sound and colour

by Jonathan Chan

First published in the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore in October 2022. Click the arrow (>) to learn more about this piece

From the author:

I wrote ‘sound and colour’ in a period of transition when I started a job after graduate school. I had just turned 26 and was thinking about where my father was when he was my age. I thought of the concerns and anxieties my friends in their 20s were grappling with — the challenges of purchasing or renting a home, the imperative to find well-paying jobs even if they weren’t wholly aligned with personal values, the different ways people have coped with these waves of stress. This poem is particular to Singapore in a way, but also thinks of all the other cities where young adults have struggled to flourish. In a way, the poem is dedicated to those in my age bracket, my generation, for whom things have not always been easy, but who have found avenues for joy and relief nevertheless.

my father was thirty-five when my mother

had me. always, he would speak of how he

started late, apartment already signed

to his name. i am twenty-six, trying to reverse

engineer all the sums and woes that go

into a child. how many payslips stack

to form a modicum of independence.

how is an old-new not the same as

stagnation. a writer writes that therapy

is cheaper than moving out. living with

your parents at thirty is nothing unusual.

the housing market is going crazy.

the rental market is going crazy.

why hedge when the recession begins

to arch its back and there are only so few

jobs available to earn a kind of life. one

person removes their instagram posts on

crypto. another person writes in their

linkedin profile their passion for making

an impact. they spin and they cycle and

they climb. we count down the days to

marital pageantry and geriatric pregnancies.

we count down the ways one can make

due with only the fringes of adult life.

frittered away in the din of night,

i sat, reading, for sound and for colour.

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Jonathan Chan is a writer and editor of poems and essays. Born in New York to a Malaysian father and South Korean mother, he was raised in Singapore and educated at Cambridge and Yale Universities. He is the author of the poetry collection going home (Landmark, 2022). He has recently been moved by the work of Noah Arhm Choi, Spencer Reece, and Roger Robinson. He has an abiding interest in faith, identity, and creative expression. More of his writing can be found at jonbcy.wordpress.com.

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