Vulnerability

Yesterday marked a two-month-long worth of a journey with the Harlequinn.

It was, for the lack of a better expression, what it was. I realise I sound like a therapist-- being on the fence about things, being merely descriptive due to the inability to pass a defensible judgment-- but to be really honest, I don't really know what I felt about the whole thing. The one thing I knew was that I was glad that it was over. Not that it was a grueling or a painful experience, people in the past have said that joining Suntec was such a vicious endeavour, but now that I have walked in their footsteps, I think they totally blew things out of proportions. Not to say that it was not tiring either, but I guess I was lucky enough to have never reached an impasse during crunch time in those many weeks. Things worked themselves out, albeit rather slowly in the last weeks since we all were losing steam, and we managed to iron things out just in time.

I am happy with all the performances that I did. Right from the get-go, I knew I would gain nothing from the experience other than the memories of having gone through all that. It was a memory-making exercise. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I did not have the testosterone to want more than what I did. We were different, and that was all there was.

With a face caked monstrosity I stood there on stage feeling absolutely nothing. I cracked a smile here and there just in case the camera caught my face, I didn't want to have a smack-arse face. Nonetheless it really made me question, specifically, why I invested so much time and effort and energy in dance. I danced because I knew how to do it, I knew where to do it, and I didn't mind doing it. A good-enough, solid, matter-of-fact and honest answer. But as to the question of the opportunity cost of the it, I don't think I have such a straight forward answer.

So I chanced upon this talk by Brene Brown on TED, and she spoke about The Power of Vulnerability. Before I clicked on the video, I told my self I would close the window the second she started to speak like Chicken Soup for the Broken Soul. She didn't. She was a researcher, and she spent one good decade of her life delving into different types of persons: those who have a sense of connection and those who haven't, and then she analysed the behaviour of those who do. And she said:

The other thing that they have in common was this: they fully embrace vulnerability. They believed what made them vulnerable made them beautiful. They didn't talk about vulnerability being comfortable, nor did they talk about it being excruciating (like they did in the Shame interviewing). They just talked about it being necessary. They talk about the willingness to say "I love you" first. The willingness to do something where there's no guarantee.

It piqued my interest somewhat because I was once struck by a quote posted on facebook: Sad people are beautiful people. A bizarre statement, and I totally agree with it. So when I heard her say all these things, I wanted to know what her take would be. And after ploughing through the data, she made the observation that:

We numb vulnerability. ... It was funny when I set something out on Twitter and Facebook that said "How would you define vulnerability?", "What makes you feel vulnerable?" Within an hour and a half I got a hundred and fifty responses. Because I wanted to know what's out there: "Having to ask my husband for help when I'm sick and we're newly married", "Initiating sex with my husband", "Initiating sex with my wife", "Being turned down asking someone out", "Waiting for the doctor to call back", "Getting laid off", "Laying off people". This is the world we live in. We live in a vulnerable world. And one of the ways we deal with it is that we numb vulnerability. ...

The problem is, and I learnt this from the research, that we cannot selectively numb emotions. You can't say "Here's the bad stuff!"-- here's vulnerability, here's shame, here's fear, here's disappointment. I don't want to feel these. I'm gonna get a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin. I don't want to feel these. ... You can't numb those hard feelings without numbing the other aspect of emotions. We can't selectively numb emotions. So when we numb those, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness. And then we are miserable and we are looking for purpose and meaning, and we feel vulnerable, and we take a couple of beers and banana nut muffin. And it becomes a dangerous cycle.

One of the things that we have to think about is how and why we numb. And it doesn't just have to be about addiction.

As she said, the aim of research is to control and predict-- she predicted right. This is really what I think has happened to me, in dance, and in life in general. The reason why I think I'm losing reason for passion is that I have numbed myself, voluntarily or otherwise. And I can only think of two reasons why I have done so-- one: is that my body is so so fatigued that it shoved me to the point of not caring, and two: is the fear of vulnerability. I have held opinion about others that they loved their passion more than it loved them, and I think I just don't want it to happen to me.

I know what is going to come in the future for me, and perhaps I am desensitising me to prepare my self to bid good bye to dance before it does to me-- slowly climbing out of the hole that I've toiled digging for the past five years. Perhaps there is no reason for such great investing in dance, and the realisation of that absence should mark a turning point. I can dance still, but I could and should do so in moderation (although I'm skeptical whether such thing exists), and "moderation" is definitely not the word to describe what I'm doing at the moment. This is, ironically, true to Merce Cunnigham's words:

You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and may be hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive. It is not for unsteady souls.

I did, but perhaps I don't have to.

Delicious

I always wanted a trampoline.

The day I first saw a big one, I knew I had to have it. It was the most glorious thing I had ever seen.

The day I first jumped on a big one, I felt that I had met my soulmate, in the form of mesh stretched across a steel frame, attached by springs.


It wasn't until I was around 19 that I finally had this soulmate sitting joyously in my backyard.



It took years, YEEEAAAARRRSSSS, of begging. Pleading. Reasoning. Then more begging.



Finally it's assembled in the yard, only after my Dad makes repeated visits during the build, just to make sure the foam safety padding isn't forgotten. No Dad, I didn't forget.





The first jumps are magical. The next jumps are bordering a religious experience. I can't believe this is real.





Now the jumps come only after a verbal contract with my parents:

NO JUMPING IF WE'RE NOT HOME

NO FRIENDS JUMPING WITHOUT US KNOWING

NO JUMPING IF WE'RE NOT HOME



Fairly straight-forward.



So it's 2 days after we get it, and news of the new purchase travels fast. My friend Ross is one of the first ones to come over for a jump.

We're both doing tricks and jumps and jumps and tricks, all under the watchful eye of my Mom who's at the kitchen sink. Everything is going well until Ross does some spin move and loses his balance. He lands too close to the edge, and his momentum leads him off the trampoline. Instead of being thrown onto the lawn, he rolls onto his side, attempting to grab onto the frame. His side hits the padded bar, and he groans in pain, then flops onto the lawn.




Shit.




He lies there holding his ribs, fighting for breath. A million things are going through my head.

Most of those things are "I CAN'T LOSE THIS TRAMPOLINE!!!"



I run to the kitchen, with a fraudulent air of relaxation and calm. I'm an AC-tor.


I get two large cups full of ice. "They're for frosty beverages, of course - all this jumping has worked up a sweat." I also pocket a plastic bag.



I return to Ross who has regained his ability to speak, but is now feeling a crunch every time he breathes. It's probably the muscle that is knotted up and rubbing against the ribs when you breathe, I explained. My 19 year old brain is grasping for straws.

He puts the bag of ice on his side.




Soon after, the pain is too much to bare and Ross needs to leave. DON'T TELL MY PARENTS, I plead. He doesn't.


He sneaks out of the house so they can't see him limping along with his leaking bag of ice, and drives home. Apparently on the way home the pain gets even worse, and he drives to the hospital instead. It's confirmed: 3 broken ribs.


I don't remember much after this. I think it's my brain trying to protect me from evil. All I remember is Ross saying something about blood in his pee.


That's gross, and I feel bad for Ross.





But I still have my trampoline.

-- "Don't Tell My Parents" by Mike Rosenthal

Confessions

I don't know why I dance anymore. But still I dance. I mean, you don't really have to have any real reason to do something, right, especially something that you know how to do and have avenues to gain access to. I do realise that this is rather unfortunate. There were times where it was the reason why I woke up in the morning. There were times where I did it for external validation. There were times where I did it because I enjoyed the company while I was at it. There were times where I danced because I felt it was my thing-- my precious-- and no one could take it away from me. Now I can't really say all those things with so much conviction anymore. I've built a home around it-- and rather painstakingly at that-- and I'm not sure whether I could fine another home elsewhere without having to lay the bricks from scratch all over again. It's like the reason why people stay in a bad relationship, or settle with a horrible job: it's inertia and fear of change. There were times where I said I would never give it up, and I said it with gusto.

I don't really know what happened. One plausible explanation is that I've chewed the taste away from it-- dance overdose. Perhaps. Or may be I realise that it's time to move on with other things in life. Like comic books, video games and peanuts, dance has had its special time in my 21 years of living, and that time has run out. Perhaps I have ceased to be inspired by others-- in videos, live, or otherwise-- for too long and the fuel has not been replenished to keep the fire going. Everything is just a blur. At the end of the day, there can be millions of good, great and excellent dancers and dancing out for grab, but there has to be that one moment of inspiration, which can't be forced. So may be the problem lies in my self: I've thrown myself to a state of nonchalance, which really perfectly fine by me.

At times I wonder why others can be so hungry about dance-- so insatiable, so tireless, such voracious appetite. We all know it's an endless pursuit: always not good enough, always something new to learn. If there is no end to it, why keep chasing it? Merce Cunningham said once that the reward is "that single fleeting moment when you feel alive". Truth be told, I do feel alive dancing, I do, but I don't feel un-alive otherwise. Others oft cry that they want to be the baddest ass around. Why? If that is the ultimate reward, which I genuinely think there's nothing objectively wrong about it, I can live my life without it, and I am really saying this stripped of any form of condescension. Gold is one precious metal, but not everybody wants gold, so mutatis mutandis vis such reward. It's just not my thing anymore. To me the best part of dance was the journey: the race to the top, and on hindsight, that journey was the ultimate reward: the means is the end. Now that I feel relatively detached from it, I cherish the memories-- the bad, the good and of course the ugly-- of having gone through all that, more than I appreciate my own dancing. Perhaps it follows that, inter alia, I dance to create more memories.

By no means that I think I have reached the top because that top is, as the cliche goes, illusory. However, it has now reached a point where I've found a plateau and I'm okay with it-- "okay" because "okay" is a neutral word"-- for some unapparent reason. Should it rise, blessed it be, should it not, there's no real loss either. Nonetheless, it does feel terrifying thinking of rolling down the hill altogether and starting to climb another hill all the way from ground zero. Is this feeling permanent? I don't know. And do I want it to not be permanent? I don't know either. I was asked before: "What do you want from dance other than time-filling?" I didn't know. What does, could, and should, a person want from dance?

I don't know why I dance anymore. But still I dance. I don't really have to have any real reason to do something. I do that everyday.

Hometown Glory

I love coming back home. Coming back home means an inevitable checkpoint where I can genuinely take a breather, and just stop to reflect on things. Coming back home means bookmarking a chapter in my journal of life, and comparing it with preceding others. Coming back home means food galore and shopping spree. Coming back home means seeing my family and hearing the exact same stories over and over again, though somehow they never get old. Coming back home means, well, a lot. Did I mention how much I love coming back home?

The Deathly Hollow

Yes, I know it's "Hallows", there's no typo there. In the latest and final stretch of the world-wide sensation septology, Harry, Ron and Hermione embarked on their epic journey to destroy the Horcruxes, and defeat the no-nose Dark Lord. The movie was, well, alright.

So I stopped following the books after dreading and ultimately failing in ploughing through the fifth one, where Harry turned into this angsty, whiny teenager lashing out to the magic universe. Basically, he turned into another us: an ordinary (well, may not exactly) blame-the-world ball of resentment, and no one wants to read that kind of stuff when they pick up a book about spells, Patronuses and wizards, especially not hundreds and hundreds of pages of it. Nonetheless, I came across tonnes of posts about the movie before I watched it, and what a sobfest they were. I guess I can't really judge those who are devastated by the closing of the series because I unfortunately fell out of love with the trio after the fourth book, but come on, how could you turn into an emotional wreck after watching the end of the movie? The end was ridiculous, almost farcical even. The 19-years-later versions of the characters look hideous: the make-up artists should really be shot. I'm fine with not replacing the characters with older actors, but the drag wig, the beer belly, the ghastly make-up that made them look like they hadn't slept since they came to Hogwards (and they probably hadn't with the amount of drama that went on), and the faux wrinkles did not work. They look cartoonish, and it robbed all seriousness and any opportunity for the audience to be awed by the ending. They should have hired look-alike actors to sub in.

However, I do like the beginning of the movie, first of all, the quality of video is fantastic. To compare it the first movie, there really has been an increase in the dollars (or pounds) spent and an improvement in the tech side. The acting for me was com si, com sa: I can't really judge their acting because the British accent kind of get in the way. To my Asian ears, they fall almost inevitably into their parts because they simply sound right, not really sure whether they act brilliantly, and as for the earlier movies, their kiddish charm sort of made up for everything else that was lacking. So the story went on, and I could follow what was going on even though I didn't read the novel beforehand, and then came the middle parts where Harry was sucked into this whitewashed, bad and budget-looking digital-effect train station of a dream and met Dumbledore. It went slightly too Chicken-Soup-for-the-Teenage-Soul for me, with the whole "Of course this is in your head, but what makes you think that this is not real?", and where Longbottom came forward to give his Captain America speech in front of you-know-who and his army. It felt like a middle-school after-school play to me. JK Rowling might have had the multibillion-pound imagination, but I hope I don't write they way she does.

The movie was essentially a war movie, and war movies always give me this sort of unsettling feeling, like things are in shambles and messy, which I don't particularly enjoy. And somehow the chemistry amongst the trio is lost in the movie, or may be it's because now there is now the supposed romance between Hermione and Ron, which felt so feigned and the kiss was awkward and uncomfortable, somewhat misplaced. I think I just don't really care much about the teen-drama side of the series, I would rather focus more on the magic side of it, which is the reason why I adore the first movie the most.

Anyway, I don't really mean to complain about the movie or the series, because insofar as the production aspect and the quality of it, it hasn't been anything less than amazing. But amazing does not necessarily mean likable. Guess this is just a perspective of a viewer who didn't grow up alongside Harry, Ron and Hermione, but outgrew them before vice versa.

Life Wonders

It's 3 am, some country song is playing in the background (it's The Once and Future Carpenter by The Avett Brothers), and my proudly-bought 20-dollar Ikea night light just sets the mood for musings.

I wonder what would have happened if I had

been born the eldest son.

sucked so badly in school.

been good at sports.

picked up the guitar in junior high.

not gotten the scholarship.

stayed on and gone to senior high.

sucked so badly that I was sent home.

actually made it to the drama auditions.

failed the dance auditions.

not moved to another junior college.

hated dance.

failed my law school dream.

been the badass kid in the family.

said yes.

stayed religious.

been simply mediocre.

Legal Fiction

I'm not sure whether I like Boston Legal. I still remember in my first year, right at the beginning of law school where everyone was a stranger and we had to do some introduction and say a thing or two about ourselves, someone said that he wanted to be the next Alan Shore. And the class broke into a laughter. The tutor then made some witty comeback, and another laughter ensued. Of course, I cracked a smile and laughed along, and lordly lord, I really thought that Alan Shore was some bigwig in the legal fora: a Chief Justice, a stellar judge, a minister, or someone of that stature. It does sound ludicrous but it may be surprising for you to know that right from the get-go some people did already have their legal chip plucked into them, which made me think there for a moment how come I didn't get the memo. Sometimes-- if not most of the times-- it did feel like I was in a secret club with a secret handshake. Only last week then I finally met this legal myth Alan Shore-- just in case you are like me then, he's the main character of the show-- and he was, well, okay. James Spader is definitely the best actor on the show (or poised to appear that way), and perhaps together with William Shatner and Candice Bergen they make the holy Boston Legal trinity. The rest just appear as pretty faces, accessory to these characters' larger-than-life (to say the least) closings and caricatural quirks. I think the biggest problem with the show is that it is very clear even after having watched just a few episodes how formulaic the plot is. Every episode will end with one or two closing statements (i.e. heroic lawyer attempting to convince the nodding-at-strategic-moments jury that their client deserves what they sue for), which more-often-than-not begin with a rendition of some statistics (which would have been dismissed in real court setting for want of relevance), followed by an argument (delivered with such a bravado, it borders on a melodramatic recitation), and end with a sound bite that necessarily triggers a couple of nods from the jury. Always. To be fair, the show tries to present an array of interesting (read: make-believe) cases to spice things up, and the same formulaic pattern is also noticeable in other cop shows or doctor shows, but something about it just does not connect. Perhaps it's the set (they simply jump from the lawyers' office, which is not exactly the happiest place on earth, to the court room, which is definitely not the happiest place on earth), or William Shatner's character Denny Crane, whose behaviour is harder to understand than is algebra. It's sad though because I really want to like the show, but I can't bring myself to do so. And bummer, there aren't that many lawyer shows out there anymore. Then again, I only watched half of the second season, hopefully it would get better in the following seasons.