Trail

Lately I've read too many discussions about Singapore and its lack of an authentic culture. What defines authenticity anyway? Dutch clogs and windmills? Too often do we romanticize the fragile webs between people with a flurry of fantasies. Things change all the time, regardless of foreign policies and the increase in the number of immigrants. Ideas, values, beliefs, languages get mixed, blended and filtered. You have a mainstream culture and you have several sub-cultures, all of which differ slightly for each individual. There never was a fixed, stable 'Culture' in the first place, but it doesn't necessarily mean it is a bad thing. Do we still live in an age where we believe that we can make clear distinctions over what is truly 'Singaporean' and what isn't?

Today I walked down the market and was immediately lost in a crowd of pullovers and windbreakers, a woman with ginger red hair, Asobi Seksu singing "there's no reason why you should look at me sadly when I cry for you", the wind tracing leaves across a velvet grey, a man smoking a cigarette, deep in thought, stalls selling vegetables, chocolates and clothes made in China, made in Turkey, made in Italy. I am on a trail to nowhere and everywhere. It is a global world, one of interconnectivity, one of complete isolation, one which floats by my eyes. I can't grasp hold of it; no country, no community, no roots.

At the heart of things, I am afraid I am going to walk through life with absolutely no understanding of it. I feel so far and distant from reality, from people, and that even if someone should hold me down to the ground and press my cheeks against the soil, I still wouldn't be able to know, feel or sense. This lack of comprehension, this futility, terrifies me yet it seems like the only thing I can be certain of for now.