Sayang. What is precious, constantly with, as with mania, trying to get into (out of?) the nut of mind and demand: At first, a scrap of writing on a scrap of paper. Then, a fist of a napkin. Graduating to, snippets of sound on an iPhone because recording the air is trust. We were assured of the quality in the fork of the phrase: “We are the loves you forgot.”
On another such napkin at Secret Recipe Cafe in Plaza Singapura, a friend and co-conspirator asked me to explain my exercise in paraphrasing conversation for this piece. And how to plot what is precious, constantly with, just slipping off the tongue, into a 30 min musical and poetic experience.
The poem begins with someone calling her/his/they/their/it’s beloved from across some great space. The music begins with the how nowhere in the mass of the beloved’s imagination lies a constellation of her. How to plot a map of her desire without co-ordinates?
The ending is in that strange, rushed place, where in all the dreams, there are losses and cures.
Devised with Enec.e
Dramaturged with Charlene Shepherdson
A commission for the Singapore Writer’s Festival 2017 as part of the literary and musical collaboration, Cache, organized by the National Arts Council and The Esplanade, Theatres on The Bay