(ROCK) MUSIC FROM MY MOUNTAIN HIDE-OUT: BOOK ONE

ON BEING WHOLESOME --

AND MY UNHEALTHY LIFE

WITH IGNOBLE/IGNORANT

BUSYBODIES AND MEDDLERS



VOLUME I



Politics being reduced to economics, freedom being equated with the freedom of the market, then you are either free or not, depending on the economic circumstances. This is the kind of reductionism and economic determinism traditionally associated by liberals with Marxism. Marxism, it is said, denies liberty precisely because it reduces politics to a variable dependent upon economics and denies even the possibility of human freedom in the superstructure which capitalism inevitably erects on its economic base. It may be that what has come to be called neo-liberalism has forsaken any notion of liberty as being in any sense related to that liberty of human will and cognition which liberalism has hitherto always clutched to its heart.

-- J. S. McClelland,
"Liberalism Comes of Age: Bentham and John Stuart Mill"; A HISTORY OF WESTERN POLITICAL THOUGHT (London and New York: Routledge, 1996)



PART ONE



1. The Opening Track:



The First Number Is the Sharpest -- and the Boldest




My work and my life -- including the way I "play" -- as an writer-thinker-author, is under constant pressure, and always facing diversary tactics and belittling threats from the invisible nobodies (busybodies and meddlers) "up there". They are always listening, talking, "watching" and eavesdropping (in other words, forever snooping or spying) -- yes, even right at this moment of my enlightening imposition of my great thought-processess!

You fucking moronic (perhaps also, or even, psychotic?) idiots! Cough up the bucks! I want a just share -- a rightful one -- of the great Economic Pie! (Where did all the money that I am supposed to have rightly earned and justly deserved go?)

I've been resisting your uncouth, forcible, foul-mouthed and disrespectful attempts -- to turn me into a docile, conforming, powerless and unthinking SUBJECT -- for more than 36 years! As an indomitable, discerning and unrepentant individualist, I've the ability to, oh, adapt and improvise (but never to compromise!).

My individuality (especially its outstanding strength of mind and character) finds its expressions in everything I do, say, read and write (about) -- nondescript ones included. I am, you might say, a distinctive personality.

My insistence, publicly (through my publications, electronic or otherwise) and privately (in those moments or times when I'm supposed to abe ALONE)) -- on cultivatng my public self and on maintaining my private space means that my firm determination ( yes, as an unwittingly penniless writer) to make up for lost grounds -- oh, those long lost wasted miserable years, all the missing opportunities and unforthcoming challenges -- remains intact! I want to recreate, with my powerful, careful and clear mind, and with, too, my rich imagination, my own ideal memories of times past ... and to establish on public record my real impressions of times present ...

It's about my women -- and girls! (paid or otherwise), my professional writer's dreams and ambitions and my intellectual world! It's about, yes, my cash and money and income. It's about asserting my unconditional demand that these invisible busybodies and meddlers -- yes, utter NOBODIES (no matter how upstanding or "outstanding" they claim they are or pretend to be!) --"up there" -- cough up the bucks!

That is the reality of my life so far -- including how I "play" my game (assuming my life could -- or should -- be regarded as a GAME!) -- and of my work (which I treat or consider with utter or great SERIOUSNESS -- let nobody misunderstand that!) NOW! (And, yes!, from NOW on ....... )

The truth is that I am an author/writer/thinker (no less and no more) -- NOT a secret or undercover government agent or spy or employee (regardless of whatever roles, guises and capacities I had been compelled to play or to perform in -- during the course of the past 36 years and more)!

I aim HIGH -- yes, very , very HIGH indeed! -- but I've suffered so damned much for having such an "unreachable" aim!




PART TWO



2. Track No. 2:


Listen To The Music!



Kelly, why did you become so shallow-minded -- like one of those celebrated (or "celebrity") Radio Disc Jockey -- by proxy? Your idea of survival in this capitalist postmodern world is to adapt to it. But, Kelly, if you think hard enough, to survive by adaptation is precisely to prove that you are intelligent enough NOT to be absorbed into this postmodern world. Stand back, stay outside, and look at it from the outside. Do you, sincerely and honestly, feel "IT" is agreeable and amenable to the expression and development of what you are really? How would you know?

By recalling the past -- through your memories of past times, events, places, ideas and personalities that now tell you that you were once NOT the person that you are now. This special atmosphere that you were so impressed with -- in a "swinging" London in the 1st decade of this century (and a city in love with itself -- or were you in love with it?) -- and which you'd experienced when you were visiting it for the first time -- yes, it was wonderfully evocative (of someone or of something?). What did, or would, it mean -- to you, yes! -- when compared with, or contrasted to, those other cities you had (presumably) visited too? (Like New York, Tokyo, Paris?)


Do you merely feel about a place -- its atmosphere , its evocative quality? Or do you not, perhaps, also think about that particular place -- in relation to the world at large?


I'm a writer and I know writers (especially those who travel much -- like V. S. Naipaul, who'd visited a great many countries in his travels all over the world) do not merely express what, and how, they felt about places they've visited but also about what they thought of them. Therein lies the difference between you and me, Kelly.


I think more than I feel; and you feel more than you think. So how can I let you into my mind (and how can you let me into your heart?) It's an irreconcilable situation; I can't resolve it. But I want the resolution (if there is going to be one) to be a natural one -- yes, the right way for me! (Is it going to be for you too?)


My understanding of what remains of my limited capacity to feel -- or to show my feelings -- is that such feelings (however limited they are) should at least NOT be narcissistic; they should be generous in spirit -- always flowing (outward), aspiring, hoping, and searching (for their reciprocation).


This special atmosphere you had experienced in London -- wasn't it one propped up by an environment of commercialism, mass consumerism, and materialism -- in short, in form and substance, the "reality" of capitalism? Did you not realize that it all boils down to the possession of money? Without money, all the feelings that you had -- about the affecting and wondrous atmosphere of London, about this world and about me -- would not be so memorable! They would -- or could -- have been miserable!


Kelly, on another related and significant note, I want to write about Tokyo. Have you, yes, visited this gay city in the Orient yet? Tokyo is a gay city without equal -- where men cheat women and themselves -- compulsively! They have no memories of its past. They are totally enthralled and absolutely absorbed by the here and now. Male Tokyo residents have no time for history -- for a sense of the world's events, ideas and personalities in times past. (This is true in spite of all those annual or regular visits made by male residents to ancient temples and shrines and other historical and cultural sites -- including, too, their fevered and fervent participation or involvement in yearly mass events that embrace ritualistic, cultural or religious activities of reverent celebration or commemoration.)


The male Tokyo residents have been absorbed by, and into, the present postmodern "reality" of capitalism -- of, to repeat, mass consumerism, materialism, mass culture and commercialism. This includes what should be, in times past, regarded and respected as, the "private" and personal sphere of their sexual lives too. Feelings? What feelings do these male Tokyo residents have? Their sexual "feelings" are concocted, manufactured, distributed, produced and consumed en masse. Their forms of sexual behaviour are methodical, planned, mechanical and, hence, impersonal. They are compulsively conformist, uniform and repetitive. And there are simply too many fakeries and gimmickries that are involved in these male Tokyo residents' sex lives. Oh, these poor, sad, pitiful, plodding perpetual masturbators!


Kelly, you're supposed to adapt (by precisely NOT adapting) to this fucking capitalist postmodern world. You must, in other words, RESIST "IT". Are you intelligent enough to do it? Yes, RESIST "IT"! (That's how I, dear Kelly -- and you should know it surely! -- have been able to SURVIVE all these long years [since I first met you in a government office as a new colleague; and then sometime later (for the second time, yes, but unexpectedly so !) -- and also inexplicably and -- perhaps, regrettably --unproductively too! -- at a big furniture exhibition at the old World Trade Centre; and, lastly, since I last saw you in a bowling alley at the old Leisure Drome in Kallang].





PART THREE



3. Track No. 3:


On the Road To Find Out

(How Good You Really Are!)



Kelly, you're too extroverted for me: you live, basically, a thoroughly EXTERNAL life. You like the world outside or around you unquestioningly, and, yes, too easily, and too much! You have no inner life and world of your own (or do you really?) -- into which you can genuinely withdraw, from time to time, when you are "ALL alone"! And that's the whole fucking point, Kelly: you are NEVER alone! You are so intelligent that you willingly and repeatedly let ALL these significant OTHERS -- yes, ALL these invisible (to me, dear!) busybodies (of which, dear, you, too, are still one!) "up there" (and always listening, talking, and "watching" -- forever eavesdropping!) -- from the System, the Network, the National Company, the National Organization, etc. -- dictate, rule, decide, censor and control your every thought, action, speech and behaviour in your own life (including, dear, your own "significant" inner life).


Or have you no volition to demand -- yes, to ASSERT -- your right to an inner life? No privacy left? Then you must settle the GREAT POLITICAL QUESTION of our time! Not by force (although I myself came from, and was influenced by, the physically and emotionally demonstrative and protesting Sixties) but by the POWER of truth-telling (through ARTISTIC EXPRESSION) -- based upon, not just your own CONSCIENCE but your sense of JUSTICE and power of REASONING too! That's where you, Kelly, have failed me -- and yourself!


You want to come to face-saving and self-approving terms with your past (including, especially, your "love" or romantic life) -- when you realized and recognized that I had hesitated in making you my own -- for defensible reasons of my own! Yes, you tried to explain away -- you had tried to justify -- my eventual or final failure to show conclusive, decisive and responsive (in a positive and favourable sense -- that would serve your self-interest) behaviour in our "relationship" then -- by casting me -- ever since I left you then -- as a "TIMID" villain in that sorrowful, regrettable "love" story of your own making -- as a, in other words, "GUTLESS" and "HOPELESS" man who had "failed" to be a "real man"! (Well, my dear Kelly, do you mean: To win your heart? To win you over to my side? But, Kelly, honestly, and in an enlightened and knowing disposition -- especially recently and lately -- and with the benefit of hindsight, how would -- indeed how could -- that be possible, really?)


Well, Kelly, events have proved that I am nothing of that sort -- a so-called "loser" in matters of sex or love! I've no need to prove to you at all (yes, even right at the beginning of our "budding" but non-blossoming "affair" or relationship -- and certainly not now, or any further)! Surely, by now, you should accept and recognized that I'm my own man! As my sweet dear friend Fann once said (to me and about me): You are always thinking! (The problem is, do you too?)


So, Kelly, that's me for you! I'll always be an uncommon thinking man (even among other uncommon thinking men!) -- trying hard to exercise my inborn faculties, my volition, and my cultivated sensibilities and qualities -- in order NOT to just or merely SURVIVE, EXIST or, worse still, SUBSIST ( in this capitalist postmodern world) but also to LIVE, PLAY and WORK WELL -- yes, on my own rules, terms and conditions -- and in my own thoughtful, quiet, humble, sensitive, sensible, unassuming and extremely serious (often, happily, irreverently and pleasantly so, most of the time!) -- and also highly COMBATIVE, in so many "stubborn" -- or perhaps, I should say, defiant, persistent, insistent and determined -- ways (whenever it is required). The purpose is to protect my personal integrity and self-respect, and also my primary or major goals in life.




PART FOUR


4. Track No. 4:



Be What You Really Are (and Must Be) --

Not What You're Supposed To Be



Kelly, this is not another discursive excursion into "swinging" London (in love with itself; or you with it?). It is about my VIRILE challenges to the invisible busybodies and meddlers ("up there") -- all "merely" and "meaningfully" (and menacingly)listening, talking, "watching" and eavesdropping phonies! No mere (or mean or meaningful) expectation here or there (or anywhere) on my part to just survive! (Even in a sarcastic, thoroughly irreverent and defiant manner!) No, for me, I must also live well, play well, and work well! Keep on coming, these ubiquitous (and officially licensed) bastards! (Tell that to your cunning and noisy -- and noisome! (oh, dry but unclean?) -- colleagues (females and males): yes, all those invisible (and so risible!) busybodies and meddlers ("up there")!


Different images; different voices; different moods; different atmospheres; different feelings; different thoughts! But machines have no soul! No real feelings, not even a little! It's all industrial (albeit, sometimes, industrious) planning and military methods! Kelly, it is all meaningless! All mechanical, robotic and highly infectious bugs -- and forever sucking human blood! Where is the spontaneous, unsophisticated, even naive -- but intuitively pointed sense of fun? To have a large portion of the big Economic Pie? Eat it, then, tell your terrifically invisible pussies and pricks! (Oh, for, and to, an august audience of well-meaning "pansies", "sissies" and "limp-wristed" wastrels, should I be using -- so irrational! -- such violent, abusive, insulting and ill-mannered but jarringly contorted verbal expressions -- especially coming from someone so refined, educated, cultured and cultivated? Surely I can communicate with you, dear Kelly, in a much more delicate, refined, wholesome, healthy-minded, subtle, polite, persuasive, courteous, inoffensive, respectful, well-mannered, pleasant, presentable and non-egoistic manner? Tit for tat? But surely did you not ask for it, Kelly?)


Kelly, who is the real "me" -- the "unkind" soul (now, or at the present moment, and also back then in those years gone by and who, for an unduly long time, was stupidly forced to be so clean-cut, unnaturally and overly mild-mannered, and, furthermore, too gentlemanly -- for his own good, no?); or the genuinely present-day ever-kind one-and-only Nikos Chua (who was supposedly so "mean" to you then -- as obliquely implied by none other than you yourself -- and who is presently now such a completely revitalized and supremely confident and, yes!, soon-to-be long-haired ageing Senior Citizen)? Yes, a wary, self-aware and knowledgeable man, thinking (meaning: questioning) citizen, and a highly skillful -- verbally -- and potent (intellectually) writer in his mellowing mid-fifties who, nonetheless, somehow, still feels it necessary to make his vital philosophical and political stand (yes, the public goal, point, statement and purpose -- of his own private or personal life) eventually known, publicly and openly -- without reservation, hesitation and apology of any kind! How would he do that? By becoming, probably, the first genuinely (i.e., truly, really, sincerely and authentically -- yes, in other words, soulfully!) local-born and basically self-educated and English-speaking Chinese-Singaporean hippie-author-thinker (well, if not in outward or physical appearance -- including the clothes that he would be wearing on that intended special occasion)! This would be in contrast to all those long 36 years in the past when he was mostly, and highly, physically undemonstrative in his personal life and behaviour! But this would certainly NOT be so when it comes to the length of his hair -- yes, on his "big" and "swollen" head, of course! -- on that particular moment of enlightenment, realization and truth-showing, come that day!


Kelly, ageing hippies like me don't "swing" (in London or here in Singapore); we just rock (and roll) with the good or bad times -- which can always be now, right? -- and with our good old proud hippie soul! And we will rock THEM hard -- by making free love (uncorrupted and uncontaminated by the Military-Industrial Personnel with their tainted inferiority complexes)!


We were young then -- simply and almost absolutely in love with the simple Idea -- based on the image of people and places -- and on the sound and voices of songs and singers (like Scott McKenzie's touching paean to the Californian city San Francisco and its wholehearted and effusive welcome to peace-loving visitors -- or the electric folk-rock group The Mamas and the Papas' compellingly evocative Californian Dreamin') in the Sixties -- bearing the hopeful message of love and peace, and inviting us all, again hopefully, to share our class-divided and caste-ridden lives together as fellow brothers and sisters.

Too much importance, really, placed on, or attached to, a "sense" of that place -- or any place, Kelly. That "sense" of a place is determined by TIME -- not by the concrete actualities and practical details of that place by themselves. It's almost about what you yourself really are, at a particular point on the time-scale of your life -- biologically, culturally and historically (or chronologically)!


In the Sixties, there was this simple Idea -- not so much evocative but provocative -- that the younger generation (led by leaders of the hippies' and the protesting students' "counter-culture" movement) should challenge and question the conservative, tradition-bound and Established status quo (with all its stuffy, stifling, repressive and unbearably conventional attitudes, platitudes, beliefs and values -- especially social and moral ones)! Those places in the Sixties in the U.S. where hippies congregated -- like the Californian city San Francisco and that explosive locale for the rock-loving and peace-loving generation, Woodstock (in upstate New York) -- reflected this simple provocative Idea (of challenging and questioning outdated and old-established mores, values and attitudes -- as they have been rendered irrevelant or overtaken by the new changing times).


The (rock) music might have stopped playing now but, at one time, it reflected, loudly, boldly, clearly and infectiously, this "new" Idea of what should -- and could -- have happened (if only the listening, talking, "watching" and eavesdropping Establishment figures and heads had genuinely and positively responded to it by "meddling" -- in the right way, as listening, talking, "watching" and eavesdropping "busybodies" (from "up there") -- that is, yes, by honestly changing the System to reflect their honest acceptance and sincere affirmation, without conditions and reservations, of, precisely, this very "new" Idea -- of a non-conformist life-style, led by self-governing and self-ruling citizens (of the world), according to unconventional values, personal convictions and individualistic attitudes! Its message -- as a fundamental principle of both personal and collective living, in this imperfect world that still sadly and regrettably (for me, at least, as a believer in philosophical anarchism) requires -- or faces -- national governments of all kinds): Self-respecting and self-knowing individualism (but allied to self-disciplining and self-unifying personal efforts and application) is the real SOCIAL GLUE! Don't let these conservatives-cum-traditionalists-cum-capitalists fool or deceive you when they pronounce that it is GROUP CONFORMITY and UNTHINKING OBEDIENCE that will seal our treasured society! (Yes, but where is the freedom then -- after such social sealing and treasured security?)


Kelly, you loved present-day "swinging" London so much (certainly not the city which had existed and was inadvertently but expectedly inspired and thus promoted by the popularity of The Beatles in their heyday in the Sixties then -- during which other cities, like New York and San Francisco, were also all inspired by the spirit, soul and energy not only of The Beatles but also those of the hippies too). But did you not know this present-day London embodies NOT the spirit, soul and aspiration of the hippie generation then but of present-day exploitative, hoarding, receptive, and unproductive postmodern capitalists -- with their fevered and fervent promotion, championing and cultivation of money-making, materialism, mass culture, mass consumerism and commercialism?

Emotionally, you were drawn to lovely "London in Love". (Was it the music, later, that you were listening to -- and which was affecting your recalling of that day or night or moment in London then that misled you into such an "impressed" and "impressive" opinion of or personal regard for London? Oh, so much feelings -- all instigated by a very evocative city indeed!) But is it all there is to it, Kelly -- when one visits a foreign city, especially for the first time? Yes, intellectually, you had no consciousness of what London could be -- for a thinking person (like me)! Should London -- or could it -- not be provocative too? Why, I ask you: Is London all about you yourself (yes, your responses and feelings for the place, etc.) -- or is it just about the place itself -- yes, by itself)?

No one you, presumably, had met, in this "swinging", music-loving and lovely city, London -- yes, it seems to me, on reflection -- would probably have, and unprompted too, volunteered to want a keen, perceptive and intelligent response from you, dear, by expressing their curiosity, inquisitiveness or sheer interest to you, in person (and were there such Londoners who were so bothered enough to do so?) by asking you: What are the rest of the world's cities -- which you had been visiting diligently during your year-long sojourn in the world at large -- doing ? Your Singapore? What about Calcutta? Stockholm? Tokyo? Could it be so, Kelly?


Tokyo! Let's not talk about that gay city again! But I want to make a final remark: Tokyo is not even a city in love with itself but one for those who love perverted, weird and disturbing sex (all centred on masturbation)! Gay Tokyo is, too bad, neither evocative nor provocative -- especially for a thinking and intuitive man like me (who is basically NOT an obsessive lover and undiscerning admirer -- but just an intelligent and appreciative user -- of modern technology and its inventions and mechanical products). Yes, Tokyo is a city virtually dominated by electricity-supplied and electricity-operated machines and gadgets. My hippy outlook and artistic soul simply don't fit in there! The male residents of Tokyo neither feel nor think! It's all about reacting (with, basically, their physical or bodily sensations -- and in their own heartless, soulless, and mindless ways of INTER-ACTING with (or, to me, unresponsive "responding" to) the damn fucking electronics- and electricity-based machines and mechanical gadgets! Oh, Heavens! What an infantile dream-world and "amusing" playground for youngish minds who, I contend, willl never truly grow up!It's all about mechanical playthings and mechanized living -- with the mainstream life of its residents driven perpetually by an obsessively computerized life-style!


Yes, Kelly, to dear old me (and I'm admittedly getting on in age), this Westernized, modernized and yet still Oriental city -- and its discordant and disharmonious life-style is notably bizarre! (And, yes, this is the land of Zen Buddhism!) But truly, I find all this material development unreal -- in a land noted for spiritual development! It is, quite simply, surreal! (And that's my humble judgement!) It does not even resemble a historically memorable city-scape and environment that is built in the cultural "form" of -- and as an architectural "substance" in, yes, a grand work of artistic and soulful expression -- by those involved or responsible for the construction or maintenance or even renewal of a modern city! Rather, it's an overly-rated (and, perhaps, too highly-populated) city which, having been expanded -- probably in an unthinking manner? no? -- into a large dream-park -- and now regarded and treated by its inhabitants or residents as a fanciful playground or theme-park or as a supposedly desirable and representative microcosm in our bizarre postmodern capitalist dream-world! What do you think is my own personal stand on our own idea of wanting to be regarded and treated as a global city? (Or are we already one? So many capitalist mouth-pieces with their enduring and, of course, mainstream, postmodern attitudes and outlook and values from the Singapore Establishment!)