Daniel Yeo
is the Captain of the Titanic, a painter who felled a warlord, a child born from a volcano, an advertising salesman, a PR hack, and irredeemably,
a writer.
Some time in the past, while not watching a baseball game*, I had the thought of writing a novel..
And so I did.
The Impermanence of Lilies
The captain of the Titanic went down with his ship on 15 April, 1912. But thoughts have power, and those who endure in the stories of the living are said to continue to roam the world after their deaths. And so the captain wanders in search of the things he tried to find in life, and discovers his destiny intimately entwined with a painter who shares the same fate, not knowing that their paths had crossed a long time ago.
The Impermanence of Lilies is a melancholic tribute to the nature of life and a yearning for love, in a story that reaches across lifetimes, borders, and the space between two hearts.
It was launched at the last Singapore Writer’s Festival.
Some kind words.
“Lyrical and distinctive, with a rhythmic, lush prose, Daniel Yeo spins a tale of adventure and romance with often memorable images of loss and leaving. Reading The Impermanence of Lilies is like getting lost in a dream. The story of Edward Smith takes us over oceans to San Francisco, Hong Kong, Japan, Southampton, across the North Atlantic as captain of the RMS Titanic and beyond into a different form of wandering. Haunting and lonely, the story rises to a crescendo of ghostly loves in its second half. A thoughtful, often beautiful, elegiac meditation on love and loss.”
— Jon Gresham, author of We Rose Up Slowly, and editor of In This Desert, There Were Seeds
“A poetic, poignant love letter to life. Daniel Yeo has important things to tell us about the painful beauty of impermanence, and he tells them with a tender lyricism.”
— Melissa de Villiers, author of The Chameleon House
“A wistful travel narrative by the RMS Titanic Captain that dives into preternatural waters, flowing into surprising and surrealist tributaries of reflections on death, memory, identity, friendship, and unwaveringly, love.”
— Cyril Wong, poet and fictionist
The Impermanence of Lilies
is available in Kinokuniya, Times and other bookstores, and more conveniently, can be ordered online.
An Interview with Esquire
ESQ: Fate is one of the anchor themes of The Impermanence of Lilies. So, do you believe in resigning to fate or going against it? Why?
Daniel Yeo: The scientific part of me knows that nothing occurs out of nothing, and that everything is a result of something else. Which would mean that, possibly, dismally, that none of our actions and thoughts are truly of our own will. However, that would also mean, remarkably, that we are linked, inextricably, to anything and everything that has come before. In touch, still, with the very first human or living thing that has walked the earth. And that there is a single everlasting thread that ties us all together.
Think back, to the Big Bang. If energy does not come into existence out of no other form of energy, then, every form of energy or force today, is linked back, through countless millennia, to that original source of energy, the Big Bang. If you and I were to talk, we would simply be exchanging echoes of that original sound.
The romantic part of me knows the thoughts and ideas in my mind, and much as I can imagine, I cannot imagine them being mere equations, the simple results of things put together, matter of fact. I cannot accept that the feeling we call love is the result of evolutionary selection, of pheromones and dopamine, of fixed sequences of neurons firing in my brain, drawing me to a person I thought I chose.
Is there inevitable fate? Or is there unanswerable free will? I do not have the answer. But such questions sometimes lead us down some paths that might bring us somewhere we never knew.
For excerpts and more on the novel and future projects, please click the below button.
I am also a copywriter. If I have reached out to you previously, please click the below button.
If you would like to collaborate, but I have not reached out to you, please drop me a message at danielwriter@yahoo.com
*One of my favourite writers, Murakami, wrote his first novel after having the thought, while watching a baseball game.
And so it goes.