life, anticipating with excitement my (then) future. 23: I lost my voice and a piece of my self; and for better and for worse, I met somebody; left the country and tasted freedom for the first time. 24: Melbourne, books, politics, intellectual life, academia, literature, Jin, Melbourne. 25: Singapore, and for the first time, I feel confident, really confident. 26: my first suit, my first job, my first paycheck. 27: if there is one year I would nominate as the year, it would be this year, when art and politics, love and life created a new alchemy of me. 28: happy exhaustion, and an indescribable devastation. 29: departure; a new life. 

My roaring twenties. Gone. I passed my 30th in Melbourne quietly and alone, and everyday has been just another day since, and that's good in a way. 

There's something that's been constant throughout these years: my obsession with these three tracks in Faye's 1998 concert CD. For the past 14 years I listened to them at least every other day. Time will pass. I will get old. But her voice remains eternal in these songs: 約定, 紅豆, 我願意. 

mid-year catch-up

I really cannot believe it's been so long since my last entry. Where have all those five months gone? Almost forgot that this blog exists too. And I'm glad it does. It's been so long. . .  so much. . .  all these years. . .  

I don't really want to record my life here in all its chronological humdrum and minutiae. Yet I don't want to forget. How does one re-present one's everyday life, in essence, in emotion, in a few silvery lines? Poetry is one answer. The question is, can I write it?

I was in Singapore last November for ten days, of my own accord and to catch Faye in concert. Had a great time catching up. Too little time on that island, too many friends on that island. It was almost four years since I left, so much changes, some things never change. Shopping malls, noise, crowds, streetlife and language, the heat, a particular heartbreak. But it felt like a holiday. Then this February I unexpectedly had to go back for a while, and this time I stayed for two weeks. Caught up with the same people and some more, the same and different Singapore. Because of the suddenness in which I had to go back it didn't feel like a holiday, more like being sent back, I didn't enjoy it as much. 


I couldn't shake off the fact that you and I were back on the same island. Back to five years ago when I couldn't bear to stay and had to leave. I paid you a visit. To see what it's like where you live. To stand at your front door and imagine what it's like beyond that door, beyond that impossibility that has become of us. It was once possible, I really thought it was, and all those times, I was thinking of light-filled mornings waking up to you, the quiet happiness of a life together. I placed a hand on your door and imagined it was your arm I was touching. Then I left.

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Glad to get back here, and there you were, and you said, in your voice that I once described as rich drops of liquorice: 'I can give you a proper hug now.' R, for taking me on this bright road of this country, so much of which has been so much colour and light, thank you. 

If there's something I could write about my teaching of this third year soci subject this semester, it would be the forging of a friendship with this particular student, RB. I've always been very close to my students, which is rare in university these days, and which is why I treasure these students-turned-friends so much. Their eagerness, naivete, intelligence, frankness, youth. But this student became a friend quite unlike any other, who constantly surprised me with his till-then-unrevealed intelligence, maturity and sensitivity. Youth flowers only once, I told him, and footfalls will always echo in the memory. 

Winterson was in town last Friday, and I got her signing a lot of books. Mostly mine and many for friends. Jeanette, will you write something for RB, a boy of twenty, full of passion and rage? And she wrote into my old copy of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. RB's eyes welled up when he opened the book and saw the inscription -

"To RB: use the passion that you feel. Don't let the rage turn on you." 

RB makes me remember my youth, when I was twenty, makes me want to be twenty again. I don't remember thinking a lot of thoughts. I remember the blur of blur of noise. Young me in a hurry. The world at my feet. Invincible me. 

For a wonderful semester, where I've learnt from you as much as I've taught, watching the edges blur, watching you mature. 

Gave him a signed copy of Art Objects too. His graduation gift. A book that profoundly changed the way I read, thought, and most importantly, felt. Hope this book will lead him to other books that will come to be his private waterfall and wine. 

There is one more book that has been very important in my life, one that'll always be my compass and guide, bible and cross, talisman and light. It'll be his twenty-first birthday present. 

I realise I always give books that I love to the people that I love. I guess books are the only things I know a little something about. Books are the only things that seem worth giving, worth gifting. Literature lit up new worlds, lifted me out of my own tiny one. Hopefully those words, lighting fires, will light up my loved ones' too. 

J, I just want to say thanks again for the gifts and thanks, for the first time, for your w. 

. . . and the true path was as lost to me as ever

when you cut in front and lit it as you ran. 

See how the true gift never leaves the giver:

returned and redelivered, it rolled on

until the smile poured through us like a river.

How fine, I thought, this waking amongst men!

I kissed your mouth and pledged myself forever.

-- "Waking with Russell", Don Paterson

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Adrienne Rich died recently. A few years ago when I was going through the darkest period of my life, she had one stanza that gave me immense comfort. Reading through her collections lately, I am again reminded of how great a poet she is:


If I could let you know --
two women together is a work
nothing in civilization has made simple,
two people together is a work
heroic in its ordinariness,
the slow-picked, halting traverse of a pitch
where the fiercest attention becomes routine
-- look at the faces of those who have chosen it.