GOOD morning, sleepyhead. Slept well? Maybe you stayed up late for the muted SOP-compliant countdown and only went to sleep in the morning and it’s now evening.

Regardless, you are now in the future. The future that you were looking forward to yesterday because yesterday kind of sucked. Not kind of, but quite majorly.

Majorly in ways that trust was broken – even the most foul and corrupt didn’t see it coming – it was the Maker’s “reset” of sorts in a world that was teetering on the eve of something (not destruction, that’s clichéd and so 1965.

It was that much of a surprise. We love surprises, don’t we? Hardly surprising now in hindsight since yesterday’s world resembled a property billboard advertisement – a simulation of something unreal but sold as not just the real deal but also the ideal.

What a ruse! It’s ok, it’s now tomorrow.

It’s easy to be lulled into complacency, like your cat there on the rug, curled up in utter comfort and satisfaction – a satisfaction that seems just within reach but far away enough to elude your grasp, like a carrot dangled before you.

It’s been dangling for so long that you’ve forgotten what it was like before it was dangled. Many are in the same boat as you, fear not, for that’s why we’re sold on ideas of how to be different from the rest while still remaining upstanding and polite to a fault.

To a fault because too much politeness becomes hypocrisy – if a wrong happens, what needs to be said or done to right it must be said and done, not zipped up and left to fester into pus.

The world was a boil, it was just a matter of when the pus runneth over and run over it did yesterday. Well, better yesterday than tomorrow, right? Like clockwork, you hedged your bets on tomorrow . It’s now tomorrow.

How does it feel? Familiar? Different? Describe it to yourself – query this in your mind as you brush your teeth for sometimes it is better to think before you say anything… and if anything, yesterday was a lot of people saying one thing but doing something else.

So apt is the Malay saying about hypocrisy: “Cakap tak serupa bikin” (Talk does not resemble action). Talk is cheap and everybody has a price – even the ones you hinged your high hopes upon.

It’s only human to err and err they did collectively and loudly without shame – while also selling the drama and shame of faith for ill gains and power.

It’s familiar because the story has been told in tales of old and even recent – falls from grace, falls from power – generations of prose and poetry on falling and falling (although falling in love can’t help but remain as the biggest moneymaker and recurring cultural symbol).

The act of falling is not perpetual for the bottom will arrive in all eventuality and as they say things can only look up from the bottom. The bottom that awaits is always tomorrow and we’ve reached the bottom because it’s now tomorrow.

You were fed-up indeed. So were many of us. The level of fed-up-ness experienced by anyone is of course relative to one’s race, beliefs, income, social class, age and gender in yesterday’s world. It can suck majorly for some while not causing others even fleeting discomfort.

Such is the vicissitudes of living in a multi-everything society – lived experiences are also part of the “diversity” ecosystem.

One thing that brings us together – and also a proven “leveller” worldwide – is a drink. Not just any drink, yes THAT kind of drink.

It’s not supposed to exist here to some people (and access denied too). But regardless, raise your roaring drink up (even if you’re alone and under your sheets in your room) and let’s toast for tomorrow and good riddance to yesterday!

You were fed up with the Groundhog Day-esque repetition of the same old plots, same old actors, and same old songs as battle cries purportedly “for” Malaysia. I guess you missed a memo about that – did you get to vote for what is the best “for” Malaysia?

Well, technically you did with our representative parliamentary Westminster system. Maybe you did vote but then the captain changed course mid-flight and veered off the agreed route. 

You woke up in yesterday and saw nothing in what you were sold (us Gen X-ers anyways) in school about some “vision” that would elevate this humble post-agrarian nation into the company of big leagues – the big leagues that turned out to be overrated bullies with their own long-buried baggage that really unravelled episodically in front of the world. Tomorrow, tomorrow.

OK, now gargle and wash your face. Turn on the tap, grab the kettle and boil some water for a morning cuppa. Maybe for one, maybe for two. Who else is up?

Look out the window as the filaments do their thing. Tell me: how does tomorrow look today? There is no time like now. – January 1, 2021.

* Azmyl Yunor is a touring underground recording artiste, and an academic in media and cultural studies. He has published articles on pop culture, subcultures and Malaysian cultural politics. He adheres to the three-chords-and-the-truth school of songwriting, and Woody Guthrie’s maxim “All you can write is what you see”. He is @azmyl on Twitter.