Music and writing are not mere pre-occupational art forms to me. They are my modes of existence. My means of becoming. They enable me to deal with the very art of existence. They remind me who I have to be to evolve.

At a young age I'd become aware of what a dangerous world we live in. It began to occur to me that I may not live very long. So, I decided if that be the case, I should dedicate my life to doing what I felt needs to be done that I felt had more meaning. Art was the obvious choice.

People

It took me a long time to accept the fact that there were many people who were either insincere, uncontrollably confused or self-deluded in their search for some reason to convince themselves they were powerful or worth something. It took a long time because I wanted to believe that the world was a much better place than it really was. I have since drastically changed my mind.

Faith

We put our faith in things or people who don't bring us any deeper answers about anything. I put my faith in God because I've thought deeply about the world and its consistence with Scriptures. It's a world susceptible to evil, uncertainty, vanity and pain. I'm vulnerable to all this. That's why I believe.

Lies

I think lies are central to the way we live. I personally think that lies destroy us. For me, in Art, you either are a truth-seeker or you're not. You either strive for what's true, or you strive for something that gives you some temporary relief from the world's pain. It's as simple as that.

Existing

My writing mirrors the trauma of not so much being Singaporean, but being a human caught between different voices and narratives. It's a constant obsession of mine that the voices say that true existing is always a lot more disturbing than we'd like to admit. Which is why I have no regard for Artists who take the easy way out. It reflects their insincerity to everything.

Confronting Death

I've always known that death, deception or untruths are around each corner. For me, the challenge lies in being able to confront it by turning that corner. Art gives me ways to work out the courage. But mostly I end up lost. Which in some ways enables me to start again and emerge deeper from that experience. All art is failure, deconstruction, extremity and confrontation. And that's just fine with me.

Being uncompromising

We live in a humiliated and humiliating world. I'd learnt some ago that the only way around it was to deal with the humiliation by growing humility. The other way was to become relentlessly uncompromising and non-conforming in my life and Art. Because a humiliated world knows very little about what's true or about truth. It's up to the personal accountability of the truth-seeker to establish the truth. And to grow integrity.

A broken world

I've seen how self-pity, pain and weakness can easily convert into evil acts. Because of the loss of any sanity or incapability to do the true "or right" acts, we are plunged into a world broken by no sense of what ideals or beliefs are My Art helps me deal with all this.

The challenge of every probing artist is to plumb the depths and the layers of artistic existence and Art. Depth and depth of introspection is vital. A need to resist a superficial and shallow world. To me, self-actualization begins with an embracing of depth.