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A DISTINCTIVE
NOTHING | Check out 2nd page of History of Indonesia | Oh how I love culture. What else enables you to foam at the mouth and in the end the net result is foam at the mouth? Before culture was invented, people did not have much to say. They woke up as the sun rose, scratched their heads and got out of the caves, immediately in search of something to kill. They did not talk to anybody on the way, though this was probably the outcome of having no fellow human within the range of fifty miles. At sundown they went back and handed the prey to their whatever (was there such a thing as a wife?), and they ate in silence, occasionally broken by a strange noise from faraway to which their ears were tuned in and the female said "There goes another neighbor", and that was the only line delivered for the day. Meanwhile the T-Rex could sleep peacefully. Back then, the sound of the night was the sound of the night. Culture erased the tranquility from the face of the earth and planted something new on the face of the people. The heyday was when the good Queen Bess of England dropped by at every tavern to have her rouge renewed. People still woke up in the morning, they still scratched their heads too, but between the getting out of bed and the exit from the door there were countless things, mainly words. Outside the house and into the public sphere, the same happened, as they always felt compelled to stop at every chance, to say something to or about each other. In the distant past, when one Neanderthal man bore certain grudges against his fellow, he simply took the big bad hatchet and whacked the aforementioned other. Then he went to bed as a big bad Neanderthal man, unaware of such a thing as "bad", because there was no culture yet to tell him what was supposed to be what. But, a few ages away, an ill feeling came out as verbal abuse first and usually stopped right there, though fortunately sometimes a duel would ensue to end the argument for good. Days became noisy and the sound of the night was eventually some 2000 watts of Spice Girls. In our history never before so much noises had accumulated thus. In Indonesia, after the supposed end of the New Order, all tongues got loose. The long imprisonment of certain words was over, everybody wanted to say something, and, if they didn't have Something, then Anything would do. Overnight, there was a surplus of news tabloids. And words suffered a soaring inflation. Things have been happening a lot faster than ever, so they age and become obsolete within seconds. News have been thrown lavishly to us from every pore of the diligent mediacracy. Occasional flashes of good news and neverending floods of bad news. Significant members of society saying significant things, significant things said by insignificant others, or, far heavier the load has been, insignificant things spoken about by both. An audience would surely find this bewildering. But, as everyone seems to be speaking, an audience is almost impossible to locate. These days, the sound of the night has been political talk-shows. Nobody watched those shows, because they were all busy attending their own shows. Culture enables us to talk nonsense with distinction. But it depends on the subject. I do not believe that the showers of mutual abuse and witch-hunting are the "right" kind of nonsense. A crisis is supposed to unite people -- yet this one has been doing the opposite. The longer-than-life habit of putting the blame on the wrong people is still very much alive. The sound of the night could be a loud multi-directional hatred. I can only hope that all the hateful, nonsensical, incoherent, stupid, careless, venomous remarks were only attempts at cracking jokes by people with a great lack of sense of humor -- and that the nondescript stuff littering galleries all over this country now is really art.
IN
PRAISE OF EVERYTHING When
the flush of a new-born sun fell first on Eden's green and gold, I miss Tino Sidin. He was the best a sunset on a Sunday in the '70's could bring -- we were always tired of consuming Sunday, we have played football and fought each other all day, and after a bath and baby-powder and light supper (all were forced on us, sometimes at once), we huddled in front of the black-and-white TV set and waited for him to say, always with the same voice, the same tone, the same inflection, the same batik shirt and of course the same black beret (I miss the beret more), "Good evening, children, have you taken a bath?" Then he would use the big marker to draw the number 6, the letter H, or anything simple, and turned them into a funny mule, a sad clown, a village, a tree. We tried, sometimes, to do that, but as far as I could remember, even my little sister back then couldn't Tino Sidin herself; the best we could imitate was only the making of the classical set of mountains with a big sun in between, and no Tino Sidin was involved in that kind of mediocre feat. It was nearing the Maghrib prayer and we came to the summit: at that time every Sunday evening Tino Sidin would sit down, rest the marker, and start to show us the drawings on paper that kids all over the country, even from abroad, have sent him. We all did, though never got the chance -- five minutes once a week, what could you expect? He picked some drawings up, the camera focused on The Randomly Chosen, and he would say: "This is from Sinta, age 10, Sinta painted....what is this, a class room, look at the children there, and the blackboard....Good, good drawing, Sinta," and, picking up another lucky kid's stuff, he said, "Now this is sent by Adi, he is at the Sawahlunto Kindergarten in North Sumatera, he painted a cowshed, look at the cow behind the walls, good, good painting, Adi." It went on for years and as we grew up a bit, we didn't wait up anymore, yet each time we happened to be at home when he was on air, we still glanced at the screen every time he began to show the drawings he has got from our younger and younger and eventually too younger friends, all around the Planet of the Painting Kids. The years caught him up, too. And then he fell ill, and he was no more. Though it was no longer fashionable, as kids apparently had less and less time for making things and are more and more keen on destroying them, some TV stations attempted to revive Tino Sidinism, paying this or that children-loving person, but it has never been the same. Tino Sidin had been two words that spelled delight for the kids of the '70's, and grown-ups, using the same two words interchangeably with "sheer lullaby", "meaningless praises" and "art blindness", actually missed him too. I think Tino Sidin knew how people over 20 thought of him and he didn't care a straw, he knew what he was doing. And he was right! The generation of kids that painted and painted and painted just because they wanted Tino Sidin's "good, good" has been growing up; some of them still paint and some of them are good (not the same "some"). Young painters who have been collecting awards and dollars today still remember him, a few (blushing violently) admit that they have sent something to Tino Sidin's desk back then. The shallow "good, good" was visceral to them. In a way, it was. Our children, usually in an atmosphere that doesn't prune but kill the budding artistic tendencies, need a Tino Sidin at one point of their lives. Alright, so they turn in stupid verses and paintings too painful to appreciate and boring screenplays and awkward acting, but a wee bit of nothing here and a tiny little something there is a case of "good, good" as they learn their way. Anyway most of them will end up being stock market people, lawyers, little nondescript bosses and drug dealers -- no need to worry that all of the kids -- who still paint and write while we have tried Sony Playstation and the Dreamcast to exorcise the artistic demons within their souls -- would eventually become artists. I could be anything but laconic, yet thinking of Tino Sidin now, years away from the Sunday evenings, I only have "good, good" to say.
ANIMAUX
! Three
things that stay loyal and true:
I am His Highness' dog at Kew;
It was simple, too simple in fact. I don't understand why for a whole century almost every religion has had something bad to say to the Darwinists and vice versa, while actually they hold on to the one and the same thing: we are, no matter what, are some superior beings if compared to other creatures -- from the mollusk to the ape. I don't belong to the animal lovers' compound, first of all I must say. Yes, I live with approximately fourteen cats in rainy days and as many as six in dry seasons (I'm never sure how many or how come), but I am not an animal lover. Not even a cat lover. It is rare that I might look up or look down and say "Oh, look how cute you are, kitty kitty goo" or something. If I am engaged in an attempt to communicate with the felines, this is what I say: "Now go mind your own d*** business while I'm writing insults to this Irishman", "Hey, check out the scores of last night's game, will you?", "Rather than looking like a licked stamp like that, why don't you find something to kill?" I am merely a lover. And quite notorious in my little circle. I haven't thought that I am superior to the cats, because reality doesn't say so. I cannot even return a glance from a weeny mouse without shrieking like a bank's alarm and my mind would race at the Formula 1 speed, digesting the info that I am dead. I cannot find chasing my own tail interesting enough to spend the whole afternoon with, since to me it is a night time activity. And greeting my fellows with kisses on their rear ends would be too much hospitality. So I think I am not superior to them, they are not superior to me, or we are both superior to each other in particularities and inferior in some others. We are merely different. There are, fortunately, some people who are declared animal lovers, and these would be buying the works Bunga will be selling, the concepts and the hardware, when the expo is open. They cannot afford not to buy since it is a matter of principle. And there are, fortunately, some other people who are proclaimed animal haters, and these would be flocking the establishment too, since it is a matter of principle, that they must hate with fervor and the fire is in a constant need for something to burn. To those people I have nothing to say. But the third bunch is what I have in mind -- the people who are not sure whether they hate or love animals, what animals to hate or to love, how much for each, what are animals in the first place so they can take a look and decide, and so on. That was why I write this little piece. What took Bunga there was her consciousness that she was the Lady Macbeth for the animal republic. She killed a chick years ago because the sad little yellow chirping feathered living thing wouldn't do what she wanted it to do -- what that was, she never tells. But eye-witnesses said, the chick was messing up with her flowers or something and she tried to rush it away. That wasn't the end of the tragic tale yet! Many years later, she killed my cat, my furry sleepy funny idiotic object of affection, his name was Cemot ("Spot") and he was minding his own business when Bunga started the car and ran him over and in a second he was gone and when I told my boyfriend in a weepy English what a misfortune it was that I shared a house and some DNA with a serial killer, he said "Oh, I'm so sorry, but baby, she didn't run over all of your eleven cats, did she?" So much for male sensitivity and he let the case of the catslaughter go untried. Bunga couldn't get over the incidents yet, and that she hadn't turned vegetarian was just an accidental slip, considering how much she loves the KFC, and she is a loyal person when it comes to matters like this. It is good -- or it is bad -- that she cares about chickens, in the past and present tense alike. After the economic tsunami, Indonesia has been roller-coastering life and some of the passengers hit the ground very hard. When the unemployment rate soared and rip through the stratosphere and reportedly caused some U.S. star-wars relics to dive into America's own backyard, creativity in staying alive has been abundant. This is the upside of doom. Yet one of the newly found crafts involved some cruelty to animals, i.e. chicks. They sold little chickens with dyed feathers, to elementary school kids to play with. That those chickens are alive meant nothing to either the vendors or the children. That made the "Anak Ayam Turun Seribu" on this expo. The title came from a classical children's song in Indonesia, that goes "There are 10 little chicks, one is dead, 9 are left; there are 9 little chicks, one is dead, 8 are left," and so on until there is no more chick to murder verbally. Children's song, imagine that. And the song is a first degree murder celebrated and made light of. Bunga hesitated a lot before deciding on the pink pig with the silver wings on its back. A very commonplace idiom, though I wouldn't say so to her face, and that wasn't why she had doubts anyway. She hesitated because pigs are very much non-kosher in the country where almost 80 percent of its inhabitants are Muslims. Even if the idiom is clearly "western" and the pig isn't anything but a piggy bank. Finally she made up her mind, though. And we have this pig on the leafless tree, it was, or so Bunga said, trapped there because it can fly but no bird after all. This pig is on duty, with the dogs, to convey her message to the world that it is abusive to use their names as a tool of abuse -- almost in every language, "dog" and "pig" always have unpleasant meanings if dispatched in an exchange of words in the human playground. Why? It is not to be answered, probably; like every other question we have ever raised. Every question is just an egg away to being another egg -- oops. Anyway, now for the league of the undecided, here are some remedy to erase your cluelessness in connexion with the realm of the so-called lesser beasts (lesser, because they don't do coup d'etat and sell stocks and put people into jails and listen to Backstreet Boys). Reasons For Loving Animals · They make great companies after being fed and sufficiently petted. Homo sapiens don't. After the same treatments, they would drain the beer from your fridge and cause a severe depletion of cigarettes in fifteen minutes. · They are mostly silent, and in no need of such things as a 2000 watts CD player that continuously pollutes the air with Korn and Rage Against The Machine. · They don't lie about their age, occupation, marital status, and the strings of one-night stands. · They aren't easy to lose their temper even if you say they are slightly overweight. · We don't have to compliment them for their new dorky haircuts, big bikes and big gigs. · You don't have to call them back, email them your apologies, or bear the ordeal of eating their mothers-in-law's homemade cookies. · They would watch football without trying to drown out your yells, and if you shift support to the opposite team they wouldn't notice it, so they would always be for the losers. · They keep their opinions, beliefs, and grudges to themselves, and never annoy you with a wonder why they still need unpaid pair of ears on their way back from therapies. · They wouldn't invite you to their fine art expo. Reasons For Hating Animals · They are not in the position to lend or give or pay you a meaningful sum of money. · They cannot fake enthusiasm when you show them your writings, paintings, boyfriends or whatever else except your dinner. · They cannot pick up the phone when it rings and tell your publisher you are occupied elsewhere, preferrably in Pluto. · They possess an inadequate sense of injustice, so they cannot be your accomplices in plotting some. · They wouldn't invite you to their fine art expo. Footnote
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