I wrote an article for the May 2014 issue of Esquire Magazine last month. The essay is entitled Things We Do - about why artists do what they do. Esquire subsequently released an audio version of the piece narrated by me. I attach both the text and audio versions here. Enjoy! _____________________ THINGS WE DO Just as you may have introduced music to your child, it was my father who bought me my first Led Zeppelin record. When told weeks later that I was giving up trumpet because Jimmy Page had changed my life, he also bought me my first guitar. I was 14. Yet my father had only ever come to see me perform once. I remember the event as clearly as the riverine softness of my first kiss. It was a concert at the old Actors Studio. The show was packed. I did good. He came to the dressing room afterwards to ask if music was going to be a permanent preoccupation or a phase. I told him. He never came again. I was 33 and had been a professional musician 9 years. Somewhere between then and now I began to make films. Millions have seen them. Some like them, others hate them, and yet others have attempted to ban them. Hell, I’ve travelled the world because of them. But my father had not seen any until last week. “There’s money in this?”, he asked after watching Hari Malaysia. I mumbled something non-committal. “So why do it?”, he asked. I’ve been asked that question many times before but have never been able to provide a satisfactory answer. So I shrugged. My father did not seem bothered by my nonchalance. But I was burning inside. See, it’s not easy to explain a passion that has defined you all your life. But it is a fair question. An arts career in Malaysia is indeed largely ill-paid, under-appreciated and frustrating. The scene is also too fragmented and dysfunctional to provide career growth for most. Fact is, beyond the occasional photo-op and interview, few artists here are able to make a living by dint of their chosen craft alone. It is mostly a hobby dressed up as a profession. Yet the line is endlessly long with aspirants queuing to get their share. Why do it indeed. I still hadn’t managed to answer my father when he’d gone to bed. Bored of the news, I channel-surfed to a reality TV show. A defeated competitor was crying into camera she’d lost her only chance of attaining celebrity. I quickly escaped to a Nick Drake documentary. It’s not that I have no sympathy for her, but if fame and fortune were sole fuel for her music, then it’s not something to which I could readily relate. There are easier ways to find loot and notoriety than being a circus animal. Nick Drake was different. Born in 1948 to a well-to-do family, he played guitar, piano, saxophone, clarinet and sprinted for Marlborough College before reading English at Cambridge. Although a brilliant songwriter, he suffered from depression, which lent his music a dark solitude that did not sit well with the 60s. He only ever made 3 albums. None did particularly well. While he’d always been a man of few words, his final years were spent in isolation as his career stalled. Then when all seemed lost one winter evening in 1974, he died from an overdose of anti-depressants. He was 26. As Drake’s story unfolded, I began to understand why he made music. He didn’t do it because he yearned for celebrity or riches - he did it because he had to. You can hear it. His is a poetry of reaching out. A call to communion. A prayer borne out of need. As he wrote in Time Has Told Me, it was “troubled cure for a troubled mind”. The truth was, he had to do it. There was no choice. “Who’s that?”, a voice suddenly resounded from the dark. My father had quietly re-emerged from his room. I noticed how frail he was - a little too thin and uncertain - a vastly different silhouette from the giant who overawed me when I was small. “Nick Drake”, I replied. “Did he know why he did it?”, he approached. “I’m not sure.” He nodded. My father was born in British North Borneo to a gambler and fishmonger. His father was too poor to educate him so he ensured that we were. He’d been a cook, fisherman, smuggler, hotelier and middling businessman. I guess you could say he did whatever he had to do to afford us a dignified existence. While he used to be a healthy man in his prime, he is now recovering from cancer. He talks about his mortality constantly and has difficulties sleeping. He is 84. “It’s alright. Don’t worry”, he sat next to me. We watched what remained of the documentary in silence. Drake’s family didn’t entirely accept the coroner’s verdict that he had committed suicide. In the last weeks of his life, his parents recalled that he was positive and had planned for a new album to restart his career. This positivity was marred by a bout of depression that led him to take an unusually high dose of anti-depressants in an attempt to recover optimism. The dose proved too much. It was, therefore, an accident. In the end, I guess it mattered not whether his death was a desperate lunge for life or a surrender of it. What mattered was that he told his stories even when few were listening. And finally, as if speaking on behalf of generations of artists struggling to provide answers to the same question my father asked of me, he submitted to what he had to do, even as he was dying. The end credits began to roll. My father shuffled in his seat. I thought he wanted to talk about death again. But all he wanted was bed. As he gingerly stood to bid me goodnight, it finally came to me that this frail old man who’d spent his life protecting me had always known what I’d only learnt that night. “He did what he had to”, he said. _____________________________ You can also listen to other contributors of the May issue read what theyd written here: esquire.my/Entertainment/Music/article/The-Sound-and-The-Fury-audio-magazine.
Posted on: Tue, 03 Jun 2014 08:22:03 +0000
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