options and attempts

an excerpt from the most recent thing I wrote for ISSUE Magazine:

Enough people are now aware of the quick-trigger nature of the bigger sites and have started to create options for cutting through the noise.
It was in this vein that here in our own part of the world a website was set up to focus on Southeast Asian short films.
Viddsee, a video-sharing site, founded by Derek Tan and Ho Jia Jian in Singapore, offers an outlet for filmmakers within the region to showcase their content to an audience interested in stories from around the region, in the different languages that are spoken in these areas.
Recounting the site’s origins, Derek explained that it all began with a short film.
“The pain that we saw as filmmakers was that we had a film that was going round festivals, and right after the festival we were thinking, how can we distribute it out to a larger audience apart from just the festival circuits?”
“What we realised is if we put it on Youtube or Vimeo, there are billions of videos out there, so how does a film stand out among the rest? We were put alongside cat videos and Harlem Shakes, which are entertaining in itself but ultimately a different type of content altogether.”

give us your money

I’ve said this before, so pardon me if I sound like a broken record, but it is very important for there to be more ways for young people to get involved and work on things, THAT ARE OF INTEREST TO THEM.

When you think about it, it seems like a no-brainer (what with this suppose-to-be ‘chase you passions’ age) but there are few big organisations do things young people want to do. And it’s not always hedonistic, mindless fun because young people can and are interested in a wide spectrum of things. Of course, you have your festivals and parties on one hand, and your lectures and conferences on the other, with content that appeals to the young Malaysian demographic.

The community (including family, neighbourhood organisations, and industry) should assist young people with resources and guidance that can help them organise themselves and explore ideas and ventures. Like in other places, I’ve found that the young in Malaysia have plenty of ideas in their heads, and it is not difficult to find someone who will express to you their desire to start something. However, quite frequently you will find that many times even strong intent dies because of the prohibitive costs that are involved in initiating something, especially if you are a young person with a paltry salary.

I’ll give you an example: say I want to start a band – a proper ready to gig band.

Too make that possible, I would need a guitar and an amp, and drums, maybe bass, and keys, and a couple more amps to go along with it. All of this costs a lot of money. A single instrument cost a lot of money. I’d have to spend about RM1000 just on a guitar and amp, and even that would be for something incredibly basic .

I work now and earn a wage, and I can tell you that 1k is a decent chunk off my wage to spend on a musical instrument and definitely not a smart investment.

So this is why I really think the community should recognise that money is a big hindrance to young people (and to be honest, to most people at the moment; living costs being what they are), and the community giving out funds and trusting its recipients to be responsible with it, as a form of long-term investment for society.

It’s not that you can’t do anything on zero budget (the video above is evidence against, and oh ISSUE!) but without extra resources on hand, your activities will find it very hard to grow to be anything more than a big fish in a small pond.

‘Young literary men in KL’

They might be writing somewhere in a dark room. The keys on their laptops only half-lit from the glow of the monitors.  

They might be writing. They should be writing.

“Who is going to listen to all these words in my head?”

Ideas, ideas, what do you do with all these ideas?

“You analyse too much”

Do they have a life inside of my head, does that make them real? 

“What is wrong with you?”

shut up

There wasn’t any space left for them to speak, so they left the hall. They didn’t write to rule, they thought originality was worth a shot, but they were wrong. Why don’t they just follow? 

“Can you write it so that it says something like this:....”

Literary young men is a concept, a fine shorthand, for the idealised male that no one really wants. As pc as diversity and multiculturalism. 

Do you get what it really means? 

It’s chaos and disruption and doubt and fickleness and weight.

Give it up, give it up