encore.

Dear Readers,

tkwek's back from a week-long sojourn in Italy, and truth be told, he hasn't really recovered from the concert highs and wonderful laughs on the trip yet. Indeed, he still has PEOPLE TO TALK TO, and THINGS TO FIND OUT, but it has been a brilliant trip (: throughout this tour he's learnt a TRICK OR TWO AT BRIDGE, built NEW FRIENDSHIPS, and performed in placed he'd NEVER DREAMT OF GOING :D alright he knows he's using a lot of allusions here, but hey, ALLUSIONS, ACRONYMS and METAPHORS have been what this trip was about!

here's a travel essay, written enroute from montecatini to florence, and edited in Singapore. Enjoy!

- Take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow will take thoughts unto itself.
The Straight Times Editor

ENCORE

Summer came early to Milan.

A city of juxtaposition, where antique spires broke the boredom of modern concrete forestry, and Catholic and secular portraits hung dripping on brick walls, Milan drew travelers of all nationalities and races: at every street corner were local ruddy Milanese soaking up the mid-year atmosphere, and Chinese women soaking up the mid-year sales, not to mention the African tourists decked in tribal outfits and sunglasses……

He sat at the street corner, watching the throngs of people go by – some roaring hot-bloodedly past on motorcycle cavalcades, some cycling along with a tune on their lips, some strolling leisurely by with fewer cares on their minds than the clouds in the expansive clean blue sky.
A violin sat cradles in his arms, its case lying haphazardly open at his feet. It wasn’t a particularly expensive instrument, but he loved it for its bright and sparkling tone, the tone that had lighted up countless passer-bys’ rainy days, earned his the meager fare of a busker – or ‘street-entertainer’, as he preferred – and gave him sustenance for his many hungry and homeless nights out.

These days there wasn’t much to think about, besides his usual pastime of observing and sketching the pedestrians he say (when he wasn’t performing). His mind often wandered to different topics that were triggered endlessly by the wave of colours and sounds that permeated the Milanese streetscape. Sometimes he thought of shops, and of the little economics that he knew drove the metropolis like how the spider-webs of wires drove Italian trams. Sometimes he thought of important people, those whose portraits adorned cathedrals and election banners, and what they did rushing around him in business suits everyday. Sometimes he thought of the countryside, and the breaths of heaven that they contained, puffs of alcohol-free air that soaked with the fragrance of Italian cheese and tons of bolognaise.

A tram trundled by, headed to the Piazza de Buono, and on its whitewashed side he caught a glimpse of a tuxedo-clad Japanese man, with a gleaming white baton in hand, that snapped him out of his reverie. The man was standing proudly at the fore of an orchestra, and even from the tableau that the photographer had captured the musicians in, his practiced eye could tell that they played with clarity and strength – at least, more clarity and strength than he could ever muster from his post, on the street corner.

His fingers tightened on the fingerboard, as somewhere from the dark recesses of his mind arose an age-old longing that maybe, if he’d bad more money, or maybe one or two lessons on his instrument, he might have been sitting there too in a pressed white shirt and neat tailcoat, facing a hall full of enthusiasts, meeting the great maestros……

But then again, he slipped easily out of his dream to the sound of coins clinking in his violin-case. Looking up, he saw two children standing on the sidewalk, looking at him in curiosity.

Definitely not Italian, they sported touristy outfits, Chinese features and jet-black hair.

Shouldering violin cases – much more expensive than his, he’d expect – they smiled expectantly in his direction.

He smiled back.

These, he believed, would appear on the trams and buses of the next generation, would sit in the shadows of the next great conductors, would meet the virtuosos of the next century.

Picking up his violin and getting up from the road-side perch, he smiled again.

He might not have the good fortune to be one of those celebrated individuals now, or even to be one of those intrigued children looking on.

But in his time, in his post, he would play for them.