HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE

I am back from a hefty one and a half week illness, which means tongues can start wagging and you can start shaking your legs at home reading my blog. If you actually consider it much to read. I do, I wonder about you. Firstly, I would like to say, Happy New Year to all, it’s two-thousand and four. You noticed it rhymes. Well I’m a softie for stupid rhymes. Who cares. Me. I had a lot of fun last night at wen en’s party (another rhyme) but that’s for later. Today’s posting is called RANTS AND RAVES because that’s what it is, rants and raves. If you think I’m going to post you lists of ‘what is great’ and ‘what’s not’ you’re utterly mistaken. I’m not being disrespectful but, hey, it’s my blog!

RANTS AND RAVES

Bah Humbug. What happened to that fiery firebrand I had once been? Where has my intellect gone, where has my mind been all this while? Crap man, the Singaporean Education system softens you up like a Meat Tenderiser, complete with plugs and what not. I remembered in Secondary School being an angsty young punk and now I’m listening to Travis and looking at the stars in the sky and how they shine for you and all the flowers in the window and all the lovely feelings and the lovely experiences I have had, as though I were 45! And to think I’m only 18! Man what’s happened to me?

You might like to know that this is RANTS because that’s obviously what I’m doing.

Which brings me on to the movie Mona Lisa Smile. Ironically that movie highlights a lot of things I want to talk about today. I can empathize fully with Julia Roberts in trying to fight that stupid notion that people should just stay in their place, know their rights and shut their mouth. What ever happened to the belief that people should utilize fully the God-given talents God so graciously bestowed them? People have this strange notion of thinking that, if you do something, it means God can’t do it, you’re taking over the role of God. I think a more correct idea would be, God needs you to do something, God works through you, so that in the end His job is done. If you don’t do it, who’s going to do it? If Paul didn’t want to spread the gospel to the people in Asia etc, where would we be today? It’s not substitutional, but you just have got to pray more then.
Hmmph. Oh. Another thing. Worry. Fear. That’s the most stupid 2 things you can ever find in the dictionary, or in your life. Worry sucks your brain cells out of you. It displaces them into worrying, instead of doing the task that you have got at hand, or you want to do. We only have a limited capacity of brain cells, and if all of the brain cells are used up by, guess what, worrying, then where are the brain cells left to be DOING the actual thing? If I wanted to write a song and kept on worrying about my failures as a songwriter, where are the brain cells to actually think of how the song’s gonna progress? Where are the peaks and troughs? Where are all of that? No, I would be, oh, just, eh, worrying. If I wanted to do Math, (which actually can be fun if you know how to do it), and keep worrying about the difficulty of actually doing Math, you might as well stick your head up your pillow and hope that the answer falls on your table or something. Oh if you had your head up in the pillow you won’t even notice the answer. I’m sorry.
You realize I’m just RANTING about every single thing. I’m sorry, but I haven’t blogged for some time. I’ll get you updated with some good stuff later on.
The other thing is the silly notion that everything is inherited from birth, you either have it or you don’t. What a dumb thought! People in RJC are especially prone to it. They think intelligence is given straight at birth and if you have it, great, if not, sucks to you (like sucks to your ass-mar). But it’s a crazy idea. Studies have shown that intelligence actually develops over time, rather than being wholly determined from the time you came out of your mum’s womb. In my experience that’s quite true. People at the party were saying, oh so musical. Okay I thank all the people for saying that, it’s wonderful, I thank God for it, but well it wasn’t like that very very long ago, I think. Well I probably was musical but not THAT musical. Well I wasn’t tone deaf, surely, but I couldn’t tell you what key a song was being played in, or what notes were sounded, I didn’t have perfect pitch. I still don’t really have that today, though I can tell you what C is, I think. Most of the time I wake up with a C major stuck in me head, but that’s another story. Yes. I wasn’t tone deaf, but I wasn’t that musical. But then you experiment. I remembered in primary school sitting on the piano after my usual practice sessions playing with chords and trying to play tunes and all that, into secondary school I still wasn’t very good, I still didn’t learn all the funny chords. But then you learn. And then you improve. And then you grow, you live, you learn (Alanis yah yah). And slowly you become a good pianist, a better pianist, an even-better pianist. I hesitate to use the word ‘great pianist’ because that’s not true, and maybe I’d offend Rachmaninoff. You learn new things all the time.
It’s the same with Songwriting. When I look at the songs I wrote in 1998 or something, I’d just laugh. They were silly, immature, uninsightful, uninspired pieces of rubbish. I won’t even call them ‘songs’. They had lyrics like ‘A cesspool, a cesspool, a cesspool, BETRAYAL! BETRAYAL! BETRAYAL!’ (sounds like a riot act). Yes, and the music was real rubbish as well. But then you pick up the pieces and the mistakes and start again, and you learn and become better at what you do. And so after writing more and more and listening to more and more and exposing to more and more I began writing better songs, and now it’s much easier to write. Last time I didn’t have music running through my head that clearly or that nicely, but then you learn, and then you grow. More about songwriting later.
I’m trying to inspire those people (IRONIC, IRONIC IRONIC) who are self-defeated suckers and think, OH CRAP I CAN’T PLAY MUSIC, OH NO, HOW?? I DON’T HAVE THE TALENT! I DON’T HAVE THE GIFTS!? Oh don’t be silly, come on, wake up! Got a piano? Oh that’s good. Then start to play some songs. Learn the basic chords okay I can teach you it ain’t that hard, and soon you’d get better and better. It’s the same with everything, actually.
More RANTING. The problem with the Singaporean education system is its nanny-like mentality. A lot of things can be taught by pure guidance, but some things require one to go and find out for oneself. It’s called ‘pure loving neglect’. Somehow through neglect people grow, people get stronger. Of course you don’t’ go over the edge, but how are you going to grow if you can’t get off that NEST you’re going to remain a NESTLING you big BIRD NESTLING!!!

Let’s have some RAVE, SHALL WE. It’s awfully stifling just ranting on about my life.

CALM DOWN, GET A SIP OF WATER, YES…BREATHE… (I am literally talking to myself as I write this blog. It’s pretty damn good fun. coz my parents won’t let me out to play pool but this is as good as it gets)

Okay, here goes.

Okay so I was sick, and so I got well. Well done to me. I hope I don’t fall sick again. I was at Wen En’s house yesterday having new year countdown party, and it was quite a fun experience. Okay the crowd wasn’t that great, the food was okay a misnomer, but the whole thing was not bad. The people made it so. It was quite a funny mix, compromising mainly the humanities people from 1c and a few from 1a, while 1b was represented only by cuifen, colin and mel, while Darren and the ac geps came over to party also, along with some j1s. so you now know why it was a weird mix. I basically floated my way from the humans people at the mahjong table to the talking ac pple (though I refused to go swimming) to talk to mel and adriel sometimes and back again to mahjong. Well, mahjong is addictive. It’s good for conversations and parties but somehow you never get past the topic of mahjong, DUH. All you hear are ‘PONGS’ and ‘jias’ and, my famous, ‘eh what’s the wind?’ okay I never get the wind. Stupid things. So we stayed over and all that. The interesting part of the conversation was with the ac pple about how things were going, which eventually strayed, inevitably, to the topic of girls.
Slept at six, woke up at nine. okay still not dead, yet. I hasten to add.
The wonderful thing about Wen En’s party, was, well, the house. It’s damn nice. I walked in, and I thought it was some hotel or something, honestly. They had lights positioned in all the nice locations so it was really lovely, and the first thing you notice is the garage with 2 ferarris, a mercs, and a family car, and the architecture is so Zen and spaciously airy, almost minimalist. The ceilings are high which lends to that air in a nice tone of white. Walking in, it felt like a museum. The living room was nicely done, there were 2 dining rooms with black tables that felt almost like eating at a posh Jap restaurant, although the food wasn’t that posh but never mind. The drinks were nice. Had tequila orange, vodka lime (the real thing, not sprite like they give you in bars), kilkenny and Hoegarden beer. The hoegarden was just wonderful. It’s lovely stuff, with a nice aftertaste and an almost creamy texture.
But the two highlights of the house were the lovely lounge and the patio outside, although his room was quite nice too. The lounge featured as a highlight a wonderful piano (it’s $27000 bucks apparently) that sounded really in tune (of course) compared to mine, the keys were nice to play, and your fingers just glide over the ivories. It was just fun entertaining people on the piano, eh playing ‘somebody to watch over me’ for jireh to sing, the ‘la vie en rose’, the ‘shawn song’ got its premiere too, in front of Debbie and anna to ‘so cute ah’ okay I hope brown thinks so (they incidentally couldn’t’ receive the midi however, I’d betta send it to them), just playing jazz and all that. Random notes that seemed like something. Haha. I have a knack for that. I was trying to write a jazz tune actually, been trying for days. Ok so I haven’t really added any new tunes but it was just fun being in the lounge. We needed some martinis to go along, dim the lights. Perfect atmosphere. Debbie and anna were having a riot with jireh on the sofa-bed okay that sounded bad they were actually, really, just talking. The other nice spot was the patio. From there you could see the lovely coconut trees in a very nice al-fresco setting, to see the stars, the pool in its glistening glory, and it was nice just lounging over there to wait for romantic juices to flow, and music to enter your mind. It was nice just, being, there. I think next time if his house weren’t so deep in I’d come over to write songs. It’s just the best atmosphere to do so, man. Just the kinda stuff you’d need to get the ultimate romantic, emotional mood.
Oh well. Just going to talk about songwriting as the last kink in my ‘RAVE’. HAHA. IT’S FINALLY OVER. I think I’ve sorta grown up thinking songwriting was this ‘aura-filled’ thing when the song will just slip into your mind and you’ll write it down and all that. Bull. So easy? Haha. Think again. Actually it’s more like a working process. Think of issues, write them down, and think of lyrics, think of tunes, start singing them in your head, and sooner or later you’ll get a good one, albeit with the split-second delay of your mind that comes with inspiration — you become unconscious of your creating. That’s when you know you’ve got a song. ‘Autumn’ was written with sweat and tears. Seriously. Many many revisions. The latest jazz piece is also going to be written with a craftsman’s rigour, with highs and lows, troughs and valleys, quickening and dimming. Real emotions. Because that’s what counts. It was really cool today coz I just sat around, strummed some guitars, thought of an issue, and boom I got like 5 different choruses, some of which are sucky but some of which are quite alright. Just like that. It’s a rigourous thing, not just a ‘sit and wait till the skies fall with song’ thing. Just like playing the piano is. So that’s my new year’s resolution change. I’m going to search for them rather than wait for them to fall.

You see, my fire’s gone, when it was still raging just now. It’s all your fault. Hah.