For The Time Being (Review)

Back in secondary school, my classmates and I had to analyse some poems for literature. I remember Mr. Lattif explaining to us that the message behind a particular poem was that life was transient. As a fifteen-year-old, it was a profound message. Fast forward ten years and there I was, at 72-13, watching The MadHatter Project perform their show, entitled "For The Time Being". 

I attended their third and final show, arriving at 72-13 with my colleagues after work. Most of us were hungry as we have had a long day. There was no time for us to have dinner, but thankfully we had ramen at Ippudo after that. Anyway, we received cute little cocktail umbrellas as our tickets and were handed a red plastic chair that we could place where ever we wanted to watch the show. If that wasn't strange enough, we also had to write our most favourite childhood memory on a post-it and stick it to our chairs. After reading some amusing ones written by the people sitting in front of us, I proceeded to pen mine down as well.

The show started with the first song, "Pop". It sounded like a fun and delightful song at first, but pay attention to the lyrics and you'd realise that the "pop" sound refers to gunshots. Turns out that "going to the beach" meant getting slaughtered. Most of the audience members jumped up in their seats when Jamie screamed "stop!" from the back of the room. It was really disconcerting, which I feel was the entire point since it was a reference to war. However, the meaning of the song may have been lost to others as the sound system prevented us from hearing the words clearly.

The second song, "Ashes", was a song that I've heard them play before at the Esplanade. This song has a creepy vibe as the leader singer, Mark, sounds like a ghost. After the song, the band members read excerpts from historical records. Briefly, they recount that people used to live in wooden houses and there were plenty of fires that had occurred. There were accounts in several languages: Malay, Mandarin and Cantonese. Sadly, no English subtitles were given. I could only understand the Mandarin bit about saving ducks when the Bukit Ho Swee fire broke out. This part ends with quotes from Lee Kuan Yew, assuring citizens that enough HDB flats will be built.

By this point, it is rather clear that the performance is in chronological order (as expected from history majors). "Pig #154" is an interesting jazzy song, addressing how humans pit themselves against nature. The band plays the tune from Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" and the line "I'm both guilty and haram" cracked everyone up! The song also touches on our obsession with statistics, since the pig is just one out of many others and society only cares about "KPI". Similarly, "Gods and Plastic Plants" carries a similar message. Jamie is seen plucking the petals of a sunflower while a fake flower is placed in a vase. 

The Merlion Poem by Stephanie Dogfoot was hilarious. Mark really brought a lot of energy into his performance. It was amusing to see him hold up a picture of the Merlion in a photo frame, as if it had died. The part when the Merlion shook its head "from side to side" and "in slow motion" was so funny. Other humorous parts are, of course, the references to inter-species love between lions and fish. According to the poem, the Merlion has died ("Gills snapped shut, you lost your life") and it is also impossible to make love to it because it is made out of concrete just like everything else. 

There was an intermission and after that, when we came back into the room, the chairs were neatly lined up in rows. We were unable to find our original seats so we just sat in a random row. I had to pull a chair from another row to sit with my colleagues, but I noticed that I was being blocked by the videographer so I sat behind them instead. When I realised that my post-it and therefore my childhood memory was gone, I also realised that the chairs symbolised home. I honestly felt lost when I walked back in not knowing where to sit. Just as how people built their houses in whatever way they wanted, we were initially allowed to seat wherever we wanted. And when we came back, HDB flats were neatly built and we to just move in. Later on, Mark went around and made sure that the outliers sat with everyone else.

(I forgot to mention that in the first half, the audience was told to move around so that they could look at what was being projected onto the walls better. However, my sister held onto me and told me not to move because we had to subvert the norm! Thankfully, our little act of rebellion went unnoticed, though I felt like an outcast as everyone else was seated away from us. Anyway, I did not have a clear view of the band after the intermission and I noticed that many people in front of me were moving this way and that, straining their necks to catch a glimpse of what was going on in front. I wished that there was tiered seating.)

In the second half the songs were more focused on modern Singapore. I like "Shopping Mall Nation" because the visual art in the background finally makes sense to me. Okay, up to this point I have not mentioned the visual art because it didn't get it. Videos of people washing a car, ironing clothes, and exercising at the park were just mundane scenes. I get it if they are trying to depict how ordinary and meaningless our lives are, but I don't think it is necessary to show that many scenes of nothingness. We already have the Theatre of the Absurd for that. Sometimes there were words instead of scenes, but the words did not really add value to the performance. They were actually distracting because when I read the words I would miss out on part of a song. I didn't know what to focus on so after a while I just ignored what was projected onto the walls.

But in "Shopping Mall Nation", it was obvious that the videos were shot at Vivocity, obviously a shopping mall. I love the lyrics of this song as they are full of irony and contradictions. Then the band plays "City Lights", another song I'm familiar with. I'll admit it; the first time I heard "City Lights", I told John that I didn't like it. However, the song as grown on me and I like getting lost in the music. "Bishan" has a melancholic tune and the last bit was called "Umbrella". Mark recited a poem first, which explained why there were umbrellas everywhere. It's based on an old wives' tale; a Chinese belief that if you open an umbrella indoors, you are inviting a ghost into your home.

I remember that my mother mentioned this before, but she did not explain and no one really bothered. How else were we supposed to dry our umbrellas? This idea was quickly connected to how thousands of umbrellas are lost at MRT stations and the possibility that each umbrella is a shelter, a place, and each of these places contains a spirit. I think the symbol of an umbrella, at that moment, tied everything together. Umbrellas are forgotten as they act as temporary solutions to the rain, bought at Daiso for two dollars (as mentioned in the poem). Similarly, ordinary people and places are easily forgotten too.

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" This philosophical question was introduced to us by our history teacher, Mr Augustine Ng, when I was studying in Pioneer Junior College. Things are happening around us all the time, but historical records do not include every single mundane detail. Historians only choose the important facts and write about prominent people, events, and places. I like how it was used comically in the poem, when Mark asks: if an old tree gets cut down without anyone writing into The Straits Times forum about it, does it make a sound? My response would simply be no. People have never cared about things like trees, and although things around us are constantly changing, that remains the same. 

At the end of the show, the band played the video of "一支小雨伞" (A small umbrella) which had already been uploaded on their Facebook page. The subtitles were extremely amusing and Jamie was their model, posing like it was a typical, old music video. The kind of video you would watch when you sing karaoke with your friends; a video that has absolutely no meaning and is totally unrelated to the music. Were we back to the concept of mundanity and pointlessness? Or was this made just for fun? All I know is that the video was funny, and it would have been even better if the subtitles were slowly being coloured in blue from left to right as Mark sang. (And at that point, nothing else mattered but dinner)