This is a Casette

This is a message meant more for the future. The value of this message is projected to increase in proportion to its duration of existence, i.e. the value of the message is expected to increase through its progression in time, or the cycles of time it has gone through: chrono-fermentation. The level of exposure shall not affect its objective value. Meaning, regardless of how much or how often it is to be read; how it will be appreciated; how popular it shall be, no subjective values will affect its intrinsic task of being an act of description for this object. Where the process of activation will most probably be lost or forgotten; where the relation to the item becomes unknown. However, this is not a technical description or a technological history of the item. It does not provide the chemical properties, exact shape, the origins or the inventors' name. It is not concerned about the character, personality, physical appearance, birth date, family background, and parents, in short, the statistics. All of which the writer do not have the talent or time for.
The choice of the object implies neither the significance of the object to-the-world-at-large, nor the writer's favour-ability to the item, which is to say, 'choosing cassette tape as a topic does not mean that my relationship with it is of the most pleasant or pleasurable. There are numerous problems with this equipment, which always interrupts and add glitches to the ideal-flow of aesthetic.' This is also to say,' even when one is trapped in Nostalgia, the land of the past that can only be reached thru' one's position in the present, one still remembers the bad experiences as bad though one does not feel it anymore.' Cassette tape is not my favourite audio source. The poor quality, short life span, and frequent jamming that made the player, when one tries to retrieve the cassette, looked like it has vomited glossy brown mee pok.
It is a good tool to steal music from the radio with, an adequate one for people that listen to only one or two songs by the singer, and not the whole album. They can compound the latest hits with cut off by talking of DJ or muffled voices of listeners on air. The rewind and forwarding is a hassle, but it sure trained and tested the writer's patience. Even though it is two sided (Side A and Side B) it taught him serendipity, or less exaggeratedly, coincidence, when his favourite song on Side A ends it happens to be 20 seconds to the start of another favourite song in Side B. This was where he learnt clichés like 'begin is this end', and the benefits and joy of 'switching sides'. But the exemplary frustration from such properties when he listened to GnR's Use your Illusion I the last track of Side A ends where it is about a quarter of Side B played, thus he had to switch and rewind. Lastly, who can forget the teenage myth of songs played backwards and hidden tracks where we can get to hear Lucifer singing – but the writer wondered who could sound angelic when it is being played backwards.
It is in cassette that he was first exposed to the unbearable experience of listening to his own voice'. It is the unbearable awkwardness to his recorded voice.
I also learnt in TV how audio cassette can be used to gather evidence, help in judiciary procedures, and as the important weapon that assist one in high technological ruse – of tricking the bad guy to saying things he shouldn't have say, but now recorded, always with that 'Hahaha!' Or negatively, it can frame a person by taking his/her statement out of context. All these are the forerunners to the videos we see on the web and CCTV footages of bank and grocery stores robbery, all the petty crimes.
In term of application, playing the tape allows me to experience the haptical from the relief or pressed patterns on the buttons; understanding the symbols of direction (<<, >, >>). It prepares me to the later equipments like computer keyboards, learning to insert things properly, fitting the mobile phone battery.

Little Red Books

The book collection in Little Red Books is growing. The quality is always inconsistent, but its quantity is definitely growing.

Every visit, I reminded myself to bring along a good camera to photograph this excrescent scene. The aisles are getting narrower and narrower. The books are spilling out from the shelves - piles upon piles - erecting unstable ramparts for the shelves. Any contact with the piles could very easily topple it. A friend of mine said how we get to feel like God when we are there... when any slight movement would cause a big disaster... how sneezing is a typhoon.

From this afternoon's visit, I noticed that even the narrow space that was kept clear to give Mr Cock, the owner, access to his desk counter is now blocked. Although a relatively a low wall, he now has to hop in and out of his desk. When he is seated, you can't see him unless he stands up. He appears to me like a comical neurotic building himself a bunker or digging a trench to hide away from the customers. I told him how I could not believe his discrimination of fat people - I mean, how does he expects them to walk through. If this goes on, the store would only be accessible to anorexics and children. The book walls are also blocking up the few aisles which is now part of a labyrinth... when most are cul de sac.

I once told him how despite this peculiar inconvenience, I do enjoy the process of purchasing books here; how I have no choice but to leave things to chance, because of the chaos in his store. And how there were times my 'prayers were answered'; for instance, I once walked in hoping, to find a copy of Craig Owens's Beyond Recognition, which is very unlikely, but it appeared in the middle of a stack. Another time, it was Murakami's Wind-up Bird Chronicle which I never thought worth buying first-hand.

He insists there is an order, and gave a pretty metaphysical or 'obscurantist' explanation of 'finding ' and 'not finding' a book here. I can't remember exactly how it went.

Later, as he was flipping through a dictionary, he mentioned how those fellows in his Buddhist discussion group failed to understand and appreciate his recent attempt to relate Kantian notion to Buddhism. He said that while they are supposed to be, according to the teaching of Buddha, 'unconditioned', they are too conditioned by this idea of being 'unconditioned'. And he quoted Thoreau on superstition. Later on, he switched, or I should say, we drifted to another topic: how reading of root words had intrigued him lately. I offered him two of my intuitive observations quite sometime ago, the relation of 'respond' to 'responsibility' which both fundamentally implied 'recognition of the other'. How they are different only in terms of their ethics and physics. I nearly wanted to mention 'rhythm' but thought this would complicate the hypothesis.

The second pair of words was between ‘passion’ (which implies certain level of active engagement, eg. 'my passion spurs me on to produce this piece of music') and ‘passive’. The differences between one giving in to the general will, the extrinsic forces, the dictation of one's genetic configuration, the Schopenhauerian Will. Such as giving in to desire, the passion or lust for a person or food, how it actually compromises one to a passive position. Giving in to passion or seduction makes one a passive, regardless of the amount of physical activity. It is a form of passivity with regards to one's desire. It interests Mr Cock enough to promise me his views on these two relations for my next visit.

I made the decision of which books to buy, from the five I was holding, by the amount of cash I had in my wallet, and went back to office.

The Autistic Society: Individual Disorder and Collective Order

During lunch at Fortune Centre, I told a friend about your idea of this country as an ‘autistic’ society. This topic was raised after a security guard from the building came by and quibbled with the tenants, of mostly food businesses, occupying the ground floor. It was over how many inches beyond the yellow line, the tables and chairs are placed outside, along the sidewalk (you know, our version of al fresco). As if the day-to-day woes of having a low-budget lunch in town (the crowd, the uptight hunt for a table…) are not enough, this ‘lunchtime entertainment’ made it all the more pathetic – pathetic to even those who have to witness it, human beings fighting over problems marked by dirty yellow tapes on the floor

It does not really matter if the friend fully appreciated or understood it, but it was a good exercise for me to revisit our earlier conversation on autism. (I elaborated my point of view to him while we went through the usual process of what every supposed thinking person would do: seeing things from another angle [how else?] and picturing this problem in contrast to other scenarios [what else?]).

So, what were the similarities between autistic and bureaucratic behaviours that made you deployed the word ‘autistic’, as a metaphor to describe our society?

Could the reason be, like the bureaucrats, the autistics seem to possess certain rationale behind each of their act; that there is a sense of regularity or order – even though autism is classified as a form of psychological disorder? With the exception of God and James Dean, of course, is not every act, everything in existence, rooted in a cause, if not a reason? (This area is rather complex for me, such as the distinction between reason and cause, rational and irrational causes etc. – my logic is really weak.)

Or was it because despite having different motivations, causes, intentions or rationales, these two categories somehow produced the same effect of rigid and inflexible behaviours?

A fire safety officer would be able to justify, with sufficient practical reasons, the necessity of clear corridors in residential area because of the fire safety guidelines. The objects misplaced are fire safety hazards, disrupting emergency evacuation… An autistic person, have enough reasons to convince themselves to move from one point to another in a peculiar way. This perturbs us as much as the bureaucratic inconveniences we are tolerating on a daily basis. And we are just as much of a nuisance and the source of discomfort when we contradict the principles of these two groups. Forcing an autistic child to talk or walk the ‘normal’ way is fundamentally similar to not filling up a registration form properly.

Then what is the difference between the two? An obvious aspect would be their quantitative difference. Does it mean we can say the difference is solely a matter of degree and not type? In these two extreme cases of inflexibility we see the tension between the one and the multiple, of an individual against the collective, of Universal vs. Particular (Hegel)… sure they are numbers one/few against many etc. but the quantitative difference, here, has brought about qualitative changes. Therefore, this is rather a difference of type in the guise of degree, where we witness how subjective order (of the autistics) is classified as a disorder. And how the general will to have an ordered world is very much the source of many minor disorders in our lives – the situation where the railings along the road, for road safety, perhaps, obstructing the way of a wheelchair-bound person.

Talking: letting out gas

During an interview, Federico Fellini said that he does not to like talk about films in the process of making, or before it’s completed. It is a kind of superstition he prefers to keep. Whatever esoteric rationales he had for such a belief, I begin to relate it to the many times when ideas I had were not realised after they were said or discussed with too many people. This is especially true when the idea was mentioned to those not directly related it. By talking about it, the desire to produce the work somehow evaporates. We all know evaporation does not mean disappearance. In science, evaporation describes a change in the physical state of matter: dissolution not disappearance. But we seldom mind using it as a metaphorical substitution for the word ‘disappearance’, of what cease to exist.

Therefore, this is not necessarily because talking is an antithetical act to concrete production, rather it is an act of production in its most minimalist form: gas. It is a difference of degree, not type. The idea turned into a form of representation through our speech, by our talks and gestures, during conversations, is a form even more intangible and ephemeral than the idea itself. Letting others hear about your idea too soon, before anything is done at all, you will receive suggestions or comments that mutilate the idea like a premature review or a critique that would trigger a foetal death of the idea. This often is the case despite their good intentions, regardless if it was a good or bad review.

By associating talking to gas emitting, a fairly visceral analogy comes to mind – an inverted reflection, to be precise.

A person suffering from constipation, most of the time, seems no different to a person with a clear bowel, like the similarity between a failed writer and a loafer, they both share the similar effects of nothingness – which is to say that both of them didn’t shit. However, this similarity is only apparent. The former farts more often – be it loud or silent. Talking about an idea is very much like this physical symptom common to one suffering from constipation. You have an idea, you can’t concretise it yet, you talked about it instead. You have the urge to shit, but you couldn’t, you fart instead, the toilet bowl was as clean as before you sat on it, but you flushed it anyway.

For those, who disapprove this slightly scatological example, we can also think of it as opening a can of beer or Coke, letting the gas out and only to drink it three hours later. This instance was drawn by the plights of many fine art students and artists who have to keep talking about their proposal to too many people,. And when it is the time to do the work, they would feel like they are drinking stale beer and Coke without fizzle, but with taste diluted by the melted ice cubes.

Of course, apart from the above, there are many other reasons why we talk. We talk to impress, to brag about ourselves, the things we have, the things we know - our bank deposit, and mental capacity, respectively; we talk because it built us the bridge of intimate relationships; we talk because we are anxious or worried about something; we talk to others our problems to share it, thus to pass the burden, the problem, to another; and we talk about an idea for a painting or writing because we have been thinking about it; we talk because we couldn’t keep a secret, because gossiping is a past time.. But if only we could hold it, hold our breath for a moment. And let it sublimate or mediate to a more concrete form.

Weren’t we instructed to keep away from the concrete when it is still wet? I now read it as an instruction to keep one’s prolificacy. A reminder of the emptiness of almost every speech act. Talk is really cheap.

To Surfian’s remarkable taste

I crave, I long for Abstinence from Images, for every image is bad. – Roland Barthes

If I have the ability, in the near future, I would write for you and those who left an art exhibition opening with distaste. Writing in praise of your reaction, the bad aftertaste lingering in, not just your mouth but around your respiratory system, the noise from their laughter, the sight of them posing, and flashes from the cameras. You overheard their conversation. You told me you are sure now, ‘Maybe, I try to be an average art student, but never a fucking artist!’ I smiled and repeated how I prefer to know someone from what they hate than what they like. Their embraces and handshakes put you off. Therefore let us get drunk on their free wine and puke into their mouths when they are about to utter more shit about ideas, issues, beauties, feelings, or B-grade philosophy. But you told me your wish to remain as a Muslim who does not drink. I might be able to understand why ‘the artist standing next his/her work for a photograph puts you off as much those photographed in front of landmarks or next to a posh car parked outside a hotel.’

We have mentioned, ‘Publication is Prostitution.’ But we did not say how an exhibition could be as well. Walking pass any red light districts, it would often be disturbing, disturbed by either the field of temptation or field of repulsion. Girls sell their flesh, and they admit it – except to the anti-vice squad, perhaps. Exhibitions to trade or circulate images, but of course, of supposed cultured and artistic geniuses… It is the difference of admitting and denying, being aware and unaware. If I am confident enough, my thoughts coherent enough, my grasps of grammar and vocabulary strong enough, I would write about how ridiculous they socialised, forming little circles, how you told me the artworks, reduced to decorations for these social events, piss you off, how the assortment of accents had raped your ears. Then you forgot you are telling this to an aspiring ‘pimp’. It is nothing at all. You are too serious. They are merely things if not commodities. Save your reverence for other moments and objects. So what if they have reduced it to decorations? No big deal.

Gaps - Bus-stop, Bus driver, Bus Numbers

It is pointless to describe the unpleasantness of waiting for the bus to come. Is it necessary to hear another person cursing the stupid weather here?

It is pointless to describe how he is proud of himself, when he managed to predict the spot the bus exactly stops; how he could guess the number of the oncoming buses by judging the vehicle model, when the route numbers are too far to be read clearly; how often he mistook similarly shaped numbers, for instance Bus 9 for Bus 2.

At the bus stop, he often recall what she said 30years ago, “I get so impatient…I feel like boarding any bus that comes along. At least I am moving.”

Unlike his ex-girlfriend, his impatience, expressed in such self-deceptive thoughts, was to change the route numbers. He was waiting for Bus 14, but arrving bus, read in red background and white text, was ‘174’ instead, at that moment, he wished he had red paint to paint over the ‘7’ which stood between ‘1’ and ‘4’. When it was Bus 980 he was waiting, but came Bus 960, ‘6’ would appear to him, irrationally, as an incomplete ‘8’. He would have this urge to extend the curve line that emerged from the left of ‘o’ until it touches the right side. And if Bus 106 came instead of Bus 190, he imagined he could switch order of ‘0’ and ‘6’, and invert ‘6’ to ‘9’.

It is also pointless to describe the how these people feel, the expression on their faces when the bus ‘finally arrives’; how they flocked together and towards the door. But sure it was a magical sight. It was as if there was an invisible piece of magnet was fixed behind the entrance door, and these people are really made of metal: they must be androids, the force which gathered the scattered crowd.

It is not pointless to describe the look on some bus-driver’s face, the look of having too much self-importance, a kind of snobbishness in their reticence. It is not pointless to mention how the passengers are like fans running after the celebrity, however, this relationship is superficial. They were not after his autograph but the bus, his arrogance is awkward because it is not the deserved arrogance of the rock star, but the snobbish expressions of the stage crew, who were cheered and applaused, mistakenly, before the start of the concert, as the member of the band coming on stage, due to the poor lighting.

His Young Relative has more sympathy and empathy for the drivers: “I can never be a bus driver. It has nothing to do with qualifications. It is a matter of character. Of one able to withstand the traffic condition, during a jam, where the driver has no rights to make a detour; of irritating green and healthy, local and expat, helmuted cyclists who gets in the driver’s way; the kamikaze Indian and Chinese workers cycling on the road; the many idiots with driving licence; their number one nemesis ‘taxi-drivers; the horrible passengers, the threat of being assault; of driving the same route many times a day, few hundred times a year. But most importantly, a Zen control of the bowel and the bladder. What if, on a day, my stomach wasn’t feeling hundred percent? Although, not as bad as having diarrhoea.”

Gaps - Vacant seats and noise

On the top deck of the double-decker bus, the jerks, inertia, the balancing acts are steps of a ritual dance well-practiced by many, yet to be choreographed.

Each time, up the short and narrow stairwell he has the slight anxiety of a mundane revelation: “if there’s a seat?”

The empty seats are gaps for him to breathe. Not only allowing him a sigh of relief, the randomly vacant seats are arrangements in the scores for various tunes of Minor Joy.

Despite his age, he couldn’t conceal the grateful expression on his face. Grateful to the mercy, of one spared the discomfort of standing; gripping on the handrail. The joy he felt, the luxury of choosing a seat (if it was not crowded). But to whom should he be grateful?

An ideal seat: a window seat for him to lean one side of his shoulder against, ignoring the stain, the grease from oily heads, or insect crawling on the pane, which he could not tell it is glass or plastic.

But the bus was noisy, the chatter and laughter of a bunch of loud, gangling youth. The Young Relative would say, “These pasty faces deserve to be guillotined.” But they are only the chorus, the backup vocals to the mobile chirping of a North Indian woman.

The Young relative would say.” I hate those idiots who think it is only the migrant workers that are rowdy or loud, many expatriates are just as bad…” Young relative’s diatribe would usually go on and go.

At the evening of his life, at the age of 58, such issues are far from his thoughts.
This evening came gradually, the disappearance and appearance of the sun, can never be trapped by a single frame of his vision. The switch from day to night is not how we turn on/off a fluorescent ceiling light. The social angst like his ambition, in morning, has all faded into the background it had emerged from. During his 40s, it was grey; now in his 50s, the colour is at most off-white. The dream of space travel is now ridiculous; the trite dream of a million dollar account is greed, according to his faith, at least.

His angst and ambition like his physique and mental agility have been waning since middle age. Maybe it has something to do with his gene; some would blame it on his lifestyle, his diet, what time he sleeps, etc. At the evening of his life, his chief concerns are gaps. The gaps between the concrete kerb and the bus, the platform and the train; the gaps he could see between the seated passengers.

The Young Relative, who is not that young actually, once mentioned, “This curse’s intensity is defined by the number of days we spent on earth.” He was not following his train of thought.

… my reaction from 10 minutes of docudrama

This is just a reaction from the docudrama on Discovery Channel. It is about the impact if a huge comet were to hit earth; how the ecological system of our dear old mother earth would be screwed when shrouded from the sun; the catastrophic ecological chain reaction and so on. Although I caught only about ten minutes of the programme, I was, somehow, educated on the sun’s importance, how the earth species - which of course, included us - depended on it, and amazed by one particular species’ ability to imagine using scientific facts. Having often commented, and written my fair bit, against the sun I felt guilty for an hour or so.

The narrative script in the show caught my attention with its rhyming sentences. For example, the sentence which ends with the word ‘edible’ is followed by another that ends with ‘vegetable’, or the question if the earth can revived itself as a ‘time clock’ or remain as a ‘dead rock’. And perhaps this was what that had inspired the sentences inside my head when I am aware of how my guilt is obscene, driven, primarily, by one’s utilitarian concerns. I recognised that I need the sun to exist for, but not I do not “love the sun”, and I do not think I am suppose to feel any guilt towards things that I do not feel intensely for. Therefore, in order to not let myself sink further down into the “lower regions of the useful” (Kierkegaard) my refutation of the sun must remain.

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful world
Isn’t this beauty?
…this end of your twirl

How many times have you reiterated?
The sun, the sun, and its importance to us

How many times have you repeated?

“Fuck Apollo! Fuck the tropical islands!
Fuck the tanned bodies!
The healthily tanned girls by the beach with sand on their hands and feet are
like brown muah chee salted by the sea.
(Fiffy, Muah Chee and the sand in that playground by Alan Bok).

“Fuck Mediterranean! Fuck California and the Caribbean islands!
Fuck Singapore and its eternal summer that has turned the
fashionable fools here to have an impure love for the rain -
all because of their love for this season’s autumn/winter collection.

Heat, solar energy, vitamin D, vegetation, water, the list goes on.
The million, billion reasons to love the sun
(Who loves the sun - Velvet Underground)
How impure to love it just because he can use it.
Here’s a classic case of how we tend to confuse love with needs.

“Fuck any sun inspired empire (J.G Ballard)”
His hatred of the sun turned him as pale as a vampire.