Table for One: Christian
Christian, 8pm, 14th October 2009, Town Restaurant Fullerton Hotel
I met Christian from Germany on my first evening of the project. It was really nerve-wrecking just sitting myself down opposite my first lone-diner. He rejected my proposal to make his portrait initially, just as I would picture the rejection as mentally prepare myself it. But after when I return to my seat, he settled himself opposite me with a string of questions out of the curiosity surrounding the whole insanity of this stranger's scenario.
We chatted for a while, long enough for him to tell me about his job, the reason why he's in Singapore and how he came to dine alone here at the Fullerton. I guess for any rich businessman like him, the Fullerton will be the next alternative place to dine other then the Ritz Carlton where he was putting up for this trip. The next few minutes was my mind fumbling about with the details of how he has 3 houses around the world, how one of them is opposite Tina Turner's and the percentage of bio-energy that he owns. I guess I've never been brought up to have a response to details like this so I just nod and smiled politely every time he ended his sentence. I guess the boredom of the whole process convinced him that I had no other agenda then what I have presented to him so he eventually allowed me to photograph him over desert.
I didn't expect for myself to put forth such a lack of empathy and coldness to my first stranger. I guess what was fixated in my mind was the desire to connect on the same emotional and intellectual level as the person I had lost in my life. I couldn't help it.
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This is my first entry for my new body of work "Table for One". It marks a new phase in my life, a process I'm going to use to understand my new found solitude in other people's solitude.
For more then 2 weeks now, I've been walking around dining areas every evening to look for people who have dinner on their own. Since its just the beginning, there are a lot of parameters that I haven't set for the work in order to get the momentum of producing images going. So this will be simply just a record of all the people I have met in the process, based on life's serendipity.
At this point in time, I would say I can't be objective enough to tell you what trigger this project. Its really a whirlpool of emotions and I don't want it to dilute my intentions. Hopefully this heartache will wear off soon and I'll let you know.