Sunday, September 14, 2008.

well, liverpool won! for sooooo long already. lol it's a little too late but, well, no offense to man u fans.

anyway today is supposed to be mid-autumn festival, where we celebrate our mooncakes (with durian, lychee and heaven-knows-what in it, and strange colours that seem to come from a chem(!) lab plastered all over it) and energiser-powered lanterns.

and just last night my estate had its 1st pasar malam this year (if i recall properly). it was hardly bustling at all, with merely 200m of shops and so few people (even on a saturday night).

in the past, i remembered my estate having at least 1 pasar-malam every week. they were grandiose in stature, with rows and rows of shops, countless swarms of people mingling with the fake gucci bags and the not-too-healthy ramly burger.

and now, 5 years later, all has changed. what is left of pasar malams are but inconsequential; within a few more years it's going the way of the dodo and all the amphibians (soon, actually). and whatever we loved about the mid-autumn festival has all been taken over by what we love about other cultures. what's the point carrying plastic lanterns? what's the point eating durian mooncakes with not a single yolk in them?

there's this piece that i started liking ever since sometime in july, where i was rather sad and angry and blasted it out (bad for classical music, but well). it's called metamorphosen. composed by richard strauss during late wwii, it spoke of his grief at the loss of german culture. he moaned when he saw opera houses being converted into cinemas, and he cried when air raids burned down many opera houses. this work was his response to the loss of german culture, all because of some germans.

yeah, it's 26+ minutes, and is a string ensemble work, but i do love it a lot. when i hear it, i listened to the outpouring of grief, that something once so great would cease to be, that whatever culture and identity built up was but to vanish in the face of their descendants.

we must keep in mind that development does not seek to erode culture, and we must hold on to culture and not let different ideals envelop us.

Labels: Life