diptych

INSPIRATION: ZERO

Went with my mom to view the Musée d'Orsay paintings at the National Museum today, met friends-of-family-friends, of which the salt-and-pepper haired patriarch (not quite the word but it does describe his role) said Hello to me over at the urinals after the show (adults are oblivious to social awkwardness) and later proceeded to quiz me about NS life. At the same time, I was like, 'oh god I am being questioned by a member of the public intelligentsia and he brought along a friend who's a UOB painting of the year recipient ONE NEEDS TO LOOK LIKE ERUDITE MEMBER OF HIS ILK OH NO THEY SEEM TO BE WALKING OVER TO ONE AND ONE WILL NOW GAZE INTENTLY AT THIS MONET'

Therein lies my problem: I cannot take high culture very seriously because it feels like I am betraying my background (even though I take pleasure in betraying my very roots because they're obviously socially conditioned and therefore artificial), attendant to which is a self-ironizing attitude I wield as I approach the social world. Sincerity isn't dead, it's just suffused with a sort of playful jesting and constant parody. 

In any case, I did enjoy the show because I saw a painting that Renoir did of a cat!! (and a naked child) But seriously, the range and quality of paintings are worth the time. The exhibition was cogent and coherent. There was, as it were, a logical flow that described the progress of French painting sensually and cerebrally. It broached the usual questions of art reflecting life, but raised more pertinent, moving, perspectives on areas like War and the Abject or even Solitude. Impressionist paintings are also very pretty. 

Anyway here's the painting that had the cat (ok fine, Pierre August Renoir The Boy With The Cat):

"MONTHLIES"

When I have 'good laughs' I remember them for life. For example, when I was 13 went out to this now-defunct noodle place, Nooch, at citylink mall. My friend said something silly and the whole table quaked with bubbly pubescent giggling, surely much to the ire of the chi-chi noodle slurping yuppie crowd. With some horror, I now realize this had happened six years ago. In our later years this crazy friend and I would recall that moment with some fondness and, I believe, saudade. Around the same period, my dad bought The Complete Companion to Dibley and I actually thought I was going to die mid-laughter because I couldn't breathe. Yes I was that sort of kid.

Similarly, I've had some good laughs recently. This is because in 2010 I discovered the genius that is 30 Rock. Also because I go out with friends (I have friends!!) and we gang up against The Past and we laugh at it. OK, so the past also conceals some pain, some frustrating times, even some problems that still remain unresolved, but it's most convenient and forgiving that time buries things very nicely for us, and troubles only come back to haunt us sporadically in our moments of solitude!! Anyway I titled this section Monthlies as an in-joke which was really a "you had to be there" moment between some friends and I. I've not laughed that hard in the month of October before! (Mainly I sneered haughtily)

what does not translate

Recently I was taking a look at the medical records of someone with Asperger's. There was a fractured, moving — if not painful — narrativity to it. It was a story of perpetual regression, marginalisation and heartbreaking innocence. I read splintered fragments from psychiatric clinical notes, fully aware of that obliquely poetic angle they took, wanting to use these understatedly emotion-rich materials in my writing. 

As if personal tragedy had to be appropriated, broadcasted and then enjoyed! Sometimes artists are monsters, claiming experience where experience is secondhand, occupying personae they don't even understand. 

I'm not sure if empathy is dead. Is empathy (like charity) a supererogatory thing? If so, is the very act of empathy an act of misrepresentation, a misconstruing of subjective experiences, albeit one stemming from good intentions? Whut?

and because I am not enjoying the tone of this post, 

image

It's raining. And right when I was about to complain about the rheumy cold weather, I read my newsfeed on Facebook and see comments like "It's minus one thousand degrees here" — which is a nice, if not timely, observation of the subjectivity and singularity of people's experiences. 

It has occurred to me that I am no longer in school. Yes, I am a pretty slow adapter. I'm not sure how any normal person (read: JC-educated, mind-numbingly middle class, post-adolescent) can approach NS in a way that doesn't profoundly change their paradigms about life and the world. It's not really work, and it's not really school. It's a fuzzy limbo, a jarring mix of "education" and "service", and it does not come close to the "service learning" we undertake (with disinterest) back in school. We encounter superiors who are occasionally wonderful but mostly incompetent in some major, complex way; the hours are elastic: periods of mindless energy give way to a flaccid, slouching-in-the-chair-with-despair idleness; instructions are confusing, pointless, and could have come from a camel with a typewriter for all we know. Yet there is a degree of sheltering involved, in that we aren't drawing a salary, we are coerced into this and therefore are not at fault for being bratty while we still can. 

Conversely, nothing much has changed between school and this... whatever this is. Mornings are still spent on the train with my train-pals, Fat Guy Who Hogs The Width Of The Train Door, Japanese Youtube Cooking Host-Lookalike, and Person Who Probably Walked To The Station Still Asleep. I spend the day looking busy and stressed (oh, why? Because I think it's very chic.) (No.) and sometimes people bitch about other people to me, revealing more about their own insecurities and prejudices than the supposed flaws of others. Sometimes I bring tea along and read a book (while listening to them bitch.) 

And what is the future but that proverbial shroud of obscure mist covering the obscure horizon (subverted my own Wallace Stevens reference, y'all), with all the tangibility of words with no referents, or words with so many referents they become essentially meaningless. 

status quo

Is it so hard not to build a culture around religion (and 'faith')?
Some people can't afford books that have sunsets and white couples splashed all over the covers. Some people can't afford Bibles that are printed on acid-free paper with Moroccan leather covers. Some people don't have all the energy to be participative on demand. Some people are incompatible with the conservatism of privileged, educated, middle-class Chinese people with their 'existential' 'problems'...

Is this imperialism inherited?

Is it wrong to examine things critically? Is it wrong to be skeptical now? Isn't the practice of examining things critically for the sake of  refuting doubt to augment belief somewhat dubious?

When will we finally acknowledge inherent hypocrisies?

What is 'belief'? Do we really have autonomy over our 'beliefs'?

Why does 'tradition' maintain such an esteemed role?

Why is this source of power now human?

what is "What's Your Name?"?

I watched this movie recently and tried my best to make sense of it all:

An oblique glimpse at white privilege and the conditions that create and perpetuate it

Capitalist ideology disguised as a tale of one woman who leaves marketing to become an artist.

Another story that attempts to answer the question "Can a man and a woman 'just be friends'?"

Parody of Woman's Magazine culture

Post-feminist re-appropriation of the harlot figure

Post-feminist ironic re-appropriation of the harlot figure

Parochial, counter-progressive presentation of women as flighty, impulsive and unintelligent

Sensitive portrayal of the complex male-female dynamic

Sensitive portrayal of the complex me-and-my-vagina dynamic

Comedic portrayal of one bimbo's stupidity

A comment on the saying, "When a man sleeps around, it's OK. When a women sleeps around, she's a slut."

A comment on the saying, "When a man sleeps around, it's OK. When a women sleeps around it's also OK and she will never get STDs."

A comment on the saying, "When a man sleeps around, it's OK. When a women sleeps around, she gets to write a book about it and earn royalties from the movie adaptation."

A journey scuttling back and forth between urban and pastoral, chaos and order, displacement and home, man and woman, mother and daughter, attachment and entitlement, art and life, work and play, green eggs and ham, Tiffany & Co., night and day, bleh and bleh, M & Ms, P's & Q's, etc.

A confused understanding of love and its various hypocrisies

The value of social media considered vis a vis traditional print media

A film with a ridiculous premise that starts off fine then decides to change its tone, because changing its tone is like changing shoes, or hairstyles, or boyfriends, or dogs, you know? 

A film with too many characters and too many names

A chick flick that's also a home interiors programme

cerebrum

Guardian interview with Jenny Saville:

"Other people I've talked to had the same bedroom all their childhood." And she says with unconcealed yearning, "To me that's magical. That your journey as a child would be within the same four walls. I never had that level of stability." Like her paintings, hers was a world in limbo, with no continuous narrative except the narrative she imposed herself.

the great pond and its waste of the lilies

Well, Caden Cotard
is a man already dead.

He, um, lives in a half world
between stasis and antistasis
  
and time is concentrated,
  
chronology confused.
  
Yet up until recently he's--
  
He's strived valiantly
  
to make sense of his situation.
  
But now he, ah--
He's turned to stone.

You need to watch Synecdoche, New York.

cruddy vibes

Actual things said by people on a K-Pop interest group's discussion page:

Lol I Stare Hard On That and the blue circle more clearer


"Such thick spect. SO CUTE!~~"


i willfor ne oppa


every one becoz 2pm lover for ever


he REALLY should keep up with the whole rocker thing ^_^ ♥ man he is AMAZING~~~!


owh,,,owesome n handsome


♥ ♥ plz be my chingu!!!!


i like ur hair


This supports my theory that every person has sentience, but for some people that's all they have.

I hate myself.

we need more realistic singaporean dramas

An HDB flat, number of rooms unknown. An underused piano is now a makeshift shelf; the piano stool has disappeared under stacks of files. Save for a family portrait with hairstyles circa 2002 and a wooden panel with the words "God Bless This Home" engraved in a font with ostentatious swirls, there are no other features hanging on the wall. The sofa is upholstered in leather, and the leather has turned a terrible shade of grey-blue. New pillows in bright green, obviously from IKEA, have redeemed the otherwise dull interior from lower middle class gloom. A folded-up card table is clearly visible from behind the sofa.

The front door opens and UNISE (pronounced "Eunice" with the stress on the second syllable) enters looking bored. She is in a uniform that clearly identifies her as a student from an upper-middle-tier secondary school. She says nothing.

The camera pans to the right, revealing another sofa in the same revolting colour. ULANDA, a young graduate fresh from SMU, is sitting on the sofa buffing her nails.

ULANDA: Oh hi.

UNISE: Hey.

ULANDA continues buffing her nails, occasionally checking her iPhone (it is in a pink case). UNISE walks OFFSCREEN to the kitchen, where she opens the refrigerator audibly.

UNISE: (OFFSCREEN) No more nutella.

ULANDA: Oh no.

CLOSING CREDITS