by | | Her, The Scarlet Queen
Honestly, I am very tired at this stage of the production. I am losing sleep over my quest for perfection. I could barely sleep more than 4 hours at a stretch, before waking up to work feverishly on the videos, to rewatch the videos, revise the script, practice. repeat. I am… exhausted. My health is deteriorating. I am, compromising my lifestyle to perform at this extreme level.
Why… you ask. The Scarlet Queen video series is something I had wanted to do since early this year. I wanted to try video blogging, to learn the art of using new media to communicate my art to the audience. I felt limited by a virtual writing blog space, and I think the time is ready now for a new medium – of videos – to communicate my stories. As I no longer work with photographers to do modelling projects as previously… I am considered in the not desired weight zone. I had built my body differently, I built it for strength, to have a dancer body, not for modelling.
When I was modelling actively, I did not eat much, truth to be told. I was constantly hungry, and had low energy levels. I slept mostly. Now, I have more energy, I eat three meals a day, loaded with protein, initially I was filled with hyper amounts of energy embarking on this ambitious one video a day for hundred days. Now, I am withering in self defeat. I cannot go on filming one video per day as different characters, everyday. I have to film three videos in one setting, so I only have to do filming for two days, and I can rest the next four days.
I felt that if I do not do this video project, I will not be happy, because I am suppressing my ideas for the personalities I want to convey. I have been actively imagining my characters (Cheryl and Risque) obsessively for two months before I started. I would act as them consciously/subconsciously to practice. They haunt me in my dreams, and tell me to let them free… they… want to… perform. Finally, I gave in to their request early this week. I am finally at content, at ease. I feel happy waking up each day, with a new project at hand.
I am learning to not be concerned with the end result (if people will like the videos) and to just focus on the process (of creating the videos artistically) especially on the content of their dialogue, which will get more interesting… towards episode ten. I have to make it a point to detach myself from perfection, and treat this project like a playtime, like a child’s play. Ever noticed how children play? They learn happily, they don’t need anyone to tell them how to play. They invent their own games with their imagination. That is… now I would like to play… towards this project.
by | | Her
by | | Editorial, Her
Once, I had a kitten, it had a striped grey and black body with white gloves on its paws. His name was Tiger. One day, Tiger ran out of my home before it turned barely three months old. When I caught it home again, it was a month later.
It was sickly, I suspected that it ate rat poison during its voyeuristic expedition to the outside world. I knew he did not have long to live. A week later, spent its last moments curled up in its basket, and passed away…
I remember its curled up body, resting in the softness of the fabric in the basket… freed from pain at last.
. . . .
Like animals, humans too, have a tendency to curl up when we are in pain.
There is an armchair in my home that I regularly curl up in, since I was a child. When I have a toothache, or tummy ache, I would seek out the comfort of the familiar smell of the armchair, and curl up like a ball, my head popped onto the leather surface like a hospital patient. The leather smell eases my anxiety, and diffuses my pain by absorbing it into the wood structure of the chair, it felt akin to hugging a tree for comfort, the smell of eucalyptus leaves… a respite from the harshness of realities.
“Don’t you ever sell the set of Italian carved leather arm chairs” my dad instructed when I turned 18 years old. “They are part of your inheritance, to be used for many generations.” I nodded, how can I ever give up something so dear to my memories? When I was a playful child, I would put my legs on the arm of the chair itself, and rock it while watching television. “Put your legs down from the chair!” My mother screamed from across the room. “It is so unladylike.” I would stick out my tongue and continued to defy her commands, till she physically moved my two tiny legs down and closed it together, to sit like an obedient child. “Sit like a lady.” My mother says, before I sped away to the next chair and defy her wishes again, and prop my legs up on the arm of the chair like tom boy, or “ah lian” as she calls it.
. . .
When I stayed in the states for a month, there was a similar armchair in the serviced apartment I rented. I would spend hours in the safety of the huge chair, consuming books hungrily from my iPhone. I did not want to leave the armchair; the summer heat was unbearable, people had a hot and fiery temper, and when I tried to do my daily chores; I was harassed sexually by strangers. After all its Las Vegas – an inhospitable place for humans, rather, it is literally a desert that only cactus and scorpions can survive in. The armchair provided the best comfort I could reminiscence about my home, where I can feel safe, where I can read endless of story books… absorbing my mind in the world of fiction, an imaginary world where there is no pain or suffering.
By reading novels and putting myself in the shoes of the character, I am no longer part of the world of pain and suffering, but in a new world of mystery and intrigue. A world that I can imagine and create in my mind, and define the rules and order… I could choose where I want to be; I could be Alice, the White Queen or Red Queen. I can be a vampire slayer or a seductive vampress. In the armchair, I am comforted by my soul, I am in touch with my imagination… I feel no pain no more, a world of no responsibilities… a world of endless freedom, a world where the skies and earth do not meet.
The world that Tiger tried to find, but could not find – till he curled up in the basket and left for the imaginary happy world.
by | | Dance, FlashFiction, Her, OneLineQuotes
Kiss
Kill
Tango and Halloween, tragic love and sentimental killers
The Scorpion Queen reigns in the month of October
Kiss or Kill, when the cords are out, fate decides
Passion Play, Dance of Death, Ropes and Chains
The Red Room of Pain awaits.
by | | Art, Her
Once, a student asked “How do we paint an orange, as orange?”. Our art teacher replied, “When light filters through our eyes, we will perceive the colour, orange, differently. It is impossible to paint orange, as orange, some will paint it darker, some lighter, or more red, or more yellowish. It is the reflection of the world we live in” ~ Chan Kerk
Picture of my painting and I taken at Arteastiq, Mandarin Gallery
by | | Her
I have been at my most moody, most depressed state over the course of two weeks. Facing fears and pain head on, is not advisable for the faint hearted. Not that I am that strong emotionally or whatever, but it is testing my limits, like repeatedly pulling a rubber band till it extends and extends, hoping, it won’t break. If it tears, the process have to restart. Maybe then, I won’t be who I am anymore, but rubber band version 2.
I got to admit, that writing is an act of testing limits. It is a push pull effect, to be better, but yet, normal, excellent, yet stupid. I don’t know how much F words I had used on the people around me, and they are ones who are most deeply hurt, yet the ones who love me the most. I am a messed up monstrous demonic being at home, like one with an anti social personality disorder, especially when I am greatly obsessed during working hours.
Now, I have extended my working hours to cover every single minute of my day, because I refuse to let my life wither in self pity or decay, as time is running short. Life to me, is like a candle flame, someone can snub it out, someone else can add oxygen, or whatever. But like all candles, once it melts into nothingness, it becomes no more, no matter how many times the fire is relighted, the wick is gone. That is our timeline on this planet. The very limited, pathetic, and sad existence.
As I struggle in the murky muddy mess of self pity, I refuse to not put up a fight before I stink into the stink hole of regrets. Once, I saw a facebook update from an old classmate, she posted, “It is hard not to be depressed at the current state the world is.” Spot on, I liked the post immediately. This effect is enhanced is especially so for people who travel widely, we see more beauty and luxury in the richest, wealthiest cities in the world, but on the other end of the spectrum, there are people dying of starvation, when there are obese people all around. It is hard not to feel, unless one is numb, which, i increasingly find, that most people are numb to their surroundings anyway, especially in the city we live in.
In the city, all you need is power and money, and the whole world falls at your feet, trying to chip away parts of you, for themselves, like parasites growing on a tree. You run the economy at your disposal, whims and fancies, like a monarch. This time, people have to depend on you for survival, their daily existence an extension of the fruits you bear, and the gifts you shower on them. In the quest to grow bigger and bigger, you consume more resources, you conquer the whole forest, and grow into an all almighty tree, topping all the other little trees that you don’t give a fck about in the process. At last, you are the last tree standing, and all the other trees around you are dead.
In my most morbid perception of the world, accounting that I spent five years in business school, I learnt more ugliness than anything else. I witnessed my classmates backstabbing each other, making use of each other, trying to climb on top of each other, for the best grades, in this ultra competitive landscape they are raised and “nurtured” in. Their self esteem way beyond saving, the bad habits of smoking inbetween lessons and clubbing on alternate days. Stealing notes and leeching onto geeks for projects so they don’t have to do anything constructive. Just wasting their youth and their parents blood money on obscene levels of tuition fees (which could probably be used for a investment property down payment). Thank god, most of them did not made it through the diploma level. I finally found salvation studying with mature students after progressing to the degree level. I regained a tiny bit of hope, after witnessing their hard felt efforts in holding a part time job and juggling their studies at the same time, not particular excelling (they looked stoned in class from tiredness), but still, they are trying, although not as fortunate as the diploma batch of spoiled children.
Behind every facade, especially the gleaming bright ones, there is an ugliness, a decay, the losers, you can call it, or rats, running in the sewers, trying to… survive. They crawl and prowl, hiss and intimidate. They want to be the winners too, the underdogs. They will always be lurking there, in this dark corners in the hidden recesses of our minds, trying to conquer, to overtake, and soar.. like the rest, towering above them, stepping on them, telling them, they are just… a rat.
….
“But I’m a creep
I’m a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here?
I don’t belong here
I don’t care if it hurts
I want to have control
I want a perfect body
I want a perfect soul
I want you to notice when I’m not around
You’re so fucking special
I wish I was special”
Radiohead – Creep Lyrics
by | | Her
If you can crack my mind open and see what is inside,
It is a beautiful world of pictures and words,
it speaks of short stories of love and war
it sings of poetry that has no agendas
it screams of justice and equality
it is a novel of memories, compressed in a circle.
Only time will show… what I see in my mind
by | | Her
The unspoken bonds of a family, is beautiful.
It is unconditional love, giving and nurturing
Building, a bright future, for the lineage
Riding, on a legacy that spans decades
We are, the outcome of this descendent love.
Family is the best teacher of love.
by | | Her
On the Aeron, looking at the brown liquid of gold, stirring it with a spoon of ivory.
The diary of secrets, sketched with a red tinted pen, filled with a vial of blood
The phones that never rings, the wires pulled out, and cards cracked.
Crafted on a Razer Black Widow keyboard, Domestic.
Moved by a wireless Logitech mouse to match, American.
Displayed on a Apple iMac widescreen, American.
A home that feels like an economy
An office that feels like an artist loft
In convoluted, contorted, confused mess
Under the pressure and stress to perform
A void of emotionless emptiness
Only evolution can take place in harsh circumstances.
by | | Her
On finding myself again.
After traveling the Great Ocean Road
Making the drive from Las Vegas to Los Angeles
Around the world, with one plane ticket;
I found, the beauty in simplicity.
On what one has to do is to find themselves
from internally
To be who they are, one hundred percent
and the world.. is an oyster
With a clear defined purpose
and meaning in one life
There is no stronger emotion
that leads to the right outcome
Clarity. Is the key to the law of attraction.
I never been so clear on what I want in life.
I wake up daily, feeling one hundred percent
10/10
At the peak of my physical vitality
At the peak of my mind and emotions
At the peak of what I want out of life.
Before I started my new life, I wrote an ending.
With the end in mind, everything else is just a process.
Insecurities and fears melts away
Knowing it is the motion, with the end goal so near.
I do have a plan for happiness, and I visualize it daily.
My desire is so strong, that is has not changed for six years.
It is of a beautiful white home, decorated with the objects I love
With a happy family, a safe heaven from the outside world.
I hold this dear image in my heart, not letting anyone or anything change the outcome.
All I am waiting for, is the right person to share this beautiful world with.
