Haphazard Rants, Nonrandom

I like the song “Any Other World” by Mika, especially the line “Say Goodbye to the world you thought you lived in." What speaks to me isn’t the reminder of disillusion, but the quiet revelation that in this globe we inhibit, in the same country that we share, in the created space we’ve formed for ourselves, we occupy such vastly different worlds.

But our worlds overlap, and they’re all subsets of one another’s universe.

At the Peranakan Museum today, I caught myself paying attention to the Monday afternoon crowd almost as much as I studied the artifacts. I found it slightly intriguing, because this museum visiting business is probably a break from everyone’s Monday routine. I began to subconciously categorize visitors into tourists and locals, wondering why they were here, what would their usual first day of the week routine otherwise be…Anyway, the museum is pretty good, a little too spanking new for authenticity though, but I guess its commendable effort for a start.

I think of Singapore as gradually building up to reach a certain tipping point where the arts would flourish (such an overused and tired phrase but still) and just explode. I got quite excited gathering all these brochures, looking at the different exhibitions, films, Substation Outreach programmes. There is definitely progress in the arts scene, we’re moving somewhere that’s for sure, how fast this progress is or will be continues to be a question.

Its encouraging that there is a bit more nurturing of talent, a little more space for artistic experimentation (yes, debatable as well, to me there is) and the like. I think what we need to cultivate is a culture of appreciation of the arts, which is sorely and sadly missing in this country. We need to turn a nation of shoppers and food hunters into individuals more in touch with their senses, with the subtleties of everyday living that is constantly being transformed into photographs, writings, plays, dramas. That would take a lot of time, wouldn’t it? I wonder if it would even happen. There are times when I feel that the more developed we get, the less we have in us. We might turn into pretentious lovers of the arts. In an undeveloped society (in purely economic terms), art, say the weaving of a hat from leaves, is being appreciated in every simple way that we have come to neglect.

Sociology acquaints me with the minority, the underdog. I like it that I constantly feel that I am finally being told the truth about things after twelve standardized years of education. My eyes are finally opened to the loopholes in the government, and I start seeing how little things like nationalism is constructed, etc. Then almost as naturally, with no one else to point fingers at, we “blame the gah-men."

Yet, there are so many things, sweet and unpretentious, that I love this country for. Endless complaints get to me sometimes, and I find myself thinking that people should go about getting things fixed. With that arises the accusation of not seeing things from their shoes, from their plight. I am well aware of the stickiness of social mobility, the viciousness of the poverty cycle, we all are. So what is left at the endof the day is this general sense of ambivalence, everyone seems to make sense in their own way. Put together, nothing makes sense.

Tonight, or at least right now, I am feeling that criticism comes so easily, cynicism is easy. We need to stop smirking all the time. We need some positivity and I am repeating that to myself.