2007-03-05
All the Names
In all the writing I've tried to fit words into, the proper noun has never found its place, finding instead weaker substitutes in "He"s and "Shes"s.
I would, if I could, claim ingenius hidden agenda in the way of literature, but really.
It wasn't too long ago when my rumpled foolscap, embossed with my arrogantly geometric primary school crest, (don't ask me why my school papers are always crumpled - I really don't know) boasted Janes and Peters and Bens, and if I were feeling really creative - Ah Seng or Bee Choo (inadvertently always given to the heartland heroes). But they always felt more nameless, all the more ungraspable; mere artist dolls for which we pay through the nose in exchange for a purposefully characterless puppet.
How exactly does one find the Right Name? Through the little gift-shop cards that bear scented definitions of Such-and-Such, So-and-So?
"It's all about nomenclature," a friend once told me, as we wrinkled our fourteen-year-old brows, trying to grasp the elusive French histories of our names. Chinese names proved more exciting, each sublime stroke laden with intense meaning. But the choice between English names(which were, curiously enough, never English by derivision) and ethnic ones revealed the real problems for me.
My honest roots account for neither Charmaine, nor Ling - the names I have been given. A protagonist named Bee Choo would do little to arouse our empathy and remind one too much of local post-colonial trash, yet a Kimberly would foreground too much Beverly Hills culture, before whatever story unfolded. How could I write something of this world, of my world, when the names already threatened to hijack the fine weave?
And then, sitting in the MRT, which is the same as the MTR, which is the same as the Underground, which is the same as the Subway, how could I properly say where this was all happening?
I wont deny that I like the romantic ideals that He and She carry - universal masculinity, or intimate feminity, that we understand well and only too well.
But her name is witheld, her blossom veiled. You wonder what the little expression that dances over her face hints at - you think you can almost see the silhouette of some passionate dancer within. And you can't help but want to get closer.
nothing ever happens at 12:24 p.m.