The nailcutter

There was a man who lived to cut his nails. He worked and sustained himself and did things day to day so that he could live another day, so that his nails could grow another day, so that he can cut it another time.

That’s all. It was not that he was really passionate about it, or that he would do a phD if he could about nails and nailcutting culture or whatever. It’s just the thing that he lived for, and the thing that he would do. It wasn’t that he particularly liked the tingling feeling when the nail was cut off, nor that he liked the sound, nor that he liked to see the white parts being manicured off, nor that he liked to observe the ridges of his uneven nail surface, nor that he liked to wish that he had perfectly almond-shaped his nails because he didn’t, nor the sensation of having shorter nails, nor the anything. He was not feeling all these.

But he knew that when he ate dinner when he didn’t feel like eating, when he dealt with a client he didn’t feel like dealing with, when he brushed his teeth in the morning when he didn’t feel like brushing them because he didn’t feel like going to work, it was so that he would be able to cut his nails the next time, and the time after that, and the as long as possible time after that.

This was how the man who lived to cut his nails lived.

Venue and choices

I was talking with Hyesu last evening about the venue of the 4 Oct meet, and I said that i thought maybe it was a straight forward thing (i thought cca was open until 9pm on friday as google said but google is wrong and so 4 Oct friday doesn’t work for CCA which was the fall back plan… and the new fall back plan is at my place in bbb) but then I realise that when it comes down to implementing it, it’s not just about fall back plan.

I had been thinking about choices - something wrong about the choice model along the lines of what Baxandall mentioned and the approach I took on for my thesis - that phenomenological approach that runs through to the existential - as in interpreting that whatever people choose, action or inaction or whatever A or B, is an expression of their intention - and interpreting the implications and consequence of that model as factors of that conscious decision. Lynx was telling me something he disagreed about it and that he thinks it’s not a choice, for example, to continue to take the next breathe - like maybe there are some automatic functions, but I disagreed with him - I believe it’s a choice to continue breathing because the person didn’t choose to kill him/herself. I believe it’s a choice to continue living. I think Lynx didn’t read the link I had sent him in reply to his note - that entry I had written about somebody letting go.

Anyway, that’s not the point I’m trying to record today. It’s about a thought that straightened out for me yesterday. I was thinking about going back to working in DSTA to be with my ex-colleagues I had fun working with them and I enjoyed the money and I think I will still have fun working with them and I will still enjoy the money. But one thing that hold me back is because DSTA is about engineers and designers and whatever of defence technology and warfare technology and that I didn’t enjoy - that my livelihood was closely associated with that.

When I was working there at first, as in so many years ago - I didn’t consider so much - as in I didn’t consider their business on the onset and then when i realise I didn’t resign immediately either. Okay maybe my action/inaction after i recognise their business and so on, might be a reflection of my choice. But I think… actually a lot of singapore’s infrastructure and monies come from these engineering things. Someone might say, it’s not DSTA but ST but come on, we’re a small country. And what is my continuance to walk on the roads that are built from the taxes collected from these monies - does that make me hypocrite?

I’m also responding to the withdrawal of artists from the biennale when they discovered that one of the directors of the board owned or got his money from a company that produce tear gas that was used at some unrest. and that is really a huge can of worms, where all the monies from the arts come from.

So, my point my point, maybe the choice is not always an expression of intention - e.g. especially when one is ignorant of the implications and the context, in which case it is an expression of ignorance.

My “agenda” of sorts is basically to share my existential anxiety maybe - is it. Or whatever. to awaken people to share that time is running out. this, i realise is a recurrent theme. time time time and lateness. but maybe then this approach assumes that intention is superior to ignorance. Which brings me to another discussion with lynx last week at CCA. is intention and consciousness superior to ignorance?

The craving for more knowledge and awareness - it is nevertheless a craving.

I discussed this with Tan Wen yesterday. I don’t know what’s the correct answer - or rather maybe I know - that it means to be balanced, but I don’t know how to stay in the balance.

And choices and ideas change as we progress and change.

Just like how now I am hoping to settle at the stamford arts centre for the 2 hour get together. because I’m trying to make some other meaning from the one I was thinking of making before.

The leaf on the river does not choose to flow downstream.
but the fish has a bit of choice on where it is going to swim.

Admin : i am nd: aim dn: daimn

I spent so much time doing admin for the IS group but I still have so much more to do. if you ask me what I do I also can’t really tell you.

Update different people at different times. in different whatsapp group. I updated the invite with new details. Then found that there’s a new joiner. then persuaded jillian to join the whatsapp group.

Tian asks me for our attendance last week at CCA.

Sunday: 4 pax average 2 hours
Monday: closed
Tuesday: 2 pax average 3 hours
Wednesday: 2 pax average 3 hours
Thursday: 4 pax, average 2.5 hours
Friday: 4 pax, average 2.5 hours
Saturday: 4 pax, average 2 hours

is it that artsy people don’t like to do admin? stop it cannot escape. suck it. po vibes po vibes!

I dreamt of chen wen hsi

Last night, I dreamt of Chen Wen Hsi. As in the pioneer Singaporean Chinese or Chinese Singaporean painter who passed away in1991. In the dream, he was my lao gu gong or lao dior gong, I think that means great grand uncle. The occasion was his wedding, I didn’t see the wife but I kind of know she was young, maybe a second wife. He was pretty old maybe in his 60s or 70s. I was there with my brother and I was pretty shocked when I saw Chen Wen Hsi's face that I didn’t know how to address him and he called himself the liao gu gong or something in sort of a chastise to me for not greeting him properly. Maybe because he thought I was judging him for marrying at such an old age to a younger wife.

I was a bit puzzled by that because I thought oh yah maybe he is related on my maternal grandmother side because of the same surname but yet he was teochew and my grandmother is hokkien. And maybe it was more likely that he is a relative on my paternal side which is teochew. But wait, I am awake now and I recall my maternal grandmother's surname is huang, Ng. So ok. Maybe he was really related to someone on my paternal side I wouldn’t know i’m so distant from them.

OK so anyway. I dreamt of Chen Wen Hsi. This is the second time I dreamt of him. Maybe our vibes are connected. Maybe he is the reincarnation of something else for me. Maybe he is really pleased with my thesis. Hahahaha. And comes to me in my dreams.

Dragonfly nymph

A nymph felt like it and so climbed up a stalk of a reed.

Climb so high for what? A shrimp said to it, higher you climb harder you fall then you know.

Climb so high for what? A little fish said, later you cannot breathe in the sky.

Now the nymph who had been a nymph its whole life cannot reply for it also cannot quite imagine why because it knew it breathed through its gills in the water, but still, it cannot help itself. There was this inexplicable compulsion, it had not yet known it was about to metamorph into a dragonfly.

Somemore you’re so ugly compared to us. Somemore you are so young compared to us, listen, don't go, you have a good life here you must be appreciative.

*

If you were the nymph what would you do? What would be the pond and what would be the sky? Who would be the prawn and fish? What would be the piece of reed?

Good vibes

Discussion w lynx and jess last night and then lunch with I and then have this conclusion.

That I just want good vibes and hang w people with good vibes cos i’m so tired of other things. It’s not that I am not a friend in need but I don't want to spend my life wallowing in each other's lament anymore.

If you need a tequila shot just drink it and then sober up and move on. I look at my parents and how their life is almost over and then that’s that life is over so take responsibility for not trying or not starting over nobody is going to help you.

I am waiting for bo le to come and spot me and frame me up and whatever but I don't think i’ll be happy either and I don’t think there is a bo le for me becuase I am not a horse. Because I am defiant and although maybe i’m a wild horse but actually nobody can be bothered cos there are more easier horses to train so shut up now and train myself.

Anyway what i’m saying is ok I have my own problems so imma solve my problems you solve your problems and k thanks. Let’s do it and we share the good vibes and help each other man! And move on!

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The outsider

I am more than halfway through the outsider and I wish *spoiler alert* that the fella wasn’t a murderer. It’s not that I can't take it but I was just walking to the art exhibition and I decided to read the book instead of playing with my phone because the book was easy enough to read and they were just hanging at the beach and I was waiting at the red light and enjoying the conversation and wondering about my hair and he was swimming with Marie and I really wonder who was the outsider why did camus go and put a title like that then why did he have to go and kill the man and then go to jail. Then now my question is what kind of precursor is this to orange is the new black.

The library aircon is pleasant especially after the walk in the warm evening but it is probably bad for health.

Lynx likes to sit on this side of the library where there is no view and I know I can go and sit elsewhere but i’m a herd animal I guess. No. A pack animal.

I sense a change in myself that is pretty drastic but I don't know if it is apparent to others as well.

I have some paper work to do but I don’t get it done because I am busy running around.

Suddenly this rhymth that I have in my writing voice is natural but I got it from reading the outsider.

It got messed up a little becuase I was conscious of it, but if I just let it happen it will happen.

I thought I brought 3 things out to read or study but apparently I brought 4.

Including a calligraphy textbook that I want to study but I never really study yet.

I think I should try to finish reading the other things I have started. The English things. Then go into Chinese painting history and then calligraphy history.

Tie up the loose ends. Except. They aren’t ends yet and will always grow haywire.

Post-modern

Regardless of the global trends I think I spent my childhood in a daoist world, then my formative years in a modernist world and then now it’s all switching to a post-modernist confusion.

I must clarify which of my beliefs /forgone conclusions that I hold on too, are modernist and if I actually still believe in them.

Like being a so called conceptual artist, that my works are conceptually driven, maybe is a description of my process instead of form. If I say i’m a Chinese ink painter then maybe others in the “art world” take me to be a modernist, but actually do I think of myself as a daoist doing the paintings or what? What do I mean and what do they think I mean? Can’t ignore the latter, when I am communicating. Otherwise might as well dun communicate.

Ashley and I discussed about identity and if the focus is on how one sees oneself vs another see oneself. There’s self-identity and identity maybe. Anyway aren't they two sides to the same coin?

The question is what is authentic between these two sides. The core and the authentic and real.

Is it what that is consistent? One may see oneself as feeling A and others may see oneself as being A but maybe one is really feeling B. But is the insistence to discuss myself in this separatist manner also a modernist thing. Haha. Like maybe one is more than both sides of coins plus core. Maybe there’s no different selves.

Maybe this is why I avoid etymological discussions nowadays.

I also realise that my writing which had been put aside for so long, was confused by modernist comments about its form. Comments like the length of sentence and the other formal qualities. and these have never been my focus in writing. So that made me confused about what it meant to be a writer.

My favourite is to write in this folksy language. Which I have come across recently , describing Dewey. But that brings the discussion back to the formal quality again and then… What?

So this is what I mean about re-evaluating my preferences and conclusions.

Wait I think my definition of modernist is also muddled. Sorry to my teachers who made the distinctions clear before. I meant the Greenberg modernism. Not the Terry Smith Asian modernism. Which ive also been thinking about.

It's late

Put the laptop in my bedroom thinking that I will write more but actually I am tired and cannot remmeber what I wanted to write about.

Discussed with Lynx and Jess about why the Stamford arts centre, and not CCA on another day, and I wonder if I’m too insistent on it, and if I am, then for the right reasons. There’s a sense of formality to things I suppose, when held at the SAC. In the past days people have been asking me what is it that I had envision and what’s the artistic concept whatever, and I realise that it is indeed up to me to decide, for I have a more wholistic overview. Am I being authoritarian? Is it wrong?

It’s convenient not to be democratic. but the responsibility is also pretty heavy to bear sometimes.

If I can be autocratic about making what happen where then why do I not be autocratic about other things - like what people are studying and what they make out of the month-long process. Is because I am dedicated to making this meet up happen and I want to set the terms for doing so.

Who do I engage personally but who do I not engage personally? I think I engage the people who lend me good vibes. and then we just ride on each others’.

I’m enjoying the evening sessions because it’s quite constructive for an otherwise lazy time. Especially on Sunday if Jess didn’t come down to Bugis then I wouldn’t have gone over to do some work at least for two hours. But my problem is I don’t know what time to eat dinner. If only the library was open until 10 that will be perfect.

Reality check, please!

Been updating less frequently, or so it seems to me, but it’s because I have been doing something else more. There is a situation with my parents and I had some issues to deal with, which sort of disrupts the energy that I have been building up here. JK Rowling ever said that there should be an age limit as to when you can blame your parents for something, but I think it’s also dependent on the extent one’s parents are still involve with one’s life.

With this whole “my narrative is my narrative” idea (did I ever write about it? I talked about it a few times before) then I want to ask my parents what role do they want to play in my life - do they want to be an enabler or… do they want to be immortalised as baggage.

Immortality.

Narrative.

These are two things that I want to expand upon but I haven’t exactly. And I’m a bit tired. I need to write a page on my involvement in the arts.

I also need to write an email to stamford arts centre. which I went to check out just now. Very nice space.

Need to make it work out.

Went for lunch just now and spent 6 dollars (the last 6 bucks) in my wallet for a bowl of miso noodles.

Went to the ATM just now, and my usual, spending account has no money inside. What have I been spending on I forget. Usually there’s a bit of money inside. So I went to the other ATM bank to put some cash in my wallet and a reality check in my head. donk.

Think I need to prepare my CV properly.

As Ratna reminds me, not in these words exactly, but in essence, that I’ve gotta stop fucking around!

Back to what I’ve been up to… So I am left with chapters on Dewey and then some chapters on the Goffrey I dun even remember how to spell his name. Meantime I’ve been working also on some ideas and series of “tangible art works” that is related to this in(ter)dependent studies.

I just went to Tang Da Wu’s exhibition and thought about his artwork ideas and stuff and how he’s also very into these collaborative ideas.

Okay so that’s my to-do-list roughly.

Maybe I’ll update more later. Wish I had time to write more. but if I were going to wish that, then I might as well wish i had triple more time, ten times more energy, and hundred times more money altogether. I don’t want infinite because that’s just to greedy. I need more money because then I can do things faster. everything is a function of time. time time time! busy busy busy!

Alright. Check, please!

“Last day” at cca

Today may be the last day of studying at cca. Actually. 3 hours is quite short although the commitment sounds like otherwise, a lot.

Read finished chapter 8 of John dewey and the book is getting progressively dense. I wished to finish the entire thing today but doesn’t seem possible. Here are some pictures from these few days.

His good life is not

His good life is not my good life.

What he wants to do with his is no business of mine.

My good life is relaxed and folksy and connected and life

With lapses from this consciousness and thinking between the lines.

But yet we have something in common across space and time,

That is at least the longing and concern and desire and suffering for and the ideas of our good lives.

http://www.openculture.com/2019/09/charles-bukowski-explains-what-good-writing-and-the-good-life-have-in-common.html

4 Oct get together

There’s been a lot on my mind recently, and one of which is to realise that it’s just a few weeks away from the 4th of Oct Children’s day for our get together. For a group of students with not much money to squander there’s not a lot of places we can do so properly.

Don offered his place and say he can host 8 to 10 people. I wonder what kind get together are we talking about actually, I think we have different ideas of what is possible. I imagine maybe it’s a talk talk and then maybe others imagine that it’s a party. Maybe either is fine actually. But if we’re at Don’s place and somebody breaks a cup or leaves a water mark on his something and breaks a leg of his designer chair or something or what the I feel so worried and uncomfortable.

I think I should come up with some programme or questions to talk about what people might want to talk about and reflect upon the learning experience.

  • Give a general introduction of the initiative

    • of the people who signed up who are present

  • Those who are present may share their reflections and achievements

  • Prepare some of my own reflections on some interactions and exchanges

The question is, if there should be people who didn’t in(ter)dependent study with us and whether or not we will want to invite them to come etc and if they will come.

Either way is okay because - either way we’re each others’ audiences and maybe it’s performative, or maybe it’s secondary whether or not the audience is physically present.

I’ll ask Ratna for opinion or anyone else for opinion and they will ask me what is it that I have in mind.

I have something in mind but maybe that’s not what the others have in mind. then which will take precedence?

What do the different spaces mean? Do we decide by democracy, does democracy mean we decide by voting, or does it mean the people who are going to make it happen just make whatever happen even if it means to choose the path of the least resistance?

Or do we not even bother to make anything happen? So what?

The gallery is not

Today I realise that the gallery is a magical place.

Don't ask me to define what is magic. It is this magical but not-magical, sacred but not sacred, this not profane but not not profane place.

Don’t ask me what is a gallery. The gallery is not a gallery not the exhibition not a physical thing not the artwork not the audience not a museum not a art centre not a private nor a public space. But also all of the above. You know what I mean about the gallery intuitively. Let us go beyond these etymological games.

Here I am a person, an audience an artwork, an agent, a passive an active, a perceiver and also part of the space.

Because I have been familiar, because I am strange, I am peculiar and I accustom and displace or misplace.

Today I am artwork I am part of the universe I am ignored I am alone I am unperceived but perceived and a secret and a non-non-profane.

Today I realise that there is temporal space.

Today as I shuffle quickly between the different frequencies and roles of my existence here I discover there is another place or frequency or space to exist beyond the previously limited imaginable space.

As the door is pried open I am immediately conscious of the moment and channels or whatever it is that shuffles across my brain or mind or head…space…

Beyond the words that fail to describe. Yes they pile up and upon them I climb up to reach this… sense or what that I cannot grasp in the precise.

I am not interested in the description and my failure to articulate and etymological games and limitations. I am interested in experiencing this experience, this position this feeling this… sense.

This sense not sense that the not-gallery is a not-magical, not sacred, not not profane, not special not inarticulable not place.

(also for Isaac, lynx, hyesu from our exchanges today. As I finished writing this the door just opened and gave me a shock and I mumbled 吓到我.)

An ant

There was an ant who got lost one sunny afternoon and it wandered around across the zebra crossing and it became blinded by the sunlight reflecting off the white stripe like snow blindness, but with no snow.