Only A Speck.

Open publication - Free publishing - More only

The Security Guard.

I know that it is common knowledge that we suffer from a lack of identity, but then again how do I know? Can anyone speak for everybody?

I was talking to one of my friends over the weekend, who works as a security guard. He went on about his dissatisfaction in his workplace, the fronts that people put up, the ways he gets treated, it's all common knowledge, and normally with anyone else, my head would be spinning the words , yada yada yada, it's something I've heard of before, but from him, it felt like a special occasion, it was as if he carried all the gravitas and weight that I've felt lacking from many a conversation.

Can anyone be said to be genuine anymore? Well, it felt like he was something like that, for that moment at least. Something happened last night when he spoke. It was as if a pin had dropped in the centre of our pub and everyone had to be quiet. Was it because those words were the last thing that you would expect such a person to say? Yet at the same time it felt for me, that he was the only one who could talk about these things. The security guard, the quiet one at the party, the truly observant one, I've always suspected that the one who rarely speaks, not out of intimidation, or passivity, but from the wisdom of erudition, has a voice like no other.

He was the one who lived under the heel of a boot, where all he got to do was to watch the figure on top, pressing down on him. It was as if that if he were to speak, he would be the one to say it for everybody. A man like my friend, has learnt more about life than any university grad could ever hope to figure out. That being said, there are many security guards that do irritate me, the kind that hold on to their positions as if it was their God-given right to inflict their own brand of justice in some out-dated style of a bad ass cop figure type. They hang on to their sense of authority, or to put it in another way, their sense of position, as if it was the last thing they had in all the world. I assure you that my friend is not that sort at all, he's a sensitive soul with a hard as nails facade.

He also talked of a distaste for plasticity in our culture and in our lifestyles. In return, I shared with him my view, that  in every relationship, there seems to be a measure of compromise, of falsity/plasticity, that the ability to live true to anything singular, is abhorrently difficult because whatever is true to any individual is so contorted and twisted by media. We the Hollow Men (although it's Eliots', let's claim it for ourselves) are so hungry for reality, for a way of truth in our lives, but in this media saturated environment, where everything is up for grabs and nothing sticks, the quest is even harder, even causes for good have to be marketed and approved with some incentive, some appeal, it has to become fashionable. Trends die. That's the natural progression for trends, can we learn something from that?  I suspect that one of the things we've learnt from trends, is that we now understand the silent art of disposing each other, and our beliefs and convictions. When we've sucked each others wells dry, a new trend in our fashionable lifestyles can begin.

After the conversation, as he turned his back to me, I lingered on my view that moved from our balustrade, a panorama that began by looking down from the back-end of the Esplanade, then stretching up to the channel of water and eventually, directly at MBS. The dice was rolling against everything as I turned to join my friends, I felt that potential slip back into a world of compromise as we would make our way back to our separate states of being. I know I can't let it go anymore. This is all the reality I have left. Those last words that felt real over the weekend, by my friend, the security guard.

Word Junky.

Word Junky

Today’s a strange day for me.

For all the words are bigger.

Bigger Words = Bigger meaning.

-Me.

Bigger is better and biggest is best.

-Burroughs.

And every syllable,  

From every tongue,

That's been filling up in my Cochlea.

Has progressed.

And now adapted,

I'm a walking boom-box machine,

With only myself,

I play the role of the listener.

Without class and without 95.

And my eyes,

They used to scroll through FB,

Like one who sets his gaze on a stream,

Of tepid water.

All the words couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Now the words are coming at me

Better than any kind of lover.

In the fashion of  Koon’s balloons,

Or Holzer’s texts.

Word’s the size of skyscrapers.

It’s all very personal now.

And I finally believe in words again.

Each word is the sum of all parts.

It’s true.

And every part carries meaning.

I do believe so.

If you don’t believe me

Carve this out,

On a tablet of plastic.

And repeat it like a mantra.

“All words carry meaning. And all meaning is good for me.”

Do this for 41 days and 41nights,

Without food, drink

And entertainment

Eventually,

You’ll get what I mean.

And yes, you may use FB,

But only to communicate your experience.

Film Directors' Comics.

Check these out, comics by filmmakers David Lynch, Federico Fellini and Alenjandro Jodorowsky.

David Lynch

Federico Fellini

Alenjandro Jodorowsky

Sleep All Summer.

This is such a delightful song, can't help but post it. This reminds me of the duet between Jeff Tweedy and Feist. Suddenly I'm trying to recall all those other duets I've heard over the span of what I've listened too. From the top of my head, there's Dylan and Baez, The Postal Service, The Fiery Furnaces, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, will probably post their videos in the future, if I can find them.

Picasso's Birthday Party.

Front

Back

Inside

It was a few months ago in february that I took a trip to Beijing for a regional workshop, part of my training for the Middle Years Program that I'm teaching. There was this little exercise that our workshop coordinator made us do that I thought was really funny. Each of us was assigned to make a little birthday card for an imaginary birthday celebration for Picasso. Slipping into boy scout mode, I made a little strip out of a little card I found in my hotel room. Found out that there's a song by Jonathan Richman about  Picasso being the immaculate charmer he is. Yes, lot's can be said about Picasso, but he did get all the girls didn't he? 

I recall my trip to Beijing with extreme fondness. I Remember Oliver from San Francisco who to me had this imposing physicality about him, he was one of those personalities that you can't rub from your memory, always bouncing around both in movement and in lively, often times funny verbal expression. He's one of the nicest person's I'd ever met, I always have a fondness for imposing personalities that humble themselves. Then there's Kazuko from Osaka, who's presence had a very calming affect on me. Her anxieties about teaching were so honest and everything about her person was so transparent and true, it was strange that she messaged me the day before the disasters took place in her country which also happened to be my birthday. Finally, of all the people I remember fondly, there's Philip from Britain. I remember that he was the biggest surprise for me, his gestures and appearance constantly seemed aloof and battered, as if he'd been through a lot, which I found out to be true, yet he was always encouraging and positive in his outlook, no matter the frustrations he faced. It was wonderful hanging around with complete strangers, artists/teachers like me who had common hang-ups regarding being artists/teachers and sharing the joys about what we do. But best of all, we could share one or two of our own private anxieties because it wasn't said or acknowledged, but we knew that there could be no damage between strangers who would probably never see each other again. It was for only three days, I missed a liu Xiaodong exhibition I really wanted to see and I didn't reach the Great Wall, but I found some commonality. 

Update: 

Here's the band Modern Lovers playing Pablo Picasso.

The Strip I Keep.

I thought of sharing this, ever since I came up with the idea of conceiving this blog. I Keep this in front of my writing space at home, to remind me to be weary of the opinions of others when it comes to making Art, that I have to be mindful that what I'm trying to convey isn't to please any particular audience, but to be as truthful as I can be to the way I see and observe the world around me. I'm starting to find that my Art is meant to give me more than pleasure, there's a certain amount of responsibility that goes with the process of Art making, but there's no political agenda in what I create and I am not making art solely for private gain. There is definitely an agenda going on, but the specifics of the agenda are personal to me. For me, an agenda must never be written like a manifesto, it always fails in that form, for my work, an agenda must remain unspoken for it to be as open as a poem. I don't want to shy away from 'abstract' thoughts, thoughts that are too vast and complicated for most to comprehend but at the same time I'm hoping that the work can be relatable. Anyway, this is the way I have seen the world thus far, a sequence of conflicting polarities that once strung together and worked out, might lead to hidden truths or new pathways.

Torture Horse.

"Friends".

Outside The World is Burning...

I'm New Here.

What a beautiful song.
R.I.P Gil Scott-Heron.

I was just reflecting on Gil Scott-Heron's album 'I'm New Here' and how it reminds me of Johnny Cash making his last recorded albums 'American Recordings'. I love it that these great artists gave their best even when they could have easily retired. These records are something the industry can never categorize, it's art in relation to life, the words shaped can never be mimicked. Art needs to come out from life, you have to have gone through what Gil Scott-Heron went through to make his art, and he went through a lot, having lived through the Jim Crow laws, laws that segregated black people from white people in America, as well as an ongoing struggle with drug addiction. I love that he was always frank and honest about the way he felt about his country and himself, he made it a point to bother about the bigger picture, that what happens in another country, happens to his country, that the world's problems were his problems. That what the future generations of rappers have to fear are making songs that aren't based on authentic experiences. His last album is something like vintage wine for me, ripe with all the flavors of a beautiful life. It's sad that he couldn't have made more music. All this makes me realize that old age is something to actually look forward too, unless you go senile, Gil Scott-Heron is evidence that great things can be done even then. 

An Assault On Affection.

It's out! My first comic, An Assault On Affection.

There are 2 shops that you can purchase my comic from:

The first is Doinky Doodles, at 33 Bali Lane (2nd Floor). Tues-Sat 1-8pm. Website: www.doinkydoodles.com. Doinky Doodles is an amazing shop, that my friend Pixin owns, there's a little section of comics and zines there that  I absolutely love (including her own). Do check it out!

The second is Absolute Comics, at 200 Victoria St #03-13 Parco Bugis Junction, it's a comic shop that I have been faithfully buying comics from, another great shop.

I really hope that more people will support these local shops, to me they are something special. The big stores are much more impersonal in comparison. I'll be putting my comics in at least three more stores and that will be that. Will update this post as I find more stores.


BTW, make sure you check if the stores are closed for special occasions, by checking online.

For any inqueries, please e-mail me at fatcrumb@gmail.com.






Updates

You can now get my comic at Cat Socrates too! # 03-39B Bras Basah Complex, 231 Bain Street. They open from 12- 8pm (mon-sat) / 1-7pm Sun and Public Holidays. Website: www.catsocrates.com.sg.

Special Powers.

Really wanted to post this one much earlier but the cleaning up process took longer then I expected (I usually clean up the eraser marks and white ink with photoshop). Also, I'm in the middle of my national service. Since my last reservist, I had a little idea for a strip about my experiences in camp, might work on that soon.

I'm really starting to enjoy making these Sorehead strips, went jogging today and came back with so many ideas. I'll probably do a lot more before I get back to painting. When that happens the strip will come out infrequently. 

Along with the strip above, I thought it would be nice to attach this image I made of a couple that I drew in my sketchbook. The sketch came in handy as a reference for the couple in my strip above. 

I've been thinking about this strip I made recently and my opinions and views as expressed in the strip are very different now. I realize that I can never look at a single person and 'figure them out'. People are a constant mystery for me and that includes myself. I'm a constant mystery to myself and can never predict the mood I'll be in, or the way I will react to sudden situations. That said, the validity of this strip still holds up in a certain way because most times I find that people do behave in ways that are predictable as as if their actions were scripted. I find it constantly disappointing when the obvious presents itself to me, and that is probably what this strip is about, a lament over the 'predictable'. How much of it is the fault of the given situations people are subjected to? How much out of it is just the person/s' willingness to be subjected? This un-ending mystery presents itself daily. 

27/07/2011

A year ago.. or at least I think it was a year ago. I stumbled on this video interview with Leonard Cohen. He made me think about something that I reflected on before and totally agree with, that of making art in-spite of suffering and not by being fueled by it.

I think this is an important point for all artists who believe that they need to live a self-destructive life before they can make good art. It's a cliche. Funny how just today, I stumbled on Jeff Tweedy (below) saying the same thing!

Start listening to leonard's clip from 3:17.

The children are the first to know.

The children are the first to know

What they haven’t learnt in a lifetime.

What it is that is.

They already know as most important.

What we haven’t learnt in a lifetime,

They summed it up with their smiles.

What we have forgotten,

The children know most often.

And the children will show it to you

Even if you’ve forgotten.

Just this once

Let the children play,

Let the children scream

As loud as they desire!

Because their screams are of delight!

If you do not want to look bad

Just leave them be,

And smile.

The boy takes his fathers face

And tries his best to make a shape.

That moment,

Hanging on the hope

For his loving gaze.

But the human face,

It is nothing like Play-Doh.

And the child trips!

On what he doesn’t know.

So children,

This is why!

You must learn with all your might!

But as you do so,

Please don’t ever forget!

What is most important!

This was done recently, it's not meant to be read like a regular poem, you have to imagine that each stanza is in a single page of a kids story book which I intend to turn this into.

- Fatcrumb

On My Way.

If you have a spirit of endurance,

If you don’t mind that creativity

Is stenciled on the walls,

And that everything’s made of plastic,

I find that the airport can be a great spot,

For the on and on and on and on.

If you don’t mind

That the disposables are left

In the wake of the drifters,

Fuel for the everlasting movement,

That never returns.

I find that the airport can be a great spot,

A real sweet spot,

For the on and on and on and on.

If you don’t mind

That the caretakers of flight

Are in keeping

With their best static lie,

It is in keeping with the

On and on and on and on.

That they mimic the stance of

Their imaginary symbols,

The on and on and on and on,

Engulfs my heart tonight.

That these self-made symbols

Whisper

“Everything is worth it”,

With the same tenacity and pomposity

Of a pimple faced girl

Who says

“All is good for me,

I who have no company.”

Then get ready,

For the on and on and on and on.

That the dot on the map finally matters,

I am not concerned.

It is the heart of a nation

That perplexes me most.

Where is it?

The question goes on and on and on.

That those who have returned

From touching the great monoliths,

Dancing to the music of fading cultures,

That once knew life,

Barely feel it in their bones.

As they return with the sound

Of fading gypsies,

Going on and on and on and on.

These people,

Colorless like ghosts,

Convincing themselves,

Life is worth living,

While never feeling alive.

They go on and on and on and on.

And me?

I am on my way.

Buzz Street.

Standing naked,

Standing pink-eyed in the sun,

Standing with

The clothed,

Bearing down.

On a busy street,

Let me catch my bearings.

Let me arrive

On time,

Definitely

On time,

I must,

Be on time,

Even if,

A little undone.

This Holy fuzz,

Is telling me funny things about the weather.

A million hits

For a million faceless kisses.

Tricks,

Playing in the sun.

Let me soak in all of this,

Before my memory comes undone.

The Holy Fuzz,

Is telling me strange things about the weather.

Talk about the weather,

Talk about disease,

Talk about a feather.

In the sizzling heat, they run out of things to say.

In a blizzard, they run out of things to say.

 “Quickly,

Change the channel.”

Someone says.

“Or amuse yourself,

With a balloon.”

On a placard the phrases read:

Triple the employment.

Triple the Experience.

The Holy Fuzz is getting too abstract,

Its breath is foul,

And now,

It’s tripping over

The triplets of employment,

On a busy street,

That I am crossing,

A little undone,

And hopefully,

Very much in the nude.

Done on a busy day, 18^th of March. Jeremy gave a talk at CC (Scape). It was great! The kids I was teaching were difficult, but one or two were affected by the experience, and one or two is enough. They could be great artists in the future, who knows? I’ll keep hoping. Strangely, felt teary eyed all day. Remember feeling very disconnected with the reality of Orchard Road. I always feel a little disconnected there, a little strung-up. But Art helps a lot.

Sunday.

I find it difficult

Surrendering

To love.

I spent that day

With a white robe

Over my head.

And two white flags

For each hand.

I wasn’t trying

To be morbid

or anything.

It was just

My way of saying,

I was trying.

It was difficult to do

Anything else

That Sunday.

While waiting for her

To Christian me

As something

Loved.

It would have been

A great honor.

And in a way

It still was,

Being so close

To something.

On the edge.

But of course

It didn’t happen.

It may have been

That what I said

Was tainted,

Tainted by

Reckless thoughts.

If it didn’t come to mind

That she could just say it,

That she loved me.

And not actually mean it.

Maybe.

Maybe I could have kept

My mouth shut.

This is just

My way of saying,

I was trying.

So I was

trying.

There is no time for Sleepwalking.

This thing called ‘culture’

Is like a scuttling rat,

Too fast and slippery to catch.

There used to be a time where

The rats would overwhelm the masses.

Then we’d catch a whiff

Of the bubonic stage.

A slowly sipping poison,

Through, muzzles, cages, mazes

And the Internet.

And I am trying very hard

To be coherent,

And unpretentious,

And caring.

Amidst the waves of ceaseless information.

Culture lives externally

From methods of display.

There must be something

Wrong with us,

Cultureless like the rats

Who play in trash.

Trash that makes

The prostitutes and scavengers,

Stand like gods.

Our values unbeknown to us

We slip into it like sleepwalkers.

It takes a whiff to wake us.

A little too late,

A little too much.

The Wisdom of Old Flesh.

I observe them,

From the discipline

of staring blankly.

There is a world of wisdom

underneath those callous skins.

The wisdom of having learnt a great deal.

Obviously the old man,

Or woman,

Who whines all day.

About taxi drivers

Waiters

Maids

For all the kinds of service

Done wrong to them,

Except their own,

Haven’t learnt shit about patience.

And mercy,

And gratitude,

And expects none.

And the fetid flesh stinks.

But they have learnt so much about the opposites.

They know a world of bitterness.

And it is in that flesh.

The wisdom of their flesh

That stinks the earth,

And wraps the babies now.

Kids on Skateboards.

Kids on skateboards

Rolling to the back end,

Because the back end is where they feel they fit?

Shallow cute girls,

Talking about shallow cute boys.

They couldn’t get any louder.

Because they feel like they’re on top of the world?

Lost in the moment?

Lost in the moment.

The ugly people on the bus

Are all quiet.

Just saw the driver of this bus,

Leaving a man

Who chased after it,

But was a fraction to late.

And by law?

The bus moves on.

One of the cute girls leaves,

The one left takes out her phone,

Immediately.

The kids at the back

Yelp like Hyenas.

They seem to have the right to.

They have a significant number

Are of the same color

And they have skateboards.

Poems, starting of with 'Beauty Never Did a Thing for Me'.

Beauty Never Did a Thing For Me

This love is paper-thin.

I’m back again, sufferin’

For paper love so thin.

Crumple it on a fixed day,

Then set it out in the sun again.

The sun that shines on everything,

The big, the small,

The pathetic and the profound.

I’ll climb your summer dress again

And call out your name

as if it were a revelation.

Pass your netted fabric,

Then clinging on

to your streaming hair.

I’ll keep climbing till,

like on a mountain

I could say I was there.

And on that mountain,

You’d catch me singing to a situation

That was never there,

Singing

Beauty never did a thing for me.

Beauty never did a thing for me.

This year, I started to write poetry. It all happened rather naturally on a bus journey home thinking about well...girls... and well... rejection. I only have the courage to show these thanks to the encouragement of my family and to my fellow teachers in the english department. Thank you guys! Some of these poems will be turned into comics, for instance this one was written with comics in mind. But I thought it would be a good thing to show them bare first before the images add an extra layer of meaning. 

- Fatcrumb

Thinking about Nick Drake.

A couple of weeks ago I was thinking of one of Nick Drakes stanzas from his song 'Hazey Jane II', which goes like this "If songs were lines in a conversation the situation would be fine." It's a line that has been haunting me for days. The simplicity of that line seems to say that if art and our lifestyles could coincide with one another, there would be less misunderstanding.

Yet the difficulty in all this is that ironically Nick Drake's music did not garner the sort of attention he was hoping for. The album in which he released this song 'Bryter Layter' was his second attempt at making an album that he hoped would gain appreciation. When you listen to it, there is no way one could argue that it is an amazing work, but for some reason, sales for the album went really bad. From then on Nick Drake's romanticism was shattered. The mood in his follow up album has a different tone, it's less hopeful, bleak in its vision. I feel that this story is a wake up call for all artists, that if they aspire for recognition through their work, the truth is that it may never happen. For me, there has to be a better reason for making art other than money or recognition.

Still, those lyrics echo a consideration of mine, that one of the areas I've been interested in my own work is this irreconcilable relationship between art and everyday life. I feel that one big reason that the quality of a lot of Art in galleries are getting weaker and weaker is that it's distant from that deeper connection between the viewer and the artwork. For instance, I've seen a lot of work that relies on interviews which probably would work if not for the fact that the person interviewed is probably putting up a front. So where is the truth in any of that? It's not a problem for me when I read my books or comics, or when I listen to one or two good albums, or occasionally, a good movie, but in most exhibitions something always feels lacking. It's not that I'm against conceptual art or abstraction, but what's missing isn't an idea or a technique it's... well...it's...it's... (not existentialism either) I couldn't put it in any simpler way than to say that it's... heart!

- Fatcrumb

New Path in a Rapid Transit System.

Sentimental Bat.

Sometime last year I got really depressed, I remember it was a bad week after a string of disappointments. Then I started listening to Nina Simone and as I was listening to her, I realized that her music was like having someone listen to your problems without being judgmental. I like the range of songs she has, you have songs like 'Mr. Bojangles' where you feel like she's right there with you in your misery and then suddenly she breaks out with a beautiful rendition of 'Suzanne' to cheer you up. Of course there's so much more music that I'm really grateful for right now I'm listening to Lambchop, earlier in the day it was Johnny Cash's late albums, their great! I do feel that music like this has a common goal with the comics I read and create. 

- Fatcrumb

It All Went to Fuck.

Mr. Mosquito.

Naked As I came Naked as I go.

So here are the first few entries of my ongoing strip Soreheads! There are four main characters in soreheads Existential Boy, Batty, Dinky and Fatcrumb. So let me know what you think by mailing me at fatcrumb@gmail.com. 

First Entry: A Kinda Statement.

Hi guys,

if you're new to this blog you probably heard it from me or a friend or from my comic that I'm releasing... very soon!

I'm just writing this entry to explain the inception of this little project of mine. But before I go on, I would like to clarify one thing. I'm cautious when it comes to explaining my work, I am someone who feels uncomfortable when too much is explained about an artist's intentions. So when it comes to explanation, the furthest I'll go is describe the origins behind one or two of my ideas. Another thing I'd like to do is to talk about one or two of the technical difficulties I had while making a work. I'm a teacher as well as an artist, so I'm always hoping my students can learn from my mistakes :)

NOT EVEN FUNNIE is meant to be more than a place to showcase my comics, it's a space where I'll blog about all kinds of stuff. The beginnings of this blog started germinating in my head a couple of years ago but I was still a little directionless about what angle to approach the idea, so it sort of just sat there in one of the quiet segments of my brain, then a few months later, I read Saul Bellow's book Herzog. It's an epistolary novel about a middle age guy (Herzog) who keeps a diary about all his past relationships, his feelings towards his fellow men etc. The Funny thing is I never got to finish the book, but I got really inspired by it. The excerpts from the diary are really short fragments of thoughts and ideas about society and life, but the way it's framed, from the standpoint of a diary, I found that very affecting. It occurred to me that I should make a blog that could showcase fragments about my own life, in the vain of a diary.

But the problem, is that diaries are difficult things to handle when thrown in the public sphere. I think that there is something wrong about writing statements about how you feel about someone you know and whom you don't like and posting these statements publicly. I'm the sort of person who would like relationships to be restored rather than shattered. And anyway, I'd hate to give a one-sided opinion about any person. Although I have to say, some people are like magnets for those kinds of statements. But still, I love the diary. I think the diary of any living person is like a sacred text. That's why I love auto-biographical comics to death. When you hold one of these comics in your hands, it's a real privilege in my opinion. So in these comics on NOT EVEN FUNNIE , I decided to explore the diary theme through fiction just like in Herzog, keeping it fictional saves me a whole lot of heartache. So the short comics on this blog works like diary fragments and the writing in each of the posts are like an ongoing stream of fiction to support these various fragments.

The comics in NOT EVEN FUNNIE will be split into two different comics, the first will be a comic strip by the title of Soreheads. Soreheads are a group of characters I made while serving in the army. They were conceived in a training shed one sunny afternoon, out of boredom. I abandoned these characters for a few years and only now am I coming back to them. Another kind of comic I want to make are individual shorts that have no connection to Soreheads. These shorts have the same diaristic approach, but they have no leading characters.

The reason I'm focusing on short strips, for these blog comics is that I'd like to express the little moments in life that get convoluted when made into a longer narrative. Sometimes, I like to look at these comics as short prose poems. This doesn't mean I won't be making longer comics, I will. It's just that not all stories should be long in my opinion and that this blog is a place for those shorter narratives. So don't think of this blog as B-sides or waste material instead of being longer grander narratives. They're just as  important to me.

In the end, this blog and these comics are another venue, a space, where I'm choosing to put to words, thoughts and emotions that have no place in the mambo jumbo of everyday life. Hopefully through the medium of this art form, I will start to express myself sincerely in a language that I hold dear to me... I hope!

best regards,
Fatcrumb