This one goes on to you, All the reasons I know. This one goes on to you, I never had a clue.

Meet Kevin Bacon – he’s the award that the player of the day in my hockey team gets to take home for a week. Said player is then also entrusted with the duty of bringing a box of half-time oranges to the next game. So that was me, last week. Although I finally got a goal on Saturday, I’m kinda bummed it wasn’t the cleanest of goals… but I’ll live. I was all too happy to pass Kevin Bacon onto a teammate for her tough efforts in defense this week though. We only drew 1-all, but hopefully it will do the trick we want it to do on the points table.

Isn’t Kevin Bacon cute?

I’ve actually just gotten back from the boy’s house where I was helping him out with his honours presentation that he has to give tomorrow. At first I felt a little picky, pointing out “things to improve” and getting him to re-order and re-structure some things but I’m glad he actually found me helpful rather than annoying. And I feel like I gave him some good points that’s helped to set off some major improvements which can’t hurt. I’ve got so much work I still need to do for my transcription due on Wednesday, which is going to be tough, but in the meantime, I certainly don’t envy being the boy. Which is worse? A 50minute presentation on a hard topic for which ten thousand words is due in a couple of weeks’ time, OR a 64-bar transcription, bebop composition assignment complete with a shout chorus, improvisation playing test, and a jazz combo recital? All of which is really… daunting. Anyway, pointless non-comparisons aside, what’s getting us through these grueling two weeks until our two week mid-semester break is a 3-day trip that I’ve planned for us to take on the 28th-30th August. To be more precise, “I’ve planned” it in the sense that the boy has no idea where we are going, except for the few hints I’ve given him. Two nights away at some mystery spot somewhere south of Auckland, within 5 hours’ drive away. I’ve also told him that we’re staying at two contrasting places for each night, that are only (according to Google Maps) within 6 minutes of driving time from one another. And that we need to bring bedding for the first night. It’s going to be amazing. I’m so crap at keeping secrets and surprises to myself that this is really proving to be quite the challenge, but I’m sure the look on his face will pay off. I think I’m going to end up asking him to drive so that I can take photos along the way. So it will go something like “keep driving, turn here, hold on, are we going the right way? I hope so, because you don’t know where we’re meant to be going”, haha.

Playlist of the evening:

1. Dawn – Kordan
I stumbled upon this band and fell for them only a month ago. I remember so clearly when I found them, because I was just about to go over to the boy’s house, but a link had brought me to their band’s website and the video for “Closer” (the song below) was on autoplay and made me sit down and really listen to them. I wish this song was longer. There’s a weird, almost dissatisfying feeling about this song, because I feel like “something” ought to happen in it, but does not. Anyway, I think this is a great album opener, thus a great playlist opener.

2. Closer – Kordan
Probably my favourite song by this band. It’s right up my alley with its dreamy, shoe-gazey sound that is coupled with sweetly endearing lyrics. It’s the sort of music I like to listen to at night either alone or tucked up with the other half.

3. Boxcar – The Embassy
The boy acquainted me with this artist, and I was saying to him the other day how undated and “relevant” this album still sounds, even though it was released almost a decade ago. I can’t think of anything else in particular from 2002 that I would label as having a “fresh” feel even today. It’s a deceptively cheerful-sounding song that actually has rather sad undertones in the lyrics, and is also where this post’s title comes from.

4. All We Ask – Grizzly Bear
I’ve had this album sit on my computer for two years now, and never really gave it a chance until a couple of nights ago. For some reason this song almost sounds-waltzy to me, and it’s really just so soft, soft, lovely. I’m such a sucker for romance.

5. Say Something Say Anything – Blood Red Shoes
I might have even put this song in a much older playlist but I don’t remember. I just have a faint recollection of having blogged about this song at some point, I’m pretty sure. Yeah, yeah, I wouldn’t say this song is musically amazing or anything, but once again it falls under “songs/bands I love for un-obvious reasons”. One might hazard a guess that I like this band because it’s a male/female duo (as I mentioned a couple of playlists ago of my affinity for them), but that’s never a good reason to like a band. They just have songs that snap at me and makes me want to listen and keep listening. They do their style so well, I don’t even care about listening to “similar artists”. To be honest – and anyone who’s been in my company whilst I’ve screamed along to this song in my car will have been told this many times – I really only listen to this song for the line that kicks in about three quarters of the way in, during the bridge, repeated all the way to the end: so tell me, how long, how long, how long can you miss someone?

6. Neat Little Rows – Elbow
Apparently this band is amazing. So I gave them a listen. And they’re not bad. I haven’t quite fallen for them yet though, but they are pretty good. Although, when I went on Youtube to acquire the link for this playlist, I couldn’t sit through the video since… well I am not a fan of seeing fat men sing passionately in a set-up situation, and would rather let the sonic merits of his voice (and the band) shine through, unaffected. That sounds bitchy though. But I always think that if you are going to spend that much money making a video… Regardless, I like their new album, Build A Rocket Boys!

7. Lovely Allen – Holy Fuck
Holy Fuck is definitely one of those bands that I started liking twice as much (if not more) after seeing them live. I especially like bands that can pull off instrumentals, and they definitely do. I have no idea if this song has or not, but I always feel as if it must have been used in a movie or something. It starts and ends so beautifully, too – a well rounded, happy-ending kind of song, thus, bringing this playlist to a close.

And oh yeah, in a spout of madness on Friday, I bought these shoes from Topshop. I had been waiting for them to come out online for soooo long and had checked daily for months – but then they happened to be released on the two days that I didn’t turn my computer on at all and were sold out immediately. They’re now being scalped off ebay and the like for around twice the price. Yikes. So maybe there is an upside to The Department Store now having Topshop after all. I know, I know, they’re incredibly sparkly and to be perfectly honest, little over a year ago I would never go near them, but I think my shoe-thing all began with infamous patent aqua Dr. Martens. I was tossing up between the black glitter and these silver ones, but then thought, oh heck, if I’m going to do glitter I may as well really sparkle. Plus I have black boots anyway.

Oh, say say say – “Wait, they don’t love you like i love you”

Words that I would absolutely die if I heard, yet feel like I will definitely die if I don’t. The lacklustre blogging is because uni and life have had a hold on me this past week, and with the entire family back together again, life will surely preoccupy me for the next week to come also. Dad’s back for the week as of earlier this evening. Picked him up from the airport and then took him out to dinner. Brought the boy with me, and so the “big two” men of my life met. Scarily so.

Taken on Ilford HP5 Plus 400 B/W film; Nikon F3. A photo I had used in the exhibition.

Call me sentimental, but honestly, I’m only blogging in the middle of the night because I wanted to post this playlist. It’s important to me. Close to heart. Far too dear. I would cry to every song if left alone on my own with this playlist… or even if I wasn’t alone. The amount of times I have. Over the person this playlist represents.

For the two years apart, six months together and an infinite more. Six songs for the past and one for the very endearing right now:

1. Bluish – Animal Collective
First night, first band he introduced me to. From one of the best albums of that year (2009), a very fitting song with very fitting lyrics.

2. Roads – Portishead
From an unforgettable night with this unforgettable album. I also wrote about “Mysterons” from Portishead’s album, Dummy, here. Everything about this so is just so subtle, so powerful… just so.

3. Ion Square – Bloc Party
“The perfect modern love song” – We dissected this song’s lyrics to smithereens, and who could blame us? The words are just so beautifully, powerfully written and described how we were for such a short while. A short while that has frozen itself for eternity in my memory. In an otherwise-forgotten song from an otherwise-dismissed album, we found Kele’s words which I wish were mine. Lyrics can be found here at their band website.

4. Y Control – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
From one of my all-time favourite albums, by one of my timelessly favourite bands. An unbearable reminder. Also the name of the epically long playlist I made last year which prompted me to start writing again.

5. Blush – The Raveonettes
I told him to listen to this song because I loved it. I told him I loved this song because I love the band. I knew he would listen to this song because I said so. And this song said everything I couldn’t. The most honest juxtaposition made with noisy, noisy guitar and such soft, realistic lyrics.

6. In Particular – Blonde Redhead
On repeat in his room, after two very mind-sucking(ly good, one of them was) movies. Then live at Laneway festival precisely six months ago, today. This band proves that former jazz students can write and play other genres too. And very well at that.

7. Overcome – Tricky
All the nights spent sleeping to this song on a previous playlist… for the times spent reading in his bed, to time spent “dancing” to this song. It’s a bloody good album opener, I’ll say that much. And very sexy too.

Seven months ago I was the commitment-phobe that found peace and company by means of globe-trotting. Now I’d still like to keep doing so… just perhaps not so alone. It’s scary, I’m a completely different person now than I was one, two, three, six months ago.

So maybe the point is that nowadays, I plan for tomorrow morning, tomorrow evening… I think about the upcoming “next week”s, I plot a while ahead. I can finally see that “ahead” even exists at all. That I don’t have to be like everything I’ve been taught through nurture (torture), and that some people don’t give up on me just because I pretend I want them to.

” And I am certain that I love you, more than I am certain that I like myself. “

So hold me, you know this wasn’t planned. Hold me close, you’ll hold

Class today was a bit of a joke. I had a clash so got moved into a different combo, which meant that I now only have 1.5hrs of class on Tuesdays. On all the students’ timetables online, it said that our Composition & Arranging class was at 1pm-2.30pm, but according to the teachers’ version of the timetables, class is set for 12pm-1.30pm. I only found out by accident yesterday, whilst trying to sort out the clash with the HOD and the teacher in charge of combo placements; so I ended up txting Oli, the teacher for this paper, to confirm that it was indeed at noon. In the end, only five people (myself included) showed up for class on time, so Oli decided to call it lunch time and to start class at 1pm when everyone else showed up.

Turns out, Student Services Online and the music school admin is more useless than we thought, and they had mucked up the times of the class before and after ours as well! And this is for classes of 3rd years, 2nd years and honours students, all for just one room! Ridiculous.

I ended up going over to Albert Park on the other side of campus to have lunch with the boy since the weather was so lovely outside. Lovely, but freezing. I happened to have everything the boy wanted for lunch so I shared and took a couple of quick snaps before anyone spotted me being touristy. Basically, going anywhere else on/near campus is a novelty for me, since I virtually never venture out of the KMC.

Seeing this fountain today made me think of The Fountainhead. My sister is a fair way through it now, and I read her a chapter earlier tonight as she curled up in bed.

My box of fuit and salami & cheese sandwiches. I bought that Marcs skirt along with the cardigan I was on about yesterday. It’s nice to own and wear a bit of c0lour… I constantly look fit for a funeral, otherwise.

 I was going to post a couple of nice songs but decided against it… I think I’ll post a full playlist along with youtube links later in the week instead. For now, a poem:

“HOme”

O I have allowed too many
visitors
Not guests
into this house that
was not
my            Home

until You
entered and affixed
a light
a heat
into the deep bellies
O’ the ceiling.

i have sat and laid
and chat
with mortal,
ordinary ones.
more than once.
special, they ought
think not,
for what is a host
without a cause?

for empty nights i stared
            at walls
            at all
            at.
i can’t alter the backlog.

you wonder of the
dozen more hands that touched
the door and
wiped the floor
filthy tracks
like thoroughfare
i conduct memories as an
   archival library –
irrelevant, useless, left to dust and rot but
libraries must be kept in order. In check,
in line,
with time.

            You daren’t
            Enquire.
for this HOme was an old house,
      a trodden, (mis)used refused
      house with mislaid boards and
      traps, set just-so;
But this HOme is now
transformed
morphed
crystallised
into well-polished
sparkling form today.

and my Home is no longer open,
            not for sale
            to the highest bidder,
any bidder,
even more handsome than thee–
this once Open HOme is
            Sold
to its old-Owner
whose key to the door
and cellar
Is the Only
One
that Fits,
O.

Obligation, Complication, Routines and schedules

I need to blog more often throughout the week so that the “things I want to blog about” don’t snowball up into one massive blog entry that resembles a tree with branches spurting out all over the place, rather than a more sightly lone autumn leaf that people like to pay strange amounts of attention to. See? There is so much crap that has accumulated in a week’s time that my very first sentence alone is far too long and disturbing. Okay.

I want to know – how much do “normal people” let things get to them? How much empathy are most people capable of, especially when it comes to books, movies and music? I haven’t done much in the past week, except I feel like I’ve been on an intense emotional rollercoaster, and I’m not too sure whether I enjoy this or not. And the root of all this spawns off into many, many tangents.

 

Taken on Ilford HP5 Plus 400 B/W film; Nikon F3. A photo I had used in the exhibition.

For one, the reason I asked the questions above is because I’m one of those people who cry at movies, TV, music, books, you name it. Even a single, beautifully written line can get my tear ducts working on overdrive. I have this unfortunate (I feel, for the most part) ability to perceive, then receive and feel everything on such a personal, realistic level. I’d taken the last couple of days off reading, but ever since starting it last week, I have been disappearing into Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead (just over halfway through it now). I read a particularly painful part of the novel at the boy’s house, and tears started pouring down my face. I felt bad and embarrassed because it’s an odd predicament isn’t it – to have someone crying over a book you gave them – but oh heck, he deals with worse from me. Then I told him this is exactly what I mean by things getting to me. I wish I didn’t feel and care so goddamn much about everything; I hate how everything has the ability to seep right through my rough and tough exterior and pluck and snap at my heartstrings. Felisa (who no longer blogs publicly, I think) and I have discussed how it’s almost like a writer or artist’s complex – that we notice things that other people might merely glance at, and actually register such things. Because we then go on to recreate them. My therapist said I need to stop owning everyone else’s feelings and my mother said maybe I should go into acting.

On the flip side, I can be a totally detached and hardened person. I can force myself to feel an empty hollowness, rather than invest any personal interest or reaction to something. It’s probably better in terms of a “public self”, but do I really want to feel empty and hollow and react to nothing?

Also, this is the playlist I slept and read to for a couple of days in a row. Favourite track from The King of Limbs mixed in with a bunch of Tricky. There is something painfully sexy about it all. And it proved to be a great sober-driving-at-3am-playlist, after a Friday night spent dancing my legs off to music I wouldn’t ever listen to outside of a club. Many people find it surprising that I dance. Sober, even. It’s liberating and I feel kind of powerful. Not because I had seven pairs of eyes glued to me (none of which I was interested in), but because it made no difference to me whether there were any at all. It’s the same feeling I get even when I’m just doing normal things during normal hours, and rather reminds me of Marina having said that she magically attracts men even when she’s not trying. It is the power in that innocence, precisely; yet not at all, and so much more all at the same time.

I think I might have to blog about it later rather than squish it into this post, but I have a 40-minute appointment with the HOD of Jazz on Tuesday. We’re all scheduled in for a 10 minute chat each, mostly about the changes to the Bachelor of Music degree structure that will be implemented next year, but I have broader issues to discuss in terms of what I’m going to enroll in… such a complicated and delicate issue that will potentially affect my future more than it will affect any other jazz students. Urgh.

 

let your will displace me on the ledge

Yesterday I fractured someone’s cheekbone.

I had been doing really well with both forehand and reverse shots on goal when we were warming up at our hockey game, doing the usual “pass-pass-shoot at goal” drill… but then for some reason a teammate of mine was crouching behind the goal. I’m not sure why – picking up a ball maybe? No one saw her there – even the goalie wasn’t aware of her presence because she was crouched down by the backboard – until she suddenly stood up just as I had taken my shot on goal, which either pinged off the post or whizzed right past it, I’m not sure. Either way, it ended up smacking her square in the cheek, and down she went. I felt awful. And still do. Even though technically it is entirely her fault and not mine, this is the second head injury I’ve given someone at hockey – regardless of the fact that both times have been caused by the carelessness of the person injured, ahhh!

Anyway, I’m glad to finally have the time to blog, now that I’m on semester break. The last couple of weeks have been absolutely hellish, and during repertoire assessment week, I was just rehearsing and playing hours on end, trying to get things right. It was mainly for other people’s assessments as mine was the second out of the entire bunch so I already had it out of the way first thing on Tuesday morning. Somehow, sometime in my very very busy week, I managed to scribble out this poem in the space of five minutes or less in bed:

Fragile Contents

Can I give you my entire heart
place it in your palm
let your fingers trace
around its edge–

Can I entrust you my entire heart
place it in your care
let your will displace
me on the ledge–

Can I tell you my entire heart
though tainted, broke,
has long been yours;
an accident

please be sincere
not careful

I don’t know how I do stuff like that. When I write, it kind of just magically happens, so fast that I don’t know what I’ve written until I go back and read it afterwards. Also, I finally grew some balls drew up enough courage to put up some writing in the WRITING PAGE (or click on the page in the navigation at top of page). It’s taken me ages, but I think I’m going to try and keep putting stuff there, despite the largely personal nature of my writing – I guess I just got over it and thought, oh heck, why not. So if anyone ever reads anything, please do share your thoughts.

Also, I know I’ve probably regurgitated this topic a million times, but it’s a recurring theme lately, and this blog post has reignited the whole identity crisis once again (I have lots to say with regards to the blog post I linked, but I’ll go on that tangent another time). I suppose I’ve always been pretty torn on the idea of “art” in general. I’ve always thought that art is rather self-indulgent, and yet I can’t help but think of myself as an artist in general. Not just as a musician. Which, there in itself, is a tough topic to wrestle with. I know I’m a jazz student and that’s how a lot of people initially or primarily identify me as these days – because, you know, this is the age during which everyone becomes “defined” in an annoyingly large way by what degree they’re studying at university or whatever (which later in life turns into what job you have); but I’m really tired of the title of it and would rather just be known as a general creative, artistic person. Or, not even that, I’d rather just be known as me, and be attributed with artistic creativity and intellect. As I was just saying to the boy a couple of hours ago when we were walking his dog at the beach, I’m having a really hard time feeling focused on just jazz. I do love and enjoy it (despite complaining about how this is a very expensive and painful way of spending three years of my life), but at the same time I am hungry for so much MORE, all the time.

I write hungrily, lustily, as if all the words flowing out in black ink was fulfilling and feeding me in some way: rather than the idea that what I write is actually output, it actually feels like input. When I was younger, I read as if I was consuming something, and I could read very, very fast, yet somehow still retain what I was reading. But these days I’ve been reading at a much slower tempo. OCD habits and a shortage of time aside, the main reason and difference is that I feel like I am absorbing all these beautifully crafted sentences and letting them inspire ones of my own. I finally finished the Great Gatsby the other day, and it took me a few hours to read the last hundred pages of it at the boy’s house – the reason being, I felt like with every few sentences, my mind was forming new concepts of its own. I now seem incapable of just purely reading, instead I’m involuntarily analysing the damn thing as I go along. Wow, the choice of diction in that sentence. The style in which that was said and how it helps to portray what is being said. On and on. I can’t stop. It’s driving me insane. Which is also why I get so annoyed whenever the boy asks, “have you finished it yet?”. It pisses me off so bad. It’s like, ARGHHH when I do find the time, I can read fast, I just seem incapable of doing that right now because of how many channels what I’m reading is being processed through.

But back to what I was saying earlier. The other night I had a short chat online with a former teacher of mine, and for the zillionth time I got told “I had always thought you would be a lawyer”; and prior to that a friend had joked “but who’s going to handle my divorce?” – and once again a wrench was thrown into my system. My friend David and I were discussing last night about how we both miss the academic, analytical, use-your-brain-and-pick-things-to-pieces-from-every-possible-angle business that being a music student just really doesn’t quite fulfill. He’s a composition major overseas whilst I’m doing performance. He could have done med or anything else he wanted to, but stuck to his artistic “talent”. And what do I make of genuinely enjoying the boy’s practise law essay questions and wishing I had the academic means of answering them? I don’t know what by, but the academic side of my brain needs to be fed. More. And the jazzically (yes, I made that word up) creative parts of my brain needs a desperate top up of inspiration because I’m running dangerously low, if not empty already. I’m such a scatterbrained person that I need something really concentrated and direct to keep my attention – so how do I focus on an art form that is so… scattered? The rule is to “learn the changes, then forget them”, but my gosh that is far easier said than done. Just as I thought I had smothered this quarter-life crisis, it rears its ugly head in again. But one key thing I must point out is that this whole “what should I have done/did I do the right thing/what will I do after this” in reference to studying jazz instead of law, and whether I should be doing either, neither, or both of them has plagued my mind since last year – so I hope that clears up any confusion with people thinking that the boy has influenced any of this. If anything, I think he would raise an eyebrow if I ever told him, “right, I’m going overseas and studying law” after this.

In the meantime, I think I am going to rearrange my room a little (or at least tidy it) for a bit of freshness, and enjoy my mother’s quiche. I found these 4-month-old photos the other night and started craving quiche. A craving which my lovely mother was kind enough to cater to the very next day. Yum!

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