Kennedy Brothers

This is one of the most famous pictures of Barack Obama, immortalised into a poster. But why did this poster look so familiar when I first saw it? Did it remind me of anybody?




Interesting, eh?

The last of the Kennedy brothers has died. Let’s look at the other Kennedys.

Joseph Kennedy, the father
He was always an ambitious person, who wanted his sons to succeed in politics. He himself was the US ambassador to the UK until just before WWII, although he made the fatal mistake of supporting Adolf Hitler.

Joe Kennedy Jr
He was the star of the family since he was young. Always more hardworking and driven by his brothers. He was the family’s best hope to become the president of the United States. Unfortunately during WWII, he was shot down and he died.

John F Kennedy
He was a very charismatic character. Even though he was an indifferent student at Harvard, and he didn’t pass many bills when he was a congressman or senator, there was no doubting that he was very intelligent and hungry for knowledge. He ran for president against Nixon, and won a very narrow victory. As with the victory of Bush 2 40 years later, it was achieved by some voting impropriety, although this wasn’t revealed until much later.

He had his flaws, as is revealed later: he was a serial womaniser, and he also had a whole list of health problems which suggested that even if he wasn’t shot, he would have died young. The fact that he was able to conceal these flaws from the public indicates that the US presidency is very different today from what it used to be like in the past.

But at that time he was a shining hope to millions. He lived in a moment where a lot of Americans were very idealistic about the future. A big generation of baby boomers were young people then, and they identified with the president.

His performance as a president was decidedly mixed: there are people who blamed him for the failure of his attempt to invade Cuba in the Bay of Pigs invasion. The USSR leader, Khrushchev thought he was a weakling and put up the Berlin wall. During the Cuban missile crisis, rash Soviet leaders lead the US and the USSR closer to World War III than any point before or since. But he managed to lead the US out of the crisis, and further moved to improve the relationship with the USSR.

Kennedy was known to have fought for the rights of black people, although it was Johnson who signed the Civil Rights act after the death of JFK.

It’s impossible to tell what he would have done with the Vietnam War. He was president when it could have gone any way. He promised to support the South Vietnam leader, but did not follow through enough on his promise, and the South Vietnam leader was murdered. As it turned out, Johnson, who took over for him, was instrumental in escalating the conflict into a full blown war. But some people suggest that if Kennedy had lived, he might have found some better way to deal with Vietnam.

His death is one of the great unsolved mysteries in the USA. The official explanation, that he was killed by a lone gunman operating alone, is not believed by most people. There were reports that people heard gunshots from a few different places. They caught the only gunman caught, Lee Harvey Ostwald, but soon after that, and live on national television a policeman, purportedly angry about JFK being killed, shot Lee Harvey Ostwald. They never got the chance to question Ostwald about his motives, or who, if anybody, set him up.

JFK had enemies. His brother, Robert Kennedy was the Attorney General, and a great enemy of the mafia. Even more so, since they actually enlisted the help of the mafia

There also exists great controversy about Kennedy about his attitude towards the Cold War, because there is no consensus about whether he is a hawk or a dove. There are some who said that Lee Harvey Ostwald was pro-Castro, and he was shooting JFK to pay back for the Bay of Pigs. There are others who said that JFK was making a tentative rapproachment with other countries in South America, and was planning to seek warmer ties with Castro. The CIA didn’t like that, and they got involved in a conspiracy to have JFK murdered.

The fact that there is no one convincing explanation for JFK’s murder left a sour taste in the mouths of a generation of Americans. They said that the 1960s began with a lot of hope, but for them the death of a leader they loved was the beginning of the disappointment of these hopes.

It was generally felt that Kennedy was still in the phase where he was learning how to become a good president. He did not have very clear objectives, but he had the political skill to overcome a lot of his opponents. But not a sniper’s bullet.

Robert F Kennedy
He was a very strange person. He had two sides, one of them was the angel, who was very idealistic about destroying the mafia. He was one of the toughest prosecutors around. But he was also very vengeful towards his enemies, and for some reason, one of his enemies was LBJ, the vice president and next president of the US.

I had just read the story of Bobby. There are plenty of people out there who believe that there was a conspiracy out there who murdered JFK, and in that book, Bobby was one of them. But he was going to keep quiet about his beliefs until he got elected president, and then he got all the power to do whatever he wanted to do.

He was close to being elected president. He more or less secured the nomination to be the Democratic Party’s candidate for president by the time he was murdered. If he ran against Nixon, he might have defeated him, instead of Nixon defeating Humphrey. A lot of things could have been different. Nixon was president because RFK died, and Johnson was president because JFK died. Both of them were responsible, more than anybody else, for the Vietnam war being what it was.

If you believe some accounts, he was reaching out to the communist countries. He wanted to make peace with Castro, and with the Soviet Union. After all, his brother had almost stumbled onto nuclear war with the Soviets. You just wonder if the world would have been very much different, and the cold war ended very differently, if he got to be president.

Ted Kennedy
Ted Kennedy, the one who died recently, was probably somebody they thought could become a president. But there was a scandal which put an end to all that: he drove somebody home late at night, while drunk, and killed her in a road accident.

Still, he managed to be a long-serving member of the Senate, and managed to make a big impact. There were even some people who proclaimed him to be the most important of the Kennedys. I don’t know about that.

Well, that’s the end of them brothers, I suppose. It’s been a great ride.

I forgot myself

The other day I was at the library in a strange part of Singapore. I found a book that was found in only 2 branches of the NLB, both in equally obscure locations. It was a 600+ page book on the first few years of the Spanish empire. I was itching to read about that one day, so I borrowed that book. Similarly, I saw some other books in that branch that weren’t available in my usual nlb haunts, so I proceeded to get some of those books.

All in all, it was 1 long bus ride to another location diametrically across the central water catchment area from where I lived, then a few stops on a few other nlb branches, and then another long bus ride back. When I got home, I was at first happy about my new pile of books, until I remembered something:

Spending the rest of my life with my nose in a book is not a desired outcome for me.

Instead, I was supposed to do the things that responsible adults are supposed to do. Make money. Make love. Go out and meet people. Read about the world today, not just about books. At the very least, I'm not supposed to add new entries to my "to read" list.

Tiananmen

It’s 20 years later after the Tiananmen incident.

It’s interesting how things in Chinese history are called “incidents”, and named after the date where there were large uprisings. There was the May 4th movement in 1919, in Taiwan there was 28th Feb 1947, and in Beijing there was 4th June 1989.

We don’t call these things “revolutions”. Yes, there were genuine revolutions, like the 1911 revolution in China, actually that was it. The communist revolution in China never was, because what happened was Chiang and Mao fought, and Mao won, that was it. Chinese don’t consider their revolutions are big break from their past, Chinese history has been going on for so long that you cannot have something like a French Revolution in 1789, English Revolution in 1688, American Revolution in 1776, where these were events that symbolised a complete break from the past, and sent shock waves throughout the world.

To be sure, China is modernising and it is vastly different now from, say 221 BC when Qin Shihuang united the whole place. But things happened gradually. It’s a large place, and important things that take place take a long time to influence the rest of China, which is why China rarely has a clean break from the past. That being said, the 30 years from 1978 till now has been pretty dramatic even when you consider that you are comparing this with 4000 years of history.

We don’t call these “incidents” as anything else other than incidents. I think perhaps us Chinese have been around long enough to be very non-judgemental about things. Like when Henry Kissinger asked Zhou Enlai what he thought about the French Revolution, it was almost 200 years later and he still replied, “it’s still too early to tell”. Yes, the shockwaves from that incident in 1789 are still reverberating and the dust has not died down.

I suppose if the Communist party had lost power in 1989 you could call it a revolution. If the uprising does not become a revolution, it is still not a revolution.

The western interpretation of a revolution is something like this: First there is a tyrant who is making peoples’ lives miserable. Then people get together and overthrow the tyrant. After that a new regime is formed which is better in some vague way and which is a better representative of the people.

In particular, the French revolution was notable for an extremely radical point of view. This view is so common nowadays that it is easy to forget how radical it is, and how controversial it still is today: all men are equal.

This is a wonderful idea, but does it work? How does it work out in practice? Does it mean that everybody is given opportunities, but it’s inevitable that not everybody will end up the same? OK, you start a race, and then everybody’s at the same level. Then you end the race, and the best man wins. Sounds good. But this is life, this is not a race that has a beginning and an end. Does equality mean that at the end of every year, we confiscate everybody’s property so that everybody has the same amount of money again? What does equality and fairness mean?

Should all men be equal? We know the result of some social experiments that were performed in communist countries: all the educated and all the smart people, we forced them to do manual labour to understand what real life is all about. But did that make society a better place? Was there progress?

During Chinese New Year, my relatives would make "tang yuan" for everybody. (That's small dumplings filled up with crushed peanuts / sesame / sugar for those who don't know, and they are occasionally also called "ah ball ling"). They come in unequal sizes, and the "deeper meaning" behind all this is that you have to remember that not everybody's equal, and the small guy will inevitably have to give way to the big guy. Inequality in society is an accepted part of Chinese culture. It is ingrained in our society. When you meet a Chinese Emperor, you kowtow to him. When you meet the Queen of Britain, you stand up, and shake hands with her. (OK, this has probably only been true for the few hundred years following the Enlightenment).

So in China you have the very curious sight of a society which has always accepted some form of inequality, and suddenly it's run by a communist. Now in communist societies, everybody's supposed to be equal. But look at what happened: Party leaders became local deities, and Mao himself became the Chinese Emperor. To a smaller extent, Deng Xiaoping is also an emperor. It was hard for people to believe that he was the one who ordered the military action. You always want to believe that it was the prime minister (Li Peng) who was at fault for giving bad advice.

On one hand, we don't need some crazy utopianist ideals where everybody is equal all the time. Sometimes people are lucky, and sometimes they are unlucky, sometimes they are rich and sometimes not. So we tolerate some inequality in life. We only talk about inequality of opportunity, and we want the poor to have equal opportunity to succeed, and the rich to have equal opportunity to fail. But this is ridiculously hard to achieve in practice.

I think that when you call something an “incident” you don’t immediately want to associate it with a certain idea. The people who took part in Tiananmen were protesting against living conditions, probably against unemployment rates and the economy. I’m sure they all had their reasons and motivations, which had little in common with each other, other than a vague dissatisfaction with the government. The communist government made China a very equal society, so they could not have been protesting against inequality.

But they were protesting against living conditions. I suppose all revolutions are really about living conditions, even though on the surface they are all about political ideals. You won’t really complain that your leaders are dictatorial and undemocratic, until your stomach has to go hungry for long enough. Look at Singapore, look at a lot of governments who have been very oppressive, but have survived so long as they did their job. This is the true meaning of human nature. I believe that the real meaning of the French revolution has been missed. The peasants were revolting not because they were under a tyranny, but because the tyranny was screwing up their lives.

I suppose the revolution is something that is very much a part of the Enlightenment, or the Romantic spirit. The image of a mob rising up against their aristocratic oppressors and bringing forth a better and more equal society is a romantic one, not necessarily something that is found in other countries like Great Britain or Germany. Only in France will the aristocracy be so self indulgent and oblivious to the sentiment of the common people. Yet the French also have the talent for organisation that can transform the mob insurrection into something greater, something resembling a state. Only French people are so talkative that everybody, including the common man is philosophical enough to be excitedly chattering away about what Freedom means.

It is also the reason why French schoolchildren every morning have to sing a barbaric song about a mob wanting to rip the heads off a bunch of aristocrats.

Great revolutions have different symbols in different parts of the world. The Russian Revolution was largely seen as a tragedy, something that brought to power a brutal and despotic regime, whose first act was to unleash a great and destructive civil war upon a land that was already pretty fucked up to begin with.

The image of the Iranian revolution is forever associated with 50 Americans being held hostage in an embassy for 15 months, and an angry crowd of Muslim fundamentalists outside, baying for their blood. It is associated with the bloody war against Iraq, the rule of the Ayatollah, and the Fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie for “The Satanic Verses”.

The image of the Mexican revolution is associated with Zorro, the peasant on horseback, draped with bullet belts and sombreros, Indian war cries and pistols fired in the air.

The image of the revolutions that ended the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe are no less arresting. A shipyard worker leading a union against the government. The Berlin wall being knocked down. 300000 Czechs marching down the town square.

I suppose there is something in western culture which romanticises the revolution, in spite of how many revolutions have gone wrong. The Russian revolution is now understood to be a tragedy of vast proportions. Soldiers marching into Phnom Penh in 1975 were not a harbinger of better things to come. The Iranian revolution in 1979 benefitted only a few people. The Chinese revolution in 1911 was the beginning of some of the most chaotic times in Chinese history (although Chinese history is so old that nothing is truly new).

Images form the narrative of the revolution, and our emotions are galvanised by the act. We want to believe that tomorrow will be better. We want to believe that things will always get better. We want to believe that everything will be swept aside in one good session of cleansing. We want to believe that everything is achievable in a short period of time.

When the revolution is over and done with, what has been accomplished? Sometimes the promise of a better life is met, and often not. While writing a play I borrowed the image of a man confronting a tank because I understood the dramatic effect. But what is life really like?

Look at what’s taken place in China – that is a real revolution. This does not excuse the thousands who died in Tiananmen, but it does make the Tiananmen incident look less like a “revolution” and more like an “incident”. People always overestimate what can be done in 1 year, and underestimate what can be done in 10 years. If we disregard the communist connotations for the moment, what has happened in China is that there were a few 5 year plans (or 5 year programs, because a lot of things were done on the fly) If you want to compare what’s been done in China to what’s been done in much of Eastern Europe, the change is very dramatic, and there is a favourable comparison. It’s almost as though Tiananmen was the fake revolution that had to be put down so that the real revolution could take place.

Wacko Jacko

When I was a kid my parents told me about Michael Jackson, who had just released his "Thriller" album some time back. Of course there was something curious about it that I couldn't put my hand on, but later on I figured out what it was. It was the strange fact that the king of pop was black.

In a way, racism was more or less dead for me, from that day. I was an impressionable kid, but I no longer really believed that a black man was incapable of doing stuff that people of other skin colours were capable of doing.

But I'm still a little disturbed by the way that black artists handle fame and fortune. Bobby Brown - drug addict, and pulled down Whitney Houston with him. Sly Stone - the less said the better. Jimi Hendrix - dead. Tupac - dead. Marvin Gaye - murdered by his father. Notorious BIG - dead. So on one hand, there are no differences between a white man and a black man, but on the other hand, there are important diffences - one swims in a sea of mostly white people, and the other one swims in a sea of mostly black people. If people decide whether or not to screw with you, they see first whether you are black or white. Have they figured out how to become a star? Elvis didn't figure it out, the Beatles didn't quite get it at that time. Maybe the black brothers will, someday.

You couldn't say these weird stuff happened to all child stars. Shirley Temple kept her head. Stevie Wonder - you wonder whether he was ever a kid at all because he seemed to be an adult even when he was young. Some people never got over it, not only MJ, but also Beethoven and Mozart.

I had read J Randy Taraborelli’s biography of Michael Jackson, which I sold on to Nat. (Yes, all 650 pages of it) It’s full of interesting detail, a little tabloid-y, and not a few unsubstantiated stories, but the picture that emerges is consistent and disturbing. There is some real psychological insight to his stories. Because, let's face it, Michael Jackson is seriously one mentally unstable guy. You think his face on the "Thriller" video was scary? Look at his real face 25 years later, without the prosthetic nose. Now that is scary.

One line from his book struck me: Michael saying, “it’s not lying, it’s show business.” This sums up everything you need to know about his (non-existent) ability to distinguish fiction and reality.

The man has so many contradictions that it’s fascinating. On one hand, he’s a ruthless businessman, and one of the very few people who can basically fleece Paul McCartney of his profits. On the other hand, he’s done so much for children’s charities. On one hand, he’s got so much discipline to become a great artist, on the other hand he’s such a conflagrate spender. On one hand, as a newspaper describes him, he seems to have lived so many lives before. On the other hand, he really has had only one life – as an entertainer. No proper childhood, a prospect that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

You probably heard about the rumours concerning him living in an oxygen tank. That was actually a stunt that he engineered himself. He thought it would be quite funny to print some bizarre stories about himself. There was no truth to it. But the damage done ultimately was considerable – he started getting known as Wacko Jacko, and the breakdown in trust between him and the media started a cottage industry whereby anything strange he did would be amplified into real weirdness.

There were some funny stories in there, like the time when he got arrested by the LAPD, and they spent 1 day trying to open a huge bank vault in his mansion. When they did, there was only a suitcase containing the combination to the safe.

But there were also stories of his real humiliation, for example how they took of his pants and tried to identify the marks on his dick.

The thing about stardom is that it brings you into the gaze of the entire world while almost completely cutting off contact between oneself and the real world. He almost alienated everybody who worked with him. Lisa Marie Presley, with whom he had a real relationship, and the person who knows both Kings of Pop first hand. Debbie Rowe. Even Elizabeth Taylor. There was a very astute businessman who helped him obtain very lucrative deals, he got cut off too, and to me that was the start of his financial downfall.

He never learnt from his lesson. He was such a strong willed person that nobody could tell him the truth, or to scold him (except maybe Lisa Marie Presley, but in the end she gave up). He still conducted the pajama parties with the kids. He kept on making himself liable to lawsuits. He didn’t understand that it was all wrong, regardless of whether he was really molesting them or not.

Michael Jackson became similar in many ways to the only other person who is routinely called the king of pop, Elvis Presley. Elvis lived in Graceland, Michael Jackson in Neverland. Both became drug addicts – Elvis to pills, Michael Jackson to painkillers. Both ended their lives a recluses, holed up in their hiding places, surrounded by syncopants.

The concluding sentence of that book rings true: you have to wonder how it was that a person who overcame such great odds to achieve such success was unhappy, and you wondered what he must do to achieve happiness in his life.

When I watched the top of the pops for the first time, Michael Jackson was #2, and the Police was #1. The Police are now touring around the world, selling out shows and making plenty of money. That is what Michael Jackson should have become. But even as we mourn his tragic death, we might remember that this could have been the path that he would go down if he had not succumbed to a heart attack.

Don't blame it on the sunshine, don't blame it on the moonlight, don't blame it on the good times, just blame it on the boogie.

Elvis Presley	Michael Jackson
King of Pop	King of Pop
Popularised black music	The first (and possibly last) black superstar
Mawkish socially conscious songs like “In the Ghetto”	Mawkish socially conscious songs like “Heal the World”
Ushered in the age of Rock and Roll	Ushered in the age of MTV
Married Priscilla Presley	Married Lisa Marie Presley
Branched out into cheesy movies like “Blue Hawaii”	Branched out into spectacular long videos like “Thriller” and “Smooth Criminal”
Famous for sexually aggressive dance moves (like swiveling his groin)	Famous for sexually aggressive dance moves (like touching his crotch)
Famous for sequined Las Vegas jacket	Famous for sequined glove
Startling physical transformation between youth and middle age	Shocking physical transformation between youth and middle age
Lived his later years as a recluse in Graceland …	Lived his later years as a recluse in Neverland …
Addicted to pills …	Addicted to painkillers …
Died young (42) of health problems	Died young (50) of health problems

A Double Life - 3

Scene 6

(UE Mall. A is at the side of the stage, at some higher level, looking down at the main area.)

A: Joe's going to give me a total hiding if he knows I'm here again, but I don't care. I need to see him again. I just wonder if he comes down here often enough. I just want to see his face. I just want to know what kind of life he's having. yet at the same time I don't want him to know about me. That must be it, I suppose. Oh, wait, here he comes!

(Enter B and Jennifer, and they go on to sit at a table. They're miming in this scene, because I don't have the stomach to think up of whatever cute and mushy stuff they're going to say to each other, and anyway the audience doesn't have to know anything except that they're rather intimate.)

A: My God they remind me of myself and Jackie when we were starting out. She always had me around her little finger. I'm just wondering what would have happened if I hadn't agreed to take those shots of Eddie. (Lights off except for single spotlight on A. B and Jennifer leave) Eddie, Eddie. He was the guy that I always turned to when I needed help with anything concerning the running of a business. He was an enormously successful businessman himself, and was always busy, but he never hesitated to give me any of his time. Problem was, he was too successful, and there were a number of people who wanted him out of the way. One of them was Jackie's father, Joe. What they did was simply brutal. They set him up with Jackie, knowing that he wasn't the kind of man who would easily turn down a proposition like that. Then they had me stationed under the bridge where nobody could see me. I was a photographer in those days, running my own business. Not entirely successful, but many people knew and liked my work. And there I was, clicking away, and I couldn't tell that it was Eddie that I was shooting at until the film came up.

(Lights back on, enter Eddie. Both of them walk up to the table that B and Jennifer occupied and sit down)

Eddie: Hey, A, what's up? I heard you had some trouble with the business.

A: Well.. I do, but that's not what I really came up to see you about.

Eddie: Well, I gotta tell you that it's really brave for a person like you to be striking out on your own. It's always going to be a real bitch

for you to be competing against all the major studios all on your own, and not everybody's going to appreciate your way of doing things, but .

A: There's something I gotta tell you.

Eddie: Oh, what is it?

A: Uh. it's like . uh .

Eddie: See, that's the problem with you. You just got to be more decisive. It's a jungle out there. People are out there killing each other all the time in the business. You hesitate one time and you're lost. You see an excellent business opportunity, you got to grab it with both hands. You can't really afford to think about how others are going to react to you. Once you've lost the opportunity, it's not going to come knocking again.

A: Actually, that just reminds me ..

Eddie: You've got to see that there's this edge you have over other people. All those prizes you've won in photography. You've got to learn how to use all that for publicity. You may think that it's prostituting your art, and that it's vulgar and it's crude and all that, and I could see your point of view on that, but at the end of the day what matters is that you get the message across that you must have something in you that deserves all those prizes you've won.

A: Yeh, I guess so.

Eddie: Oh, by the way, I just heard that you've just been nominated for another international freelance photography award. Congratulations!

A: Well, thanks.

Eddie: I've been talking a lot, but that's because I'm in such a happy mood. I want to tell you about this hot chick I met at Clarke Quay yesterday afternoon.

A: See, that's exactly the kind of thing that would.

Eddie: Make my day, see, she was like. well, I don't know if I've seen her before, but that's probably got to do with the fact that she's a model. A real hot babe. real intelligent too. (suddenly apprehensive) you're not going to tell my wife, are you?

A: Er . erm . no .

Eddie: Well, heck, no. It was nothing serious, we were just having a little fun. I'd have asked my wife to join in. They'd have got on fine .

A: Oh really?

Eddie: Well, somebody's just paged me . I gotta go. See you some other time. (exits)

A: (to audience) That was the last I ever saw of him. What I did to him was really dishonourable. That was the first time in my life that I ever had to hide under a bridge to take photographs, and although I didn't feel sick at the time, I really do now. All Jackie ever told me was that I was going to take a photograph of a man having a liaison with a woman. She neglected 2 important facts: That she was going to be the woman, and that Eddie was going to be the man. They just wanted to set up some incriminating evidence to get Eddie into trouble with his wife. (Pauses)

After I realised what the pictures actually contained, I wanted to confess to him, but I couldn't. It would sound ridiculous, because I had already done the deed. After they had the photographs publicised, it was the straw that broke the camel's back. His wife had long known about the womanising, but it was still alright that everything was done in private. What followed was a long divorce case and a big alimony payout.

Say what you want but ultimately she was still his first love, and he definitely didn't want it to end that way. It destroyed him. After that he wasn't the same Eddie anymore and his business empire started to crumble. And who did I do it for? What was it all for?

(Enter Jackie. She sits down at the table with him)

Jackie: (rubbing his forearm) Hey, don't take it so bad. I didn't know that he was that close to you. (A is silent) Hey, you want to hear the good news? Father has agreed to pump 100 hundred thousand into your shop. Aren't you happy?

A: (sullen) I can't complain.

Jackie: And in the meantime, he's got us a nice villa in Southern France for our honeymoon.

A: That's nice to . Look. First of all, Eddie was the guy who was helping me through all the rough times, and secondly, I don't at all like what you did with Eddie in those photos.

Jackie: Come now, it was all an act. It was all put on, you know. I didn't like him one single bit.

A: Really? You must have been a really good actor.

Jackie: Well, not really. he did have something there, though . look, why don't you stop thinking about such unpleasant things . I .

A: I can't go on with the business. I can't keep asking for help from your father everytime I run into monetary difficulties.

Jackie: Well, so much the better, then. Why don't you come join in the family business? I'm sure father's dying to have someone by his side that he can trust?

A: Well . I . I'm not very sure if I can .

Jackie: It's alright, everything's going to be fine, I can assure you .

A: I hope so, it'll be good for the 2 of us . (Jackie gets up and leaves. A addresses audience) So, I suppose, that's how it all began for

me. Hold on, someone's coming . (hides in the same place where he witnessed B and Jennifer. This time, B and Jennifer's father, John come in.)

John: I understand that you want my daughter's hand.

B: Yes, we are very much in love.

John: Very much in love . That's just so like my Jennifer. She can convince anybody that she's very much in love with him.

A: I can't make out a word they're saying . but this so reminds me of the time when Joe was telling me I had to set-up someone in order to gain his approval.

B: At least . Jennifer's . agreeable to it.

John: Yes, yes, that is true . but . I'm not as easy as Jennifer is to convince. I need to know . more about you . you have to do something that convinces me that you're worthy.

B: What could it be?

John: This is a public place . well, come, I'll give you a ride, and I'll tell you along the way. (both exit)

A: I can see it so clearly now, he's walking in to the same trap that Joe set for me. He'll get tricked into betraying a friend, he'll leave the life he loves, and he'll find that he doesn't really care that much for his wife and her life anyway. I've got to tell him something . but what will I tell him? What can I say? I can't tell him anything about Joe and Jackie. It's insanity. It's courting death. What the hell, he'll have to learn it the hard way, just as I had to learn it the hard way. It's none of my business, anyway. None of my business .

Scene 7
Dim lighting, warehouse. The smuggling operation is being carried out. A is there, overseeing the procedures. Workers are carrying boxes in and out of a warehouse.

A: (to worker 1) You keep a lookout on that sector (points to stage right) I'll keep a lookout with mine. (Stands watch over stage left) Jennifer walks in from stage left, and at a certain distance away from the warehouse, she pretends to trip and fall.

A: Hey, I'll go see what's going on.

Worker 1: You be careful, boss. I suspect it might be a trap.

A: I think she's fallen badly and she needs help. (goes over and looks at her. Murmurs .) God, she's beautiful.

Worker 1: Guys, we'd better hurry up. I don't feel good about all this.

A: Yes, you guys go hurry up .

(Enter B, at the side of the stage left).

B: I'm not sure what this guy really wants from me, but I've got to do this for Jennifer's sake. (Starts clicking away. ) This is the first time I've had to take a picture from hiding. It's not very comfortable here under the bridge. (Click a few times) Now I've got to get up close and take a few faces.

Jennifer: Oh, it hurts very badly . I was just going home, and it's so dark in here .

A: What can I do to help, miss?

Jennifer: I've sprained my ankle, I'm afraid. It'd really help if you'd massage my ankle like this

A: Like this?

Jennifer: No, a little higher up . Oh, that really feels so good . Oh .

oh, I've got a cut somewhere there. Would you mind finding me a plaster?

A: A . plaster? Sure. (Fumbles through his pockets) I haven't got one with me right now . Hold on, I think there's a first-aid kit somewhere .

(goes over to warehouse. Jennifer gives B the signal and he sneaks up behind A as his back is turned. Worker turns around and sees somebody behind A)

Worker 1: Hey, who's that behind you?

A: Wha . (turns around, and B flashes the camera in A's face) I can't see! What the hell's going on? (B starts clicking away a few more times, and then runs away)

Worker 1: (points to 2 other workers) You two, go after them (they comply, as both Jennifer and B leave.)

A: Abandon operation! Abandon operation! (Some police sirens in the background. Workers scramble around trying to dispose of the evidence.) This is a set-up!

Scene 8
Same setup as scene 1, except that both A and B are sitting behind tables. Only a red spotlight on B. B is developing negatives.

B: (Holding up a developing print to the light) It's him, oh my God it's him. Who would have thought . My God, what have I done? (Off spotlight on B. Stage lights on A. Prisoner's visiting day. Jackie enters.)

A: (Brightening) Oh, it's you.

Jackie: (slaps A) All because of another woman? You made me a prison widow all because of a woman?

A: How was I to know?

Jackie: Of course I know what it was like. You got waylaid by her. The fact that you were susceptible to these kinds of tricks is practically the first thing I learnt about you.

A: I mean . I . it wasn't entirely my fault.

Jackie: No matter. I just wanted to hear it from you that you let yourself get waylaid by a pretty vixen.

A: Well, I did . it was just a moment of weakness, could you just .

Jackie: Right. Now that we've got that out of the way, I've got no business being in this wretched place, WIMP.

A: No. No, don't leave me now. Not when I need you more than ever .

Jackie: Don't worry about me, darling. I'll be just fine . probably seeking out better specimens of male company than what you'll be getting

in here. Bye. Don't expect me to drop by anytime in the near future. (leaves) (Stage left darkens. Stage right lights on)

B: (Linda walks in) Take a look at this . it's actually him.

Linda: Can't you stop them from .

B: Too late. They've already sent the copy of the prints to the police. There's nothing I can do now . to think that he's actually involved in all this .

Linda: You've done a terrible thing .

B: Yes. but I did it for the woman of my dreams . the woman of my dreams

. (Lights off. End of play.)

A Double Life - 2

Scene 3

B has a camera, is taking pictures of Jennifer. With every flash of the camera, Jennifer changes her pose.

B: There you go, relax, lean a little to the right. OK (camera flash)

Jennifer: Do I look alright? Is this sash on too tight?

B: No, it's just fine. (click)

Jennifer: Do you know what I like about being a model?

B: Well, I've never had anybody ask me that question before. (click)

Jennifer: Really? Not even one out of all the other models you've worked with? And how many have there been?

B: I've been in this line for almost 10 years. (click)

Jennifer: That's a lot of models, I suppose.

B: Not really, I only started photographing models around 5 years ago. (click)

Jennifer: That's still a lot of them.

B: Oh, well, maybe. (click)

Jennifer: So how many are there?

B: Dunno, fifty to sixty, I suppose. (click)

Jennifer: That's quite a lot..

B: Well, that's a fair number (click)

Jennifer: Considering that you've almost definitely had more than a few session with some of them.

B: Yes, that's right (click)

Jennifer: So. back to our question. Have any of them asked you that?

B: Asked me what? (click)

Jennifer: You know. what's so great about being a model.

B: Well. I don't know. I never really thought bout it. (click)

Jennifer: You've been in the company of many beautiful girls, have you?

B: Most of them look pretty good to me. (click)

Jennifer: Just pretty good?

B: Some of them are a little more than pretty good. (click)

Jennifer: And the very best of them? (here, she strikes a pretty provocative gesture. B is getting a little hot under the collar)

B: Well, a few of them have been really beautiful. (a beat, then click)

Jennifer: (getting closer and closer to him. From here on, her poses get more and more provocative, and we can see that she's actively out to seduce him) And the really beautiful ones. what do they make you think about?

B: What? (click)

Jennifer: Doesn't it get to you? Every other week, taking pictures of beautiful women for men to ogle at, for women to envy, and you getting a piece of the (click) action first hand. doesn't it get to you?

B: (trying to sound calm and amused) What are you talking about? I'm a professional. I just try to make you as attractive as I can.

Jennifer: (now practically sidling up to him) Attractive to whom? (click) And you still haven't answered my question. What's so wonderful about being a model?

B: Well, I dunno.. never been on that side of the camera before.

Jennifer: It's the thought that somebody out there thinks that I am beautiful. I am beautiful, am I not? (here she starts to undo her sash, and wraps it around his neck. A slight pause, then B takes the camera away from his face, and starts gawking at her. The camera goes off, breaking him out of his daze)

B: Well. rather, in fact I think you're rather.

Jennifer: Do you? Well, I've been a great admirer of your work. I do think it makes me that much more charming that such a . fine man like you would be . thinking of ways . and means . to make a girl such as myself appear more . (loosens her blouse) One just wonders what's going through his mind . all this time .

B: (jaw drops) I . just think . you're very beautiful. Very. veery . in fact, you would be even more beautiful, if you would care to stand over there, so I could .

Jennifer: Could what? I just wonder what it is you possibly could want from me . Oh, could you help me with this zip at the back, please.

B: (rather unsteady) well, what do you want with it?

Jennifer: What do YOU want with it? All the way up. or all the way down..

B: (a tense pause, then calls out to backstage) Guys, I think we can pretty much call it a day now. (Enter make -up artists, lighting crew, basically a lot of people we didn't know were there at the start of the scene. Fade away lights, except for a single spotlight on B, for a little while, then off spotlight).

Scene 4

Joe: Where have you been these past few days?

A: Nowhere in particular .

Joe: Rubbish nowhere in particular. You've been out in public, running the risk of being followed, have you?

A: Well, considering that I've stayed away from the incriminating areas all this time.

Joe: Well, yes. I mean . UE square. I can't see how that's got anything to do with the stocking operation.

A: Neither can anybody else who's been following me around these few days. I've been absolutely careful that nobody's been following me around.

Joe: You're a fool. Anybody who opens himself up to unnecessary risks a few days before a major operation is an absolute fool.

A: I'm sorry, father.

Joe: And I can't really understand why you've been going there so much these day. (pause) You aren't seeing anyone else, are you?

A: You know as well as anybody else I've been absolutely faithful to Jackie all these years.

Joe: That's right. but . you know, I've spoilt her a lot . she's got a way with people that you can't say no to .

A: I know what you mean.

Joe: I mean, you know the number of people who have been coming after her even before you've come along.

A: Not to mention the number of "friends" she still has around her . You set her up to this, didn't you?

Joe: Set her up to what?

A: Your very own daughter. you asked her to come on to me just so that you could use me to get rid of Eddie . ?

Joe: Well, what do you think? You already knew it from the onset.

A: Doesn't mean that it was right. I just ruined another person's life because of her. And it wasn't just another person, it was one of the closest people to me .

Joe: Well, a lot of it was in your hands. You could have turned us down.

A: It was not my idea to have done it to him. You set me up in the first place.

Joe: Come, come now, that's water under the bridge already, isn't it? Whatever it is, why don't we rid ourselves of unnecessary distractions and start concentrate on the upcoming operation?

A: Well, I'm not very sure that. (Jackie comes in)

Jackie: Father. wait till you hear what A's just got me.

Joe: (laughing) what? (to A) See? You're just as responsible as I am for spoiling my little girl.

A: (embarrassed) She wanted it so much.. (Jackie shows a large diamond ring on her finger)

Jackie: Isn't it great, father?

Joe: (still laughing) Oh, my son. one of these days.. (slaps him on the back)

A: Anything to make her happy.

Joe: It must have cost you a fortune..

A: It did .

Jackie: I can't believe he actually did that for me.

Joe: Just goes to show how much he can't do without you. (Jackie gives A a big kiss)

A: (brightening, blushing) well. he's right you know.

Jackie: (girlishly) You've just made me the happiest girl in the world.

Joe: (amused) Until she sees the next piece of jewellery she likes. well I'll just leave you two young and happy people to your own. I've got other things to do.

A: Yeah.

(Joe leaves. Sound of door closing behind him.)

Jackie: Isn't this wonderful? (kisses him again.)

A: Yeh.. Tell me, Jackie. Do you love me?

Jackie: Well, what a funny question to ask. of course I do. Otherwise I wouldn't have gotten married to you, would I?

A: Do you truly, truly love me as much as I love you?

Jackie: What are you talking about? What's on your mind?

A: I . was just thinking about . what we did to Eddie ..

Jackie: Why should you? It's all over and done with, isn't it?

A: How you just threw yourself all over him .

Jackie: Come, now. you knew as well as I did that it was just an act. I did it for you, remember? I did it for us.

A: Us? What do you mean you did it for us? Eddie was one of my mentors in the business. He was the one who taught me everything I knew about running my business.

Jackie: (gleefully) some mentor, eh? You were the one who brought him down in the end. And moreover you didn't seem to be doing very well yourself up till then.

A: He helped me all he could. Moreover, how was I to know it was him? I couldn't see his face from where I was . And I couldn't see the face properly until I had the negatives developed.

Jackie: (laughing) That was so long ago. I didn't think that you'd ever bring it up again.

A: All the same, I really felt cheated. Remember how we met?

Jackie: What's all this got to do with how we met?

A: I can't shake off the nagging feeling. What you did with him when I was taking those photos . so suspiciously similar to that time I had my photo shoot with you.

Jackie: (Suddenly furious) What are you trying to imply? How can you compare yourself with him?

A: Well if you could try it on me, and you could try it on him..

Jackie: Is that what it all comes down to? That I'm some kind of a cheap

slut throwing herself into every other man who comes along?

A: Well, how the hell was I supposed to know? Considering that how it started .

Jackie: How it started was how it started! Are you just going to discount 4 years of married life together just because of how it began? Just because I happened to take a fancy to you during a photography session?

A: Well God knows if .

Jackie: What do you mean by that? You're telling me I was leading you on all this time? Well (taking the diamond ring and throwing it on the floor) you can take this back, since obviously it doesn't mean anything to you.

A: Well, what I actually wanted to say was that..

Jackie: I've never been this insulted in my whole life!

A: You've never been this insulted? You should have known that I'd bring this up sooner or later. God knows why I waited so long to muster up the courage to say this to you. You'd know you had to remove this lingering doubt from the back of my mind eventually.

Jackie: What's there to clarify? I've done so much for you, can't you see? What would you be doing nowadays if I didn't ask father to look after you?

A: So now you're implying that it was merely due to your father's influence alone that had me placed on the board of directors? So what does that make me, a fortune hunter?

Jackie: How should I know what you were really after?

A: After all that I've done for your father .

Jackie: Or should I say. what you've actually done for yourself. Well, think about it. It takes 2 hands to clap. Nothing would have happened at all if you didn't decide to join in. You played your part in all this and there's no turning back or putting the blame on me for this. (Storms out)

(As usual, lights out except for spot on A, then off spot.)

Scene 5 (Spotlight on B as B walks into the stage, he finds a chair and sits down)

Linda: (as yet unseen) You're still thinking about her, aren't you?

B: Wha.? (rest of lights on, and Linda's sitting there)

Linda: You're still thinking about that woman, aren't you? That Jennifer.

B: Well, it happens that I am. So what if I am?

Linda: I think you're getting obsessed with her. Just because she came on to you like that.

B: Come off it. the girl's just being playful.
Linda: You think about her all the time. You'd do anything for her.

B: . so what if I am?

Linda: Don't you think any decent girl would think twice before coming on to another guy like she did on you?

B: Like it or not, we're going steady now.

Linda: Alright, alright, just teasing you. Well I got some serious business to talk to you. It's about the accounts.

B: We're still in the red, aren't we?

Linda: Yes, we are. Things aren't going that well with this business. This is the third straight year.

B: I know things are bad, Linda, but .

Linda: We'll have to close shop in a couple of months if things don't work out. It's really bad. This is probably going to be real cruel to you, knowing how much you like photography.

B: I could always go working for someone else..

Linda: It's not the same. And you know it, you're always so used to having things done your way.

B: Well I gotta go. I just came to drop off something.

Linda: Where're you off to?

B: (smiling) I got a date with Jennifer at UE Mall.

A Double Life - 1

I'm mulling over whether to join the 24 hour play writing competition again. I joined in 1999 and 2004, and thought, "once in 5 years is not too bad" but I'm not sure. It doesn't please me at all to think about whether I'm less creative now than I was as a kid.

I’ve always wanted to post the play I wrote in 1999. Time really flies, it’s 10 years later now. There are some parallels: in this play, A is the older version of B. Because of some time warp, they are living in the same physical space. 10 years ago, I was in the same position as B, thinking about my choices in life. Now, I’m in the same position of A, thinking about the choices that B made 10 years ago.

I was lucky that the premise came to me very early on. The game master said in a throwaway remark, “try to incorporate the stimuli into the play. Don’t just make it happen once. Twice is even better.” A bulb went off in my head: a play where everything happens twice! The same life lived twice over!

I had recently watched “the Double Life of Veronique”, about twins living different lives in different countries. It was an intriguing prospect. I had named the play “A Double Life” in explicit reference to that. But I had made a variation on the theme: This was twin brothers, 10 years apart.

The plan that I had (and at that time I only knew about the first stimulus, the UE square Mall) was that I would write a play about a person looking back at his former self, and reflecting upon his life. I had already decided that the central theme of my play was going to be karma. It was a favourite theme of mine. Yes, there are a few coincidences but otherwise everything that happens happens for a reason. Shakespeare's plays were about karma and in a way that influenced me. A quote I pulled about Shakespeare: A.C. Bradley argues," the playwright always insists on the operation of the doctrine of free will; the (anti)hero is always able to back out, to redeem himself. But, the author dictates, they must move unheedingly to their doom." That is an approach I have also tried to take.

The miracle was that I was able to work all the stimuli into my play without having to deviate from that basic plan. First, if you are going to enter one of these competitions, common sense tells you that you put the physical setting of your play to be the same as the location of the competition, since the physical location is the source of most of the clues. Still, some things were unexpected, like the plaster. I was lucky that I could fit that in, whereas somebody might just run out of ideas. Still, no matter how many plot twists I had to put into the play to incorporate the clues, the basic shape was sound. A person, going through life, reflecting on his mistakes, and making mistakes. I never had to change that.

There was a fair amount of amusement at reading this again. I was a little surprised that I managed to come up with all these ideas in 24 hours. I knew that I only managed to win something because I wrote the best play I had ever written. (OK, the second best play: that one I wrote in school has a special place in my heart.) I’m also surprised at how horny I was at that time.

(the following is an email to my sister)

I wonder if I told you that I joined the 24 hour play writing competition. It was OK... just a bunch of people sitting together for 24 hours and getting totally sick of each other at the end of it.

For me the real fun began when I was about to hand up the play. We were all given a floppy disk each and were told to save our play on it, and they would print out a copy of the play. 2 hours from time, we were told that there was to be no handing up during the last 2 hours, in order to prevent chaos and confusion. I deemed my play finished / irrepairable by that time but by the time I had finished fumbling with the ejection, the handing up process had closed. I was pissed off, naturally, having been denied an opportunity to go home early, but at least I had the thing ready on disk and I was waiting for 4 o'clock to arrive.

Suddenly I remembered that I forgot to format the script, so I just popped in the diskette, did the formatting. But when I wanted to get the diskette out, the button came stuck. PANIC! People were hovering around me, offering helpful advice, screaming into walkie-talkies, tearing their hair out. I being I at the eye of the storm was in zen calmness. Fortunately for me there was a cyber-cafe nearby and I popped in to borrow their facilities. I emailed a copy of the play to myself, retrieved it one of their computers, and copied it onto a diskette.

So now that we got that out of the way, what dey do is to give us 5 stimuli at 4 hour intervals and we would write a play incorporating these 5 stimuli and mostly be happy that the insanity was over. The 5 stimuli were:

1 One day in UE square mall (to be quoted in verbatim at the start of the play)

2 Under a bridge (they drove us under a bridge in a bumboat for that stimulus. We could incorporate anything that had to do with being under a bridge.)

3 A wedding of some sort had to be in the play, or made reference to.

4 A warehouse (they brought us to one which used to be for holding tea leaves, and now contains lots of canned food)

5 A plaster. (The first aid appliance, not the building material)

The thing:

A Double Life
Scene 1
A and B take up positions on stage left and stage right respectively. All is dark save for one spotlight each on both A and B.

A: One day at UE Square shopping mall I saw somebody who looked just like me. What he was dressing, what he was carrying, his manner of walking. unmistakable. But as I turned to call him..

B: I turned around and I thought that there was somebody calling after me. I looked around and I couldn't see what was wrong. But there was this figure.. I could have sworn..

A: I disappeared behind a pillar and hoped that he did not see me.

B: But I caught a glimpse of him. I wanted a second look, but he was gone or something. No, he wasn't gone. He was still there. I knew it. He was just there, hiding away from me..

A: I didn't know if he was still there, but I definitely had the feeling..

B: I don't know if he knew I was watching him. I wanted to see if he was coming up again..

A: I couldn't get up. I knew that if I got up, that would be it, he would see me, we would see each other, and then he would come over and..

B: I wanted to get to know him better. I would've come up to him and say, "Hi, I'm..

A: Mr So-and-so, he would want to know how I was doing, and he'd come and ask about.

B: I'd wanted to know if he had his wife and kids ..

A: But I didn't want him to know, so what I did was I waited.

B: So I walked up to the pillar..

A: And I made a dash for it.

B: And I saw him make for the car-park.

A: I didn't look back to see if he was still there..

B: And I gave chase..

A: Yet when I got into my car.

B: It was there and then that I got a glimpse of him. I was..

A: I nearly ran him over. He was right in my path. I stopped just in time...

B: And when I got to the side of the car..

A: I sped off again. Just like that. I don't know if..

B: I wished I took down his number. I was just so stunned. There wasn't much light, but I was pretty sure that.

A: How could there be anybody who looked so much like me? I wanted to know if there were somebody.

B: He was just like me from the outside! I thought I was looking into a mirror.

A: But I couldn't bear him knowing about me. That was just not right.

B: What could he have to hide away from me? It was a big car. A great big volvo..

A: Sure. I wouldn't really mind knowing about him.. But at that time.

B: He must have seen me. he must have been avoiding me for the very same reason that I wanted.

A: I don't know. I just couldn't. Something inside me said..

B: But that guy.. his car.. What I wouldn't give to be in his shoes.

(Exit B, enter A's wife, Jackie)

Jackie: Hey, you're back early!

A: (flustered, struggling to regain his composure) Well. I couldn't find

that piece of antique furniture that you were talking about. There wasn't much else to do there but.

Jackie: And you did drop the suit over at the laundry, didn't you?

A: Well. I. it must have slipped my mind or something.. Shall I..

Jackie: well, doesn't really matter. It's probably closed by now. Are you alright. you're not your usual self lately. I got the maid to prepare some chicken soup for you.

A: I'm fine, actually. And nothing's the matter.

Jackie: All the better that you're alright, and nothing's wrong with you. There's the stocking operation that's coming right up, and a lot riding on it's outcome. I dunno about you, but father said . (A bristles at the mention of her father and turns away) . hey, are you listening to me? Father said that there're a couple of very capable new people around right now, and any one of them could displace you as the next favoured man. It's all up to you to prove to father that you've still got what it takes.

A: I know, I know. The stocking operation is really my problem and not..

Jackie: How can you say that it's not my problem? I always get worried sick about you all the time. I haven't a problem with father. He's been at it long enough to know when to start another operation and when to lie low. But I think all the time about what would happen if they were to catch you and throw you in. Who's going to pay off the installments for our properties in Johor?

A: You can't always expect things to go your way all the time, right?

Jackie: Is that what you're going to tell me when they throw you in? What's the matter with you? You didn't always use to be this way. You were always the most alert one, the most willing to learn. Now look at you . How are we going to upkeep our way of life if you are just going to spend the rest of your life getting the meagre cut of the profits, if you don't eventually inherit father's position? Take away the monthly installments on all the furniture we have, all of Sam and Jane's tuition, we're not very rich at all.. How about having to pay the Chauffer and the gardener every month.

A: All right, all right. I get your point. there's no need to get so upset. Just leave me alone now, alright? I've got a lot on my mind already..

Jackie: OK. But I just had to remind you about what's it like out there. (turns coquettish, sits down behind A, wraps her arms around him) You go there, do a good job, and don't let me down, alright?

A: (simmering down) OK. I'll see what I can do.

Jackie: Remember, father still thinks very highly of you, even though you nearly screwed it up the last time.

A: Yes. don't remind me about that right now.

Jackie: Alright, I've got to fix dinner right now. (exits.)

(Lights off, except for spot light on A, he's in a thinking position.)

A: Why did I run away? Why would it have bothered me if he asked me about my life? I couldn't tell him I was married to a daughter of a bootlegger, I could lie, but he would look into my eyes and tell me immediately that I was lying to him. But I gotta know more about him . I'm going to find out more . I have to know what it's like being him if he hadn't gone the same way as I did. (Off spotlight.)

Scene 2 B and his friend and colleague, Linda are talking at the photoshop, eating canned food.

Linda: More peas?

B: (mouth full of baked beans) Oh, it's alright. (Swallows his food) So I couldn't understand it. Why did he want to run away just as he was about to see me?

Linda: He was probably too freaked out by what he saw.

B: Oh, I freak people out, is that it?

Linda: Hey, you got to consider that he's someone who looks just like you. I'm surprised you didn't get freaked out at all. I would have thought it was really creepy.

B: Well, I didn't really give a second thought to it. But I was really really curious to have a second look at him, just to see what he was like.

Linda: Most likely he got scared off by you. Can you imagine what it's like having the shock of seeing your doppelganger compounded by having him run after you on sight?

B: Hey, I only really noticed him when he started dodging away from him. That was when I first realised that something fishy was going on.

Linda: So, what made you want to go chasing after him?

B: I. don't really know. was it recognition? I just had to go see what he was like, I mean, someone out there, who's just so much like me, I just had to know about the life that he's living.

Linda: But you don't even know what he's like on the inside. All you know is that on the outside he just looks and walks a little bit like you.

B: That's not all, alright? He was like, you know, the very splitting image of me. And anyway, whatever's a person like from the outside, it's a manifestation of what he's like on the inside. That's the first principle of photography. Everytime I take a picture of another guy, I'm not only capturing his outward appearances, I also uncover something about his soul.

Linda: That's true. That's what taking pictures is all about.

B: And if you have 2 people who really look alike, talk alike, walk alike, I suppose deep down, they do really have something in common. After all, it's what's inside of you that finds its way to the surface of a person.

Linda: But we're only talking about stuff like facial expression, body language.

B: That's what I mean, you see? Eventually the kinds of expressions you have on your face are going to shape what your face will look like eventually.

Linda: Well . that's true. We're having canned peaches for desert today

B: That's a rare luxury.

Linda: So suppose you were going to meet him. What're you going to say to him?

B: Well, we'd sit down and share my life experiences. Maybe we're fated to go through the same kinds of experiences together, but I may have gone through something he hasn't yet gone through, so I could tell him about my experiences, and maybe we could.

B: All that canned food .

Linda: That's all we can afford. We're going to have to cut down on the living expenses. I'm down to my last thousand dollars.

Linda: Well.. (looks at how B's fixing up his equipment) who're you fixed up to shoot today?

B: Jennifer (fill in your own last name)

Linda: Oh, wow, you actually got her.

B: Well, she's .

Linda: Just merely the hottest model around today. Plus she's the daughter of some rich trading company's chairman.

B: Ho.. I didn't know that last bit.

Linda: So you're in good company, aren't you?

B: Well. every model's just a pretty face to me.

Linda: Yah right.

(B finishes packing his equipment, and both him and Linda start walking off the stage)

Reading

I’m going to stop reading books for a while and see what happens. There’s this website where I logged down the number of books I’ve read. I’m about to hit the figure of 500.

There’s nothing wrong with spending a good part of your youth reading books. Everybody knows that male 20-somethings get kicked around like footballs. Women think that you’re stupid. Whereas if you look older they’re more likely to believe what you say, so long as you have that gravely voice. Even if you’re talking shit all the time.

I always was a slow reader. I put that down to my attention deficit disorder. My stream of thought is always highly non-linear. I can begin with point A, and end with point B, but my stream of thought from A to B could be 10 different paths. That’s OK, because it makes me more creative. But it’s a nightmare for people who have to follow that train of thought. Well, sorry, guys. So if there’s a page of words in front of me, and they have to go that way, it’s hard for me to tame my head and ask it to please follow that book.

OK, from young my parents did the right sort of things to me, read to me and stuff, and I also read books, although not many. I think they’ve always wanted me to read a lot of books, but I was never a good reader. I used to bluff my parents, they’d ask me what the book is about, I memorise the blurb, read 1 chapter, and pretend I’ve read everything.

There were other people getting ahead of me and everything. Perhaps it’s also that I never got the books that I was interested in. I never read enough books, never mastered the skill of finishing an entire book. If you put a 3-400 page book in front of me, I would probably take 6 months to finish it.

I didn’t really like the arts subjects at school. They were the big pains in asses because they involved so much rote memorising. They weren’t like the science subjects where you memorised the underlying logic, and suddenly the number of questions you could answer was unlimited. When I studied for my ‘O’ levels, I spent half of my time on 2 subjects – Geography and Literature. And this may surprise you guys – I only studied sample questions for the “Merchant of Venice”. I have never read the thing all the way through.

Yes, at this time I was a playwright. I merely pricked up my ears when my literature teacher was explaining to the class about literary devices. I watched TV and I saw how plots worked. I didn’t become a playwright by reading books because I hardly ever did that. Reading books does not make you a playwright. The ability to think and synthesise ideas does.

And in JC, I never really needed to read. I aced all my subjects at the ‘A’s, although I must remind everybody that around 1000 people of each cohort do that every single year. At the same time, I was intrigued by the people from the Arts stream. They seemed to be so much more fluid, confident and articulate. Of course, in the end I feel the way that scientists and engineers think is a great asset, even though it doesn’t get easily expressed.

At the same time, though, my sister started accumulating a huge amount of books. I think maybe her literature teacher was more inspiring than mine was. I had a literature teacher who genuinely cared for her subject and her students but at the same time she was too much of a misanthropist for anybody to ever like her very much. Seeing all those volumes somewhat fascinated me. I tried to read some novels, but I was such a slow and laborious reader. And I suppose that literature is still not a favourite subject of mine because I don’t really read novels well. Let’s make a distinction between literature and writing plays. In the former, you’re supposed to be good at listening to stories. In the latter, you’re supposed to be good at telling them. Being good at one is no guarantee that you’re good at the other.

Still, I persevered. I tried to read Henry James. A big mistake, I think. It took me forever to get through “Wings of a Dove”. Other books like “Catch 22” were easier. I didn’t catch what was going on in “Crime and Punishment”.

I ended up attending a good university. Some others may have slogged all their lives to end up there, I found myself there almost by accident. Although my major was Maths, I took the liberty to just indulge in anything that fascinated me. Looking back, this may not have been the best idea because there are some people out there who will never understand why I never focused on Just One Thing and made myself Very Good at it. Those people will never understand why I valued a broad education so much that I was willing to sacrifice depth for it.

Whatever it is, I ended up taking up a lot of reading courses. It was just as well that I was in a place with a very inhospitable climate, because I spent plenty of time indoors, just trying to get through a paragraph of inscrutable words. It was craziness. I had to endure mediocre grades for a few semesters, until magically 1 semester onwards, I just got an “A” or “A-“ in every arts subject I took on. Considering that there is grade inflation in the US unis, this is not fantastic. But I managed to take on and master a skill.

Suddenly, the written word changes its appearance. A 2-300 page book used to look like a wall, then it started looking like a garden hedge, and after that, a hurdle you just jump over. Years later, I would experience the same with running. First 5 km seems like more than enough running for a day. Eventually, the first 10km of your super long run seems to pass by without much thought.

And at the same time I was introduced to a whole world of ideas. My brain became the equivalent of a hot chick who had started growing tits. I delved into the great ideas. I took a course from every subject because the first course you take is the most difficult one, and the one that introduces you to the great ideas. I liked it. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, that was around 10 years ago, and one of those times in my life when I was truly happy.

After I graduated I knew a little from many different subjects but there was never enough time to flesh it all out. I kept plugging away, reading. Hoping one day that it would be useful to me. I don’t really know if it ever would. Maybe I knew, eventually that all my ideas would come head bang against reality. Or even sooner than that, my ideas would come head bang against my very limited ability to spread them to the wider world.

I spent a lot of time reading. First I read the books that I wanted to read. Then in the end, when they spilled onto the floor, I read the books so that I could clear some space for myself in my room. I think, today, I have spent the last 2-3 years reading. As in, when not working, eating or sleeping, reading. Reading in the MRT, in the toilet, even in the kopitiam when an EPL match is on, during the 89 minutes of the match when goals are not being scored.

It’s so easy to convince yourself that there’s something to reading. It feels like real work. You can tell yourself this is not idling (even though when you do it on a scale that I do it, it is). You can tell yourself, you don’t really know when it’s going to be useful. Even though, when you discuss the knowledge from your books with people, more than 90% of the time you will get blank stares. Unless that book is the bible or Harry Potter, more than 99.9% of the people would not have read what you are reading.

I could kid myself that a lot of the knowledge I got is relevant. In a way, I do read less arcane subjects. But it’s a slippery slope. I could read about the world economy in the 19th century and kid myself that it’s relevant. I could read about poverty in Africa and kid myself that other people would be interested. I could read about the invention of the internet and kid myself that 99.9% of the people who use the internet give a damn about how it was invented.

It was too easy to shut myself away from the world. I set up this blog and was largely successful in avoiding writing too much about my own books. So when you consider that I wrap myself in books most of the time, I’m really not telling you that much about my life.

Unlike other hobbies that you can get sick of, you can never really get tired of what you read. I only got tired, in the end, of shutting myself away from the world. It’s not an addiction, because it takes effort. But I knew this is unsustainable. I could be like a caterpillar in my own cocoon, eating like a pig, and forgetting that the whole point is that one day I’m supposed to be a butterfly.

Unfortunately the next few plans I have for myself involve reading: an IT education. A financial education. OK, fine. I’ll live outside of my cocoon for a while and see how it feels. For something that seems to be so cerebral, binging on books is rather mindless. You reduce the entirety of your life into a lot of book and a few other essentials. Who gives a shit about what friends you see and what you say to them. Who gives a shit about what clothes to wear, you just wear what you wore last year. Who gives a shit about family, they’re just a bunch of old farts who will never learn how to use a computer and you have to baby them like they babied you. You’re just thinking which 4 books to stuff into your bag when you go out. You're just waiting for the weekend to come so that you can make that pile of books smaller, so that you don't have to confine your reading to the MRT.

And sometimes I look in the mirror, what do I see? I see a guy with a mask staring out at me. He’s wearing a black cape, he’s breathing noisily through that mask. “Come with meeee to the daaaark side ….” And I say, does the dark side have any more geek porn for me? Complicated computer diagrams? Arcane academic dry language? Boring statistics about the quality of life in 1898? If so, I’m all for it! Yippeeee!

And so I delve into all of that, for the same reason I tell off-colour jokes – to make you cringe! There’s something hideous about all this excessive erudition. It makes your skin crawl and I know it!

OK, I’ve had enough of this. I’m paring it down.

I think: maybe over the last few months, as a result of my excessive reading, I think my brains got quite scrambled. They got quite scrambled too when I was in the uni, getting the drinking from the firehose treatment. You barely have the capability to process that amount of knowledge, and definitely don't have enough mental resources to do it on a meaningful level.

I once was at a bus stop near my house, and I looked across the road at a building I had probably seen hundreds of times. It was dusk, at twilight, and probably the building looked a little strange in that light. It was in a hospital, the same hospital where my sister and I were born and where my sister underwent a very very major surgery - an event that probably as much as any other influenced her choice of a career. It was an old building, a missionary building, and it had large windows, and stark yellow light pouring through them. What suddenly struck me was that it was probably the hospice I was looking at. A building where old people come to die. Just as the maternity ward is a special building because so many lives have begun in there, so is the hospice a special building too, because so many lives end in there.

I suppose, after all, there are new things that we can learn and see. Yes - the unpleasant fact of turning 30 is that all the novelties that adulthood has for you - the sudden freedom, the maturity, the mastery of your own life - all these no longer are novelties. From 30 onwards, it's basically the same shit over and over again, year after year. But I suppose there are new things to learn and see. It is possible that for me that a new adventure is there for me, not really around the corner, but growing closer day by day. Especially after I put down my old bloody books.

Question is: was I addicted to reading? I don't think so. What I was really addicted to, and probably still am addicted to, is procrastination. Reading is one of those things. If it wasn't reading it would have been something else. Blogging. Arcade games. Porn.

I'll probably write about procrastination some other time but not today.

Structure

OK, for a few times I have taken the Myers Briggs test, and usually the result is INTP. I’m a little borderline on the I/E, and on the P/J, so there is a bit of the ENTP or the INTJ in me but basically I am an INTP.

So like most INTPs I am concerned with structure. I may come across as a bit of a joker but my chosen subject of study is the most serious subject around: Mathematics. The one subject with which it is impossible to fuck around. If you get it you get it. If you don’t or maybe you are not so clear you get caught out.

But I’m not here to talk about Mathematics. I’m here to talk about structure. It’s a good thing to understand structure, because once you get it, you get the gist of most things. I feel that if you really want to demonstrate that you understand music, you got to be a composer, but I’m biased. If you want to understand visual arts, you got to understand composition. And if you want to know how to write a play you got to understand plot.

So when I made a claim to a friend that I am a playwright, he asked me what I knew about theatre. (Actually not much. I would rather be writing short stories. But writing plays gets you noticed more than writing short stories. So I wrote plays.) He asked me if I understood dramatics, if I got the lighting and mood. If I heard about all those games that actors play when they get warmed up. I said no. But for me (again I’m biased) there is the one element which is important above everything else: plot. Plot is king.

Now I know that there are 3 main players involved: the writer(s), the cast and the crew (and the king of the crew is the director). OK, I may actually be saying that the plot is the most important thing to the writer.

Whatever it is, the plot is the first thing that a writer must get right. It is the skeleton of the whole thing. If a play is a model with clothes on, the plot is the naked model. Every thing else is the clothes. If the model does not have a nice body the clothes won’t look good either. So have a nice body. Even when we study literature, the first thing we talk about is the plot. When there is a trial, the first thing they talk about is the fact finding. Then they talk about character (probably not very much – in fact they don’t want to let the judges’ perception of the actors to colour the judgement about the case. In fact only one thing is relevant – who’s telling the truth.) and themes (how to frame the case so that we know which laws apply). Whatever it is, regardless of whether you think the plot is the most important, it definitely comes first.

You should design the plot first. Always start with the story. Never start with character, unless that character has something to do with the plot. The Little Red Riding Hood: a girl goes into the forest to visit the grandmother. A wolf eats up the grandmother, and then disguises himself in order to eat Little Red Riding Hood up. She runs away in a nick of time, and is rescued by the woodcutter. What happens to the wolf differs upon the telling of the story.

Later on, now that you have the story, then comes the other parts. What does the plot tell you about the character? The wolf? What are the themes?
The thing you should not do is to start with the themes. You can’t say, let’s make a play about suicide. And then later on you try to fit that into a storyline. One of the first plays I was involved in, my seniors decided to make a story about homosexuality. It was a legendary play, and it won the competition (in conjunction with 1 other play) but I didn’t like it because the story felt that it was tacked on. It’s the most clichéd thing you could think of. Somebody in school outs himself to his best friend. Suddenly his best friend is not his best friend anymore. Duh. Yes, this was 1991, and during that era anything that had anything at all to do with homosexuality was very daring. Well there were 2 prizes given out that year: one to us and the other probably to the one that the judges thought should have won.

Anyway it is true that sometimes even before you have a plot, you have a premise, and part of that premise is one of the characters. The one person in the Little Red Riding Hood that really has a character is the wolf. All other characters are not fully formed. It is the character of the wolf that determines everything. The other part of the premise is the forest, a setting for a dangerous place, the scene for everything that takes place, including providing a hero to rescue the Red Riding Hood in that situation. The premise, the set up of the story is to place a young innocent girl in a dangerous and treacherous place, and later have her rescued. Set up an interesting situation: put the innocent heroine in harm’s way and see how she wriggles out of it. Cross the luscious pre-pubescent with the lecherous wolf, and suddenly the story writes itself.

Why is it that bad people usually have more character in stories? It is because the good person in a good vs evil story has to be liked. The viewer has to be able to identify with the good person. Because one of the easiest ways to identify with a person is to provide that person with no personality at all, so that the viewer can project whatever he wants upon that person, the Little Red Riding Hood.

There are other reasons, of course. The only people in that story who are doing things are the guys. This was probably the sexist days when women were there to be, like children, seen and not heard. The ladies in the story are only there to get eaten up or raped.

There are a lot of meanings in that story. But they come from the plot. In a way, after the plot is formed, you might notice a few patterns, and you can expound upon them to enhance the storyline. But you should do that only after the basic plot is done.

One of the ways to deepen the impression about the plot is to have a few aspects of the plot that reinforce a certain idea again and again. What is the main theme of the Little Red Riding Hood? Betrayal and treachery. For treachery, there is the danger lurking in what seems to be a safe place. Your grandmother’s house is a safe place, but it is situated in a forest. You thought that the person on the bed was your grandmother, but instead it is the wolf, in the grandmother’s clothing. You play an innocent little game with the funny looking grandma (“My what big eyes you have…”). Then the forest is supposed to be the home of the wolf, but in it hides the woodcutter with the axe. Things are not what they seem to be, and it is a treacherous game.

Of course, now that we are grown up, we understand the one aspect of the Little Red Riding Hood. It is also about sex. Sex is about children growing up to become adults, the way that the Little Red Riding Hood making the first trip into the forest is a rite of passage into adulthood. The forest is the metaphor for adulthood, because things are not so clear cut and straightforward after all. The little teasing game that they play (“my what a big and hairy dick you have…”) is now recognized as foreplay. The grandma, a symbol of the childhood (since most grandmothers during those days did not live to see the grandchildren grow up) is taken over by the wolf. (Yes it is possible to interpret the wolf’s eating up of the grandmother as a rape but first who would want to rape her and secondly I don’t want to give myself a headache thinking about it.) Then the wolf is taken over by the woodcutter when he cuts the wolf's stomach open. In reality, they might even be the same person. Notice that the woodcutter is holding in his hand an instrument of castration. OK, maybe this is overkill but maybe it is really a huge dick. In any case, the conquest of the woodcutter over the wolf represents how the good husband unselfishly puts aside his raging lust to fulfil his duties as a good man. (But he probably needs to go somewhere private to grind his axe I’ll bet).

In a way, the other 3 main characters are the guardians of the Little Red Riding Hood. First your parents take care of you, then your horny boyfriend (the wolf) and finally the responsible husband (the woodcutter).

Also, note that the Little Red Riding Hood is both little and red. Also she is hooded. Little, because she is innocent at first and contrasted with the big bad wolf. Big dick and little pussy: a great combination. OK seriously. Little Red Riding Hood is childhood. Big Bad Wolf is adulthood. Getting fucked for the first time is a rite of passage. Is it rape? Possibly. But I would say that the little “my how big your … is” game that they play beforehand hints that it just might be consensual. Point is, both scenarios are controversial. Anybody who is outraged that a wolf would fuck a poor innocent kid should be reminded that the poor innocent kid fucking a wolf of her own volition is equally outrageous.

But importantly, she starts out as a child, or at least you know that she is a virgin, at least before she goes into the forest. (Recall that Napoleon used to nickname Josephine’s pussy “the forest”) OK, maybe the implications of child rape are a little disturbing here. But she’s wearing red. This is a giveaway. It’s not because this is Chinese New Year and there is no year of the wolf. Yes, this is about sex. Yes, this is about the unpleasant surprises that await the child during adulthood. Everybody knows about the relationship between food and sex. Also both involve the lust for human flesh.

OK, we’ve taken care of little and red. Hooded? She’s hooded because she’s sheltered. She’s wearing clothes. She’s chaste (in the beginning). The point of her being hooded in the beginning: if you want to have sex with her you got to take off her clothes. The disrobing parallels the sexual awakening. She’s sheltered, sort of. The grandma, the wolf and the woodcutter are all her guardians. And last of all, you can’t see her. She’s the only person whose face you can’t see. (OK, the wolf is disguised but can you seriously believe that a person smart enough not to get lost in a forest can’t tell a wolf from her grandma?) Point is, you are the only person whose face you can’t see. She is you.

So, this is a great story. It has survived from generation to generation because, even if not all tellers are aware of it, every detail in it is loaded with meaning. All the parts fit nicely, there is no flaw in the storyline, because every piece of the plot leads nicely into the next. The architecture of the plot, even the architecture of the ideas is good: adolescence, loss of innocence, sexuality, treachery. These things go together, and are found in the same place. The naked body under the clothes is a supple and muscular one. Great job, guys!

The other thing to note is that there is a good relationship between the plot and the themes, the characters. The characters drive the plot: the wolf in his insatiable desires, the woodcutter in his anal retentive self righteousness. But at the same time there is the influence that the plot has on the characters. There is a new, powerful psychological theory that a personality is influenced by the setting, the context, the environment. In other words, the plot drives the characters too. This goes back to the deeper philosophical principle that who you are is determined by what you do. Your actions determine what you are. Therefore a wolf is a wolf because he’s always looking for something to eat. A wood cutter is a wood cutter because he’s always the hero you can call upon for help. And Little Red Riding Hood is Little Red Riding Hood because she’s always getting into trouble.

So the question is, why does the plot have to come first? Let’s go back to the naked body metaphor again. When you see the naked body, what comes to mind? That’s right boys, ACTION. A naturalistic storyline is one where things happen. If you want a storyline, just borrow something from somewhere, and transplant it into a different setting. Or just remember something that happened to you, because the human memory usually remembers the exciting things. The sensational things. Mortimer Adler, in his great books series, said that there are only very few stories and plots in this world. All you have to do is to choose one.

And what is it about the Little Red Riding Hood that makes it a good narrative? Let’s go through the various actions of the tale, livejournal style. In the morning, she packs a picnic, some food, and heads into the jungle. Mood: nervous, excited. Wolf chases away the grandmother. Mood: tension for the audience because they have a foreboding about what happens next. She gets to her grandmother’s house. Mood: happy. Expects to have a jolly good time. Sees the wolf and his big whatever. Mood: nervous? Frightened? Horny? The child version would have her being scared. The adult version is much more complicated. It is also funny. Real life people do not have such conversations. Then, when all seems lost, when Little Red Riding Hood looks set to be digested, in comes Mr father figure, axeman himself.

OK, a little too much rambling towards the end, but the moral of the story is: when you are writing a story, come up with the story first, then come up with the moral of the story. Never do it the other way around because it would seem too artificial.