The photograph I would spend the years trying to catch…

Personally, I don’t think any other picture comes closer to approximating the beauty of a landscape, or that of a sad goodbye, or simply saying how far one should travel from home.

Change your life

If you believe in the magic of language,

then Elvis really Lives,

and Princess Diana foretold I end as car spin.

If you believe the letters themselves

contain a power within them,

then you understand

what makes outside tedious,

how desperation becomes a rope ends it.

The circular logic that allows senator to become treason,

and treason to become atoners.

That eleven plus two is twelve plus one,

and an admirer is also married.

That if you could just re-arrange things the right way

you’d find your true life,

the right path, the answer to your questions:

you’d understand how the Titanic

turns into that ice tin,

and debit card becomes bad credit.

How listen is the same as silent,

and not one letter separates stained from sainted.

Once

Within every photograph, there is also the beginning of a story, starring “once upon a time…”

Every photograph is the first frame of a movie, often the next moment, the next release of the shutter a few steps further on, the subsequent image, that is, is already tracing this story’s progress in its very own space, and its very own time.

So over the years, at least to me, taking pictures has more and more turned into “tracing stories”; with every second picture the “montage” is already on the way, and the story that has announced itself in the first picture is now moving into its own direction

defining its sense of space

and portending its sense of time.

Sometimes new actors appear, sometimes the alleged lead proves to be just a supporting part

and sometimes no person at all is at the centre, but a landscape.

–Wim Wenders

You have a wish.

You wish that something might exist, and then you work on it until it does. You want to give something to the world, something truer, more beautiful, more painstaking, more serviceable, or simply something other than what already exists. And right at the start, simultaneous with the wish, you imagine what that “something other” might be like, or at least you see something flash by. And then you set off in the direction of the flash, and you hope you don’t lose your orientation, or forget or betray the wish you had at the beginning.

And in the end, you have a picture of pictures of something, you have music, or something that operates in some new way, or a story, or this quite extraordinary combination of all these things: a film.

-Wim Wenders

Rough weather, Sublime Poetry

To share with you this rough, divisive weather
And not to grieve because we have to share it,
Desire to wear the dark of night together
And feel no colder that we do not wear it,
Because sometimes my sight of you is clearer,
The memory not clouded by the sense,
To know that nothing now can make you dearer
Than does the close touch of intelligence,
To be the prisoner of your kindnesses
And tell myself I want you to be free,
To wish you here with me despite all this,
To wish you here, knowing you cannot be—
This is a way of love in our rough season,
This side of madness, the other side of reason.

–James Reeves (1909-1978 )

I was confounded by the syntax of this sonnet at first, but then realized a way round it was to divide its train of thought in 2s. (the commas are indicative of this) So this is my rusty attempt at paraphrase:

Lines 1-2: To share with you our woes is not an occasion for grief.

Lines 3-4: You and I are cold despite the absence of grief.

Lines 5-6: (The “because” is perplexing because it does not answer a previous query; I can surmise that raw emotion is breaking through here as it seems like a recollection of love)
I remember you best through memory untouched by the senses.

Lines 7-8: Nothing can bring you back except cold rationality of these lines?

Lines 9-10: This is a very confusing line to a mere mortal like me. I am entrapped by your qualities (ie kindness) but I want you to be free from me, but ironically i am not free from you. A paradox or some impossible wish the speaker is making?

Lines 11-12: I wish you were here (x2), but it is impossible.

Lines 13-14: These are the strange currents of our love. Binaries: Madness/Reason, Absence/Presence, You and I. Don’t you just love complicated relationships and the madness that comes from it? There is simply no resolution and you wonder why poetry indeed makes NOTHING happen.

Shrinking Salzburg

Just as I’m considering an expensive foray into the world of analog photography, some cool digital effect has come by to upset the apple cart. I’ve just learnt how to do this miniaturizing effect on photos. Especially good for landscapes and buildings taken from far. It’s dead easy to apply this in Photoshop CS.

Here’s the original – my favourite European town which I’ll hope to drive to from Singapore one day — a good 10,000km.

And here’s the toy version — You could take a picture of it using it tilt-shift lens, but I think it is not an accessory you find everyday in your camera shop. So thank Photoshop CS!

My new toy

I would love to write about all the recession nay-saying and the impending doom that befalls us in 2009, plus gripe about those predatory chain of bankers making irresponsible policies that caused the collapse of Lehmann Brothers Bank. But instead, I think I’ll just like to gaze lovingly at my “in-spite-of-recession” toy, the very retro-styled Voigtlander Bessa-R with her new Ultron 35mm f1.7 oculars. This is a fast 35mm, wide-angle lens, great for photographic stories in low-light conditions. Though tedious, the analog camera holds a charming engagement with History and Sound. If you ever get your hands on this non-electronic camera, listen to its film advance lever and the shutter…all working mechanically to catch that moment.

What a work of beauty! And how apt that I should just have seen Ben Kingsley’s “Elegy” where the most poignant moment was him immortalizing Penelope Cruz in his Leica.

Ode to the Egg

“Oh milky white egg, spew forth your glorious white …” nevermind. I can’t write an ode to the egg without some hint of vulgarity. Anyway, have you seen such a nice eggie? Some excerpts from the Oxford Book of Food Writing: a genre I can never fathom because the tired descriptors of food just being “nice lor” is all I can think of:

“In English the word egg is something to cup in one’s palm. On the page, the extra g, like a linguistic wink, lends the word the same oblong shape as the thing itself. Egg nestles against the curve of the tongue.

In its shell it is all smoothness and balance. Next to it, other kinds of beauty seem bony and embellished… Yet the egg lends its beauty generously—witness the way egg tempera allows itself to be saturated with color; the chalky aura that bathes a Vermeer, as though the painter has cast his light through a broken shell.

The love of eggs is a love for the tiny and tender—pinkie-sized squash, potatoes like marbles, three-week-old chickens, skinny-limbed lambs and calves—but taken one step backwards.”

Amateur Nightshots

I’ll just let the pictures speak for themselves. Atop Centrepoint Carpark, I had a lot which had a nice beam showering down upon the car and decided to seize the moment. What better way to showcase her new R32 shoes too? Just need to find more cosy spots to play with my camera’s aperture and shutter speed…

My lovely Golf

A long overdue shot of my sayang, after PPS and waxing. My goodness, are apolocalyptic changes going to be done unto her soon. The Eisenmann Sport Exhaust is coming in this week, as will the Bilstein PSS10s. Modifying this car is like playing Diablo; you just won’t be satisfied till you have a level *** [insert class] with all the best weapons and stash. But despite all the hoohaa, I have embarassingly lost out to ricer-boy Touaregs, Subaru WRXs egging me on to 180km/h, and the occasional showboating Mini Cooper Asses (S), all driving without regard to the hefty price they paid for their rides.

Anyway, after having clocked about 5000km and doing an Engine Oil change, I’m so pleased with her performance. Unbridled when provoked, yet docile as a family Labrador when I want it to be. Lovely, absolutely lovely car…