not much of a title
Of late, I've realized that in going about my daily life, I unconsciously maintain a running narrative of my surroundings in my head. I realized this today, while at an independent film festival watching the director of one of the featured films saunter in - a nondescript Singaporean boy with the veneer of artistry about him; dyed hair, belligerently long. I narrated his saunter down to the front of the room - observe the almost avian way he perches on the edge of the stage - and then watched with mild amusement as he extracted a digital camera from his bag and began to film the crowd. In that moment, I realized - I realize that he's cut from the same cloth - that desire - from the irrepressible need to capture, document - to view everything as a potential subject - not out of some mercantile opportunism, but as though the process of expression was as organic and natural as warm bread rising in the oven. When it's hot, one sweats; when bread is baked, it rises; when there is something to describe or observe, one describes or observes it. Instinct. Words, film, art, music, drama - anything to harness the world into something manageable.
For me, the act of writing becomes something after the fact - it bridges the limbo between conception and articulation. This is why it's often so frustrating. One tries hard to recreate that perfect sense of the moment, but every passing second is an inexorable step away from attaining this perfection - a widening of the limbo. Then, having tried our best, we regard the end piece of writing gravely, and the comparison between the moment of genesis and its ex posto facto depiction - well, it becomes unavoidable.
For the best - Walcott, Larkin, Yeats - sheer artistry and consummate skill closes that limbo. A grey sky trawls its silver wires of rain; these are the subtleties of the noon sea: lime, emerald, lilac, cobalt, ultramarine.
For the unworthy - me - the limbo is a constant source of frustration.
Thus, a running narrative in the head - or a constant camera in hand - holds a certain kind of purity. But it does lend itself to a general inability to maintain a solid grip on one's surroundings, and art suffers for its sake. For example, I'm convinced that it's partly why I am incurably prone to leaving, viz., shopping bags in various restaurants, mobile phones in friends' houses and wallets on buses. And the director was so busy staring into his camera screen that he tripped on the stairs. It would seem that absent-mindedness is more aptly termed "other-mindedness", or perhaps, "health hazard".