redemption

A day has passed, but I am still pleasantly numb with savage joy.

I have exceeded my own expectations. The crownless again shall be king, and then some more. Despite the sense of overtime, demons have been vanquished, and wyrms have been slain. Wrongs have been righted.

I have neither let myself nor my friends down. Dear friends, you have borne me above troubled waters; you have freed me from limbo and unfurled my wings.

I fly with the flock once more.

love - #5 Daydreamer

- art by Cory Godbey

Daydreamer,
Sittin' on the seat/Soakin' up the sun
He is a real lover
Makin' up the past
And feeling up his girl/like he's never felt her figure before

A jaw dropper
Looks good when he when he walks/He's the subject of their talk
He would be hard to chase,
But good to catch
And he could change the world/with his hands behind his back/Oh

You can find him/sittin' on your doorstep
Waiting for the surprise
It will feel like he's been there for hours
And you can tell that he'll be there for life

Daydreamer
With eyes that make you melt
He lends his coat for shelter plus he's there for you
When he shouldn't be
But he stays all the same, waits for you/then sees you through

There's no way I could describe him
What I said is/just what I'm hoping for

But I will find him/sittin' on my doorstep
Waiting for the surprise
It will feel like he's been there for hours
And I can tell that he'll be there for life

You can tell he'll be there for life.

-- Adele

-----
Take care. Happy Valentine's.

I have a foolish thought.

I wonder how you're coping with all the snow?

I dig up some old emails.

I think I'm fucked up. I really do.

hallelujah

- art by ochrejelly

Now I've heard there was a secret chord/that David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this -
The fourth, the fifth/the minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof/You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair/She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Well maybe there's a god above/But all I've every learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you
I've seen your flag on the marble arch/Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

There was a time you let me know/What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
And remember when I moved in you/the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

You say I took the name in vain/I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light in every word/It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much/I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong/I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah.

Hallelujah.

-- Leonard Cohen

this is annoying.

- art by Domitille Collardey

I am busy.

I have started my lessons at the driving school.
I have had to make do with the small and under-equipped gym at my workplace.
I have weekly sessions of acupuncture (more on that soon) and physiotherapy.
I have a nearly-due quarterly report to compile.
I have two new understudies to train.
I have applications to fill in.
I have a body to build.
I have a mind to enrich.
I have music to make.
I have issues.

I am busy.

I am distressed.

Earlier on, I saw a girl who looked just like you at CHJIMES. But she could not have been you.

Reality is perceived by my mind and not my eyes. I am sure of that.

Therein lies a dire distortion of Plato's opinion, which, to my fancy, I am borrowing out of context - that the flesh and senses are a dark glass which obscures reality and absolute truth. I have a mind which screws around with my senses. There are ghosts and ghosts of ghosts within it, and they plague me in this growing agony which I have been conscripted to. I am worried.

It is four in the morning and I can't sleep.

I hope you are well.

I have regrets.

Why on earth did I drag you to see Wall-E? We could have watched Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea.

I'm sure you would have liked it.

the darkling thrush

art by Erwin Madrid

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervorless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

-- Thomas Hardy, 31 December 1900

-------------------------------------

Thank you -

Adam and Derrick, brothers in freedom and song.
Ben Koh, for tiding me through my foolery.
Xiaoting, confidante and friend.
Chris, Jes, KC, Mervyn and William, for being such wonderful colleagues.
and Pip, Faii and Rayner, for always standing by me.

Most importantly, thank You - for teaching me how to live; how to love, and how not to - and for those firsts which I will cherish for as long as I shall remember you.

Finally, if there is one thing that I have learnt above all else this year, it is that trying is never enough. One does, or does not.

You have my well-wishes too, dear Reader.

Here's to a happier and better New Year than the last.

music calleth

I turn to music when I wish to remember; I too turn to music when I wish to forget.

To the individual, it is a poor salve for pain, for its effects are transient. But it is still a beautiful thing, to know music - to be able to cry and mourn to the skies.

These are my thoughts.

*****
I am in the company of some very old friends. It is a grand reunion.

Ike and Shuxiang are on the fiddles, and Adriel is on the cello. Rayner is hunched over the piano; Christopher and Oliver peer over my shoulder like a pair of intrigued owls.

It is a 'bowing meeting'! and I find myself in a studio at the Yong Siew Toh conservatory - all wood and glass, capped by a high ceiling, all of which make for beautiful acoustics. It is also my first visit to the building. I have never been here before. I have had no desire to. It is a sprawling mess of glass, concrete, card-access points and security booths.

(Mr.) Chan sits amidst the half-moon of strings. We have been playing - it is the Brahms, and the first symphony, no less. It is my first reading, and I think that I am doing quite well, in spite of not having touched my instrument for more than half a year.

The First Symphony is a splendid piece. It is replete with terrible beauty and a wholesome, intense melancholy. It was clearly composed by a man in great emotional agony.

-----
Chan works his porcine features, and squints hard into the distance. "What was it that afflicted Schubert?"

We giggle like a bunch of schoolgirls. "Syphilis!" Shuxiang chirps brightly.

"And Schumann..." Ike looks around thoughtfully.

"Oh he just went mad."

It might have been syphilis too, I offer helpfully - a rather modern view that finds little purchase with most musicians. Chan, however, has moved on. He makes a proclamation.

"Brahms? Brahms! He suffered from lovesickness."

He pauses -

"And that was why he wrote such phenomenal music."

There is an ensuing ripple of appreciative laughter, which soon gives way to an awkward moment of introspection.

*****
Brahms' music, I think, was also hardly panacea for himself. He lived his life as a tormented wretch, right to the miserable end. The beauty within his heart, however, lives on. It has found a place in his music.

Under Fate's hand, true happiness was the price which he unwillingly paid for such immortality. It is a terrible exchange, and I only wish to point that out -

- and somehow, somewhere in his grave - I am sure that Brahms agrees.

the wind cries mary

art by James Jean

After all the jacks are in their boxes
And the clowns have all gone to bed
You can hear happiness staggering on down the street
Footprints dressed in red
And the wind whispers Mary

A broom is drearily sweeping
Up the broken pieces of yesterday’s life
Somewhere a queen is weeping
Somewhere a king has no wife
And the wind, it cries Mary

The traffic lights they turn up blue tomorrow
And shine their emptiness down on my bed
The tiny island sags downstream
‘Cause the life that lived is, is dead
And the wind screams Mary

Will the wind ever remember
The names it has blown in the past
And with his crutch, it’s old age, and it's wisdom
It whispers no, this will be the last -

And the wind cries Mary.

-- Jimi Hendrix

----------------------
I do not think it pleasant to torment oneself, but I have not ceased thinking about you. Not even a little. All things considered, never have I, however, counted on your return to Singapore after Michaelmas, nor had I counted on seeing you in a shopping center during an illicit lunch outing in the middle of a workday.
----------------------

I remember this song well. It was the first Hendrix that I sent you.

You liked it (:

human beings

art by James Jean

are four-dimensional. That is, only if time is strictly perceived to be a dimension, and only if we truly travel in the wake of its arrow.

Are we not the sum of our experiences? We are that, and what we make of them; I think that we are all what we have been.

And that scares me.

I wish

to extend my heartfelt thanks to all my well-wishers. I have truly been overwhelmed by your goodwill. It has certainly been an enjoyable 19th birthday, and I have each and every one of you to be grateful for.

That is all.

an open letter - #2

art by Rad Sechrist

Small actions can go a long way; you gave me solace and strength through yours. Thank you for the letter - I have it under my pillow. I trust that it will see me through the next year.

Happy birthday - I really miss you.

O.K. Corral

art by Ewing Galloway

O.K. Corral - there the outlaw band
make their final stand;
O.K. Corral -

Oh, my dearest one, must I/Lay down my gun or take
the chance/Of losing you forever
Duty calls, my back's against the wall
Have you no kind words to say/Before I ride away -
Away?

Your love, your love, I need your love
Keep the flame, let it burn
Until I return/From the gunfight at O.K. Corral
If the Lord is my friend, we'll meet at the end
Of the gunfight at O.K. Corral.

after love

He is watching the music with his eyes closed.
Hearing the piano like a man moving
through the woods thinking by feeling.
The orchestra up in the trees, the heart below,
step by step. The music hurrying sometimes,
but always returning to quiet, like the man
remembering and hoping. It is a thing in us,
mostly unnoticed. There is somehow a pleasure
in the loss. In the yearning. The pain
going this way and that. Never again.
Never bodied again. Again the never.
Slowly. No undergrowth. Almost leaving.
A humming beauty in the silence.
The having been. Having had. And the man
knowing all of him will come to the end.

-- Jack Gilbert

via the New Yorker

art by Goro Fujita

"I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
for love would be love for the wrong thing; there is yet faith
but faith and love and hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
so darkness shall be the light and the stillness the dancing."

-- T.S. Eliot, Quartets