Sonic Youth - The Eternal

Despite Pete Townshend's famously-reneged-on promise, rockers get old - usually with informative, if not interesting results. The increasingly inappropriately-named Sonic Youth's latest album The Eternal is a thudding collage of times and places that paints us a compelling picture of a group of aging hipsters who've internalised tragedy for no loss of rage.

What struck me about the sound of this album, with respect to the few before that, is how much more stable this sounds. It's not that they've lost their penchant for the two-guitar-noisebox-freakout (they haven't) - but where these were inchoate screeches of rage on Daydream Nation, lovestruck soundscapes on NYC Ghosts, and structural punctuation on Rather Ripped, here they are the self-assured sonic statements of a bunch of musicians past their age but not past their time. It's as if Thurston and Lee's wild noise generations have ceased to become acts of rebellion but instead have become a fully-fledged language that the whole band speaks with the ease and looseness of long-time native speakers. Where a younger Sonic Youth might have delved into more extravagant textural fuckery, this older and wiser band seems content at times to sit back, make noises, and revel quietly in the chaos.

The effect of this is perhaps more in keeping with the general feeling of the album - less personal than Rather Ripped, less political than Daydream, more focused and more song-y than NYC. In many ways it is a retrospective - 'It's been quite a ride/with you my sweet, here by my side' Thurston sings on 'What We Know'. And the creepy Kim Gordon tour-de-force that is 'Massage the History' is a powerful lament of past grief. It's no surprise that they're looking back somewhat - Kim and Thurston are what, 50? and no serious philosophy would refuse to look back and make sense of a past that must have been wilder than anything I can imagine.

Lyrically, Sonic Youth have always been dodgy - the half-written jive-verse served to signify a rebellion against the very foundations of language at its best ('Teenage Riot') and a somewhat misplaced grandeur at its worst ('Rats' - also, 'werewolf commando poison tongue?' Really, Thurston?). Here they've perhaps given up on the idea of ever writing traditionally good lyrics. Instead, they've written several highly functional songs that eschew irony purposefully. It's refreshing in some ways that they've given up posturing, and where the lyrics grate they at least make you think about what they mean, and they never mean nothing (I wish I could be/music on a tree). It could be the fan in me being charitable, but of all the strange barely-coherent inhabitants of the alternative universe, I find that these guys are probably part of the few who've transcended the need for songform and parse-able lyrics. They're still pretty terrible at it sometimes. At its best though, the lyrics hint darkly at meaning the way the music hints at structure and beauty, and never fail to bubble up from the texture at the right moments.

And that's important because primarily the Youth are a music band rather than a lyrics band, and the lyrics are fundamentally un-divorceable from the music, unlike say Paul Simon. I for one am glad that they've decided to stick to song form after the brilliant-but-almost-horrible sprawl of NYC Ghosts. As in all of their work, the actual music is the (very) necessary counterpoint to their lyrics. Now that they seem to be content with what lyrics they can muster, they can relax and let the music carry the lyrics to wherever the hell they want it to with the assuredness of master inventors. When Kim Gordon whispers grief in 'Massage the History', Thurston's wide-eyed guitar reveals a persona not broken by grief but coming out of grief looking at the world with new hope and old anger. That's a hell of an achievement for anybody, never mind a 50-year old rocker who's led the charge himself on several occasions.

I'm sure Pete Townshend is sorry that he wanted to die before he got old. Now nobody will let him live it down. He should also be sorry for missing the best thing that could happen to a rock and roller - growing old, facing down your demons and shouting your triumph and your grief to the sky. That will be the legacy of our generation, and that's what Sonic Youth have done here. Kim Gordon sums it up herself at the end of 'Massage the History' - 'Come with me to the other side/Not everyone makes it out alive'.

xmas 2010

It annoys me that I should have to talk about my feelings up here where I have made the altar of reason. But I suppose I disposed with the sacrosanct along with the sacred... so what the hell.

This year has been the best and the worst at the same time, the highest and the lowest of conditions. Just 11 months back I was still 3rd Sergeant Adam, waiting for my release into the civilian world. And then it was a storm of music and friends and preparations and saying goodbyes. And then it was a storm of newness, and those were days of ecstatic freedom and then it ended.

Now it's christmastime and I'm carrying a grief heavier than my heart. It is in part a grief for the past and the familiar that I have left behind and the unfamiliar that is in my lungs and forces a new death with every passing day. But it is mostly a grief for the futures that will never happen. These days are the fulcra about which the rest of our lives revolve. Every lost opportunity is met with its echo - a wave of grief propagating ceaselessly into the future. I grieve for one particular future that is lost, in which I prophesied happiness that is now lost to me.

There are other things: the bittersweet feeling of letting the old year die and welcoming the new one. There are songs and fireplaces, and family and the sounds of children. There are the voices of old friends and the faces of the new. All of these things are the messengers of happiness. I am grateful for them, but I still grieve, and when it passes it will not be a restoration to life but the first step in preparation for death. In the meantime, I mean to live, and that may require tears.

I'm a long long way from home

and I miss my lover so

In the early morning run

when the cold wind blows

when the cold wind blows

- Singapore army song

I did not anticipate being this far away. I did not anticipate being this alone.

On Rage

There is much cause for anger for an atheist. Everyday I am confronted with new evidence of the unbelievable stupidity and ignorance (not to say violence) that religion causes. People around the world are suffering from the effects of religion, not just because religion is misappropriated by Bad People, which it is, but because religion and its texts are engines of extremism, in the words of Sam Harris. No religion that professes a text that supports slavery and capital punishment to be the Word of God will ever be free of extremism. It is not Bad People that are solely to blame: religion is inherently to blame.

The causes for rage are many - not always a personal rage, I must admit. These are things that are to some degree removed from my personal experiences. But isn't the idea of sociopolitical and humanistic awareness basically the expansion of one's own experience to include the happenings of wider society? The concern (and indignance) is valid, I feel.

Yet there is, from another point of view, little cause for rage for one such as myself. I have religious friends who are as much human beings as anybody I know. The ideological hatefulness of religion shouldn't negate my mostly-positive personal experience of religious people and religion in general.

What I'm saying I guess is that as an atheist I should be on my guard against the sort of dogmatic hate-mongering that is the mark of extremism. Which is not to say that I should not be highly outraged whenever a human being's dignity is compromised over some laughable point of theology. However, the quality of outrage is not personal, if it doesn't happen to me. It is a specific outrage directed at injustice, not a spiteful and personal vengeance. It is too easy to be monolithic about morality and blindly apply narratives across the spectrum of my experiences.

I think that the acceptance of reason as a guide to living necessitates accepting the plurality of experience. No One Thing is true - if it is we are incapable of understanding. This might mean that I find religion reprehensible on one hand and deeply love my religious friends on the other. It doesn't make much sense, but at times the reality of feelings and experience don't make sense. It is only human to make the best we can of it.

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

-Walt Whitman, 'Song of Myself'

Leo Igwe at the 2nd Annual Conference for the Free Society Institute of South Africa

'To the question that brought us here today – is a secular viewpoint our best guide to moral clarity? – my answer is yes. The secular, not religious, outlook provides us a reliable framework for the expression and realization of moral excellence. The secular viewpoint is based on evidence, reason, science, common sense and human beneficence. The secular outlook is open to revision and improvement. Secular morality is a morality for this world and of this world, not for the next; it is a morality for our happiness and well being in the here and now, not in the hereafter. It is a morality for this temporary life not for an eternal afterlife in an imaginary paradise. Secular morality is a morality by us, from us and for us, not a moral decree of God from God and for us ‘wretched’ humans. Secular morality is informed by the quest to be good and to do good for goodness’ sake, not the quest to be good and to do good for God’s sake or for heaven’s sake or to avoid going to Hell.'

There is nothing more to life than chasing down every temporary high

For a unbeliever,

life is a rush from peak to peak

backpacking up the steps and slopes

then a wild toboggan ride through the valleys and up some ways

I beg you not to think that that's so sad

as you daughters of the faith are wont to do

one climbs and falls

(one climbs, at any rate)

and, ascending to each peak one isn't concerned with

breathlessness and aching legs

but the sun reflecting off the lakes and the trees.

it will pass, as you say.

after the last ascent I will ride alone into the valley of death,

that cold and windy place -

but There is nothing more to life than chasing down every temporary high,

I am happy to say.

I get stronger with each ascent,

and looking out from the hilltops I know that the sun is rising

and say to myself 'It is good.'

for abigail

"Kathy, I'm lost," I said, though I knew she was sleeping
I'm empty and aching and I don't know why
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They've all gone to look for America

Gloria Gloria Gloria

Jimi Hendrix, Patti Smith and the Doors tackle what could be the greatest rock and roll song ever written - Them's 'Gloria'. I feel like I need to write this to figure out for myself what makes each of these so wonderful, because things like these sure aren't happening anymore.

So, the first thing that I should point out is that the songs are about sex. Not in an excited, teenage way at all. These are songs that elevate sex and place it at its rightful place near the centre of human existence. These songs aren't about sex so much as they cause a Copernican re-centering of the human experience around the sexual act. In this new existence. , love, anger and sadness are merely functions of something far more fundamental.

This is all highfalutin talk though. The specific manifestations of this spirit are far more interesting and (from a musical standpoint) far more analysable.

For example, Patti Smith and Jim Morrison of the Doors are both primarily vocal artists : their expression of the sacred sexuality becomes vocal intensity. When Jim screams 'Make me feel alright!' it is a moment of release. His voice suggests drunken rage; his lyric improvisations suggest the worst(best?) forms of crudity. Its justification is intensity and power - and the comparative sedateness of the rest of the Doors allows him to lapse into refractory periods that build into orgasm again and again.

Patti's vocal style is another thing altogether, partly because she's a woman, and partly because her femininity gives her a different perspective on the whole issue of sex. This is not to deny Patti credit for her own brand of wonderful violence, but that violence is refracted through a kind of poetry. Patti's version is much more symbolic - 'I heard those bells ringing in my heart' - 'i wanna tell the world that I made her mine, made her mine, made her mine' etc. Patti's message brings evangelism and religion into the sexual universe.

Give Thanks

1. A man sat across me on the crowded train out of the city, carrying a bouquet of roses. The two college girls sitting with us were eyeing it. 'It's for my wife. We've been married for 25 years.' 'Oh,' I said, 'That's wonderful.' 'It's a long time. Too long. I told her that.' 'Is that why you bought the flowers?' 'Nah. I got them... just cause. We're past all that apologising and stuff.'

2. 'You know, I swear I'm gonna end up playing funk banjo or something. I'll be playing in the park and someone will come up and be all 'You know any Seeger?' and I'll be like 'I don't, but I know Tower of Power'. 'You high? I asked. 'I'm pretty high' said Dylan.

3. Kim came into the room with a bag of M&Ms. Normally she'd buy me a bag for every week I quit smoking, but I'd fallen off the bandwagon recently. 'What's this for? I've been smoking, Kim.' 'I felt bad not bringing you anything.' 'Um, okay. Tell you what, I'll only eat them after I've quit again.' I ate them anyway, feeling a little guilty.

4. '...and in every generation of musicians, there's somebody who's the Ramblin' Man. He does a deal with the devil in exchange for being really good at music. And he always sings the blues. It was B.B for awhile. Then Dylan. and then Hendrix. Are we forgetting anybody?'
'You missed Robert Johnson.'
'Jim Morrison'
'Cobain, man. He was a saint.'
'What about now, who's it now? I think it's gotta be a rapper.'
'Mos Def. Definitely Mos Def.'

5. It's alright, it's alright - you can't be forever blessed. Still, tomorrow's gonna be another working day, and I'm trying to get some rest.

6.oh dear. sato's whining
aw
i go check on him okay
one sec
idk what's wrong with him?
could it be the rash?
i don't think so
he wldn't whine
he'd just scratch
could be something internal
he's a afraid of smthing
maybe he has a stomachache
its not a whine that's sick
its an anxious whine
oh
dunno then :(
and he keeps pacing
idk
i gave him a blanket
to cover with
so he'd feel safer.
:)
well you can't talk to him so there isn't much you can do
i did talk to him
but he's not really listening
do you want to go down to be with him for awhile?

7. Don’t know a soul that’s not been battered,
don’t have a friend who feels at ease
Don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered,
or driven to its knees

8. And now, Let the weak say "I am strong"
Let the poor say "I am rich"
Because of what the Lord has done for us,

Give thanks

9. her lymph node test results are out. all 27 are negative from any signs of the cancer spreading!

10. ‘You know, it’s my first thanksgiving.’
‘Is that so? Prepare to get fat, then’
‘Turkey coma. Watch out.’

Spiritual Dimensions preliminary

So I'm one and a half times through this album, and still deciding what to think.

On the one hand - when they get going (both bands) they are powerful and persuasively energetic. Check out the Golden Quartet version of 'South Central L.A. Kulture' for a great example of the band searing on a post-electric Miles sort of tune, which breaks down, then breaks up for no loss of effect.

For the Organic band, 'Angela Davis' is a driving statement where the 4 guitar format gets to unleash its inherent chaos to great effect.

On the other hand - Vijay Iyer's avant-gardisms sound a little trite to me at times. I don't think he completely lives up to the role. But where he's allowed flashes of tonality he demonstrates the same power heard on his solo albums.

The 4 guitar band works on the loud songs where chaos is rewarded, but every slow section quickly loses its erection and turns to mush. It seems like they're avoiding each other so much that no music happens - and the prog-rock-y sections just annoy me to no end because they're devoid of the dirtiness and grit that's the saving characteristic of Miles-ean funk, just like much of modern jazz (and indeed most of prog-rock. I mean you, Thom Yorke.)

Commentary on Harris vs Sullivan

http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Secular-Philosophies/Is-Religion-Built-Upon-Lies.aspx

This is a really good debate on the issues of religion. And Sullivan makes probably the most convincing argument about religion that I've ever seen, and he's greatly increased my understanding of people of faith.

On the other hand, Sam Harris pretty much demolishes him in the reason department, and Sullivan basically concedes the debate in his last post, saying that he is unequal to the arguments presented (or somesuch). I shan't make this another self-righteous atheist post crowing about some victory or other, though. I'm more interested in Sullivan than I am in Harris, although Harris is making clearer and better arguments.

Sullivan's argument cuts to the chase of a religious person's faith. He writes of the serenity of knowing that a benign power guides our lives, and that the keystone of that belief is that such a power demonstrated its concern by becoming human. If nothing, that is a beautiful, comforting belief. I can and do admit that much.

Let me offer my alternative though: I believe in the fundamental goodness of human beings. I believe that that goodness reveals itself when we submit ourselves with humility to the truth that we discern with our reason. We have never experienced a better way to do things. Sullivan argues that the point of our existence cannot be reduced to a quest for truth: ultimately, in the moment of death, we must have made peace with existence. Or, to put it another way, that the need for happiness, not the need for truth, is the most fundamental human need. Sullivan uses that to justify religion, which I don't agree with, but I agree with the principle. However, I think, as does Harris, that you can't untangle happiness from the truth. I have lived by this principle and it has never failed me.

Adam

everything is broken.

reassembling

I've had a pretty bad week. Still, when you pick the pieces up off the floor sometimes you find things you've never known were there.

I wish things could have been different. And I demand the right to could've and should've myself into whatever corner pleases me, leave me that much.

The quality of affection is not strained, however. I guess I can say that things will be alright, and that there will be smiles to come.

That is all.

I woke up sobbing again. I am running out of patience.

You can't be forever blessed.

Many's the time I've been mistaken, and many times confused
And I've often felt forsaken, and certainly misused.
But it's all right, it's all right, I'm just weary to my bones
Still, you don't expect to be bright and Bon Vivant
So far away from home, so far away from home.
I don't know a soul who's not been battered
Don't have a friend who feels at ease
Don't know a dream that's not been shattered
Or driven to its knees.
But it's all right, all right, We've lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on,
I wonder what went wrong, I can't help it
I wonder what went wrong.
And I dreamed I was flying. I dreamed my soul rose
unexpectedly, and looking back down on me, smiled
reassuringly, and I dreamed I was dying.

And far above, my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty, drifting away to sea
And I dreamed I was flying.
We come on a ship we call the Mayflower,
We come on a ship that sailed the moon
We come at the age's most uncertain hour
And sing an American tune

But it's all right, its all right
You can't be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow's gonna be another working day
And I'm trying to get some rest,
That's all, I'm trying to get some rest.

The Good News

is that there is no judgement other than our own

that we are free, as we have always been,

to love and be loved

to create and be created

and in every second that goes by

rings the joyous tumble of fears.

A statement of purpose

So a very very good friend of mind exhorted me recently to re-consider my religious beliefs. I felt it would be doing her and myself a dishonour not to do so sincerely and honestly.

I read the Bible (parts of it anyway - I AM in college.) I familiarised myself with apologetics. I revisited philosophy. Mostly, I spent a good amount of time thinking.

So I'm happy to report that no conclusion has been reached other than the current affirmation of my previously-unproclaimed atheism. I wish to put this out for the world to see today - I am coming out of the closet, so to speak. I am an atheist. I believe in no God, no creator, and I do not accept Jesus as my lord and saviour. This is not a fully-considered belief. I have not familiarised myself with all the arguments at hand; I have not read all the books on the subjects or spoken to all the experts. However, I have reflected and found that no observation of mine or knowledge that I claim to have in any way supports the doctrines of any religion.

I believe in the supremacy of reason. I believe that it will be mankind's salvation. I believe that life has a purpose and a meaning, and that every human being deserves to be treated with love, compassion and respect. I have not lived up to this always, but I believe in it. I believe that science is the highest discipline man can aspire to, and that logical reasoning is the key to a life well-lived. These beliefs have borne me through the most difficult of times.

I believe in the intrinsic value of all human beings, which derives from no God and no external power other than the happiness we are miraculously able to experience and the principles we derive for ourselves, through the exercise of our intellect.

This is by no means the end of any discussion - I look forward to a life fraught with doubt, the daily challenge, and the soaring joy of finding my own way.

Adam

My heart has broken many times for the plight of humanity, but perhaps never as badly as for the Christians, who suffer and only become weaker. If there is one thing mankind deserves it is the fruit of his suffering.

am being punished by millions of years of evolution right now. FML.

The Trees 2

The Trees

are turning yellow one by one. I've seen snows but not falls, so this is a new experience for me. Pretty.

for bo and me courtesy of Ira Kaplan. (punctuation by me)

Hey Mr. Tough, don't you think we've suffered enough? Why don't you meet me on the dancefloor when it's Tiny Tom time? And if you need to tell me something once you won't have to say it twice. And if you ask for a nickel I'm gonna hand you a dime. And we'll forget about our problems, if only for a little while, and leave our worries in the corner - leave them in a big, big pile. Pretend! Everything can be alright.

Hey Mrs. Blue, time to think of something new. The Possum's spinning our hips, the old soft shoe. And if you wanna lose the rest of the night there's nothing better I have to do. And if I tell you something you won't have to ask if it's true. And we'll forget about our problems, if only for a little while, and leave our worries in the corner - leave them in a big, big pile.

Pretend everything can be alright.

thoughts on jazz

1. without a new intellectual leader a la bird, coltrane, ornette, ayler, jazz will die. Rand was right. There are no immediately observable consequences of having a solid intellectual foundation, but without it the music will die. Wynton Marsalis may be a great trumpet player but he's a hack and has done nothing to underpin the intellectual foundations of this music. That is why we don't rally behind him anymore.

2. it was said of Rene Chateaubriand that he was 'incapable of writing any character other than himself', and that he was a 'poet rather than a novelist', even though he wrote novels. This distinction is useful in thinking about jazz. Jazz is poetry rather than prose: this is not to suggest that other music is prosaic. Rather, a jazz musician is incapable of writing a song other than himself - in some sense, jazz songs are not independent works at all but templates applied to personality. In this sense, all jazz songs are the same because they express exactly the same thing, which is the totality of the performer. B.B. King's autobiography includes a quote from Bird to the effect that jazz music was essentially the blues. This is what I think he probably meant - that the musical relationship of performer to sound remains rooted in that tradition of personal expression that originates in the blues.

This is not to suggest that programmatic jazz is impossible. It has definitely been done - Night in Tunisia comes to mind, as well as Syeeda's Song Flute, just to cite two of the most overt examples. Jazz that aims to represent rather than express inevitably fails, however - which is my pet peeve with a lot of modern jazz. When Charlie Parker played Night in Tunisia, the exotica was of secondary concern to his soloing, which was exactly what it had always been - a torrent of (i hesitate to say emotion) intensity of experience.

This situates jazz firmly in the modernist tradition. There have been many comparisons between baroque improvisation and jazz; certainly the forms and techniques are very similar, but my argument is that the purposes differ. The sense of self that jazz requires is very much a modern construct that did not exist in the form it does today pre-20th century.

This idea also helps us unite the disparity of post-1960s jazz, which is a major concern today. There are few ideas today which can reconcile the 'historical' movement (wynton et al) and the free movement (ornette). My argument is that the essence of jazz is not a system of blues and altered harmony and syncopation like Wynton says - nor is it the endless pursuit of the new like some of the freedom players espouse. The essence of jazz really is this particular relationship of performer to improvised music which comes from the blues, and I believe that anything that claims to be jazz but strays from this principle immediately calls into question the necessity and quality of the performance.

There have been a few musicians recently (or not so - Duke Ellington said the same thing) who are for discarding the term 'jazz' entirely. I can see why this is an attractive concept. Calling it simply 'music' invokes a kind of universal quality of the performance and gives it the importance of a primary idea. I think there is probably some merit in this - but like it or not a certain idiom of expression is going to continue to exist, and the only reason why this is important is because this idiom contains the elements that are necessary for jazz to be compelling. Genre labelling is largely superfluous, but to call something jazz is perhaps to give an idea to the listener of what is happening. That has merit.

3. Jason Moran is the fucking bomb. He totally deserved that Macarthur.

Some reassembly required.

brooklyn 1

brooklyn is much more spacious than manhattan. It sits just to the east, across the harlem river, joined by the williamsburg and brooklyn bridges. the distance is deceptive, needless to say. a 40 minute train ride isn't too long but stepping off i felt like Neil Armstrong; a month in Manhattan doesn't prepare you for this. what struck me was the emptiness. i don't mean that there is a surfeit of space but that the city in brooklyn does not acknowledge you the way it does in Manhattan. it carries on its way of life as if you weren't there. manhattan is for consumers: walking down broadway you notice that every sign was written for you, but in brooklyn the signs signify nothing but the life you aren't privy to.
Hence I felt a sense of tranquility, knowing that as I walked down the streets of brooklyn I only existed in my mind.

smiles we gave to one another/for the way we were

david s.ware's version of this song is heartbreaking. also, the original = yes.

adam

I know you're hurting and so am I. It seems ridiculous that we should punish ourselves for doing what comes naturally, but there it is. Anyway, know that I'm with you through all this, and that letting go is probably the hardest and the best thing we could do for each other. Peace.

I can't asleep again so I'll drag up the old remedy : writing. I think it's time that I recap the last few months, bag them up and put them aside so I can move on.

These have not been easy months. While my friends have been busy getting on with their lives I've been stuck in a kind of limbo, practicing and wondering if I should be doing something more. I haven't figured this out yet. These have also been lonely months, partly because I've isolated myself and partly because I haven't sought out what little company was available. I haven't really figured this out either. I don't know if my decisions have made me an irrevocably unlikable person, or if i'm just bad at it. And after all this time of trying to decide what to do with my life the only conclusion I can come to is a resounding I don't know.

I am excited to leave, but the reason I haven't been sleeping is that I know I'm going to lose my last few precious connections with the human world. I don't know why this is so unsettling, but it is keeping me up. On the other hand, I have much to be grateful for - my friends, my work, and the musicians who were magnanimous enough to help me on my way. I suppose it isn't a plan, but it's something.

Maybe I needed this slow dissolution. It's helped me sort out some priorities. Maybe I'll be able to really start afresh in New York.

I haven't figured this out yet.

Still, there are people who deserve a little recognition - friends (quek, lee, anna, d, and wang; bo and abby; rayner and zh; jon, ben and yizhe, nick) and musicians (andrew lim, andrew klein, weixiang, rick, aya, wen and nicky) - i really want out of this country, but I wish i didn't have you leave you all behind.

I need to write this all down so I don't forget it sometime. Artists i need to check out -

Black Star (Mos Def and Talib Kweli)

A Tribe Called Quest

David S. Ware

Roscoe Mitchell

Lee Konitz

James 'Blood' Ulmer

The Stooges

Jackie McLean

birthday girl

One of the saddest songs I've ever heard, by the Roots. Is this all we have to look forward to when we turn 18? Poor girl.

What is it we wanna do?
Now that I'm allowed to be alone with you
Birthday Girl its your birthday
Wherever you wanna go
Now you are old enough to go and see the R-rated show now
R-rated show

Yo, She said she was a magazine editor named Janine
Backstage in high heels and painted on jeans
Probably had the most devious eyes I'd ever seen
Told me she was twenty-two she was only seventeen
She had sumthin' to hide she snuck in from outside
And got everybody gassed like the car I drive
With all that grown lady ass and my far out vibe
She said she came to see them roots boys fallout live
But listen,

What is it we wanna do?
Now that I'm allowed to be alone with you
Birthday Girl its your birthday
Wherever you wanna go
Now you are old enough to go and see the R-rated show now
R-rated show

You see them girls look good but they brains not ready
I talk to a woman, her mind is more steady
Probably something in the way they designed that's more steady
I just let you inside cause the line so heavy
But I shoulda known better cause now I feel like America's underbelly
R. Kelly gutter smut peddlers, internet predators, chat-room irregulars
This not my twist you trying to send me to the therapist, miss

What is it we wanna do?
Now that I'm allowed to be alone with you
Birthday Girl its your birthday
Wherever you wanna go
Now you are old enough to go and see the R-rated show now
R-rated show

Now she told me cheddar cheese grits
Two tomato fried fish
Cause she heard its my dish
Tryna be my sidekick
All the people all around thinking she was my chick
Saying DAMN the girl thick
But she aint no twenty-six
Looking at me like I'm up to sumthin' on the funny tip
Like I ever been the one to honey jib
Its your birthday so let me know the gift you wanna get
In fact blow out the candles on the cake and make a wish for me

They can't really seem to look away
So they tried asking her to stay
Fake I.D. you won't get turned away
You look lovely tonight
Now you'e old enough to buy a gun
So many better ways of having fun
Right now I can only think of one
You look lovely tonight.

What is it we wanna do?
Now that I'm allowed to be alone with you
Birthday Girl its your birthday
Wherever you wanna go
Now you are old enough to go and see the R-rated show now
R-rated show

Oh, I needed to dance so badly. When you dance, your soul becomes free. We should all dance more often.

I took a trip on a train and I thought about you. I passed a shadowy lane and I thought about you. Two or three cars parked under the stars a winding stream. Moon shining down on some little town And with each beam the same old dream. And every stop that we made I thought about you. And when I pulled down the shade then I really felt blue. I peaked through the crack and looked at the track, The one going back to you and what did I do? I thought about you. There were two or three cars parked under the stars... a windin' stream. Moon shining down on some little town And with each beam the same old dream. And then I peaked through the crack and I looked at that track, The one going back to you, and what did I do... I thought about you.

jazz for punks

So I blew 28 bucks on a 5-cd Miles collection, this time of his earlier work - 'Round about Midnight, Milestones, Porgy and Bess et cetera.

For me that first Columbia record, 'Round about Midnight', has quickly become one of my favourite albums to listen to. This is jazz that a punk rocker can get behind - it's never afraid to usurp a couple of pop tunes, never afraid to play a simple progression, and it's driven by the sheer rhythmic energy of the chambers-philly jo rhythm section, who are the hardest swinging cats I've ever heard. The bare-bones aesthetic that Miles had here is the sort of thing I wish I heard more often. For an interesting comparison, put on Patti Smith's 'Horses' after this one.

adam

Keith Jarrett

ok first off, go here:

http://yourmusiceducation.blogspot.com

cos Yizhe's put up a little weekly music appreciation series of articles there and i think he's done a damn fine job and you'd be doing yourself a favour if you went over there and started reading from article 1.

Now, to business. This is a bit strange coming from me, because I'm right up there (or down there) in the noise-as-art camp as far as my preferred timbre goes, which means Hendrix over Clapton, Thurston Moore and Ira Kaplan and Kurt Cobain over Slash, and Coltrane's late 60s output over... well, just about anything at all. So it's a bit uncharacteristic to be plugging here somebody who puts out so much... well, pleasant music. His short stint with Miles aside, Jarrett is the sort of sensitive pianist I'd love to hate, and as you could expect I was pretty stunned to find out that I don't. But the Noise-as-art thing is pretty maligned anyway. I don't think just any noise qualifies as just any art. My underlying point (i say presumptuously) has been that I expect a player to play not just the pitches but the sonorities of the instrument at hand. All the great musicians of this century have. Think. Where would jazz be if Louis Armstrong hadn't reached for those ear-splitting high notes? They were great notes, better than if a piano player had merely reached his right arm a little and played the high G, because they strained the timbre of his instrument. In that moment, the urgency and the stress of holding that impossible embouchure became the urgency of the music. What about Monk? Nobody else in the world could make the piano sound like what it really looks like - an impossible, plinky contraption with far too many corners. And the great modern pianist Vijay Iyer says in this interview that each of his voicings was a sound rather than a collection of notes :

A close study of Monk’s playing reveals this spectral quality of his chords, this clear perception of higher harmonics in the sound of the piano. In order to activate these higher partials, he had to play with a little more force than the average pianist, to get the instrument ringing and shaking. In this sense harmony and tone were integrated concepts. This is why I call them “sounds” rather than “chords”; they are not theoretical constructs but vibratory experiences—actual, specific sensations—and they feel good.

And if we reach a little further into the late 60s, saxophonists like Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders and Albert Ayler were establishing something that should've stayed with us to this date but sadly hasn't - the primacy of sound as the first fundamental of music. Taking a historical perspective, it makes sense - before the advent of tuned instruments, we must still have had music. Even in tonal music today, it irks me horribly to see a guitarist playing Bird licks. I mean, they're fine as harmonic studies, sure, but rarely on the stage. They worked for Charlie Parker partly because he was Charlie Parker and he wrote them, but also because he was playing a goddamn alto saxophone. The sort of things that work for an altoist don't work for a guitarist because the instruments are different! This is what Ornette was getting at when he talked for ages about how a Bb on the alto was different from a Bb on the piano.

Anyway, having taken the grand detour through the history of jazz, let's get back to Jarrett, and this clip. 'I loves you, Porgy' (spelt with the s!) is one of my favourite ballads of all time, and this is hands down my favourite version of it. It beats the Bill Evans and the Miles version. And you might be thinking that Keith Jarrett plays it awful straight for someone who's supposed to be a top notch jazz musician, aren't they supposed to make everything weird and substitute all the chords? (Here's Vijay Iyer playing a certain John Lennon song.) He doesn't. What he does do though is play it using the sonorities of the piano. That crystal clear, bell-tone he gets out of his fingers makes the joy of the melody a palpable feeling, like floating on air. And it's a sad song! That's the blues right there, the approach that makes joy out of sadness ... and in one act Jarrett has covered almost every historical aspect of jazz. The joy of listening to Jarrett isn't just the joy of hearing a wonderful tune interpreted well, it's the joy of listening to the sound of a piano. I think we're missing some of that today. In any case, you oughta check him out.

adam

p.s.

Check this out if you want to hear him getting seriously freaky. Nope, he's not all tame at all.

twenty one

i didn't want to have a party, initially, because this is such a terrifying year.

thanks to everybody who came.

and as much as it feels good to appreciated, i know this is going to be a lonely one, because I've chosen loneliness out of all the possibilities of turning 21.

I know that I'll never forgive myself should I give in to loneliness, and that I'll suffer if I don't give in. Sweet damnation I've chosen. But I think that choice is too much of an illusion here.

adam

' You know, sometimes we're not prepared for adversity. When it happens sometimes we're caught short. We don't know exactly how to handle it when it comes up. Sometimes we don't know just what to do when adversity takes over. And I have advice for all of us. I got it from my pianist Joe Zawinul, who wrote this tune, and it sounds like what you're supposed to say when you have that kind of problem. It's called 'Mercy, Mercy, Mercy'. '

- Julian 'Cannonball' Adderley

Ami oh, le monde est ma maison
Et le ciel est mon toit
Viens avec moi
Ami oh, l'amour est ma raison
Et le bonheur ma loi
Viens avec moi

Ami oh, l'amour est ma raison
Et le bonheur ma loi
Viens avec moi
Ami oh, le monde est ma maison
Et le ciel est mon toit
Viens avec moi

Bizarrely, I could only get the french version.

Whatever you want from me

is what I wanna do for you

sweeter than a drop of blood on a sugarcube

Yo La Tengo makes a great case for songwriting: the lyric doesn't seem like much on the page, but it gains life when it's sung by Ira and James in half-whispered harmony. It gains a certain amount of conflictedness that isn't apparent just reading the text. Plus, Ira just knows how to rock out.

adam

Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus

This one took awhile. I ordered the album from Memphis Music sometime around last year and pretty much left it to rot on my mp3 player until just about recently. Sometimes developments in jazz just don't hit you until you've absorbed the prerequisite - in my case it was Mingus's language of gospel and spirituals. But don't mistake this for a spiritual music - in many ways it sounds to me like a sober but sympathetic take on the ins and outs of faith. The star of the album I'd say is 'Better Get Hit in Yo' Soul', some kind of speedy gospel rampage in 3/4, like a 30s shout chorus sans arrangements, and so much more exuberant for it. Mingus locks up with Walter Perkins like some terrifying lopsided locomotive and lets the saxophonists burn the upper registers.

When I say 'language of gospel and spirituals' I really do mean a whole paradigm that Mingus absorbed into the language of jazz - the call-and-response, first seen in the New Orleans bands but gradually lost to swing and bebop, and the open, improvised, multi-participatory nature of a church spiritual. The rest of the album trundles along, and I'm probably not doing it enough justice by just talking about this one fascinating aspect, because in every other facet Mingus is a composer of astounding sensitivity. 'Theme for Lester Young' or 'Goodbye Pork Pie Hat' is one of his enduring classics, and Eric Dolphy himself lets rip on the cunningly titled 'Hora Decubitus'. It's a bit too late to tell you it's an album worth listening to - that's been established by musicians and writers alike years ago. I'll tell you, however, that it's an album that could open your ears the way it did mine.

adam

polemic time

I've been feeling crappy for a whole day so now it's time to take it out on the internet.

This is something I've been getting for awhile. You see, I'm a bit of a guitarist, and I try to play jazz, and I like to think I can play the blues with some measure of ability. And I listen to this stuff, and I love it dearly - you know, Stevie Ray and Miles Davis and John Coltrane and the Marsalis Brothers and whatnot. It's the great music of our century. So when I tell people, usually musicians, that I kind of like Lady Gaga they usually give me a look of disbelief. Naturally most of my musician friends don't like that all her songs sound the same and have silly lyrics and they pretty much assume I'm rationalising some kind of primitive connection to the music that's beneath my intellectual heritage. I mean, having listened to the Coltrane, how can you - to take a line from Christgau - continue to push that second-rate shit?

And there goes pretty much all of the great pop music that's being released today, at this very moment. The Black Eyed Peas. Lady Gaga. Outkast (good god, Outkast. I love them). Make no mistake - I do not rationalise the irrational. My attraction to pop music is not a guilty pleasure. Sure it's not a Love Supreme - but why need it be? Pop has sociological complexity which comes of the form rather than of the music. It's like how Yoko Ono's room full of sawn furniture pretty much lacked any classical beauty, but still managed to say something. Good pop today transcends phoniness the same way the experimentalism of the no wave and noise movements transcended ugliness. We miss that, us Serious Musicians with our 20th-century theory and our heads full of Schoenberg and African music.

And them come the accusations that I'm over-analysing. Bullshit! My material comes from the artists themselves. Elton John : The best pop is disposable. Andy Warhol. Madonna. Michael Jackson. Sure nobody can accuse Britney or Hilary Duff (neither of which I really like) of having an intellectual justification, but the beauty of it is that (as Yizhe rightly pointed out) modern pop is a collaborative effort more than any music in the past. It's producer, artist, song-writer, marketing team, record label. They sell an image. Phony, yeah - but definitely self-aware. And we who spend all our time listening to so much great music have made the mistake of only hearing music. That's the prejudice John Cage talked about when he said we discriminate against non-musical sounds - only now our concept of 'musical' is loftier. But we've missed the forest for the trees. Art is the overarching aim, not music. Music exists in the service of art. Pop is a sociological construct and I think it qualifies for any definition of Art anybody cares to challenge me with. We listen to Poker Face's 4 chords and silly lyric and we think 'oh, that can't be good. it has no musical value'. And that's a damn shame.

EDIT: Here's a great one. 'Fire Burnin' on the Dance Floor' - Sean Kingston. Haven't been able to get it out of my head since last year.

mental note

i'm sure this proves somehow that I'm slowly losing it, but I need to write this down.

I have chased the ghost of the moment down the byroads of rationality. I know them like the lines on my palm now and he cannot hide there anymore.

adam

hypothesis #2

That Pirsig book is a good one.

Here's another one: art is a product of personhood, which means it's a product of genuine understanding. Pirsig writes : to paint a perfect painting - make yourself perfect, then just paint naturally. That's an interesting thought. And I doubt he means personhood in the wishy washy, let's donate to charity sort of sense, but personhood as in the genuine commitment to quality in all aspects and in understanding foremost. I don't mean just the nuts and bolts business - scales and harmony and structure and all that (which is important) but I'm really trying to get at that Nietzche thing, the assigning of value. That defines a person - the willingness and ability to assign value based on experience.

Additionally, a deficiency in art is not a deficiency in skill, although that is a factor. It's also a deficiency in understanding that nobody is exempt from. In that sense our modern worldview is a bit twisted in its arbitrary division of art from everything else. Life and Art are just two sides of the same coin, and living itself is an art. That's just something I should write down before I forget it.

hypothesis

Here's a thought, brought on by Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance -

We always think of musicians as performers. A musician's work is validated by his performance on stage. It's a widely held opinion that the defining act of musicianship is the stage performance (in the case of jazz players, the improvisation) and that practice is just a necessary preparation for that one act.

I think though, hypothetically, that the defining act of musicianship includes practice and the act of searching for what Pirsig calls 'Quality'. In fact, it could just be more important than the performance itself. In that sense, practice is as much a component of the art as performance. I think the musician should be distinguished from the performer - a musician is a performer but a performer is not necessarily a musician.

Just musing, what do you all think?

adam

I only had hopes for achieving some sort of necessity with music. Or maybe i just want to play the fucking guitar. That's the best sort of guitar, you know? but why is it so difficult.

adam

Lionel Loueke

That was probably the best concert I've watched this Mosaic season. I don't really want to compare him to Branford, who's almost an institution in the intellectual landscape of today's jazz scene, but I enjoyed the concert thoroughly. The spirit displayed was something rarely seen nowadays - a sort of urgency - i think necessity is the word, of the music. The best music sounds inevitable rather than contrived - it sounds like it's been around forever and all the musician had to do was discover it.

It brought to mind something Ornette Coleman said in an interview (and this is the smartest man ever to be completely unable to explain himself, mind) - that a B flat on a saxophone or a trumpet is not the same as a B flat on a piano or a guitar. What he meant is that pitch is only one aspect of the note, and that sound must be considered in its entirety - timbre, rhythm and placement being equally important and (in his own music) equivalent. Jazz is notorious for putting emphasis on the pitch of the notes. The more modern jazz gets, the more interchangeable its instruments get. I've heard the Coltrane solo from 'Giant Steps' played on steel pans, of all things. So last night it was a new thing and indeed a relief to hear Lionel Loueke not just play jazz on the guitar but play the timbre of the guitar as well as the pitch of the strings. Everything fit into his sonic conception, which had the joy of the African pop musics (a language I must learn) as well as the sophistication of jazz.

A night to remember.

adam

branford

I'm listening to him do 'A Love Supreme' now - and naturally, to compare anything to the original is futile. I think he sounds much more...vernacular than Trane. I think he's probably incapable of the spirituality of the original (who IS?) but he's an excellent saxophonist nonetheless.

He seems to be highly original within the context of that vernacular though. I watched his concert a few days back and was very impressed. He and his brother are capable of wielding the entire history of jazz as intellectual material. For example - listen to his treatment of the standard 'Cheek to Cheek' on the Contemporary Jazz album, where he dices the melody. It might sound like another bebop workout, but I prefer to see it as a reimagining of the concept of 'dancing' in the new era of music, and I think that intent was not lost on him when he was playing it.

I think my frustration with his 'A Love Supreme' is that it copies entirely the form of the original but misses the intent. Taken for what it is though, rather than what it tries to be - it's still by any form of reckoning a fine example of modern jazz. I'll listen to it any day.

adam

good ol' Neil

Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.
Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.

Old man look at my life,
Twenty four
and there's so much more
Live alone in a paradise
That makes me think of two.

Love lost, such a cost,
Give me things
that don't get lost.
Like a coin that won't get tossed
Rolling home to you.

Old man take a look at my life
I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me
the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes
and you can tell that's true.

Lullabies, look in your eyes,
Run around the same old town.
Doesn't mean that much to me
To mean that much to you.

I've been first and last
Look at how the time goes past.
But I'm all alone at last.
Rolling home to you.

Old man take a look at my life
I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me
the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes
and you can tell that's true.

Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.
Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.

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

Even as I've dedicated the next few months to Jazz, it does me good to dust off some of the other records and have a listen. I love Neil Young dearly.

adam

Dear Joel

I just met you the night before you had to go, so it isn't up to me to put you at peace or to set the record straight or anything. But anyway epitaphs are written for the living. There is a kinship among musicians - I hope I don't presume too much - and any death in this tiny little community is a big one: It saddens me to think that now I'll never know you or hear you play.

Please give my love to Trane and Miles and the Duke. I don't really believe in the afterlife but who knows? For what it's worth, I hope you're somewhere jamming with them.

Rest in peace man.

adam

things i have learned from my friends

1. It is possible to listen to shitty music and still be in a loving, committed relationship.

2. people may, on occasion, when the season is due, in the fullness of time, have their uses.

adam

poker and evolutionary biology

Props to Mr. Dawkins here.

Behavioral evolution dictates that males invest less in offspring (males of this species, at any rate) because the creation of offspring costs them less than the female.

It's like a poker hand - the female is the big blind, and no matter what the cards are there is an investment of time and energy into the child, in the form of the pregnancy term. The male is the dealer - he may fold at any point for no loss in terms of resources expended. This dictates classic behaviour - men seek physical relationships because it is expedient to invest as little and spread the genes as wide as possible. Females seek commitment because they stand to lose in abandoning offspring, and they stand to lose if a partner should abandon them. Men invest nothing from a purely reproductive standpoint (or almost nothing beyond the energy used to create the sperm, which is nothing compared to the burden of carrying the child).

This might dictate societal standards, which are largely females' play at evening the playing field - males are expected to invest in relationships more so than females, from a societal standpoint. Time and resources are expected from men. They are expected to make the move. This is a form of investment demanded by society, and the penalty for disobedience is ostracism.

just a little thought. I'm sure any real biologists could put me right on any salient points I misrepresented.

4.03 am, acerbic

I hope this isn't construed as an attack, but it probably will be by people too timid to formulate a response. So what's there to lose?

I am always provoked to philosophising whenever I go clubbing (which is maybe why I do it). It is one of the most pointless and empty activities available to my generation, which in a world thatincludes WoW and Facebook, is saying a lot. It's a meaningless parade of skin and glitter and the stench of a hundred frustrated guys crowding the dance floor trying to get some action.

Yet I go back. Some days for the music (because I dearly love hip-hop) and some days just to engage in the games that are played. There is an energy at work that's bigger than the crowd. It's the aura of consensual (and sensual) futility, at once frustrated with the pointlessness of the world at large and society's fulfilment-seeking subtext. It says - if the world of work and study is empty and the world of relationships is doomed to caricatured gestures signifying meaning but devoid of weight - then let us play. We embrace futility, but it must be fun. I think this is the rallying cry of my generation. It is nihilistic but not solipsistic - it rejects meaning but embraces the masses, the popular, the social animal. It accepts that the give and take of relationships is little more than a game played for one's own profit, but denies that two players may not both gain in the struggle.

I think modern religion places too high a premium on fulfilment. It places too high a premium on peace, which is another word for wretched contentment. Why not live empty? I need no cosmic justification for my own pleasure, and in every moment wasted I revel in the struggle.

adam

Wayne Shorter

I blew my $30 bucks of HMV vouchers on two Wayne Shorter albums -

'Speak No Evil' from the (I believe) post-messengers-pre-miles period, and 'Beyond the Sound Barrier' with the excellent Footprints Live! quartet.

I've heard more of 'Beyond the Sound Barrier', and it is proving to be highly enjoyable. Modern jazz at its best - challenging yet eminently enjoyable. This album is a good starting place for anyone looking to get into jazz after the 80s (we're all trying to forget about that decade - Dave Weckl's band and Chick Corea's shirts).

adam

music

><. The amount of work ahead of me boggles the mind. I'll have to get to it.

miles davis '80s

Two conceptually important recordings here - his two pop covers, one of Michael Jackson's 'Human Nature' and one of Cyndi Lauper's 'Time after Time'.

These recordings are by no means jazz in the traditional sense, but it's good to note that by this point Miles had pretty much given up on jazz. 'Let the white boys have it,' he said. I am one of those Miles-for-lifers though, and I don't reject his fusion, funk and later pop oeuvre. I personally think he stuck to his musical guns until the day he died, and these records are only proof of his all-encompassing vision.

There are naysayers who complain that Miles abandoned jazz for commercial music of disputable quality. I believe no such thing occured - if anything, the sheer quality that he imparts to the commercial music he performed in the 80s is a testament to his musical imagination. 'Human Nature' is played with a joie de vivre that is almost infectious, and his talent for understated romanticism takes him places on 'Time after Time'. Sure, it ain't jazz, but who cares? It is a pop record of rare poise and sensibility. And I'm glad he made it.

I've come down with some kind of sickness, and I'm not referring to the metaphorical sort. Yuck.

adam

ORD

what's there to say. So many things I could've been doing, yet I feel little regret. The most important thing I learned is to wear suffering like a crown - not to be bitter or hateful but to seek it out, and as Nietzsche said, to exult in your strength.

I don't feel any regret, but there's a good deal of anger left which I hope will help me catch up with what I've missed - my music, my friends and my studies. Yes, it was a time of anger. I've learned to hate efficiently, a life skill no doubt.

whatever. there's no use pontificating anymore - I have a life to get on with.

adam

the joys of chameleon

I had another go at 'Head Hunters' recently. I think I can pretty safely reaffirm my appreciation of this album - the Herbie's first go at getting funky, and what a go.

I'd like to use a phrase Robert Christgau used to describe Joni Mitchell's 'Both Sides Now' - 'beguiling logic'. That's what comes to mind listening to Chameleon, which sounds as modern as any of the electronic dance tracks you hear in clubs, only twice as kicking, and with that something special - that logical progression. At first I only heard the repetition, and it does go on - it's probably the longest iteration of AABA songform in the history of popular music (the A goes on for 4 minutes) - then I heard the slow, incremental, but fabulously satisfying development. Herbie plays the band like a keyboard here, never varying the drum beat or the two-note Clavinet melody (that IS the melody. not the horns!) or the envelope-filtered bassline. He just adds and subtracts layers at will. It's the horns sometimes, playing riffs, or its his keyboards howling.

There's something fundamental that Herbie grasped about funk here that I think could be missing in the music scene in Singapore. Nothing here (save the keyboard solo) is any kind of showboating. In fact, it's the exact opposite - five musicians in service of the groove. Personalities are laid aside (find me a drummer who'll play the exact same beat for 12 minutes at a go and I'll show you Moe Tucker, who didn't play funk unfortunately). Even Herbie's solo tinkles along at a relaxed pace, almost gloating in its relaxation. And that's the point. This is music for dancing, not for blowing or beating or getting faster. And Herbie shows his mastery of composition with a piece that never devolves into histrionics but slowly unfolds like origami over 16 minutes. I want to see that live.

adam

all the things that made me happy today (5th Feb)

1. Joy Spring (With Clifford Brown and Max Roach)

2. Having an actual conversation. That makes two in two days, a new record for these two years. Thanks Nick and Bo.

3. Realising that the cute Westlifer is the gay one. Aww. I used to have a boy-crush on him.

4. Looking up girl names to amuse myself. I think i'll name my daughter Karen.

5. Discovering Aaron Goldberg and realising he's coming here this saturday.

6. Writing, even if I'm not very good at it. Look at this, I wrote it a few weeks back.

7. The mind-numbingly hot girl at the club with the same name as my mother.

what is the name of the rose?

something sad and something still

motionless until the day it dies

and then fodder for the flies.

what is the name of the sun?

a bonfire slowly burning out

the last refuge of virgin light

and then gone in the night.

what is the name of the city?

shadows and light in etched patterns

it is bright with the morning's breath

it is a dance and a death.

what is my name?

I am a coffin, wide but not so long

filled with empires and desires

and sealed with a song

all the things that made me happy today

1. 'Oh My Love' (John Lennon) in the car on the way to camp.

2. The receptionist's face at NUH when I told her my trooper was crazy and needed a brain scan.

3. The really pretty malay girl in the full-length kebaya on the mrt.

4. The really cute (and REALLY underaged. fml) girl on the bus. It is NOT pervy to appreciate a thing of beauty.

5. Finding zul's guitar in the mess during my COS duty.

6. Singing really loudly in the office.

7. Singing 'Blowin' in the Wind' to the empty battalion square in the middle of the night.

8. The conversation with Nick.

9. Talking to Bo.

wind down, buckle down, sit down, stay down, get down, feeling down, going down, fell down, look down, throw down.

In other news, it hasn't been a good week but it is looking up!

:D

More times than I know I've wished for the end of the day and the sunset and the moon and the quiet and it's not weakness, this - it's not anxiety. I just need to be alone for awhile and not let my feelings get the better of me.

It's not a punk that said it, it's not a poet, not a working man or upper-class like a prize poodle with my hair done up. Just trying to be myself, people talk like it's so easy, like you just let go of all the layers and there You Are. I tried that once and I disappeared.

Maybe I don't exist. That would be a conundrum.

Conundrum. Hmm. That would be problematic. For instance, who's writing this?

And - I wish I were Joni Mitchell, but for reasons of physics it seems that I'm not. That's a bummer but I'll live... I guess.

adam

agitation

mental static is parsed as punctuation by the word processor

. - ! ?

( . , , !)

and now that I've pressed the 'zen' button on the neural interface things seem a lot cleaner. If only they found a more comfortable way, cos everytime I turn my head to look at the door the 3.5 on my left temple threatens to fall out. And we all know what happens when that happens.

So the update today. Still waiting for army to finish, though that isn't a surprise, it is getting unbearable though, all these things I could be doing yet I need to sit around in the office and answer calls. I could be getting drunk! I could be playing! And the world will not spin backward, not for me.

I have made a commitment, and if there's one thing history has taught us it's that commitment is the instrument of suffering. (Or is suffering the instrument of commitment? Chicken and egg...) but seeing that woman was made before man, I'd say suffering came first. For the next few months I'll make a living as a musician, until I go to uni. I owe this much to myself.

brb. Jacking out.

Smiles!?

This is one of those posts in which I admit my utter despair at ever knowing anything at all about music.

1. Miles Smiles

I returned to the album after the almost two-year hiatus from any jazz that needed brainwork and found it almost as confounding as I did then. The liner note essayist (who's definitely on somebody's payroll) seems to think it was the jazz album of the 1960s, well poo on that. I don't understand it at all. The only reason I can think Miles would inexplicably be smiling is that he just shafted the remaining few of his loyal listeners (no left hand for herbie!) and just when you hear the familiar progression of the blues on the last track 'Gingerbread Boy' he pulls an awful stunt where he gets Ron Carter to make funny noises on his double bass for four additional bars, just to screw over those of you who dared to hope they could follow a 12 bar blues.

No, I'm sure it's great but what gives !? Why did he have to take away Herbie's left hand? Back on E.S.P. it was the tenuous thread connecting the band into a harmonic structure and without it it's just noise and strings. Maybe I'll get it someday.

2. Leonard Cohen

is some kind of awesome

but what kind I don't think I'll ever know.

adam