Stopover

Anticipatory
a white sheet of paper
an unlined sketchbook
the word "you"
a finger on the light switch
clear glass

Well, been busy yet. Concert preparations entering their last phase, and we only have half a week left till the 17th. Quite cool, cos we managed to sell out all the tix after 4 days of sales, and there's still leftover demand, people wanting more tix than we have. We beat Chorale, I think =) But to be fair, we probably only have half their tix to sell at most. And of course, Dance just demoralises us all...selling out in twenty minutes is positively obscene. Yeah...having such a small venue can be annoying in its own way. Just not enough space to make it really epic.

Anyway, every morning going to look for the Exco to prac our small group piece. And it's coming together quite well, actually. On Mon was suddenly overtaken by this feeling of dread because of all the administrative loose ends waiting to be tied up, and the state of our piece. But it's been getting better...now it's all positively hilarious =P But I won't elaborate too much on it here. It's just really fun to prac the piece with them. We certainly have a few aces up our sleeves for this year's concert. 'Nuff said (as a side note, to see this expression in a set of Hist notes is quite disturbing...).

I think this year's concert is going to be a better experience than last year. Partly cos we're more directly involved in it...last year, only two pieces to play, and spent most of the time offstage stoning. This year, six pieces and much more excitement and variety. I'm hoping that the programme will be more appealing to the audience...variety like this was precisely the thing that I was hoping to see emerge. But also partly cos of the time that's running out. After Tue, there won't be any more big things for Guitar's senior batch. Zip. Nada. It'll feel exceedingly weird not to have Guitar prac every other day. And this feeling of an impending end does make one sit up and appreciate what's left of the time, I think.

Ah well, it's a good way to end, I guess...with quite a big bang. The SYF gold, the successful camp, and now we're on the brink of what I hope will be our last and biggest coup, "Euphony". There are worse ways to end off, and to end off doing something that everyone can have fun at, and something that will entertain, is not a bad way to go. Part of me, though, still wishes that this week will never end. It's really been fun, all this Guitar stuff. Even with the tiny PAC stage, the administrative tangles, the hectic prac schedule, and the millions of things that we still have to do (tech runs on Sat and Mon...urgh).

But yeah...increasingly it feels like I'm coming to school just to wait for the time to start Guitar prac. Lessons are becoming decidedly humdrum...much too much talking I think. Sometimes I can't avoid getting annoyed, because there's a lot of static around the classroom. I always think that if you have nothing to say, then don't say anything. But then again, we're all caught up in this great social game that we all must play...go through the motions, a la Virginia Woolf. A rather sickening niceness, sometimes. It just gets really tiresome after a while. Feeling increasingly short-tempered in class, and feeling too that this is an uncharitable response, particularly towards the fairer sex. Probably this is how they're used to behaving.

Hmm...also lots of relationship stuff coming up again. It's such a risky business, isn't it? To hold someone else's heart in your hand, and even scarier, to surrender yours to someone else's whim and fancy. I find myself in a rather strange position. But I guess my lack of experience does produce a strange and novel way to look at this kind of thing. Heh, but I know it's making me think what I'm missing out. Though I'm still far from convinced that the formalisation of friendship in a BGR is actually worth the trouble.

* * * * *

Anyway, just read Kels' entry about the shortfalls of modern lit. Heh, personally I think the main drawback about modern lit is that it was created so recently. The classics have a certain prestige attached to them because they stood up to the test of time. So to some extent you can assume a classic that everyone still reads is good. Modern lit doesn't have that luxury. But I still think there's plenty of value in it.

To be sure, much of it is quite hollow. But then one cannot assume that all novels written in the 18th and 19th centuries were all masterfully crafted. Time sorts the chaff out, and in modern lit, there's still lots of chaff left, that's all. When a modern writer sincerely has something to say, he can use the techniques and devices as adeptly as a classical writer. The trouble is that most modern writers are merely repeating what others say, the flavour of the month, as it were. But now and then you come across a gem, something that stands out because it is written with originality that breeds sincerity. Atonement is a nice example...something modern, but still powerful, as Mel is discovering. I want to find the time to start on it for Lit S.

But to be fair, modern lit can be bewildering, with the new approaches like stream-of-consciousness and variable structures. And the influence of postmodern thought, absurdism and all those cheem concepts. The best writers today seem to be unsure of what they're supposed to be saying, and what they're actually saying. And there's a lot more consciousness of the perceptive gap between reader, book and writer now. But if the approaches and the messages are different, does that mean that they are inferior? No, I don't think so. There are modern books and poems worth reading, and there are classical works that are not. They're just different. Whether one is better or not is more or less a personal preference issue.

Me, I find that modern lit is striking in that it is so frank and unabashed about the ambiguity and fluctuation in the world that we live in. The lack of constants and conventions in modern writing reflects the environment we all work within. To that extent, modern lit seems more truthful to me, or rather it reflects the truth that is currently the most convincing version of a world-view that I have encountered. To that extent, Hardy and Conrad are appealing too, the former talking about the lack of a benevolent fate, and the latter talking about the Heart of Darkness, the superficiality and vanity of human endeavours at civilisation. They use different conventions to say it, but in the end are they not saying the same thing? Talking about the same world-view, just as McEwan talks about the perceptive gap in the writing process?

Heh, interesting questions...sounds like something to do in Lit S. But not before we finish the Guitar concert, I'm afraid...

pondered by phoenican @ 12.5.05