day 99

Like all men on this island, I have been a politician; Like all, I've been a slave. Like some, I've been a food critic on a blog page. Like some, I have criticised. But nothing is worth complaining nowadays. The reminders of our inability to write pile up ceaselessly on forums. The same could be said about queues outside lottery stands. We shade - papers that decide our futures. This is also when I like to imagine how the mosquitoes fall like musical notes as we gas them. No, I'm not making a direct reference to Jews "zum Baden". There's a limit to dark comedy here. We don't understand that here. Instead, we believe in "Arbeit macht frei". That is as close as I could get when I think of our affiliations to an altogether forgotten generation. When we disseminate ideas of such to a general press, we restrict ourselves to a impoverished method of self-justification and self-pity and delude ourselves with a future (financial) freedom. To be more precise with my statement: we cherish altogether poor/rich versions of the impoverishment of society. Instead, the papers are dominated by figures, numbers and the occasional disbelief that people can jump into a cage of white tigers.

Indeed, we can. Potentially, we're all in cages of white tigers. Besides white tigers, we can jump into wherever captivities we want. And indeed, we can be front-page news. Frankly, we labour to find some free way of expressing paradoxes as paradoxes. Instead, we go around masking, diligently, the (paradoxical) truths of the quotidian.

The best news are actually the unintended ones:

"AG Woon says there's only one law for both the rich and poor" - 11 Dec 2008

Indeed, there is only one law. Many have discovered, post factum, that all news are meant to be forgotten. In fact, the piles of National Geographic and Newsweek in our storerooms remind us of this mere fact. I'm certainly not inheriting any of these magazines. They rightly go into second hand sales. People tend to be in despair that our generation's vernacularism consists of vulgar idioms. That is not surprising if we consider the "second-hand" inheritance of cultures here. After all, if you cannot master the "Mother" language, you rape your "Mother" in an innovative manner.

If there is a way to exhibit our anguish in the lack of proper journalism, I believe it must be founded on principles of an Emergency State. At least, we could easily discover how there are two opposites - the State and the Resistance. The transparency of our present journalism makes it impossible for the dialectical relation to be played out first-hand. There are too many voices now. There are also too many exhibitionists here. From vulgar musings, intellectual meditations, to codes of law, we often rely too much on useless chatter. Try giving a pen to a single-room flat occupant on financial assistance, and you will be amazed by the quality of poetic literature he or she can conceive. After all, it is not flowery and fanciful language that reflects the tensions of this world. More often, it is a personal vehemence to the unseen forces and the invisible hands that drives us to write the simplest of expressions.

As one old uncle once beautifully reminded me of the One Law:
"等死咯."
(wait to die loh)

It is to admit that one could feel fatigue, cold, hunger and thirst. But we often express our wants as a lack of sex, money, more sex, more money and the lack of luck in the lotteries of life. In a very fatal way, we seem to believe in chance more than any other place in the region!

I can't seem to believe whatever I write or say nowadays. The truth is that inherent in my discourse, is my mistrust that I'm veiling an obvious truth - that is, by stating the obvious which we choose to ignore.

Now, the crux of the matter cannot be postulated (knowing it will somehow be rejected!) by just words alone. After all, how lamentable a tragedy (of Hamlet, Lear, Romeo and Juliet) is, is never judged by the heroes and heroines in the play, but by the ruly plebeians and higher-ups in our society. They strictly and passively behave as they should, and give their rounds of applause to well-done lamentable tragedies performed in costly architectural disasters and symbolically shaped exhibits. We pay to justify that. We pay to forget. I tell you, the actors on this island don't get all the credit!

At the same time, the choice to complain is a useless endeavour. As we begin to express an idea, the idea flees immediately, and we are unable to fully grasp the extent of the argument and its representation of our everyday. Everyday is such a vague concept! I tend to believe that the perpetual construction around us is definitive of our society. This island is vibrantly (and irritatingly) alive and under construction. There is a metaphor in there to be exploited and to chance upon. If I can throw a dice, and earn myself a chance to throw the next, then perhaps, the One Law can divide itself to more laws other than Death. I shall buy myself a chance and integrate my chances into the singular experience of my life. Perhaps, I can then justify my complaint that there are always separate laws for different sections of a class society. If I have a dollar to bet, compared with a million dollars to bet, who will have the higher chance?

To hit the home run, I feel compelled now to illustrate how discourses end with an extravagant flourish (something like fireworks heavily used here) after the prior construction and destruction of stages and sets on this island. It now seems incredulous to suggest that "Arbeit macht frei" is our national pledge when it should be "Meine Chancen machen frei". I can't be sure. Freedom is still at stake here.

Freedom or not, the One Law still applies. But before it can be applied, someone must give birth to us to be part of this integrated resort of an island. If you believe that the island has to be measured from Tuas to Changi, and Woodlands to Esplanade, then you're missing the point. The Emergency State suggests that our movement will be restricted in such an event and the law will free from the clutches of our enemies. As we perpetually try to make the transition over to democracy, we are reminded once again of the rational 3-tier structures in place - I suspect it is Aristotelian in disguise! - that protect us in events of emergency (or what is deemed as an emergency). Democracy at its paradoxical best!

I think, freedom of expression is impossible here. And I don't see how it should be argued for. To be a rational being, one must be founded on an capacity to define rehetoric. And with a formal definition of rhetoric, we can then anticipate our course of action, through character, disposition and argument. I'm convinced, that politics found us as an entity (with a bit of tearing to do!), as much as we found them. The facts can be imagined later to furnish the rhetoric of the discourse. So this island, if you ask me, is full of politicians. We master a bastardised form of rhetoric and performativity and I'm proud of it. It is our vulgarities! Even Lacan must tremble at the mere thought of his symbolic order being satirised by the Hokkien metaphor - which we do not mean it most of the time.

So don't believe a word we say. This island has nothing to say except vulgar expressions. But I am proud of this island - self-parody and irony as manifested as an entire nation is often not a common global phenomenon. We get a lot of Marxian analysts here, but let's stop that Hegelian crap. The Ah Beng is the new philosopher. The Ah Lian is the new poet. They don't work for Capitalism and Democracy. I think they work for a higher cause. They work to live and die. They are entirely aware of their alienated status - as living beings more than slaves of the State. They can be as indifferent as they can get, contrasable to the increasingly frequent and active Agu Casmir and Li Jiawei in our national teams or hand-holding-hand migrant workers that build our fəˈsɑːd. So, with their foreign tongues, the State of Emergency (of bi-polarities) can be declared and we will know what the paradoxes of this island are.

(There is no need for Journalism. They won't read blogs like this.)