loss and strain

Yesterday I gave the orange hourglass away and a part of me died with it. I do not think I am being excessively dramatic and I strongly suspect that my soul has been trapped in one of those little bubbles stuck in orange gel land.

Does knowing this increase your pleasure?

Let me gripe a bit about how I am submerged (once again) in all things insignificant but peskily time-consuming like rehearsals, more rehearsals and term papers that have to be churned out by the end of this week (hopefully). Again I place undue pressure on myself and relish the feeling of suffocation.

The closest thing I got to having a life recently is when I watched Constantine on Friday (alone of course). I like the idea of the liminality of water - isn't it true that we can exist in the form of a solid and gas (soul?) but not in liquid form? Well of course you can say that decomposed bodies are liquefied but, ewww, let's not go there for a while. (I feign queasiness so as not to appear too weird.)

Heavily ironic was how the devil gave life to gain a soul.

This gratituously parenthesised entry serves to prove the point that everything worth saying is hidden betweeen lines, (or not).

If this entry seems delirious (or lacking the sluggish fluidity of gel), that is because the reading break starts tomorrow and already I am bursting with pleasure because I have a mountain of work to devour. Chomp Chomp.

orange globule in a lightbulb

Today I have an orange hourglass. The kind of fluorescent orange that is almost as tacky as neon Madonnas found in Chinatown. It doesn't look like an hourglass because it lacks figure, being the shape of a cylinder. But what it lacks in contours it makes up for in the way you can put your whole hand around it and pretend that you possess an element of time for a while.

The movement of the viscous liquid within reminds me a lot of lava lamps, except this one comes without the heat of lava lamps, and spares you from the irrational fear that the liquid within might burst forth at any moment and burn you.

I love the way the liquid flows down - first in strands, then in globs - and the way there is stability in the inconsistency. And with every glob of liquid that descends, a mushroom cloud-looking golden blob balloons up and fuses with an air bubble. I think it is the embodiment of prettiness, but it seems impulsive to limit the world's beauty in something that is plastic and gelatinous.

I love the hourglass because it tells me that everything is pretty lasts for about ten minutes, which is how much time it takes for the liquid to flow from one compartment to the other, which is how long it takes for you to mark one script, or two.

where have all the raintrees gone?

Todays rather tiring filming session turned out to be a great opportunity for me to conduct informal interviews for my Sociology term paper on Emotional Labour and Impressions Management. Talk about a blessing in disguise. It has to be said that it was not a pre-planned thing on my part to do any interviewing. However, when 0830-1200 was to be spent standing around, eating, waiting for the lights to be set up, waiting for your scene, waiting for the other actors to arrive, there is nothing to do except talk talk and talk, the word 'talk' here being a euphemism for emotional ventilation.

The producer/casting director ventilates about egoistic auditionees and diva-esque actors/actresses. The costumes i/c ventilates about actors who sabo him by wearing something directly contrary to the director's wishes, about the demands of an eminent local director which led him to blacklist a huge, shady and leafy movie production house. However, as they have extraordinary powers of emotional control, they keep their frustrations neatly tucked away until someone probes deep enough to unleash a torrent of curses.

"As much as we like our job, we just have to bitch about it to let off steam..." says Hamid*. (*name changed to protect the innocent)

Other than that it was an uneventful day of doing chase scenes at some ulu cafe at Serangoon Gardens, playing Scrabble with two very convincing-looking policemen, moaning about the state of the dried grass, and being amused by the dog in a Chinese embroidered top and brown socks barking at the most inappropriate moments during takes.

Primary colours

How is it possible that in the flash-bang-crackle-pop explosion of red, I am feeling outrageously blue?

(no more of the "I feel.." stuff now. This is not going to be a soppy sappy blog.)

The inner cactus in me is actively guzzling water, and taking in everyone and everything and every body that passes by, letting out in small pricks the occasional heatwave of anger.

Now if only I could let the thorns rain on the man in the hospital who shouts "nian2 qing1 gu1 niang0..." (lit. young lady) ad infinitum ad nauseum everytime I pass my brother's bed (which is directly in front of his). I could practically hear the leer in his voice. Ugh. And you know how the hospital beds have this label to inform the nurses about the language you speak? This man speaks both English and Chinese but his label reads 'non-communicative'.

A young Indian teenager lies handcuffed to the bed, while two policemen watch. He is handcuffed to a policeman wherever he goes (which is limited to the toilet and the toilet). Poor policeman.

The Poppy Paradox

That something so beautifully red and brilliantly fragile can have so much potential for damage, and fund a war.

That someone who looks like a flower should try and self-destruct for nothing but to affirm her evanescence.

That random acts of poetry plucked out of the monotony of a lecture can prove to be opium for a day.

yodelling rainbow bear-butterfly

k.d. lang was great. 'Great' meaning the most number of standing ovations I've ever seen in the Esplanade. Not that I bothered to count though. Practically everyone was standing. It's really understandable why she was so well-received - she has the stage presence (she was wearing this black velvet bathrobe looking thing with many layers of white underneath which made her look rather big and, well, bear-like) and the voice which she so effortlessly controls. She got the most laughs when she attempted to flit like a butterfly (?). For her size, hmmmm, I felt the ground move beneath my feet. Of course I was also thinking that her huge fan base may be also due to what she stands for. Last night saw the largest gay audience I've ever seen for any show,apart from Eleanor Wong's Mergers and Wills.

Well at least we heard her sing during the concert as compared to listening to her do her mic/sound check while we ate dinner. She yodels funnily, and it got quite grating after a while.

The thing about doing gigs, I think, is that it happens really fast you have so little impression of what happened. And considering that we didn't actually have idea how her songs sounded like, it felt a lot like downloading a song and deleting it after you've heard it once. Makes you feel like actually going out and buying her album - Hymns of the 49th Parallel.

k.d. who?

Tuesday's rehearsal for the k.d. lang concert was rather amusing considering only one person in the entire orchestra was familiar with her songs. Which is quite a pity considering her voice makes for good listening especially her version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. I know many people say Jeff Buckley did a flawless cover of that song but hey, she gives a female perspective. (Though the 'female' part may be debatable). She is quite the alternative pop singer, if there is such a thing as alternative pop (and alternative in more ways than one). At the bottom of each of our scores writes "The Seven Letter Music Group", and the ever perceptive HW said it was 'the L word'.

The next time I get to blog properly, (instead of squeezing something out between appointments), I think I may write something on anime/manga. Was pleasantly surprised that Naruto was mentioned in the forum page today. Although if anyone's interested, the latest, most captivating manga in the market today (according to Your Humble Narrator) is something called "Death Note" by the artist of Hikaru No Go (the weiqi comic). It explores themes of playing God when one has the power to take the life of anyone in the world, basically, the subjectivity of morality.

Hope tonight's concert proves more exciting than expected. And I don't think it's too far from the truth to say that expectations surely are high considering people have to pay up to $120 for a 70 minute concert of 16 songs. Will anyone turn up at all?