Singapore (Singapore) Marina Bay, The Promontory (map)
Saturday, 19 Dezember 2015
In Singapore, Saturdays are a grand moment for associations that like to present themselves in the streets. Today, for instance, I heard a Porsche Club which was waiting at a traffic signal for the lights to turn green, wheezing harshly. A little after that I smelled the exhaust of crackling 1950s’ Vespas which young Asians, dressed in Dolce Vita fashion, rode nonchalantly through the streets. A while later a group of electro-scooters crossed my way, followed by a group of walkers in fluorescent t-shirts. All this, within a few minutes! Finally, on the fringe of Marina Bay, I came across eight young Singaporeans flying electric kites through the air on the instructions of a clearly older coach – not randomly but in strictly choreographed fashion.
When I see a kite pulling on its string, it always appears to me like a thought that one allows to float away from its life on earth into different dimensions: from the concrete into the abstract, from the personal into the world of big ideas and concepts. In the concentrated effort of the kite master, in his joy and fears, and in the strain in the edge between the experienced and the systematic, the personal and the general, the thought and the spoken is reflected for me. Perhaps the sportsman does succeed in retrieving his thought and bringing it back to himself. On the other hand, perhaps the string snaps and the kite sails off. Or, perhaps the paper bird gets frazzled in the wind, crashes and gets smashed on the ground.
But, what are kites that are manoeuvred through the air by means of their own impulsion and radio-communication? In this case, even as the flight gains security in the wind, one loses the physical link to one’s bird. Isn’t it quite similar when one joins a certain way of thinking? Especially when one is on one’s way in a squadron?.
First Publication: 23-1-2016
Modifications: