The Failed Reader

Rating systems for books are ridiculous. It does not matter if the reviewer is a professional or an expert for sunday reviews of a petit bourgeois papers. It projects a one-sided notion of reading of how 'good' the book is, as a passive object awaiting judgement, if the text has failed and disappointed the reader, but failed to take into account of their own ability as reader, the chances of their own inadequacies that made them, often the consumer-readers, failed the text. [...]

Even in the worst text, an active reading beyond passive reception of plot and content to structure and form could produce an effective reading. [...]

The issue would not be if this is a good book but if one has read the worst book well. This also demands the reader to question their position when they approach the text. Stop judging if you are reading a failed writer but start thinking if you are a failed reader.

I am also writing in exile. Exile from my country that does not exist

I am also writing in exile. Exile from my country that does not exist

my English grammar is perfect, but my worldview is a mess

my English grammar is perfect, but my worldview is a mess

The Cafe (transcribed)

The cafe displays fake posters of a real revolution and some old books from the xxxxxx Foreign Language Press as if, like most cafes, only for display and not meant to be read. But when this cafe, which seems to be another cafe for hipsters' and designers' ahistorical nostalgia, is closed, the books are removed from the shelves and read. From the outside, we noticed that the lighting is much brighter when the cafe is closed fro the day. But this cafe is not a bar or club. ***** We discussed how poster designs degenerated in that country during the 80s. ***** '...but this is not an issue about the intrinsic quality of the English language itself. Just as much as I dislike the fake accents I heard on this humid island, I abhor the tone of the colloquial English here which is only a parody of slangs. Especially its vocative expressions, especially when I hear it from kids, and thought about the future of this island they called a cuntry. This republic of silence has been mocked by her intelligent and educated citizens for not voicing out. But for me, an inhabitant not as intelligent or educated like them, the problem with this republic of silence is not because it is silent, but that it is not quiet enough. We should not express ourselves too much if we do not have a language of our own.***** During the meeting, the teachers were joking about the students who mispronounced the word 'memoir', the condescending discussion of how unforgivable it was. but it is quite normal, most of the time, I have heard insincere laments about the quality of the students, and the students about the teachers. What is the point of proper pronunciation, diction and grammar for English. English is a bastard language, and 'memoir' is a borrowed term. And we are no less another kind of ideological bastards suffering from colonial hangover. To speak 'proper' English, to write when my English grammar is perfect, but my ideology is a mess (it is a mess if you think ideology only refers to communism or nazism or islam fundamentalism). I hear the echoes of the word 'imperial' in the guise of global - and the misused 'international'. This imperial language, 'my English grammar is perfect, but my worldview is a mess'. The real joke is the that English is the first language here, the myth that it is universal... and the problem of foreigners from the third world who don't use this lanaguage. When your grandfather is sodomised, and grandmother was gang raped your language becomes a dialect. The antithetical gesture of retaining the syntax, and some Asian dimunitive interjections is the greatest parody. No James Joyce will emerge, those who started learning Thai aren't Samuel Beckett who wrote in French. There is no Dante to poeticise a vulgar tongue, or turning it into a national language. The native writers are fortunate. They can return to admire Malaysia or adopt Indonesia. The others would usually despise their origins. They hate the new immigrants or foreign labourers because they are like the ghosts of their forefathers who have returned to do more or less the same kind of labour, occupying the same social positions. We have tried so hard to change our accent and language through education, and adopting another religion with fake Michael Jackson as pastor, we encountered these 'cousins' we do not want to acknowledge, who returned to smear our social status and expose our origins. According to a writer of another once colonised continent, literary tradition is the muse, and literature is a tone of voice, but this island has neither. The local writers and national librarians will disagree. But when we vacilliate between fake accents and parodic colloquialisms, I repeat, we have neither. But I do not write to peddle them this idea. What's the point of writing properly when you are not reading properly or confined to anglo-american literature. It is not even a matter of method but the content your ideology draws you towards. A PhD research with the conclusion that it is fine since language is basically meant for communication disappoints the hope I had for the conversation. It is not the problem of grammar deteriorating in the recent years - but why is it a problem. A problem for who? Who does it serve? For your master to understand you? Or to write about your anglicised asian tongue and Singlish when you are living in New York because you are so witty? ***** We never disagree that this country is a parody.***** I am also writing in exile. Exile from my country that does not exist.***** I was consoled when you told me about Malayan English. But Malaya does not exist anymore. My grandfather is not a Malayan, I was born too late to be considered one, and have no wish to become one. I do not need these petty alternatives. I am Han, who was once an imperialist too, and will return as an imperialist again.'

Pigs

We were the sons of an obsolete calendar sold to the south sea as pigs. The silhouette of a tree a gun shot /The bird drops like a leaf the leaves flew away like birds /The horizon of my grandchildren is narrower than the gap between the door and the wooden frame/ It was the sun of the an obsolete calendar the moon dissolves into the yellowed river.

Art Education

Art Education

It was the age I learned to hug.*

The police walked like a gangster

the gangster talked about business

the businessman was a teacher

and the teacher is a lecher.

Everything was actually, or trying to be like, something else than itself.

Every inch of the land is developed.

But the uneven brain development is reflected on the pasty faces with vacuous expressions.

And the peasant stock degenerates further with the belief that they are middle-class property owners and started to buy paintings for their empty walls.

It was the age I learned to fuck.

In the morning, my friend drew me a diagram on the studio cubicle wall to show me the position of the clitoris.

The position was wrong.

I discovered this in bed, at night - not during live drawing lessons.

The police officer talks to me like a hooligan

the gangster walks into a political rally

the politician is a businessman

but the teacher remains a lecher:

Neo-liberal forever.

Now I priced my drawings according to the price of cheeseburger in McDonald’s.

Now I am being paid by schools the rate of a bar hostess for answering cuntish questions like

-          Why is Van Gogh’s Sunflowers significant?

-          Why must we apply rule of thirds for composition?

-          Why is reading modernist manifesto important to my art practice?

Tertiary institutions are like day care centres for bored old children to be entertained with events and non-curricular activities.

The teachers are like salesmen with some discount books and equipment to sell to the students.

In the evening, I went to a music lounge with a friend and returned all the money I was paid to a hostess whose country had betrayed the Third World Congress.

Black Cover

I see the little red book and I want to paint it back

because

reading him is the opposite of

buying gaudy paintings
wearing badges, t-shirts
or carrying a canvas sling bag

with a picture of him.

or to pair him with a fucking mouse from Disney
or a campy anti-war horse by the name of Andy.

April 22 - Chien Swee-Teng

Please remember
you are not the reincarnation of Lenin from the future.
Lenin is the reincarnation of you from the past.
But all in all nothing materialist at all in this statement,
spiritual, metaphysical reincarnation shit.

Euthanasian (安乐死者) – Chien Swee-Teng

Euthanasian (安乐死者) – Chien Swee-Teng
You were driving us around Jalan Besar. The sun was terrible, like we are stuck in an eternal tropical noon. You were driving us to look for a wood supplier, and the weather is driving us mad. Along the way, I pointed to you all kinds of people we should knock down randomly: the roadwork sign, the Indian workers, the orange vests and yellow helmets, knock a few and miss a few, like bowling pins, and drive into the ditch they have dug. Why are they always digging, pumping and drilling? The kid and her foreign maid after school, crossing the road, when green man is flashing, you have the powerful machine to knock and drag the bodies under the wheel for another few metres before you stop. The delivery man who just got out of the van and glanced into your car, sole breadwinner raising his family with a meagre salary, it is to supply the same old story to the local tabloid about why he shouldn’t die, the sick wife and children are now helpless. The Chinese man with crew cut cycling, I want blood on his oil stained white polo T-shirt, the shirt with the logo of a restaurant printed on it. Those students out on excursion, talking loudly, giggling, knock onto the pillar of the heritage site, let the roof, maintained with high conservation standards, collapse on them. The more they are innocent the better. You once said, it is sad to see ‘old clerks’, which you defined as balding middle aged man in short sleeve shirt from department store, a silver pen tucked in the shirt breast pocket, synthetic leather shoes with rubber soles, carrying a folder… but nobody calls themselves clerks anymore, we don’t know if he is really a clerk. Now he might not be wearing Montagut, Alain Delon, Pierre Cardin or Goldlion anymore, there are other cheaper brands that sound like other brands. You said at this age they are neither here nor there. Here’s one archetype of the old clerk waiting for a bus, he’s wiping his head, face and neck, then cleaning the spectacle frame, the corners around the lens, let’s swerve the car into the bus stop. But you reminded me that you are not driving an armour car or tank. I apologised, and we parked and alighted on Syed Alwi. Then I noticed an old lady. Nothing beats the sight of a petite old lady with slight hunch pushing a trolley filled with a huge stack of cardboards. I heard the noise, the noise of a plastic bag full of drink cans dangling from the handle like an aluminium bell; from the way she is pushing the trolley it seems very heavy. I doubt she is into recycling or environmental issues. Under the merciless sun, looking satisfied, tired but happy, a fruitful a day of collecting, how could one doubt her diligence, sometimes she took the cardboards with permission, someone’s good grace, sometimes minor pilfering when no one is looking. I can’t help it. I shall walk towards her and kick the pile of cardboard, scattering the flattened boxes on the road, she have all the time to pick it up later, I have all the time to laugh at her. She can curse at me all she wants; complain to her children, if she has any. If I am in a bad mood, I would not hesitate to kick her. And if I am carrying a pistol, I would not think twice about shooting her, killing her. I doubt anybody around would give a damn – it would be strange if they did, why not earlier? But I would not use any self-righteous excuses for this murder. It is not about how I can’t bear to see her suffer and so it is better for her to die. It is simply how I can’t suffer the undying sight of her. I am an individual, and individualism is what many artists like to preach. Hence, this is purely for my personal gratification and my esoteric sense of beauty.

The Question of Fat Vegetable - Chien Swee-Teng

The Question of Fat Vegetable

“My daughter is very fat. Although this is a fact, I cannot accept anyone saying that. I nearly fought a half-drunk guy at the coffeeshop when I heard him he calling her pui chai (fat vegetable). If not for my drinking buddies… pulling me back, I would have whacked that bugger. She is the only one I love, the only I am left with to love, the little love I am left with in this world. My wife died young, she is my only daughter… I did not remarry… no one suitable. But I always tell my daughter, my relatives and friends that it is for the sake of my daughter. She’s still young, the stepmother might ill-treat her. Actually, I learnt that line from some local drama series, used several times in different shows, to sound like a good father. When there’s a need I visit Petain Road. It is cheaper there. My old primary school classmate works there… he takes care of the girls there. And now he has grown old together with those girls who are old women. Now my daughter is in her late twenties, I am already so old, what’s the point of looking for a companion, a woman to nag at me, to quarrel with me. It is not as if I could get it up anymore, what’s the point? The doctor told me about my condition. It was like announcing to me my death sentence, terminal illness, few months left, like in drama series again. Cheebye, shouldn’t have gone to the health check at the community centre, that time. When I got home in the evening, after cleaning sai kang (toilet bowls), the public toilets at Raffles City have very high standards for cleanliness, need to check every half an hour, that stupid fat estate manager told my supervisor, but the people, they have no standard. No matter how well they dress just cannot aim properly, whether sitting or standing, whether shit, pee or blood at the female toilet. Although there’s also blood in the male toilet too, I don’t know from anal, mouth, nose or when peeing. I even cleaned dry semen stains before, chow cheebye. But phone numbers and vulgarities written with markers are even harder to clean, even if using thinner. That day, when I got home in the evening, I saw my daughter in the living room eating potato chips and ice-cream watching Taiwanese variety programme, so noisy, this TV programme, the people keep laughing. What’s there to laugh about, kannina? I thought about how she will be all alone when I am not around anymore. She doesn’t have many friends, although now she has a stable job in a photocopy shop, at least she has something to do. I thought about what she once told me, that day she was very sad, as sad as that time I brought her to the swimming pool. Some kids who laughed at her when she was learning how to swim. Two of them were her classmates, the cheebye kia’s surname is Liang or Leong, and another one wearing spectacles. I cannot forget the way that fucking kid, Liang laughed. But the good thing I heard is that my daughter saw that guy now, much older also quite fat. She told me nobody will want her, she will never get married. I remember what she once wrote in her diary. Yes, I checked her diary. She wrote about her curiosity towards sex, I thought is not a girl after all, she is a woman now. I thought about how she would die an old virgin. I feel sad for her. I feel responsible for the way she is. Why can’t she enjoy life like the rest? I thought of making a bold suggestion to her, asked if she wants to find a gigolo. But I know she has never had any intimate contact with any man before. I thought about perhaps, I am the only man she’s closest to, when she was a little girl, she sat on my lap when taking the train. I should be the one doing it. I told an old friend about my idea, he told me I am crazy, that I smelt too much urine or detergent at work is it? I don’t care I will go Petain Road, kin jio kar, to buy Viagra.”

In the approved film version, the father was found dead in the toilet from an overdosed of illegal sex drugs, and construed simply as the death of another dirty old man. The alternate ending, for the DVD version, is the sex scene between the old father and fat daughter which is neither grotesque nor perversely erotic but melancholic, like a depressing family drama. It was more or less a successful attempt by the scriptwriter and director, as some viewers were moved to tears, despite the apparently incestuous plot. A critic has related this to a Japanese film by Beat Takeshi, where the spirit of the mother, who died in an accident, possesses the daughter to live with her husband for another few weeks, and the Fritzl case, where the Austrian man raped, abused and imprisoned his daughter.

Petty issue about names - Chien Swee-Teng

Art historian Michael Sullivan said in a conference in Singapore he still insists in using Peking (the old name) instead of Beijing because that how they termed it in English, like how London is Lun Dun in Mandarin. [some in the hall laughed, perhaps to show they know how to appreciate the wit and humour of a British academic.]
If the director Lee Ang is Ang Lee in the West because that is how names are ordered there, then this old historian of Chinese art should be Sullivan Michael or Chaelmic Vanlisul or Leahcim Navillus or Navillus Leahcim.

Didactic Chinese Poem - Chien Swee-Teng

1.1
'I love the culture but the party deforms it.'
Kong Lan Jiao Wei
1.1.2
The Culture of Defeat it must be
The Tradition of Servility we are proud to keep
If I have to be colonised to 'retain' my culture
I would rather be a barbarian.
1.2
Cultured but '... it is so sick to see
a Chinese painting teacher spilling
black ink intentionally on the thighs of a young female student and offer to clean it'
Or 'calling her late at night, after ten, saying he needs help at the studio.'
Fatherly figure, brotherly gestures.
2.1
The border,
the places, provinces,
and lines that demarcate.
2.2
Not Chinese but Hong Kongers
Not Chinese but Peranakans
Not Chinese but Taiwanese.
The many Not Chinese but...
2.1.2
Yang says, Low Gek Nam said,
'Lines do not exist in reality,
it is the curve, the turn.'
So lines exist,
due to the limitation of our perception.
2.3
The question of nationality,
the question of race
are false questions.
This should not be a question
if one prefers not to change the surname into last name.
2.3.1
But the language,
to think
about it, as another question,
is not to understand
why it is hard
for this to be written or read in Chinese

Balding

Rosewood pillow and a leg of the armchair fractured, the cold, hard broken Chinese furniture. I studied legs of women of young girls of men of tables of stools and stray cats, and thought of models and whores. In a public place, I see her balding like an old man, a few grey strands on top - the top of her head an open field. She sees better with her glasses on. She did not hide herself or her frame of a ten year old, I mean, the size of her bones not the skin or posture. Few strands like the Chinese painter from an art academy wandering along Middle road. She is under the noon sun, the noon next to a complex, I can still see the shadow of things and beings. She moves under the shelter that leads to the interchange, she is not another mad woman in the amusement park with ten dirty plastic bags tied around her and an unwashed head, she is not another homeless man, sleeping around, lying on the parapet, scratching his crotch. I want to believe she is chaste, I only see she is only balding. I thought about mothers and skeletons, young mothers to be, mothers have been.
I was on my way to get a book about Sun Yat-sen from a balding professor, but he was not in, I guess, he spent most part of last night with a Saint by the name of James. By the coffee place, I saw the Chinese painter bald and undead, I saw and read and learnt that most of his friends are now spectral. I relate this to the balding Javan Myna we saw when we were along the same street.
Few nights ago, you told me it was cold. And the wind and temperature here in December could create the illusion. The temperature made it proper to understand rationalism better. We know it is ridiculous to say it was cold last night. But it did help with your reading of German Idealism and metaphysics. I told another old man, not the balding one, but a real hairy one about one year for archiving, one year for reading, one year for writing, one year for publishing, one year for collecting royalties, I did not tell the old man, not the balding one, but a real hairy one, that it would one year of reading only what I have read before. One year of rereading. It is ridiculous to think about writing under this weather, you might have ink blots on the pages of your manuscript, but nothing like Victor Hugo’s, it is sweat not tears, it is not hardship but heat and humidity.
I was at a coffeeshop. I saw four crabs in a huge fish tank. They have ample space to move, although the claws were tied with dirty strings the colour of those crabs. They aren’t hairy crabs. They are from Sri Lanka. Yesterday was a public holiday, most of them must have been slain, quartered and soak in chilli or pepper last evening - overpopulation.

Departure

A couple, one of them has to leave the country, for a period of time, for work or school, it could be three months, it could be six months, a year or two, or perhaps they did not know they will never meet again, or that things will never be the same when they see each other again, the clichéd scenario: of the guy already married, the girl is now pregnant, or the girl is engaged and the guy, has gotten someone else pregnant, and whatever. Yet, there are other things occupying the mind of the one who is going to leave than the imminent departure, perhaps it is to distract them from making epic statements or promises to each other, showing epic emotion, or any histrionic gesture, it could be mundane, because of the half-packed luggage, and it would very likely be banal, about the long hour flight with transit - to get mentally prepared for it, to be only half-asleep throughout the journey, if one could really fall asleep, next to another stranger, to sleep sitting, to see that service industry smile of the air stewardess, the badly choreographed safety evacuation demonstration or video, because in reality the flight is not twenty-second seconds, like in some bad film or drama where the scene and sound of a plane taking off cuts to the protagonist on the plane looks sadly out of the window, and then switches to the scene of another country, sometimes with caption at the bottom, stating the new location, because the flight is fucking twenty-eight hours excluding transit.
So the couple decides never to see each other off at the airport, he went to her place instead, an hour before she has to leave for the airport, when it was time he has to leave, she sees him off instead, at the corridor, they exchanged another few words, mostly broken sentences from him to trade for her smile, he kept reminding himself, nothing too sentimental shall be uttered, it is always harder to not say what you wanted say than to follow the impulse of saying out. She was leaning against the wall, he noticed a cockroach crawling, he pointed it to her, and she reacted like how people usually reacted to cockroaches, but without hysterical screams (he thought of the song lyrics, ‘watching roaches climb the wall, if you call your daddy he could stop it all.’ And her dad was actually inside the house, getting ready to go with her to the airport.) She told him, not her dad, kill it, kill it! He asked, with what? The sandal, the Birkenstock! One smack, the cockroach fell and wriggled on the floor, and she said, not dead yet, kill it! He ignored her second order to kill. He swept the cockroach towards the stairs and kicked it down the steps. He did not tell her that he was amused by how her decision, or intuition, perhaps out of fear, is similar to Adolf Hitler’s.

On Humour

Chien Swee-Teng: Lao Tzu says, if one desires to have a sense of humour, one must laugh at things such as dead orphans.

On Class Attendance

"I don't want to hear any more about class struggle. If not I'll send in my sociologists!"

On the Future of Hokkien for the Ancient Middle Kingdom

Chien Swee-Teng: Lao Tzu says, from the South will arise the great Fujian empire for a thousand years

About a Clumsy Poet

Chien Swee-Teng: almost tripped over the edge of a shadow at noon

On Child Care

孔子说, 小孩不听话, 就应该把他踢下楼梯
Chien Swee-Teng: Confucius says, when children disobey one should kick them down the stairs.

The Dream of an Eastern Imperialist

昨晚我梦见一个统一的东亚
(Chien Swee-Teng: no translation as requested by the author)