Archive for July, 2006

Continuing the Fusion Stories series, in this podcast, I talk to Pey Colborne whose experience of both Eastern and Western cultures have influenced her work as an aromatherapist and poet.

Listen to the podcast with the embedded player below.

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• To find out more about Pey’s aromatherapy practice at Neals Yard in Bath - go to www.nealsyardremedies.com and click through to their shop in Bath.

• On the podcast, Pey reads one of her poems:

English is my Second Language

1.

Ghosted on a foundation of inscrutable whispers,

Restless meanings, rocking the cradle.

Sleep now, a lullaby of pictographs.

Dancing with the seagulls in my first

Encyclopedia of Birds,

White wings, black tipped, flashing in the blue sky

White dress, baby feet flashing in that blue heat

Flight and dreaming yoked together

As the many-names-of-things.

2.

Second language,

The ladder to my escape

The way out, the other world

I wrestled for it, asked for blessing;

Exile is an English name.

In banishment, a faint music still follows me

A bamboo scaffold, wobbly but strong

To build new rhythms in a journey (not home).

I go to China, place my ancestors worship,

I clamber around and wind its golden dragons round my thumbs;

Master its ways, gallop the horses of the steppes–

On a high plateau, dance with Generals drunken and fat,

In gold braid and red caps.

3.

I dream in tongues varied and few

In contemplative red mansions

In entire tales scried from a second’s being

In none, come the power of commonality

But in lonely fragments

Like us, seeking to be held close.

My first language follows me like instinct

Or a beautiful abstract

Entirely open in meaning

Unforceable and permeating

A stricken mute maiden

At my heels.

I’ve learnt to jump through the hoops now

I am my other tongue

Whether right or sinister–

Bound like a confident wave to the sea.

I feel the power and the draw of it

The sensual limning,

A careful adornment of bare bones–

Talisman and relic,

Dissecting the myth

Making it new.

Copyright Pey Colborne
Published in Magma 29 Spring 2004

I’ve been working on a memoir tentatively called Bound Feet Blues for a while now. There is a lot of material and it’s a fairly major task, which I was finding quite daunting. I took a break to experiment with blogging and over the last few months, Fusion View has evolved into this multi-media site that has got me writing and podcasting regularly in between my day job and other commitments. My friends have asked me if the blog is really a distraction technique to give me an excuse not to be getting on with writing the next book. To some extent, i think they may be right! But something exciting has come out of it for the memoir.

I had been struggling for some time now to find my personal narrative voice. The Flame Tree and Mindgame were both thrillers and I wrote those in the particular narrative voice that seems to be required of thrillers. That voice has a terseness and urgency about it. It’s all about verbs and action. Short staccato sentences. Direct, punchy descriptions. I remember being asked by my editor to take out huge chunks of philosophical discussion about the nature of personal freedom and individual choice in Mindgame and essentially, to “cut to the chase”. There are lots of breathless chases in that novel and I had hoped to squeeze in more on the deeper issues that underpin the storyline - but, nope, they had to go, sacrificed to the gods of plot and pace!

So over the past few years, it’s been an interesting struggle, learning to allow myself to take more time over the contemplative passages in my writing. I’ve worked on a couple of novels in the last few years since Mindgame that have been more personal but I’ve not been able to move beyond the first few chapters. The narrative voice is flat and the pacing is uneven. Or, it can’t decide whether it’s inside a thriller or a Henry James novel. I’ve also had difficulty with plotting - in the thrillers, something dramatic happens every few pages and you are pulled along, gasping for breath. I was not used to writing pages and pages where nothing externally dramatic happens (no car chases, no men with guns leaping through the window). It felt scary, taking my time in exploring and inhabiting the emotions and psychological drama within my characters.

What writing this blog has done for my writing style is to enable my own personal voice to come through. In writing these short posts about my family or recipes or what’s been happening in my week, I am learning to speak as me. This is not the voice of the omnipresent, omniscient narrator of the thrillers, nor is it the measured, self-conscious voice of a literary auteur. It’s just me, telling a story, plain and simple. And by speaking like this in my posts every day for the last few months, it’s become natural and comfortable - and not at all scary.

I’ve split the memoir into two books, Bound Feet Blues being the second volume. I am now working on the first part, which I’ve called Iced Tea and Laksa. This weekend, I’ve just finished Chapter One, which weighs in at just over 5600 words. It’ll need some work and editing but that will come later when I have more of the finished book so I can see how it all hangs together. Laksa, for those of you who have not yet discovered this dish, is a Malaysian speciality of noodles in a red curry and coconut soup, served with chicken, bean sprouts and fried tofu. You slurp it with chopsticks and a Chinese L-shaped soup spoon, preferably at a roadside or market stall in the sweltering tropical heat. Do not wear a white shirt!

Two Chinese Boys are an internet cult - they are, well, two Chinese boys who lip sync to pop songs in their dorm room and post their video onto their website. They seem to have a huge fan base!

Continuing with Film Mondays, I bring you one of their videos so you can see for yourself. Yes, here at Fusion View, we’re not just about bookwormy stuff - we’re curious about new media and all that creativity and self-expression that seems to be exploding from the accessibility and affordability of digital technology. Enjoy…

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And before you ask, no, I will not be posting up a video of myself singing in the shower…

Sharon Bakar, the creative writing teacher and writer based in Malaysia, on her blog http://thebookaholic.blogspot.com/ has recently written about the Singaporean writer O Thiam Chim who had to self-publish his novel because of the huge difficulty in getting fiction published in the region. Of his experiences of trying to get published conventionally, he is quoted as saying “I sent my manuscript to these publishers. Out of the four or five publishers … only two responded. One rejected my manuscript based on the taboo subjects I touched on in some of the stories, and the other had stopped publishing local titles and advised me to seek other avenues”

It seems curious to me that a publisher would reject a book for “moral” reasons because thhe subject matter was considered taboo. From a Western perspective, this raises a question about censorship - or rather, self-censorship - and whether or not a publishing company, being a private enterprise, has a role as a moral gatekeeper to what reading matter is to be available to the public. I sense, however, from an Eastern perspective, that the position taken by the publishing company has not taken anyone by surprise.

I am also curious as to what these “taboo” subjects might be. In the UK, I think that the only “taboos” left might be bestiality, incitement to paedophilia or religious hatred. But these are not so much taboo as illegal. In fact, I am not sure that any subject matter is taboo anymore. And even with the topics I’ve mentioned, I could imagine novels being published that address them - especially where the writing is powerful and the handling of the story sensitive or ground breaking. In the West, there is almost a moral imperative for creative artists to explore subjects that are taboo and for publishers - and art galleries - to support and encourage them.

I will see what more I can find out about O’s book and his “taboo” topics. In the meantime, I’d like to know your thoughts on this apparent East/ West divergence, especially if you are a Malaysian or Singaporean reader or writer - or publisher.

Andrew was born in London and grew up in France. His background is in theatre, particularly playwriting, and he has just returned to London from five years away in Japan to complete an MA degree at Goldsmiths College in Writing for Performance. Visit his blog here.

Andrew writes:

I returned to London in 2005 after an ‘extended’ séjour in Japan. Like many foreigners in Japan, I worked as an English language teacher. At first I was based in Yokohama but then I struck lucky with a Monbusho scholarship offer and I moved to Arakawa Ku (north east of Tokyo). I studied Japanese language at the University of Tokyo for six months before going on to do research on minority issues in contemporary Japanese theatre. I choose to focus on a specific theatre company based in Osaka, called Gekidan Taihen (you can read more about Taihen here).

Upon my return home I was a little worse for wear, lessons learnt and when meeting old friends I felt stripped of my youth. In fact, my youth, is probably still there now, wandering the streets of Tokyo, waiting for life to happen. London has become the adult in me, and trite though it may sound, I’ve come to appreciate the ‘here and now’ of life in this city, more so than the ‘bubble’ that was sometimes life in Japan. What follows here, are certain fragments from Japan, episodes from a trip that lasted almost five years.

Shinjuku

I remember stepping out of the hotel onto a boulevard flowing with orange taxi cabs, pavements lined with bare black cherry trees and women carrying umbrellas like shields from the sun. I stopped at the crossing to see the Shinjuku skyline taper off to my right. Its high-rise offices, commercial buildings and shopping malls, a familiar scene shown ten times over in recent films and photographs. What caught me off-guard though, lay just a few yards behind this grand façade and I call it the ‘labyrinth’ of pedestrian Tokyo: a criss-cross mêlée of dark and narrow streets, wood against concrete, gentle shop banners (nōren) in soft aubergine and the entire canvas punctuated with shocks of neon light. And in the stream of bodies, each with its own tone and cadence, I could hear the sound of waves – not water of course – but thousands of feet echoed in the cracks and gutters, peaceful not chaotic. I spent a good deal of time observing people walking in Tokyo and the sensation I had that evening in Shinjuku would return several times as the years unfolded.

Whale Music

Y. Junior High School, seemingly just another suburban school aspiring to national standards: the same old 1980’s prefab concrete, the same old dusty baseball ground, the well-ordered staff car park, the morning chatter by the shoe lockers, but on the inside it was gang land. The worst was the second floor, home to three 3rd year boys, one of whom was supposed to have connections with the local yakuza, although that was never confirmed, not that it mattered because the myth thrived and the more intimidating the story the wider the influence. These boys were not your average school bullies, they were organized, militant and they devised elaborate plans to topple the establishment. Quite a few of the teaching staff openly admitted to being afraid, and on several occasions, like this one, it was fear with just cause. The irony, of course, is that these youths were in school to learn – not math, history and chemistry like everyone else – but the art of crime.

One morning in winter, I was happily preparing for class over a cup of coffee when the shout went up and three male teachers (including the two gym teachers) burst into the corridor and ran up the stairs only to return minutes later with the math teacher trembling in tears and one of the infamous trio restrained and bundled into the principal’s office. Much to the horror of his fellow class mates, he had threatened the teacher with a knife. The police arrived and the boy was ‘officially’ sent home for the day, and in accordance with school rules he was back the next morning – strange though it may seem, in Japan teachers are deemed responsible for minors rather than parents or police.

Following that incident, the art teacher, in an attempt to restore some sense of normality to the place, suggested that for the first fifteen minutes of every school day ‘soothing’ music should be played over the tannoy system. When asked by colleagues what kind of music, she replied: “whale music”.

Banzai

15th July 2003, 4:30 pm: my last day at school after two years of teaching. I was at the main entrance to W.N. Junior high school. I removed my indoor shoes and stood awkwardly on top of them while trying to put on the outdoor pair from the shoe locker. The entire teaching body was lined up at the threshold watching me. With my footwear finally sorted, I looked up at the row of smiling faces and in my best Japanese extended my thanks and appreciation one last time. The general hubbub of greetings was cut short by the stern voice of the head teacher. He invited his colleagues to partake in what he called a ‘traditional’ farewell greeting, and I was suddenly watching fifteen people swing both arms in the air and shout ‘banzai’ three times over. Time seemed to stop at that point, the body of teachers froze, arms extended and mouth open, and all I could think of was how little I really knew of Japan.

Written by Fusion View Guest Blogger: Andrew Eglinton

Part Two will be posted in two weeks time on Thursday 20 July 2006 after 8.30am.
You can contact Andrew via his blog Desperate Curiosities - click here

Next week, Fusion Stories takes the form of a podcast, with an interview with Pey Colborne, aromatherapist and poet.

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To find out how you can contribute your cross-cultural story to the Fusion Stories Series, go to my post “Tell Us Your Fusion Story” in the Announcements section of the middle sidebar on the Fusion View homepage.