Faded Glamour

A useful e-mail from Alistair may have gone some way to opening From A Far Place to comments. It seems I was using the wrong settings, thus inadvertently preventing anyone, except myself, from posting anything. Now things should have changed, if anyone has got anything they want to say, that is.

A little while ago I mentioned having a little stash of F. Scott Fitzgerald novels in KL which were crying out to be read. I listened to the moans of This Side of Paradise and polished it off over the weekend. Generally critics don't have great things to say about the two earliest novels. I can recall at least one who regards them as unreadable. And I suppose they are at the side of the supremely readable The Great Gatsby. In Gatsby Fitzgerald seems to get everything right. The glamour of what Gatsby represents is as genuine as glamour can be and is perfectly in balance with the steely-eyed moral vision of its emptiness. Even the joys and concomitant pains of alcohol are conveyed with an observant neutrality quite extraordinary in one of the great (and saddest) drunks of the century. Much better than anything in Hemingway.

Now next to this level of attainment This Side of Paradise is transparently poor stuff. The plot is a mess and, as far as I can tell, Fitzgerald just gives it up in the final pages. The characters are painfully irritating, especially Amory - and since the book is about him, and Fitzgerald seems to be determined to invest him with some sort of significance, that's about as major a fault as a novel can handle. The period charm is as dated as fashion can possibly become, which is very dated indeed. And yet I quite enjoyed the whole thing. Once you accept that this is an extremely young man's book, things fall into place. And there are intimations of the real writer everywhere, particularly in the honesty with which Fitzgerald fundamentally regards the whole Princeton edifice.

Highs & Lows

We're just back from Malaysia having enjoyed yet another smooth trip. Melaka was, as always, restful, at least from my point of view. Nenek didn't recognise either Noi or myself and according to Noi looked in worse shape than she was two weeks ago. Happily both Mak & Abba looked good, and Abba was obviously pleased with the new wheelchair we got for him.

Before leaving Maison KL I had a little run around the taman. Originally we intended to run together but Noi forgot her running shoes. This was the first time I'd done any running at all in the area and I loved it - five circuits of the taman in around twenty-seven minutes. A great way to get to know the area and get the endorphins flowing at the same time.

Moving On

We’ll be setting off for Melaka this afternoon. We’ll spend the night at Mak’s house and head back to Singapore tomorrow afternoon, probably with Hakim & Intan on board. They’ve come over for the weekend, with Hakim intended to do a barbecue this evening. Of course it would be nicer to have longer here. It’s always hard to leave. But even a short break is a good way to stay in touch with what’s of fundamental importance in our lives, and I’ve learned to be grateful to have only that.

Yesterday we spent the evening at KLCC and then we had dinner at a place called Ali Baba’s (very original!) along Ampang Road, opposite Great Eastern. The food was plain but satisfying. The traffic was noisy and close, but since the restaurant was all but empty it seemed oddly peaceful. At home I found myself watching a BBC programme called Sounds of the Sixties which finished with Jimi Hendrix playing Voodoo Chile (Slight Returns) on the Lulu show from 1968. Astonishingly alive. Music to frighten the whole family. Great bass from Noel Redding underpinning transcendent stuff from the master. Noi fell asleep.

Regarding things in Melaka: there are big concerns about Nenek’s health, and I don’t think these are going to go away any time soon. She’s looking frailer with each visit we make such that it’s getting hard to remember the sturdily independent tough old lady who once lived across the road in that primitive shack of a place. (It’s still there, having been used as a kind of eating place – I don’t know what’s being done with it now.) Mak cannot look after her on her own, but now Sulis has come back from Indonesia, after a not terribly successful trip home, she has some help. Noi, I know, is looking forward to lending a hand, but it can only be for a short while. The difficulties of the situation are causing some conflicts within the family. I suppose this is inevitable, but it’s sad nonetheless. However, the brothers and sisters seem extremely resilient in this regard. They argue over all sorts but are able to bounce back and sort of pull together at the end of it all. The only thing is, there is no real end to it all. In this kind of extended family new issues are always arising. It’s supportive, I suppose, but draining.

Nations

This is just about the time for the National Day Parade in Singapore. Curiously it’s not at all like a parade, more like a kind of mass-participatory cabaret show. The usual venue, the National Stadium, is about to be demolished to make way for something bigger and better. This is the expected fate of almost everything on the island and lends to the place a curious sense of being constantly in transit – it’s as if one is permanently seated in a particularly well-provided for waiting lounge, ready for the gate to the future to open. So this year the parade will take place on a kind of temporary stage out on the water, as far as I understand it. It will be a big success, as it has to be, and Singapore will take one step closer to convincing itself it is a nation.

When I first came here, back in 1988, I found the stress on nationhood startling, especially as it manifests itself in schools. Given the unlikeliness of Singapore being a nation at all the fuss made about being Singaporean was understandable but generally tiresome. I mean it’s a fairly interesting experiment to carve a sense of nationhood out of almost nothing, but it seems curiously besides the point in a world in which national borders are becoming ever more doubtful. But it seems to keep the younger kids amused, though there’s a dangerous degree of cynicism amongst teenagers and young adults about the whole enterprise. For myself, I can live with it all but I think I have less sympathy now with nationalisms of any shade than I have ever felt before. I suppose I occasionally feel some pride in being English when I hear Jerusalem sung, but that’s because it feels good to be born in a country that has adopted such a weird and wonderfully eccentric piece as somehow representing the nation. And there’s always Blake himself to be proud of, the quintessentially English poet. Shakespeare doesn’t count as he has always been beyond nationality.

Here at Maison KL, safely far away from the strains of Stand Up For Singapore, I’ve been treating myself to a bit of Bach at home (the Brandenburg concertos) and a lot of the Temptations in the car (driving out to the post office at Ampang Point this afternoon to pay some bills). Noi has already got the place clean and Devan has been round to poison any termites that might dare to lunch on our (plentiful) wood. I’ve said it before, and I daresay I’ll say it again – with a full sense that I’m incredibly lucky to be able to say it at all: life is good, very.

Journey's End

Another fun-packed day: a hot celebration of the nation’s birthday in the morning, which was pretty much over by 10.30, followed by a couple of hours of packing, followed by a smooth trip north, incorporating tea and toast at the A.R.A.B. Café and a cheese sandwich at O’Brien’s in the Great Eastern Mall on Ampang Road . Now we are here in Maison KL, getting the place sorted out and in running order. More of this tomorrow. Time to attend to the (pleasant) demands of domesticity.

Full Disclosure

Quite an eventful day. This morning the school held its cross country at Turf City. For those, like me, with light duties it was a lot more relaxing than teaching, but hotter. After that I went back into school for a meeting with the Drama Exco. Fairly long, but productive. It's important we hit the ground running after the production. In many ways we're still feeling our way into how the club (I'm referring here to the senior Anglo-Chinese School Independent Stage) might function across the two years for which a student will be a member. Then it was off to Arab Street with Noi to see her tailor in preparation for her Hari Raya finery, and a quick cup of tea there. She's just gone off to Sengkang as someone in the extended family passed away yesterday and she needs to pay her respects. I'm here through simple tiredness and there're a few jobs left to be done. Tomorrow we'll be heading to KL after the National Day celebration at Queenstown Stadium in the morning.

It seems that (my ex-student) Sheela was trying to post something here but couldn't get through. A pity: it would have been From A Far Place's first comment. I've got a feeling you need to be signed up to Blogger.com to get something down in black and white. Anyway, she asked me to cut and paste her offering from an e-mail she sent, so in the interests of full disclosure and a diversity of voices (all very post-modern) I'll comply:

I think Annisa was the Tree in Ming Lee right? (Sort of - she was the Property Man and wound up holding a branch.)

We had quite an outing on Friday - dinner at a Bugis coffeeshop that left us (ok, me at least) largely unsatisfied; then Chinese dessert at this Hongkong-style place on Liang Seah street; then walked over to Arab Street for tea/tahu goreng. That was the worst stop of the night cos we (ok, I!) was terrorized by this GINORMOUS cockroach on the floor, much to the glee of all the Mat Moto-s around us. Plus also, the shop was tuned in to this Malay radio station that was having a singing competition for its listeners, and after 15 mins of torturous female warbling, the DJ would exclaim: "SE-DAAAAAP sei!" You should have been there! If not to reminisce, then to save us from the lipas/bad singing.

Update on everyone:Annisa is back from Theatre Studies at Warwick, she was looking v polished in her pants and heels, fresh from her first job interview here at EPSN.She and Priya were talking about their yoga class and some hot yoga instructor (yogi?) that Priya is quite taken with. Dali is leaving for a short trip to KL, she's just back from the UAE where she's been based for the past few years. And I am starting my second year of Masters in Sociology at NUS in a week's time and am now savouring the last week of hols.

But we would all love to meet up again, this time with you!So squeeze some time out of your busy schedule, or we will be FORCED to hunt you down at your school and embarass you in front of all your students.

That's a wicked threat, but I remain unembarrassable.

Words and Music

In an attempt to make up for my lack of focus in actively listening to music I've been piling it on this weekend. We enjoyed ourselves more than a little last night at the symphonic band's concert in school. The programme was full of toe-tapping crowd-pleasers and we agreed it was a bit of a pity we didn't take Fa Fa and FI Fi along - especially for the Abba medley which kicked off the proceedings. The percussion section played a couple of pieces on their own in the middle of the concert and this was the highlight for me. The senior band finished things off and managed to inject some real swing into a big band medley, a quality rare in school bands here. We closed the evening with mutton soup at the Adam Road hawker centre after munching something (sardine puffs for me) at Dadi's on the way down. A kind of perfection all told.

This morning I've been soaking myself in Ralph Vaughn Williams, my music of choice when the old ears need refreshing. I gave Dona Nobis Pacem and Sancta Civitas a spin. The latter has a mystical power that connects it to the fifth symphony and the shorter swooney stuff; the former a sense of unease perfect for a time of approaching war. (It was first performed in 1936.) Not exactly toe-tapping, but a kind of release. I also read Alan Bennett's The Madness of King George which I picked up at the library yesterday. I must get to see the movie. Its run at the cinema here was exceedingly brief, as is the case with most films of note, and I've foolishly been expecting it to appear some time on cable - which it hasn't. It was a pleasure to read the play but I'm painfully aware I'm missing a lot not seeing it performed.

This afternoon we went down to Bussorah Street for the cup that cheers and bumped into Adrian with his family who are over from Ireland. I got a sense they loved the place, and rightly. On a hot, lazy Sunday afternoon the area functions as a ante-room to paradise.

Voices From The Past

I recently received an e-mail from an old friend, Val, who was a colleague at Rawmarsh Comprehensive, and her husband Peter. They will be going to Australia in September, as part of a round the world trip, and we should be able to catch them on their stopover in Singapore. Over the years we've been lucky enough to entertain, if only briefly, quite a few people from my old school - Jean Armstrong, David & Sheila Hoddle, Phil & Margaret Chappel - and it's always a great experience, if slightly disorientating. The dark side of seeing old friends is being told about people passing on, or experiencing major problems in their lives. It was back at Dave Turner's on one of Noi's first trips to England that I heard of the deaths of Pat, George and Harry. Even now that doesn't seem quite real. So it goes.

Coincidentally Sheela from TKGS recently contacted me with news of a small reunion of some of the girls from the Drama Club there (one or two of whom performed in the original Ming Lee and the Magic Tree, quite a few years back.) That archetypally Singaporean problem, a busy schedule, meant I couldn't get to chat with them. Disappointing but there may be opportunities in future to find out what they've done with their lives so far.

I'm wary of tending to live in the past, possibly because I remember so much so vividly that there's a powerful temptation to do so. I'm lucky, though, to have a present that is rewarding enough to inhabit comfortably.

Less Than Satisfactory

Now the production is out of the way (closure being achieved with a little party for the cast after school on Wednesday) it's time to get some serious reading done (amongst other things) and some balance back into my life. We're going to the library tomorrow and I'll be returning two entirely unread books. Ouch.

Music teachers make music, Art teachers paint but do English teachers write? (I'm talking creativity here, not just minutes of meetings.) Should it be made compulsory?

Got to run!

Desire, And What It Leads To

Desire was the breakthrough Dylan album for me. Before it I'd admired Dylan, but from quite a distance, and part of me didn't quite get a lot of what he did. Sometimes the voice simply sounded comic, sometimes the music seemed though not exactly inept not quite 'ept' somehow. I hasten to add that at the time of the release of Desire there was an awful lot of Dylan I'd never listened to. In those days album costs were prohibitive for someone of my income (virtually nil really) so buying one was a big event and I never felt I could afford to experiment in terms of sampling new stuff. Even borrowing an album seemed a big deal. I remember getting hold of John Wesley Harding at school and just not appreciating it at all, thus pretty much deciding not to bother with other stuff from the catalogue. In fact, I realise now I was always a long way behind others in grasping the work of musicians who came to prominence in the late sixties. I don't think I actually listened to Sgt Pepper's until around 1970 - 71.

But Desire spoke to me, at the time of its release, in a big way Someone, I can't remember who, had bought it at university and for a few weeks it became the album played late at night on those nights when conversation got out of hand and supplanted the good sense of sleep. It insinuated itself musically into my brain until I became hooked on just about everything involved in its distinctive sound world: the hooky melodies, the echoey but oh-so-right drums and bass, the resinous violin sound, those oddly complimentary voices - Dylan's abrasive, Emmylou's sweet but sometimes just on the edge of struggling to find a tune. Then I delved into the lyrics, and found myself beguiled. The personal songs, full of emotion yet strange and indirect so you had to guess at contexts and meanings, and ended up supplying them. I constructed an entire narrative around One More Cup Of Coffee which I never really believed had much to do with what Dylan meant but which I found satisfying. The theatrical songs, narratives that drew you in to their implausible and never wholly serious worlds and seemed to say something worth saying, or, rather, involved you in something worth feeling.

Today I was listening to Desire once again, in the car and was struck by how much I liked the track Joey, almost universally panned by critics over the years as a glorification of a gangster who didn't deserve the tribute. Moralising over Dylan's songs misses the point (sometimes, though possibly not in the case of those songs which genuinely involve a 'message' of some kind). In this case you just need to surrender to the laconic machismo on offer and become a less than self-aware, sentimental mafioso of the old school for as long as the song lasts. It's not a nice thing to do but Dylan is prepared to put less than comfortable things on offer. That's what this album helped me understand back then and why it opened for me a new way of listening.