Friday, September 24, 2004

on purpose

i entered a creative writing competition organised by the NUS Literary Society just recently. in my attempt to choose the best 3 poems to submit (it was difficult, they were all so bad) i learnt a few things about writing.

i asked my GP tutor to give me some comments on my work. it went something like this:

(MCPGT: my cool general paper tutor)

me: so, what do you think?
MCGPT: um, well, i didn't really look at them.
me: okay, but what do you think, just by glancing?
MCGPT: well, let's just say i admire people who write poetry.

hmm.

she did, however tell me that it is important to maybe include some literary elements that have been put into the verse/prose/story on purpose. like, maybe that alliteration was deliberately slotted into that sentence to give it more meaning, and to make it more interesting and exciting.

that was what a literature student and english major said about my poems.

my friends, however, took things in a more simplistic way. they liked my poems because the words flowed, or because they made them think and look through the verse again. or, in the case of one friend, because the poem sounded sexy.

anyway, it made me wonder what i really want out of my writing. writing is a very selfish thing, because it is mainly done out of one's own pleasure and own wants. i mean, i usually write because i want to convince myself that i can. if ordinary people can relate ("your poem sounds sexy"...aargh) and can give me different interpretations, that's fantastic. it means you can actually feel something, maybe even share what i felt when i put the words on paper.

on the other hand, i also want my work to be something that can be taken seriously. you know, something people can dissect and perhaps find delight in my intentional use of paradox or irony. like those passages i have to dissect for GP.

reading Amy Tan's "The Opposite of Fate" though, made me rethink that. Tan's works are being studied all over America (and probably in other countries) as pieces of Asian-American literature, able to deliver a lesson on culture and tradition, as well as the mother-daughter relationship she has been known to convey so well. a graduate who wrote her master's thesis on Tan noted Tan's "intentional" use of the number 4 (and its multiples) in "The Joy Luck Club". another student wrote about Tan's clever use of figurative language.

know what Tan said? it horrified her to see her work being dissected that way. the reason why the number 4 (and its multiples) was prominent in "The Joy Luck Club" was purely coincidence. she wrote to please herself, and the way her words fit were due to "goodfeel" or just based on the flow of the story. some of her figurative phrases were derived from chinese proverbs. nothing much was intentional, although i'm very sure she put in alot of pains in deciding the right words to convey her ideas and feeling.

when i read that, my mind went: YES! that's how it usually is. i change the words of my poems everytime i read them out loud to hear how they fit. if the tone isn't right, or i felt they didn't fully represent my meaning, i make changes. it was difficult to imagine a writer sitting in front of his or her computer, consciously including literary devices that would become the nightmare of every lit student.

after thinking about it, i guess i'll just work harder when i write poems or jot down my thoughts. my tutor was right in saying sometimes my work seems too random and too much a product of inspiration than a real piece of writing. but i think also about Amy Tan and how her brilliant books were written more on feeling, experiences, her imagination and the "feelgood" of her choice of words.

i want to be like that: to produce commendable pieces of literature...unintentionally. like there was another spirit ensuring that everything falls into its right place.

lishun at 6:29 PM

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Sunday, September 19, 2004

the beach

yesterday, I and 7 other friends headed to the beach for some fun in the sun, after being cooped up in the hostel for one entire month mugging for our prelims.

it was your typical day at the beach: some frolicking, cycling, seashell searching (an activity carried out in vain, this being SINGAPORE), and burying people in the sand.

in all this, i found something really weird. it was a realisation that came to me as i was writing a letter to a friend: things look better at the beach.

the shells i found looked so beautiful, the gleaming mother-of-pearl practically yelling out at me to pick it up, the odd shapes and colours of the stones...they were mesmerising. however, the moment i took them back to the hostel, gave each one a good scrub and dried them, they looked drab and bland, almost as if they lost their magnificence somewhere on the bus ride home.

as if, once plucked out of their natural environment, they were gone.

it made me relate this to people who have not found their purpose, or have pursued their own purposes instead of the one our Maker has planned for us all along. they are like the shells, gleaming and excelling when in the place they are meant to be, but being mediocre when elsewhere.

and it bothered me, because i have yet to completely realise what my purpose is. will i be like the shiny mother-of-pearl, with it's diminished splendour, now kept in my drawer? will i cease to thrive, should i fall into the wrong path?

the beach. its romantic appeal has never ceased to fill me with ponderings like this.

lishun at 3:48 PM

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Friday, September 03, 2004

reality overload

it was the olympics men's gymnastics finals. russian alexei nemov, the defending champion, had just completed a stunning performance on the horizontal bar and was beaming into the adoring crowd.

the adoration soon turned to boos once the scores were released. his score of 9.725 left him in third place at the moment, and the audience thought it left much to be desired. after all, the guy did wow the crowd and hey, 6 catch-and-release maneuvers!

the crowd showed their utmost displeasure over the decision and the judges were pressed into awarding nemov an upped score of 9.762, which didn't help his standings at all. once again, the crowd responded angrily to this and nemov had to get up to calm them down.

i was pretty angry at the judges too. not for shortchanging nemov, which i'm sure they didn't, but actually yielding to the crowd's demands. what has the world come to if the judges at the olympics are not doing the actual judging? no one in that crowd has been judging gymnastics events on an annual basis. no one in that crowd has ever sat on a panel of judges for an olympics event.

and no one in that crowd respected the decision made by that group of people who know more about gymnastics than we know about victoria beckham's pregnancy.

i was disgusted by that scene. and i blame it all on reality television. we are so attuned to having our opinions decide the fate of others that the result of this is people at an international sporting event thinking they can help a guy get a medal just by showing disapproval over the awarded score! just what made them think that? the petty power we get these days by determining who gets the recording contract?

there are way too many reality shows on tv. each one has people kicked off because of votes, screams, underwear, whatever. it's power to the people. we get to choose. i didn't like how that singapore idol contestant overdid the vibrato, so i didn't vote for him. and yes! he didn't get through! he never deserved to anyway. i'm so glad christopher did. he's so cute.

so just because we can do that in our living rooms, people have got it into their heads that it's acceptable to do that at an international sporting event where every point determines how much an athelete is going to get in sponsorship for his training so that he can put food on the table for his wife and kids.

it's ridiculous!

we're living in a reality overload, where things have suddenly become so weird that it's almost unbelievable. like a scripted reality show.

[ read more about the incident. the message board comments are pretty interesting too. ]

lishun at 10:02 PM

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