Blind man

This was one of the happiest days in my life.

I was in Sec 4. A happy time. I deserved it, partly: first half of sec school was a miserable time, second half was a happy time. Almost as though the time in sec school was a England match under Sven Goran Eriksson. A week or 2 earlier I had hiked halfway across the island from my school to Lim Chu Kang. (Actually we cheated: we hiked to Chua Chu Kang, got lost in Chua Chu Kang because we were using a map that was published before Chua Chu Kang new town got built, and then took a bus to Lim Chu Kang. But such was the flexibility of the moral imagination of teenagers that I still considered myself a real man to have done it.)

That day I attended a half day seminar, and was given time off from school to do it. And it ended early. We were such good boys then, and I even thought that I should go back to school for the last 1 hour, when I decided that, what the hell, I'm going to enjoy life for a little while. Exams had ended and there's no harm in skipping lessons.

At the interchange I met a blind man. He asked to be helped to Toa Payoh interchange. I had time to spare, so I helped him. You couldn't believe how moral education textbook cliched that situation was. But it was alright. Along the way we talked, and one of the things that stuck with me was him saying that women can't be trusted, because he kept on ranting about it over and over. So I helped him up to the feeder bus. (It passes near the school for the blind even though it's a 300 m walk) So it felt alright.

I bought a tape that day. It was Terence Trent D'arby's "Symphony or Damn". I used to spend pocket money (which wasn't that much) on cassettes. Getting them was like buying 4D or betting on football: sometimes they will pay off, and sometimes they won't. Well this one was a great album. Not a masterpiece, just a great album, but you feel happy when things work out.

It was a great period. A lot of music I bought around that period turned out to be successful: "Pet Sounds". "Born to Run". "Ingenue". My struggles at school were over, grades were looking up. Finally getting the discipline to study. In a few weeks I would write a school play and forever cross it off the "things I want to do with my life" list.

But I think it was helping that blind man that made me happy. I think you don't want to help these guys sometimes, it's fear and laziness, not really cruelty. I wasn't cruel back then. It's fear that I might be a goody two shoes. (I'm still afraid of that. I'm really ambivalent about being a goody two shoes.) All those nerdy hao3 gong1 ming2 textbooks. As though it were a Chinese traditional value to be a good citizen - no, people always cared about their family and their clan first. Being a good citizen only came when the commies introduced Lei Feng. Then laziness - too easy to sit back and do nothing.

I wouldn't normally do this sort of thing. I don't always win when I wrestle with my demons. I was carrying a school bag, but my time was free. 1 hour with nothing to do, that should have been spent at school, I gave it to the blind man, and had half an hour left. Maybe I didn't really feel so good about helping him as I felt like I was victorious over my demons. But hey a moral victory is a moral victory.

I shouldn't have told my parents about this. My father wouldn't mind, but my mother told me that I shouldn't listen to what the blind man says about women, "because he's just trying to drag you down to his level". Maybe, but it was around that period of time when I started to realise that my mother talks a lot of nonsense.

I don't know if it's just that blind men who have a deep- seated insecurity of women. Now Stevie Wonder is not only a great musician, but I have reason to believe he's a great guy as well. He's not only blind, but he's a great musician. By "great musician", I mean he's a great singer (3.5 octave range, and sings with great feeling). He's a great harmonica player, piano player, drummer, bassist. You can see the credits in his albums, he usually lists all the players other than himself, and that list is usually very short. He is one of the best songwriters I know, at least in his prime (sadly he was past his peak by 30.) His skill as an arranger is unmatched - I can usually listen to a song and hear all the parts but for his stuff it's all a blur and you can learn a great deal by working out how all the parts fit together.

Now Prince usually gets acknowledged as a genius because he's more flashy, puts on the mantle of a tortured artist, and writes about weird stuff which is inscrutable. He's also a great guy but I think Stevie Wonder has a slight edge because I like his character. He's music reflects a generous spirit. He's not self indulgent and narcissistic like Prince. He writes positive, happy, upbeat music, and you know what? He suffers for it because people's idea of Great Art is that it should be angsty, tortured, screwed up, which is quite unfair. Life's like that - it's terribly unhip to be emotionally unbalanced, at least, in angmoh culture, which is why I am quite ambivalent about being fairly westernised. He's not a gangsta, but that didn't stop Coolio from changing his "Pastime Paradise" to "Gangsta's Paradise". He writes more eloquently about social issues than Prince, even though he doesn't have the gift of sight. How does he do it?

The dark side of Stevie Wonder is, like the other blind man I helped, he doesn't trust women. Ray Charles, that other famous blind pianist, also doesn't trust women either. I wonder if that's something common to all blind men. Like they see a succession of women leave them because they aren't willing to take care of a blind man for long. Like relationships are fraught with peril because you got to see your partner and know how she's taking to the stuff that you're saying.

As evidence I will put up a partial list of Stevie Wonder songs about mistrust of women.
"Summer Soft"
"Ordinary Pain"
"Another Star"
"All in Love is Fair"
"Blame it on the Sun"
"It Ain't No Use"
"you've Got it Bad, Girl"
"Lookin' For Another Pure Love"
"Maybe Your Baby"
"Superwoman (Where Were You When I Needed You)"
"Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer"
"Never Had a Dream Come True"
"'Til You Come Back To Me"