island life

Yums, i love citizens!
Yums, I love citizens!, conference doodles.

On our small island yesterday, in a still smaller room, a group of young islanders gathered for the second day of a closed door conference "Building a Community of Citizens in the 21st century". Elsewhere, the Thais woke up to the the termination of their "constitution, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the Cabinet and the Constitutional Court".

These young islanders from the non-profit, corporate, arts, media and public sectors traded sentiments, plaints and opinions, bandying about terms like "equality", "public space", "shit-stirrers", "freedom of expression" and "dual citizenship" all within 2 hours to the ears of a Harvard professor and an island politician. Then politician picked up the mic and proceeded, with furrowed brows, to condense, stretch and contort the histories of nations and places with the rehearsed earnestness of a high school debater.

There was, however, amidst this tired series of soliloquies, one young man who lamented why it should be that us islanders must always retreat to the political when there is more outside it. I thought, of course he was right. Why only use the language of politics when alternative linguistic, literary and social strategies are more meaningful - and are certainly less predictable, less restrictive and less unimaginative. Why live on an island if you do not enjoy the sea and sky?

There was also a dinner speaker - a performing artist, educator and administrator - who spoke emotionally and movingly of religion as man's conversation with God, and art man's soliloquy of himself. The dinner speaker was also right, in some ways. But surely though art may often start as man's soliloquy of himself, it is not always so. It is also man's conversation with his fellow man/woman. Even if a soliloquy is the chosen form, it need not be about himself, but it could be about his island, sea and sky. And around these words and images, people may gather.

Comments

tcn afen said…
and art is also about searching for God sometimes
love the sketch btw! those scrawly messy lines are fabulous
Anonymous said…
Why people do not gather tightly around this island... ?... because so many of those who want to, cannot speak of the island in all honesty and not be ostracised.
ampulets said…
jing - yup, i guess a lot of art is religious in a broad sense of that word.for eg, the roots of theatre iare often found in religious ritual. (hey, the scrawly lines are a sign of how bored/distracted i was!)

gecko - not sure that people do not gather tightly around this island (sometimes, too tightly!) or that honesty is necessarily ostracised...but maybe we are thinking of different islands. the (figurative?) one i like better its shores are more porous and elastic, its meaning found in relationships with elements outside of itself, and sometimes its shores so wide it ceases to be an island so singular. ;>

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