Powerpoint Boy

Mercy Over Justice Any Day

I'm a bit lost. The past month has really just whizzedzoomedsped past, and a great deal of my energy has been pouring outoutout into the campaign to try and save Van. I need to sit down and take stock. This has been the campaign for Van thus far:

1. setting up the online petition
2. designing the flyers and then zapping and folding them with the help of Tony and some of the 05S34 kids
3. organising the flyer distribution campaign
4. distributing flyers with Jacob at Orchard Road, with Elaine and Jeremiah at NUS, with Jacob and Jan and Jon Koh at Raffles City, and then the big bash again outside Centrepoint
5. helping out with the forum - getting posters done and zapped, getting people to go down and support
6. scanning lots of hand tracings with James' help, setting up a Flickr account, uploading the pix, and then having to do the whole thing over from scratch again!
7. setting up the stophanging blog (cos Uncle Yap's campaign blog was really hopeless!) and learning how to use audioblog and networking with Niraj from Pilot n' Jo
8. maintaining the online forum (i can't believe there are jerks out there who will post comments like 'hang the bastard'...well, I don't need to believe it...now I'm older and wiser and I know they exist)
9. writing letters - of appeal (to Lee Hsien Loong and President Nathan) and to challenge puerile arguments raised by those in favour of the death penalty - Huei Huei's not-very-nice-to-activism article, Siow 'little-miss-nationalism' Jia Rui's letter, MFA red herring reply to Philip Alston, and then the reply to one of its directors who wrote to me, Dr. Loo Choon Yong's 'sacrifice-one-for-the-many' letter to the Australian parliament
10. meeting Matija together with Lucy Davis and then attending the opening of La Salle's Urban/Non-Urban exhibition (and goodness, what a right regular controversy that generated).

Gosh. And then there's also been PW OP prep (and now the GPF assessment), the 05S34 chalet (sigh...I feel so bad about sleeping through most of that), getting the 2006 school diary going, and also planning for Subjectif (well, that's the working title for the VJC blog till someone thinks of something better).

And of course the emotional turmoil occasioned by Aaron Goh, the police officer who just kind of hung up on me - literally. Sigh. I so hate it when people tell me they want intellectual challenge, and when I give it to them, they rabbit. Silly little rabbit, don't you ever learn?

I haven't been very nice to my friends, I think. I've been living, breathing, dreaming death penalty for about a month - most of the emails that I've forwarded to them have been about the death penalty. Am I disappointed with them? Hmm...yes and no...I think when I'm most myself I understand why they can't or won't get involved in a deeper way - other battles, other issues, safety and security, the list goes on. But when I'm distracted to pieces and in need of validation and support - that's when I wonder why I find myself fighting so many battles in life alone, and that's when I want to run away from it all.

And yet, in all honesty, it's been a tremendous period of learning and the best kind of self-discovery. I've had to process a great deal of fear about how my actions might be judged and dealt with, and because of that, have had a kind of political 'coming-out', although I hesitate to term it that. It's that deep realisation of just how the media is used by the state, and how profound the media's influence can be. I used to think that it was just about advertising - how we're all suckers for Nike shoes - but now I see that it's the news as well - and how the withholding of information can be as crucial as any piece of news that's actually presented.

Most of all, I'm beginning to crystallise my own values and my sense of what's important in this life. I just can't see much point (at this point) to, for instance, the research route that James wants to go down. I think it must mean quite a lot to him, because he's been urging me repeatedly to commit to presenting some papers etc. but I really can't say I want to.
What *do* I want to do then? I don't know...I'll keep listening.

Interior Tectonics

I've not written about my feelings for some time. Sure, I've blogged about how I feel about things. But I've hesitated about plunging headlong over the precipice of emotional restraint, preferring the hazy complacency of days slipping by unreflected and unexplored to the deep pain that such attention can occasion.

I want the terrain to have changed in my absence and inattention. I'm hoping it has.

Quite a bit has changed over the past month. Becoming involved with the appeal for Nguyen Tuong Van's life was practically a second coming out, so intense and breath-depriving was the fear I experienced. Very slowly, in much the same way that I relinquished the need for approval by the Church, I find myself relinquishing that need for approval by the State.

It's not really some great grand martyr-like thing. Sure, I do have the occasional vision of being hauled away by dark-suited men (much like Kate Bush's Cloudbusting video), and I do wonder what the interior of a holding cell might look like, or how one might while away the endless hours - but most of the time it's a more practical immediate feeling. It's that horror at being judged as deviant by one's colleagues, of being misunderstood and gossiped about, coupled with the irritating sense of superiority (which arises as a defense mechanism?), that has formed the tenor of these days.

Peering into the murky grayness within, what does seem to have altered is the fixation with fulfilling my emotional needs. More peering later perhaps.

The Braille of Our Bodies

my fingers go seeking the braille of your body
blindly needing to read loving words entwined,
written into the way you hold
me to yourself because
the body does not lie

you braille my body, fingers become our
words, blinding the need to love to read -
rites are rewritten each time we hold
because you and i are one self,
are more than bodies lying, entwined

entwined, our fingers are strings
are rings, that bind and blind the needy
parts of ourselves; our bodies cannot lie
to us, one day the braille of our love
will be written as our lawful right.

Grow Like A Champion Grow

Part of the sleeplessness of last week came from worrying about the photo shoot for this year's JC2 Farewell Assembly. Thankfully, it's all worked out quite well and I'm fairly chuffed with the results. Kudos to James for the initial concept, which he'd seen in some jeans advert the week before, and Li Ren for his usual Photoshop wizardry. If you're thinking 'why do the pix remind me of the covers of Golden Age DC comics,' then I've fully succeeded. Still missing the one with Ruth and James Ho, but I thought I'd put up this set of 4 first, just for the sheer heck of it.

Heigh-Ho, Silver!

One of the more interesting things about Fridae that I've just noticed is how the minimum age that one's supposed to be is 18. Yet clearly there are Fridae members here who are younger than that - one poor chap'Cuteboy16', for example, has to suffer the indignity of having his age recorded as 18, and thus has to proclaim in his profile headline that he's '16 n single, wan to noe more cute guys'.

But I'm not here to get into a polemic with Fridae over its age restrictions or policies. Fridae has its commercial interests to preserve and protect, after all. No, the thought that struck me a few minutes back with Cuteboy16's profile was this: what is (or was) that first stirring of desire like? Can I actually remember the *very* first time I was aroused?

I remember being very attracted to the old grade B Westerns - or what used to be called 'cowboy-and-Indian-movies' - as a child of 6 or 7. Strangely, we never see any of these on TV these days, quite possibly because of the phenomenon of political incorrectness. My sympathies were always with the Red Indians/Native Americans, my eyes glued to Tonto, rather than the Lone Ranger. There was something darkly erotic about the way all these lithe, tanned men with painted faces were riding and whooping their way to their doom.

It would be lovely if someone could undertake a survey akin to that done by Alfred Kinsey in America back in the 1950s. Find out for once just what it is that Singaporeans do behind closed doors and drawn curtains. Un-demonize homosexuality because once and for all the public will *know* that homosexuality is not something out there, but intimately linked to the soul and fabric of this country. Liberate those horses that paw behind our staid, stable breasts.

Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits

  I was musing about an army officer friend's unfortunate situation earlier this evening - he's been the victim of what I can only describe as a homophobic witch-hunt, and I can't help but feel how very silly the SAF's position is: that gay men are a 'security risk' because their homosexuality potentially opens them to blackmail. But it's a self-created double bind, really - if the SAF *allowed* its servicemen (and women) to be open with their sexuality, there *wouldn't* be an issue of blackmail at all.

In all fairness to the SAF, they also have to be sensitive to the latent/explicit homophobia that pervades all levels of the institution - from the recruit's bunk to the hallowed 5th floor corridors of MINDEF. So let me be a homophobe for the span of two sentences: "If, for instance, an army officer was known to be gay, then wouldn't that 'jeopardise' the soldiers under his charge? What if he abused his position to - ahem - abuse them?"

This is where I think we begin to uncover a very real *fear* of gay people that even gay men unknowingly internalise. Society (gay men included) see gay men (somehow lesbian women seem exempt from this perception) as hyper-sexualised creatures - Energizer bunnies that run on pure hormonal adrenaline who will jump at any and every opportunity to bonk.

It's a perception that I encounter in the IRC ever so often. When someone learns that I'm a teacher, more often than not I'll get some comment about how fun it must be to be near all these young hunkalicious guys (and this accompanied by the lewd insinuation/knowing wink that I've probably done 'it' with some students before).

That comment presupposes that I'm that sexualised Energizer bunny. And I resent it. Call me a killjoy and a prude, but I'm *not* sexually attracted to my students because I'm in control of my impulses, thank you very much.

And when I think more about it, it scares me because having heard those lines once too often, I've caught myself wondering if I was odd, if perhaps I should *be* an Energizer bunny. Am I abnormal if I feel that I can and ought to maintain a professional boundary between my students and myself?

So - I won't presume to preach to the rest of the gay community, but I'm certainly not going to over-sexualise my being gay. Being gay does not mean that I *have* to be sex-mad. It's a very important part of who I am and how I view the world, but let me balance and square and integrate that with the other parts of my being. I'd like to think I'm a bit more than a chemically-charged wobotic wabbit.

Perhaps (and here you'll forgive me my didactism) when gay men have enough self-respect and self-awareness to refuse the 'sex-mad' label that society pushes at them, things *will* change, and society will then be forced to rethink its stereotypes and its mindless homophobia.

A Personal Manifesto

Julian, someone I've corresponding with via email (and gosh, how long has it been since my last email correspondence with anyone - work completely discounted, of course), just asked me this question: 'How are you going to fight for gay rights?'

It's an interesting question, and one that I want to devote some mental bandwith to.

I think one starts with one's fears. A quick list of some fears that I've had to deal with:

1. Am I effeminate? Sissy? Will people think I'm gay because of that? Can I pass for straight?
2. What happens if my mum/dad/friend/colleague finds out that I'm gay? What if I'm discriminated against/kicked out of home/ostracised by friends/lose my job or get demoted or not promoted just because I'm gay?
3. Am I too thin/fat? Am I attractive? Sexy? What if I won't be loved because of my shape, or my face - am I too plain? Too much of an average Joe? What if people judge me and mock me behind my back?
4. Why is it no one ever picks me up or talks to me at a club? Or a sauna?

One could probably add on to this list, but certainly these are fears that I've been haunted by or am still haunted by. Fears #1 and 2 are fears that no human being should have to live with, really - but which exist because of the widespread atmosphere of homophobia that the State effectively sponsors when it says that it cannot 'promote a gay lifestyle' - euphemistic rhetoric for saying that it will not risk votes in order to educate a homophobic public into a greater civility/sanity.

Fears #3 and 4 are self-inflicted by the gay community upon itself, unfortunately. Local gay culture *is* body-obsessed. What I've learnt for myself is that muscularity and good looks are almost always correlated with flakiness and narcissism (or at least, that muscle-bound jocks and poster boys are more inclined to show their flaky side to those less muscular and gorgeous than themselves). 

But to return to the 'how' of gay activism: fears #1 and 2 are what drive me, really - it's that sense of outrage which springs up whenever I think about how a whole segment of society is being robbed of so much happiness (and who are so often so used to these fears that they aren't even aware of being robbed, because they see it as a 'natural' state of being).

Fears #3 and 4 suggest that I shouldn't put gay people on any sort of pedestal - another person's being 'gay' is no guarantee that he's going to be nicer to me, or appreciative of any of my efforts. It's a reminder that I should expect no thanks for whatever it is that I'm doing - I'm not working for a community of saints (it would be easier if I were, I guess), but rather, people as human (with egos as fragile and delicate) and just about anyone else. It makes me more realistic about the 'constituency'.

Hmm. Not fully satisfied with this but it'll do for now. Will try to revise this later.

Black as the Blackest Ocean

It's the 1st Sunday of the September hols as I begin this entry. It's nice to know that there's a week ahead to breathe (even with the photo shoot *and* the blog competition's closing ceremony on Friday and all). The struggles with loneliness will probably intensify this week, as they typically do during any holiday period, but I'm more mentally prepared to face that this time round.

Cory Doctorow's talk on copyright yesterday (many thanks to Yu Mei for getting me down) was a real eye and mind-opener. The last time I received so much info packed into so little time was in a Dr. Susan Ang lecture. It was incredibly humbling to be there - here was a quicksilver mind capable of continuous coherent dialogue. Essentially, Cory traced a history of copyright - its evolution as a response to emerging technologies of the day - the phonogram, the radio, the VCR, and at each point, strikingly, the deferral of politics to the public body. This doesn't seem to be happening with the latest technologies, though - with its attempts (including anti-circumvention, region coding, DRMs etc), to prevent users from editing/recording content. He also discussed how the cartels have attempted to protect their interests at the very highest levels of governance, through a treaty/body like WIPO.

Talk aside, one of the things that's uppermost on my mind now is how to prevent my emotional turmoil from overflowing its banks and just swamping everything else. It disturbs me that most of the gay guys I know - both Robs, David from HK, the other blips that have registered on my radar - are so very flakey. And of course I get round to the thought: maybe it's just me. I'm not interesting enough, not beautiful enough. Too average, too mediocre. And I get to wanting to hit the reset button, to thinking of ending all this darkness.

I HATE the fact that I have to psyche myself up everyday - try to be cheerful, zippy - but all the while something inside me is withering and no one cares. I mean, it's easy enough to say that one ought to be engaged with the world and all, but it hurts like hell when I come back at day's end and there's no one there. It's not something that James or Yu Mei or Celine or virtually any of my friends seem to understand, and that's Frustrating with a capital F. Again, always, my fault.
:(

Bow Your Head

It's hard not to watch Child of Our Time and come away wondering just how differently one's life might have turned out. What's evident from just the 4 episodes that have been screened so far on Arts Central is how we - the persons that we grow to be - are the results of a complex negotiation between biology and the environment that a child is raised in.

One of the more painful moments of today's episode was watching one couple's relationship fall apart - a hearing impaired man by the name of Paul, and his wife (didn't quite catch her name). 3 children was too much of a strain for the relationship, it seems, and the last child, a girl, seemed all solemn and wise. But it wasn't the last child that moved me so much as one of the older children - a boy, all blonde and tousle-headed - in particular a shot of him slouched against a wall, disconsolate, and his mien already taking on a moodiness that doesn't bode well.

I think of that classic Sharon Olds' poem 'I Go Back to May 1937'.

  I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
  I see my father strolling out
  under the ochre sandstone arch, the
  red tiles glinting like bent
  plates of blood behind his head, I
  see my mother with a few light books at her hip
  standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the
  wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
  sword-tips black in the May air,
  they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
  they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
  innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
  I want to go up to them and say Stop,
  don't do it--she's the wrong woman,
  he's the wrong man, you are going to do things
  you cannot imagine you would ever do,
  you are going to do bad things to children,
  you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of,
  you are going to want to die. I want to go
  up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
  her hungry pretty blank face turning to me,
  her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
  his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me,
  his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
  but I don't do it. I want to live. I
  take them up like the male and female
  paper dolls and bang them together
  at the hips like chips of flint as if to
  strike sparks from them, I say
  Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

It's the essential paradox, isn't it? That without all that unhappiness, the shaping hand of misery - one wouldn't be who one is today. And yet, always at the back of my mind, the question of 'what if': what if I/he/she had been spared all that? Could a fuller, more joyful self have emerged?

Other insights gleaned from today's episode of COT:

1. that one of the earliest and most basic aspects of our personality to emerge is our orientation to others: whether we are shy or bold. Child of Our Time presented an interesting test involving the introduction of a stranger wearing a tiger mask to the child. The shy child would almost immediately burst into tears. The normal child (poised between shyness and boldness) would remain calm until the tiger did something surprising, like growl. And the bold child would be quite unaffected.

2. that one's personality retains a certain plasticity up till 30 (oops, just missed the boat marked character change, I guess). :)

Earlier today: went with Tony to JB. We wandered around City Plaza for a bit - had my hair cut by one Edmund Lee, who was telling me about how he'd worked in Singapore for a time, and then we went to a rather dodgy looking massage place near Pelangi Leisuremall.

My Childhood in a Carpark

I had my first kinesiology session with Vincent yesterday. After the restructuring that he's done for me with Rolfing, it felt like a good time to move into more significant issues. I still find it hard to conceptually understand or explain what kinesiology is. Even the big name kinesiology websites are vague on this.

But what I really want to set down is the insight that Vincent provided - that I'm thirsting for something (he guessed knowledge, I think it might be affection) - and that much of my current low levels of motivation are related to this, and to something which happened to me when I was aged between 2 1/2 and 3 (which would mean the later half of 1977 or the early part of 1978).

Just talking about it to Tony this morning brought back something that Mummy once told me: Papa, it seems, used to gamble very heavily and would often return only very late at night. And she would take me down to the carpark as a kid to wait for him. It didn't strike me then, or all these years, but having watched 3 episodes of Child of Our Time and getting a feel for how children (and their brains and biology) are in an ongoing process of negotiation with their environment), it now occurs to me that I would have been picking up a lot from my mum at that point in time - the sense of helplessness and inadequacy, the lowered self-esteem, the feelings of guilt and rejection, the desperation that comes with waiting - as she waited for my dad to return.

It helps me understand why I feel often feel so desolate at night, or when I find myself in an open air carpark in the evening. It's a very real key to the emotions of helplessness, inadequacy, guilt, and worthlessness that wash over me every now and then.

It strikes me now that parents have no intention of blighting their children's future, but so often do, inadvertently and unconsciously. Through one or another incident they inflict upon their children a legacy of pain that's taken up into the structuring of their brains and bodies - with Rolfing, for instance, one understands how suppressed emotion often translates into muscle tension: an emotional situation often programmes our bodies with the need to tense certain muscles - and hold that tension for the remainder of our lives if we don't realise or release it.

I need to sit down for a while with myself now to wait with this and see where it takes me.