Muscle Memory
Monday, August 18, 2008
Muscle Memory
I remember Tomas' guitar classes in the after hours of a school's daily timetable. Twenty or so students with their guitars stuffed themselves into a crammed up classroom and no song sheets on the table. We always began with the basics, everybody had to go through the routine. We began with practicing our fingering on the fret board, one note at a time from the first fret to the fifth with each note pressed by a different finger. We progress downwards from one E string to the other. That process repeats itself again, but the second time from the second fret onwards and all the way till the part of the fret board where our fingers can't reach. The right hand, too, had to go through the same routines before any proper songs were being played in the classroom. It was standard practice, even the old timers did it without questioning Tomas. It was to train our muscle memory, or a neuromuscular facilitation, which is the process of helping the muscles to memorize certain motoring skills. It was to help us play faster and with more confidence, to play the guitar without thinking about playing the guitar. We had to learn how to learn the guitar, then forget that we've ever learned it in the first place and then play a song. It's abstract, but it's true. It begins with repetition, then it becomes a routine, which leads to familiarity and it fades into the background. Eventually, it becomes a part of you, like coming back home.
I remember Tomas' guitar classes in the after hours of a school's daily timetable. Twenty or so students with their guitars stuffed themselves into a crammed up classroom and no song sheets on the table. We always began with the basics, everybody had to go through the routine. We began with practicing our fingering on the fret board, one note at a time from the first fret to the fifth with each note pressed by a different finger. We progress downwards from one E string to the other. That process repeats itself again, but the second time from the second fret onwards and all the way till the part of the fret board where our fingers can't reach. The right hand, too, had to go through the same routines before any proper songs were being played in the classroom. It was standard practice, even the old timers did it without questioning Tomas. It was to train our muscle memory, or a neuromuscular facilitation, which is the process of helping the muscles to memorize certain motoring skills. It was to help us play faster and with more confidence, to play the guitar without thinking about playing the guitar. We had to learn how to learn the guitar, then forget that we've ever learned it in the first place and then play a song. It's abstract, but it's true. It begins with repetition, then it becomes a routine, which leads to familiarity and it fades into the background. Eventually, it becomes a part of you, like coming back home.
I was hoping that this trip would take my mind off certain things, with "certain things" being the fact that I just powered through a whole semester without a breather for the most part. So much for the summer break, since the two week long holiday is feeling more like a coffee break at the water cooler. That's the main mission, but there is a secondary mission that I was hoping to achieve, to kill two birds with one stone so to speak. I was hoping to test the waters here, kind of like putting your index finger into the tub of water to test if it is too hot or too cold. I've been toying around with the idea if coming back home, and I just wanted to find out if I am going to fit right in, like feet on a pair of silk slippers. Of course, a week long trip is certainly going to be different from "the rest of my life", but this is as good as it gets for now. There are still obligations back in Singapore, things that need to be done before any future plans are being made. Future plans, I really do think that I need to hire someone for that sort of thing. My first choice is April, but her life is tight enough I suppose. Yet another entrepreneur idea, I'd look into that.
I haven't been back in Taiwan during the summer for the longest time. The past few winters in Taiwan have been welcoming of me, but never the summer, always the winters. It's really because time has never allowed me to come back in August, along with a whole bunch of other reasons I suppose. Summertime in Taiwan differs a little from the Taiwan I have grown so used to in the past couple of years. Thick jackets, a few layers of clothes, a heater in the middle of the living room, and hot coffee, were just some of the essentials I needed in the past visits. To be completely honest, I am not entirely used to being at the dining table in my shorts and t-shirt. But I guess, if I really do intend to move all the way back here, this is just one of the few things I have to start adjusting to. The only aspect of my old life that doesn't take any time to fit back in is probably the food here, the way the taste fills up the corners of my mouth is like an explosion of tiny taste bud invaders. Anything, very simply, works here when it comes to food, it doesn't even take a lot of thinking to buy something that is heavenly. That, I haven't got a problem with - it's everything else. It's always everything else.
There's something about the air-conditioning that must have sucked out too much moisture in the air. My mouth felt like a desert and my tongue like sand paper. My nostrils of my noise decided to revolt against one another, with one of them being completely blocked while the other decided to run like the tap. I was mildly sick, and it was probably because of the air-conditioning or the fact that my mother shared a spoon with me before I came over here. Anyway, I needed medicine, but I didn't want to tell my aunt about thing either. I waited for them to go out in the afternoon, just a mere ten minutes while I went to the closet next to the kitchen to take out the pills, and then from underneath that shelf a jug of warm water to down the pills, since tap water here isn't exactly safe to drink. So I opened the bottle of pills, poured eight of those pills out onto the table, placed six in my mouth and put the rest back. Then I got the cup, poured the water from the jug in, and swallowed the pills. Routine, normal, nothing surprising here.
Half an hour ago, my mouth felt a little dry again, and I felt like having some milk for the insomnia that I have been suffering lately. So I opened the storeroom where the fridge was (don't ask), turned on the lights by feeling the switch to the left on the wall, then took out the carton of milk that my aunt bought in the morning. I needed a straw then, I needed a straw to drink the milk. So I looked around a little bit and found the batch of straws stuck in a cylinder on the door underneath the neat rows of white eggs. So I poked the straw into the carton of milk, drank the milk and burped by the time I paced around the living room about four times. The bills stuck to the front door with a bunch of magnets looked the same as the last time I saw it in December, and the dead rose stuck in the glass vase still stood at the back of the shelf amidst old memorabilia and thick layers of dust. Just the way I left the house last time, little to nothing has changed. OK, not exactly nothing, since the dog has been shaved to look like a mouse with a lot more fur. Still, the house smells the same, the food taste the same, even the same television programs are still running.
You see, I found the pills, the milk, and the straws around the house, not because I knew where they were and consciously looked for it. I just knew that they were there, as if I actually live here. Of course, for the most part of the year, it is occupied by an old army officer (my uncle), an old saleswoman from Amway (my aunt), and an over-active dog with a bad attitude (my dog). But there is a certain level of familiarity around the house that I cannot explain, and it kind of reminds me of those basic routine practices that we had in the classrooms before any guitar lessons. The way our fingers danced along the fret boards after a few weeks of training without our minds being conscious about it, or the way our index and middle finger alternated in between each other on our right hand. Everything was automated, because we have grown so accustomed to those actions, we have learned how after doing them over and over and over again. It's the same as the time when you learned to walk, you don't think about putting one foot before the other after some time. You just walk.
I have realized just how easy it is for me to lead a normal life on a very basic level. You know, to get milk or to get medicine - everything is relatively easy. In fact, getting food is a much smaller problem here in Taiwan, since I can probably have three meals a day in different restaurants in the neighborhood and still not eat the same dish for a week. I don't know about the environment, I don't know about the people. I don't know anything else outside of my comfort zone and if I am going to take some time to get used to it all. Which is also why my meeting with Sarah, my childhood friend whom I haven't seen in ten years, may just help. You know, to see how I can relate to the people all over again, to see what they see and to hear what they hear, type thing. In the mean time, I am just relying on my muscle memory here, knowing where to go and what to do, something which I am still trying to get used to after living in Singapore for a full seventeen years. So, the blood coursing through my veins, the skin that covers my flesh, and everything else on me screams of my nationality. The only thing that goes against that fact is probably in black and white, but that isn't going to change who I really am. I suppose, there is still a part of me that, very simply, remembers.
But, here's the thing: I saw Gattaca all over again the other day on HBO here. You know, the story about how a "God's Child", or a man born under normal circumstances, defied the odds and got himself into space in a time and age when only the genetically superior could be selected for tasks like that. There is a scene in the movie with Uma Thurman dancing with Ethan Hawke days before his planned trip into space, and he tells her that it is a funny thing how he has been trying so hard to leave the Earth and yet, he suddenly finds himself a reason to stay. Well, there are so many reasons to come back here, so many reasons to just pack up everything and leave - and, it's easy. It is going to be petrifying to come back here, but it is certainly going to be an easy thing to do. Everything just works here, really. I mean, they have little USB things you plug to your laptop so that you can access Wifi from anywhere around the island with cellphone coverage. They even have Tivo here as well, something which makes the television business in Singapore look like the stone age. So many reasons to come back here, so many reasons to leave. Yet, sometimes, just sometimes, a reason presents itself to you and you find yourself unwilling to leave.
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