Rambling on!

Sometimes I wake up briefly at early hours of the morning (6/7 am) and look out of my window (I sleep with my curtains open expressly to do this). And then I see beautiful things, and if I have presence of mind enough, I photograph them. This is sunrise in KL.

Today I am leaving city skyline views for mustyfusty……

View from the library!

….LIBRARIES! And library-views, of course.

Leaving is always weird. I’ve done it so many times now you’d think I’m alright with the whole business – and I am, by & large, but – I miss home intensely at the same time I’m desperate to be back! Last night I was struck by a desperate urge to run to Dutamas and flop down their with shisha (because it is the most chilled out, laid back thing/place ever?!). But of course I had to pack. In the UK, pubs will replace mamaks.

But – ONWARDS HO! I have done NO WORK these holidays, I am going back obscenely late (I know the libraries will be missing me) and I need to start work ASAP!!! Ahharhghg!! I know holidays are for chilling, and I have, so I’m very grateful… but I still feel guilty!

*   *   *   *   *

I am going back late because driving tests in Malaysia are only administered on Mondays, and I was desperate to take mine. KL is a city which was not built (with any conceivable plan, it’s true, but also) for walking. To get from Point A to Point B can be the most painful experience ever for the transportationally-challenged, because it would be too long and dangerous a distance to walk but too embarrassingly short a distance to take a cab, etc etc. I haven’t seen buses in a long time (although I am assured they exist). Miles asked me if there were buses to my area, and I didn’t know what to say: I don’t think so? I’ve never seen any? And he didn’t understand it either, which explains the unique conundrum that one finds oneself in.

Having attempted to take it in September, and failing because my front wheels didn’t touch a yellow line of some sort (bah), I felt I had to get it yesterday! Otherwise I knew my driving plans would be shelved forever (I can’t conceive bothering to drive in the UK, at present anyways – who would give me a car?!).

My driving school is most wonderful an encapsulation of Malaysia and Malaysian life. The place I had to sit waiting in was next to a miniature city-jungle of sorts, hastily fenced off from civilization/the driving school – but the smells of the forest still wafted over. It reminded me of Duke of Edinburgh trips to Belum, and school trips to FRIM.

There was also the most wonderful little old man who would “look after” the test-takers and send them to their first test (the hill-test). He was tiny, and shouted perpetually at the candidates (only ever in Malay, so I didn’t understand much); although he was mostly only shouting numbers, sometimes his face would crinkle up into a mesmerizing mixture of malevolence/benevolence, and he would lean forward and utter (shout) words like “TAI-TAI!!!” confidentially. (I am VERY eager to know what “Tai tai”, phonetically rendered here, could possibly mean. If you know: get in touch.)

His other job, besides seeing that candidates kept going to the cars as they were available, was to bring back the cars of failed candidates (stopped unceremoniously then and there, upon committing the fallacy) to the next candidate. It was the smallest distance imaginable; about a 15 second drive at a slow speed. He would drive it at insane speeds (60? 80?), and take sharp turns at insane speeds also – the tyres would scream, the small Kancil would look as if it were either about to turn over or be driven on two wheels only. This scandalized all the test-takers, who would gasp, whimper, or shriek, according to their diverse temperaments. Some would hiss, “Aiyohhh!!” – the traditional Malaysian/Singaporean exclamation of dismay, despair and disapproval (“Oh no!” would be a reductive but appropriate translation). Others nudged each other, and condemned the little old man roundly: “REMPITNYAAA!!”

It made me laugh A LOT.

(It would be difficult to translate ‘Rempit’ also: I am assuming that it is shorthand for ‘Mat Rempit’, which – though it originally meant a very particular brand of streetracing motorbikers – has, I think, become shorthand for any kind of dangerous street-driving. See ‘Mat Rempit‘, an article as amusing as my little old man and his scandalized audiences.)

Edit: My friend Sara has clarified one thing “Tai tai” means (in Mandarin, I think): ”a lady who enjoys life, one who marries a rich husband, dresses well, only goes shopping at Gucci/Prada, does nothing but that” (Sara). It seems a bit out of place in the context of a driving test, but I wouldn’t be surprised…maybe knowing how to drive makes it easier to be the aforementioned ‘tai tai’? Or maybe no ‘tai tai’ would ever drive (because they would have chauffeurs, of course!), so he was congratulating us on not being one? Your guess is as good as mine!

Love in the Time of Cholera. (A moment.)

“Despite the perpetual rain, the sordid merchants, and the Homeric vulgarity of its carriage drivers, she would always remember Paris as the most beautiful city in the world, not because of what it was or was not in reality, but because it was linked to the memory of her happiest years.” - Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Marquez Garcia

I’m reading (continuing from three months ago, because ‘reading for pleasure without needing to write an essay’ is unthinkable while at uni) this right now, and I came across this passage which is breathtaking in its beauty and truth. A case of someone else setting down what I’ve always felt and never said (c/f Alan Bennett!).

It always amazes me how much places become infused with the memories of certain experiences or people (and I guess obliquely, people are experiences). I don’t think I could ever conceive of Oxford or London without certain people; London would be much sadder and without half its excitement/charms for me without Someone, for example. Paris – which is, for me also, the most beautiful city in the world! (although I didn’t encounter the ‘Homeric vulgarity’ of any carriage drivers….what is  Homeric vulgarity?) - is so linked to memories of experiencing winter and Christmas in all their European glory: vin chaud from outside St.-Pierre-de-Montmartre; chocolat chaud; crepes in Montmartre and the Quartier Latin; the Christmas market along the Champs-Élysées!

The Seine.

One lives out one’s life in emotionally distorted spaces: every walk along the Thames or every step in the Tate Modern becomes value-laden, feeling-laden – it constantly gestures back to another time and another feeling. The problem arises in time, because people fade in and out of one’s life and places do not (although there is the transience of rooms and homes, which is another matter entirely – I guess I’m thinking only about cities here). I suppose when that day comes traversing along streets of happy memories will be the saddest thing of all.

Until then though – there is little or no seeing places for what they are in ‘reality’, as Garcia writes; the only reality they have is one which is redolent of anticipations and fears, filtered through desires or one’s particular and momentary mood on a day.

This is also wonderful and not all sad, in its own way: stories lie over cities for me like palimpsests; London is never just my London but has traces of Dickens’s London, and Austen’s; Naipaul’s and Virginia Woolf’s.  Paris is never just my Paris but Djuna Barnes’s and Jean Rhys’s; Choderlos de Laclos’s, Flaubert’s. I cannot dream of New York divorced from Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, or Dos Passos’s Manhattan Transfer. Places become soaked in the memories of books too, and while I may romanticize this excessively, it definitely adds infinite amounts to their beauty and charm for me.

Parisian streets.

Edit: Oh golly! And merry Christmas everybody! That was a bit of a downer note to end a Christmas post on, now I think of it….!

I am dreaming of….

Title-page of Henri Matisse’s Jazz. 

I found this in the library one day when I was expressly doing something else. But because I was (as always) dreaming of & in jazz, I decided to flip through this book on the shelves and because it was Matisse, and breathtaking, I took photographs too.

Jazz is, according to this essay/article on it (by Greg Kucera), the product of insomnia, and artificial lights; the child of a music-hall meets circus aesthetic. I think that’s apt enough: jazz is a nighttime madness, dogged by the stars and yellow lightbulbs. Colours that pop in one’s eyes because they’re caught in the headlights.

All pictures the product of Instagram, libraries and my procrastinating skills.

And just to finish this little word/photo vomit ramble up – if you didn’t believe that jazz belongs in the province of twilight/dark skies/faces lit up by cigarette ends, I give you – Glenn Miller & His Orchestra: Song of the Volga Boatmen.

Hello again!

Back in The UK with them lovely sunsets again (and with Instagram, to boot!).

I don’t really have time to read the news here, since there is just (already) too much work and too many books to read. Too many long words and complicated theories of time and whatnot that I can’t get my head around…

So I have decided that I will update this blog in such a way as to incorporate my work….with book reviews and literary rants! If all my reading and work goes well, I will, hopefully, finish Woolf’s ‘To the Lighthouse’ tomorrow and Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ by next Tuesday.

(Ha. Yeah, I know. Ulysses in a week. Tried it before. It didn’t work. One only can hope.) Well, at least y’all can follow me on this odyssey (hohoho) and see how I do!

Two more days until…

View from inside college.

View from window

Birds.

….I’m back in Oxford! One doesn’t realise how much one loves places or cities until one has to go away, or come back. I’m so glad I have another year there, even though it’ll pass probably as fast as – if not faster than – the past three years have. Wonder if anyone else feels suddenly too old, hurtled to a point they never intended to reach by life itself (and more such unexpected stops along the way). I sometimes do.

But whatever. OXFORD. SOON. A place I love filled with people I love. Can’t wait to be back!

 

 

A love-letter to cities (in pictures)

This post will focus mostly on my favourite photographs (& memories, because the two are by and large synonymous in contexts like these) of two particular cities: Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore. A love-letter to South-East Asian metropolises; to the shapes of the lines that demarcate sky-space and city-space in this particular region of the world.

μητρόπολις - mētrópolis

Orig. Ancient Greek: ‘mother city’

OED on contemporary usage: ‘a very large & busy city’

So without further ado. (On this note – I always hear people say ‘without further adieu‘ with a very pointed and falsely French stress on that last word. Am I entirely, entirely wrong in thinking ‘ado’ makes more sense? Have I been getting it wrong my whole life? Maybe it’s time for a quick grammar-induced panic-attack Google search…)

What I love most about cities are their lights: the colours they emanate, and the sheer state of life & being it signifies. So lights are for rooms, homes, cities: all of those spaces are lived in, loved in and loved by. The above is Kuala Lumpur, and the bottom is Singapore.

I love this picture for the stories it tells: people are hugging, posing, staring, photographing, holding hands, etc. - all in the glow of the omnipresent city. It watches like a mother; not far away from its root definition - μήτηρ (mḗtēr, “mother”). I guess I'm having a ''plump Buck Mulligan" moment - "she is our great sweet mother". This is a view of Singapore's gorgeous skyline, from the Esplanade area. It's beautiful because people really do live and love in the glow (I won't say shadow) of the city behind.

Dear Malaysian skyline. I see it every night before bed, and every morning when I wake up (though not in such glorious close-up... this was taken from Sky Bar, which has alcohol & the most amazing view - double win!).

Took this just last night, in the pouring rain, in the center of town. Life is lonely for an umbrella in the big city. Capitalism reminds me that life has some sort of sense of constancy: it isn't all tragedy & soul. Some of it is just plain soulless and that's beautiful. It's wonderful.

(This is how I read Breakfast at Tiffany’s too: in a world of goodbyes and love stories, Holly Golightly finds comfort in the clinically mass-produced (and yet exclusive, of course); in shop windows and their perfectly pre-arranged world. Nothing is out of line. Everything is designed to attract. There is simply no room for tragedy, soul-searching, hello and goodbye, love or loss on those window-display shelves, I’m sure. And so Holly goes-lightly. I always find pretty shops and big glass windows with lots of expensive, over-valued things extremely comforting. Almost the most comforting thing in the whole world. Isn’t that slightly disgusting?)

Dawn.

Conscientious lens

Prena's 'room'. (c) James Mollison. Prena is a 14 year old domestic worker in Nepal. She earns roughly $6.50 a month.

A series of photographs by a man called James Mollison recently came to my attention – they have received a lot of press, in the NYTimes, for example. My first reaction to his photos was one of slight horror (sometimes), awe (because even rubbish dumps in Phnom Penh acquire some sort of aesthetic charisma through his lens) and profound humbling. It’s a strange word to employ, ‘humbling’: Oxford dictionaries define it as a verb – to “cause (someone) to feel less important or proud” – and a noun – “(of a thing ) of modest pretensions or dimensions”.

Of course these photos are all of these things: a stark reminder that even the innocent life of children is sometimes shut in by iron bars, or reduced to a used tyre in a dump. How sometimes it is inflated to excesses of pinks and frills. They tell wider socioeconomic stories: somewhere behind the glitz and glamour of Chinese urbanity are little rooms with faded portraits of Mao Zedong on the wall; somewhere in Kenya, a boy sleeps under the stars. They are poetic and tragic and awesomely inspiring all at once.

Susan Sontag wrote that “photographs cannot create a moral position [although] they can reinforce one—and can help build a nascent one”. This encapsulates precisely the potency of Mollison’s photographs: they appear to be taken first and foremost with an almost Arbus-ian sense of detachment from the political in favour of the aesthetic, with a staunch refusal to tack on any sort of ‘social conscience message’. But they are let loose, nonetheless, as little snippets of other worlds and realities, bare truths offered out to inexperienced eyes. By putting art first, politics second (if anywhere at all), these images make people face up to realities which are otherwise too easy to ignore, too ‘other’ to really care about.

I know Mollison didn’t take these with any specific sociopolitical/charitable agenda (he says on his website that he “didn’t want it just to be about ‘needy children’ in the developing world”, and perhaps that is why they are so extremely powerful in their ability to move the viewer. They are lacking in self-consciousness, without any of the dramatic qualities that underlie appeals, pleas, and the image-heavy social-conscience attacking of people (which by and large people are immune to, now).  They force the observer, firstly, to observe at all, catching the eye with their distinctness, their lack of conversation. And secondly, they make that observer consider those very sociopolitical dimensions and contexts so cleverly left unsaid (but so entirely captured) by these photographs.

I hope everyone takes a look at them if they get the chance (there are many select photos displayed through the links above, and then some!). All of them are in this book:

Where Children Sleep, James Mollison (From his website)

‘The World Through A Plastic Lens’

When I bought my Holga 120cfn on the Internet, it shipped in from Hong Kong with a little book by its side – the book was called The World Through A Plastic Lens, and it contained the most amazing photographs taken by people all over the world, with colours that popped in one’s eye and announced themselves dramatically; with cities charted out and translated into skylines, etc etc.

Since that day, about 4-5 years ago, my own little Holga has sort of become a way for me to not only experience the world, but also capture it. I have experienced it through the senses (because it’s terribly sad to know the world only through a plastic lens) – seen its towering buildings and endless waters, tasted its dusty air and lain on its grasses – but none of that is really permanent.

Luckily, the world as captured through a plastic lens is firmly ensconced on my wall. One of my favourite books by Susan Sontag (On Photography - sadly left behind in a plastic box in England, now!) says it all about how I feel: “Photographs do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality, that anyone can make or acquire.” Acquisition is so important (even if it sounds dangerously powerful and wrong!) when memories are so unreliable.

Magdalen College Fellow's Garden, Oxford.

Left: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Right: Oxford, England.

One of my most-loved pictures – an accidental double-exposure (I’d forgotten to wind the film properly!), but which gave me the view from my balcony at home (in KL, Malaysia) alongside the Radcliffe Camera (in Oxford). It seemed to encapsulate my life pretty well, flipping between Malaysia and England all the time!)

University Parks, Oxford. England in the springtime is heaven!

Marina Beach, Chennai. I went there a few years after the tsunami had struck - but there wasn't a sign!

Malaysian skyline - as seen from home!

Chennai, India (near Apollo hospital). India is all about yellows that pop!

Tiruvanmiyur (sp?), India. My great great grandfather built a temple in this village, and so the family 'pilgrimages' every now and then.

Belle Paris! Needs no explanation really.

Paris (again)

Bridge over River Seine. It came out funny, but I sort of like this daguerreotype effect.

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam. I love that skylines and road signs can meet in one frame.

On the Mekong Delta, Vietnam.

The Isis, Oxford. "I married Isis on the fifth of May..."

I feel a bit like I’m painting the world different colours, all with a few chemicals and some colour flash! And I love that something small, plastic and uglily-coloured can have accompanied me on so many adventures, seen so many places, and captured so many memories! All hail cameras.