Bulldog

when i was 15, it's already foreseeable that i'd be the first person exterminated at the break of the third world war. a roach would despise me for being so vulnerable to all sorts of hardships in life -- temperature, noise, food, bedsheets... even the "wrong" colours and lighting can bug me. and unsurprisingly, human beings are always the biggest source of irritation.

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we've never been spoonfed on cinema etiquette, but it's supposed to be common sense. let's forget about the non-stop beepings for the time being -- the worst is yet to come. i understand that the cinema experience is no longer considered an "event" we look forward to, but the dark space is still a momentary refuge for us to forget about real time and space. and the entitlement to this right is not limited to wong kar-wai arthouse flicks, but also to every popcorn movie that deserves rotten tomatoes. there're those mouths which are fed up with the $40 popcorn and decided to host an 80-minute symposium on the establishing shot, high-key lighting, montage and jump cut. thank you very much, but i've had my film lectures. and no, you're not a cahiers du cinéma critic nor a dvd special feature, so just zip up.

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there are also those fragile little hearts we've to cater to. even if it's utterly out of the blue to see two cowboys smooch in brokeback mountain, you don't have to scream like they are about to crawl out from the screen. i also assume that applying and scraping fat from a corpse's skin to produce perfume is SICK but you don't have to call him a psychopath every 2 minutes. you may as well take a power nap or leave at the 32nd minute of the film. and yeh, if you don't catch the satire in the group sex scene (the mob is enchanted by the serial killer who has dipped himself with perfume extracted from the bodies of his victims, and instead of wanting him executed, the crowd indulges itself in sexual pleasure openly in the square) towards the ending of perfume, you do not have to deafen me with continuous whispers of "chi-seen"s. no country for old men may be jaw-droppingly long and quiet (man, you haven't met béla tarr and hou hsiao-hsien), but you can save your guesses on the murderer's next move to yourself.

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while i was on my knees begging for openmindedness from my fellow viewers, i may as well be aware that part of the $70 we pay goes to the first-hand responses, and thus be tolerant to others' execution of freedom of speech.

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my bad, my bad.

Short Sharp Shock

as a kid, i was never chided or punished for my academic performance. the policy was clearly laid out as "it's okay if you've tried your best". so when i flunked my math / physics / biology / chemistry / geography / computer / music (yeh, everyone has a past) for the 5th consecutive term, i could simply walk away after giving my parents a pat on their shoulders and a sympathetic c'est la vie look. i was never given that slap on the face which says "there's no defence for underperformance -- your efforts weren't enough".

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well, of course, shifting the blame to one's childhood "trauma" is so typically freudian. as a keen educator (laugh, everyone laugh), i've always found myself pondering the most ideal child-rearing mechanism, upon the realization that my mom has done a lousy job raising us into mature, responsible, productive and independent beings.

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my conclusion? throw their asses into the military.

Lone Wolf

i am a bibliophile, or precisely a lover of the physical presence of books. my favourite past-times include wrapping them and placing them in a neat stack. don't ask me whether i still flip through them after the third day of purchase. but my nose is recently sticking into this notes on a scandal about a 60-year-old history teacher (barbara) betraying her middle-aged colleague (sheba) who's having an illicit affair with a 15-year-old. (the book should be read with its film adaptation, which gives an extra level to the original text, albeit occasionally spells things out too clearly.)

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barbara is never good at friendships. her previous gal pal has filed an injunction against her harrassment. her lonely spinster life seems to have brightened up with the arrival of sheba, the new pottery teacher. they have eventually become friends and barbara presents herself as sheba's only confidant especially when she later discovers sheba's affair.

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but things changes when sheba fails to give sufficient attention to barbara when her cat dies, and when a "pursuer" of barbara turns out to be sheba's secret admirer. barbara airs her friend's dirty laundry to him, who subsequently spreads the word among the school. barbara appears to be standing by sheba when she's bombarded by the boy's mother, the school, the press and the cops. sheba is not aware of the betrayal until she finds barbara's manuscript, a report on the series of events which begin as soon as the two women encounter. the book ends with sheba surrendering herself to barbara's arms and barbara's monologue "and she knows, by now, not to go too far without me". the film, on the other hand, wraps up with sheba imprisoned and barbara picking up her new prey (another younger woman)..

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may i just digress for the moment from the "scandal" to the "notes". barbara, as compared to the sheepish sheba, is a far more interesting character -- scheming, possessive, domineering, demanding and yet fragile. i remember from one episode of america's next top model, tyra banks commented that there's a broken heart in every "bitch". you can characterize barbara as the quissential spinster, but this "bitch" is in every lonely soul. in the film, there's a more blatant hint of barbara's lesbian inclincation towards sheba (secretly picking up a lock of hair sheba drops and pasting it in her journal), but the feelings are more complex in the book. is she a friend? a secret admirer? a fan? a psuedo-mother? a bystander? a detached scientist studying sheba as if she's a reindeer on national geographic? a lion eating that poor thing alive? or simply a god wannabe?

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is it someone's fault to be lonely? throughout the manuscript, barbara has talked about how she's unwelcomed by almost every soul wandering on earth -- her students, colleagues, sheba's family, and even strangers who just happen to have a glimpse of her on the streets, as if she's the sinister black cat. can we be so vicious to jump to the conclusion that loners deserve the way they are treated?

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is solitude a result of the domino effect when:

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1. you're unattractive or incapable of effectively expressing yourself

2. you become an outcaste or a laughing stock

3. you're angry and detest the humankind as a whole

4. you lose the last dose of charisma when you put up a poker face and picks on everyone as a defence mechanism

5. the world deserts you

6. you are left with no choice but to convince yourself that you're fine on your own

7. you get used to the solitude, believing that you need / want no one

8. you're left alone by the world and yourself

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what if in between phases 4 and 5, someone like sheba walks into your life -- how can you still end up at phases 5-8?
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4a. you lead yourself to believe that if you give 100% to the special someone, you deserve at least a 100% reciprocation

4b. it is proved to be just wishful thinking on your part

4c. you become an asshole demanding some "compensation", calculating everything in an almost scientific way

...

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at this point of my brainstorming "art", a french play by yasmina reza, slips into my mind. it is about a friendship crisis between serge, marc and yvan triggered by a piece of modernist painting serge has bought -- a few white scratch marks on a canvas painted white. in a nutshell, it's... white. and just, well, costing him 200,000 francs. dah. marc was extremely skeptical about its artistic value and the first half of the play is an aesthetic debate between the two men and yvan's vain effort of peacemaking. it is, however, soon discovered in the later half that marc's genuine concern is not the huge piece of whiteness, but the fact that his friends have "matured" or "moved on" and no longer look up to him.

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marc and barbara share the same need to be needed, and become destructive like a maelstrom when they can't prove their existence.

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no offence to mother teresa -- i simply don't believe in utterly unconditional love.

Don't Stuff Words Into My Mouth

received the latest issue of muse and u-magazine from the curator. i'd rather have them publish my artist statement which is a much better representation of the series. was never a fan of exhibitions until haizi and i spent two nights constructing this concept, summarizing my 3 (or 27) years of sloth. it was initially meant to dope the artsy-fartsy (yeh, they were impressed, i tell you). but at the end of the day, you cannot deny that there's reality in that flowery language.

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Self-blended Perfume (2007)

Rumours were that there was this exceptional tango dancer whose partner is always a homemade pole attached to a wheel. I finally ran into the legendary man on the dance floor and while the rest of the crowd was giggling, I thought I saw him swirling with a lady in a blood-red dress. It was almost as if the air has frozen, the sweat has melted the skin, the music has refused to stop, the torso has discarded its habitual defensiveness, and the pores were touched by the touch. The entire world was reduced to just him and “her” in a bubble. The moment was theirs.

This frozen moment has frosted my mind and stimulated this masturbative series on a Walter Mitty retreating into her own comfort zone. She finds her refuge yet senses the insecurity and vulnerability of the almost immaculate world she creates. Her state of mind is fluctuating and yet simultaneously falling into a pattern, as demonstrated in each picture which is going through a stage in the water cycle. There are moments of self-indulgence and instant gratification (snowmelt); self-delusion (mirage); repressed desires (condensation); spiritual vacuum (drought); disunion of personal shield (defrost). They will somehow accumulate on the top of the mountain, and when everything suppressed has become somewhat a burden it is only natural that a catastrophic avalanche (the unveiling of hidden desires) is to follow.

You can almost hear, amidst the glamour and vibrant colours, a silent cry at the top of the lungs.


And it was until recently that I discovered that it was my voice.