Almost Project 365
July 3rd, 2009
by Eileen Chew
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20090703 A Karaoke Giantress
20090703 Stray Lion 2
20090703 Stray Lion
20090703 Hello Bird!
20090703 Sleeping dog lying
20090701 Makeshift clothes dryer
The function of a novel
July 2nd, 2009
by Eileen Chew
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Like most of Ballard’s fiction from the last 20 years, Millennium People uses the framework of a middlebrow English novel as a way to parody the reader. For Ballard, as he explained to Salon in 1997, the novel is “the greatest enemy of truth and honesty that was ever invented. It’s a vast, sentimentalizing structure that reassures the reader and at every point offers the comfort of secure moral frameworks and recognizable characters. This whole notion was advanced by Mary McCarthy and many others years ago, that the main function of the novel was to carry out a kind of moral criticism of life. But the writer has no business making moral judgments or trying to set himself up as a one-man or one-woman magistrate’s court. I think it’s far better, as Burroughs did and I’ve tried to do in my small way, to tell the truth.”
From Death of a Dystopian
Nanowrimo 2009
July 2nd, 2009
by Eileen Chew
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Things are lining up. (Maybe I should go to the temple again.) I work on the outline, get stuck, I go to bed and find that on waking up the problems have resolve itself in my sleep. And how v strange that I’ve encountered the details I’m using for 2009 (nano)wrimo: a few days ago @keyist posted his fasterfox submission; yesterday, Jolene of Glass Castle Blog canvassed me for notorape.com; today, I tripped over a double negative on twitter and was laughed at. The universe smiles and I smile back.
~
V: Are you going to be like this when we go Sibu? When are you finishing your writing? (eye roll)
Me: What? No, no, of course not. We’re snorkeling in Sibu. I’m going to finish planning before I go. Yeah, I know, my mom complained that I took her lunchbox today.
V: You’re like, dazed the whole week. (Shrill) I won’t go with you anymore!
Me: What? I’m listening! You were talking about Dior foundation! Go on…
Not Bearded in Heaven
July 1st, 2009
by Eileen Chew
Filed in Uncategorized, music
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She has long fingers, blunt and graceful as nudibranches – sometimes in my head, just as many. When she plays, her fingers, white as the sun, plays. They bounce over phrasings with a flourish and she rolls the wrist laguidly over the keys – as if taking a merry stroll in a park. She has long slim hands that she keeps very smooth and white as the sun, although I have never once seen her put any lotion on her hands. Intermittently, she would wipe the keys using the piece of cloth kept at the side of the piano, for the perspiration, she explains.
Come, memory, let us seek them there in the shadows.
All of us hold our hands the way she does, with varying success. Only one other person succeeded changing her hands to an exact copy. She was an older student and while taking the teacher’s diploma, she taught the younger students. She looks like a conventional pianist: pale and slim with tidily permed hair. In other words, she looks like my piano teacher.
We shall not ever meet them bearded in heaven,
It was with difficulty that I found a fuzzy video of her accompanying her husband on the piano. I didn’t know it was her until her hands bounced and then I’m fourteen again, in the carpeted music room, feeling woefully inadequate, wanting to be elsewhere.
Flash Dance
June 30th, 2009
by Eileen Chew
Filed in popscience
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The male, flying around, releases a certain pattern of flashes–a single one second pulse followed by a five second in the case of Photinus pyralis, for one example. And if a female P. pyralis, sitting on a blade of grass, likes what she sees, she responds three seconds later. Not one. Not six. Three. If she responds at the right interval, he knows he’s found a female of his own species and zeroes in, sending more flashes. She may also be signalling other males at the same time; which male she chooses may come down to subtle features of the flash pattern–for example, a rapid series of pulses as opposed to a slow one.
On Reading
June 28th, 2009
by Eileen Chew
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The older I am, the lesser time I spend reading. It isn’t because of competing entertainments but that there is always something else to do – not better – but a person, an object, wanting attention.
A book is a pathway inside another person’s head….you have few deep relationships, maybe no real emotional connections with others at all. …A novel is an opportunity to really listen to another human being…. To disconnect. To finally feel alone…
Almost Project 365
June 28th, 2009
by Eileen Chew
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20090628 Clean Slippers
2009 Reith Lectures: Prof Michael Sandel Part 2
June 28th, 2009
by Eileen Chew
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The second lecture is more interesting than the first. It starts off from the idea that the personal is political. Sandel believes that to separate politics from the personal by ignoring the moral and religious opinions of the public is mistaken
…for two reasons: first, it’s not always possible to decide questions of justice and rights without resolving substantive moral questions…Arguments about justice and rights are unavoidably arguments about the moral meaning of the goods at stake. The second reason is that even where it may be possible, it may not be desirable.
But I don’t know if that is quite as practical. Ideally, all opinions (including moral and religious, etc) of all the people in a democracy must be considered carefully before deciding policy. In SG, what I’ve always found irritating is that instead of active debate to include all opinions in terms of policy making, politicians immediately create policies that lean towards the morality of the ‘conservative public’. Yes, can’t fault the party for not listening to the ‘conservative public’ but I’m not sure this ‘conservative public’ exists at all. I’m thinking that it’s the get-out-of-awkward-debate-card that gets waved about when there are slightly troublesome questions arise.
(Catch them all here.)
Almost Project 365
June 28th, 2009
by Eileen Chew
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20090628 Lunch
20090628 The Third Ant
20090626 Huddle
20090625 Rose bush Nankin Row
20090623 Hello cat!
20090621 Temple in Tanjong Pagar
20090621 A successful marriage
Middle Class Men
June 24th, 2009
by Eileen Chew
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We are so worried about Alexander’s behaviour. His father even had to say, Alexander, can you stop doing that please. And we don’t like to speak harshly to him, like that, and undermine his confidence because it’s not as if he’s a girl. And I don’t think he’s disruptive, in a way that boys from the estate clearly are. Why, he’s just bored because he’s very bright. I don’t think you’re stretching him to reach his full potential and that’s the problem. I think he’s much brighter than the other children and that’s why he’s set fire to them.The fact, of course, is that Alexander will do fine at school because he’s middle class. Get his GCSEs and his A levels, go to university and go on to do some bollocks job that he hates for the rest of his life. And his parents will be proud because he works indoors and earn a decent wage and they won’t notice that by the age of 25 he’s become corpulent, looks uncomfortable in casual clothes and socialises with men 30 years his senior and at lunch time he says, “Well stoked yeoman, shall we adjourn to our neighbouring hostelry and quaff some fine ale?” and “We work hard but we play hard” which means that by the time they get off work, it’s too late to go home, get changed and go out with real friends, so they just hit a wine bar with the guys from marketing who are “a bunch of absolute nutters” because one of them once did something that was slightly unexpected.
Their dreams go on a back burner. But eventually the back burner is full so their dreams go into the freezer never to be microwaved. And they liven up their working lives by changing the amount of hair gel they use.
– From Jeremy Hardy Speaks To The Nation “How To Be Young”
