All luvved up

Thus ends the opening night of Ah Steve. It ran wonderfully, with all of us feeling the buzz of energy and the enjoyment of the crowd and then later seeing who it was exactly who came for the show. There's something wonderful about seeing familiar faces from your life who are beaming in happiness for you. Thank you so very much for coming and waiting, guys - it means so much to me.

Of course, what made it especially wonderful and magical tonight was that M was there. How do I put into words those moments - from the meeting of the eyes, to the first words, the first touch, the enjoyment of each other's company once again, the goodbye. Last time I called it 'joyous ecstasy and deep sadness', and that's it all over again. I think in my past month of busying myself with everything in my life, my love and care for her got pushed to the further corners of my mind; tonight, it all came surging back. Someone just said, "she's your biggest fan lah," and that broke my heart all over again. Not in a bad way, but in a really beautifully bittersweet way. My words are failing me (several glasses of wine might have have something to do with it) - in essence, we still care a lot for each other, and yet are steadfast in our stance of how our relationship should go on. So tragic hor? Or in the words of the immortal HT - a Greek tradegy.


What next?

Continuing the theme of being luvved up, L said something absolutely wonderful to my ears. She's (not-so-) secretly praying that I don't get an on-stage part of Tunku so that she can have me assisting backstage. Yeah I don't care much for that praying bit, but it's nice to be wanted, isn't it?

But I'm sorrylah babe, I'm aiming for a lead role. God knows what that role is, but if it can somehow fit I want it. The masochist within wants to be belasah-ed kau-kau by Mervyn.


Agel & Urgency

The thing I've always hated about the word 'urgency' is that I'm not sure how to answer the question "what is it". Conceptually I know it is the antithesis of procrastination, and that it encapsulates "do it now 'cos there's no better time", but such platitudes don't adequately answer the question. Whatever, I'll bullshit my way through when someone decides to ask me.

The reason I bring it up is because of this: in Agel, the compensation plan brilliantly rewards the "correct behaviour" - one of them being urgency. This is a business - you go out there, take action and make yours work. However, I know someone who has been thinking about joining for the longest time - 4/5 months, at a guess. I really believe that he does want to join - but he's waiting for something. Lord knows what that is, but in his dilly-dallying he's missed a few massive opportunities to reduce his workload to make a lot of money.

Look, dude. A huge reason to join Agel is timing. When you have the opportunity to be responsible for bringing leaders into the business; leaders who will be the reason for Agel's success, who see more potential in it than you do and want to make it happen for them - you take it. There's more work because it's new, but there's more rewards because of that work.

Grab life by the balls, make sure you have yours, and go make shit happen man!


More on loneliness

This arrived in my mailbox recently:

If you are afraid of being alone, you are dependent on others for your sense of self, and if you are dependent on others, you block your receptivity to inner guidance. Being willing to be alone involves being willing to be different, to have commitments and values that don’t blend with any crowd.

-- Ingrid Bacci

Show some love to the loner within. The lone ranger within.

Good good, feeling better

No giant kudzu. It's all good. Just wikipedia-d kudzu, it's actually quite pretty. I was thinking more of this, this and this. Of course, if you know it as a disaster card that can be played against a city, I want to meet you, fellow geek.

The title's a reference from the play I'm currently in. I'm a psychiatrist, in this case I'm consoling myself. In this case, I'm also recommending that you do not see a schizophrenic psychiatrist.

Anyway just wanted to share a hilarious quote from Marianne Williamson, who's quite the genius with her lines.

Some men know that a light touch of the tongue, running from a woman's toes to her ears, lingering in the softest way possible in various places in between, given often enough and sincerely enough, would add immeasurably to world peace.

Brilliant. I'm going to MPH to see if I can get any of her stuff now.

Abyss

I've spent the last half-hour attempting to wrestle the right word out of my brain-dead head, and the best I could settle for was "Abyss". There's a beautiful, succinct and pithy word that means "nothingness" and bloody hell that's exactly what I got when I tried to remember it.

I don't know why I'm so compelled to blog this entry. I am stuck in some kind of purgatory: my brain's barely working, my eyes don't wanna stay open, my shoulders and back ache. I'm not feeling anything.

I don't want to sleep. I don't want to do anything: read, surf, play a game, look for porn, listen to music, watch a movie, study my fish (that's literally a fish, not an obtuse reference to my private part), whatever. I want to have a smoke but I'm not letting me.

So somehow, blogging it is. And as much as I'd love to transcribe all the above in some eloquent, sexy, ass-kicking poem, man none of my systems have any hope of accomplishing it.


What a strange state it is. I'm tired, possibly exhausted; and yet I don't want to sleep. Mind you, this isn't the first time I've been here - but it's been a long time since the last one. I've had a lousy day - Randy Gage was so spot on when he spoke about putting positive inputs into the system and how negative inputs just fuck you up, and I started the day with one super-negative conversation. I couldn't get that conversation out of my head the whole day. So, for some reason I don't want a blah day to end.

Maybe I'm scared. Today's the day I felt the least certain about my current path all year. Maybe I'm scared that if I go to sleep with this feeling, it'll grow overnight into some giant kudzu that'll swamp my mind body soul and I'll end up as some wannabe-consultant at Accenture or something. Heh no offense dudes, but as time passes by I lose more and more of the awe and reverence I used to have for your company and think less and less of working there. Be a "Resource" that the company shuffles around to satisfy the whims and fancies of its clients. Yikes. Fuck me lord but I pray to make so fucking much money that I never need to contemplate such blasphemy to my soul ever again.

And that's the truth, isn't it. I'm scared shitless. An eighth into the year and I'm having doubts. Every day passes so slowly with so much to be done, but the days are passing by so quickly that I sometimes wonder what I'm doing. The Year of the Roasted Pig is almost here and I don't know where my fucking afflictions are! Save me Ah Too!!


Just thought of the word I've been looking for: nadir. It appears NOT to mean "nothingness", but "the lowest point; point of greatest adversity or despair." Scary shit man, that's exactly it. The soul has a way of communicating what it needs to. Or some funky shit like that.

Another side-note: isn't that picture fucking gorgeous?!? Chanced upon it looking for "abyss" images. It's a bloody jellyfish in an aquarium, believe it or not. I have to go diving again.


Yes. Steel my soul. Sharpen the sword called Belief. Burnish the shield called Perseverance. Ride the stallion called Destiny.

But ultimately have faith. In me.




I ask myself, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous and fucking rich?

Actually, who are you not to be motherfucker?!?

Ah Steve

‘I’ve always been a good Catholic boy. I’ve been baptized, go to church every Sunday, and confess even when I didn’t do any sins. And now at 30, I think I know how to be happy.’

‘Ah Steve’ is a story of a Chinese boy who prays to his dead mother everyday. On Sundays, he prays to Jesus.

This Christmas, there is a problem at the church. The youth wing of the Church wants to put up a nativity play and Ah Steve wants to be part of the show. However, because ‘all the man parts in the show tok in hard bible words I cannot pronounce’, Ah Steve has to play a woman part - Mother Mary.

The problem is, Ah Steve feels very happy donning Mary’s costume and lipstick. It reminds him of his Mama’s shoulder pads, and the mascara he used to see his Aunt Tabitha wipe off her face, and of My Little Ponies! Horse dolls he never had a chance to play with because his staunch Catholic Aunty Tabitha thinks it is a sin!

Ah Steve is a story of a boy who woke up one day crying because he felt happy to be called Mary, even if for a day. It is a story of lip gloss, Church hymns, Chinese ghost stories, and of course, My Little Ponies.

Ah Steve is in English with bits of Hokkien.


Dates and Times:
The Actors Studio @ Bangsar Shopping Centre
22nd Feb - 4th Mar
-- Tues-Sat at 8.30pm
-- Sun at 3pm
-- No Show on Mondays
Box Office Contact: 03 2094 0400/1400

The Actors Studio @ Greenhall Penang
9 - 11 March
-- Fri & Sat at 8.30pm
-- Sun at 3pm AND 8.30pm
Box Office Contact: 04 263 5400


Ticket Prices:
RM30 (Adults)
RM15 (Students, Disabled, Senior Citizens)
*Free Celebrity Fitness passes for each ticket purchased. Celebrity Fitness members enjoy a 10% discount on tickets.

Chaos-chasing

I recently told someone that my emotions are so shot-up and all over the place that I now regularly have to fight off cigarette-desire again. Only ex-smokers and some smokers will truly understand this (some, because the rest are too unaware of their bodies to realise what's going on) - whether it's the sight of an ashtray, or the smell of burning cigarette, or the sound of scraping flint, or even the wistful curl of transient smoke; my body wants it. Craves it. Desires it, for that brief one moment, with its entire being.

The skin prickles with anticipation. The fingers rub, feeling the absence of the stick. The breath quickens in preparation. The eyes search for the necessities - the pack, the fire. The mind is flooded with thoughts of comfort, relaxation, social acceptance.

And the Soul fights back. The Self. The Spirit. The Heart. The Will. Call it what you will, it is usually a silent scream. Absolute power, completely emasculated by a being too scared to trust it. Thankfully, in this I have learned to make it a habit of trusting my soul. I like to think that I cheat by having cigarillos / cigars; but that is needless self-deprecation - I know that I grow stronger, better, happier every time I say no to a cancer stick.

I'm still learning to trust my soul in other things in my life.




I'm just back from Velvet, which is strangely the place I felt most keenly a powerful emotion. An emotion I felt and wrote privately of last month. An overwhelming emotion. An emotion that may seem most unlikely for someone like me; who values his space, needs regular time alone, yet has many people he can call 'friend'. That emotion is loneliness.

Language... has created the word "loneliness" to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word "solitude" to express the glory of being alone.
~Paul Johannes Tillich, The Eternal Now

I believe that I have found my path in life, for this point in my life. Where everything makes sense, where everything has a beautiful symmetry and harmony to it, where everything feels just right. And that's where the glory lies. But because everyone has their own path, there is no one person I can truly talk to and be with right now. No one to share everything with, no one who truly UNDERSTANDS. And that's where the pain lies.

I spoke to an old friend and saw so much self-denial and learned helplessness. I chatted with my mum and saw so much narrowness and negativity. I met with old schoolmates and saw so much low self-esteem and lost dreams. It's painful to see, but I'm choosing to see.

Now I know that a way to make this work for me is to find different people with whom I can share and be with for the different aspects of my life. It's just that the transition to that mindset from my previous one hurts. Realising what I'll have to let go of, seeing what I need more of / less of in my life, working against entrenched habits.

Because I also see old friends having epiphanies about how they want to live life and choosing to; old schoolmates reaching for their dreams and the stars; new friends who stand for their individuality and their individual beauty; new people who believe in themselves and believe themselves worthy of everything this bountiful life has to offer. That is why I choose to see. Inspiration. Uplifting. Meaning.

The title, if you're still wondering about it at this point, actually refers to the fact that I'm driving myself even further down this path that I'm taking. I see my pot of gold at the end: I just might have to take multiple trips to hell and back for it. Thankfully I've just found myself a lovely quote that brings a bittersweet smile to my lips.

There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence, in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song - but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny.
~ Pablo Neruda, Toward the splendid city: Nobel lecture

Yes, I did have fun tonight. Some same-old same-old songs, some strange dance groups, hot as hell. But fun. Anyway how often does one have such a thought-provoking clubbing experience?

Seeking peace within the turmoil

I haven't updated in a while, and it's long overdue. In a deviation from the norm, I'm going to one-pass this entry - I'm typing it right into Blogger in a straight-out "memory dump". I've a text file with the skeleton for my next entry sitting on my desktop that I'm ignoring for this. Warning: this may be one mother entry.


So what's been going on in my life? Quite simply: Ah Steve, Agel, meeting up with old friends, making new friends and dancing. I'm riding all that on a mad rollercoaster called Emotion. It's one crazy ride but it's so exhilirating - there's so much energy in that which I'm directing into what I'm doing. Sure it's nuts sometimes, but I feel so alive; the past 3 weeks have really crawled and yet I feel I've done so much.

Ah Steve

Can't remember if I've mentioned this, but we've enlisted the support of good ol' Dominique for our production and he's been doing some funky shit. Don't know if it's the weight of sheer centuries of French liberal arty-fartiness in his accent or his exhortations of going deeper (in breath), but he's the one constant we can hold on to and be guided by. It's unfortunate that someone who is completely external to the play is a pillar for us, but that's how it has turned out - our director sticks to the principle of change and 'try something new all the time' while our lead does not have a clear idea (to me, at least) of where to take the character and by extension, the play.

I'm not saying that these are bad things, but currently I am not happy with the status quo. I am fully aware that I am quite the newborn babe in the woods of theatre, which is why I hold my peace and patience. I genuinely do not know, and feelings are a fickle means to judge by. I'll just regularly vent my feelings out of my system, aim to create a mindblowing performance and wait till it's all over before making a conclusion about it all. Pass judgement, if you will.

Again, can't remember if I've said this but we've had a massive breakthrough in our set layout so we're all very happy with the effect it has - on us and on the audience. Frankly, it's a show worth watching (yes, if I do say so myself) purely based on the script and the set. The lighting and sound show good potential, too. I pray that the actors deliver, and THAT would really rock. It'd become a highlight of the year.

Which reminds me of some ideas mentioned (possibly in passing, but who knows) - publishing it as a book (which would be so bloody excellent as my name would be in the early pages under the entry "first performed at The Actor's Studio Bangsar with the following cast"; and as a movie. My plan is to be in the position where there is no doubt that I'd have to play my character in the movie, too.

Agel

Now this is where the rollercoaster rides the hardest. From facing rejection, to handling objection, to having hopes dashed, to getting great results, to dreaming and wanting better faster more - it's all there. What a mad learning experience (yes mad, crazy and gila are the featured words of this entry - the only adjectives to describe my past few weeks) it's been. Thinking about it, I first joined looking at how I could have everything I wanted. The next 2 months were spent looking at what I'd have to do, to go through, to stay strong about. After that, I just blasted through - risking, desiring, striving, growing.

I make that sound so trivial, but I truly cannot describe how tumultuous my mind was. From self-doubt to guilt to desire to distraction to self-drive to uncertainty to fear to self-belief - the whole gamut of thoughts and feelings one goes through as one commits oneself wholeheartedly into something so unknown, so foreign.

It doesn't have to be that way, of course. My mind just makes things especially difficult for me. As some say - the danger of intelligence is intelligence itself. The mind has... okay fine the mind has a mind of its own, and when it fights, hoo boy have you got a battle on your hands. And I planted some really dumb ideas in there when I was young so I've been waging a war to get them out.

All that rhetoric is meaningless without results, and I am elated to say that I've earned more than USD500 for the month of January. If I (and my crew) did jack-shit for Feb, I'd earn USD20. So, 1 point for Active Income, 0 for Passive Income.

If you're wondering what the hell I'm on about, take a look at my website.

Friends old and new

My favourite part of doing the Agel business is the implicit core directive: meet people, spend time with people. It's such a joy to catch up with old friends, see what's going on with their lives, which directions they've taken and the whys. I recently met up with a primary schoolmate who'll be a Doctor soon (PhD) - the first I personally know, and it seems that he's utterly salsa-crazy. Funny world, right? I'm reconnecting to various souls I've met throughout my life and loving it.

Dancing

Now this is something that I hadn't been doing enough of in recent times. I'd forgotten how much I love it. My stats for 2007 are already standing at: 1 Cynna, 1 Bar Sa Vanh, 3 Velvet / Zouk. And fantastically enough I think I've spent more money on the parking than on drinks. Yes that means 2 things: 1- I don't need to drink to dance and have a blast; 2- I have great friends. Dancing is one of the things that is keeping me sane (or as close to that as I can be).

So how?

Indeed. Plans for 2007 are crashing together in my head, jostling for attention whilst I seek the centre of the storm. Establishing acting career, getting parts, filling my year with activity, exploring avenues likee film and Singapore; attempting writing career, seeking ideas, angles, materials; self-devlopment, singing, Mandarin, dancing, body-building; creating income pipelines, Agel, writing, adverts.

I look at that, and it's madness. But I'm happy for that madness. It's so thrilling, all sorts of crazy stuff that I told myself at various points in my life - "I wanna be like Han Solo" (yeah yeah Harrison Ford whatever) or "I'm gonna write a book as good as this" or "I'd like to be as built as that bitch" or "man, I love to go live in Cuba for a few months and not worry about money". Holy shit man, I'm going for ALL of that, now!

And to think that just 2 years ago my dream was to "hopefully be Senior Executive by the end of the year". Fuck that shit man, no wonder I was an unhappy fatty. If I lose my bet with my Mum, I think I'd commit suicide the most spectacular way I can rather than serve my soul, diced and lightly stewed, on a cubicle-sized platter to IBM / Microsoft / Intel / Accenture / heaven-forbid-ShittyBank.

So drama-mama right. But that thought really drives me today, and every day. My fire of individuality and my will to live burns too brightly to allow the above paragraph to happen. The gila babi within has awoken, and none shall stand in its path.