Ch 1: Coming Home - Off Stone

“I UNWRAPPED the musician in me.” That’s the best way to describe what I came to do in preparation for my gig at Lim Siang Jin’s Off Stone exhibition series. I did not set out with that idea in mind, but hindsight is a wonderful and revealing thing.

No one had ever before called on me to speak about my music, and the time leading up to my appearance at the Offstone launch was laden with trepidation, anxiety and doubt - not least because, My goodness, who could be interested in that?

But Jin was insistent, persistent. Talk about yourself, he told me, your music. It will be interesting, he said.

I already know my old friend as an artist with a motherlode to offer the world. But, as our Off Stone discussions evolved (Jin in KL, and I in Sydney), I began to also see Jin as curator and mentor.

Jin had invited me to speak about and perform my music months before my scheduled appearance. As is my wont, it was only in the five days or so leading to the event that I really began taking notes for my presentation. I have been a journalist, and in our jargon, the deadline was approaching. Soon, it would be offstone. The clock wouldn’t stop for me. Desperation became a good companion to the composer.

THE first thing I did was pick the compositions that best reflected the person I had come to be. My songs are committed to memory, but it also occurred to me that writing down the lyrics would help me better see my own work. And that set me on the path to reworking the lyrics, intonation and musical structure on those four songs.

Off Stone became the first time I performed the new versions of four songs from way back when (Bluebird being the earliest, from 1982).

THE SLOT I was given in Off Stone on 13 October 2024 marked 40 years, to the day, since I migrated to Sydney with my family. I don’t see it as a coincidence.

Off Stone will always stand as a special milestone in my life. Forty years after leaving Malaysia, Off Stone gave me a chance to come back home, introduce to Malaysians the musician I have always been, and the musician I had become. Thank you, Lim Siang Jin.

AND FINALLY… We all have in ourselves what I would like to call a life song, a music entirely ours that tells our very own story.

William de Cruz, Sydney
10 December 2024

Photo: Performing at Offstone, with a guitar that was kindly loaned to me by former journalist David Lee Boon Siew, with whom both Jin and I have worked.

The songs: The four original pieces performed by me at Off Stone are:

Click on the names for their background


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