random extravagant beauty
Walking out of the workplace i am always struck by nature's extravagant beauty. The sky - bright youthful blue in the afternoons, dark dusk in the evenings. Outside at the bus-stop, i see the delicate beauty of rain tree leaves silhouetted against the night sky, like a fine lattice of intricate black lace set against rich grey velvet. After rain, the fallen leaves are a glossy black against the concrete pavement.
In the mornings there is a coolness in the air from the dew on the leaves. It is a crisp kind of coolness, not at all like the thick slow coolness that falls during afternoon rain and lulls you to sleep, but something that invigorates, makes your eyes shine even amid a sea of grey. The birds must love this because their morning song rings out without fail at the start of each new day, as they wing their way across the rooftops and over the treetops. There's a pair of them, one red and the other green, that have frequented the area ever since i started noticing these things. They soar and dip through the foliage in an exuberantly celebratory dance, the unlikeliest pair - i think they're of different species, though they move so fast i've never been able to get a good look.
There has to be something to all this, other than to make random people feel happy about their ordinary day-to-day lives, or even to make other random people happy about their ability to see and appreciate totally random beauty.
a very unfortunate event
SSC 25th Anniversary:
Beethoven's Choral Symphony
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Conducted by: Lim Yau
Soprano: Tamara Matthews
Mezzo-soprano: Graciela Araya
Tenor: Paul Austin Kelly
Bass: Johannes Mannov
Singapore Symphony Chorus, Singapore Bible College Chorale, Hallelujah Chorus, & The Philharmonic Chamber ChoirClaude Debussy said once that 'music is the space between the notes'. By that definition, then, what happened at the Esplanade Concert Hall on Friday 6 May was anything but music. Under the baton of conductor Lim Yau, the SSO forced the audience to witness the frenzied massacre of Beethoven's sublime 9th Symphony in which there was no space, between the notes or anywhere else, for the music to even take just one tiny life-saving breath. It was an experience that i honestly could have done without.
As a die-hard Beethoven fan, i'd been looking forward to this concert ever since i bought the tickets in February. Beethoven's 9th is one of those masterpieces of the classical repertoire that i cannot imagine the world being without. It is a work of great generosity, an extraordinary experiment in musical form and technique that somehow came out, not
just right, but
just right - despite its composer having been almost totally deaf at the time when he wrote it. i love the way the first movement emerges out of mist and fog, in an other-worldly half-light unlike any dawn that has ever greeted human eyes; the jocular energy of the second movement, with its musical 'Gotcha!' right at the end (i imagine Herr Ludwig, guffawing out loud, slapping his thigh in amusement at his own little joke); the absolute hymn-like calm of the slow movement; and of course, the pure joy of the last movement - it boggles the mind that a near-deaf musician could have written something called 'Ode to Joy' as convincingly as Beethoven did.
It's hard to imagine how any experienced conductor could possibly have messed up the 9th. Not because it's an easy work to perform - it's too massive, too complex, to be easy. But i had thought before this that its very fame would protect it from bumbling conductors or other performers who didn't know better. After all, anyone with access to the many recordings of the 9th could not possibly get it wrong, could he? And anyone who was less competent would surely steer clear of this old classical workhorse in favour of other, lighter pieces.
So what went wrong with this concert?
Lest i give in to the temptation to say, 'Everything', let me state for the record that i think the orchestra and soloists did a wonderful job, given the circumstances. It was not their fault that the conductor was pushing the music far beyond its limits. In fact, the soloists were brilliant, and one can only imagine the possibilities that went to waste as a result of Lim Yau's haphazard conducting. The orchestra, too, did the best it could with the conducting it got. The blame, as far as this listener is concerned, lies squarely on the shoulders of the conductor.
The performance was the most insensitive handling of a piece of music that i've ever heard in a public concert (barring that awful version of the Rach 2 i heard a couple of years back, played by the NUS Symphony Orchestra). All semblance of musicality was lost in the breakneck pace at which Lim Yau drove the orchestra in his apparent eagerness to get to the end of the piece in time to rush home for the Friday evening episode of his favourite primetime TV show. Or, as a friend put it, 'One would think that LY was paid according to how many notes he could squeeze out of the orchestra in a set time.' He rushed through all 4 movements at virtually the same headlong speed, ignoring totally what any good musician should know: that music needs space to breathe, that time has to be given to allow musical meanings to gather and grow. Not only did the pace result in the total absence of feeling in the playing, it also led to very messy ensemble work, sometimes in simple passages that really should have been a breeze to play. It's been a long time since i've heard the SSO play so badly - in fact, in recent years i've grown to expect high standards from our national orchestra - but i cannot see how they could have done otherwise with such poor direction from the conductor.
At its best, the 9th is a complete musical universe that encompasses in its 4 movements a whole history of creation, from its embryonic beginnings to the exultant triumph of its finale - a hymn to the joy that pervades all of creation. And within this musical universe are passages that, well-executed, could make a grown man weep. Yet, what happened during the concert was more like the aural equivalent of a soggy pudding splatted across a greasy linoleum floor. Passages that ought to have shimmered with light (the mysterious opening, for example, or the transcendant soprano chorus lines towards the end of the 4th movement) sank darkly into oblivion, while more complex contrapuntal passages sputtered hopelessly into unintelligible gibberish as the players tried desperately to keep pace with the conductor, and with each other. The whole of the slow movement was hacked through mercilessly, and the resulting lack of soul (especially obvious in slow movements in general) was, depressingly, representative of the whole rendition of the work in general.
Halfway into the 1st movement i realised that if i was to get anything more than utter frustration from the whole concert experience, i was going to have to look elsewhere than in the music. i started, firstly, with the performers. It seemed to me a wonderful opportunity to see for myself how artists behave when they feel that their art does not meet the standards of excellence they set for themselves. So i couldn't help but notice that the soloists (all highly-acclaimed international singers) were looking bored throughout the performance, and that the boredom morphed during the curtain calls into sheer disgruntledness. You could actually see it, quite clearly, from their body language. The orchestra members, too, looked none too pleased – instead of the usual foot-stomping and bow-tapping that breaks out at the end of a good performance, the orchestra simply sat rather stiffly in their places during the curtain call, with only the principal violinist diplomatically tapping his bow on his music-stand while the rest of the musicians looked on with plastic smiles on their faces.
One truly positive thing that did come out of the whole sordid affair was that i got the chance to check out the interior of the Esplanade concert hall. It is truly a work of art - the most beautiful concert hall i have ever come across. With its pinewood finishing, olive green wall coverings, and the black microphone cables hanging down from the acoustic canopy like the aerial roots of a banyan tree, the concert hall encloses the audience in a warm orange glow that effectively shuts out the distracting noises of the outside world – even mobile phone signals are cut off when one is in the hall.
It is in every way a state-of-the-art concert venue, and the majority of the performances that it has hosted since its opening have surely proved its detractors wrong – quality hardware does help facilitate quality performances, no matter what sceptics may say. More than that, though, the venue justifies, endorses and vindicates the art,
if the art is good. Much as it appears politically-incorrect or even anti-artistic to say so, it does seem that an expensive, world-class performance venue somehow endows the performances that take place under its auspices with a certain aura of class and social acceptability. Would the Vienna Philharmonic perform in a school hall? i rest my case.
But i digress. In this particular case, the art was manifestly not good, and no amount of architectural or technological wizardry could conceal the fact. Even if the rest of the audience seemed fairly satisfied with the performance, there was at least one member of the audience on Friday who did not applaud at the end of the concert. And that, coming from someone who’s always felt that good artists deserve all the support they can get, is saying a lot.
the inevitable post on the Casino Issue
Once in a while, something happens on this small island to galvanise the normally passive islanders into passionate action – or at least voluble speech. Several years ago, this took the form of the Hello Kitty Issue – concerned Singaporeans all over the world joining in the chorus to lament the poor state of manners and civility shown by the barbaric behaviour of certain native islanders as they fought, literally, over the Hello Kitty soft toys distributed as free gifts by a certain fast food chain as part of a promotional campaign. This time round, the hot-potato is the far less frivolous issue of the proposed opening of not just one, but two, casinos in our hitherto cloistered city-state. After almost half a year of vigorous public debate that saw Singaporeans sharply divided along the lines of liberal and conservative, pro and anti-casino, the decision was finally announced in favour of the 35 000 new jobs the euphemistically-named ‘integrated resorts’ would generate for the economy. All this, amidst much public weeping and gnashing of teeth as ministers (both political and religious), gamblers and ex-gamblers, aunties and uncles, Singaporeans here and away – in short, the whole spectrum of Singaporean society – pitched in with their two cents’ worth of heartfelt discourse. It was, in short, nothing short of truly amazing.
It was also a revealing, and frightening, example of the way Singaporeans have made a habit of expecting to have their cake and eat it, too. Frightening, because this surely is a case of hubris on a grand, nation-wide scale. Yes, we are the little red dot that could. We are the economic miracle that took place while the rest of the world was looking elsewhere, not even thinking about us enough to expect that we would do anything less than screw it all up and whimper, tail between legs, off the world-stage. We have, to date, managed to balance the difficult demands of being a cosmopolitan city-state while maintaining a (some say excessively) strict hold on public morality. We have done all this, and more – perhaps too much more. Yet to think that we can, once again, pull off the knives-through-the-box-with-the-bimbo-inside trick, is perhaps to take our belief in the miracle of self-determination just a wee bit too far.
I might as well declare my allegiance now for the blur of mind who have not already guessed my stand on the issue. I was, and still am, firmly against the setting up of a casino (or two, or three…) in Singapore. Unusual, I know, for me to take such a strong position on an issue that impinges on the right of the individual to make his own decisions and to take personal responsibility for the consequences of those decisions. I suppose this is an example of how, in the battle between abstract theory and personal experience, the latter has always carried far more weight for me than the former ever could. And my (vicarious) personal experience has shown me how gambling addiction can tear lives asunder and leave them broken and almost beyond repair. I have seen entire extended families divided by conflicts over how to deal with a family member who is a gambling addict. I have seen people suffering – financially, emotionally – because a loved one who is a gambler insists on sponging off their goodwill and charity by borrowing money and chalking up huge debts that he cannot possibly hope to repay. And to top it all off, these people almost invariable come from the lower strata of society. The ones who suffer most are the ones without the financial and social resources needed to extricate themselves from the mess that they land in as a result of their failure to control their gambling habit.
Of course, not everyone who gambles becomes an addict. That would be a gross over-generalisation of the sort that upsets me so much when I hear it coming from other people. In fact, I am open to the possibility that most people who gamble do not become addicts. (I have a friend, for example, who sets aside a fixed budget for jackpot-gaming every month. As far as I know, he has kept to this budget, which he sees as the price he pays for the entertainment derived from his regular encounters with the one-armed bandit.) What I am concerned about, though, is that the people who do become addicted to gambling are the ones who are likely to have the least ability to seek and effect a cure. They are likely to be the people on the lower end of the economic scale. They are the ah peks and ah mahs, ah cheks and ah sohs who people our heartlands, the ones for whom the boom of the new economy spells not excitement and new hope, but possible unemployment and despair. The ones who need excitement and hope, however meager or fleeting – and who seek it in pastimes like buying 4D and Toto, or horseracing. Yes, I know I am generalizing, but these stereotypes exist for a reason. And I have seen them, spoken to them, lived through family quarrels over what to do with them, so that for me, they are real people, not mere cardboard bogeymen set up by moralists with nothing better to do with their time.
As one of the people who objected to the setting up of a casino here, I find particularly objectionable the idea that it is now my responsibility (together with religious organizations, social service organizations, and other groups who were opposed to the casino) to help protect Singaporeans from the pernicious effects of something that we did not want to take place in the first instance. So this is now my problem? How’s that for passing the buck?
The government has assured us, time after time, that measures will be put in place to protect Singaporeans from the pernicious effects of our own greed and lack of self-control. All thanks for this thoughtfulness, I say – but why should we protect just Singaporeans? Do the tourists whom we expect to form the bulk of the visitors to the casinos deserve any less protection? Is it right for us to think only of our own in this matter? What kind of nation are we becoming, to work into policy laws and regulations that will benefit our own citizens at the expense of others?
But my objection is not just based on moral grounds. I find the manner in which the debate has been couched in terms of economics versus ethics highly dubious. Even if we accept the argument that in this case, our economic survival has to take precedence over the maintenance of our (admittedly rather clinical) ethical environment, it remains to be seen if the integrated resorts will indeed become the cash cows that we so fervently believe they will become. With such a small local population, the IRs (as they are now called) will have to depend on a steady influx of tourists who will find, once they come here, much of the same sorts of amenities that can be found in any other first world city. That should take care of the visitors from first world countries – why come here when they have the whole of Europe and America at their doorsteps? What can we offer that will distinguish ourselves from our older, more established first-world cousins? As for our neighbours from the region – what can we offer that cities such as Hong Kong and Shanghai cannot? Why would, for example, our neighbours from up north want to visit our IRs when they have their own well-established casinos in their own country?
It just seems to me that the decision on the integrated resorts was made in the absence of any more creative or interesting ideas on how we can maintain our global competitiveness in the years ahead. It bespeaks a serious lack of imagination on the part of the decision-makers, and sends a rather desperate smoke-signal to our competitors that says, “Hey, we’re really at our wits’ end here and we cannot see any other way out of our present situation. So we’re going to follow the business model that other countries have used successfully in the past, even if it isn’t particularly exciting or novel, and in the meantime let us pray and hope that this all works out.” Not a particularly inspiring solution to the problem, I must say.
Finally, I find the argument that opening two casinos in Singapore will help build our reputation as a ‘funky’, ‘happening’ and attractive place to live particularly fatuous. Funkiness is not predicated on the presence, or absence, of roulette tables and jackpot machines – nor is it necessarily dependant on whether or not people are allowed to choose to get their kicks from the thrill of gambling. Funkiness is an attitude – a state of mind and a way of life that means, among other things, people having the freedom to pursue the things they feel passionate about, and having the imagination to dream big dreams and the daring to make those dreams come true. There are many ways we can help make Singapore a funky place to live, and while the setting up of two casinos may signal a relaxation of the rigid moral codes that characterized the Singapore of the past, it does not in any way show that Singaporeans have become more passionate, imaginative, or daring. In fact, if anything, it shows that we are a country that has run out of fresh ideas, and that has to resort (pun not intentional) to building the kind of glitzy, high-cost international resorts that virtually every other developed country already has in order to stay abreast of the competition.
Nor is the casino decision likely to make the idea of living in Singapore any more attractive for the ‘foreign talent’ we are trying to woo. In what way will the integrated resorts contribute to making Singapore a creative, intelligent, compassionate and humane society that creative and intelligent people will want to call home? To what extent will the integrated resorts provide these people with the intellectual stimulation and the variety of lifestyle, entertainment and leisure options that they value?
All these questions remain to be answered. For the moment, it seems only wise that we work our damnedest at making sure the integrated resorts succeed in the economic sense, and that we continue our efforts to ‘remake’ Singapore into a society that truly values people
as people, not as mere units of production. And in the meantime, let us pray very very hard that we will not live to regret our decision on the Casino Issue, and that the integrated resorts will not be the harbingers of destruction that so many people fear they will be, either to our society as a whole, or to the individuals who make up that society.
