It rains sometimes.

By gent

August 20^th, 2014

Read between the lines

Before you venture beyond this paragraph, I’d like to point out that reading my impending stream of thoughts may affect how I want to present these pictures of Singapore, because I am quite frustrated at this time of writing, but I still like these photos enough to share. If you prefer only visuals, I hope you enjoy them. Read text only if you wish to feel like I’m some angry teenager which I channelled.

The first time I’d finally gotten my own space at home, I recall feeling all kinds of emotions I imagine a caged bird does when it finally breaks free and takes to the skies. Sure it’s in the same apartment but I was now in a cocoon of my own will. There was nobody else to have to share this space with anymore, even if it was my brother.

But suddenly being alone was hard;
being lonely was the easy part.

If the very concept that you exist disappears every moment that others do, then I guess I’m alright. I’ve always drifted towards solitude.

Apart from being compared to somebody else all the time I can hardly tell you otherwise how I’ve felt most of my life so far. My mother compared me to every relation with a kid my age if it was about my results at school. Past girlfriends and lovers compelled me into endlessly chasing the yardsticks of whom they thought were ideal for their lives instead of a togetherness where our capabilities and interests could lay separate but equal in importance. When I started taking photographs, study these photographers were my instructions and perhaps I did hone an ability to please the teacher to an art form.. up until the points when I could not.

See they were happy for me that I did well for them, until it came to me that I was unhappy the whole time and I just stopped.

(Right this moment I’m made particularly aware of my proclivity towards client servicing as a career and maybe we should all be a little worried.)

So I’d suddenly had all the solitude I wanted and needed but I had a hard time knowing what to do with my self. So I learnt to read a lot more, then I learnt to talk to myself the way I talked to my toys, then I started talking to my dog. I began watching a film a day. I started making pictures.

Didn’t take long before I started actually living alone.

There isn’t any more explaining why I’m spending whole weekends un-contactable while I catch an entire season of F.R.I.E.N.D.S for the 9th time. I wake at 6AM and have a beer before I even reach the office. I take on maybe another job or five sometimes because I can. I think there’s a joke in everything and I now laugh heartily always without needing to feel like I’m an idiot amongst friends who laugh at me for being. I get to be curious and excited about everything I’m unfamiliar with now instead of being told to be a man about things.

What does that even mean?

Most of all, I get to say no to whoever tells me how I should love.

I’m not sorry that I care and make efforts in ways that are different from the constructs you’re exposed to.
I’m not sorry I take photographs in the rain and of the rain while you complain that the rain ruins your perfect photographic experiences, experiences that you believe can only be achieved in clear weather.
I’m not sorry for laughing with you even when I don’t know your low-brow jokes because laughter is infectious and it feels good to laugh along and you somehow think you’re above that.
I’m not sorry for choosing to leave you who choose to hurt those who cannot do a thing for you.
I’m not sorry that I’m almost always wrong about things that I eventually learn from.

I’m not sorry for me.

It rains and it rains hard sometimes in this space I’m trying to call my own, but I think I’m okay with the grass that flourishes upon my field after the storm.