Imagine the best, urged Jeanette Winterson, a keynote speaker at this year’s Writers’Festival. The power of my imagination is my comfort, my best aid, my best source of delight to nourish and energise me in my old age. I remember reading Winterson’s collection of essays Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery, where she says that ‘…the only boundaries are the boundaries of our imagination’ and she asks:
…If we could imagine out of despair?
If we could imagine ourselves out of helplessness?
What would happen if we could imagine in ourselves authentic desire?”
The Singapore Writers’ Festival has come and gone, an annual highlight event of the year for me. I love the atmosphere, the buzz, the excitement, the feel of a community of book lovers rushing from one event to the next, chatting over coffee, or sitting in a quiet corner reading a book lost in a world of imagination. I love the ambiance, the energy. I love the idea of a community gathered around the idea of a festival, united in their delight in reading and writing. And I love the fact that for the first time we have had a woman director, the energetic Pooja Nansi, the first female director in the 36 years that the festival had been running. Imagine that! Many young women like her in the workplace she shouldered multiple responsibilities including having a child in the middle of organizing the festival as she did last year. Imagination, flair, the ability to mulit-task Pooja Nansi had loads. Her energy is amazing.
The Festival is a showcase of the best of Singapore’s multiculturalism and each year the diversity is growing. This years along the line-up waiting for me to sign my books I met young women from Hong Kong who are looking forward to making Singapore their home, people of the various diaspora – India, the Philippines and China and America and Australia. The young man from the Philippines reached the table and asked for the definition of ‘love’. You must be kidding I thought and since we had just come out of the panel on loving your city I attempted an explanation (my ego of course had to meet the challenge). Can’t remember what I said but I look back in embarrassment for having fallen for it.
But the one idea of the Festival as the gathering of a community that appeals to me the most.
Two young women, reached me having stood in line to get copies of my book signed. They were not in a hurry and they wanted to talk to me, to tell me their story. One of the women had slash marks, many of them and in both arms which she made no effort to hide. They told me that they had mental health issues and were very lonely. Have you tried to find a community? I asked. Yes, they replied but had failed. What about an association for people with mental health problems? Yes there is one and we joined but they asked us to leave after a while. Why, having you been giving them problems? At which they smiled. I signed the books and wished them luck. Keep searching, I urged them.
I couldn’t help them and that has continued to bother me.
If we could imagine ourselves out of helplessness?
Connie 