Singapore is a place for instant nostalgia, it would seem. It has a fabulous culture, and is really a big conglomeration of cultures that spread out in multiple directions, and it’s endlessly fascinating. Trying to find common threads is like trying to find the world’s first potato, where it surely must have existed somewhere, but it began so long ago, and the road to get there is so convoluted, that it’s impossible. But it’s extremely interesting to try. Trying to find common links between things in a place as complicated as Singapore is splendid fun, because the links all reveal something even more fascinating than the thing you set out to discover in the first place.
By the time you realize you’re fascinated by something else altogether, the threads of that original search might come through, and remind you of what you were looking for. Its impossibility is something that can cause a melancholy, a splendid melancholy that just is, and for no good reason. This sentiment runs through a lot of the popular culture forms here, and it also runs through most things that have a semblance of style. And there’s certainly a lot of style in Singapore. Boutique hotel accommodations are particularly magnificent in offering a sense of style that combines an old that never was with a new that never will be, and it’s so splendid that it will no doubt be copied somewhere down the road.
Singapore is ahead of the future even when it lives in the past, and that might be why it’s always too late to mourn Dorian Roach & the Cruzers. The psychedelic rock band that was quoting the 70s has already left, the members gone off to promote new projects. There was something extraordinary in the sound, and there was something visionary in the facial hair, and it would be nice to thank them for re-introducing it as soon as it left before it got too popular, and at times we are melancholy enough to wish for one more song by Dorian Roach.