3 reasons why graffiti on Toa Payoh Block 85 is dope as fuck

 

If there’s anything better than the sweet aroma of coffee beans and toast floating through the air when you wake up in the mornings, it simply has to be waking up to “fuck the PAP” scribbled with a toddler’s handwriting on the roof of the HDB block opposite yours. It just makes you feel so…warm inside. Despite the fact that the ledge is literally less than a metre wide, fellow street artist Mike Cool risked his life to remind Singaporeans to…erm, I can’t really tell what his message is. Vote for PAP right? It’s a bit vague. Anyway, here are three reasons why MatKool’s graffiti is so dope:

1. The sheer height. 

Just standing at that height would make me want to pee my pants, let alone spray something legible. One simply cannot blame Mike for having a childish hand considering that it is very hard to write properly with soggy pants. Also the wind could have easily tipped him over at that height. No wonder he got straight to the point. It’ll be pretty sad if he had martyred himself after spraying “fuck”.

2. It is very semiotically complex. 

Breaking down the artwork into a list of symbols, we have the following:

• the Anarchy Circle  x 03
• the Anarchy Heart-shaped x 01
• the Circle Lightning Cross x 01
• the Circle PAP Cross x 01
• a variant of the Nirvana Smiley x 01

Let’s talk about the first two: the regular anarchy circle, and the anarchy heart-shaped circle. For most of us, the significance of the anarchy symbol is rather clear – it is a right wing extremist position which advocates severe libertarianism where it’s every man for himself. Why then, is there an odd heart-shaped anarchy symbol inserted below “fuck”? One can only guess that out of 4 anarchies fucks that we give, one anarchy fuck has to be coming straight from the heart. Whatever it is, Mat Kool probably has some profoundly feasible political theory in mind when he sprayed the walls. One that includes Nirvana and PAP and something that’s got to do with freedom and change… It really boggles your mind.

3. It forced our darling papers to censor PAP even though it’s not a vulgarity(debatable, of course)

It is hard to miss how ridiculous SPH made itself look by censoring “PAP” from Straits Times and the NewPaper. One can only imagine that this is what happened:

Somewhere earlier last night at SPH…

Chief Editor Mr Tan: Eh, err, I think having the PAP there is really not good for our brand ah, what do u think.

Young Editors: Ya lor, “PAP” sprayed in red on the walls, later all the aunties mistake us for gangster organization.

Chief Editor: Okok settle. Then the lightning thing wan censor or not?

Young Editors: Okok let’s sensor that one also. We just erase ppl won’t know what this guy talking about alrd, they will think he’s just trying to give Singaporeans a wake up call. Like, a literal wake up call, like, SG, wake up, time for work kind.

Chief Editor: okok settle. I go ask grandpa first den we see how.

***********

Tomorrow, Straits Times will be releasing a statement by Minister of Home Affairs saying that Vandalism is a serious crime that is punishable by a maximum of three years in jail and a $ 10 000 fine blah blah blah, and we all look forward to the same bullshit.

Thoughts on Waterland by Graham Swift

“Reality is uneventfulness, vacancy, flatness. Reality is that nothing happens. How many of the events of history have occurred, ask yourselves, for this and for that reason, but for no other reason, fundamentally, than the desire to make things happen? I present to you History, the fabrication, the diversion, the reality-obscuring drama. History, and its near relative, Histrionics…”-Waterland

Waterland is the type of novel that will suck you in with its density and then leave you feeling confused, frustrated and poignant, before finally spitting you out as a different person, one that has a deeper understanding of human nature, of civilization and possessing a heightened sensitivity towards different minutiae of the universe. Events, post-novel-reading, are much more symbolic than they were before. It’s just much easier to see connections, links, or the co-relation of things – and perhaps this is what Waterland is ultimately teaching us – that the interactions between elements, no matter how slight or trivial they seem, are bound by the deeper material presence of a history of events. This history, formed and shaped by our respective biases, define the nature of the reality of the material “Here and Now”. From there, we proceed: to understand the past that is in itself an impossible task, but to try to understand it, not because we want to, but because we, as human beings, need to tell ourselves stories to survive.

Waterland is, therefore, a dogged attempt at establishing meaning in an alogical, random world of flying facts. Narration as solace; story telling as a balm for emotional wounds (for we all have many). To tell us that all is fine and a okay. The imperfect narrative, the persistence of the Whywhywhys, and the drilling into us that curiosity is fundamentally good…

Like a typical novel, though, Waterland is rife with drama. Sexual tensions, incest, complications of family history- one can even read Waterland as a Bildungsroman of Tom Crick, the self-conscious, cynical history teacher, who, at the age of fifty-five, looks back at his personal past to find an explanation to this absurdity called the “Here and Now”. Throughout the novel, we are constantly reminded that Tom Crick’s is old- for who else besides the sagely old will address their readers as children? Who else, indeed, besides teachers? The primary tone achieved through this stylistic device of second-person address is,therefore, a composed one. Yet, slipping between these gentle address is a much more urgent voice, one that is distraught and desperate to explain, constantly questioning, constantly accusing: “So you’re curious. So you’re curious. You’d skip the fall of kings for a little by-the-way scurrility. Then let me tell you.”…”Now who’s the rebel around here?”. It is ironic that the old teacher of easy temperament tries to out-do his teenage student at rebelling. But underlying Crick’s insecurities is the immutable and paralyzing dilemma of how history is everything and nothing. To Crick, “history is that impossible thing: the attempt to give an account with incomplete knowledge, of actions themselves undertaken with incomplete knowledge”; but at the same time, it is also the one thing that keeps everything else together, the idea that “as long as there is a story, it is alright…”

Of course, there are many different readings of the text, and amongst those, the post-structuralist reading shines because of how appropriate the tone and content of Waterland is for the fruits of post-structuralism. The language games, relativity, binary opposition (water/land, reality/myth, rise/fall, etc, etc) all point to facets of the linguistic turn as explored by the likes of Hayden White, Foucault and Lacan. Very crucially, the self-conscious, self-defeating voice of the novel dynamically articulates the tensions between narrative and narration, which is one of the primary fixations of this period.

All in all, Waterland is rich in thought, imagery and complexities – it is a novel which balances art with philosophy very well. I should really be spending more time going through the water imagery that I so love, but I am lazy. Besides, the narrative structure mystified me more, so.

Away Amy, Gimme Grant

Lana Del Rey, the queen of luscious baroque pop, is undoubtedly an amazing singer. Her 2012 album, Born to Die, has been dubbed as a “fairy-dusting of harp and an ominous timpani, laid out over-top a hip hop vocal cadence” by Times, “glossy trip-hop” by BBC music and (best of all) “Hollywood Sadcore” by the Lolita Grant herself. She has successfully replaced my need for the raunchy americana of The Andrew Sisters and the trashy OD-infused glamour of Amy Winehouse, with this single album.

To many critics who recognize talent when they see it, Lana Del Rey is not just another pop sensation. The abundance of theatricality in her music, infused with her mellow, femme fatale voice and played out alongside the 1950s Desert Americana of “Off to the Races” create something so utterly unique that it defies categorization. Sure, we can term it indie; we brush it aside as pop: but the sound of her album, despite containing both elements, is much grander than that – what she has created, alongside with her producer, her song-writers, her art directors, is art music that penetrates deeper into pop culture than any of the post-modernists living on art theory can ever dream of. She has created instant noir: sweet, deep and dark.

this feels new.

self portrait outside seven-eleven: Bangkok

No, it’s not love. Love isn’t new. Love has been there for centuries, and people will probably continue to love for centuries to come.

It’s independence.

Recently, I’ve realized that I no longer feel the need for company. It might be that life is slightly busier now: army, business, music – almost every single second of my time is spent on those things. But more likely, I suspect, it might be because I am finally over Lena. Truly and for good. I don’t feel sad when I think of her; I don’t feel happy when I think of her; I hardly even think of her, but when I do, I feel nothing, as if she is just some stranger whose name I can somehow recognize. I don’t think I would love anyone anytime soon, and I don’t see how that is a problem.

There has been a series of short affairs, however, sustained by nothing but a Dionysian impulse. They were fun while they lasted, but it stops there. In exchange for love, I’ve discovered the liberty to flirt and make merry. Nothing spectacular, just a different lifestyle.

My friends whom I once used to hang out a lot with also seem to be embracing vastly different lifestyles. Those who club, club; those who idle, club; those who failed their As, club. For me, I find no pleasure in clubbing. And thus we split apart, for the lack of a common activity.

I don’t feel sentimental a lot these days. (Is it bad? Am I losing my humanity?) I don’t feel the need to express myself, except only in ways that humor myself and those around me. Artistically, I am losing it.

Wayward in spirit, the force of commercialism pulls me hither and thither towards all that is interactive.

On the Vacuity of Clubbing.

Clubbing in Singapore is a sordid affair. While in theory (and on TV), we see people enjoying themselves as they dance all night to the groovy music, making friends, making out and living the life like they’re supposed to, in reality, it is nothing close, at least for me.

So I enter a club after paying cover charge of $38 dollars with my heart bleeding from the entry stab. I navigate through the club with my friends, bouncing to the Dum Dum Dum of the EDM simply because it’s something to do, not because I feel the music or anything like that. Cheap. We found a table that’s opened by our friend and we start to drink. Soon, someone will suggest we go to the dance floor and we’ll move through the thick, annoying crowd again just to get closer to the ear-deafening speakers and into a bigger crowd of autobots who raise one hand up and jump like idiots. At this point, I would often look at the crowd and marvel at their communal stupidity. Look how pathetic you people are, I would think, before moving into the back of the crowd and raising my hand up and jumping along idiotically, until I grow so sick of myself and my conformist tendencies that I would puke all over.

Halfway through the night, I will move to the smoking corner to take a puff. Interestingly, the smoking corner is perhaps the best place to have a conversation with someone as it is the only place in the club where you can hear yourself. I dream of finding a girl who happens to be as disinterested in clubbing as me, who is smoking and looking melancholically out at the Singapore river and wishing she was in Switzerland – but it never happens. The girls I see there are either drunk, or are complete sluts (or the worst kind: drunk sluts), and so I always smoke by myself quietly.

The rest of the night passes slowly. Either I get drunk and zone out for the rest of the night, or I spend my time checking instagram on my phone wishing someone I followed will post something life-changing. The point is, by around 1 to 2 am, I am bored to death. Can there be any activity in modern life that is more vacuous, I find myself repeating this question two hundred times. By the time I step out of the club, my soul would be emanating despair.

I have never walked out of a club happy, and I don’t think I ever will.