It’s been over a year since my last newsletter; hello everyone, how are you doing? I hope life has been treating you well. It’s been three months since I’ve moved to London, and a lot has changed since the last time I wrote anything. It feels kind of cringe to be writing here again. This newsletter (do I even call this whatever-this a newsletter) originally started in 2020 when I was really into the tech-productivity sphere, and everyone that I was talking to at that period of time was reading and writing and creating so so so many things. I think it feels cringy to be writing here again because I had started this newsletter in an attempt to be part of that group - to show that I’m someone with the consistency and the grit to maintain a regular writing schedule - seemingly hoping to believe that by doing so I will reap the benefits of prolificity and maybe achieve world domination somehow along the way. But I’m not a writer, neither am I someone that has very much consistency when it comes to my working plans. And somehow coming back to writing here has felt like a daunting task. I’m slightly ashamed for having started this newsletter in 2020, making all these bold declarations of putting only like 1% of effort every week to write. I’m ashamed of how it’s been somewhat of a failure. I guess that’s okay. I guess I’ve come to terms with it and that’s why I’m back here now. But why am I writing here? After all this time?
Eh. Just felt like it I guess.
I’ve been aching to write again, to find an alternative creative outlet for my thoughts. This past year I’ve been in close to a dream-like state, where my mind was constantly and overwhelmingly clouded. It’s been hard man. I have been writing a little bit, in the form of threads of poetry chained together in twitter threads, I had an amazing opportunity in December 2021 where an essay I wrote about Identity and Growing up as a B-Boy in Singapore was published on Ink Cypher, part of the Hip Hop Dance Alamanac editorial run by Ian Abbott. You can read This Dance Is Not Our Own here. Hmm… and I came back to Substack today to find a ton of unfinished drafts that I don’t remember writing - stuff along the lines of reviewing dance film / Screendance stuff, reflections on my work on film sets, some heartbreak essays, some investigative studies on Identity, so I may slowly review these and begin releasing them when I feel like it. But I don’t think I’m going to schedule myself or push myself very much to write here, and try and treat it as a much more casual thing. It kinda gives me the pre-2010 Blogspot vibes now that I think about it. Rambling to the world about your days when nobody really cares. I’m quite ashamed of that phase. I spent so much time trying to basically subtweet my crushes when I was 10-12 years old, and then my MUM found out about the blogspot and she will read it everyday and I was teased and it made me feel sad and I didn’t want to write anymore. I never wrote anything really meaningful back then, but it was an experience I guess, signing on to other blogs, writing in their little chat boxes, your playlist as you opened your page. I had this entire music/guitar theme to my blog - a personality trait I stole from somewhere I’m sure and I was trying to be cool saying oh damn I played the guitar and I had all these like music notes on my wallpaper and a cursor that leaves trails of bars when you’re on it. The worse part was my writing style oh my fucking god. Leaving catchphrases left and right. TYPING IN ALL CAPS. There was no structure nothing to make you think. Ironic transitions between points - wait, isn’t that what I’m doing now? (I did it intentionally - future me please don’t cringe). I was all-time ADHD-maxxing as a kid. I jumped from point to point without really linking things and I would get it but nobody else would and they would get confused and I would get frustrated because I didn’t really know / have the patience to explain how I got there. I think I’ve somewhat gotten better at that skill since then, but it really takes like a good day to not write and speak like I’m deranged.
p.s. my tone is all over the place today in my writing. I’m writing this like in multiple spurts because I’ve been more easily distracted than I used to so I apologise for an inconsistent tone - just treat it like you’re reading a child’s blogspot
Okay yes so I wanted to update the external world on my life.
I’ve moved to London from Singapore about 3 months ago. Hi! I’m here now. BToh exists in London now. Say hi if you’re in London! After many many years of arguing and defending my stance about not needing school, I have done the unthinkable and returned to get my education baby. Early this year, in a fit of frustration about my own work in dance-film, I began a search for opportunities that would allow me to expand my own practice and understanding of my creative work, which led me to the MA Screendance programme in London Contemporary Dance School. It was a great privilege to be accepted in a postgraduate programme despite the fact that I don’t hold any undergraduate degrees (my highest qualification is a polytechnic diploma in Film). Since then, I’ve just been kind of thrown into a whole new world that I now know as Screendance. It’s hard for me to talk about all that’s going on in school without like really going into details of what I’m learning and what I’m excited about, but just know I’m fine, I’m having fun. I’m struggling a little bit, suddenly jumping into a Masters programme without having gone through school proper, but it’s been really fruitful.
I guess top of my mind, central topics that I want to talk about perhaps in future posts
Returning to dance, dancing with emotions, recalibrating my own movement
Entire new world of Screendance, brief history, brief ideas of topics I’m learning in school and discovering on my own
Rethinking the way that I shoot dance
movement exercises and practices
curation process in screendance
My own practice and goals in dance film
Reviewing old work
I think my biggest struggle with writing right now is that I keep trying to segment my outputs. I had this entire era of where I wrote exclusively heartbreak poetry and I wanted to put it on Substack under a pseudonym but I didn’t really have the courage to do that.
Which brings me to why this post is titled Chasing Courage.
It’s been getting harder and more difficult for me to do anything lately. And I sincerely mean anything. I don’t know, some part of me believed that when I left Singapore, I would suddenly become a changed person, as though a flight would magically change me, allow me to be someone else. But no, I’m still the same BToh, existing in a different place. I still get anxious easily, still kind of soft, still cocky, still the same habits of smoking and alcohol. Just a different place. And lately it’s been as though every single day I am faced with a million micro-decisions, arguing back and forth in my head to the point where I get so mentally exhausted and pass out on the floor.
And I think. Right now. Writing this. Is me, trying to seek courage. Seek courage to allow myself to grow and not hold myself bad. To hold the fears gently and be kind to myself. To seek courage to make the tiny decisions that will help me develop, grow, flourish, fuck some shit up.
But where does courage come from? I wrote about the concept of Resistance a long time ago, and right now I feel like I’ve completely 180-ed on my perspectives regarding these mental models. There are a 1001 ways we can conceptualise and talk about the way we can’t be the people we want to be - and often in that case that’s in the amount of things that we do that makes us feel satisfied and fulfilled. So what will make me feel fulfilled and satisfied right now? I think for me right now, it is being able to push through all my doubts and insecurities about myself. To be able to do things that I never thought I could do before - like continue writing this newsletter. Courage is such a weird energy that at certain points seem to come out of nowhere. Think about like… here journeys for example. What really pushes them to go past their limits? The inciting incident? Their personal reason for being? Desire to protect? What makes people go “fuck it” in their head and fight for what they till then did not believe in? Courage is a constant, ongoing battle between you and yourself that you can never seem to win because COURAGE IS TOO DAMN NICE and keeps picking you up after it has beaten you down! It’s the ultimate toxic gaslighting relationship! you! You gaslight yourself in believing you can’t be or do The Things!!!
Yeah!!! and I think moving to London was a huge leap of faith that needed courage but I still tell myself that I’m smol but I’m not! who dis btoh! dis btoh is someone new!!!!!
—on growth.—
—I recently had a thinking session, a Big Think (tm) I like to call it, about growth and growing and how it felt like despite living here for 3 months it felt as though I was still the same person and that I haven’t grown at all. And as I watched the leaves fall while smoking on my roof, it just suddenly hit me how ridiculous that notion is. I literally shave my facial hair everyday. My hair grows longer. I learned how to cook. I’m relearning and changing my habits to suit the environment. Wtf am I on. Growth is scary, I think it’s scary to accept that you have grown. You’re so ingrained in the person that you thought you were that you forget you have the ability to be another person as well that is still you and still holds true to your deepest cores. And it’ll be sincerely super nice if that person is someone that you can love to.
—I want to take a moment to acknowledge my growth for the past 3 months. I still feel guilty for existing here, but I’m growing. And one day I think I really will become someone that I can be proud of. I’m already someone that I can love. Someone that really tries to grow. Someone that really tries to grow is someone that I think I can love quite easily in fact. It’s like little trees trying to sprout. Just leave them alone man, they got their shit down. Just don’t fuck them up. Don’t kill their supports y’know. Just chill and before you know it they will be big trees and you will remember when it was just a little tiny tree and your heart will be carved into that tree ingraining your little fingerprints of soil between the layers of bark maybe one day they will cut it up and trace the circles and hold your palms at their finger points.
brb gonna seek courage rn
see u i love you
vibes for ur week