Bravely Set the World on Fire

      Gary won a talent competition when he was two months short of his seventeenth birthday. It was a small provincial affair in the north of Malaysia, not very professional, but it enabled him to move down to the capital to take part in a bigger contest which was televised on all the main channels. The finale was watched by nearly four million people, and over two million voted by SMS. At the time, Gary was amazed by these figures. He came from a town of two hundred, and could not believe that so many people would ever listen to him sing. He performed three songs, one in Malay, one in Mandarin, and the final one in English – an arrangement of a Diana Ross song, the words of which he did not fully understand. He was the youngest contestant and was shining with the innocence of a boy recently arrived from the countryside. His hair was spiky and dyed with flame-coloured streaks, which he had done himself. Recently he saw a video of this performance on YouTube and could not believe how bad he looked.

      After the first song the judges said he had the voice of an angel. But even before that, from the moment he opened his mouth to sing the very first note, he knew he was going to win. He heard the strange, pure sound of his voice amplified by the microphone in the vast auditorium, its echoes separated by a split second from the time he felt it in his throat. He recognised that the voice was his, but he felt distanced from it too. It sounded as if it no longer belonged to him. In the audience, young girls were waving multicoloured fluorescent batons that glowed in the dark. When he sang the love ballad in Mandarin everyone screamed as he hit the high notes in the chorus. He felt the noise they made reverberating in his chest and ribcage, and he knew in that instant that his life was going to become confused and messy, full of privileges and sorrows he hadn’t asked for.

      He won by a landslide.

      He did not have time to celebrate his victory because he was signed up by an artist-management company that arranged for him to go to Taiwan two weeks later. He stayed in a hotel with a bathtub in which he had his very first bubble bath. The furniture was modern and new, with clean lines and leather upholstery. The room smelled of paint, but he thought it was extremely luxurious. Now he realises, of course, that it was only a modest and functional hotel used by sales companies wanting somewhere cheap to hold their training conferences. These days, Gary only stays in the most exclusive hotels in every city he visits.

      In just under eight years in Taipei he released four albums, each of which sold more than three million copies across Asia. In the months following the release of his debut album, Rainy Day in My Heart, he narrowly missed out on winning the Best Newcomer category at the Golden Melody Awards, and starred in a film as an apprentice cop who ends up accidentally shooting the gangster girl he has fallen in love with. The film was a total failure at the box office, but everyone who saw it remarked that Gary’s face was perfectly proportioned, beautiful to look at from every angle. Maybe you saw it too and came to the same conclusion. Teenage girls began to send him presents – designer clothes, jewellery, watches, home-made CDs, cards with photos stuck to them, and even highly personal items, such as the girls’ own underwear or antiques that had belonged to their families. Every week his record company would receive enough of these gifts to fill a room. He would stare at this unwanted pile and feel guilty that so many fans wanted to give him such valuable things. He could not bear the thought that all these people, whom he did not know, were thinking of him. They were thinking of him so much that they would spend time and money sending him objects that represented parts of their lives – of themselves. And he felt bad because he was not strong or big or deep enough to accept their love. The record company arranged for it all to be donated to charity or simply destroyed, but still he could feel their desire for him lingering over him like a raincloud on a muggy day, refusing to budge.

      Early last year, on the eve of a major concert at the Taipei Arena, Gary collapsed and was admitted to hospital. The diagnosis was not serious – he was anaemic, which explained not only his famously pale complexion but his frequent dizzy spells. He was also found to have low blood pressure and an elevated cholesterol level for someone so young. It was all the takeaway curries, the pizzas and other junk food he ate during late-night sessions in the recording studio. His punishing work schedule exacerbated these underlying conditions, and it was no surprise that he eventually succumbed to the pressure, the doctors said. They prescribed a fortnight’s complete rest, some supplements, and a balanced diet. Before he left, one doctor asked him if he was stressed. When Gary appeared somewhat confused by the question, the doctor posed it again, this time asking whether he found it difficult to deal with the pressures he had placed upon himself and whether, for example, he worried about things beyond his control. Gary thought for a few seconds before truthfully answering no. Because when he stopped for that moment to consider his life, he realised that there was nothing in it that was within his control. Every minute of his day was organised by his management company, even the number of hours he should sleep. It had been like this for so long that he wondered if he had ever known a different way of living.

      The press was full of hysterical reports. Some said he had fallen ill from toxins ingested while eating moray eel down on the coast, some said he had suffered an overdose, others said he had AIDS. He had not been seen in public or been photographed by the paparazzi for only five days when one tabloid newspaper began to surmise that he was dead. From his apartment he peered cautiously out between the metallic slats of the blinds and saw a group of teenage fans holding a vigil for him. At night they lit candles and huddled together to console each other. In daylight, he could see that some of them had been crying. He wished they would go away, and after two days he began to resent them. Their presence weighed down on him, and he couldn’t sleep. He longed to be free of his apartment, which he hated even at the best of times. He had become used to having the blinds down all the time – from the moment he moved in, he had never seen the apartment in daylight, not even for one minute. It was always night in his home.

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