BLOGGER



Youngest kid of six with an inferiority and black sheep complex, but determined that God saves not just his soul to heaven but the remainder of his manic-depressive life, so others won't say he became a Christian and remained a jerk.


MAIN THEMES

On identity
i won't be transparent before i'm opaque. and you'll get to know me starting from the small things: who my favourite bands are. what kind of movies i like. who are my heroes.

On Christianity
I’m convinced that when confronted with sincere, real love, the Jesus factor will become obvious. But let’s not plant the cross before we carry it. I’m not trying to con you.

On dreams
Some dreams are meant to be achieved. I know that. But maybe other dreams are meant to drive us, privately. Never known to anyone but ourselves.


OTHER THEMES

On melancholy
It is a sadness that, when choosing between crying and sighing, will choose sighing. I'd almost say that melancholy is being sad about sadness itself.

On memory and nostalgia
It saddens me when life moves forward and people decide that certain things are worth forgetting.

On language
I've learnt that the word irregardless is filed as a non-standard word in the English language. That's a lexicographer's way of saying it's not a real word.

On politics
Crowds are fickle things. So when we stand in the thousands and cry against the present government, do we know who we're actually crying for?

On society
People always want the best for themselves. But I want to sometimes take second or third or fourth best, just so that the loser down the road doesn't always have to come in last. It must feel like shit to always come in last.

On growing old
Leasehold property make me feel sad. It doesn't matter how old the family photos are that you put on your wall. It's your family but it's not really your wall.

On philosophy
I ask you, if God loves everyone, and if God is also incapable of loving evil, how can there be such a thing as an evil man?

On a daily basis
One line quips, like this.


CHAT





Monday, March 31, 2008
ON OPINION, RESTRAINT AND ALWAYS BEING RIGHT

Today, i offended my friend. i never meant to. but inadvertently i did.

by inadvertently, of course, i mean that i misplaced my honesty, i was sensationally insensitive and i lacked restraint when holding an uncompromising position.

the fact of the matter is that some of the values i hold offend people. i don't know how i grew up like this, but i've emerged from my teens and twenties as someone who needs to hold a strong opinion on almost everything. now having an opinion has never been a bad thing. even the opinions themselves - though some may argue otherwise - are not in themselves the problem.

the problem is that i've not learned how to keep my mouth shut.

and so today, at a fairly overdue age of 27, i've learned how important it is to be restrained about some of my values. i'm learning today that sometimes, the conversations i want most to participate in are the ones i should avoid the most. i'm learning today that i can afford to let comments move back and forth in front of me without me having to tell people what i think. even when asked.

because when 19th century american presidential candidate henry clay was told to dumb down his hardline position on slavery, he said "I would rather be right than president". but today i have this to say: i would rather be related than right.

i would rather keep some of my relationships than defend an idea that i think is correct. today, i'm deciding that, and so i am consequently deciding to show more restraint. cos there are few things more unpleasant than a self-righteous jerk.

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Genusfrog [ 3:10 pm ] | 0 comments

Friday, February 08, 2008
ON PHOTOGRAPHS AND MEMORY: MEDIATION

Many guys i know experience important events in life through a camera lens. at some point in my life, i decided that i wouldn't do that.

i like photographs as much as the next guy. i like them for the documentation they do and i like them even more for the aesthetic good they bring. above all, i like how photos remind you of good days, ordinary days, an hour, a feeling, a person. but as much as i appreciate these things, i won't trade that for the real thing.

whether it's someone blowing the candles off a cake, or a singer taking to the mic on stage, or a couple wearing rings at the altar, i think i've reached a stage in my life where i'd much rather have my real eyes on the event. i'd take that over having a beautiful photograph to help me remember something that i had a compromised real experience of.

to me, it misses the point. i'm there. if i'm right there when it's happening, i'd much rather have a real and really good experience of the thing, live - not mediated. eyes opened. ears trained. taking it in. maybe we live in an age that is somewhat insecure. we feel like we have to preserve all our memories. that if we don't do that, that maybe we'll forget that anything ever happened. maybe we're so afraid of this that even before we experience something, we hijack it by putting a camera in front of our eyes. we never experience anything first hand anymore. we have no memories of a live experience. but we have photographs to help us build these memories.

i was looking through my melbourne photos and many of them were taken hastily. some of them are composed dodgily. others are a bit off-focused. but i'm happy with them. i really am. i'm happy because i didn't go to melbourne to take photos. i went to melbourne to see melbourne. and saw it i did. i can't show people what i saw. i can show them my photos, but those photos were never really going to replicate the experience anyway. so my photos, warts and all, do enough to remind me of the real experiences that i had. nothing more. put differently, i don't need perfect photos of my holiday. i just need thumbnails, so to speak, that remind me of the real moments. the rest, i have real memories for.

do i sound like an experiential fascist?

experiential fascist. yeah, maybe that's me.

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Genusfrog [ 11:43 pm ] | 1 comments

Monday, January 14, 2008
ON GETTING THE BEST

People always want to the best for themselves.

they want their kids in the best schools. they want to drive the best cars available. they want the best jobs. the best opportunities. the best deals.

for some things, i can see the reasoning behind it. if i'm gonna buy a copy of the raveonettes' new album, i'd like to buy it at the best price available. there's no qualitative difference between picking up the same record for RM10 and S$23. but most of the time, when we hear people say that they want the best, they're not talking about simple things like the best price for the same thing.

they're talking about best complicated, subjective things. best school. best tv. best job. in short, the best lifestyle, or godforbid, the best life. but do we really know what the best life is? are we only taking stabs in the dark because what we think is the best is actually what everyone else thinks is the best? how do you really quantify what is the best kind of life for anyone?

and while i'm on this, how do you really know if what the best is for someone else is also the best for you? if we're all created unequally, and that some of us are better at some things than others, and we all like different things, then surely, something has to be wrong when all of us are chasing after the same idea of the best life. one of us has to be wrong.

i'm really sure now that the best thing for me is almost necessarily different from the best thing for someone else. because i'm not someone else. and if there is even such a thing as "best", then mine is out there, shaped uniquely for me to meet who i am. it doesn't have to be "the best". it just needs to be the best for me.

but really, i want to go another step further and say that a culture, a community that is always going after the best for themselves is a community that will eventually consume itself. it is cannibalistic and cannot sustain any semblance of charity and goodwill to others. i'm writing now as a christian - perhaps also to christians. seriously. if you always get the best, it means that your neighbour is always getting second best. and i don't want that for my neighbour.

i don't want to always get the best. if there is such a thing as "the best", i'd like for us all to get a scoop of it every once in a while. i want to sometimes take second or third of fourth best, sometimes take the worst just so that the loser down the road doesn't always have to come in last. it must feel like shit to always come in last. why should anyone have to always feel like that?

no, i don't want the best school for my kids. i don't need the best tv for my house. and i don't need the best the world has to offer for myself. i have my own tastebuds and they're personally refined enough for me to ask for the ordinary things that i love. show me that and i'll show you a fulfilled life.

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Genusfrog [ 10:18 am ] | 0 comments

Friday, August 17, 2007
THE LIE OF GOOD AND EVIL

"It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious"
- Oscar Wilde.

There is no such thing as a good person or a bad person. yes, there are only people who are compliant or rebellious, easy or challenging, simple or complex, or in Wildean terms, charming or tedious. but there are no good or bad people.

some days, i wish this weren't so. if real life was like afternoon soap operas, the lines that separate good guys from bad guys would be clearly drawn, fat and thick. if i were a soap character, i'd know exactly who to trust and who was going to land me in a pile of horse mud by the end of each day's episode.

in film and writing school, they teach you that villains need to have redeeming qualities, and that heroes need to have flaws. that's supposed to be real. blur the lines between the wicked and the righteous and you have three-dimensional characters worth either killing off or giving the girl to (excuse the patriarchy). but even that fails to adequately tackle at least my reality.

because it's a lie.

there are no goods and bads when it comes to people. there is no such thing as an evil man. i ask you, if God loves everyone, and if God is also incapable of loving evil, how can there be such a thing as an evil man?

there are evil acts. maybe. maybe not just maybe, maybe yes. and righteous acts. maybe. you can do a good thing or a bad one. but to be bad. or good. that's just too much of a fullstop on one person's identity for my theology to hold. or i ask you: how much bad must a good man do before you call him a bad man? bob dylan asked that question before. there is no answer.

there's a chance that as life pans out, i'll be labelled a bad man by people. heck, i know i've been erroneously labeled a good boy before too. (what were they thinking?) but i know my only aid to brush aside labels like this is not by convincing myself that i am good, but by knowing that the greek dichotomy of soap operas and eastern yin yang of film school characterisation will forever be inadequate. we can brush aside labels only by knowing that the only label available to us all is not black or white but grey.

yes, that's it. no goods. no bads.

everybody grey.

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Genusfrog [ 1:42 pm ] | 3 comments

Tuesday, August 14, 2007
ON PAIN AND REALITY

"Nothing is as real as the pain you feel"
- Ron, Furniture.

Is that true? is nothing really as real as the pain you feel? i've had this line lodged in my head for the last many weeks, not least of all because it has the tendency to pop up in the car while i'm nowhere on the ldp. (incidentally, the ldp is a bleak, sorrowful highway, and there are few other landscapes on which you will want to be when you contemplate pain, suffering and aesthetic hurt.)

maybe i can find something more real than my pain. i'm holding a book up intermittently, as i type - maybe this book is as real as the pain i feel. it's got this waxy texture to its pages, and i can feel the sharp edges of every crisp, unread piece of bound paper. that's quite real. some days, i think books are more real than pain.

maybe my face is more real than the pain i feel. when i'm feeling blue, i like to put my hands on my face - cover it, rub my eyes, scratch my forehead or bury all of it between a pair of arms and a tabletop. i can feel the skin, the brows, the arc of bones. that's quite real too. some days, i think my face is more real than pain.

of course, the two paragraphs above mistakenly assume one thing, that they posses in them the definitive idea of what reality is. if reality is cognitive, then yes - my book and my face have a good chance of being on the top of the existential pile. but what if reality is experiential. if that's true, then maybe i've carried many books and covered my face many times without fully appreciating the reality of those acts. i've put things in places where i can't find before. i've gone through days where i forget what i've done.

but pain is not like that. pain won't let you ignore it when it walks through the door. like the guy in a hawaiian shirt and a loud voice, pain makes itself abundantly obvious, not least of all if you're the one whom it's crept into. i can forget that my room has white walls, that the girl next to me wears perfume, that my fingers are right now touching plastic keys, or that i got bubblegum in my mouth. but i've never forgotten when i hurt. some media smartass once said "if it bleeds, it leads". i somehow feel that that's as much of an experiential truth as it is a broadcasting one.

so maybe ron was right. but i've got one last nagging question. is pain more real than the guy in the hawaiian shirt?

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Genusfrog [ 8:53 am ] | 2 comments

Wednesday, July 04, 2007
MULTIPLE CHOICE

What should we eat for lunch? what should i wear tomorrow? in ocean of noise, win butler asked, "who here among us still believes in choice?"

how much choice do we really have? are our lives closer at heart to multiple choice tests than writing freeform poetry? if you're at gunpoint, and someone tells you to do something, sure it's easy to say you didn't have much of a choice. but how much options are there for the rest of us who don't have pistols on our heads? i have free will. that's one thing. but doesn't our fundamental need for self-preservation render whatever concept of choice we have in life merely cosmetic? even if all i had to plug this self-preserving trend was to die, how much of an option can you say that is? i counted - one.

i wish i could live a freeform poetry life. the kind of life whose paper by default has no lines, where the only predictable thing is inconsistent anarchy. but maybe i'm not ready to live that kind of life. maybe i wasn't created with the right infrastructure to handle an existence that has no guidance whatsoever, no models, no precedent, no narrowing down of possibilities. so what if i'm not entirely chuffed because every once in a while, all the possible options, including death, look like compromised solutions? maybe it's only because i'm an immature entity, unable to process the infinity that comes with a blank page.

maybe that's why i'm still checking boxes.

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Genusfrog [ 2:14 pm ] | 0 comments

Tuesday, June 12, 2007
NOT ALL KILLER

The quest for perfection is sometimes so frustrating. the perfectionists among us will know how long it takes to get something - even as benign as a blogpost - looking just right. the critic among us will testify that it's rare that something so intact rolls into town for us to bask in its spotlessness. for me, this obscure object of desire lies in my favourite albums.

most of them have blemishes in them - songs I don't like, songs that don't fit, songs that are absolutely gross. which makes it really annoying, and a crying shame because these are my favourite albums. they're the ones i'd bring to a desert island if i really had to go there. how can the bulk of my favourite albums not be all killer no filler? to establish this point, i shall run through some of my most personal and dear records.

the stone roses' self-titled debut album is the ultimate debut album, backed by mega singles on like I wanna be adored and Made of stone and finished with timeless album songs like Shoot you down and This is the one. killer, killer, killer all over the record. all except that one very annoying track 4, Don't stop, which is essentially a backmasking of the hit single Waterfall. ok, credit to the roses, i think they backmasked the song, learned the backward words and did the vocals forward while everything else went backwards. very smart. but also very, very dissonant and absolutely impossible to listen to. bad roses.

the raveonettes' Chain gang of love is a glorious noise-drenched homage to 1950s rebel boys and the good girls they turn naughty. beautiful melodies are hidden beneath a wall of feedback so that only the brave will ever hear the deep-lying beauty of songs like Noisy summer and Untamed girls. but of course, the album is marred - at least to me - by the second last song, The truth about Johnny, where Sune Rose Wagner repeatedly drones "Joooohhhhny.... wheerre you been?" between some much more bearable guitar solo twanging. it's not as unlistenable as Don't stop's backmasking. but it still calls for that 'next track' button.

my third example is stereophonics' Just enough education to perform. but this time, the marr comes right at the front, in the form of album opener, Vegas two times. don't get me wrong, the song's not really bad. it just doesn't fit the album. JEEP is a lazy sunday album, languidly meandering from Lying in the sun to the slow stomp of Mr Writer and then rambling about old shoes, going out, having a nice day, watching people "fly sundays" and taking caravan holidays. all of this makes a heavy rock brawl about las vegas wrong wrong wrong. the only saving grace is that it's the first song on the album, so i can skip it and start the album with track two. but it's still wrong.

you see - it's hard. there are many other albums that carried me through some of my most meaningful times in life. and those records mean a lot to me. some of them are legendary by any standards. but almost all of them have songs that shouldn't be there. why?

is perfection so elusive? do we go out there to break it? to dismantle that which is glorious for some abstract, deep reason? when i was a child, i remember reading that persian carpet makers would intentionally marr their rugs, if only by a stitch, to remind themselves that God is the only perfect creator. havelock ellis said that "the absence of flaw in beauty is in itself a flaw".

it's a lot more than just a killer album, isn't it?

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Genusfrog [ 4:26 pm ] | 0 comments

Tuesday, April 10, 2007
ESSENTIAL READING



I recently had the pleasure of meeting a guy with a bookcase full of essential reading: darwin's origin of species, i-ching's book of changes, hitler's mein kampf, the KJV bible, the mahabharata, and all four vedas. we talked about the hindu epics, the bible, aliens and angels and truth. a few days later, he asks me if i had mein kampf in my library. i said no. he said he had an extra copy and wanted to find an appreciative owner. I accepted the gift.

and so, that night, i began wanting to collect all these books... these books with bold, sometimes brash, sometimes absurd, and almost always compelling claims to truth. these books that in a bygone day, attempted to explain the world as it was then, and on this day, accounts for the world as it is now. cover them and you probably understand the mind of three-quarters of the people you'll ever meet. so essential are these texts that perhaps the entirety of world's history of ideas lie between the pages of no more than twenty books.

the eight books above are the ones that interest me the most. and so, on top of my recent gift, i'm gonna aspire towards owning a copy of each of these classics: sigmund freud's studies on hysteria, karl marx's das kapital, the mahabharata, plato's republic, darwin's origin of species, mao tse tung's little red book, and nietszche's thus spoke zarathustra.

but will i really read these things? some of them are really huge. i found a pdf of das kapital online and it was massive. when i saw how big it was i felt the same crestfalling feeling that i felt the day i realised how big crime and punishment was. man, how am i ever gonna plough through these things? add to that fact, i'm a slow reader. it's preposterous to think i should own them.

i was talking about this recently, and athalia said that i should get books that digest all these primary sources and sort of spit them back out in a more concise way. it makes sense. i think i would benefit more from reading some oxford companion to freud than ploughing through his seminal works. i'd get my head around it faster. someone learned would have helped me chew on the spongy meat and it sure as all would go down faster. i've flicked through those oxford companions - they're really nicely put together.

but there's still something wrong about that. for all its appeal, reading the essential thinkers through some second-hand guide is like discovering the beatles through the red and blue albums. i discovered the beatles through the anthologies, and while that was a bit closer to the actual, organic thing, i always envy the folks from the sixties who bought their albums one by one, fully digesting rubber soul before moving on to revolver. you can't digest rubber soul over three number 1s on a compilation. so maybe the same thing is at work here.

there's something quaint, something poignant about reading the words as the thinker thought. something pure about that indivisible connection between the original speaker and the eventual listener. something unadulterated, immediate and precious about the primary piece. sure, it's fodder for pretentious poseur pop-philosophers, still i'd risk of looking like a wannabe if it means hearing some of these guys speak for themselves.

and so, i will begin my little adventure in itty bitty steps. i'm not sure which to get first, but it's exciting. maybe i'll start with nietszche.

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Genusfrog [ 5:17 pm ] | 3 comments

Friday, December 08, 2006
People sell their soul to the devil for fame, wealth, success, talent, power and sex.
People sell their soul to Jesus for persecution, unpopularity, self-control, servanthood and chastity.

Dunno how to choose? When in doubt, choose Jesus.

*

They say that robert johnson went to a crossroad one night and sold his soul to the devil for his guitar ability. this story was probably exacerbated by the fact that a young johnson followed howlin wolf on his tours and wolf couldn't stand johnson's guitar playing, requesting for someone to "take that guitar off that kid". johnson would disappear and return a couple of years later with what would be known as his legendary guitar ability --- if you listen close to his records, it's like there are two guitars playing. of course, he would write about staple blues subjects, and a fair few songs about the devil. it also didn't help that johnson would turn away from audiences to play complicated guitar parts, never revealing to them what he was doing.

Of course, with legendary musicians, myth-makers will go on the tilt, and if there's a devillish angle, it will always be sniffed out.

Now whether or not robert johnson lived down to his legend, i don't know. and i'm only this close to saying that i don't care, except that i somewhat do. if i'm gonna listen to his songs, i almost do want to care. it's an age-old christian conundrum.

"That's the devil's music!"
"Burn it!"

Buuuurrrrnnn.....

I think it was cs lewis (or was it francis schaeffer... it was one of the apologetists) who said that every territory is claimed by the devil and counterclaimed by God. to this end, there are supposed to be no neutral territories. it's a bit like the old analogy that a christian walk is like riding a bike up a hill. what then of robert johnson? do you agree with that? that there is no such thing as neutral ground in our vast experience of this world? is it true that anything which doesn't extend the kingdom shrinks it?

Cartesian philosophy insists on us knowing for an absolute certainty that what we know, we really know. in it's attempt to ward off skeptics, it leaves out all room for speculation. is it possible that Christians have ended up using Cartesian philosophy to handle our fear of what may or may not be "the devils' music"? i definitely know of respectable christians who walk down that road. is it because when our walk with Jesus isn't exactly vibrant, that our leaders can't trust us to be fully sensitive discerners of good and evil?

I never planted my flag in any camp. i never backed either position without considering the validity of the other. and while i do this partly out of my appreciation of a balanced theology, i also do this partly out of my laziness and lack of knowledge and conviction to make a firm stand. and while that gives me the leeway to listen and question, it also means that as i'm listening to johnson's records this very minute, there is a tiny feeling in me that i should just stop it.

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Genusfrog [ 10:45 am ] | 0 comments

Sunday, September 10, 2006
Wars are bad, right?

People get hurt, innocent lives are lost and nobody comes out a real winner. This is undoubtedly the current attitude towards war, but there was a time when wars were not morally condemned. Wars used to be good. Wars used to be fought without the media guilt-tripping everyone into thinking that it was the root of all evil. Wars are what got us our world today and when they happened, it used to be for glory, for honour, for protection and sovereignty. Today, the smallest skirmish is blown up on our tvs as horrific crimes against the sanctity of life and reasonable standards of human rights.

How did we get here? How did things change so much? My gut answer now says that Resnais Descartes is involved. Resnais Descartes? This dude? Well yes. This dude. When he hammered his dictum, cogito ergo sum or I think therefore I am, on the banner of enlightenment philosophy, he kickstarted a major shift that has lead to our skeptical attitudes to the battlefield.

Wars used to be seen through national eyes. People used to take to arms to defend nations, and it didn’t matter if people had to die, it was always for the greater good. It was always for the big narrative: the life and death of nations and kingdoms, and with that, ideologies, ways of life and hope for futures. These were the real players, not individuals making up an army but an armies, armies and armies. Fullstop.

But when Descartes came around and said I think therefore I am, he stripped the entire meaning of existence down to the solo person’s solo thought. Cartesian philosophy says simply this: because i can think, i am meaningful. Countries don't think. Nations don't think. I think. I am. Are countries and nations and kingdoms "am"? Maybe not. One writer puts it better:

“Descartes’s philosophical method led to a new conception of the human person. Descartes himself ended by defining the human being as a thinking substance and the human person as the autonomous rational human subject … In establishing the centrality of the human mind in this manner, Descartes set the agenda for philosophy for the next three hundred years.”

Grenz, Stanley E, A primer on postmodernism (Eerdmans, 1996), p 64.

If nations and kingdoms don't "am", do their interests matter? No. Whose interests matter? I. Mine. And yours. We are the autonomous rational human subjects.

Wars used to be fought by nameless, faceless armies. Now they are fought by sympathetic three-dimensional soldiers who cry and feel and fear. Well, now that you mention it, of course we want the war to stop. How can anyone support the continuation of a war when innocent helpless lives are killed, when those soldiers who sometimes get photographed carrying cute kittens and whatnot are slaughtered on the battleground? Stop the war! It’s too sad. Stop it now!

But some wars need to go on. Some nations need to fight and some nations need to defend themselves. Some wars are necessary and some wars are even righteous. And when war breaks out, maybe sometimes we should step back from all that media sentimentality and think about the larger picture before we shoot off and say it’s bad and not know how to defend it apart from saying “wars are just bad”. Who is "am"ing in your worldview? If nations and kingdoms didn't "am" before, do you think today we can live in the peace and comforts of our online-everything generation? Nobody likes the idea of conflict, but sometimes we need to think more multi-dimensionally about wars before we throw our hat into the peace bandwagon.

So the next time you hear a news channel or anyone condemn wars altogether, think of Descartes and a time when people saw wars differently. Then think about this: if how we see war changes over time, is our attitude towards it an issue of morality or fashion?

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Genusfrog [ 12:16 am ] | 0 comments

Tuesday, August 01, 2006
What is time?

I mean, what exactly is time? I know what it is in its absolute sense: the duration that passes in a linear passage, from now to later, from just now to now. But what is time in a measured sense?

What the hell is an hour? Why is it called an hour and more importantly why is it as long as it currently is? Why isn’t an hour, say, as long as ten minutes or six minutes or six and a half? Who determined it and what gives that person the right to measure something like time? Was it by divine decree? Or was it just something a bunch of fogeys calculated while stargazing?

And what if time isn’t objectively experienced? What makes us think that the same duration can be measured equally by two people who experience that duration on different terms? In a football match, when there are five minutes left to play, five minutes for the team holding the lead is a very long time; five minutes for the team chasing the game is a blink of an eye. How sure are we that an objective notion of “five minutes”, or any other value for that matter, adequately represents the duration between then and the end of the match?

When I was 21 and in uni, I asked these same questions. I riled about it and announced that I henceforth did not live in ‘time’ as it was (and still is) known and measured, but that I lived semi-outside of it, trapped inevitably in its absolute forward progression, but rejecting it in all of its calculated constraints. I went about for a few days without a watch, and decided to show up at classes according to my whim, or perchance. My more educated housemate at the time kindly informed me that what I was saying was in fact not novel at all, and had already been covered by philosophers and writers long before me. At that time, it made my notion seem silly, my thoughts unoriginal and my ideas about a few hundred years out of sync. I put my watch back on and the watch told me it was time to eat. So I ate. I probably wasn’t even hungry.

But five years on, I’m still thinking about it and I can tell you right now, I don’t give a flying fox if the philosophers and writers before me have covered it, they had their temporo-existential journey and now I want to have mine. I think I deserve it and just because they came before me doesn’t make my doubts about the way we measure time any less valid.

I don’t really know what time is. It’s a completely ridiculous construction designed to segmentise what should otherwise be two halves of a day where one featured sunlight and brightness and the other the absence of said sunlight and brightness. I don’t even know if it’s that clear-cut because the sun sets in stages and darkness does not step in, it creeps in. How am I to know that the measurement of time isn’t a massive hatch to lock people into regimented routines under a system of tyrannic order? Because from where I stand, it looks every bit like a man-made mode of time-ing, or ‘timing’ things. Like a desperate bid by man to claim control over every last terrain in their experiential existence. When they ran out of space and matter to dissect, they started dissecting time: arbitrarily, into pockets of 24s, 60s and 60s. Well as far as I’m concerned, it sounds like a big lie.

Give me a second. Fifteen minutes of fame. My finest hour. All of these represent time much more capably than what they literally mean and I prefer it this way. What the hell is an hour? An hour is just an hour until it’s over. And mine ain’t over until I say so.

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Genusfrog [ 2:10 pm ] | 2 comments

Tuesday, September 21, 2004
PHILOSOPHY OF PHOTOGRAPHING PEOPLE

As i glance over some of the photos i took for lennie's wedding, what strikes me is a philosophical query over the following: what makes a photograph containing people good?

it has always been clear to me that a photo lennie thinks is nice may not be nice to chin peow, and vice versa... and any photos eventually used will of course have to pass both acid tests. but another sure thing is that the photographs deemed nice by this photographer may or may not also pass the acid test. so as i consider these things, i arrive at a larger question... what criteria can we use to determine whether a photograph containing people is a "good photograph". is it even feasible to consider this? i think it is. so let's get right into it.

coming from a background of film analysis and video production, i am naturally one to look for the technical and signifying aspects of a photograph. regarding the former, i refer to things such as the composition, the focus, the lighting, the amount of light, the shutter speed, the works.

as for the latter, i am talking about what stories the photos tell. semiotic students won't need introduction to this... but this is roughly what i mean. if i shoot the bride and groom with their parents in the foreground, the story it tells is one about generations. it's a completely different story compared to, say, the bride and groom with their ring boxes in the foreground - which would be a story about commitment.

someone from a fashion background, will of course, look at differnt things. they'll be looking at how the subjects look. of course, this is important to me, but you and i both know how subjective the matter of looks is. so it goes beyond fashion photography to say that it is an essential ingredient that the subjects look good - not just to the one taking, but to the ones taken.

i know that technique and symbols are important in all good photography. it's what wins awards and distinguishes holiday photos from professional ones. but when photographing people for people, one has to consider this grey and subjective area. for photography of people to have any real relevance, there must surely be an interaction between the photographer and the photograph with the photographed. there has to exist a common consensus with regards to standards of beauty. if you remove this criteria then photographing people simply becomes a hobby, a pursuit of art on the part of the photographer... syok sendiri. for it to have real and interactive meaning, it must always take into consideration how the photographed feels about the given piece of art.

i guess there'll be shots of lennie and chin peow i love that one of them doesn't like so much because of the way they smiled. and likewise, there'll be shots that they'll love but i won't so much because of some blurred jo in the background or a wrong highlight on one of their cheeks. it's a humbling process and a great learning curve to photograph people for people. as you can see, i'm finding out a lot.

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Genusfrog [ 6:24 am ] | 0 comments