The Cooler Lumpur Festival is one event I will put aside time for each year.
It is my Good Vibes, my Coachella.
I clear my schedule for the weekend it is held and block my time for the forums, talks, or exhibitions I am interested in.
This year's event is probably the best I have ever been. I am thinking because in the past year, I have grown a lot in terms of my interests and thought process. I am, in huge ways, no longer who I was last year. I have started to envision "the big picture" of my life's goals.
I also had the opportunity to meet and interact with a whole bunch of cool people doing really cool things. I got to mingle and connect with poets, artists, writers, storytellers, designers and leaders, conceiving and developing ideas and visions. The exposure to different perspectives and fields has been a boost to my creative and editorial undertakings.
For example, the "English, Singlish, Manglish" slot where moderator Fuad Rahmat speaks to writers/educators Cheryl Lu, Hanna Alkaf, Chuah Guat Eng and Kate Bassett about the English language and how its adoptions in this region has become a part of our identity. One huge thing I got out of this slot is how, as an editor, I should not let the language mess with the storytelling process. As an editor, it can get really frustrating when you had to deal with writers who either has no sense of how to use the language or just didn't care. But one thing I keep forgetting is that they are a storyteller first before anything else. Their focus should be on the storytelling, while the language is my responsibility as an editor. Of course, this does not mean writers should take editors for granted and be sloppy with the language, expecting the editors to "take care of it". Just that with more mutual respect, we can consistently deliver the story more effectively. Not everybody is a writer, but everybody has a story to tell.
"Poetically Correct" is a special spoken word poetry X visual art event brought by If Walls Could Talk. As much as I had been a fan of poetry since I was very young, I have only been making more time to attend poetry events this year. The thing I love about poetry events is it's like going ... home. Because the poets bare their soul on the stage before the audience, there are no longer those "walls" usually put up among strangers. The audience feels closer to the poets because their first connection starts from the heart.
What I had been aware more and more now is that people are often so afraid of what they feel, who they are. That fear leads to dishonesty; first to themselves and then towards other people. Always trying to be somewhere else, or become something else. Not online or in RPGs (because that's what they are for), but I'm talking real life here. Indie poets like Azizan Afi, Enbah Nilah, Melizarani T. Selva, Jack Malik and (special mention because she got swag) Lily Jamaluddin, however, fearlessly open the gates of the dams that are their hearts and let its contents rush out in full force -- nothing short of heroic. I'm sure it didn't happen overnight, but I admire the commitment they made to achieve it.
On the last day of the festival, I sat through a talk with Datuk Kamil Othman (RE: Malaysian Cinema Redux), who spoke about his observations of the state of Malaysian cinema throughout his concluding tenure as Finas director-general. Datuk Kamil is first a film buff before he is the head of a government agency. His visions are probably achievable only by people outside of his agency -- fittingly, by some sitting in the audience even.
Commenting on boundaries, he said the reason everybody was offended with everything in Malaysian cinema these days was that everything was too "in your face". Where art is regulated, artists need to be creative in dancing along boundaries. Sensitive issues, no problem we can put it in a film, he said, but it doesn't have to be the focus of the film. If you can't mess with the conscious, then inject it into the subconscious. The strategy works with any art form -- performance, visual, literature, etc. How liberating is that!
When the festival concluded, I was at a high for many days afterwards. Next up: George Town Literature Festival in November. Can't wait!
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