Once upon a time, the Little Yellow House on Waterloo Street was home to the SYC; where we grew into the SYC Ensemble Singers, going where no Singapore choir had gone before. This used to be our playground—where low notes became high notes, soft sounds wrestled with loud spirits, and colourful soundscapes multiplied. Where even the ghosts practised after office hours, on the Studio 1 piano, behind locked doors. This short story was written in memory of our Little Yellow House.
____________ Little Yellow House YMS Arts Centre, 54 Waterloo Street, Singapore
The Little Yellow House gathered Everyone together—
small to XL, infant to elder,
those With, those Without
—into its folds, wrapping them
with sonic hugs of the warmest order.
Everyone and their sounding selves
echoed in the corridors,
growing louder in the air wells,
until the walls re-sounded themselves
in arabesque lines and swirls.
The swirls flowered, into a large
Little-Yellow-House-shaped cloud,
the wet yellow air filling
the insides of Everyone. Everyone together carried pieces of the Little Yellow House away, wrapped carefully in sonic memories of the warmest order; bit by bit growing louder in mind-wells, heart-walls bursting into song. The pieces of the Little Yellow House sing to each other,
gathering Everyone together without, within, its folds.
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