I love how light fills the flat. But this afternoon, sitting by the window for lunch, I could feel the heat bearing down on my back. And I suddenly realised: the windows have blinds! Silly me. I have not lowered these blinds for more than a year and have forgotten about them. When I did, the room immediately cooled. The blinds filter the light and in the first photo you can see the difference. I took these photos as quickly as I could on the phone because light moves and shifts. Even though it owns the magic of seeming to complete and freeze time, it doesn’t - it is a bird.
The pursuit of beauty seems noble. Especially a beauty that is not slathered in gold or diamonds. A modest beauty - if there can be such a thing - a beauty seemingly attainable by everyone yet noble because it requires the mind’s eye to be honed. This is a romance. It is a fool’s game. It is pleasurable.
Just as I finished repainting the door and gate to my flat on 1 May 2020, I searched blogspot for all our previous attempts to paint this door....starting with
this > 4 Sep 2006 , 2 weeks before J formally registered ampulets studio as a business.
Amps decided to make our own Singaporean version of Sanrio's SumikkoGurashio (Left in a Corner), the Left Behind.
It's strange how people tell me which character they relate to. Hmmm, I don't think I relate to any of them specifically! But it was good fun to write and draw them. My fave, if I have to name one, would be Ed, followed by Carma.
Today started like any other day when we would go to MacRitchie - lazily, then a sudden rush to get out of the house. Quick! Before the sun rises to its height!
When you look at the lifeless body of someone, they never quite look like themselves.
An old doodle by J, words by Y. Found this while archiving, Amps humour.
Grab drivers are slowly but surely taking over the role of taxi drivers in most areas, including dispensing folk wisdom.
A Sun won a bunch of awards at the Golden Horse, edging out Wet Season in the Supporting Actor, Best feature film and Best director categories.
My neighbour's flat has been empty for over a year now.
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Sleeping J, portrait circa 2006. When archiving images of J recently, I discovered many photographs and drawings I made of him asleep. This is probably quite typical. Your partner, when asleep, will look extra adorable. If not for work, I can spend my mornings just looking at his sleeping face. Of course these sleeping portraits are like death masks.
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Friends you always ask how am I doing. The concern is sometimes embarrassing. I am definitely doing okay. God has been good. The feeling of gratitude is real. I am blessed with friends, family and both purpose and provision in my work. Many people dealing with the death of a spouse are supported by much less and deal with a whole lot more - young children, ailing parents, a loss of income or subsistence. This is also how I try to keep self-pity at bay.
A dear friend WW gave a book to me a week or so after J died. I don't remember exactly what she said - but something about how the book had so moved her when she lost someone close.
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| first Amps photo together - taken on Polaroid 2001 |
It is inevitable that we all experience failure.
It has been 25 years since I was last at a life drawing session. Held in a cold basement studio in Cambridge then, and in a hip factory studio in Eunos now. After the first 10min of the session, It all started to make sense again. What the eye chooses to see, the weight and energy of a line, and of course, the purpose of making something take form. This is part of the intrinsic integrity of art. It is built into your body. Drawing, music, dance - you never forget, do you? The muscles do not let you forget.
I read last week that a prominent leader had bemoaned to her audience: “I have no choice.”
Capitalism is many things. One of the things about the capitalist world is its materialism, its “thingness” - literally the making, the desire and the possession of things. Our modern cities are organized around the ability to manufacture and acquire things, and in Singapore we continue to suffer this tyranny of malls.
copyright ampulets 2005-2019
