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[alvinpang]

The Joy of Walking Through Walls

Closing Keynote, Asmara-Addis Literary Festival - In Exile

Brussels, 31 May 2022

We belong here.  Wherever we came from, whatever we believe, we belong here. By train or rain or pain or by the skin of our teeth we come to belong here. To this gathering, to this conversation, to this place and this life. This giving and sipping at straws, our doubt and its magnificence, our courage and its silences—all that drives us to seek more of the world. We are the world. We are enough and more than enough: in our exquisite specificities, our impurities and jagged edges that are in truth part of our heritage and heroism, an unclaimed abundance of experience and knowledge and imagination.

We came, called by the Arch-Wizard Sulaiman and his magical team, to hear one another speak and sing and move in the world as if it were ours. It is ours. We came here to reach across the boundaries of time, space, prejudice, language, law, bodies, to share intimacies. To be touched; to be nourished by the surprise of touch; to be held by a different sense of connection. And for these gifts, I thank you. For baring ourselves so generously to one another, over the past few days, I thank you.

Because it is not in our hardened certainties that we find growth but in our vulnerabilities, our soft bellies and blind spots. To learn, we must let our guard down a little. To leave orbit we must lower our planetary shields.

I am thinking of what Nguyen shared yesterday, about censorship and finding a different place from which to speak fully. I think of her courage in making that journey. But it is not a matter of the stereotypical liberal West vs the draconian East or deprived South. Literature has always been about what we keep in and what we keep out. It has a custodial function, and this operates through mechanisms that support it: not just regulatory laws but genres, canons, gatekeepers, publishers, funding, readerships, translation or its lack, fandom, patronage, political agendas, imperial curricula, courtesy, taste—these are evident everywhere. Today books are still being banned or removed from libraries and schools, and texts held back from circulation, because they are seen to be unsuitable, or unsellable, or blasphemous, or offensive, perhaps too Russian. And then you have social media coming up to fill that thirst to speak, to share and to be heard, but bringing with it other forms of shouting and silence.

It is not about better or worse: what we have is a spectrum of differently negotiated freedoms, something that came up in conversation with Jay Bernard. We are surrounded by walls (both external and internalised) that keep us safe by keeping us apart from what may harm or confuse us, including one another.

Of course as mortal creatures we long to be comfortable and secure, to be accepted, to be seen as part of a tribe. In return, we are asked to respect these walls by those who erect them or those who fear them. And so we play the games we are given to play, as best as we can. We come to think of being coy as cleverness, as protective camouflage. As membership. All these shoulds that corral us.

When I was just starting out as a writer in the 1990s, I had little idea about these freedoms, these negotiations, the various walls, visible or invisible, that keep us in check. I didn’t know what the rules of the game were. And that was my great blessing, because it meant I started out doing what I wanted to do.

To be subtle one has to understand the codes of conduct one then labours to skirt around. To beat about the bush, you need to recognise the bush.

Because I didn’t know there were protocols and social norms and what a person like me was supposed to be, either at home or away from it, I was able to do things that I might have felt inhibited from doing, as others have been. I did not know what could not be done. Everything felt new and challenging, but nothing felt impossible.

Mine was not a philosophy of resistance or breakthroughs, but of wayfaring and exploration. Because I didn’t know about the walls, I ended up walking through them, on my way to where I was going. Because I did not centre the walls, I did not know that I was supposed to be in the margins, to stay in my lane. You could say being socially clueless, tactless and awkward as a young person turned out to be my most useful superpower.

I realise now, decades later, that I have become much more circumspect, more subtle, and have shed some of that raw innovation and boldness of the early years, as I became known as a “serious” writer. But I am learning to look past the trappings of success that after a time become walls of their own, and to rediscover the core of play, of process, of possibility, that is at the heart of what we do as writers. As human beings. And as the previous panel reminds us, becoming a dinosaur can also free us from giving a damn.

We spoke about seriousness in yesterday’s panel, and I have been thinking again about the beauty of folly. Of following the weight of our desire to where it will take us. What in some philosophies is known as beginner’s mind.

What would it mean to look at the world through an amateur’s eyes? There is going to be anxiety, certainly, as well as false starts, even perhaps shame. Let’s not pretend that walking through walls is going to be painless. But there is also a profound freedom, wonder, and dare I say it, joy—the amateur’s exuberant pleasure in the act itself, in unreserved immersion and unconstrained engagement, without expectation of recognition or reward. “Amateur” derives of course from the Latin for “lover”. An amateur is someone who does something out of love. And from acts of love come the future.

This precious festival is one such act of love and I cannot wait to see what will come of it in due course. Thank you for having me be part of it.

I commend you, my fellow amateurs, into the wild unknown of tomorrow, unsubtly free. May you walk through any walls in your way as if they were but rain. And may you have a good journey home to your deepest loves.

[alvinpang]

I can see why the Ricoh GR III has become a bit of a cult classic, esp. for street photography.  It captures the mood of a scene well; it even brings drama and texture to the HDB landscape, which can seem bland at first glance. This camera’s rendering lends each scene a certain texture; not grime exactly, but a sense of being streaked with story. This camera (esp with its much vaunted “Snap Focus” feature) encourages an approach to image-making that is less about precision than atmosphere—-although it is also very capable of a sharp eye and nuanced colours.  Unlike many contemporary cameras, which boast of ever greater resolutions, focus speeds and frames per second, the GR III is about dancing with light: a flirtation with what a scene suggests rather than adhering with dutiful fidelity to what-is. It rewards sideways glances and sly glimpses. It asks the photographer to take a chance; to be spontaneous; to loosen the reins; to wink at chaos.  To be free. Perhaps this is why this petite device appeals to me, a decidedly promiscuous camera lover. The GR III reminds me of the sort of photographs I used to love taking, back in the days of film which each roll of 36 snaps cost something to develop, but each print (mysterious until physical in hand) was proof of play. I’ve wanted to be more deliberate in my photography recently, but the GR III speaks to my natural creative style: intuitive and instinctual rather than carefully planned; drawn by the poetry of shape and movement. Of course, I will still need to hone technical expertise and patience (especially with wildlife and macros). But I am also grateful to be reminded to let go of my other habit—-which is an obsession with precision (pixel-peeping), optimisation and control, to the point where I can lose sight of the bigger picture (literally). Our tools shape how the work goes. What then does it mean to be deliberate; masterful, in this or any art? Surely the mastery of tools involves understanding how tools master us: how our ends are informed, whether we know it or not, by our means—as well as by what escapes us. One day perhaps I will learn to dance with birds and be precise about the sea.

[alvinpang]

I used to  run into Anxiety a lot back when I was rushing from place to place. She would always want me to sit down with her and talk, but then refuse to tell me anything much. She once woke me up in the middle of the night, and all I could listen to was the sound of her breathing. I spent a lot of time with her in cafes, until I realized that she was addicted to caffeine an the sound of her voice. 

Anxiety craves attention. She loves bringing people bad news.  At meetings, she used to shut people up when they were about to say something interesting. In a crisis, she would be the loudest voice in the room. She is difficult to ignore, and has always been a poor listener. Until I learnt to step away from her, I never knew the quality of my own voice. 

It’s unclear why I ever spent so much time with her. Perhaps I was fascinated by her loneliness, or was in love with her presence. I remember her as always being hungry, constantly gnawing at anything she could lay her hands on. She has grown so large and awkward, and that she is afraid to go out and meet people. She might spent hours dressing up, but no matter what she wears, she feels naked in front of others. She has forgotten how to laugh. 

Nowadays, she stays mostly indoors talking to Despair, who is blind. She feels heavy and lethargic, and keeps the curtains drawn so people outside cannot see how gross she has become . Still, even though Anxiety claims to prefer the dark, I know she has a secret pair of wings which she’s forgotten how to use. Deep in her heart, what she truly wants is to fly again, - if only she could be sure of never falling. 

- “Anxiety”, What Gives Us Our Names by Alvin Pang.

[alvinpang]

On leavings

From time to time in his travels he has lost or left things behind. A copy of Boey Kim Cheng's BETWEEN STATIONS slipped from his fingers in Bohol and tumbled out of a window towards the sea. At the airport in Helsinki, a treasured Swiss Army Knife (a gift from his godfather and engraved with his name) was confiscated because he'd forgotten to remove it from hand luggage; at another port, a favourite portable umbrella was taken away. A comb, a pouch, an adaptor, an item of clothing. Toll for the travel gods, he has always considered these losses: the price of safe passage. So too did he regard the recent disappearance of his Airpods, in the course of his #PhDJourney. Fair fare for the road.

He notices that these losses happen most often when leaving a place, usually for home. It is not just that he is caught out by the task of checking out, but also that he is caught up in some compulsion, a different veer, horizon. A more urgent *Yes*.

Perhaps the surrender of these gifts is a reminder of  limits--to reach for the new or the next he must open his palm and let go of what was once grasped. The way rocket boosters, after pushing their payload out of orbit, fall back to earth, become soot and skystreak and splash.

It is not that he wishes to nor can fully shed what clings. But these things have after all already left their mark: each has in their way nudged his flight through time and place. What they can give he has gathered in himself. Where he goes, they have taken him, and he will them.

The rest the road claims, makes more itself. Gravel and ground to push off from, on the way to the next leaving.

[alvinpang]

On aversion & difference

For many years, when I was younger, I had an aversion to gay people. 

As a teen, I imbibed the prevailing view that being gay, as well as even vaguely “effeminate” behaviour, was somehow perverse: not necessarily a willed trait, but a character weakness. Like being limp, but at the wrist. HIV/AIDS was assumed to have been the outcome of anal sex, through some pathogenic mutation or cancer. This by the boys on the schoolbus who, some of them, later came out themselves as gay in NS. 

After university, with a better appreciation of the complexities of human sexuality, I remained in distaste of gay activism.  Why not just co-exist and live quietly among people like everyone else, unperturbed and unperturbing?  Did we not all have our own quirks and peccadilloes without needing to shout in public about them?  Why the in-your-face flamboyance, the lobbying, the loud talk of pride?

It was only in my late 30s, once I had a child old enough for school, that I realised that sometimes education takes persistence, opportunity, and the occasional raised voice, to get a message across. Have you never asked a kid nicely to do something only to have them roundly ignore you? Have you not tried to use every teaching moment you get to highlight an important but easily forgotten lesson? 

Sometimes, in a world crowded with distraction and misdirection, it takes a bit of noise to get folks to pay attention. Or to notice when people are in distress. And that we may be in some way responsible for that distress.

So too with many social issues: sexuality, race, poverty etc. It’s not about kicking up a fuss for its own sake. It’s about the fact that people are hurting. It’s about sounding an alarm — who does that discreetly?  Somewhere on our streets, a house is on fire.  The person whose house it is, or who first notices the fire, doesn’t necessarily know the best way to put out the fire. They may not even be very nice people.  But the first order of the day is to check what’s going on, and try to put the fire out. To save lives, bind wounds, rescue memories. Not to assume someone is going about it wrong, or crying wolf, or seeking attention, or needs to just chill. Unless of course we don’t see fires in our precinct as our problem at all. Or worse, see our neighbourhood as fireproof.

I am glad people have bothered to open my eyes to the fact that my fellow Singaporeans are hurting and need support. Being human, I will always be a little awkward in the face of experiences in some ways profoundly apart from my own.

But I'd rather learn to be averse to indifference than to difference.

[alvinpang]

When the Barbarians Arrive

by Alvin Pang

lay out the dead, but do not mourn them overmuch.

a mild sentimentality is proper. nostalgia will be expected on demand.

cremate: conserve land, regret no secrets. prepare ashes for those with cameras.

hide your best furniture. tear down monuments. first to go are statues with arms outstretched in victory, and then anything with lions.

it is safer to consort with loss, to know the ground yet suggest no mysteries.

purport illiteracy.

have at hand servants good with numbers. err in their favour between schemes.

keep all receipts out of sight. as soon as is proper, embrace their laws and decline all credit for your own.

confound their historians. give up the wrong recipe for ketupat, for otak.

lay claim to the tongue of roots, the provenance of trees. when the chiku blooms, tell them it is linden. when linden, tell them it is ginko.

recommend laxatives as love potions. attribute pain to the passage of hard feelings. there will be a surge

of interest in soothsaying. do not tell them how it will end, or when. progress, while difficult, is always being made.

on no account acknowledge what your folktales imply.

never deal in the dark unless you can see the whites of their eyes. when they speak of god

bow your head to veil piety, shame, laughter, or indifference.

dress your children like their long-dead elders. marry your daughters to them.

soon you will attend the same funerals.

[alvinpang]

(via The Opening Lines of Romeo and Juliet Recited in the Original Accent of Shakespeare's Time)

[alvinpang]

readying for the call

He is not pursuing doctoral research to change the world, or so he assures the shadow in the mirror. He is only looking for ways to change himself, and not necessarily for the better -- nothing so vain. No, some sort of inner broadening of perspective would do, to begin with, some degree of stretch. A kind of martial disciplining of the intellect. Gruelling, not for its own sake, but as conditioning for other tasks; for war that may or may not come. Is that not one does? To prepare, to be ready when -- if -- called? To ask whether such a call might plausibly come, and from what quarter, is outside the scope of his silence.

It sounds terribly self-indulgent, is the note he reads from the unspoken grey glaze in most people's eyes when he tries to explain what he is doing.  Which he does not, unless questions are pressed. He has been a poet long enough not to proffer private enthusiasms to serious minded persons, face to face. Social media is different: it has a self-reflective value, and he has always used it like a private diary or journal that from time to time is peeked into by a few who might chance by.

The shadow in the mirror seems to nod, and to accept this without signalling either agreement or dissent. He eavesdrops on an owl's protestations, on the dutiful clatter of the day's last trains. Without leave nor sanction, the scent of wrightia religiosa wafts in through an open window, from somewhere in the thick, unlettered dark.

[alvinpang]

A way of one’s own

I've written lesson plans and verse and marked essays and edited books and drafted policy papers and poems and composed op-eds and copyedited the news and compiled anthologies and coded web campaigns and lit journals and 'shopped reports and translations and sat in committee meetings and writing camps and taught and made speeches and readings and travelled and travelled sometimes on another's coin and sometimes on my own and helped others do the same and been called things wherever the wallpaper and whatever badge is purported.

People are basically the same, and unsaintly, and ask too much of each other. 

Not having to worry about money and time is the exception in any sustained human endeavour. You do what you love to keep making a living or you make a living to keep doing what you love. Yes, help helps but no serious parent expects a grant for having or raising children. I might be wrong. I am probably often wrong. What do I know but what I have known? I pay my taxes. I do the best I can, except when I don't. I am just an I. But not less. Better is possible. Worse is possible.

When I feel stuck I walk the manmade paths around the field; sometimes the field. Is it wise to skirt the grass, and not plant a flag in one small corner? I have not brought any flags with me, only the slow wear of my walking. What I trample down becomes clear. Bared earth marks the passing of feet. You are the grassroots or you are the sower of largesse. But grass seeds itself wherever it can. If not one patch, then another. I am saying it does not need to stay in its box. I am saying we like to trim back the verge. We keep growing, unruly as hair. But when did the I become we? I will have to watch that slip. No, no, I meant only to bring an umbrella. It may not look like rain, but it rains. The otters are back, plumper and more numerous than ever. Their pips and squeals drown out the disgruntlement of crows.

[alvinpang]

On independent funding

After disbursing and pledging several thousands in USD this year, I'd like to declare my offer of lit/arts independent sponsorship closed for 2017.  

I'll still honour any pledges I made this year, and continue to welcome recommendations or requests for assistance (from anyone, anywhere) for projects taking place in 2018 and beyond.  Once again, my priority is to help in meaningful areas where reasonable sources of support are not available. I'm no Royal Literary Fund, but I will try to help where I can.

Remarkably, *all* the projects I've supported this year have been by women (from all around the world). This is not due to any active discrimination on my part: it's just that all the applicants and candidates have been women.  It's worth considering why.

It may be that in the fields I'm interested in supporting (i.e. literary and related arts), it's women who are more committed to doing more interesting, bolder work in the first place.  It could be that they are more likely to lack opportunities for support: i.e. that they get less conventional help than men.  It could also be that they are more prepared to ask for help to get new things done, or to overcome red tape -- rather than stay within the bounds of what is already permitted or funded.  

Whatever the underlying reasons, I am proud to have been able to support these efforts and hope to do more next year, once I build up my savings again.  

I wish the recipients every success in their creative endeavours, and trust that they will in turn pay it forward when they are able.  We can and must find in ourselves the power to make a difference, rather than leave good to chance or to others.

[alvinpang]

PhD Year 1+

I feel like I was a much sharper, more cogent, more diligent, more disciplined researcher and essay writer 20 years ago.  

The paradox of course is that I'm a much better creative writer now and I have, out of accumulated life experience, much more to write about.

Win some, lose some.

Part of this is sheer rustiness (this I have to scrub off).  Part of this is time (this I have to set aside). Part of this is bloodymindedness and the arrogance of age (this I have to unlearn, unlearn, unlearn).

Part of it is the old habit of relying on intution and flair to take the place of meatiness (I need to do more homework, which means: see above).

I hope I'll be able to get my scholarly mojo back soon, now that I'm on the wagon. As one of the supervisory panelists has suggested: stop wasting time making excuses. Don't whine through it; don't drink through it; work through it.

The work is, in large part, not about snazzy answers -- the sales pitch is over. Now it's about showing I can put in the (tedious, challenging, anxiety-inducing, uncertain) due diligence necessary to approach difficult questions.

p.s. *I* have to do this. Not some disembodied "you". It's on me. I've won the tender: now to deliver on the goods.

[alvinpang]

Look folks, I'm fine.

I care about what I do even if others don't. I'm cheerfully productive in ways that matter to me. I have a little savings, the love of good people, the esteem of those I respect and the consternation of those I don't. I have my share of scrapes. I accrue foibles the way some acquire tattoos. I'm not about to off myself any time soon (but never say never right?).  I don't run around with sharp objects. My booze supply is steady. I see well enough to be stung by unexpected beauty and the casual malice of the world. Writing is a way of thinking aloud through unvoiced words (but there really ought to be a separate term for it). We don't ever really know what lies beneath the mask of language, and it doesn't quite matter. Even the mark you did not mean to leave can tell those who come after someone once passed this way. What may be read isn't where I come from, or where I'm going. It's travel.

[alvinpang]

Home is where the heart aches

I'm glad I caught the last day of Good OH' Holland Village. It was bittersweet for me personally, to return to a neighbourhood I'd called home for nigh 20 years -- not too long after I'd had to leave it in something of a hurry -- for a grassroots arts initiative I've been following with enthusiasm for years:  I would have, I imagine, offered to be a volunteer had I still been at Chip Bee, just a few doors away from the OH! headquarters. I met a bunch of young people, including readers who knew my books but not my ah pek avatar, and old friends who've followed my online rants enough to know my deep connection with Holland V. I couldn't help but chip in with tales of my own when the guides were taking us around. My own experiences seemed consistent with the concerns of this year's Open House: boundaries; the possibility (or dearth) of exchange, flow and connection between disparate cultures, groups, aspirations, values and memories; what can be bought or sold; how a sense of place is developed or disrupted; relocation. We sink roots whether or not we know it, or perhaps want to. We leave our marks on white walls or dusty surfaces that can be scrubbed clean of trace, but that erasure uncovers other textures. We are marked as indelibly; we are stirred and tarred, in profound material, affective, cognitive and unconscious ways, by the places in which we've been for longer than a while. The transience of our contemporary relationships, with places that do not last and people that do not stay, has become our peculiar and particular argot. The tours themselves, even as they tread such narratives and critiques, do little more than skim through the homes and lives, fictive sanctums curated from detritus we amass and arrange into a kind of welcome for ourselves. Our paths that hardly meet save for the brevity of theatre or the happy assignation of a book, a meal, a lift ascent, a traffic crossing. Here is a port village in a port city, in which we must secure our own harbourage. Or arrive, trade, watch and leave. Good OH HV was a thoughtfully designed conversation about my old neighbourhood and what it means. Even though it wasn't about me, I felt as if I've had a long chat with attentive strangers, about the past two decades of our lives. The heart is sore, but our stories have had an airing. It wasn't the Biennale: art adorning well-lit public galleries, anxious to underline its smarts, stripped of context. It wasn't the National Gallery with its filial burden to state and posterity and towering voids encaged. This wasn't "just" about art -- and so it became another demonstration of why art matters. How it brings strangers to our doors in ways that shift perspectives, theirs and ours. How it is possible for something to be beautiful because it is off the market. How we find time by letting it go. How a child's scrawled ambitions spoke to the braided carpetwork. How twin infants beam at unfamiliar giants wandering through their four-roomed cosmos to peer at the installations, and the view, and their smiling eyes, fresh and free from judgement.  Art as neighbourly gab. Art as a walk around with our eyes a little more open. Art that tells me how much more there is still to learn about a neighbourhood I thought I knew well (and I do). This is about bringing something home. For me, it was also a way of saying goodbye, and meaning it. Thank you to the entire passionate, dedicated team at Good OH' Holland Village.

[alvinpang]

This morning I went to see Priyageetha Dia's effort on the 20th floor of Block 103, Jalan Rajah (off Balestier).  I'm no art critic and I lack the technical language to describe what I saw, but I'll try to find words for it.  Quite simply, it was the most affecting artwork I've experienced this year, and in a long while.  It is, to my mind, a work of remarkable faith, in both the sacred and secular senses.  In the dim light of the HDB stairwell, the goldfoiled steps seemed of a piece with the household altars elsewhere on the corridor. It is the thin, tatty gold of everyday ritual; of temple ornaments; of paper offerings burnt for the dead, of New Year decorations left on doors for lingering good luck; not treasure but a wish for treasure. Not the better thing itself but hope for better things.  But it also suggests faith that the very sight of this golden surprise might trigger in us all our associations with that luminosity -- with memories of playing on the stairs as children, of religious rites, of festive joy and family and moments of beauty and wonder that stand out against years of drab routine.  And if the gold flakes off or is removed: is not the transience of mortal works a core tenet of most belief systems?  Has it not always been the case that nothing gold can stay (Frost), and certainly not in Singapore's relentless urban reinvention of itself? After all, the work is no more a hazard than the random assortment of chairs, shelves, bicycles, old newspapers, tiles etc. that we let be on our own corridors. Come on, we grew up with this stuff. May have stubbed our toes on some of these splinters. The tiled lift lobby seems more slippery than the stairs lah. While I was there, a young woman jogged upstairs, stopped to noticed the gold, then kept going. This work does no material harm. The neighbours, it's been reported, have no problem with it either. Yes, it's technically against the rules, but that is, along with the variety of public responses, part of the conversation it seeks to generate -- which has been really quite civil. The town council, to its credit, has had to highlight the prohibitions it's obliged to observe, but they are not, it appears, taking a punitive stance.  They get that this comes from a good place.  (Recall also that art in the corridors, albeit permitted beforehand, was a welcome feature of OH! Marine Parade some years back). In this case, the artist has no doubt taken bold risks, and not just in terms of the potential repercussions.  Any investment of significant artistic effort (this took 5 hours) is a leap of faith: a testament to belief in the value of the creative process and its seldom certain outcomes. Nor does the work, for all its supposed glitter, call to itself in a way that confers primacy on its transgressiveness ("Look at me! This is so rebellion!").  Instead, it acts, to me, as an understated yet poignant reminder that art, that beauty, are possible in life, wherever we are and whatever our station. That some extraordinary, 'unnecessary' things may be worth investing time and resources in. It's worth recognising and accepting -- without constantly needing the endorsement of external authority -- that we are always, in different ways, trying to make more of our lives and ourselves; trying to introduce and share our own ideas of beauty and grace. So too do potted flowers and greenery spontaneously appear, and are tended to, in every HDB block across the island. Some things are worth giving ourselves permission to love. Like country. Like home. This is a paen to Singaporean place and life and longing. Thank you, Priyageetha, for your labour of love.

[alvinpang]

THE NAYSAYERS

The naysayers nayed. Nobody understood them: "Horse ah? Neigh what neigh?"

The naysaying went unheard due to the crowing of cocks being culled.

The naysayers wrote down their nays. This was to be mistaken for verse.

The naysayers wore T-shirts proclaiming their nays. Business quickly boomed.

The naysayers nayed each other, mostly. Meanwhile the rain kept falling.

The naysayers yayed, once, a dish of fried noodles. Yes-men, every one.

The naysayers could only say nay, or give up naysaying at will.

The naysayers spoke only when spoken to. None were called to witness.

The naysayers stopped saying anything at all. Winter came, and went.

The naysayers who said nothing were deported by the silent free.

[alvinpang]

On assumed intentions

An ancedote:  I once spent a few days driving around the UK with a poet friend. We rented a car (splitting the cost) to get to a series of Michelin restaurants and interesting locations we wanted to explore.  I took first shift and drove for hours, my friend navigating. I kept driving -- even after I was tired of having to pay attention to the road instead of the sights, and having to curtail my drink during meals -- because he'd not offered to take over the wheel, and I felt obliged to keep going as designated driver until further notice.

After a day or two of this, he finally blurted out that if I was going to hog the wheel, maybe we shouldn't be dividing the rental costs equally. He was puzzled when, instead of protesting, I burst out laughing.  O the irony. While I'd regarded driving as a responsibility and a burden I was to bear until relieved, he thought it was a privilege I'd been reluctant to give up. Neither of us, introverted by instinct, had bothered to check with the other.

I readily swapped seats and roles, grateful for a chance to use my camera and looking forward to an extra pint at the next gastropub stop. On his part, he found out how finicky an oversized, underpowered Peugeot can be on winding hedgemazed English country roads.  But I wasn't keen to take back the wheel :p  

Since then, I've had a much better understanding of how to read him, and of the importance of being clear about what I want and do not want -- because people will impute intentions and motives in the absence of communication.  One often assumes, but never quite knows, what other people are really thinking.

[alvinpang]

On mentorship

I wish I had a mentor.  I don't think I ever had a proper one: there have been some assigned for work to whom I never quite related (and at any rate they didn't stay long in the institutions they were supposed to induct me into...). I've not had one for writing: when we first came out in the late-90s, there wasn't anyone on the scene to show us the way; no role models -- or at least none who wouldn't try to reshape us in their own image. 

(In literary life outside writing, my first proper publisher in Singapore, Fong Hoe Fang of Ethos Books, is a respected exception, and I would not have achieved a thing without his support, wisdom and friendship.)

It's a bit like being a good editor: you don't impose your own view of how things should be. Instead, you try to look past the raw fluff to locate and tease out the merits that are there, signal caution where you see gaps, and offer a sense of what the world out there is like: its landscape; what it lacks; what it hungers for; what its dangers and opportunities are.  It may be unrealistic to expect the mentor not to have a vested interest in the relative success of his or her wards, but the idea isn't to push someone forward like some new product to be launched.   It is, to my mind, more like offering a map charting both paths well tread and regions not yet explored, with the legend filled in ("Here be jewels. There be dragons. Deceptive rocks ahead."), along with a more visceral impression of what it can all mean: a sailor recounting tales of the high seas and distant shores, inspiring travel, noble risk, compassion.  It's an extended tour backstage, without demand the prospect buy tickets or join the theatre, trusting instead to curiosity and the ambition only it can awaken. 

I've tried being a mentor to others, generally on request.  I'm not sure I've always been a good one: all too frequently ego, inexperience and wishful thinking (on my part and theirs) get in the way. But where there has been some personal affinity, some human fondness, the time has felt worthwhile. It can't in my view, just be a professional thing. It's not a transaction.  You have to care, both of you, even if you disagree. Especially so. And there's no pro tip for that.