My pleasure


14th February 2010


First of all, to my Chinese readers and any reader celebrating with the Chinese this new year, gong hei fatt choy, xin nian kuai le, huat ah!

I'm going to do something a little different today: I'm going to explain myself. It's not something I usually do but because this is the new year and I've eaten far more pineapple tarts than someone running a low-grade fever should, I will.

It's the pineapple tarts talking. I may take down this post once they stop.

But for now, this is what they're saying:

I've been writing about Japan for almost three years now and one comment I hear fairly often is that the pieces are...different. Or if the other person's being blunt, strange.

And I don't mind that at all. I would like to know why people feel that way though (if you have any ideas about this, the comment section's all yours).

More than one reader has said that the columns don't seem to fit into the Review section of The Straits Times, which is where they appear every fortnight. The Review pages are for commentaries, where writers put forward an argument - and argue it out.

I've gone over some of the columns I've written and the closest thing some of them have to an argument? "Buses are nice." Or "flowers are nice". Or if I'm on a roll, "Flowers are really nice".

Different and, to be blunt, strange.

So what am I doing?

I'm answering this now to try to make it clearer for myself and to make sure I don't lose my way in easy jokes and easier opinions.

At their best, these pieces do not offer points of view; they are points of view. They do not express argument; they embody it. In the bones of the best of them are ideas that I have jumped on, shaken, dug my nails into when life bit and I would not cry out. The ideas left are those that did not break. As long as they are lived rather than just believed, those pieces can be written.

I do not bring opinions to the table; I build rooms out of them. If you would know what they are, look under the wallpaper, in the wood grain of the table, in the air that stirs when you enter.

I do this not because I believe there's anything wrong with pieces that state and argue with nothing up the writer's sleeve - they're efficient ways of sharing ideas and, done well, offer much pleasure.

But statement and argument and information speak to the mind, to habits - some would say, prejudices - of thought.

And we are more than creatures of mind.

To the part of you not much used to being addressed, I will speak for as long as I can.

I do not seek to change your mind and I know I cannot change you. All I can do is create spaces where you can, if you choose, speak to the self you seldom see - or to the self you're hoping to see though you're a little hazy on what that self looks like.

Making spaces. Making space. That's all.

If you will allow me, let me do this for you.