The Troubaganger Merdeka Show

Sorry for the short notice! :) See you there? Where better to be on Merdeka eve than right in the heart of KL, enjoying the midnight fireworks?


THE TROUBAGANGER MERDEKA SHOW
WEDNESDAY, 30 AUGUST 2006 from 8pm
@ LA BODEGA KUALA LUMPUR
31, TENGKAT TONG SHIN (behind jalan alor)
Featuring songs and readings of original works by the Klang Valley's singer/songwriters/writers/poets!

Performances by:
{Azmyl Yunor}
{Fathulistiwa Soundscapes}
{Reza Salleh}
{The Sofa Sessions}
{Jerome Kugan}
{Yuri}
{Zalila Lee}

Readings by:
{Bernice Chauly}
{Sharanya}
{Rahmat Harun}
{Mekarnya Satu Kematian}
{Patrick Dominique}
{Wei Yin}
{Jasmine Low}

{and a Surprise Guest Artiste}

RM20 includes one drink

8pm-midnight + fireworks from the neighbourhood

The 'Voices From Next Door' double-cd compilation will also be on sale for only RM 30!
The perfect Merdeka gift for loved ones (and for yourself)!

Stay tuned for 'Voices From Next Door' launch gig on Sunday 3rd Sept!

Reading@Seksan's Aug 26 - A PhotoDiary

I've always liked Bernice Chauly's Readings series, primarily because it is one of the exceedingly few programmes in KL to focus on spoken word performance. It is so important to have dedicated events which are conducive to writers and their work and where one can be assured that the audience is there because they actually want to listen to readings (I've performed at events where the impatience of some members of the audience, as they wait for me to get off stage so the next band can come on, is palpable). So each time I'm asked to read at a venue or event where the spoken word is honoured and celebrated, I am grateful.

Saturday afternoon's reading, curated this time around by Sharon Bakar (Malaysia's closest thing to a literary doyenne) was no different. I think it was one of the better readings I've been to so far this year.



Ted Mahsun.



Jessie Michael.



Saradha Narayanan, one of Jessie's co-authors in the recently-published collection Snapshots!



Fairul Nizam.



Yours truly. Pic by A.



Jasmine Low, who co-produces the Troubaganger series. Jaz recently published a chapbook, and she's someone whom I will be working closely with on some exciting new projects.



After-show open-mic readers Patrick...





... and KG, whom I met through this blog, and whom I'm glad I managed to convince to start performing his writing. I thought he was pretty impressive, especially for a reading virgin!



Sharon caught contemplating - under a ladder!


I will be reading again on Wednesday and Sunday next. More details soon.

All photos by Sharanya Manivannan unless otherwise indicated.

Correction

Correction -- That's three readings in one week. ;)

See you this afternoon, perhaps?

Readings @ Seksan's Resumes This Saturday

This is the first of three readings I will be doing between now and mid-September.

Time: 3.30pm
Date: 26th August 2006
Place: 67, Lorong Tempinis Satu, Lucky Garden, Bangsar (for directions check www.seksan.com). Readers for this Saturday include:
Ted Mahsun
Jessie Michael
Saradha Narayan
Fairul Nizam
Sharanya Manivannan

"Readings" is organized by Sharon Bakar and is made possible by the gracious sponsorship of Seksan from 67 Tempinis Satu and La Bodega.

Please forward this mail, blog it, repost it on bulletins, etc. Feel free. :)

Thanks.

More Miscellany (Quick quick)

Am excited -- three readings lined up in the coming three weeks, some poems appearing on Sept 1 in a magazine I am simply honoured to have had accept my work, and a warm email from a writer I admire.

Farewell, Julio Galán and
Ustad Bismillah Khan.

More, soon.

Miscellaneous

Two books I really, really want (especially the first): Yashodhara Dalmia's Amrita Sher-Gil: A Life and Letizia Argenteri's Tina Modotti: Between Art and Revolution.

Seriously, it's too bad there're so few photos of Sher-Gil on the net, otherwise I would probably want to do a tribute for her too.

Found this video of Suheir Hammad on Youtube. One word: Wow. I was having a discussion earlier today with Jerome about ways in which to expand the spoken word scene here in KL. I know people are interested -- you are, after all here at my blog (thank you) -- not only because of what they have said to me after events, but also because of the (small enough to still be surprising, admittedly) number of times someone I had never met before has told me that they had seen/heard of me. But I agreed with him -- people may be listening, but spoken word here needs a real shot in the arm before it can consider itself anywhere near par the indie music scene. So, for my next performance, on the 30th (more details later), I'm going to do something a little different. That little something might only be memorising rather than reading off the page -- am still working on a few things -- but I promise I'll try.

I spent the last two days flea-marketing, and feeling quite sad. Aside from clothes and bags, which I'm forever buying for dirt-cheap anyway (at least half of all my clothes cost less than RM10, and that's not even including accessories and shoes), my favourite find was an antique piece. A small red and gold piano with a lid that opens, velvet inside. The detail -- the piano keys, the embossed rose on the lid, the sides and legs -- is exquisite.

I wonder if I have a shopping addiction. These days, am also rehearsing, three times a week, for a play I'll be in at the end of September. This evening's was funny. Breathing exercises: the person who conducted the workshop kept spewing innuendoes (supposedly unintentional) which really lived up to the theatre company's name. Rehearsing's great. I so badly need the discipline lately.

Went to Rock Safe, an anti-drugs campaign gig organised by Taylor's College Mass Comm students, at KL Jam Asia on Saturday night. It left me very annoyed, annoyed enough to leave during the third act, which is a shame because I know for a fact that some really good bands were playing. The event started almost an hour and a half late, the crowd was tiny (seemed like two classrooms of people, which it probably was) and lacked energy, no one seemed to be enjoying themselves, and there was some weird "VIP seating" thing going. It was probably one of the worst local music gigs I've been to -- and I sure hope that every sen of the RM20 ticket goes to a worthy charity. Having organised college events myself, I can understand the effort and running around it must have taken to pull the whole thing together, but for a whole group of PR students, I expected much better. (And what does one do when you're deeply irritated by an event that supposedly is meant to raise anti-drugs awareness? Well, thanks to designated driver's curfew, we settled for shisha.)

Update: Ooh, and how could I have forgotten to mention the thing that peeved me the most about that event? They were selling T-shirts with two slogans. One read, "Real Men Don't Do Drugs". The other? "Hot Chicks Like Me Don't Do Drugs". Obnoxious on so many levels. Firstly, consider the manner in which value is quantified according to gender -- worthy males are real men, with the variety of qualities one would ascribe to full adult self-actualization. The value of females, however, is reduced to two things -- their sexual attractiveness, and worse, the value of the self through the denigration of other women. And notice I said women, not chicks, which brings me to... dehumanization/animal objectification. Sigh. Suffice to say, I didn't buy one. Whoever came up with those slogans should fail the assignment.

Pic: Amrita Sher-Gil, photographed by her father in 1937

Flickr Made Me Sad

So I got myself a Flickr account, and it seemed like so much fun, and I was so excited and started uploading and then I saw the message that I've almost filled up my entire monthly quota after just ten pix and now I'm sad because I'd love to get the pro account but can't afford to yet.

Sigh. :(

"You Bring Out The Mexican In Me"

(Cross-posted at Puisi-Poesy. I don't usually reproduce here my entries from there, because it's better to encourage discussions on the PP blog itself, but am hoping that doing so this time will bring over some more readers, with more to add to our discussions!)



"You Bring Out The Mexican In Me"
By Sandra Cisneros


You bring out the Mexican in me.
The hunkered thick dark spiral.
The core of a heart howl.
The bitter bile.
The tequila l�ágrimas on Saturday all
through next weekend Sunday.
You are the one I'd let go the other loves for,
surrender my one-woman house.
Allow you red wine in bed,
even with my vintage lace linens.
Maybe. Maybe.

For you.

You bring out the Dolores del Río in me.
The Mexican spitfire in me.
The raw navajas, glint and passion in me.
The raise Cain and dance with the rooster-footed devil in me.
The spangled sequin in me.
The eagle and serpent in me.
The mariachi trumpets of the blood in me.
The Aztec love of war in me.
The fierce obsidian of the tongue in me.
The berrinchuda, bien-cabrona in me.
The Pandora's curiosity in me.
The pre-Columbian death and destruction in me.
The rainforest disaster, nuclear threat in me.
The fear of fascists in me.
Yes, you do. Yes, you do.

You bring out the colonizer in me.
The holocaust of desire in me.
The Mexico City '85 earthquake in me.
The Popocatepetl/Ixtacc�huatl in me.
The tidal wave of recession in me.
The Agustí�n Lara hopeless romantic in me.
The barbacoa taquitos on Sunday in me.
The cover the mirrors with cloth in me.

Sweet twin. My wicked other,
I am the memory that circles your bed nights,
that tugs you taut as moon tugs ocean.
I claim you all mine,
arrogant as Manifest Destiny.
I want to rattle and rent you in two.
I want to defile you and raise hell.
I want to pull out the kitchen knives,
dull and sharp, and whisk the air with crosses.
Me sacas lo mexicana en mi,
like it or not, honey.

You bring out the Uled-Nayl in me.
The stand-back-white-bitch-in me.
The switchblade in the boot in me.
The Acapulco cliff diver in me.
The Flecha Roja mountain disaster in me.
The dengue fever in me.
The ¡Alarma! murderess in me.
I could kill in the name of you and think
it worth it. Brandish a fork and terrorize rivals,
female and male, who loiter and look at you,
languid in you light. Oh,

I am evil. I am the filth goddess Tlazolt�otl.
I am the swallower of sins.
The lust goddess without guilt.
The delicious debauchery. You bring out
the primordial exquisiteness in me.
The nasty obsession in me.
The corporal and venial sin in me.
The original transgression in me.

Red ocher. Yellow ocher. Indigo. Cochineal.
Pi��n. Copal. Sweetgrass. Myrrh.
All you saints, blessed and terrible,
Virgen de Guadalupe, diosa Coatlicue,
I invoke you.

Quiero ser tuya. Only yours. Only you.
Quiero amarte. Aarte. Amarrarte.
Love the way a Mexican woman loves. Let
me show you. Love the only way I know how.


---------------------------


This time around, I'm sharing a poem by one of my favourite writers. Cisneros is a Mexican-American feminist poet and author, and this is from her 1994 poetry collection, Loose Woman.

It's a steamy, sexy, sensuous love poem -- and you can almost hear a celebratory parade in the background (or maybe that's only because I'm listening to baila right now). You can hear Cisneros reading her poem here. I'm unable to open the link myself, but maybe you can.

The basic structure of "You Bring Out The Mexican In Me" is that it's a list poem, a long reel of place names on a map of the interior, if you will. From the grandiose -- tragedies, heroines, legends -- to the personal -- tequila tears and single womanhood -- a whole plethora of memories emerges. Her lover has teased all of this out of her. He has made it possible for her to reach these previously esoteric parts of herself. She is all things -- the pre-Columbian, the colonizer, the colonized, the immigrant, the second-generation Chicana. And with sass and with tenderness, this is her response. It's a grand, horns-blaring kind of poem, but under it all, even during its most audaciously in-your-face moments, is a pervasive sense of awe and quiet gratitude -- hers is the kind of lover who restores her soul, smoothes over the scarring of life between cultures, repairs the fractures of her past. He brings out the Mexican in her -- he brings out her deepest knowledge, and deepest secrets.

"You", she says. You. Thus it's intimate. Who is this lover? Who or what provokes Cisneros thus? Does s/he exist? Perhaps it doesn't matter -- she needs the Mexican in her, with all its roaring glory and its hideous grief.

I am immensely influenced by Cisneros' work because to me, she's one of the few writers I've encountered who are able to successfully juxtapose a supposedly exotic identity with the supposedly more profane language of her expression. She navigates this interface with such skill -- and more importantly by far -- such sincerity, which is why she can offer up the most succulent exoticism there is and never once seem contrived or pandering to Orientalist tastes. And I applaud Cisneros for avoiding the use of a glossary, that most tell-tale of "exotic" devices, as doing so speaks volumes about the nature of her craft. In the case of this poem, I personally also feel it's unnecessary, because the spirit of the work shines nonetheless.

And speaking of influences, I've read some "after" poems based on this one (e.g. "You Bring Out The Klang Valleyite In Me"). Here's a suggestion to anyone who wants to take it up: if you like this, why don't we write our own after poems modelled on its structure and its soul, and share them, perhaps at the Puisi-Poesy reading? A few examples I found on the web are here (by a performance poet called Bao Phi -- this one's amazing), here (scroll all the way down) and here (this one's by a 6th-grader!). On that note, I'd also like to open up the floor again on the subject of Puisi-Poesy readings (or, if that's too intimidating, gatherings)... what are your thoughts? Would be great to hear from non-contributors especially.

Misogyny, Weddings a la Lanka and the First Teaching of the Pipe (Linkage)

After reading this obnoxious article by Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal, I'm glad I've got more time to submit my own article on him, based on an interview I conducted a couple of months back for a magazine called -- ahem, ahem -- New Man. If you thought Tourism was misogynistic -- and I did -- the audaciousness of this article really moves it up a notch. It's one thing to get (pretty decent, at that) fiction out of a flashy, trivial sort of misogyny, but it's another altogether to use one's own bedroom insecurities to try and tear down all the work of a revolution in progress.

My family has the patently worst, most boring and downright unpleasant weddings ever, which explains why I generally hate weddings (and which also makes the fact that I love Monsoon Wedding further proof of just how cool that film is). But this made me smile, mostly because of the many references to Colombo Seven, which was where the first home of my life was (yes.. that would make me hardcore bourgeois, by some people's standards). And the cake -- oh my, that Sri Lankan love cake!

"The first teaching of the pipe is sexual respect for women," says the wonderful Cecelia Fire Thunder, as she recounts the legend of White Buffalo Calf Woman. Fire Thunder continues to challenge forces within her tribe, state and country to provide reproductive rights to women.. I recently also discovered that she is legally deaf. What can I say, except that here is a woman who makes me want to jump up and cheer. She makes me want to shake loose in the sunshine the warrior cry in my lungs.

In 1969

Go see In 1969, by Five Arts Centre, if you can. There's one more show, Sunday at 3pm. I saw it on Friday night, and loved it. It's a very raw production, and this adds to its power, rather than detract from it. It's also incredibly subversive... and incredibly relevant.

What impressed me:
1. Most of all, despite it being physical theatre, never once did the movement overwhelm the words.
2. Secondmost of all, it was easily the least pretentious Malaysian production I've probably ever seen. Everything from the performances to the venue felt refreshingly honest. Rare indeed.
3. Again: incredibly subversive, and incredibly relevant.

I'd like to sell it to you better than to simply say: if you live in Malaysia, you need to see this play.

But, if you live in Malaysia -- you need to see this play. I hope they take it and travel with it, because it's sure to give goosebumps to audiences outside the Klang Valley too.

Lastly, wear comfortable shoes. It's stairs all the way till the top, to get to the theatre. Unfortunately, no wheelchair ramps or elevators.

Venue: Sunway College Rooftop Theatre
Written by Beth Yahp. Directed by Chee Sek Thim. Featuring Shanon Shah, Adrian Kisai, Gabrielle Low, Hari Azizan, Imri Nasution, Mark Teh and Ruza Jajuli.
Sunday August 6 2006, 3pm
Free entry

¡Aliviate pronto, Compañero Fidel!

Get well soon, Comrade Fidel.



I pray that, if nothing else, your reign outlasts that of that dictator up north. That the vulture of George W. Bush's administration never gets its chance to feast on you.

I pray for your health and your longevity, but not for your legacy, for in that regard you are already immortal. I pray for the exoneration of your sins, and for the voices and souls of those you have silenced.

I pray for you, Fidel, because in a world falling apart with imbalances, we need you.


(Pic: Castro in New York, 1959)