Introducing himself through a spillage of humming sing-song, all alone, McMorrow allows this eventual dramatization time; time to breathe, time for a moment’s pondering, as he dips his feet into the cold crystal of his particular turmoil. Built in the isolation of an Irish beach house, “If I Had A Boat” is a surfeit of coveting change and thirst.
“I’m pointed north, hoping for the shore.”
As with the most approachable of contemporary folk music, it nestles in the ear as if heard before, and is entirely simplistic in its foundation, yet drenched in allaying melodies, rising from its quiet box of seclusion to a far-reaching moment of aural splendor. “Burn slow, burning up the back wall … Weeds grow through the lilies and the vine.” [Purr-chass.]
It had been weeks since the apartment was this eerily silent. Often times everybody would sleep long into the afternoon, stumbling out occasionally in the shadows to slip into the bathroom, their piss trickling against the inside of the grubby toilet bowl that had sat bolted and unwashed for weeks. In passing they would stub their toes on the tiled steps that framed the shower, cursing and hacked-coughs scoring a sick symphony that would permeate across the rooms and give noise to the thoughtless space. It was a dysfunctional household that looked like a dysfunctional household, rather than a mimicry of the orderly workings of a functional one. The wooden shutters that offered a portal into the kitchen from the side walls were scratched, indented from frustrated outbursts, slammed and slammed and slammed off their hinges more than twice, thrice, four times. The walls bore bruises from the kicks of oppressed men, rabid with the strains of fever that come not from infection of a bacterial kind, but the infection that possesses all young men with no ambition, no comforts, no lights leading the streets they walk on. The glasses were cracked and whiskey-stained. Underwear and wet towels made impromptu carpets as the cotton desert dragged on out to the balcony. If only one rule remained, it was that there was no smoking inside. Crumpled cigarette butts overflowed from the greasy ashtrays on to the stained table, smeared across the playing cards and binders of paper filled with nonsense scribbles and words. The bathroom door opened, closed, the toilet unflushed, the bedroom door opened and scuffling feet were heard as it closed, again. [Buy.]
I’m on the stairs up to Midlands (the mall, not the area in England). A guy wants me to pay for parking. Sometimes you have to pay for motorbikes, sometimes not. Depends where you are – and Maggie, my 2004 Suzuki, sits about four feet from the steps.
“How much?” I ask in Malay.
“One ringgit,” he answers in English.
I grew up in this mall. It used to be Komtar was the only shopping center on the island, and it took well over an hour to get there on a bus. So when Midlands opened just 15 minutes down the road, well, we were there every weekend, sometimes twice. Even if we had nothing to do.
(I’m starting to notice just how much lounging happens in Malaysia. People just sit around doing nothing, staring at the distance. I’m starting to join them. I unplug my computer and chuck my iPhone in a drawer and just exist for a while, let my brain slow down. It’s boring and soothing.)
BOS means bekas orang sinting (translation: a crazy person, as in someone who was institutionalized, not the edgy or zany kind) in bahasa. It’s difficult to tell the levity-to-spite ratio when locals call foreigners ‘boss.’ But this nation is populated with earnest, unironic folk, so I don’t take offense.
To the left as I enter the landing are a series of closed shops. One of them used to be a pretty decent kebab joint. One of my Japanese friends went there alone in 9th grade and the cashier asked if he wanted to see his dragon. The cashier lifted his shirt to reveal a tattoo of a red dragon which covered his torso. Then he pulled down his pants to show the rest: His dick was the head. From then on it became a running joke among my friends – “Do you want to see my dragon?” – and the shop closed shortly afterward.
Almost all of Midlands is closed now, its business sucked away by other malls. Entire floors are empty. The old McDonald’s where we ate nearly once a weekend is gone. No huge yellow M. No plastic Ronaldo McDonald lounging out front for me to pick his nose.
The back escalators I used to take are gated off, a makeshift purse shop blocking its mouth. The place where I used to buy basketball cards turned into a Jet Asia. Then that, too, closed. The bowling alley is gone. The Fun Zone, an arcade, moved down from the top floor, but somehow it feels neutered on carpet and with glass wall along one side. Half the reason we went was to hide in the din of blaring noise and darkness where we were guaranteed never to bump into any staff from school. The internet cafe where we’d play Starcraft and Counter-Strike (we would wear sweaters so that we could shed the cigarette smoke smell when we crept back home) has a sign for a bistro above it, but it’s boarded shut.
Popular – the Borders of Malaysia – is closed. That one is recent; it was open when I visited a year and a half ago.
I head away from the main block and up the back stairs. No air conditioning. I march all the way to the top. The railing, all chipped green paint, is coming loose from the tile, and I can shake it back and forth. Around and up I climb. The last floor has a hallway, and at the end is a gate. Along the wall the cement is painted like logs to give the place a lagoon feel; this used to be a water park. One side of the gate is padlocked, the other chained to the wall. I shake it. I heave into it. I yank as hard as I can. I scream and bang. Through the gate I see sunlight and the back entrance to the park. I can hear the low hum of the motor which powered the water rides. But I can’t get through. My hands are filthy from the gate and my breath quickened.
For a while I just concentrate on breathing, slowing my slight hyperventilation. My knees feel weak, my head light, and I think about how peaceful it would be to fall fall fall off the edge and drift through the wind to the bottom nine floors below.
Back in the main tower, on the seventh floor, is the shop where I used to buy my video games. I liked it because the games always worked and the guy who ran it was really kind. He was clean-cut, with a trim bowl-cut and pressed white shirts. The store is closed now, of course. The entire floor is closed, really. Out in front of the deserted gaming shop, one of the lights flickers like the twitch of a madman’s eye.
This is what has become of my childhood – a husk of a building, hollowed out except for the nostalgia, with the strobe of flickering light fixtures.
There’s a whimsicality to Woody Allen’s fondling and measuring of life’s curiosities and starkness, and it doesn’t quite sit with the claim to himself be the room’s gloom. Reality, however, assumes it must sit quite agreeably, probably in a cross-legged gesture, otherwise where would the movies go? There would be no resulting art to speak of nor cured curiosity to honour dead cats. We’ll call it cognitive dissonance or maybe we’ll call it just getting along, but Allen has stared the banality of it all square in the nostril and concluded only that it too holds warmth and humour. Have you yet seen Midnight In Paris? It may be the only cozy corner in this rather circular – yet undirected – and fatalistic world; an unhurried and spacious ode to nostalgia is Midnight In Paris and, ironically, a knowing nod to that disconsolate yearning to be a great artist among greater artists. You’d be a ruddy fool not to see it; a silly git not to feel it. [Petite fleur.]
Ghost – I’m going with the name airbrushed on his black cargo Capris – crashed open the train car door, awakening me from my open-eyed sleep. My fellow passengers (except the passed-out, inebriated ones) and I slightly turned our necks, the bang having diverted our attention from drowsy meditation.
The towering wanderer meandered through the car, murmuring, “Excuse me, excuse me,” and softly shepherding human impediments with his hands and forearms. Ghost was hard to ignore. I squinted, trying to decipher his tattoos, black inked on slightly lighter skin. A cross was on his right eye socket with an unintelligible phrase imbued underneath. His left cheek was the home of a splotchy eagle, but I’m not much of a birdwatcher.
“This is the type of thing you see on your way from Newark at 1:30 at night,” sniggered some chick from Boston to her faceless girlfriends. She sucked. They all sucked. I’m glad I don’t have to see them ever again. At least, the appearance of Ghost ended the discussion concerning some guy named Aaron Klein. He’s cute, ya know? He’s funny, ya know?
Ghost pulled his shiny do-rag to the bridge of his nose, zoning out as we sped past the shadows of abandoned factories and the classic billowing smoke stacks of New Jersey. He rolled up the sleeves of his purple flannel, reached for the bar above him, and began doing pull-ups, alternating the side his head bobbed over on every lift.
We pulled into our station and Ghost landed on his Dunks just as the doors beeped and slid open. Exhausted figures exited and entered. Ghost didn’t turn or make notice of anyone, but ambled again through the car. The doors closed and the train lurched forward. I quickly clutched a pole as my feet slipped, and continued to observe our subject.
The door crashed open as I attempted to rub the torpor out of my eyes. Ghost was straddling the exposed threshold between the two cars, his collar flapping in the gale. I chuckled and looked down at my Keds. The ether was abandoned when I raised my glance. [Record Collection.]
This little boy, he crept his head inside the already shyly opened door. There was no need, for the walls were glass, but he crept through anyway. He was just making sure. In the first corner to his left was a bin of used fabric softeners, empty water bottles, detergent canisters, but mostly cans and gum wrappers. He dipped his hand into this bin, this boy’s lucky-dip, scattered what was there – just enough to catch sight of items underneath – and unearthed a plastic bottle or possibly two. Into his bag they went and off he skipped to the other end of the Laundromat. For a boy searching bins, he looked happier than the rest of them.
He couldn’t have seen above the washing machines for his height, and it was a long room, yet he knew exactly where to go. He might have done this before, maybe yesterday. No winning ticket in that final dustbin either and so out the door he went and onto the sidewalk, clasping the loose jeans covering his father’s thick legs as he sold copied DVDs to no one. A girl, much older than the boy and much younger than the father, watched every step the boy had made. His smile was as infectious as the empathy for his situation, she thought to herself while passing through radio channels of bad music.
Knowing, she moved from her seat to the boot of her battered car – she was asked twice already that week did she need a repaint and someone else had offered $1,000 to take it away. The boy and the father had gathered their belongings into their red truck, their newer belongings, too, and were on their way. Like the boy opening the door, she waved them down. “Do you want more bottles?” Nothing. “Bottles,” and she pointed at the bag in the back of truck. “More?” “Sí!” And smiles.
The boy opened the truck door, jumped the height to the floor with a kind of excited plod and followed her to the car, his father chasing them through the truck mirrors. She opened the boot, the trunk, and pulled from it, with some effort, a garbage bag of empty water bottles she’d been keeping to avail of a chunky coupon at the local grocery store. Searching in bins … they might need it more, she figured. With it came some shoes and a bag of old clothes. The boy grabbed everything but the bottles before they hit the floor and tucked them back in, coyly taking the bag of plastic away as she smiled again and saluted towards the father. He didn’t see her; instead paralyzed by his son’s smile and the way he sat up beside him with a glance suggesting a sense of pride in their successful evening. [Skying.]
I kind of hate this song. The clunky transitions, the obnoxious intro, the longer and even more obnoxious music video intro, the atonality of the chanted chorus, the preachiness, the pretentiousness – it’s all bullshit.
But there are two redeeming qualities. One is the adorable double stomp of the dancers in the music video. The second is that the jingoism, the triteness of the message, the sheer banality of it all is absolutely necessary.
For years homophobes have dominated that corner of the public discourse. There are plenty of articulate, compelling works in a variety of mediums about homosexuality and homosexuals’ particular brand of struggle (pick up Middlesex if you’ve got a free summer to flip the page 529 times or just happen to like really good fiction), but the reductive banners, the regurgitated cliches, and the mind-numbing arguments – that sphere belonged solely to the homophobic.
Until now. Lady Gaga is hitting back. Gays, too, can be entirely unoriginal and bland and gain huge amounts of public traction despite it. So suck it.
It’s the ’90s again, when singers appear in their own music videos, one costume is enough, old black guys have belting saxophone solos, everything is in earnest, boobs jiggle, and dancing to your own music is actually pretty cool. [Born this way.]
Stare at the girl walking in front of you off the plane, her knees pointing in at each other so severely her legs give a tiny buckle with each step. Think about how miserable she must have been at gym as a child, hiding in the locker room crying, but now here she was before you, half gorgeous (her beauty undermined by a touch of flat face and a snout of a nose), her hips swaying majestically.
Try not to stare at the old man’s light blue dyed hair and mustache when he approaches you in the airport Coffee Bean, being bullishly American and asking the barista if they sell coffee from Sumatra, where, incidentally, they just make the best coffee, didn’t you know, and it’s such a pity no one there drinks coffee so they don’t even know how good they have it. Also, where all have you been, young lad, anywhere else besides Singapore? Tell him you’ve just come from Indonesia and let him get distracted by buying his Sumatran coffee while you slip away.
Take the subway to EW11. Notice the abundance of women nodding off at 5:45am. Wonder if the equal numbers of each gender on your train indicates that Singapore’s workforce is more evenly shared than most nations or if women just have jobs that require an earlier start on average. Or, if you just got an uncommon blend.
Walk 1km to the Golden Mile Tower.
Check in at the bus station. Nod knowingly when the lady tells you to come back in two hours. Fill out the immigration form with a borrowed blue pen in the waiting room while watching a dubbed Indian soap.
Grab two pork bau – $1.20 Sing a pop. Wash down with a Coke. It’ll keep you awake till your bus starts loading.
Idly wonder where your parents are in their journey, then realize they’re in Singapore too, just in a transit hotel. They’ll be halfway across the Pacific by the time you eventually arrive, even though you’re only going two inches up the globe your dad keeps in his classroom.
Smile at the sight of an old Liverpool 15 Berger jersey on a middle aged man with two pudgy daughters.
Snap a picture for the large Indian family outside the bus, half of which are climbing on. Ponder how Indian women can expose so much midriff without it being the least bit sexual.
Smirk when, on the bridge into Malaysia, the shoulder becomes another lane. Not even Singapore is immune to the Asian shotgun approach to queues. Smirk again as, frustrated by the traffic, the driver, a skinny man with his pant legss pulled up over his knees, lights up a menthal, carefully exhaling out his window and away from the no smoking sign.
Notice the sweat trickling freely down your side as you stand for over an hour in an immigration “line” which would perhaps more accurately be described as a huddle. Curse the local schools for all ending on the same day, filling all flights and trains as well as causing the traffic.
Fall asleep listening to the Handsome Furs on headphones.
Feel the bus slow down in your sleep as it pulls over for gas in Ipoh. Note how weird it is that you can sense the loss of momentum even when unconscious.
Try to figure out if there’s a time change throwing your calculations (that a 10 hour bus ride took 13) off.
Hop in the back of the taxi and give the driver directions to your apartment. Flat out refuse when he tries to up the price once you’ve arrived, and demand full change back. Say thank you as you slam his door.
TUNE THE PROLETARIAT is yet another useless music blog, of which there are too many -- precious little blogs created by self-indulgent fucks who think their opinions are somehow more meaningful and more beautiful and more insightful than yours. Fuck those guys, man. Fuck 'em long and fuck 'em hard.
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