Last night I thought I heard it again. Was it another dragon dance? My housemate said, “No. It’s for Chinese funeral.”

Ooops. Okay.

I’ve been here in Singapore for more than five years now and I haven’t really seen a Chinese funeral. Decided to go to the block near my place to take a quick look, but the ceremony was over when my housemate and I got there. Haha. Anyway…

I am not a singer, so I sing. Why not? Sometimes it’s easier to do the thing that you don’t know. Haha!

(I was supposed to record my voice over for my digital story. I just couldn’t do it right. So I ended up singing. Haha!)

I am unwritten
Can’t read my mind
I’m undefined

I’m just beginning
The pen’s in my hand
Ending unplanned

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words
That you could not find

Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions
Feel the rain on your skin

No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips

Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten

I break tradition
Sometimes my tries
Are outside the lines

We’ve been conditioned
To not make mistakes
But I can’t live that way, no

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words
That you could not find

Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions
Feel the rain on your skin

No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips

Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
To the years where your book begins
Feel the rain on your skin

“The National Book Development Council of Singapore and Scholastic Asia are jointly launching the 2012 Scholastic Asian Book Award (SABA). The award will recognise Asians and writers in Asia who are taking the experiences of life, spirit and thinking in different parts of Asia to the world at large. SABA is awarded to an unpublished manuscript (original or translation) targeted at children of ages 6 to 12 years. Deadline: 17 October 2011, 5pm (Singapore time).”

Are you also interested? Visit SABA for more info. All the best!

Though smooth be the heartless prayer, no ear in Heaven will mind it, and the finest phrase falls dead if there is no feeling behind it.

Though perfect the player’s touch, little, if any, he sways us, unless we feel his heart throb through the music he plays us.

Though the poet may spend his life in skilfully rounding a measure, unless he writes from a full, warm heart he gives us little pleasure.

So it is not the speech which tells, but the impulse which goes with the saying; and it is not the words of the prayer, but the yearning back of the praying.

It is not the artist’s skill which into our soul comes stealing with a joy that is almost pain, but it is the player’s feeling.

And it is not the poet’s song, though sweeter than sweet bells chiming, which thrills us through and through, but the heart which beats under the rhyming.

And therefore I say again, though I am art’s own true lover, that it is not art, but heart, which wins the wide world over.

- Ella Wheeler Wilcox