I've had just enough time to... be pierced in the heart.
A place to be creative...
I was asked by an artist friend just a week ago “Art… Luxury or Necessity?” I do not know the correct answer so I gave a personal one - “One thing I find in many of my travels - poverty and wealth never have any correlation to happiness. If anything there is a bias of happiness towards poverty ironically. To the rich, art is more often a luxury. They can do without it. And if they do enjoy it, it ranges from entertainment to passion. To the poor, after the essential of survival and if they enjoy art, it is quite often a need. A need to lift themselves off the depressing life they live and gave them hope and fulfillment. Like happiness, there really is no correlation but a bias and intensity.” I concluded by saying, that I hope I was making some sense. We could expand the term ‘poor’ from beyond ‘materially poor’ to ‘culturally, emotionally and spiritually poor’ and we can then understand how an organization like KLpac touches the lives of so many of us. It enriches the lives of the 'rich 'and transforms the lives of the 'poor'.
A place to chill out...
I
personally think that KLpac is modest when they declare “while KLpac has served
the general public, it impacted 3 groups – artistes/arts group, youth and the
under-privileged”. Nurturing, developing, and providing the avenue for growth
for the first group. Exposing, stirring interest and expanding the horizon of
the second group. Reaching out, touching
them and giving hope for the third group. All these KLpac had done and is
doing.
A place to get the rhythm...
However,
KLpac may have impacted the general public more than it gave itself credit for.
Many years ago in the early days, I asked a local singer, songwriter friend – “what
is so different about performing arts?” It seems so, ‘inefficient’ (they could
put it in DVD, couldn’t they?). I could not remember the exact words he said
but some words stuck like – ‘communicating with the audience’, ‘closeness’, ‘touches
you like no other medium’, before he went into the really bloody stuff like – ‘tearing
out your heart and chewing it raw!’. That was when I said – ‘Enough!’ and dismissed
him as those artsy-fartsy type. Chewing my heart. Imagine!
A place to have fun...
Then
I went for this performance. And this beautiful lady sang till the tears rolled
down her cheek. Those couldn’t be real tears could they? Not when she got to do
the same thing again for another 5 nights! Then she stabbed me right in the
heart from where she stood 10 meters away. I felt a piercing pain in my chest
and a chill ran up my neck to the side of my face. Why are my eyes welling up?
You
came through such an experience transformed, humbled. And some of the words
made sense for the first time. You have been touched. It is like a high. You
went back seeking it again and again. You do not find it often but that does
not stop you from looking and I believe it makes you if not a better person, a
more sensitive and caring one.
A place of dreaming...
Oh! For
that sublime, exquisite moment when your tender pulsating heart was torn from
your rib-cages setting all your senses afire!
Oops! I am going to have that
term thrown back at me if I am not careful. It is the dream of every artist to
be able to touch you this way. That is when the sublime moment is shared
between the artist and the audience. What is more meaningful than to feel life
with the sharpness of a razor’s blade? KLpac is the place where moment like
this happened. For that reason alone, its fire should never be extinguished...
A place to keep our balance...
A place for the young and matured...
A place for the child and woman in us...
A place of magic...
A place to learn...
A place to participate...
A place to ponder...
A place of movements...
A place to reach out...
A place of sharing...
But
I’ve not mentioned the one reason, which I do not have a photo which can do it
justice.
It is – A PLACE OF LOVE!
