Workspaces

This is a photo of Margaret Atwood when she was writing “The Handmaid’s Tale”, which was nominated for the Booker Prize in 1986. There were a few things about this photo that caught my attention when I first saw it. There wasn’t anything on the wall, there wasn’t any other furnitures besides the desk and the chair. The way the desk was placed so prominently in what seemed like the center part of the room facing the window, seemed quite intimidating to me. It looked like the room was solely dedicated for writing and there would be no other kinds of activities that would be tolerated there. It felt so serious and she looked like she was really “in the zone” in that photo. Like it was a story that had to be written.

 

I’ve just moved to a new studio space, it’s somewhere in town at a quiet place on top of a hill. For the past week while I was setting up the space I’ve been thinking a lot about what kind of workspace I want to have, how do I want it to feel like. I’m settling in to the current set up and I’m still getting used to it. It feels a little weird working at this new place after almost a year of working from home. I wonder how other writers, artists, designers, musicians who work alone do it. The pressure of producing something hopefully inspired alone. The hours. The blank canvas. The glowing white blank screen of a new document on the computer. The desk in the middle of the room. The silence.

Tags: Margaret Atwood, Studio, The Handmaid's Tale, Workspace

What I Did When I Was 23

I had a very heartbreaking thing happen to me when I was 23. I was in the middle of my final year in art school then and was also working part-time. It was a make or break year for me. I had to graduate, I couldn’t screw that up. Also, the part-time or contract job I was working on, I wanted to ace it so that I could go full-time once I graduated. I really enjoyed working there. So I was feeling intense pressure. It was a very difficult time for me and then the heart-breaking thing happen and I thought, “this is ok, I’m going to be alright.”  I had to be alright because I needed to do all these work. Failing was not an option. I kept thinking “I have to be alright. I have to make myself alright.” So I just went on everyday trying not to think too much about how inside I was a complete mess. Even if I wanted to really tell people I couldn’t because the words won’t come out. The one person I really wanted to talk to and connect with didn’t want to talk to me anyway. I didn’t know how to describe what I was feeling. I never felt like that before. I pretty much was like that until I graduated a few months later. I graduated 6 months later than my classmates because there was one class where my attendance was insufficient. I had to re-take that 1 class again and 6 months later, I graduated. I didn’t attend my graduation ceremony. I guess when you were feeling miserable and exhausted all the time, the last thing you wanted to do was pretend to be happy and be celebrating. But the college posted the papers to my home. My responsibilities grew at work and I was working full-time. I paid off all my student loans. I’d like to think that I scraped through that difficult year alright, considering how miserable I felt. I pretty much cried myself to sleep every night, from exhaustion, from whatever else I was feeling that I didn’t know how to describe. I remember thinking, I accomplished what I set out to do that year and I tried very hard to keep it together, but I still couldn’t shake off the miserable feeling.

It was around that time when I started listening to a few musicians seriously. Going through their entire albums and really listened to every word and note. Up until that point, I had only listened to music casually, as a background distraction when I was working and needed to block the noise of chatter when I was at the computer lab or something. I never really bought CDs and stuff. But then I started to listen to a few musicians like Ingrid Michaelson & William Fitzsimmons. I listened to their entire albums and I could finally put the words to what I was feeling. These people were describing exactly what I was feeling. I think it was only then that I was able to start to process what was it that make me so upset and actually started to deal with it and tried to come to terms with it, instead of just pretending that everything was ok. I’d like to think that the heartbreak set me on a path to start appreciating music a little more than just a noise-blocker. I still don’t consider myself a huge music lover or anything. It was like a crutch that I used to get me through a difficult time. It was intensely personal and it was helpful. I can’t even listen to those albums now. I’m not in that place anymore and listening to them will just remind me of all the horrible feelings.

Anyway. There you go. That’s what I did when I was 23. In a nutshell:

I liked someone for real for the first time then I got dumped, I almost did not graduate but I did, I landed a great job and I paid off my student loans, I felt miserable and then I discovered music. That was also the year that I started to log my runs and according to my running log, I ran 211.8 kilometres that year. Also, Obama became president that year.  All in all, I’d say it was a pretty good year.

Discovering Tegan and Sara

I have been listening to Tegan and Sara a lot lately. I first saw them in an interview on the QTV radio show and I was intrigued. It was a really good interview and they covered some really interesting topics and I thought, “these girls seem really smart and introspective.” I went on to listen to some of their tracks online. The songs “Nineteen”, “The Ocean” & “Call it Off” got me hooked. I wanted to buy the songs online. It turned out they are only available for purchase on CD in this part of the world. I headed down to HMV two weeks ago and bought their latest two albums, “Sainthood” and “The Con.” Those were the last two copies left on the shelf. I saw the last copy of their album “So Jealous” on the shelf as well but decided to get it if I like the other two. They have six albums to date, which is impressive considering they are still only 32.

 

I was at the National Library Reference section when I impatiently ripped open the album packaging covers and inserted the CD. I pored over the album covers and lyrics and started listening to the albums from start to finish. There were a few songs that immediately stood out for me. I pulled my favourite tracks into a separate playlist. 

 

That night, as I listened to the two albums more, I was a little disappointed. Other than the few singles that I had really liked and enjoyed, the rest seemed harder to get into. Songs written by Sara seem particularly cryptic. Tegan tend to sing incredibly fast and it was hard for me to catch what she was singing about. These, followed by the heavy production of what sounds like many instruments that sometimes sound abrupt and disjointed make the albums seem less accessible to me. At times, I feel like the production is drowning out the vocals, especially in some of Tegan’s fast songs like “Hop a Plane,” “Someday” & “The Rush”. Theirs is definitely not what you would call a mainstream sound, even if they don’t shy away from poppy tunes, there is enough quirkiness in there that takes some getting used to. Well, for me at least. Many of the songs do not follow the conventional song structure, which I find very interesting even if sometimes challenging. I’m the kind of listener who likes to chew on the words, the lyrics first and foremost and see if I can relate to it. I remember thinking, “this is frustrating to listen to, I want my money back.”

 

Then it all started to make more sense for me after a few more listens. I’m starting to appreciate Sara’s intricate style of songwriting and her love of using metaphors. Her songs tend to be short and she likes to repeat the chorus to a very wonderful hypnotic effect. Her tracks “On Directing” and “Back In Your Head” are great examples of this. Her darker songs “I Can’t Take it”, “Knife Going In” and “Floorplan” are particularly intense and you can just feel the almost quiet but deep sense of desperation, but with soothing effects.

 

I really like Tegan’s sense of urgency in many of her songs like “Hop a Plane,” “Someday,” “The Ocean,” “Nineteen,” & “Are You Ten Years Ago.” Her songwriting is linear and more direct. I think it takes courage to write like that. The darker, slower tracks “Call it Off,” “Soil, Soil,” “Dark Come Soon” are all brilliant.

 

The dynamic of the distinct songwriting styles between the duo is what makes it very interesting to listen to the albums. They don’t feel repetitive. The music challenges me to listen deeper, to peel the layers and ruminate more. I find them exciting and dare I say it, inspiring. I find Tegan’s sense of urgency in her songs particularly infectious.

 

By the way, I went back to HMV and got “So Jealous.” Loving it so far. I can’t believe they released this in 2004 and I’m only listening to it now. I also got the digital tracks for “If It Was You” which was a 2002 release and has a more acoustic sound to it. I went back to HMV again and got their even earlier album “This Business of Art.” It does’t sound at all like the current sound of Tegan and Sara, I’m putting this album aside at the moment.

 

Their 5th album “The Con” remains my favourite for now. I love the overall concept and sound, the album design and I feel like I could relate to it better. Below are some of my favourite lines from their many albums:

 

 

[Burn Your Life Down]

 

You lay awake in the night

Just staring at the ceiling above

Pulling pieces of it out

It’s such a waste of time

 

 

 

[Living Room]

 

I’d spend the night losing sleep

I’d spend the night and I’d lose my mind

 

 

 

[Relief Next to Me]

 

I miss you now,

I guess like I should have missed you then

I’ll tell you now,

I guess like I should have told you then

 

 

 

[Are You Ten Years Ago]

 

I’m up and doing circles

I collapse

 

When I feel like this 

When I get so into myself

I lose track of where I’m going

and lose track of how to get going again

I feel myself slowing down

Feel myself turning around

Is this taken?

 

You collapse

The pressure of this life is so

You can’t be held accountable

If you go, you go

If you go, you go

 

When you act like this

When you get so sick of yourself

The whole world falls away and since

I feel like I have only missed 

the feeling that I’m here again

the feeling that I’m clear again

I’m not taken

 

When you act like this

When you get so into yourself

I lose sight of common goals

And letting go so I can be all alone

Feel myself going slow

Feel myself letting go

Not taken

 

When I’m just so sick of feeling less than perfect

Is it right for me 

I never fight to see

If coming clean would get to me

I feel myself holding back

I feel the pressure it’s finally back

I’m taken

 

When you feel like this

When you saw it all come crashing down

Subtle but not underground

I was there

I saw the signs

I saw, unfair

And so I write to you 

Through other means

I let myself finally feel taken

 

I’m up and doing circles

I collapse

 

 

 

[Wake Up Exhausted]

 

I wake up exhausted

it’s not morning,

it’s back to sleep

to re-dream me

 

 

 

[Relief Next to Me]

 

In the dark, it won’t be easy to find relief

and I’m not proud that nothing will seem easy about me

 

I can’t untangle what I know

and what should matter most

Now there’s no point in reaching out for you.

 

 

 

[Soil, Soil]

 

I feel like a fool so I’m going to stop troubling you

Buried in my yard, a letter to send to you

And if I forget or God forbid die to soon

Hope that you’ll hear me, 

Know that I wrote to you.

 

 

 

[Call It Off]

 

I won’t regret saying this 

this thing that I’m saying

Is it better than keeping my mouth shut?

that goes without saying

 

Maybe I would’ve been something you’d be good at

Maybe you would’ve been something I’d be good at

But now we’ll never know

 

 

 

[Someday]

 

I don’t want to know that you don’t want me

I don’t want to know what you do without me

I don’t want to know, I don’t want to know 

 

 

 

[The Cure]

 

All I said to you

All I did for you

Seems so silly to me now

 

All I dreamed up

All that seemed like luck

Seems silly to you now

 

 

 

[Where Does the Good Go]

 

Where do you go,

with your broken heart in tow

 

What do you do,

with the leftover you

 

And how do you know,

when to let go

 

How do you live so happily

while I’m sad and broken down

 

Where does the good go?

Where does the good go?

 

 

 

[Fix You Up]

 

What do I need to do 

to get myself in a better mood

What do you need to do 

to get yourself in a better mood

 

What I wanted most 

was to get myself all figured out

 

 

 

[I Won't Be Left]

 

I won’t mistake you for problems with me

I won’t let my moods ruin this you’ll see

I won’t take everything good and move it away

I won’t be left dancing alone to songs from the past

 

 

 

[Don't Confess]

 

Don’t be so hard on yourself

you won’t get better till you’re worse, 

yeah you

send a little smile my way

 

Don’t be so hard on yourself

you won’t get better till you’re worse, 

yeah you

send a little love my way

 

I’m not alone,

I’m just on my own.

 

 

 

[Red Belt]

 

I kneel,

to condition all the feelings that I feel

 

Slow it down,

you have a tendency to rush back into your past

 

Kneel,

to condition all the feelings that you feel

 

 

 

[Walking with a Ghost]

 

No matter which way you go

No matter which way you stay

 

You’re out of my mind

Out of my mind

Out of my mind

Out of my mind

Out of my mind

Out of my mind

 

 

 

[Someday]

 

Don’t stand back here and wait

like an animal at a farmer’s gate

am I food or am I free?

 

Might paint something I might hang here someday

Might do something I’d be proud of someday

Mark my words, I might be something someday

 

 

 

[This is Everything]

 

Got to watch myself

I’ve got to love myself

and take care

Tags: Album, Call It Off, Duo, I Bet it Stung, If It Was You, Indie Rock, Music, Relationship, Relief Next to Me, Review, Sainthood, Sara, So Jealous, Tegan, Tegan and Sara, The Con, The Ocean

Lamentation for Nadia

رثاء نادية

أيا عينُ أذرفيْ دموعَكِ وانحُبي* فلا عيبَ في البكاء يأتي شفائيه
أوِ اضحكْ أقلبُ لا ملومةَ قد يكو* ن سُلوانُنا فيه يُسهِّل دائيه
ألا أبلغوا عنّي نعيمًا وليدَها* رحلتْ إلى نعيم ربّكَ آتية
وزوجًا لطيفَ القلب والقول حاسما* جزاه الجليلُ المتعالي مساعيه
وحنينةً لمّا يحِنْها فطامُها* سقاكِ الرحيمُ بالقناعةِ راضية
وللصَّحْب أحسِنوا العَزاءَ وذِكْرَها *فمَن للودادِ والوفا مثلُ نادية

Translation:

Lamentation for Nadia, 

Dear eyes, shed your tears and wail, for there is no shame in crying. May my cure come from it

Or laugh, O my heart, there’s no rebuke in it. Maybe our solace comes from it, easing my pain

Oh someone please tell Na’im; her son, she has left towards your Lord’s Na’im (paradise)

And her husband, Hasmu; kind heart and words, may Allah Al-Jaleel Al-Muta’ali reward his deeds

And Haneenah, whose weaning is not due yet, May Allah the Most Merciful shower you with satisfaction and contentment

And friends, offer the best condolences and mention her well, for who, in friendship and loyalty, is like Nadia?

(by Hamzah Nordin)

Nadia oh Nadia

Some weeks ago, I received an sms from my sister asking me to come with her to Tampines. She was meeting Nadia who have agreed to be her guarantor for a student loan my sister was applying for. It was a hectic workday for me and I sort of scolded my sister for even asking me to come with her in the middle of a busy workday. “Are you crazy? I have lots of work to do.” Nadia is a family friend of ours, she was my sister’s college roommate, my brother’s schoolmate. We used to work together on school holidays when we were students. 

That evening, when my sister got back home after meeting with Nadia, I asked her how it went. She said Nadia was super nice and very supportive, she said she was all for an interest-free student loan which my little sister was applying for (since interest is forbidden in Islam).

I was deeply moved when I heard that, since we haven’t met Nadia for years, and she was still the same genuinely nice and generous person. I mean, this is like Singapore, where people are generally fussy about money matters. But she just gave without question.

Few weeks after that, I heard the news that Nadia had a serious asthma attack and had collapsed. She was later pronounced as brain dead. She spent much of last week on life suport and last Sunday she passed away. She was 31 years old. On Monday I went to her funeral at Darul Ghufran mosque. The same place we used to work together on weekends many years ago. There was something very real and sobering about seeing her body being carried away after the prayers. The cheerful and lively person that she was is now lifeless. Suddenly it hit me. This is real. She’s not coming back. She really is gone. I remember the last time I met her few years ago, she just got married and she was with her husband and she seemed so happy. I wished I had gone with my sister to Tampines that day and had seen her one more time. Why did I have to be such an asshole.

Nadia’s sudden passing touches a rare nerve in me, it hits a bit close to home. I am still somewhat shocked by it all. Food has lost it’s taste. Every day for the past week I’ve been having these thoughts, how such a genuinely nice and generous person like her had died so young. How a person like her is rare. People always think it’s easy to find genuinely kind people but really, it’s not. Sometimes I think because everyone is on facebook or twitter or just an sms away, it gives this impression that they are always going to be there and I sort of take things for granted. I think about my life choices. I think about the person that I’ve become when it comes to work. I think about how out of whack my priorities are. I think about how when I meet someone, that may be the last time that I will see them and is that really how I want to leave things. I think about how life waits for no one. 

Come Back Down

Two of my favourite musicians doing a duet? no way! Love the lyrics too:

“All of your wallowing is unbecoming

you’ve  got to take it on your own from here

it’s getting pathetic

and I’m almost done here

You’ve got to come back down”

Trying to make sense of things

I’ve been reading quite a bit lately on the U.S presidential elections. Mostly I want to find out how this election will affect three things:

1) It’s foreign policy in asia where I live

2) It’s foreign policy in the middle east where a lot of my brothers and sisters live and whether there’ll be another war

3) What the candidates propose to do to fix the financial and debt crisis because let’s face it the whole world is affected by this in some ways

After reading all I can about these matters above, I’ve come to these conclusions:

1) The congress and washington d.c is controlled by lobbyists and special interest groups. It doesn’t really matter who wins the presidential election. Maybe it matters in some extent, but in crucial areas it doesn’t really matter who’s the president, especially when you have strong lobbyist groups dictating behind the scenes. Once one understands this, everything else starts to make sense.

2) Whether or not there will be another war in the middle east depends on whether lobbyists give enough money and influence to washington to push for the war to happen. Right now it looks like that’s most likely to happen. Whether or not Iran is in fact a nuclear threat is irrelevant. Similar with Iraq and w.m.d. Until now there’s no evidence of w.m.d. in Iraq.

3) Whether or not the U.S will be able to fix their debt crisis and the financial crisis: this partly depends on whether they are able to pass laws that enforce sound monetary policies and whether they can make wall street play by fair rules and abide by stricter regulations. Obviously it’s more complicated than that. You can trace back the causes for the current financial and debt crisis back to the 1970s when the U.S dollar shifted from gold standard to paper money and in the 1980s when financial deregulation happened. Right now the laws favor the financial institutions and wealthy individuals in the country because they can afford to have lobbyists and armies of lawyers to make congress pass laws that favor them.

This financial and debt crisis and it’s aftermath is going to take a long, long time to fix, and that’s optimistic thinking that it will be fixed and it won’t happen again. It can happen again because the laws and rules of the game is pretty much still the same.

4) Assuming it’s true that the U.S is indeed going into another war in the next few years, despite it’s massive debt of more than 15 trillion dollars, then it has to borrow even more money from China than it already has to finance this war. Again, this will make getting out of the debt crisis even more difficult and it will take even longer to do so. This brings me to the next point.

5) What the U.S presidential election means for Asia? Seems like they have bigger problems at home and pressure to go to war in the middle east than to meddle with Asia. By Asia, I really mean China. The presidential candidates will make themselves appear tough on China to win more votes. That’s just rhetoric though, they won’t be able to do anything considering China’s economic growth is unstoppable and they are already borrowing lots of money from China to fund their own spending. Asia will go about it’s own business with little meddling from the U.S., maybe just some tough talks but no real action.