day 44

What do you see.

The national narrative boils almost to a farce, a grand carnival of the cabaret sort; but what do you expect?

I only saw an eye looking back at me, and suddenly I realised that this is a Singapore I did not know.

What do you see?

MM Lee closed his eyes.

As if to take a quick rest of his eyes, perhaps, overwhelmed by the bright lights and the loud music. Sparkles everywhere; an image of the future he once envisioned and now could not recognise. Is this still his vision? He is no longer the master of his vision. The vision has taken over.

What do you see?

MM Lee coughed.

Perhaps, before him was more than just the lightning and the thunder. A chocking smell had filled the air, adding another layer to the haze from the neighbouring countries. Without dampening the spirits of his white party, he waved his singapore flag and followed the rhythm of his own imagination materialised by the acrobats, dancers, cabarets, costumed testicles, divas, and nonya kuehs, of all shapes, sizes, colours and races. Happy as they were, he coughed. As if to remind us of our underlying predicament - a huge budget needed to pay for these excesses, and to trouble ourselves to share the same space filled with germs from multiple coughs. He coughed, and at once, many of them around him had to breathe in his air without really knowing.


At those two precise moment caught on camera, we returned our gaze to the screen - the screen, shaped of an eye, reflects - and all we can see is a microcosm of nothingness. It performs nothing. Nothing - that is its fantasy. A fantasy to mask our apparent insecurities. (His son did no better, holding his hands loosely as he tried to convince himself that he made sense; hence, the camera zoomed in and we are only made to remark at his honesty. He really doesn't know what he has inherited from his father)

And we look, in between, a chaotic and organised performance simultaneously. Are these really Singaporeans? Or are they meant to keep on performing, performing to this endless loop of simulcrum (of Singapore and Singaporeans). Simulcrum or what? The performances mime nothing. (or perhaps repetition of people after people, chapter after chapter, who will be replaced each year) They, however, give us the reason to perform unfathomable joy -the kind of joy that goes up in flames and smoke and never returns as something concrete. So we smile, clumsily as if that is the most appropriate expression. Because, other than that, we know no other expression which shows our confusion and our inability to see beyond the present and into the future. We must eternally look back, and find our visions tempered by vision itself. We cannot differentiate; was it us that had the vision? Or the vision is something other than us, and pulls us along into the unforeseen future, which some people like to call nostalgia. Are we the one looking at, or the ones being looked at? And so, we forget the bones we exhumed, and the progress towards progress, without ceasure; without destination. We bounced to and fro; and if we should fall and disappear, someone else will take our place, jumping and falling as if we were never gone.

The pursuit of a nation is manifested rigorously as deferments, as if we could seperate our narratives into chapters. Singapore is disappearing; or Singapore is appearing as something utterly unrecognisable. It is simultaneously the work of a creative imagination, a staged cabaret set, and a mourning for a loss. It constructs the technological house in which personal memories and narratives reside partially and grudgingly move on. The National Parade must loop its national narrative annually, playing itself in slow repetition, reducing each event to technological pyrotechnics. The National parade must materialise the nation’s pledge to be united and yet it reduces its materiality into flames and fleeting sparks. The performance undoes the knot that ties the bonds together. The house of Singapore will continue to perform a home for its citizens - and the homes of Singaporeans will continue to reinvent the house of Singapore.



If we were to mean what we say/pledge - a democratic society - I suppose we would need to do exactly two things - to democratise and to make a society.

And this democratisation means to destroy our society, even if we are to make a new one; always a new one.

We pledge to destroy/create Singapore.