.ivars gravlejs.

interesting artist who showed visitors to art openings porn in his hp:

http://www.ivarsgravlejs.com/pages/mobilevideo.htm

.moving house!!.

to: bedtimeeyes.wordpress.com

this blog will be used for taking note of vid clips/pix i like. :)

.dad caught a centipede today.

.nick vujicic.

.olafur eliasson.

.just be.

pressuring others to deviate can be as disrespectful as pressuring them to conform.

.a happy woman.

.daniel libeskind.

.wii at yin's.

in that room, 

we are the secret police caught in a crossfire with terrorists in an airplane, rescuing hostages and dodging bullets.

with the remote controls,

we are sonic, shadow, tails and knuckles competing in the beijing olympics, throwing the javelin and jumping on the trampoline.

after pressing a few buttons,

we are rabbits on the podium, dancing to hip hop and then, disco.

for a while,

we are not ourselves.

.felix dennis.

.poems.

A Poem [Nichita Stanescu]
Tell me, if I caught you one day
and kissed the sole of your foot,
wouldn't you limp a little then,
afraid to crush my kiss?

(from indrani)

Absolutely Last Poem to a Past Love [Agnes Meadows]
In Winter's cloudburst
We dodged raindrops
Like we dodged love.

So I found another umbrella
Under which to splash
singing, Gene Kelly style.

Now even the rain feels warm.

(from a link aik wee passed me)

.fr yj's blog.

"If only I live in a world
where people are more concerned with filling their minds
than emptying their wallets."

.rooftop night.

.wild is the wind in the sea of love.

benjamin button

"For what it's worth: it's never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There's no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again."

i think the movie is a little cliche, and it didn't move me. but en passed me this while msning today, and the words are rather encouraging.

thank you.

synthesizer

this is awesome!

http://lab.andre-michelle.com/tonematrix

.ryanair.

http://www.b3ta.com/board/9222744
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7914542.stm

.got this in my mailbox today.

"Being an ideal Singaporean is hard. Singaporeans are implicated, on one side, by the state’s aggressive goals for national development, which demand from them ever-increasing productivity in full-time and formal employment and which require these in return for access to social goods.1 From the opposite direction, they are compelled through policies—which again involve social goods—to aspire to particular forms of families that are supposedly traditional but that in fact require all sorts of modern orientations and habits. Singaporeans are compelled through a series of state mechanisms to work hard, full time, for many years of their lives, and to do so while also marrying, having children, ensuring that their offspring are upwardly mobile in an increasingly competitive middle-class society, and eventually making sure that their elderly parents are cared for (preferably within their households) and that they themselves have enough money to live comfortably in old age."

.balzac and the little chinese seamstress.

It isn't an everyday affair that a book affects you. A good book keeps your mind in sweet captivity, cajoling it to go on a wild flying carpet ride in an imagined world. Then, like a voyeur, you swiftly rub shoulders with familiar people you would never meet, and experience the emotions they might have felt. All these, right in your very own bedroom, and on your very own bed.

Dai Sijie's Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (a pressie from t) is a book that reminds me of the power of words. It tells the story of two youths sent to a village for "re-education" during mao's cultural revolution. There, they fell in love with a seamstress, and acquired a suitcase of forbidden life-changing books that fed their hunger for ideas. It's an account of how literature opens the mind to possibilities, and how, when coupled with reflexivity, can undo the invisible chains that hold one enslaved. At its last few pages, i was unsure whether to laugh, or to cry.

The book, reading the book, and the person who first brought up the book in a conversation, remind me that the mind can be free, even if the body is not. as long as the mind is free, there's a chance that the body can be too.

...

My thumb is still blue-black. with dark purple nail polish now. it hurts so much that i couldn't sleep properly at night. thank goodness my fingernails aren't long, else i'll look like a vampire right out of some b-grade chinese horror flick.

.she.

She runs around, looking for the answer,
But the question, it hasn’t arrived.

.leftover time.

It is when, stripped of the external constraints you are under, and free from all the people you have to meet, that you realize how rich - or empty - your inner life is.

.hello from tomorrow.

As the moonlight settles on my window sills, I wonder how you are.
You, who are continents away, where it is still day.

Hello.

.yann tiersen, amelie.

The first notes set in bravely, drawn out of nimble fingers dancing on the piano. Minor chords form, hanging in the air and cascading to the 4/4 beat.

“The body is more trouble than it is worth.” I once told yj. The statement was muttered in reference to life-threatening ailments and near-deaths.

The sounds huddle close, flowing to create a melancholy melody that grows intense. Slowly, it skillfully and cruelly draws out emotions I thought were carefully hidden.

“Did you sleep with him? Tell me!” She screamed into the phone, almost sobbing with hysteria. I was surprisingly much calmer than my mum when dealing with a breakup.

Fingers bang on the piano keys. The tune gets bolder. Louder. Faster. Louder.

“You should eat more,” you complained, while holding my hand. I’m not sure if you made that statement out of concern.

Until the climax tears through the air. Laden with disturbance, and tinged with frustration.

“Do I not know you well enough? You should know better. Don't be tempted.”

Emotions mingle with the musical notes, weighing on the listener and sinking in unhurriedly, mercilessly.

Your disdain I thought I sensed, your disrespect that I’m sure exists, your objectifying gaze, your expectations I could not live up to, your morals that I suspect need revision.

The melody grows quiet. The highs are gone, allowing the lows to slip in.

My body, inflicted with some wounds, is a constant site of contestation. 

Then the last musical note, it dies.

.junk.

I always thought certain histories, or memories, should be treated as if they were junk. Put them aside, throw them out, and then, bury them inside. Bury them long enough for them to decompose and disappear. And then find the strength, please, to walk away.

Occasionally, when my resolve weakens, I return to their burial ground. I would uncover the earth, just to find that much have changed, yet some things, just stay the same.

Slowly, however, I don’t recognize the histories or memories anymore. I figure, maybe it's time to stop heaping earth again and again on top of them. Instead, place them right in front of you, and talk about them. 

Then, sweep the bits and pieces away, so as to make them disappear into thin air.

.the devil is in the details.

1. today.

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2. last year dec, tiong bahru plaza.

||          ||          ||      ||

.hope and sunscreen.

The first, of Joven, taken outside my uncle's flat. The second, at my ah ma's place.

I love the study room at my uncle's. Light, big sofa, purple walls and pretty shadows. No doors. I want!

me: "I love this room!" 

uncle: "Yes, it's a cruising room."

me: "It's for cruising?!"

uncle: "Ya, cruising."

me: [laughs] "Cruising!"

uncle: "Er! I mean, cozy!"

.sentiments of a bicycle.

.dancing leaves.

the leaves dance gracefully, 

together with the sun.

.skies.

When I see skies like these, I wish I have my Canon 450, instead of my Nokia N82.

.kissing angels on my kitchen floor.

.baudelaire: a self-portrait, by lois boe hyslop and francis e.hyslop, jr..

[p.15] "It was partly through leisure that I grew. To my great detriment, since leisure without fortune increases debts. But to my great profit so far as sensibility, meditation and the possibility of dandyism and dilettantism were concerned."

[p.117] "Exiled on earth in the midst of jeers,

His giant wings keep him from walking."

[p.199] "One always imagines that there will be time,

and then death, that is the irreparable, arrives."

.talking art over beer.

prof: "The irony about art is that you can produce naively produce art if you don’t know about art history. If you know art history, you may never produce art. History becomes a burden."

me: "Because you realize you can never create anything original. Someone else has already done it." 

prof: "Yes. But if you know art history, and yet can still create art, now, you’re somebody worth looking out for."

me: "You can still be commercially successful if you naively produce art."

prof: "Yes, you can sell it to thirty-somethings who just enter the market and doesn't know. But if an expert comes along, he’ll know. I have a friend who knows nothing about art history, and a friend who does. One doesn't care, just take a canvas, splash paint all over, and earn big bucks. My other friend who knows art history is perpetually pissed at the other. [laughs]"

me: “I don’t like it when artists don’t say directly what they want to say. Why can’t they just say it? Words seem easier.”

prof: “No, words, like images, have multiple meanings. It’s okay to have multiple meanings. And most artists think they are obvious.”

me: "They're not. I think should strip everything down to the bare minimum in art. Get rid of all the fuss. The extra stuff. Like writing."

prof: "That has been tried. Minimalism. 1920s."

me: [pauses] "Okay, I think I prefer to naively produce art." 

prof: "[laughs]… Hey, nothing is easy, alright?"

.about today.

I love days like these. A little reading in school. Then an afternoon session of beers/fish and chips with my prof at Brewerkz, where topics such as Marx, money, art, things, people and living creatively popped up. Next up was dinner with yj and zl in a rooftop café at Holland Village, where conversations treaded on the terrain of office colleagues, unthinking behaviors, movies, jokes, anger management and annoying people on MRTs. I also managed to lay my hands on the latest issue of Monocle after that.

Today was so enjoyable, that even realizing you’ve struck me off your friends list on Facebook when I got home doesn’t blemish it, nor hurt me very much.

.a pretty flower.

.fallen leaves.

.around my home.