the2ndrule Issue 42
the2ndrule
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August 2003 email edition
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web edition: http://the2ndrule.com
Contents
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0. Edit
1. Instant Cafe Radio Episode 19 [Koh Beng Liang]
2. Oasis [Salleh ben Joned]
- A Poet Beyond The Far South (poem in six parts) - Huizhou [Wong Phui Nam]
3. The Life After [Jerome Kugan]
- A Poet ... - The Crossing [Wong Phui Nam]
4. How I Envisage My Own Demise [Antares]
- A Poet ... - Chaoyun [Wong Phui Nam]
5. Anda Berada Disini [Heman Chong]
- A Poet ...- Happiness [Wong Phui Nam]
6. Notes for a Memoir on My Girlhood in Malaysia [Lai Ah Eng]
- A Poet ... - Days into Dream [Wong Phui Nam]
7. Introduction to 'The Inner Technology of Art' [Antares]
- A Poet ... - Ground of Days and Seasons [Wong Phui Nam]
8. A City, An Old Woman and Death [Latiff Mohidin, trans. Salleh ben Joned]
9. Fish [Koh Beng Liang]
Edit
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[Jason Wee is the guest editor this month]
01
The irony of our mutual quarrel over water is [1] the fluidity of our positions (exactly how many sen are our respective bargaining positions?) and [2] no politician seems to see the irony in that.
About time we inject some play into this serious lack of imagination with some 'household anarchy', ie, introducing a little disorder without inflicting any material damage. How about
- Malaysians give us a free small tablet with every litre of water sold to us, so that Singaporeans may understand we have been less of a little spot in an ocean than a little Pill.
- We will give the tablets back, duly coloured red, with every litre we sell back, so that some of our neighbours can break out of the Matrix.
- Which will be sent back coloured blue to show us how we haven't.
or
something more DIY that we all can do:
- putting a sign near the border that says our water bottles and radiators have to be three-quarters full before we drive over.
- Singaporeans, share a drink w your Malaysian friends (it'll come back to you for next to nothing anyway).
- Malaysians, share a drink w your Singaporean friends (it'll come back to you as next to nothing anyway).
- Stick over the bathtub and shower head of every home you visit little stickers that read 'You are now entering Malaysian waters'.
02
This issue we celebrate Malaysia's National Day with an all-Malaysian issue. The contributors traverse the diverse strata of literary geography, from expatriate visual artist Heman Chong (based in Germany) to expat academic Lai Ah Eng (based in Singapore), from multi-hyphenate Jerome Kugan (songwriter, poet, editor) to multi-hyphenate Latiff Mohidin (painter, poet, academic). But this is no Pride Parade representation, no politically-correct tokenism, but a description of who and what is out there, and would want to see their names in fine print at the bottom of our page. So if you disapprove, write in and change the scene. I bet your hands, right now, are already halfway to the keyboard.
We're always looking for new work to publish. If you've got any writing, graphics, music, animation or video you'd like to get featured in the2ndrule, do get in touch with us. Please send your comments, suggestions and contributions to: editor@the2ndrule.com
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2ndrule team : Koh Beng Liang, Shannon Low, Benety Goh, Russell Chan, Alfian Bin Sa'at, Jason Tong
Contributors : Jason Wee, Salleh ben Joned, Wong Phui Nam Jerome Kugan, Antares, Heman Chong, Lai Ah Eng, Latiff Mohidin
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Instant Cafe Radio Episode 19
-----------------------------
This week's episode features a commissioned work by the Hans Gret Band. You know how they say that Singapore is the Israel of South East Asia?
http://the2ndrule.com/issues/issue42/instantcafe.html
Playlist:
Hans Gret Band - Yiddish Majulah
http://the2ndrule.com/issues/issue42/yiddishmajulah.mp3
Faith No More - Das Schutzenfest
Empire Brass - Hungarian Dance no 5
Moloko - Sing It Back (Can 7 1930's Mix)
Hermes House Band - I Will Survive (Karaoke Version)
rowloff.com - Glitzville!
Tom Lehrer - L-Y (Songs from the Electric Company)
2nu - This is Ponderous
Louie Austen - One Night in Rio
Mr Scruff - Ambiosound
Parappa the Rapper - Level 5 (Restroom)
Cannibal! the Musical - Shpadoinkle
Mamas and the Papas - California Dreaming
Portishead - Only you (French version)
Dres - You're so vain (feat. Horace Brown)
Gus Gus - David (Darren Emerson Underwater Remix)
P. Ramlee - Bunyi Gitar
- Selection and mix by Koh Beng Liang
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THE OBSERVATORY CONCERT
The Substation Guinness Theatre
Thur 28 & Fri 29 Aug 2003, 8pm
Tickets: $8 (From the box office)
Supported by The Substation
Helmed by the likes of ex-Humpback Oak mainman, singer-songwriter
Leslie Low and Evan Tan, former bassist of The Padres, Victor Low from
Concave Scream, Dharma, and Vivian Wang, The Observatory fuses
electronic programming and acoustic textures, and relies on vocal
storytelling with a soothing soundtrack of folk to jazzy flourishes.
Expect rich mood pieces with lyrical storytelling, in an evening of
music made-in-Singapore.
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Oasis
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In Latiff's terrace house in Lembah Keramat
there are many marvellous alcoves and arches.
Even the TV there's no common TV;
bats and butterflies dance out of the box.
Webs of light quiver lightly in the corners;
tigers prance, colours roar in the corridors;
and white horses, winged and wanton, whirl
in the dark secret attic of his world.
Amidst the dull labyrinth of this desert,
he creates his own oasis of the sacred.
Holding on to the clew, gift of Ariadne,
he paints his way towards epiphanies.
- Salleh ben Joned
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A Poet Beyond The Far South
(For Mohammad Abdul Quayum)
'I am now proceeding to my place of exile in a
barbarian country in my old age. There is no hope
of my returning alive.'
i. Huizhou
Day cools quickly here in driving cataracts of rain
that roars in on a swelling tide of incoming night,
dousing the last incandescence of the Huizhou hills.
Over our fields, the makeshift barns and shelters
for our feeble lives, it builds into high collapsing walls
of crushing waves - the wrack of cane and banyan
blows in as a fiend's disturbance of the air outside.
The world has contracted in here into the fitful radiance
of my single candle sputtering on the odour of wood rot
and the smoke of incense snaking into damp bedclothes.
I fail into its small flame's eye in closing oblivion -
till morning probes me with its icy knives of fire
into the rowdy wakefulness of crickets and field frogs
and spirit touching faintly the shattered wind chimes.
- Wong Phui Nam
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The Life After
--------------
Perhaps there was something about
returning home after
dying so slowly
in that farmhouse where
six months I hid
from my family.
That smell of burnt rice
scraped from the bottom of the saucepan
and the faces of friends, twice disappointed:
these were pages
on which I wrote
poems that never were.
- Jerome Kugan
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ii. The Crossing
The sea comes in sullen and black, brimming over
in a rising flood from the far ends of the sky
as I make my fearful crossing into a dawn
still-birthed in faint smears of its own spilt light.
Through a lightless noon, I drift into a distressed quiescence, wary of pain's ambush in a flaring up of dream, of memory that now I carry as banked down fires beyond this wilderness of waters across the world's edge. Nothing that I was will catch new life: the high exhilaration that was spirit lost to itself, brooding on the commonweal all night, making bright day in the chancellery of subdued candles till the dawn levee. Now a spill of lights out of the darkness grows across the water into jostling lanterns - the bearers claim us for their night.
- Wong Phui Nam
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How I Envisage My Own Demise
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I'm vaguely hungry.
But I'm too lazy to eat.
- Antares
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iii. Chaoyun
After bouts daylong of massive rains, the earth
opens its clogged recesses to night in fumes
of midges and winged termites which, subsiding,
leave the garden a moonless quietude,
an other-darkness haunted by the unearthly scent
of jasmine. Your presence, fugitive in the vanished
grass and trees, secretes itself into waking dream
misting over into the visible as blessed spirit - or ghost.
I see you now luminescent as fallen snow
under our remembered northern moon, white
from dead winter, but delicate still as jade,
and your lips that should be brighter than berries in the sun. The closing earth reclaims you even as I speak, leaves in the after-vacancy a spectral fragrance, a scent.
- Wong Phui Nam
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Anda Berada Disini.
-------------------
Tandas. Telefon. Pertukaran. Batuan Kelemasan. Keluar. Keluar. Keluar. Pertanyaan. Pintu C37. Bebas Culcai. Kaca mata. Tangga 41.
Together, everyday together. Now I think it's set. Buantan Malaysia.
A lift that shuffles between 2 floors. Troli, sila gunakan lif. Balai Tamu Syarikat Penerbangan, surau. Cleaning in progress.
A pasta meal that costs RM28 nett. Operation hours 6am - 2am. Dilarang Merokok.
Pintu rintangan api hendaklah sentiasa ditutup. Kaunter pertukaran B. Imigresen. Imigresen. Imigresen. Aerotrain. Gelung Hos. Pemadam Api. Pelan Kecemasan.
20 July 2003, 7:32pm - 11:50pm, Transit Lounge C, Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
Anda Berada Disini : A text by Heman Chong / NoSleepRequired. For H.
Heman Chong / NoSleepRequired was born in Muar, raised in Singapore, educated in London and currently lives in Berlin. His recent work "Murmurmurmurmurmur (VeneziaAccademiaRemix)" represented Singapore at the 50th Venice Biennale. He is now somewhere lost in transit between Tokyo, Copenhagen, Linz and Yogyakarta.
Lisa / Thelma. "The long distance love test", The Star, StarMag "Your Lifestyle Companion", 20 July 2003
I am 18 and I love S, who is 28. We are both from Penang. I have known him for a year and we are like husband and wife - we fight, but the next day, we will patch up.
One day, I planned to see S because it was the date we had first met - our first anniversary. I felt happy and we went out for lunch and dinner. Suddenly, S told me that he wanted to move to work in Kuala Lumpur. But he said he would come back to Penang whenever he got two days off. He also said he would leave his old handphone in Penang (for his family to use) and buy a new one with a KL code. Then he would ring to tell me the number.
I tried many ways to stop S going away, but failed. The reason I did that is because S will be staying at his sister's house in KL. His sister has a daughter named P, who is very close to S. I am worried that P will change S and he will forget me.
I feel confused. Will S forget me? Will he call me? Can I trust him? I am miserable and cannot concentrate on my work.
Lisa.
Dear Lisa,
Love from a distance is the greatest test. If you continue to fret and fear, you will only live in misery and doubt every moment he is away from you. You are only 18 and have known S for only a year. He needs his job and time to build up his career. It is not fair to use love to make him stay. In the meantime, you will be growing up and adjusting to the changes in your own life. You will be meeting more people, shifting your needs and feelings. Stop worrying for now. Thinking of the worst and working yourself up over potential women in his life is a waste of time. If you are very serious about him, then consider getting a job where he is. Talk to him and see if he is happy and receptive to the idea. This will give an indication of where he wants you in his life.
For as long as you are away from each other, you have lives of your own. It is better to accept the situation and give each other space to develop and expand career and interests. If love is meant to be, he is yours - regardless of distance and distractions.
Thelma.
Cara membuat panggilan. Kad IDD. Goreskan kotak perak di belakang kad untuk medapatkan nombor kad dan PIN. Jangan masukkan IDD kad. Arahandalam bahasa pilihan anda: 1800 383880 Bahasa Malaysia 1800 383881 English 1800 383882 Mandarin 1800 383883 Jawa 1800 383884 Bengoli 1800 383885 Tagalog. Masukkan no. Kad no. pin kod negara. Kod Daerah no. telefon dilikuti butang palang. Membuat panggilan baru. Tekan butang palang (#). Untuk mendal semula tekan butang palang dua kali (#) (#). Untuk memadan numbor tekakhir yang didail sila tekan butang bintang (*). Lertakkan gagang selepas perbualan.
End.
- Heman Chong
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iv. Happiness
In the heat of the morning's light that burns
through crevices of my hovel crumbling into earth
by a baking summer field, I wake from the past
to present ruin. All of the living signs I set down
to catch my wine-lit and other passing ecstasies
have bled into the grain of rain-touched pages
that I saved; seeped into fibres of fused reams
to join enclosed Du Fu and others in an ink cloud
of common oblivion. Mould fattens where words were,
that roused the vipers in contentious men at Court.
Yet, as from embers of the stove I fan to brew weak tea
for neighbours calling, I catch from the debris, a flame
of happiness rising as we talk into a late noon rain.
By the evening bamboo weeping after-rain, it burns bright still.
- Wong Phui Nam
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Notes for a Memoir on My Girlhood in Malaysia
---------------------------------------------
I was born ugly. So ugly Ma said the nurse thought she surely would not want me. Besides, I was yet another girl, her sixth. And she had already given away her fifth daughter to the Malay bidan the last time she gave birth. So they put me in a corner for discarded babies. By the time Ma found me I was shivering and bluish from the wind by the window. That was in the general hospital, Kuala Lumpur, May 1954. Third class ward of course. My mother said the toilets there were so filthy and so haunted the ghosts were bold even in broad daylight.
So that was the beginning of my life, Ma loved to tell me as I sat at her lap when I was a little girl. Of course I wanted you. Luckily I rescued you. I went around asking, where's my baby? Where's my baby? And the nurses said which one? Oh, that ugly one with the big lump? Oh she's so ugly we thought you wouldn't want her. Who says you are ugly? See how pretty you are now? Always so pretty! Just that you had a big lump growing right there beside your neck. SO big and SO ugly we thought you might die. But the doctor CUT it off! See the scar? But lucky just a lump, not a cleft lip. Now that would be REALLY ugly!
So I did not die and I was never ugly. And by the time I was seven I was one of the prettiest girls in the world, Ma said. Except that all the time before that, I was disguised as a boy. Because Ma wanted a boy so much. I wore shorts and a ring on my third finger. I had a short haircut with a currypuff top like Elvis Presley's. Several times a day I checked that my currypuff stayed in place with Brylcream. I didn't mind and I didn't care whether I was a boy or girl. It didn't make any difference so long as I got to do whatever I wanted to do - which was to play, play and play.
Every month or so I went to Ah Neh the Indian barber across the road for a haircut. He put me on a plank cross the arms of the chair and used the clippers to cut my hair all the way to the top of my head. And when he had finished, he said nah, you handsome boy lah! I knew he knew I was a girl but we kept my secret. I just loved sitting there feeling the clippers go up up up my scalp, it was so soothing yet ticklish. The music from Ah Neh's radio added to the sensations. Sometimes it was holy music ah ah ah aaaaa aaaaa aaaaa aaaaaaaaa! Sometimes it was drums, thum thum tup tup tup! thum thum tup tup tup! thum thum ta thum ta thum thum! Trum, trup, trup trup trup. I also loved the dusting of powder at the end of the haircut, it was so fragrant. And I liked to watch every movement in the mirrors. What magic to see everything behind me! Ah Neh could talk to his customers or hum non-stop to the music and toss his head continuously as he clipped my hair. Chinese children's hair hard to cut, too soft and too little, he would tell my father.
Ah Neh loved me. He even wanted to bring me back to India for a home visit for six months. I wanted to go so see India when I was six. My mother said no, he may never come back, then how am I going to find you?
But he will, he will come back! I want to go! I want to go!
Ah Neh went to India without me and sure enough he came back six months later.
Nah, you see, Ah Neh came back! Next time you let me go!
But the next time Ah Neh went, I didn't want to follow him. I had begun to wear dresses and no longer visited his shop. And this time he didn't come back.
Ma said either he died of sickness or his wife would not let him return. Lucky you didn't follow him or you would have become an Indian girl. Worse, sold off to be a slave, beggar or prostitute. That is what happens to many little girls who don't listen to their mothers or who do not have mothers. No mother very pitiful. People will scold you, beat you, sell you off. In this world, only a mother is the best. Why do you think Redifusion always plays the song si shang ji you ma ma hau?
So that's how I did not become an Indian girl and became Chinese. A very fair Chinese girl. Even though I drank thick black coffee without milk three times a day. Ma said that would make me very dark like an Indian. She even quarrelled with Pa over my drinking habit because he was the one who made me my drink, the last one with ice cubes before I went to bed every night. But Pa laughed and said I also drink soyabean and water.
Because of Ah Neh - that's how I first became part Indian and came not to be afraid of Indians. Even though they were very dark and many spat red blood-like saliva after chewing this bidi stuff. Even though some people said Indians and Bhais would catch children if they did not behave. Indians lived all over Sentul. In the toddy shop area, in the labour lines of Sentul railways, along the railway tracks, in temples, squatter huts, homeless under the trees and on the street.
We lived in a shophouse without the dignity of an address. Our neighbours' houses also did not have numbers. Squatters, we were called. Squatting illegally on government land. Muk uk kui, settlement of wooden houses in Cantonese, boh leh sen kai su kia har, little homes without licences in our Hainanese.
Ma said she planted rice and grew lychees in China. But because we had no land we just grew some spring onions in old Milo tin cans and some bitter gourd in the backyard. We also reared some ducks and chickens. At night, the baby ones were put in boxes with a light in each and they slept in the kitchen. "They need the light for comfort since they don't have a mother. And they know I am near," Ma said.
- Lai Ah Eng
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v. Days into Dream
Where summer never ends, the sky at evening blinds
with the veiled expiring sun bursting into a blaze
of mauves, pinks and reds against impending total night.
The day-brightness of men in hot chase after boar
through fern and vine; of snowfall of egrets across the marsh;
and, out of broad noon, word of Chang and Zhou's fall from grace -
friends from the yamen who eased my days in this wilderness -
these stay luminous awhile. Day fades. days into dream.
I smell the spring in dream imperial gardens
where high terraces look down on vague banks of flowers
floating in muted splendour in light pools of mist.
In the high brocaded hall where we crook our knees
I dream before that presence as great lords and ministers
plead, twittering as they vanish into the light of dawn.
- Wong Phui Nam
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Introduction to 'The Inner Technology of Art'
---------------------------------------------
What does it actually mean to be called or to call someone an artist? We could think about the earliest evidence of human artistic activity, found before the outbreak of the First World War in southern France: the famous paleolithic cave paintings of Lascaux, more than 30,000 years old, which largely depict the primal mystique of the hunt. The scholar Joseph Campbell, in Primitive Mythology, describes these prehistoric artists as shamans: medicine men and women who worked as intermediaries between the mystical and practical worlds, whose private visions - projected into public ceremony and ritual - could effect profound change in our lives by impinging upon our perceptions.
Then, as now, the shaman-artist served as a visionary of the sacred, a medium connecting the various dimensions, a transducer of spirit into matter and vice versa, a vital link between metaphysical and physical. His ability to merge the inner world of dreams and symbols with the outer world of the hunt made him a healer and a seer, gifted with initiatic and prophetic authority.
Australian aboriginal creation myths speak of archetypal ancestors, closely linked to specific animal lineages, singing the landscape into being as Songlines. The spiritual world is a vibratory essence which can materialize itself by lowering its frequencies. Physical reality is but a shadow of the metaphysical. Interestingly, this idea of earthly existence as a shadow-play is the central metaphor in Plato's allegory of the cave, wherein he describes the unawakened consciousness as a prisoner chained in darkness, kept enthralled by an illusory pageant of animated shadows enacted by an invisible priesthood. Precisely the technique employed in the Wayang Kulit tradition, still practised in former colonies of the Majapahit Empire.
The imaginative interplay of light and dark creates all drama - a word associated with dreams and nightmares. From Plato's Cave to Wayang Kulit to the Magic Lantern and George Lucas's Industrial Light Magic is a mere progression of technological sophistication. A father amusing his child by creating animated shadows with his hands is drawing on a very ancient artform. These days the same father (especially if his name happens to be George Lucas or Steven Spielberg) would have access to computer-generated digital images which enormously enhance his power to project his imagination to a remote audience of millions. The art of entertaining and enthralling an audience is akin to hypnotism (or to an ancient Javanese magical practice known as pukau, by which means the victim is involuntarily put into a paralytic trance, thereby allowing the practitioner to do as he will as long as the spell lasts).
Disregarding the superficial changes in the technology of art, the primary tool of the artist will always be his imagination. The secondary tool of the artist might be a stick with which to draw figures in the sand, a brush with which to paint, a chisel with which to chip away stone, a flute on which to blow, a lute on which to strum, or a computer with which to sequence an electronic fugue. Technology, after all, is essentially the evolution of tool-making and using. A gripping tale can be told with only an eloquent tongue - or with an extravagant panoply of son et lumière effects. Without the artistic imagination, creation itself would not exist, nor would the concept of a creator. We have been told that God made man in his image; the artist intuitively knows that the reverse equally applies.
To imagine is to create an image on the screen of one's mind - and this act of imagination, when focused through the clear lens of willful intent, is a magical performance which can effect a transformation on all levels. Thus the artist-shaman-magician has always been a source of fascination and fear. His powers of creation and projection make of him a god or demon, depending on his mood and inclination. And indeed, in days of old, the visionary power of the artist-shaman often gave him tremendous influence over his tribe. It was only recently - in the last 13,000 years or so - that brute strength gained ascendancy over mind, and the warrior muscled his way into dominance. The gradual erosion of archetypal pantheons and monarchies has facilitated the rise of the merchant-entrepreneur, whose crude time-is-money credo rapidly became the 'bottom line' over the last few centuries. Commercialism and industrialism now threaten, alas, to turn art into just another economic activity - and the artist's ceremonial and magical role into a purely ornamental one. No doubt a certain superstitious awe still attends the artist's endeavours; but in this consumerist age, the artist-shaman's contribution to the success of the hunt has been reduced to churning out effective advertising and public relations for the vulgar new gods of materialism - or fashionable new trends for the children of the privileged.
- Antares
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vi. Ground of Days and Seasons
This is the hour after moonset when the earth wanes
into the cold of deep darkness and silence.
My lantern's intent eye upon the wet grass casts
a patch of wakefulness that roams like ghost or spirit
the forest's edge and provident fields, as I scour
for herbs that mend the body's ills. Attent upon the light,
I am let free from the coils of thought, from all confines
into being lighter than the invisible air. I am
exultation beyond darkness and silence.
When the sky rekindles, the sun brings me back
into the world - first grey, then gold, then white
with heat that beats all who are outdoors into the earth.
But then, I have touched that mystery, a nothingness,
ground of days and seasons, the world in their fleeting colours.
- Wong Phui Nam
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A City, An Old Woman And Death
------------------------------
You came to me
at the roadside
peering into my eyes
reading their fleeting light
my eyes: heavy stones
that no longer shine
Do not give me
that cold hand of yours
let me step out
to cross this silent city
by myself, as always
I know
in front of us
is a line of buried cars
pieces of black metal
which no longer
give me the far
I've traverse this city
so many times
Let me step out
without your magical blessings
you too know
that in a moment
something will happen here
quick as lightning
and as quickly forgotten
- Latiff Mohidin, trans. Salleh ben Joned
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Throughout the 20th century, small groups of men seized control of great nations, built armies and arsenals, and set out to dominate the weak and intimidate the world.
- George W. Bush, State of the Union 28 Jan 2003
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Fish
----
"Everything evil is outside of the tank."
Click here to watch the video:
http://the2ndrule.com/issues/issue42/fish.html
- Koh Beng Liang
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http://the2ndrepublic.com
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* 2ndrule t-shirts *
Non-uniform of the guerilla army. Now available at S$20 each.
Sizes: Girls (28,30), Boys (40,42)
http://the2ndrule.com/issues/issue24/2rtshirt.html
Please send your orders to editor@the2ndrule.com
Oasis (c) 2003 Salleh ben Joned
A Poet Beyond The Far South (poem in six parts) (c) 2003 Wong Phui Nam
The Life After (c) 2003 Jerome Kugan
How I Envisage My Own Demise, Introduction to 'The Inner Technology of Art' (c) 2003 Antares
Anda Berada Disini (c) 2003 Heman Chong
Notes for a Memoir on My Girlhood in Malaysia (c) 2003 Lai Ah Eng
A City, An Old Woman and Death (c) 2003 Latiff Mohidin, trans. (c) 2003 Salleh ben Joned
