Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . This Thanksgiving I'm giving thanks for the Hong Kong protesters who struggled bravely for democracy and human rights, and for the brave Hong Kong people, who voted in record numbers and handed authoritarianism a stinging defeat. There is mourning amidst the thanksgiving, for the protesters who died or were badly injured in the struggle. For injured members of the Hong Kong police too, who are someone's father, brother, and son. It is unbridled authoritarianism that pitted one side against the other. There should be a commission of inquiry into excessive police violence and the higher-ups who gave the orders, not those who had to carry them out, have to be held responsible, but the commission should include not only the goal of truth, but also that of reconciliation. The Hong Kong protests will, I hope, inspire those of us in the USA to take part in the mass movement to impeach Trump, if any inspirat...

Weekly column written for Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . I wrote to Yale's president after Alfian Sa'at shared his version of events about the cancellation of his "dissent" module at Yale-NUS in Singapore. Please consider writing to Yale's president to ask for the re-opening of the inquiry with an unbiased representative, now that there is fresh and convincing evidence that the Yale report is wrong. His email is president@yale.edu. Please feel free to share my letter with friends and media contacts.  Dear Yale President Peter Salovey: I hope it has come to your attention that the narrative and analysis of the Yale report on the cancellation of the Yale-NUS learning module "Dialogue and Dissent in Singapore" has been refuted by the instructor concerned, playwright Alfian Sa'at. According to the administrative leadership of Yale-NUS, the learning module was cancelled because of (1) insufficient academic rigor and (2) the legal ri...

Weekly column for Singapore Unbound's newsletter. Sign up here . When I expressed interest in attending a Jewish service, a kind friend brought me to the Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, which he has visited a number of times, not for worship (he is an atheist), but for the beauty of the Hebrew language sung and chanted, the sounds of his childhood. Founded in 1973 by twelve gay Jewish men, CBST describes itself as the world's largest LGBT synagogue. There I was last Friday, wearing my rainbow-colored kippah, tapping my foot to the catchy music, and trying hard to follow the service in English. I must admit that in the midst of the worshipful atmosphere, a fleeting thought went through my mind: what if a gunman should burst in and shoot up the sanctuary? The rising tide of anti-semitism and homophobia in America made such a thought not altogether fanciful. The Poway shooting, which took place less than a week ago, must have been on the minds of the CBST congregation. The at...

United States Virgin Islands Let’s find an instrument close at hand— an old sardine can, white pine wood, a useless sack for twine— and join a scratch band that welcomes us. United States, we sing of thee, with our squash, our cane flute, ukelele, and ass pipe made from the exhaust tube of a car, we sing, make thyself worthy of us and make us worthy of thee, we sing all together from Twin City, Rock City, Love City, from all over, islands old as the volcano but forever virginal.

Puerto Rico To see the bioluminescence, light without fire, sit tight in your canoe and stir the dark water. A tiny meteor will appear in the atmosphere of the bay. Stir again, this time not with your paddle but with your hand, and direct the sentence of the second meteor. You are then angel and patient.

Northern Mariana Islands These islands have names-- not Asuncion, Saipan, Tinian, Pagan, but older ones-- Launch Pad, Mission Field, Way Station, The Secret of My Heart's Desire, and one that is possibly mistranslated as Dandelions Growing Out of a Boot.

Guam Ferried over by a military transport, the brown tree snake has nearly killed off the ko'ko' bird, now only bred in captivity. Forests, where the secretive rail once ran, its elongated body slipping through the receptive herbage, are empty of bird whistle but full of spiders and swathed like a bride in spider webs.

American Samoa He charged at the ball and at the quarterback. He sacked all our defenses. He made America sit up and look for their maps. “I have a fear of being average,” said the tight end. He shot himself dead in the chest, the warrior, said good-bye with the lyrics of “Who I Ain’t.” Born in Oceanside, California, but he came from the territory with one zip code. in memory of Junior Seau (1969 – 2012)

District of Columbia Not real, marmoreal city, mammary gland, memory land, march of the living and the dead, the murmur in the corridor that changes everything. The reflecting pool, humming tunelessly, steals your face. * Lady Bird (2017), written and directed by Greta Gerwig, is a good movie, but not a great one. Why the fuss over it? Saoirse Ronan, as the Sacramento high school senior stumbling through her first romance, family entanglements, and college application, makes it very watchable. Laurie Metcalf is wonderful as Mom. Lucas Hedges, Lady Bird's first boyfriend who turns out to be gay, is a natural actor. He also appears as the nephew in Manchester by the Sea . In Valentina's Wedding (La Boda de Valentina, 2018), a silly but enjoyable romp, an all grown-up Ryan Carnes as Valentina's gringo fiance. Still has the body he showed off in Eating Out .

Wyoming Here you can stand over the Continental Divide, rivers to the left, rivers to the right, and feel the irreconcilable differences. Rain stands here too, in this great Basin, not running to any ocean, true, but moving, nevertheless. The rain sinks here into the parched ground, or else evaporates into the air.

Wisconsin This is the house that Wright built and rebuilt and rebuilt after each ravagement, the limestone from a local quarry, the plaster mixed with sienna to resemble the sandy banks of the river, the shingles weathered to the color of silver-grey trees, the windows placed to let the sun in at every hour of the day. This is the house that houses Japanese prints and Ming vases, a council circle re-de-signed by an immigrant Dane, and bears the name of a Welsh bard, which means Shining Brow. This is the house that built other houses and the centrifugal house for Non-Objective art, later named after its founding Jew. This is the house that students come to every summer to study how to build a house.

West Virginia A snippet of video cut from a cut and recombined with the clip is called West Virginia. A pod of dolphins leaving a super-pod to join a herd is called West Virginia. Welcome to the secession from the secession, which is not the same as unity, or Not Having Left. Welcome to the past, the present, and the future. The deutero-stomes, whose first hole formed the anus of the organism, split from the proto-stomes, whose first hole formed the mouth, 590 million years ago. We look forward to their rejoining and our recording of the convention of the blastopore.

Washington “I don’t belong to any of you,  not to the Army Corps of Engineers, not to the anthropologists, not even to the Confederated Tribes of the Coville Reservation, to whom I most closely resemble in my genetic material. I am not native. I am not foreign. I am the Kennewick Man, named so because I was completely found in Kennewick, which means a grassy place, as in the grass is always greener on the other side, also, winter paradise, for winters there are mild, or, in another name, Tehe, the laughter of a girl when asked the name of where she lived.”

Virginia Do you want the name of your state on a landmark case against loving? “Mr. Cohen, tell the Court I love my wife and it is just unfair that I can’t live with her in Virginia.” Mr. Cohen, tell the court of public opinion I love all my boys, the statistician, the father, the masochist, the Starbucks manager, the above-average architect, the ex-lawyer, and the lovers still in their diapers, and it is so unfair that I can’t live with all of them at once, at their peak, o, blue ridge mountain, by the Potomac with its two sources.

Vermont sugar maple rock maple hydraulic lift phloem tap bowling pins guitar neck pure stand shade tolerant pool cues sad sap real estate civil union fall colors secret history climate change commemorative coin winged seed winged seed

Utah In the painting of the Promontory Summit by Thomas Hill, in the ceremony of the golden spike, which would join not just two rails, not just two halves of a country, but two world-faring oceans, you can see the Big Four, the railway officials, the railroad workers, women, even an Indian, but not a Chinese stone blaster stone carter, bridge builder, cook, who survived the panning years over the Sierra Nevada.

Texas They raise them now, the broncos, for bucking, running wild on the open range, but gentled for worming, for loading in trailers and in the bucking chute. The beasts are scored too, for rocking hard and not in a straight line, for bucking unpredictably. On the first jump out of the chute, the cowboy has to mark  the horse out—his heels have to tap the shoulders of the athletic gelding for the ride to count. Make it count.

Tennessee Heartbreak. Jailhouse. You’ve got to love the words as much as the music. You’ve got to shoot not just from the pelvis but break out the pulse.

South Dakota You could flash a route, but the pure ascend the rock on-sight, without fore- knowledge, every handhold a self discovery. You could dance with the crowd on the head of a pin, but the tenacious  angel, who knows when to smear and when to campus, always mindful of the risk of a zipper, climbs the Needles.

South Carolina There’s no sensation like syncopation. I’d rather Charleston in Charleston. There’s more to destroy than the towers of Troy. I’d rather Soloi in Soloi. Give up the dry eye to the blue sea and the blue sky. I’d rather Shanghai in Shanghai. For the scoop and the dope, for the good trope, Grant in Grant and Hope in Hope. I may never Barbados in Barbados, or Buncombe in Buncombe, but let me be banged up by a gang of 251 men or more. I’d rather Singapore in Singapore.