dies irae

I was looking at google analytics for this blog. Why are my pageviews predominantly Russian?? (Silence, my computer nerd friends: this is a question I do not want the answer to.) In any case, it is 0039 and I am looking up "Farfalle" on Wikipedia because I miss Turin and I am filled with the anxiety of tomorrow's pasta not matching its sauce, and cooking a terrible lunch, and all my friends leaving me, writing terrible reviews on Facebook, etc. etc. 

Europa Cantat was great. Nothing in Singapore will ever come close to that level of national and regional support and community involvement that I witnessed in Turin. I am caught up between divergent strains of living — the laid-back, heritage town lifestyle that is so continental, so Torinese; and the convenience and comfort of the metropolis, nevermind that constant sense of alientation. Someone posited that the Italians, having reached the highest level of development, have the resources and ability to enjoy this quality of life. I do not agree fully with this economic argument because it is the complex matrix of culture, history, geography and economics that produces the conditions for "lifestyles", but whatever. It is what it is.

On another note, if Mitch Albom were to adapt my life to a direct-to-television telenovela on the Hallmark Channel, it would go something like: This is the story of S, who broke his voice at age 10 and has been trying to piece it back together ever since. The more I use my voice in debate speeches and choral pieces and spoken word things, the more I feel alienated from the familiarity of it. It does feel like I'm losing a part of myself. I feel less resonant and less convinced of that clarity I was so sure of 5 years ago, when, in bits and pieces, people began to partake in the undoing of this certainty and the confidence it entitled me to. It's less of an "adjusting one's sound to complement other voices and the music" thing than it is a complaint (and a futile manifesto) against the critique of the natural speaking voice, in its wonderful intonations — for, and in, what they are — that reflect interior states of being, of personhood.