A walking study in demonology.

What will we do in the absence of men?

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 05:18:39 GMT

One of my new year resolutions is to blog more often. It is near the end of January, and I have finally managed to get round to it!

Have been reading a couple of good books lately – Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi which JYH bought for me after knowing how keen I was in catching the movie. It is a graphic novel that tells the growing up years of an Iranian girl brought up by liberal parents under the regime of the ayatollahs. It is both a deeply intelligent and heartfelt account of how she coped living in a country of deep political and personal repression, a country which she loves deeply. In fact, its tone reminded me so much of Alison Bechdel’s Fun House, another graphic novel I read last year which was a gift from S.

Another book that I recently read was Sulphuric Acid by Amelie Nothomb. Quirky and witty, it had a punchy style that sustained the reader through its unbelievable plot. Basically it deals with the ultimate reality TV show: people are grabbed off the street and find themselves taking part -- whether they want to or not -- in Concentration. Shipped off in cattle cars, they find themselves in what in every respect except the countless cameras following their every move amounts to a Nazi concentration camp. Right down to the weekly killings of those who are weeded out. Since then, I have started on a number of her books – The Book of Proper Names, and A Life of Hunger.

I’m currently re-reading a book that I thought I had misplaced, and which is one of my all time favourites. It’s called ‘In the Absence of Men’ by Philippe Besson. I think I read it around October 2002. Translated from the French, it is about a sixteen year old boy (Vincent) whose youth and precocity capture the friendship and imagination of two men: Marcel Proust, the acclaimed writer, and Arthur, the son of his family’s housekeeper who is 21 years old and who is a soldier at the front. Set in Paris during WWI, it has a daring conceit that deals with huge ideas, and in a style so deft and controlled that you are amazed that this is his first novel. Dialogue between characters are prompted by the phrases ‘You said’ and ‘I said’ – it sounds painful to read, but it adds a layer of textuality that constantly alludes to the act of writing as a way of remembering the past.

For me, the strength of Besson’s writing comes from the description of the nights that Vincent spends in Arthur’s arms, with their bouts of lovemaking and ruminations about the war, youth and remembrance of things past (the link to the Proustian idea of memory is very clever). Below is one of my favourite parts – after ‘the semen has dried on the sheets’, Arthur (the ‘you’ in the passage) tries to explain why the nights spent with Vincent are his salvation:

You say: you will probably resent me for thinking of you as an adolescent, but that is what you are, and there is nothing shameful in that. Quite the reverse. It is a moment of indefinable grace, of beauty and poise. I want to tell you something, something I want you to believe: the love of a man for a woman cannot compare to the love of that same man for a youth. Love for a woman carries so many habits, beliefs, conventions in its wake that quickly it becomes something which, though pleasurable, is controlled, something which can no longer really surprise. Love for a youth encompasses every wonder, every fury; it has a desperate intensity; at every moment it is threatened with destruction, but it is lifted up by that very grace. A love like that has peaks and troughs, tremors and little deaths, dazzling light and terrifying shadows. All life is condensed into such an embrace.

K read parts of it (will pass it to her once I have finished re-reading it) - and we were both struck by how his writing has a poetical grace that is comparable to Jeanette Winterson’s writing.

The Gym: the gay man's mecca?

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 05:53:34 GMT

The following was taken from JYH’s blog:

Gym-going has all the basic lineaments of a religion. Its adherents are motivated by feelings of guilt, and the urge to atone for fleshly sins. Many visit their places of worship with a fanatical regularity. Once there, believers are led by sacerdotal instructors, who either goad them into mass ecstasy during aerobics classes, or preside over the confessional tête-à-tête of personal training. Each devotee has his own rituals, though most rely on the principles of self-mortification and delayed gratification. The extremist cult of body-building has become a mass movement.

What inspires the armies of devout body-worshippers? What is the point?

Today's young professionals are not the first people in history to devote so much time and cash to the cultivation of their bodies. The word “gymnasium” comes from the Greek word gumnos, meaning “naked”, which is how many ancient Greeks practised wrestling, boxing and running in their gymnasia (or palestra). Gymnasia were part of Plato's ideal city; the Romans inherited this corporeal preoccupation from the Greeks. Ancient gyms shared some features with their modern equivalents: for instance, well-heeled exercisers could engage the services of the classical version of personal trainers. There was a fair bit of ogling. But one essential difference was that one of the purposes of gym-attendance was to prepare young men for war; it was essential for the warrior classes in martial societies such as ancient Sparta.

Conventional religiosity motivated a 19th-century form of body-worship. Christianity had traditionally regarded the body as something of an embarrassment; but with the Victorian rise of “muscular Christianity”, looking after the body became a way of worshipping the creator. Christian gentlemen were obliged to attend to their muscles as well as to their minds. Exercise was also embraced to quell the unruliness of poor, urban youths, who were shepherded into boxing clubs. And it answered worries about the sturdiness of the national gene pool, which was required to generate enough able-bodied young men to govern an empire. So the cult of the body spilled out of public schools and into the slums.

Unfortunately, these precedents offer little insight into the motives of today's mostly civilian, often godless gym-goers. But there is one concomitant phenomenon that might supply an obvious explanation for the rise of the fitness religion: fat. The exercise boom has coincided with an epidemic bulge in waistlines in many rich countries. So perhaps gym-attendance can be explained as a logical consequence of gluttony—a prophylactic or remedy for fatness in particular, and a sensible way to stay healthy in general?

One problem with this neat explanation, as a visit to almost any gym will reveal, is that most gym-goers are already depressingly svelte. According to Mintel International, a British market-research firm, more people visit gyms to tone up than to lose weight. As one personal trainer confides, fat people are generally too self-conscious to subject themselves to comparison with the flabless forms of most gym users. Society, it seems, is becoming polarised between the fat and the fit.

The sweat and the stupor

Whatever they do to the body, gyms are certainly numbingly bad for your mind. This is not simply the partisan judgment of a self-vindicating slob. The biggest problem the fitness industry faces is retaining club members, who, when their original zeal wears off, get bored with all the lonely and repetitious rituals. To combat the threat of boredom, gyms have installed distracting televisions and (in the posher ones) Internet connections to entertain the Sisyphean toilers on bikes and rowing machines. Most chains have devised zany-sounding exercise classes to bedazzle flagging members.

Are the compensations of a pastime whose physical benefits are variable, and which is so dull that all manner of improbable hybrids and gimmicks have to be invented to keep people at it? Why do hordes of already-fit people devote so much of their time to such a boring and self-punitive pursuit? Most other forms of entertainment that have evolved with mass affluence—such as, say, the rise of foreign holidays—are more obviously enjoyable. Indeed, one standard critique of Anglo-American capitalism argues that, at a certain point, the puritanism that originally sustained it evaporated, to be replaced by a callow and self-indulgent hedonism; whereupon pleasure replaced graft as capitalism's ultimate good. What explains this masochistic anomaly?

Perhaps the answer lies in the access gyms offer to gaggles of lithe and scantily clad (if not entirely gumnos) strangers. Many gyms are indeed designed with plenty of glass and mirrors to facilitate mutual admiration. As Tris Reid-Smith—editor of the Pink Paper, a gay British weekly—says, there are some gyms that attract large numbers of “muscle Marys” or “gym bunnies”, as stereotypically muscle-bound gay men are known among their peers.

In some of these, gratification is not always exactly delayed. But the etiquette in most gyms, and the strict concentration on personal salvation that prevails, precludes much in the way of flirtation. Most of the admiration is of the narcissistic variety (it is the men, fitness instructors report, who are especially besotted by the mirrors).

Changes in the structure of relationships outside the gym may be part of the explanation: the increased likelihood of divorce and separation may have persuaded attached people, unconsciously or otherwise, that they ought to stay in shape, just in case. Along with the growing demand for male-grooming products, gym attendance among men may also reflect the growing power of women in the singles market: more and more men are now afflicted by the same sort of bodily anxieties that women have endured for decades. (A contrary explanation is that the emasculation wrought by women's gains at work and home has driven some men to fall back on muscular notions of masculinity.) Perhaps, for both sexes, muscles have come to signify prosperity, just as a suntan used to be the mark of an agricultural labourer but now denotes wealth.

Explanations based on the potential rewards of swelling biceps and flat tummies assume that, at some level, gym-going is motivated by the rational pursuit of happiness. According to a more pessimistic view, going to the gym is not pleasurable (however indirectly) but pathological. The result is an “horrendous perfectionism” prevents people from enjoying the fruits of their affluence. Few will take this “horrendous perfectionism” to the same extreme as did Yukio Mishima, a celebrated Japanese novelist who, after building a splendidly buff torso from years of pumping iron, committed hara-kiri rather than grow old and ugly. But still, Mr James speculates that for every person who goes to the gym for a legitimate health reason, many more are engaging in low-grade attacks on their bodies, which, in most cases, are already absolutely fine. An extreme form of this can be found among bodybuilders, some of whom suffer from a pathological belief that they are puny. According to researchers in Melbourne, “muscle dysmorphia” (or “bigorexia”), as the delusion is known, often leads sufferers to exercise obsessively and gobble steroids.

There is some evidence to support the view that working out, and other forms of body-anxiety, may be sicknesses of affluence—driven by unreasonable and unachievable expectations about where the rowing machine can take you. One personal trainer confides that, whenever a client successfully hardens or tightens one targeted part of the body, he or she invariably moves on to the improvement of another part. Research suggests that twenty-somethings are more dissatisfied with their bodies than anybody else, when, in fact, they tend to be in the best condition. Anxieties about body-shape, epidemiologists in Canada have found, are most prevalent in affluent areas. On this analysis, going to the gym will only make things worse, condemning users to an endless and destructive cycle of perfectionism.

A slightly less depressing possibility is that the appeal of the gym cult lies in the structure of religion itself. Perhaps hedonism is losing its lustre, and the rich once again crave the shape and strictures, however masochistic, that orthodox religion once supplied. Like Christian salvation, the holy grails of gym-goers may be distant and unattainable, and the paths towards them painful, but the rules and routines that their pursuit involves seem to provide comfort to a new and growing breed of secular puritans.

In the end, gym-attendance, like most popular religions, probably has something to do with fear of death and the quest for immortality—as if a well-toned body could somehow stave off the day of judgment. Which, unfortunately, is just another way in which it is liable to lead to disappointment. Gyms may not actually be bad for most people who go to them; but, as a wise man once inquired about hard work, why take the risk?

(Souce: Adapted from The Economist, Dec 2002)

A Letter

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 12:00:05 GMT

Something I wrote about 1 – 2 weeks ago, but which didn’t get published in the end.

*********************************************

Dear Forum Editor,

I refer to Mr Goh Kim Soon's letter, 'Why this gay is for keeping Section 377A' (ST Oct 27).

As not all Christians support to keep S377A, it is inevitable that not all gay Singaporeans are supportive of its repeal as well.

But it is disingenuous of Mr Wong to argue that Singapore is a good place for a gay man to live in, based on his personal experience of having had no legal interference pertaining to his homosexuality for the past 30 years.

He may want to think about the number of gay or sexually confused students who have been victims of homophobic bullying, and whose bullies are given implicit legitimacy by a sexuality education package that emphasises the criminality of homosexuality.

Or the gay civil servant who still faces discrimination at his workplace, despite government statements on homosexuals working in the public sector. Even though Section 377A may be a symbolic piece of lesgislation, it appears that various ministries and government-linked bodies use it as a reference point to determine policy directions.

Or how a number of gay people live their lives in secrecy and shame, rather than a life of discretion as Mr Goh claims he leads. This is a result of the internalisation of society's homophobia. Section 377A plays a crucial part in reinforcing such homophobia.

Research has shown that such internalised homophobia is a major developmental difficulty in many gay people, and it is related to lower levels of self-esteem, lower levels of self-concepts of physical appearance and emotional stability, and higher levels of sex guilt (Rowen & Malcolm 2002).

Repealing S377A is not about pushing a gay lifestyle onto mainstream society. It is about ensuring that all Singaporeans are treated fairly and equally in the eyes of the law. This should be one of the fundamental principles of any social contract made between a minority group and the larger part of society.

Body Fascists of the World Unite!

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 02:16:01 GMT

Now that I have slightly more time, I have decided to spend some time writing about my two separate trips to Bangkok and KL over the past 1 – 2 months.

One of the things I like about going to Bangkok is that I can catch up on all the gay magazines which are sold at the bookshops and news-stands over there, e.g. GT, Attitude, Out, The Advocate, Genre, Instinct.

(D actually subscribes to GT, so he used to pass me his copy every month, and thanks TJ, for lending me a number of your older issues of Out.)

Anyway, one of the articles that I read caught my attention.

This article describes how in the UK, skinny gay men wearing skinny clothes have replaced the muscle mary. (And when we are talking about skinny, we are talking about a waist line of 26” / 27 “ or less.)

The main reason for this change in aesthetic? Hedi Slimane.

For those who are not in the know, Hedi Slimane was hired as the chief designer for Dior Homme in 2000 and since then, has been said to define how men will look this decade. Not only is he unforgiving in the slim-cut of his clothes, he is also very particular about the models who wear his clothes. He was the one who started to cast young, skinny 16 – 18 year old boys who didn’t look like conventional models.

He is also associated with the indie music scene in the UK, like The Rakes and Franz Ferdinand. In fact, he was the one who recruited Pete Doherty (the lead singer of the The Libertines and Kate Moss’ squeeze) to model his clothes.

As with all high-fashion moments, the affordable watered-down versions have started to appear in high-end shops, like Topshop, River Island, and FCUK. And this is the look that 16 – 19 year old gay guys have now, what with the skinny jeans craze and all. In fact, they have started an XXS size for Topman t-shirts.

And even though many older gay men – who have the money to buy the narrow designs that Slimane has produced – are not able to ideally fit into them, why are so many of them willing to adopt this new size zero? Well, mainly because the people who can fit into them effortlessly belong to the sub-section of the gay community which is constantly fawned over – the young gay men out there.

And especially in the UK, the visibility of this sub-section of the gay community has risen, due in part to the ease which many of them come out at an earlier age. This is happening in Singapore as well, where a Saturday night in Play is like being in a hawker centre near a secondary school / junior college around 2 in the afternoon - everyone around you is so, so much younger. And as usual, when demographics shift, so too does marketing and niche targeting. After all, while many gay men in their late 20s and in their 30s are too cynical to immediately buy in to a new trend (they have postcards left over when chequered shirts and moustaches were all the rage), young gay men, the ones who are experiencing the first taste of gay abandon, are all too willing to buy in to the newest trends and fads.

In fact, the attitude of gay young men has helped to perpetuate this skinny-is-beautiful notion. The fuck-you attitude that the young set have towards the older generation is encapsulated by clothes which the older generation have difficulty wearing, but which the young ones have no problem. It is no wonder then that small is the new big.

Why was I struck by this article? Well, before I left for Bangkok, S2 mentioned that I had the archetypal body of a Hedi Slimane model. I do have a size 27” waistline, and for all my time spent at the gym, I am pretty lean.

Well, at least I don’t only eat baby food – which is what Hedi Slimane does as he doesn’t like to chew. (No, seriously.)

I should mention this whenever I get bitched about being a difficult person to eat with.

James is doing this because if he tolerates this, his (former) students will be next.

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 15:00:08 GMT

On 24 September, in response to audience query about the government's decision to retain Section 377(A) of the Penal Code, Prime Minister Mr Lee Hsien Loong told university students at a Ministerial Forum at NUS that "If everybody felt like you in Singapore...we could change 377(A), and we would decriminalise gay sex."

While it is heartening to now know that Mr Lee feels "gayness is mostly something in-born" and "how they live their own lives is really for them to decide, it's a personal matter.", we have noted that he also acknowledges that "the tone of the society, the public, and society as a whole, should be really set by the heterosexuals and that's the way many Singaporeans feel "and that "the subject will not go away."

Friends of the minority of Singaporeans who are affected by this law - a law which creates unnecessary emotional stress and ample opportunity for abuse, hatred, blackmails and threats - are presenting an open letter to the Prime Minister to express their concerns on this issue.

Please read and sign the open letter today: http://www.repeal377a.com/letter/

James is going to go where people go to let go.

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:07:00 GMT

I know I haven’t been blogging for the longest of time.

On my end, I have been busy with a series of projects. But now that I have submitted two overdue articles to MY and JT, I feel gloriously free - so free that I decided to head down to Toast to take a long lunch-break today. Ostensibly, it was to proofread the final article that I was going to submit later in the afternoon, but I also wanted to get a book that K and I read about while in KL.

But I was weak – and bought three other books. How could I resist when two of them are by authors that I really like? The books in order of ‘I can’t wait to read them’ -

Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods

Sara Bongiorni’s A Year Without “Made In China” (This was the one that K and I read about in the IHT while gorging on the buffet breakfast in KL.)

David Leavitt’s The Indian Clerk

Renaissance Singapore, edited by Kenneth Paul Tan

Anyway, I did tell myself that after spending most of my free time writing / editing /proofreading the damn articles during these past few weeks, I will spend most of my waking hour catching up on all the reading that I have been deprived of.

But I will only start with The Stone Gods once I have finished my current book – J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year. Having read parts of Disgrace, I must say that I am not a fan of his writing. But what started me on his latest was the postmodern structure of this novel. It interweaves a variety of stories and ideas - the non-fiction essays of an old writer (entitled Strong Opinions), and the developing sexual attraction that this writer has for a neighbour, a young woman whom he asks to help transcribe his handwritten essays. This is told from the perspectives of the writer, the woman and the woman’s boyfriend. What gives the reading experience such an intellectual buzz is that these different parts are all written in one page. My mind constantly shifts between fiction and non-fiction, between the essays in Strong Opinions and the events that have shaped the writing of the essay (though the link can be at times pretty tenuous). I have been told that the plot will get quite exciting once the boyfriend starts to take an interest in the essays that his girlfriend is transcribing. It’s quite Pale Fire, but the essays are so much more readable than Pale Fire’s narrative poem, and I don’t have to constantly flip to the back of the book to read the end notes.

On a random note, how do you respond to people who remark that you like to read ? In my mind, I just think – my god, you don’t?

Yet on another random note, I am spending too much time Facebooking – it is terribly addictive. (At least I am not dreaming of Facebooking, unlike hardcore YM.) Though when I MSN, I enjoy referring myself in the third person, much to the irritation of Dennis Boy. Interestingly, I have been chatted up on Facebook. Oh well, maybe Facebook really is the new Fridae.

All together now

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 16:29:29 GMT

Two books that I want to read or reread in one go – Ready To Catch Him Should He Fall by Neil Bartlett and Chuck Klosterman’s A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas.

Check.

A list of so-hip-they-collectively-can-cause-brain-damage cafes so that I can café-hop as I read and people-watch.

Check.

A soundtrack for my weekend – the latest album by Leo Ku direct from Hong Kong (Thanks S2!)

Check .

All set for a weekend in Bangkok then,

It almost feels like the various times when I was preparing for a long weekend in New York on my own while studying in the UK.

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 02:03:26 GMT

I Knew I Was

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 16:21:43 GMT

I bought this book - called 'I Knew I Was' - for D as a Christmas gift last year. Basically the editors asked gay Americans for the following personal stories - when they knew they were gay, when their parents knew they were gay, when everyone else knew, and the occasional coming-out story. Some of the stories are hilarious, some poignant, others bittersweet and funny at the same time.

************************************************************************************

Some of the ones that I really liked:

1971, Abilene Texas , Stephan Orr

My father was tossing a football with my brothers in the front yard. Seeing me sitting alone on the steps, my mother took my dad aside. “Dub,” she said, calling my dad by his nickname, ‘I think Steve is feeling a little left out. Why don’t you ask him if he would like to play too?’

So my dad walked over. ‘Wanna throw the football some?’ he asked.

‘I’d really rather go pick flowers,’ I replied.

And we did.

My father, a former football coach, spent the rest of the afternoon picking flowers with me in a nearby field.

Archie Gatlin

When I was six, my mother said to me, ‘Wait right here, I think I have something you’d be interested in.’ She went into the other room and came back with a pink feather boa.

1967, Jeff Judd

I was lying on the floor of the living room, watching an episode of the Tarzan series. I kept sliding closer to the TV, sort of looking under it, trying to see under Tarzan’s loincloth. Seven years old, go figure.

Michael Frank

When I was ten, I would put on my mother’s leather evening gloves – they came all the way up to my elbows. I would sing ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend’ into the mirror. One day, my mother walked in and caught me mid-song – I tried to cover, screaming out, ‘To the Bat Cave, Robin!’

1965, Kate Nielsen

I was sitting next to my mother, munching on popcorn, watching ‘The Sound of Music’, and I wondered in my little five-year old brain if it was wrong to want to be Christopher Plummer, aka Captain von Trapp. It was the only way, as a girl, that I could imagine being able to be with the beautiful Julie Andrews. I made my mother take me back to see the move several times that summer, which she was more than happy to do as she just assumed it was because I wanted to be a nun – not that I wanted to be with a nun.

Eric Marshal

I heard this story from my sister, years after it actually happened. At the time, I was fifteen years old. My father was in the middle of his weekly poker game with his buddies. The game got very heated and an argument broke out between my father and a friend of his. After one taunt too many, my dad lost his cool and shouted at his friend, “At least my wife’s not fat and ugly.” To which his friend replied, ”Yeah, well at least my son’s not a faggot.”

Kevin Willliamson

The FISHERMAN, fifty-one, sits in his recliner in front of his television, flipping the remote, the volume blaring. Across the room, on the couch, sits his SON, twenty-seven: anxious, something on his mind. After several false starts and what seems like an eternity, the son speaks:

SON (quietly): Dad, I’m gay.

The fisherman hits the mute on the remote. The room goes silent. A long agonising moment. For the son, the world has stopped. He stares at his father, waiting for a response. Anything – the silence is maddening.

FISHERMAN: I figured it was that.

His son is confused.

SON: You figured what was that?

More silence.

FISHERMAN: Why we never talk.

Both men sit there, staring at the muted television.

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While the stories do resonate with me, there is a certain level of disconnect in terms of the alien cultural references that abound in these stories. Perhaps what we need are similar local stories . So here is mine.

On Sunday afternoons, SBC would screen these Chinese movies on Channel 8. My parents would usually be out, leaving me and my sis at home to watch TV.

There was one Sunday afternoon, when I was around 10 years old, when the movie was Moon, Stars, Sun (月亮星星太陽). The movie stars Maggie Cheung, Cherie Chung and Dodo Cheng as bar hostesses / prostitutes, trying desperately to eke out a better life for themselves.

I remember being so caught up in the tragic stories of these women, that until this day, one of the scenes from the movie still plays in my mind. It is near the end of the movie. Maggie Cheung sits at a restaurant and thinks that one of her patrons will marry her. In this way, she can gain some level of respectability. She is filled with hope, optimism, courage.

But then she realises in the course of the dinner that her patron never had the intention of tying the knot with her. She is now consumed with anger, dejection, despair. She is overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness, yet she refuses to break down. She tries to impose some normalcy in the act of eating, but fails to do so and in a moment of anger and frustration, she flings her chopsticks away. She is imperious with rage. Her look is one of scorn and pity - but you are not sure whether they are directed at the patron or at herself.

At that moment, in some inexplicable way, I was able to relate to her.

I knew that I was different. In what way, to what extent, I wasn’t sure. But I knew somehow that I belonged to a group that would be as marginalised as her.

D says that this was the start of my love affair with movies that feature crying women.

How VERY dare you.

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 09:13:26 GMT

Catherine Tate is a goddess. She's a comedian with the BBC, and in the tradition of Dawn French &Jennifer Saunders, she does these skits in her very own the Catherine Tate show. The humour is painful, the kind that makes you squirm in your seat as it is so uncomfortable, yet you still carry on watching it as it is so damn funny!

My two favourite characters of hers are the closeted gay man Derek Faye, and the confrontational student Lauren. Hilarious!

Which often makes me wonder – why is American humour so much popular than British?

Here are some of my favourites:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=-hfZqbZtT6E

http://youtube.com/watch?v=JXo-IDpfRBo

http://youtube.com/watch?v=c-h3IrUhEiE

http://youtube.com/watch?v=f9uugVWW_XE

http://youtube.com/watch?v=yosbkVlT018

Leo and Me

Sat, 11 Aug 2007 08:49:22 GMT

I know I haven’t been blogging for a while. Have been busy with a number of things, specifically with the Indignation forum, and I have started to help Oogachaga with a workshop that they are planning for 8 Sept. Plus I have recently promised DK that I would be his production manager for the upcoming performance he is doing with the National Museum. (And there’s this NIE article that D and I are writing, and another article I owe MY!)

Anyway, I just bought this Leo Ku album that I have wanted for a long time. I now have all of his albums, including his hard-to-find first album, when he had geeky hair and baggy clothes, very acceptable in the 80s. But the first Leo Ku album I bought was his most recent one, Human, based on a review in the Straits Times. And I have never looked back since, hooked by his baritone voice that is strangely tremulous in its tenor, and by melodies that are comforting in their strange familiarity. In fact, I have become quite a hardcore fan, quite unusual for a homeboy who used to listen (and still do actually) to alternative rock and hip-hop.

What is it about ballads sung in Cantonese that resonate with me so much? (Was talking to KW when I was sending him home after a meeting on Monday and found out that he also enjoyed listening to Cantionese songs, even though like me, he doesn’t understand a word of it.)

Well, it is precisely that I don’t understand what is being sung that makes these songs shimmer with possibilities. Each time I listen to a song, it takes on a slightly different meaning for me, as I imagine what the lyrics could be – or more specifically, what I want them to be. Imagine a signifier that has the potential to lead to different signifiers each time one tries to impose some kind of meaning on it, an imposition that is both futile yet meaningful in it its futility - that is what listening to Cantonese ballads is like for me. I imagine the lyrics are terribly poetic, filled with heartfelt profundity and pathos. And it is this reason that I can listen to the same track or album ad-nauseum. Even PS recognises some songs now, as it is my usual post-club soundtrack on my ipod as I give her a lift near home.

Of course the songs may be terribly cheesy, lyrics that would make be wince if I actually knew what they mean. My attempts to have one of my favourite songs explained to me (twice!) have failed. Both instances ended up with “well, it’s about a failed relationship”, and that "it's about about ‘love’, and ‘how things don’t work out in the end’. Sure! I could have grasped that through the melody and the way it is sung. But maybe I didn’t push them to further translate the songs as I didn’t want to lose the ambivalent nature of these songs, an ambivalence that draws me in each time I listen to them.

But on a bigger picture, perhaps why I am able to enjoy Cantonese and not English ballads is the fact that the mode of irony is pervasive in the Western context, such that sincerity and authenticity is constantly questioned. I find it very hard to enjoy ballads in English because of the postmodern paradigm that I tend to frame what I know and understand. It helps that the Chinese language and culture does not have such baggage that at times cripples the way one tries to engage with a text. (Of course, some cultural analysts have claimed that the 9/11 attacks signalled an end to the age of irony, but in an age or Paris Hilton, can anything be taken seriously?)

D and I have discussed what we think post-postmodern writing is like. For me, Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius captures the spirit of this new age, where the very use of irony as a mode of writing to talk about something so tragic - the death of two parents from cancer - ironically allows a genuine sense of loss to shine through, startling in its intensity and depth. Eggers' book is one of my all time favourite books, and it is one of the few books where I'm excited by its clever postmodern tricks and yet humbled by its emotional honesty.

But I digress.

Why Cantonese? Why not say Hokkein? Perhaps it has to do with the sound of the language. Like Korean, when sung, there is this musicality inherent in the way the language sounds when sung. But when I hear people speak Cantonese, they sound terribly rude, as if everything was meant to be a barbed comment, or a throwaway bitchy rebuttal. Or could it be because these songs mark particular periods of my life when I was dating someone from Malaysia, and when I was seeing someone from Hong Kong? Or maybe it was the other way round, that I sought such guys out in my fixation for things Cantonese?

Oh well. Who can say?

Wei Ming is a Chao Ah Kua

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 01:27:40 GMT

I'm helping to organise this forum, as part of Indignation 2007 (http://www.plu.sg/indignation/). Please do come and support this event, and do bring your gay teacher friends, or gay-friendly teachers that you know!

Indignation 2007: “Wei Ming is a Chao Ah Kua”
Equality and Sexuality in the Singapore School
organised by Plume.sg and Plu.edu.sg (a gay teachers’ networking group)

Growing up gay is easier these days - or is it? Come hear the experiences and stories of gay teenagers and the teachers who teach them. This forum will enable gay youths and teachers (both gay and gay-friendly) to articulate issues, concerns and challenges faced by today’s gay teenagers in the formal Singapore education system. It will also allow teachers to better understand the needs of gay students and to seek ways to better provide support and guidance for such students.

Date: Friday, 10 August 2007
Time: 7:30 - 9:30 pm
Venue: 72-13

No soft men please, we're teachers.

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 02:01:14 GMT

Someone forwarded this article to me. It was featured in one of Malaysia's newspapers, The Star.

I especially like the was they defined soft men, that they were "not referring to well-mannered male teachers but to men who were heterosexual but behaved like women by putting on make-up or by using false eyelashes."

Well, at least they are slightly more transparent about it, unlike our Uncle Moe.

THE STAR ONLINE Monday July 23, 2007

'Soft' men won't be recruited as teachers

EFFEMINATE or "soft" men will not be recruited as teachers and their application to pursue a degree in education in local universities may also be rejected, Berita Harian reported.

Quoting Higher Education Ministry parliamentary secretary Datuk Dr Adham Baba, the report said all candidates for teaching would be required to sit for a test called the Malaysian Educators Selection Inventory (MEdSI) and undergo interviews.

He said the move was not to discriminate on "soft" men but was an approach to help them realise that they have deviated from the original path in life.

Prior to this, Dr Adham said recruitment of candidates to pursue a degree in education would only be based on academic excellence and candidates were not required to sit for the MEdSI test or go through an interview.

The daily said the matter became an issue after schools were allegedly flooded with "soft" men, and added that such a scenario would hamper the image of the teaching profession and national education.

"Beginning this year, all candidates interested in teaching would have to sit for the test and go through an interview.

"Those who pass the criteria, and that includes not having gender confusion, will be allowed to participate in courses pertaining to education," he said.

Asked to define "soft", Dr Adham said he was not referring to well-mannered male teachers but to men who were heterosexual but behaved like women by putting on make-up or by using false eyelashes.

"As an educator who is also a role model to students, they should not reflect such an image to students. If these are our group of educators, what will happen to our future generation?," said Dr Adham.

Kissing by Dan Rhodes

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 08:53:45 GMT

Since the moment we met, my wife and I have not stopped kissing. I’m Catholic she’s Islamic, so there were complications. Throughout the delicate negotiations with our families, our lips did not part for a moment. Eventually they accepted our love, so we married. We walked, tongues tangled, down the aisle. Now, after six years of marriage, we are still fused. We had our first child without stopping kissing for the conception, pregnancy or birth. Our lips are four broken scabs, and our chins always covered in blood, but we will never stop. We are far too much in love.

Binding by Dan Rhodes

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 08:51:53 GMT

I found my girlfriend smashing our two-year-old’s toes with a rock. I told her to stop. ‘What are you doing?’ I cried, above the baby’s agnoised wails.

‘You wouldn’t understand,’ she said, winding a bandage tightly around the crushed digits. ‘It’s a woman thing. It’ll help her get a boyfriend.’

‘But darling, don’t you remember what the doctor told us? It’s a boy baby.’

‘Really?’ She looked surprised. ‘Oh well. Men look nice with small feet too. I expect he’ll be gay, anyway. He’s got that look about him, See?’

I had to agree that she had a point.

The need to be covered.

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 07:24:29 GMT

When do cover versions of popular songs work?

When they do it as well as Scott Simons’ cover of Rihanna’s Umbrella. From a dancey, urban track, it has become a wistful, emotive ballad. It’s goose-pimply lovely. In fact, it has been getting quite a lot of airplay in America.

PS even thought that he had changed the lyrics – it seems that all everyone can remember from the original song is the damn ‘ella ella’ refrain.

Check out Scott Simons’ version here:

http://www.scottsimonsmusic.net/umbrella.html

That came too close in your direction, DNA on your complexion.

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 10:17:33 GMT

DK has been very kind and has compiled a number of CDs filled with new songs for me. Most of the songs are obscure, alternative and terribly exciting. I don’t know where he gets these songs, but he has a huge database of music stored in his Mac. I do enjoy chilling out in his room while he excitedly plays me a new song that he has heard, or a new artist that he is crazy about. He and his flatmate deejayed at Mox earlier in April, and I wish that I could have gone for that session. Anyway, the CDs that he has given me more than make up for it.

These are just lines from songs taken from the 3^rd compilation he made, which is full of dirty, sexy, and campy songs sung by drag queens. Well, I think they are drag queens, based on their husky voices and the sassy way which they let these pithy one-liners rip.

Some of these one-liners that always put a smile on my face (or at least a suppressed giggle) are listed below. I have tried to contextualise the one-liners, but they may appear meaningless to you. Oh well.

“They love me, they hate me, but they all say, ‘I look good’

“Like Madonna would say, I give good face.”

“Looking good is not just a way of life, it’s a plan of action, you know what I mean – hair, nails makeup - it all adds up to the whole “I look good”. It is a certain kind of glow that I have and I don’t mean that delirium kind, dahling. I mean this glow comes from within. It happens when I wake up in the morning, because I look absolutely fabulous!”

“On the ceiling, in the window, behind the curtains, in the bushes, love to do it!”

“In the morning, love to do it, in the evening love to do it, love to do it!
In the shower, every hour, love to do it.
In the backseat, in the parlour, call me Marla.
In the army, call me Sally, love to do it, love to do it!
On the table, call me Mabel, love to do it, love to feel it, love to touch it, love to do it!”

“You got me under your skin, and on your skin I could cum again!”

“It’s all over your face, tell me how does it taste?
When the light goes off and your head goes down,
Don’t let a drop go to waste!”

“That came too close in your direction, DNA on your complexion.”

“I don’t know much about clothes, but my hair looks fierce!”

“’So who made your dress?’
‘Some Mexican children in an LA sweatshop who worked non-stop till their heads dropped. They weren’t allowed water or food to drink, but they still did a fierce job, don’t you think?’
‘Yes I do.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Now about that dress…’
‘Forget the dress, and talk about my breasts.’
‘Speaking of breast implants, whatcha think Paris Hilton do?’
‘Paris who?’

Support by Dan Rhodes

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 01:30:31 GMT

Tired of her ex-boyfriends desperately trying to get back with her, my girlfriend arranged a support group for them. When she told me she loved me very much, but only as a friend, she gave me their number and I went along. We meet every week. Sitting in a big circle, we try to get over her by talking about other things. It isn't easy. Every subject we try seems to return to the warmth of her naked body beside us in the morning, or the way she flicks her hair away from her face as she smokes a cigarette.

Yo George!

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 09:29:23 GMT

I always find the lyrics of Tori Amos’ songs brimming with such forceful intelligence. This song from her latest album, American Doll Posse, keeps ringing in my head.

“I salute to you Commander and I sneeze.
'Cause I have, now, an allergy to your policies, it seems.
Where have we gone wrong, America?
Mr Lincoln, we can't seem to find you anywhere.
Out of the millions, from the deserts to the mountains, over prairies to the shores.

Is this just the madness of King George, Yo George
Is this just the madness of King George, Yo George
Well, you have the whole nation on all fours."

Oh the glory of it all.

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 09:02:37 GMT

So I went to Bangkok over the weekend on my own. The last time I went overseas on my own was when I was a university student in Leeds. I would fly over to New York for a few days to catch up on my reading in Central Park, to shop for books and CDs in the East Village, to spend a lazy afternoon in MOMA, and to catch the latest play or musical at Broadway.

I like the feeling of being lost in the city, that if somehow I disappeared, no one will know or care. And a heady sense of freedom inevitably rushes over me , that I can do anything - literally anything - and no one will know except me. There is that wondrous sense of possibilities, with each possibility, each choice, each person, tantalising me with the question of ‘What if?’

In the novel, The End of Mr Y, the protagonist talks about her dislike for big cities: “I have been to spaces like this bef0re – Soho, Tokyo, New York – but there were always too many people shopping, camera-clicking, talking, running, walking, hoping, wanting. I get claustrophobic in big cities, overwhelmed by all that desire in one small place, all those people trying to suck things into themselves: sandwiches, cola, sushi, brand labels, goods, goods, goods.”

But I am a material boy at heart, and I thrive on desire. I love the claustrophobia, the pushing and shoving, the messiness that comes with big cities.

And Bangkok was gloriously messy during the weekend.

Honest by Dan Rhodes

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 07:30:25 GMT

January said it was important for couples to be completely honest with each other, and I agreed. I told her very honestly how much time I spent thinking about her, that whenever I pictured the future she was always there by my side, and how even after three years together I sometimes couldn't help feeling a little nervous when she was around. She told me to stop. 'That wasn't what I meant,' she said. 'I meant I just don't love you any more.' She looked away. 'And the more I think about it, the more I realise I never really did.'

Why I love Dan Rhodes' Anthropology

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 02:09:38 GMT

Just check out the four short stories below, taken from his collection Anthropology. As Uncut puts it, this is 'a book you want to hurl from rooftops at passers-by to spread the word.'
I work in a low-rise building. All I can do is post some of the stories on my blog.

History by Dan Rhodes

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 02:05:51 GMT

As part of the getting-to-know-me process, Nightjar told me about her ex-boyfriends. She went through her shoebox full of photographs. 'His penis was much bigger than yours,' she would say, 'but he had bad breath.' Or, 'He was quite old but he could still go on all night.' When, at last, she had finished, she asked me about my romantic history. I told her I had been waiting all my life for that special someone, and how glad I was now I had finally found her. 'Ah. I see.' She rolled her eyes. 'You're one of those.'

Lesbian by Dan Rhodes

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 02:01:52 GMT

My girlfriend and I couldn't decide on a name for our little baby girl. Eventually she took her to the registrar, and said she would think of something on the way. When she returned, I was frantic with anticipation. 'So what's she called?'
'I called her Lesbian,' she said, smiling at the bundle in her arms. 'It's such a pretty name.'
I asked her what on earth had possessed her. 'Don't you know what it means?' She didn't, so I explained. The poor thing burst into tears.
'I didn't know there were ladies who did that to each other,' she sobbed.

Stuff by Dan Rhodes

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 01:56:13 GMT

Treasure left me. 'I'm so sorry,' she said. 'I understand how awful you must feel.' Choking, I told her she couldn't begin to understand. She insisted that she could. 'You know you'll never find anyone as pretty as me,' she explained, 'or as nice, and your every moment will be clouded by nagging recollections of times we spent together; times when you wrongly believed we had some kind of future. Believe me, I understand,' she said, gently. 'A part of you has died, the part capable of loving and trusting, and you know you'll never get it back. Stuff like that.'