about this cheese

When altruism and charity fly to Bintan for a day trip, I read Ginsberg's poetry and watch Youtube videos. (And then, do my homework. Nessun dorma!)

I liked this song as a newbie chorister, but now it feels kinda cheesy when placed side-by-side with Palestrina. Sorry, Orban.
In related news, I can't seem to memorize Sicut Cervus for tomorrow without forgetting the lyrics! *artistic rage*

subvert the status quo

It has dawned on me that much like Jeanette in Oranges, I am the Other within the Other within the Other.

1) I am in the arts stream. Because The School frequently partakes in the othering of the arts and humanities to define their identity (i.e. a science faculty dominated academic structure), I am an Other in the Shady Green Fungus of Bedok South Road. Let us also pause to contemplate the harrowing obscenity in appropriating Economics into the science-based curriculum. Social sciences aren't, in absolute terms, like the natural sciences, guys.

2) I am a masculine presence in the arts stream. (You may stop snickering now. I know who you are!) At least, I am male and doing arts subjects. It is very difficult studying Paper 5 literature in a lecture theatre filled with women who have much richer experiences of Womenhood and the like. (I can be more objective though.) It is also difficult to multitask; taking down lecture notes while vehemently muttering feminazic diatribes under one's breath is highly taxing with my limited mental faculties. Also, I must stop here lest I come under attack tomorrow for being misogynist, but I'm just trying to offer a harmonious balance in gender politics here, people!

3) I am studying KI while being a man* in the arts stream. Enough said. I haven't started planning for the essay on social sciences, but it does not necessarily follow that I'll end up dying this week. I'm just trying to lead a quiet existence here, y'all!



*do I have to address myself as man now? But I'm not a boy, not yet a man. All I need is time, a moment that is mine, while I'm in between. (Ha-ha.) <-- I had to add that because some people take what I say too literally. <-- I also had to add this because I'm concerned that no one might get the Britney reference. <-- Now this makes me feel a little self-conscious.

Gulp. Timothy McSweeney (whom the website by Dave Eggers was named after) passed away last week.

(from http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2010/2/5mcsweeneys.html)

THE REAL TIMOTHY MCSWEENEY.

- - - -

Back in 1998, for a journal I was planning to put out, I started collecting fiction, essays and experiments that couldn't find a publisher elsewhere. Because the journal consisted of work that didn't fit in mainstream publishing, I decided to name the journal Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern.

Here's why:

My mother's maiden name was McSweeney. She grew up in Milton, Massachusetts, one of five children, the daughter of an obstetrician, Daniel McSweeney, and his wife Adelaide Mary McSweeney.

Much later, my mother married John Eggers and they moved to suburban Chicago. When I was about eight, I started getting strange mail addressed to both me and my mother. These were usually notes written on pamphlets and other sorts of mail that required no postage. The messages were confusing, but generally seemed to be written by a man named Timothy McSweeney, who thought he was related to my mother, and who was hoping to visit soon. Sometimes Timothy would include train schedules and other plans. Sometimes they included drawings and diagrams. Usually the letters had a sense of urgency, as if after many years of searching for his relatives, he had found my mother and me, and wanted to reconnect as soon as possible.

I was intrigued by the letters so much that I kept them in a drawer in my room, wondering if Timothy was actually related to us. My mother dismissed the letters as those of a confused or disturbed man who she had never met. When a new letter would arrive, she would hand it to me, usually without reading it. I would pore over it for clues, and then would add it to the stack.

We didn't know if he was real—if there was a real person named Timothy—but in any case the name Timothy McSweeney came to hold an aura of mystery. He was an enigma, a man looking for a home, producing writing that was cryptic and full of longing.

So many years later, when I was conceiving a name for this literary journal, the name Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern occurred to me. It made sense on many levels. I was able to honor my Irish side of the family and also allude to this mysterious man and the sense of possibility and even wonder he'd brought to our suburban home.

A few years after the quarterly began, we took on an intern named Ross McSweeney. Ross and I got to talking, and he mentioned that his family, too, was from Boston. I joked that we were probably related somehow, and he told me that he was the nephew of Timothy McSweeney. The real Timothy McSweeney.

Ross and I, with the help of Ross's father David—Timothy's brother— pieced it together. And this is probably what happened:

One day in Boston in 1943, my grandfather Daniel McSweeney delivered a baby. This baby was put up for adoption, and was adopted by another McSweeney family. He and David were raised in a loving family, and Timothy eventually went to the Massachusetts School of Art and later received an MFA from Rutgers University. After graduating, he taught studio art at Rutgers for a time.

But mental illness overtook him, and he struggled with alcoholism. He was hospitalized many times. Eventually he was put in the care of an institution for mental health, where he remained safe and received treatment. It was from this institution that he began to send letters. According to his brother David, he would search through city and state records, find names, and write to the people he found.

Presumably, he saw my grandfather's name on his birth certificate and came to think Daniel McSweeney might have been his father, not simply the delivering obstetrician. And thus he sought out the children of Daniel McSweeney.

Ross, David and I figured all this out in 2000, and it was then that they informed me that Timothy was still alive. He had remained under doctors' care all these years, and the McSweeney family visited him regularly.

Knowing that the journal bore the name of a real person who had endured years of struggle threw melancholy shadows over the enterprise. But the McSweeneys insisted that the use of the name was acceptable, even appropriate, given Timothy's background as an artist and search for connection and meaning through the written word. Since 2000 we've implicitly dedicated all issues to the real Timothy.

— Dave Eggers

Double sigh.

Now that it is decided that Bertram and I are going to do a parody of Mango Dollies with a ukulele/baby guitar/kazoo/recorder duet to accompany good bad poetry for Lit Night, I'm on a roll looking for verses so bad they make your toes curl while you laugh.

I am going to write an original poem composed out of Facebook group names. *hesitant excitement*/*excites hesitantly*

And, Happy Birthmonth to Olivia, Serene, Angeline, Lucas and everyone I know and love (because I am sufficiently inebriated from clinking wine glasses and drinking the Bad Stuff in celebration of my grandparents' official 65th wedding anniversary that I didn't know was today :( )

I really like this recording of Miserere. It's the first choral piece that I fell in love with, btw. That was in 2002; sigh, memories, memories.

K I'll be Going Green tomorrow 'round Bedok Town. Am sleepy.

everyone loves jstor and rambling academia, la la la

WAITING FOR PEOPLE TO DO SOMETHING BUT AM, IN ACTUALITY, SCREAMING INTO A VACUUM; IT'S LIKE WAITING FOR GODOT, WTH.
P.S. TYPING IN CAPS NOT BECAUSE I FORGOT TO TURN IT OFF BUT BECAUSE INTERIORLY-SPEAKING, I'M TRYING TO REFLECT EXTREME STATES OF MIND. AND EVERYONE WANTS TO SHOW HOW AWESOME THEY ARE AND NOW IS THE TIME TO BLOODY DO IT. DON'T TRY TO RATIONALIZE IF YOU DON'T KNOW YOUR SHIT.

'k that's all I want to say. It's all that's left to say anyway.

(So yes I've been unhappy for the past week and I've been doing a lot of SELF-REFLECTION YA. Bottom line: it's not insecurity and that psychological crap, I was just pissed, pure and simple. Apparently Orientation has resurrected an ocean of grievances from last year, and this shall culminate with O Night. Fan into flame.)