Oh, and a poem as a special surprise.
On and around the time of my birthday this year, I took a walk around Chinatown and other places. The theme of this year seemed to be "Reminiscence", and I'd had a nice spa massage (courtesy of Citibank and other faces), had a booking at the Yamaha studio where I'd had an hour of piano playing (or attempts at piano playing) to myself, a fabulous dinner with family and a planned day of times (not dates), wandering, reminiscing, getting back in touch with myself.
This is important. Partly because who you are is defined in parts by who you have been, which defines also who you will become. There is a train of thought that one can never truly know who you are until you look back, revere, and finally accept who you have been, that the mirror only shows you images of the past, light reflected on glass into your eyes split seconds after you have become who you are being.
This is also important because as I move in the semi-nomadic life that I lead, travelling and living from places to places, cities to cities, it is easy to lose track of where I have come from, and lose memories of the place where I was born, and gain new, artificial, reminiscent memories of the place I grew up in. So I treked back memory lane, so to speak.
It was quite an adventure.
I'd discovered a poet, whose father was a great Singaporean photographer, once awarded the Photographer of the Century by the Photographic Society in New York. This is apparently great, a century is a long time, and Andrew Yip now spends his time raising awareness of his father's work - antique photographs of Singapore. One photo in particular struck me, a piece called "Singapore River", which shows the mouth of the Singapore river circa 1900's (I think), still chock a block with bum boats and trading houses. The photograph leads the eye along the line of shophouses at Boat Quay, which still remains today, obviously in a different form. The photo must have been taken from a building whose vantage point is lost today, somewhere near the top of where the Merlion now stands I gauge.
Anyway, I looked at it again today, and a poem came to mind. I suppose it captured what I had noticed of the picture when I saw it, from the time I'd set my eyes on it to the experience of having bought the print. [I shall scan a copy and post it on this post for curiosity.]
On 'Singapore River'
The boats are gone now
Carried away in tides of cliche
Policy sifted the river, its waters swelling now
Not with trade but pride, a tourist lure
In twinkling lights along the quay.
The boat house at the corner stands still
A colonial restaurant today,
A mockery of days
Gone by, almost forgotten, except
For this single, astute eye.
"This one very popular, nearly
All of Australia has a copy somewhere."
In that moment then, you reminded me
Of torrential rain, euphemistic showers
In distant faces at distant hours.
No comments:
Post a Comment