He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

~W.B. Yeats~

Talent and doubt

Some gifts of natural talent you get that don't go away. Right?

That's the question I often ask myself. While in school, I discovered that my gifts of prose and acting far exceeded my knack for school curriculum. While I can't say I was born with them, they certainly always felt like natural and essential parts of me, like the ability to write with my right hand and the ability to curl my tongue.

But will the lack of contact and use cause them to diminish? I'd stayed away from acting for so long, I no longer know if I'm any good at it anymore, and I can't help feeling that it doesn't come to me as naturally as it used to. I feel more stilted and uncomfortable, even though I still love it. Or is it because I just wasn't doing the right pieces for me?

I can write, that I know. Words flow from me with ease. But can I write prose anymore? I have not written a single piece of fiction or descriptive writing since I was 17. There's only one way to find out, if only there was time enough.

Simple little questions of doubt, flowing from insecurities and deep-seated fear - after all, who doesn't sometimes stop to wonder if there's a little less of themselves if they stop being able to do things that they used to be good at or love? Part of my soul is with the pen and the stage. Is there a hollow space within me where they used to fill?

The office panorama

The view from my office window. Pretty neat, huh? Of course, I've cropped off the part of the view that includes the dingy Golden Mile Complex carpark and what appears to be a makeshift outdoor storage area for some workers. That strange little white-&-black object in the lower right hand corner is apparently the laundry of the aforesaid workers hanging out to dry....and appears to include some underpants.

My office has had the 'privilege' of being right next to the Nicoll Highway collapse site. Right before I joined the company, Francis (my boss) told me that one day they were suddenly told to evacuate the building, though he had no idea why. He later found out it was because of the collapse on the highway that day. During that time, if you'd looked for my office in www.streetdirectory.com, you would have been pointed to a spot within a circle labelled "Accident Site"! But that also meant that if you'd travelled along Beach Road outside the office for the next six months after 5pm, you would've been trapped in horrible traffic.

Today, someone visiting the office commented, "Oh, it's quite nice and cosy, isn't it?" Whenever I hear that tone, I can't help but think that what that person really means is, "My, I never thought your office was so tiny." Each time someone waltzes in, gapes for a moment and then comments on the 'cosiness' of the place, you marvel at how polite people can be and yet be just as annoying as if they'd made a tactless comment.

My company's little workspace occupies a studio-apartment sized unit in InCity Lofts, a building that has based itself on a "live and work" concept, meaning that its units can be used as apartments to live in or small offices. This is perfect for our little outfit of five people, two of whom are hardly ever in the office (the sales gurus who bring in the moolah). We hope to move into the bigger unit next door when (and if) we expand. The next door unit is quite lovely, and includes two separate bedrooms (that can be converted into more 'private' working areas...*rubbing hands in glee*) and a kitchenette.

It's small, but quite pleasant in general. The ceilings are high, and there's a loft-like space above our huge wall cupboard. But to date, no one has brought in a ladder yet, so that space is not doing very much. It gets pretty dim too, since most of our natural light is obscured by Golden Mile Complex next to us. Even with the room lights switched on, it's pretty dim. The desk lamps don't do much except irritate my eyes. Our furniture almost entirely comprises Ikea stuff, right down to the letter holders.

There's an odd yet interesting phenomenon among the tenants here. Whenever a person is alone in the lift, and the lift stops at any floor other than the desired floor, the person will start to walk out without checking which floor it is, and look utterly shocked when someone else enters the lift. I've done that myself quite a few times! I guess everyone's so used to having few people around to share the lifts with. But it's still priceless to see the look on someone's face when they start to walk out of the lift and then have that OH!! expression when they see you walking in.

The OTHER view from my office window - none too inspiring. At least I didn't show you the carpark area....at least this view has some symmetry to it.

My desk at work. Yes, I'd neatened it to take this shot.

VJC revisited

VJC cleaned up real nice! This is the view from a landing next to the lovely stairwell next to the auditorium wing. It's got a rather ostentatious chandelier dangling down the middle, and a cool baby grand piano at the base. I'm jealous - I wanna be 17 again!

Bottom view of the stairwell.

Sunday in the 'arts' library

$15 per hour for a meeting room in the Esplanade library. That's not too bad, really, if you want to compare with other places, but yeah, I guess Yan has a point that it's not very encouraging for the arts to have a charge like that. But this is Singapore, we're pragmatic people. That room mightn't necessarily have been for the 'arts'.

Arts library indeed. They didn't have ANY Christopher Durang plays there! Got there on Wednesday night to find out that all the Durang plays are in the Marine Parade library. Then pray why tout this one as the arts library if they ain't got a comprehensive collection? Folks, it's OKAY to have duplicate copies in different libraries, ya know??

Was not entirely surprised to have only Joe and Kennie show up for today's gathering at the library. Two last-minute pull-outs and no response from anyone else....we're off to a good start, aren't we? But we made some good progress I think. Spent most of the time reading snippets of the plays we dragged out of the shelves. Very promising, some, but others inspire the phrase "What the...?!". Like Agamenon, which is actually an adaptation of Poe's immortal House of Usher story. I don't know about the others, but I'm not too sure I'm keen on learning lines that come mostly in stanzas.... Then there are some other plays that seem to comprise entirely of a series of monologues. And no, they were not classical Greek ones.

Hard to pick a suitable play. Can't be too male; can't be too female; can't be too abstract; can't be too comedic; can't be too dated. Such a series of 'can'ts'. This week's exploration of the theatre shelves has shown me that, for every brilliant work of playwriting, there's a horde of seriously crappy stuff.

Browsing the music scores section was lovely, though. Even if I couldn't find the score for South Pacific (was looking for the score for that ridiculous shampoo song). Seeing the shelves of classical scores brought back memories of my college days when I used to spend hours rifling through the collection at the Stamford Road library, picking out works that look promising to try out on my Albert (my beloved piano), and then having to reluctantly eliminate some from the inevitably large pile that ends up in my to-borrow list. I doubt I ever played half of those I borrowed, though. Still was always nice making my way to the library on my own. I still like that, though the opportunity comes by far less often these days.

I don't like libraries. I don't like borrowing. I prefer owning, collecting, so I prefer bookshops. But my pockets don't run so deep, so borrowing will have to suffice till I earn my first million and fund my own private library. (uh huh.) I like to be able to read something, put it away somewhere on my shelves, and come back to it again sometime when its spine catches my eye again. Even if I don't read it again, I like the thought that I can. Compulsive consumerism? Perhaps. But the value I attach to a book I own is something that can never apply to a borrowed book that I read and doesn't seem to stay with me. The contents of the book just seem to be more a part of me when I own the book. Same reason why I hate e-books - the feeling that I can't own it, that it's not real enough for me. I'm always so hungry for books, always looking for that next work of art, be it an astronomy reference, a social dissertion, graphic novel, an irresistable coffee table book, a piece of fiction. Bookshops are death traps for my wallet.

I like my camera. Please excuse the narcism. I was really bored when I took this picture in the mirror.

(Uploading this just so I can use it in my profile. I doubt anyone will see this post anymore!)

In-your-face art

I doubt many people missed this huge head by Botero sitting in front of the Esplanade. Gonna go Botero-snap-happy with my camera on Sunday I reckon. Don't we just love how Botero makes fat people look beautiful? I'm usually not much of a photographer, but I must say I'm quite happy with how this pic turned out, especially for a night shot. Good symmetry. This was taken without flash - the flash shots I took actually turned out really dark (which is why you're seeing this one instead of the one with Kelvin trying to pick the huge head's nose).

The arts superfluous? BAH!!

It is a fact that, if we had to strip to the bare necessities, 'the arts' would probably be the first to go, since it is not essential to survival in the same way that food, social system and security are. Singapore, being such a young society, is used to being practical, since that's what got us so far in so short a time. It takes time for people to take a leap to see the arts as more than just nancing about on stage or decorating museum walls.

What a lot of people here don't share is the view that the arts is pretty much an extension of our everyday existence; a different way of expressing the nuances of life. Everything we do is on a stage; every face we put on is a mask. We behave differently in different social situations. Isn't that some form of acting? We exclaim how beautiful someone's handwriting is. Isn't that a kind of art? What we collectively call 'the arts' is really setting aside something we do all the time and focussing on it, bringing it out as an entity on its own.

Perhaps we have to get over those days where actors and artists were seen as lower-caste, immoral leeches of society. Why should actors get scorned as idle and frivolous when they act or sing on a stage, while teachers telling children stories and singing songs at playschool are seen to be conducting a productive profession? They're doing essentially the same thing.

Why do audiences keep coming if they see the arts as superfluous? To partake in an hour or two of beauty and magic, and then forget about it as they return to the mundane everyday business of living? Are artists like alcohol - kinda fun to have around, but the first to be forgotten, minus the hangover? Maybe it will take a day, a week or a year of a total absence of arts for a society to realise how much emptier their existence is without it.

But hang on - that's impossible! Where there is beauty, there is art. Where there is role-play, there is theatre. Where there is a written word, there is prose. Art is not separate from survival. It is part of the very state of being.