Liner Notes

Soundscape #80: I Remember More Than I Have Seen

So I’m back. I want to say that I’m glad to be home but the humidity and the heat make it really hard. The cold does funny things to your mind. You are always conscious of warmth and shelter, (hot) food and drinks. It always seems very elemental, very primal, very simple. When you are in a foreign city, all you need to care about are where you are exactly, how to get back to your hotel, what you are going to eat and drink and where you are going to find a toilet. It’s not very exciting stuff, granted, but to me, it feels very immediate and frees me from all the more abstract problems and questions to which no answers can be had just by reading a map.

March, 2008. Graffiti at Negen Stratjes, Amsterdam.

While it’s been only 2 weeks, I realise just how many things I’m capable of doing by myself, for myself. We all take things for granted especially here in Singapore and when you are alone in a foreign city and can’t even ask for help in a language people understand, you quickly pick up map-reading skills, laundry skills, non-verbal communication skills. I’ve never bothered much about lunch or dinner here but when it’s 9.30pm and you are starving and have to go out and forage for food in the cold, you go out and forage for food in the cold.

When I travel, it’s never very important to me that I check out touristy stuff. Sure I went up the Tour Eiffel, Montmartre and so on but I know at the back of my mind that even if I didn’t, it wouldn’t have bothered me too much. All I want to do is soak up as much as the mood, the atmosphere around me, yes, even the cold. So I sit at a cafe with a hot chocolate and crèpe au nutella (god they are good!!) and watch people go by. So I take the trams and the metro a lot and try and guess what people are saying through their body language while listening to my ipod. So I walk and walk down streets trying to figure out what the shop names and advertisements mean.

They say that travel revitalises the mind and spirit and makes you appreciate what you have at home. I was more tired just walking and walking (down one street and realise it’s the other way you want to go) in Paris, London and Amsterdam than I ever would have been in Singapore. But then I have never felt alone or lonely in those places. It’s easy to be an outsider looking in into an unfamiliar way of life or city scape but it’s not that easy to feel like a stranger in your own country.

Playlist:
1. (0:00) Bright Eyes - Another Travellin’ Song (I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning)
2. (4:13) The Killers - Change Your Mind (Hot Fuzz)
3. (7:25) Wilco - I Must Be High (A.M.)
4. (10:27) Nina Nastasia & Jim White - I Come After You (You Follow Me)
5. (13:50) Suede - The Wild Ones (Dog Man Star)
6. (18:30) Bonnie “Prince” Billy - Cold & Wet (The Letting Go)
7. (20:54) Damien Rice - 9 Crimes (9)
8. (24:34) Death Cab For Cutie - Transatlanticism (Transatlanticism)
9. (32:35) Yo La Tengo - By The Time It Gets Dark (Little Honda EP)
10. (35:40) M. Ward - Here Comes The Sun Again (Transistor Radio)
11. (38:10) Bedhead - Wind Down (What Fun Life Was)
12. (41:44) Okkervil River - So Come Back, I Am Waiting (Black Sheep Boy)