A Single Story

Fuad passed me the first volume of Tall Order - The Goh Chok Tong Story a week or so ago. Since he'd gone to the trouble of lending me a copy I thought I'd better rise to the occasion by reading it and I'm now halfway through and, somewhat to my surprise, I'm enjoying it. Of course, as with any political biography I'm reading the tome with a healthy scepticism, but it does grant a number of insights into the ways this Far Place is run and the kind of people who make the big decisions about folks' lives here.

I suppose the fact that the book is profoundly unexciting says much for what has been achieved on these shores. I experienced the transition from the days of LKY to the new regime and, since then, to further transitions. Much has changed and I feel oddly privileged to have been around to witness those changes. I've gained a little more understanding of the nature of those changes and the nature of governance here, from Tall Order, but I'm keenly aware there's a much richer story going on. There always is, I suppose.

Perfectly Ordinary

Just got back from the McDonald's at West Coast Park. We popped out to have a very ordinary time on a very ordinary evening after a very ordinary day. And all of that ordinariness was more than fine by me. Quite a gift really. Indeed, something of an exception in a world that is so frequently unkind.

Another Number

I've been listening to some of the online lectures given by Tim Snyder, the historian who wrote Bloodlands, an account of the mass murders that took place in Eastern Europe, the bit between Germany and the Soviet Union, between 1933 and the end of WW2. One day I'll read the book, but I've been putting it off as being a bit too depressing to take on at the moment. I suppose the lectures function as a kind of substitute for the overwhelming detail of the real thing for me.

One number sprung out from the various statistics the prof expertly analyses. 14,000,000. The number who died (men, women and children) in that territory, in that period. The idea of 6,000,000 Jews as victims of the holocaust is difficult enough to comprehend, impossible really, but this number (which includes most of those six million) moves to a place that the brain just cannot go, except in the most abstract sense.

And this in Europe less than a century ago. In the lifetimes of my parents.

Numbers

There have been so few Covid-related deaths in Singapore for so long that it was both uncanny but reassuring. Of course, it couldn't last. There were 10 deaths yesterday and the total now reads 349. Amazingly low compared to other places, but enough to emphasise the sheer nastiness of the virus. Each one likely to be a source of grief for someone somewhere, and since grief is endless we move beyond numbers into that which lies beyond measurement.

I'm not looking forward to seeing that number increase, but it surely will - which surely makes it incumbent upon us to mitigate that increase as much as we are able to. It's easy to forget in this context what just the single digit 1 means, but we can at least try to remember.

A Fine Mess

Finished watching the series on Netflix about the O.J. Simpson case. Impressed with the writing and acting, though I do wonder just how much liberty was taken with the facts of the case. I've got a feeling it was all even messier than the mess we saw on screen. Must say, I thought overall a sane kind of balance was created in terms of allowing a range of perspectives to emerge.

I liked the sense created of the hollowness of O.J.'s 'victory'. The final scenes centred on the man himself felt deeply uneasy, and rightly so.

How strange it all was. And how reflective of America, its problems and its promise. And how sad in terms of the damage done to so many. Probably some still going on.

The Hard Stuff

Just finished the August edition of The New York Review of Books, the Summer Issue (according to the cover.) I read a lot fewer editions of the publication than I used to over a year, I suppose because I'm now so accustomed to reading stuff through my phone, pushing to one side the reading of material in hard copy. However, I grow more certain over time that what I read for 'real' somehow 'sticks' in a way that 'soft' material doesn't always manage to.

As usual I put this edition aside (meaning on the pile of NYRBs on the bookshelves outside) convincing myself I'll revisit it one day, though I suppose that's unlikely. But I am taking note of the articles that had a particularly eye-opening effect, especially one on W.E.B. Du Bois that served to reinforce my desire to read The Souls of Black Folk sometime soon.

Good Cheer

Relieved to get through on the usual number to chat with John this evening. I was baffled as to what was wrong with the line the last few times I've tried to ring him. The thing is, getting through on our landline means the calls are reasonably cheap, whereas using the mobile entails the cost of an arm and a leg and I hated the fact that I'd rushed the previous call after all he's been through.

Actually my niece Cheryl was visiting him, which is also very good news given the occasional strains between them. She'd just shown him a recently taken picture of Maureen and he reckoned my sister looked a lot better - even more good news. In the course of our last rushed conversation he'd told me that she was due for a detox on the day after the call, but this doesn't seem to have taken place. Today he was talking about a possible detox around May - and the real possibility of her then being allowed to go back home from the place she's now in, which is somewhere in Dukinfield. Since John hasn't had a drink himself for some three months, and doesn't care about drinking anymore, it sounds as if there's a possible future in this.

It's clear that John is lucky to be alive. His daughter Louise was told he might not make it in his first month of unconsciousness and surviving both septicaemia of the liver (I think that's what he said) and bleeding on the brain (definitely) clearly couldn't have been a picnic, especially for someone already missing a leg. I reckon he has the constitution of an ox, and I'm talking about a super-fit, genetically superior ox here. Long may he continue.

Noi reckons that, since he's stopped drinking, now would be a good time to get him to convert and give him a chance of communing with the angels. Not a bad idea, I suppose, but I'm not sure what the angels would make of him, though I reckon he'd provide them plenty of entertainment.

Not So Blank

Acquired my diary for 2022 today, in the usual edition. Except they've changed the cover, which I don't like, and the price, which has increased by $3.00 (a 25% hike!) which I like even less. I suppose the increase in price is related to the unpleasant cover, but at least the inner contents remain reassuringly the same in terms of content and layout.

Not sure why people think they need to make progress by making sure everything gets worse, but it's the nature of things, as far as I can tell. So who am I to complain?

Getting Into It

I managed to find the time in the later part of the week to watch the full 2018 live performance of Radiohead in Sao Paulo. Apart from just how good it is, I was struck by the difference between this version of the band and the live from the basement stuff they do, available on YouTube. It's difficult to believe that they're as convincing as arena rockers as they are in the tight confines of a studio. The sign of something very special. And, I suppose there's a third version: the albums themselves and the sense of the studio as an instrument.

One unexpected reaction from me to the Sao Paulo performance. I found myself genuinely moved by just how much the young crowd were into the music. The singing along added an unexpected dimension, and normally I find that kind of thing irritating. This time the special sincere intensity of it all helped me to a better understanding of how much the songs have the potential to mean.

Betrayal On The Grand Scale

Great piece in The Guardian about the betrayal of the families of the victims of the Hillsborough disaster. A reminder of the degree to which it's wise to distrust the British Establishment. That degree being a lot.

Can't imagine the anger the families must feel. I only know my own.

No Sign Yet

In previous years I've sometimes found myself complaining in this Far Place that mention of Christmas approaching has come too early - often around the first week of October. This year we haven't encountered a single sign of the season, so far. Wonder if this is part of the 'new normal'? Suits me if it is, I must say.

A Blank

I haven't yet acquired my week-to-a-view diary for 2022. I've seen some in various bookshops, but not my favoured brand, and I am nothing if not a creature of habit. I might just start panicking if I get to November without one since this is the time that detailed planning begins for me (which means carrying around two diaries at the back end of the year.)

In case you are wondering why I don't go digital, I'll just say real life requires a real physical diary.

But perhaps I should add that the fact that 2022 remains a sort of blank canvas has an element of charm about it. Would that it remain so! 

Trying To Connect

I've read five of the plays from the Connections volume I referenced the other day and enjoyed each of them to some extent, with that extent usually being a lot. Mind you, I think you have to be a bit of a theatre person to grasp how some of them work on stage, and even then I couldn't quite visualise fully Howard Brenton's The Guffin (yes, there are some big-name dramatists involved) and Stacey Gregg's I'm Spilling My Heart Out Here. But I grasped enough of these to get a sense of how exciting they'd be to witness - at least by a teenage audience attuned to their concerns - and how they are meant to work. (I know that sounds patronising, but it isn't meant to. Such concerns are passionately real and thought-provoking to all, but they tend, to some degree, to push back on old geezers like myself.)

The only disappointment I feel in relation to the volume relates to what was primarily on my mind in 2017 with regard to the 2014 compilation: above all I'd really like to find a piece we could do as part of a production with my drama guys. However, there are two key problems regarding this: the plays (so far) are wonderfully edgy, but too edgy for these shores, I think, and they are very, very British. I like a sense of the local but there's a limit and adaptation necessarily loses something (even as it might gain something else) and when that something becomes too much of a thing you end up failing to do justice to the material, I'm afraid.

The play I've most enjoyed so far has been the most obviously conventional in terms of telling a story. Ryan Craig's We Lost Elijah struck me as a brilliant bit of theatre and I can almost figure out a way to get it done in our context - almost, but not quite, I'm afraid. A pity, but I've still got fifteen plays to read, with five more from this volume and ten from a different Connections to go.

Just Walking

Went out for a walk this evening, to blow away the cobwebs and get outside of myself. I walked in the direction of Pasir Panjang Road, following what is almost a winding country lane once past the hospital, turning around when I reached the road at the bottom of Kent Ridge Park. That gave me forty minutes there and back, a reasonable time for someone as out of condition as myself.

At the turning point it occurred to me that I'd been so lost in my inwardness and little concerns that I'd paid hardly any attention to the loveliness of the greenery around me, the sounds of various night creatures, and the general freshness of the evening, mild humidity and all. I told myself to get out of my thoughts and attend to all this on the way back. But I didn't. We're strange creatures, aren't we? Well, I am, at least.

Not So Cheerful

Over time I've developed the belief that it's good to at least try and be cheerful despite everything. But today just wasn't a cheery sort of day, sadly. At least I got to talk very briefly to John just now, and he's back home from hospital and has some at least mildly good news about Maureen.

The problem is that our communication was restricted to just a couple of minutes due to circumstances beyond our control, as they say. Another aspect of the disappointing nature of the day. A pity. I could have done with a bit more good news.

Some Strings Attached

Listened just now to an informative interview with Jonny Greenwood, serving to fuel my on-going bit of an obsession with Radiohead. Would have liked more about his work on film tracks and thoughts on Penderecki, but glad to have some access to his thoughts on these matters. Wonder if Radiohead have ever worked live with a string section, or full-blown orchestra. Doubt it, but interested in trying to find out.

On Occasion

I was listening to Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks a few days back - the excellent Archiv recording with Trevor Pinnock and his merry men - when a fairly obvious thought came to me: It's splendid stuff, but you really have to be in a Baroque kind of mood for the over-the-top grandeur of it all. Then came another, somewhat fresher, thought: Even regarding music I'm a mindless fanboy for, there is some element of needing to be in the mood to get close up and very personal - it's just that those moods are easy to find. So I can listen to Crimso, VdGG, Radiohead, Dylan, Richard Thompson, Elvis (Costello, that is), Vaughan Williams, Haydn almost any time, but not quite every time.

And here's my final thought, dredged from memory: In my early teenage years I listened to whatever it was I was getting into at any time, and all the time, over and over - and never tired of it - especially with regard to my encounters with the giants of the underground scene: Deep Purple, Sabbath, Led Zep, Tull, Crimso (of course, my first love), Floyd, VdGG, Genesis, Strawbs, Yes, ELP and the like. Just spinning the vinyl created the occasion.

I suppose the change began when I developed a primitive kind of discriminatory taste.

Keeping Cheerful

Just lately I've been listening a lot to Radiohead, the live stuff on YouTube mainly, particularly in brief moments of downtime at work. It's all a bit contradictory: I think it would be fair to characterise the band as pretty intense on the somewhat depressive side. But after listening I always feel unaccountably cheerful.

(Just to give a specific example, I listened to a wonderfully frantic 2 + 2 = 5 live from the Reading Festival a couple of times today, at a suitably happy volume, and it went a long way towards healing the pains of an unconscionably busy day.)

On Waking

Does anyone actually describe themselves as 'woke'? Or even see themselves as such?

The best we can ever achieve, it seems to me, is to be trying to be awake to all our various world has to offer. But isn't sleep so inviting?

Sadly Lacking

I've long been bewildered by the utter mundanity of my dreams. After all, I'm a vaguely artistic sort of chap who regularly wrestles with works of high imagination. And do I dream of centaurs & sea-nymphs & heroes in battle with the spirits of rivers? No. I dream of getting on-line in a lesson three hours before I actually go on-line. I suppose it's a form of lesson preparation, but stultifyingly dull.

As Others See

I've been watching the mini-series centred on the O. J. Simpson trial on Netflix in fits and starts. I'm not at all comfortable with the ethics of dramatisations of real life events, and I wondered if The People vs OJ Simpson was just going to be high class trash, but I've reached the sixth episode and been impressed by the acting and general production values. I get a sense I'm being shown something close to the truth, at least in terms of the basic facts. To be honest, I'm a bit surprised by how much I didn't know, having followed the saga from a considerable distance back in the day.

Watching Episode 6, which generally focuses on Marcia Clark, the main prosecutor, was in many ways quite a painful experience. I'm not sure if the real Ms Clark would have wanted herself portrayed on screen - actually I wonder if seeing herself depicted might have added to the pain she suffered in the course of the trial, horrible thought - but for this viewer, at least, it was illuminating to see first hand, as it were, what a woman in her position had to face. Before watching I think I might have brushed off the idea that the media paying attention to one's appearance is a big deal. Now I know a lot better and am so much more aware of how that necessarily looms so much larger for women - even one as obviously accomplished in so many ways as Ms Clark.

I suppose that if there's any justification at all for this genre (apart from providing interesting television) it's the possibility that the viewer might grow in sympathy and understanding of others - especially those whose perspectives are so foreign to us.

On The Edge

Listened to the first act of Mozart's Don Giovanni this morning. I'm growing in understanding of what's going on in the music in relation to the drama, but there's still a way to go. Mind you, if that implies that I'll be listening to this and the other operas for years to come then I have no objection.

The whole mythos of the good Don (or, rather, emphatically Bad Don) in both high and low culture is fascinating and disturbing. There's a weird energy about Mozart's central character that seems to break every frame he's put into. Talk about living on the edge.

Making Progress

My progress on the first volume of the Collected Poems of Archie Ammons stalled for quite a while when I reached his 1969 poem Essay on Poetics. Odd really, as I assumed that as a longish piece at over 700 lines I was likely to enjoy it as I've enjoyed every one of the longer poems I've read. But that was not to be. Or rather, I would need to get through the maze of the first 100 lines or so and tune in to the peculiar concerns of the poem before feeling reasonably at home with it.

It turned out that once I really got going on the poem I was able to read it in a couple of sittings today, and I think I understood what the poet was exploring - though I'm not convinced that poetry itself is the main concern, despite the title. I suppose a reread is in order, but not for the time being: I need to maintain my forward momentum in the volume as a whole. I'm vaguely targeting completion by the year's end.

I also made some progress today on one of the Connections volumes of New Plays for Young People, this being the one from 2013. It's been on my bookshelf for some time and I've decided not to pick up any kind of novel until I've read the ten plays in it - and another ten from a companion volume I possess.

Mr Teh Tarik - 4

We were downtown at the funky Funan Centre this afternoon. We parked there to do some business down the road at Peninsula Plaza, but spent more time pawming around the Funan Centre. It was there that we came across the Makanan Bollywood Restaurant and even at a distance thought we might just be able to get served teh tarik gajah, to happily discover we were not wrong. I suppose the name of the establishment was enough to suggest it was our kind of place.

Anyway, the teh tarik I was served was suitably gajah and tasted just right. I detected a mild back taste of ginger making it highly satisfactory. Just one very minor complaint: it was hot enough, but not very hot, if you know what I mean. It needed to be consumed speedily, but I had no problems doing so. A pity the place didn't serve kueh, though - but you can't have everything.

Not Much Changes

Was looking back just now in my journal at what I was up to on this date twenty years ago and fifteen years ago. In 2001 I was moaning about feeling tired and having an aching shoulder and had just embarked on a reading of Proust. In 2006 I was moaning about feeling tired and having an aching back and was reading Neil Gaiman. Funnily enough both days fell on a weekend and it was clear that relaxing was the main thing on my mind - though I was fasting for Ramadhan in 2006 and that was pretty prominent as well.

At a distance of years from both days I'm struck by how deeply boring I was and am: a cause for minor celebration, methinks.

Above All

It had been my intention to finish Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles over the weekend, but that was another plan that needed to be abandoned along with several other aspects of my life. On Friday I'd reached the bit where Patroclus is setting out in Achilles's chariot, posing as the great hero. I was pretty close to the end of the novel, but there were enough pages left to make me wonder how Miller was going to continue the narrative after Patroclus's death (he being the narrator), since I was aware, as most reasonably savvy readers would be, that he wasn't going to last more than a handful of pages. I suppose I was as much invested in the fascination of how the writer would solve a major narrative problem as in the fate of a character I'd come to feel close to.

I now know Miller's 'solution', having completed the novel, and it's artistically perfect - clever, yes, but in keeping with the integrity of the text (I'm thinking of Joyce's integritas here) at every level: thematically coherent and true to her characters. And, above all, emotionally devastating. The final paragraph is gorgeous.

It now seems odd that I felt so detached about the novel initially. The writer succeeds in almost every way I can think of, helping us to a deep understanding of the classical world's understanding of ideas of nobility and heroism, reflecting with unerring precision the reality of the brutal violence of that world, and exploring the equally compelling realities of sexual passion and abiding love in all our worlds. Indeed, on closing the novel I couldn't help but think of how much of what we know of humanity in the twenty-first century is strangely reflected in its craftily fashioned pages.

In Recovery

As I remarked in Sunday's post, last Saturday was a particularly taxing day in terms of what needed to be done work-wise, and the necessary travails spilled over into the Sunday itself. I must say that I thought I'd recovered from the mild trauma of it all by Monday, but just now I found myself uncharacteristically knocked out after the Maghrib Prayer, so I reckon I still need a good night's kip for normal transmission to have officially resumed.

I won't bore you with the full gory details of what took place, Gentle Reader, since it's the sheer boredom of the details that was so taxing. Suffice it to say that after happily completing my marking target for the day by 1.00 pm and assuming for the rest of the day I would get my life back, the sudden need to carry out some very urgent contact-tracing which landed on my plate (and the plates of quite a number of colleagues) an hour later reconfigured the day (and the next, to some degree) in an unappetising cocktail of ferocious activity and mind-numbing detail.

I suppose I knew this kind of work must feel like that for the poor souls who have to carry it out on a regular basis, but actually doing it introduced a whole new way of knowing based on very real experience. The thing is that you have to get the details right, otherwise you're going to unnecessarily mess up quite a few people's lives for no good reason. In a sense you're trying to help mitigate the spread of a very, very nasty virus, of course, but there's a kind of halo effect involved in terms of what it will cost in terms of huge inconvenience to provide uncertain protection to the community.

I allowed myself a good moan about it all - with Noi on the receiving end - in the middle of all the action; but, even then, the understanding that compared to those serving in the absolute front line of protection my grudging contribution was small, indeed tiny potatoes, helped give some much-needed perspective.

Having said that, am hoping the experience need not be repeated.

The Mind Is A Strange Thing

Remembering things that never happened. Forgetting so much that did.

Not Exactly Resting

Yesterday was one of the toughest days of my teaching career in terms of sheer busy-ness. And it was supposed to be a relaxing, weekend day.

One day I'll tell the story. But not today. (Still busy.)

Autumnal Almanac

We popped out to Arab Street in the late afternoon, after I got back from the third shift of Friday Prayers. (How odd that sounds, yet how routine it has become!)

We went with a purpose, and I mean something more than the statutory cup of tea and curry puffs. It was our intention to visit Wardah Books to obtain a newly released CD from the estimable Ramli Sarip since Noi read about it being on sale there.

In the event, Wardah turned out to be closed by the time we got there, I suppose because of a lack of the usual business at that time of day. But we were able to sit and slurp at the Kampong Glam Café, and enjoy looking out at the rain which poured fairly steadily. In fact, the dark clouds over our heads made the scene distinctly autumnal in quality, most suitable for the first day of October - though the cosy tropical warmth seemed to contradict the gentle melancholy of it all. Ray Davies's wonderful Autumn Almanac sprang to mind - and I'm glad it did.