So much angst. We're all mired in it; the exams are tearing us apart, from each other then from ourselves. I've noticed we all cling to each other more closely now, like we're holding on to our constituent atoms for each other. Holding together the places that we can't reach ourselves.

Got this from zhuoyi's blog: 50 things which make you happy. It's 12.32 am, i'm feeling fucked up, and pretty bored, so i guess i'll do it. In no particular order:

1. having friends to talk to. Especially now.
2. music.
3. TV. especially now... i guess we all need our brainless entertainment.
4. long walks
5. silence. I usually go without my headphones nowadays. There's plenty of time to listen to music at home. I feel like i'm missing out on too much if i encapsulate myself when i go out.
6. playing the guitar. Even when I don't know what to play, i guess it helps.
7. good food.
8. alcohol. G & Ts for the win. Getting drunk is pretty unpleasant though.
9. gaming. when i allow myself. I'm currently playing starcraft, trying to finish the campaign without cheating. 3 missions to go!
10. chatting with classmates when we get the time
11. making fun of rayner
12. making fun of rayner
13. chocolate
14. ice cream
15. poker with the boys. getting the stuffing kicked out of me.
16. my cat desdemona
17. the sound of birds in the morning
18. being inside when it rains outside
19. writing
20. books - mostly lit texts, but still awesome
21. the complete yes minister on dvd
22. a special person - feelings are boring; kissing is awesome.
23. new clothes
24. jam sessions with hyqel and xiumin and the juniors
25. teaching the juniors
26. the sound of a double bass
27. the new-album smell.
28. liner essays.
29. the sense of accomplishment you get after you finish restringing the bugger.
30. random doodlings of ominous coffee mugs and sinister saline drips.
31. writing my name in huge letters on worksheets in highlighter so it covers the entire first page
32. discussing music with people
33. writer's blog; even if we do fail occasionally.
34. blog-surfing. if i don't have a life, i invoke my right to live vicariously through others. pity all the people whose blogs i visit have no life either.
35. just sitting and thinking
36. a good joke. if possible at the expense of somebody uptight.
37. coco pops. breakfast of champions.
38. milk and bandung.
39. sashimi.
40. wondering about the future
41. wishing i could fly
42. cycling round the neighbourhood. racing down the hill at ~ mach 7. stunning pedestrians. they're called that for a reason, you know.
43. watching people dance lindy hop.
44. playing with thompson jazz band.
45. doing gigs with mark and debbo
46. indulging in nostalgia
47. a cheerful atmosphere
48. smiles
49. companionship
50. not being alone anymore.

sigh. i need some of that shit.

adam

List of dead heroes:

John Coltrane (1967)
Jimi Hendrix (1970)
Jaco Pastorius (1987)
Stevie Ray Vaughan (1990)
Miles Davis (1991)
Kurt Cobain (1994)
James Brown (2006)
Michael Brecker (2007)

H3 lit is OVER! woot.

Okay, in retrospect it was quite fun. Although I realise I didn't actually know much about the subject, but no matter. Kudos also to Abby, Hyqel, Ryan and Zhiying for finishing their h3s alive and sane (mostly). That's one more subject out of the way.
We had a h3 lit party at the minicanteen on friday after submission date. Abby dared me to give a mars bar to a complete stranger (female, of course) and tell them 'congratulations.' It proved fun enough that Ryan tried it twice, and we managed to get Abby to give the last tiramisu to some poor looking dude too. Heh.

adam

I've given up so much for my studies.
I miss jazz practice. I miss thompson jazz band. I miss going out with friends or hanging around southbridge at midnight and playing 'softly as in a morning sunrise' on a pint of beer. I miss waking up at 8 in the morning and knowing that i'll be practicing until 11 at night. I miss gaming until my eyes are red. I miss having time to read things that aren't my lit texts. I miss crazy after hours dinners debating the merits of Nirvana and Ornette Coleman. I miss concerts.

When i'm done with this shit, i'm out of here and if I have one more look at the bloody A levels I will gut it and strangle it with its fucking intestines, mark my words you fucking MOE assholes I hope you all asphyxiate on your big fucking inflated egos and go to the special hell reserved for the extremely stupid.

I really love Sinatra. His music has a depth and breadth of experience that I find rare in many people. When you listen to him you get the feeling that he's lived life, that he's somehow encompassed the wonders of the world in his mind and you can't not take it seriously. It hits you in your gut.

It makes me wonder about what it'll be like living elsewhere. I don't exactly like Singapore but i'm sure anywhere else just looks rosy from this perspective. It won't be peachy anywhere, I know. But I still have a yearning to go out and live somewhere else where the air's different and the people speak another language (or at least speak English differently) I need to see the world. I've seen too much of it on TV, in songs or books but I need to see it for myself. I think it's inexcuseable to be cloistered in this age. The internet generation has seen too much on the web to have an excuse not to feel some kind of irrepressible wonder. I think of myself as a child of the internet, I think probably one of many. But rather than keep us locked in our rooms surfing all day I think it's given us so much to think about that we can't be walled into this tiny country anymore. I need to get away...

adam

It's been a crazy few weeks. A lot's happened.

Mugging's finally approaching a state which can very approximately said to be on schedule. That's a plus, always. And there've been... other issues close to my heart.

All I want to say is that i'm very thankful and that I regret nothing.

adam

Free jazz - one third dissonance for its own sake, one third free modulation between keys, and one third actualy twelve-tone melody. This as far as I can tell.

adam

edit: and of course, one-hundred per cent blues.

This is the state of my life.

I have just realised that while listening to RHCP songs i can actually pick out the GERUNDS in Anthony Kiedis' rapping. For example,
'East side love is living on the west end', from 'Can't Stop' - the word 'living' is a gerund.
I was actually listening to the track when that line went by and I remember actually stopping to think 'hey, that's a gerund!'. I think i'm doomed forever to be frustrated by the grammatic inferiority of my peers.

For those of you who don't know what a gerund is:
It is proof of your sanity. Cling to it. Cling to it.

adam

Learning point #1. Love isn't about feelings: it's about decisions because choices are what make us human.

Learning point #2. Ornette Coleman contains so much concentrated awesomeness that he should be classified as a hazardous substance. Seriously, fuck your pansy smooth jazz rubbish - you have no idea what you're missing out on.

adam

My classmates are all depressed now for some reason. I think it's the season it's like seasonal affective disorder only it isn't winter or fall - it's EXAM SEASON fuck you. I thought it was just my personal issues with the nature of existence but well it seems i'm wrong everyone's angsting their asses off. We could sing some sickeningly catchy feel-good-get-together tune and sit in a circle and hug and cry I guess WE'RE ALLLLL IN THIS TOGETHER or something like that or maybe we could just lock ourselves up in our sad dark little rooms and start mugging.

adam

It's existential angst week. I had another anxiety attack last night... one of the worst in years.

Fuck that. I refuse to give in to despair.
Was brought back from the brink this morning by John Coltrane's Resolution. THAT is worship music. And i have some wonderful friends who I really don't deserve.

I'm still a bit panicky now but I'm holding on. It'll pass.

Stevie Ray Vaughan can make the truth come out of a guitar, I swear. Eat my dust, Steve Vai!

adam

From Abby's blog:

What Be Your Nerd Type? Your Result: Musician   Doo doo de doo waaaa doo de doo! (<-- That's you playing something.) Everyone appreciates the band/orchestra geeks and the pretty voices. Whether you sing in the choir, participate in a school/local band, or sit at home writing music, you contribute a joy to society that everyone can agree on. Yay! Welcome to actually doing something for poor, pathetic human souls. (Just kidding.)
Social Nerd
Literature Nerd
Gamer/Computer Nerd
Drama Nerd
Artistic Nerd
Anime Nerd
Science/Math Nerd
What Be Your Nerd Type? Quizzes for MySpace

I figured i'd score higher on lit actually but apparently i don't read enough books.
Damnit. WTF is a 'social nerd'? Isn't that a contradiction in terms?

adam

Okay, Mr. A Levels. I'll play your fucking game. You WILL regret this.

adam

Rest in peace, Thaddeus. I never knew you, but...
argh. Condolonces to any friends who may visit here.

AFTER THE A LEVELS

Here's my to do list - if it gets any bigger i think it'll undergo gravitational collapse and become a black hole.

1. Start a band.
2. Start a band.
3. Get gigs and get paid.

Now that's out of the way... In no particular order.

4. Learn to dance lindy hop.
5. Go overseas and away from the urban cesspit that is Singapore.
6. Finish reading Ulysses for the ultimate win.
7. Portrait of the artist as a young man for additional win.
8. Party. Get high. Get drunk.
9. Train for army. Want to be fit-ish i guess. Actually just an excuse to cycle. I love cycling.
10. Catch up with old friends who may be leaving, say tearful final goodbyes. Punch a few people i've vowed to punch once in my life. Ee Chong, you're on the list.
11. Learn to drive.
12. Learn to fly (O.o)
13. Fly.
14. Visit the north-sea jazz festival with uncle fabian.
15. Go on a round trip of every jazz bar in singapore. Start with harry's at esplanade. Must catch Paul Ponnudorai again and profess my undying love.
16. Practice until my fingers bleed.
17. Save up for the sexy fretless nylon string guitar at ranking. Pray nobody else buys it.
18. Play a real game of DnD. Hopefully find an experienced DM.
19. dittto shadowrun
20. ditto V:TR
21. buy an xbox 360 somehow and/or new comp. Game until my eyes bleed.
22. Learn to play the double-bass.
23. Learn to play clarinet.
24. Learn to play saxophone.
25. Learn to play trumpet.
26. Learn to play hammond organ.
27. Learn to play bridge.
28. Play more poker with xun and terence. Win their money while they're drunk.
29. Learn to play the mandolin and/or ukelele.
30. Buy CDs. Eric Dolphy, Bill Evans, Miles Davis, Tribal Tech, Dave Brubeck. For starters.
31. Get a real job.
32. Did you seriously believe #31? The hell no.
33. Retake SAT1s. Do SAT2s. probably lit and math, maybe bio.
34. Practice for my piano ATCL. Refrain from sucking.
35. Redecorate my room. With a bulldozer - but failing that, paint is good. And furniture.
36. Learn jazz piano from xiumin. McCoy Tyner <3.
37. Write more poetry/short stories.
38. Go out with important people.
39. ...like politicians. yes.
40. Train with the netrek team.

Yes.

adam

New template. Hmm... i'm not sure yet if i like it. Tagboard's at the bottom - not that anyone tags here, ever, heh.

Exams are the day after tomorrow and i'm screeeeeeeeewwweed. Damnation...

adam

Totally appropriate.

Don't Get Around Much Anymore

Missed the Saturday dance
Heard they crowded the floor
Couldn't bear it without you
Don't get around much anymore

Thought I'd visit the club
Got as far as the door
They'd have asked me about you
Don't get around much anymore

Oh, Darling I guess my mind's more at ease
But nevertheless, why stir up memories

Been invited on dates
Might have gone but what for
Awfully different without you
Don't get around much anymore

-adam

Been swinging through euphoria and depression for the last few weeks.
I'd forgotten how much i need music to remind me that things are still worth waking up for.

adam

New favourite webcomic. This is genius:

Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life
http://www.bohemiandrive.com/comics/npwil.html

adam

Just when i thought i'd had the universe well and truly figured out, once and for all...

Wow, I got a lot of presents. Thanks so much to all my classmates who got me stuff: abby, trees, sophie, zhiying, eli sharon and nat, and to the mind-bogglingly awesome jazz club people. I feel the <3.

'Get high?'
'I hadda give it up.'

- William Gibson, Neuromancer

The more I listen to Coltrane, the more I think of Shakespeare - they both manage such an incredible density of meaning that just the mere reading or listening leaves you breathless and slightly dizzy.

And the more I tell myself I must study the more I want to lock myself up and spend the rest of my life learning to play like that.

adam

... and the world conspires to keep music with me. Just when I had every intention of starting my studies.

Jazz is a capricious mistress. Her and that piece of worm-ridden modal filth that Miles Davis came up with. They're conspiring to frustrate me, I swear it.

adam

We dont need no education.
We dont need no thought control.
No dark sarcasm in the classroom.
Teacher, leave those kids alone.
Hey, teacher, leave those kids alone!
All in all its just another brick in the wall.
All in all youre just another brick in the wall.

-Pink Floyd

So i went to the room today cos Yvonne told me they're having practice. And i sat there and I almost reached for my phone to call everyone and get them to hurry up and practice.

It hit me then. I miss my job. Goddamn i hated a lot of it but now it's gone (and i don't like to admit this) I miss it a lot. It's like a phantom limb now I don't have it anymore sometimes I reflexively go through the motions, like standing around worrying my ass off that some particular band CMI oh no oh no what am I going to do the gig is on saturday!

It's not my business anymore. I mean, the standard of the jazz club will always be my business. But now i'm only going to be teaching. It's up to Royce to organise the where and the when and the what. I suspect i'm not such a good teacher as I think but i'll learn, also.

Shit.

adam

So it's over. I guess for most people it could be hard to fathom how important the club is without actually having been in it and kind of smelled the air during a jam session. Or without mark's constant nagging that really impressed his vision onto me, and it's also a difficult one to see without having been there.

So many regrets but if there's one thing jazz has taught me it's that the only difficult decision is the one you're making now because it's the only one you control. Your past could be a fiction and your future could be a daydream but what happens now is yours and it's real and it's in some ways the only thing you can count on. So hey, i'll move on from my mistakes; it's been fun.

I'd like to say a big thank you to my wonderful EXCO who did all the work while I was daydreaming:

Huang for being the oft-needed voice of reason and supporting my crazed post-bop tendencies. Also for being the only other guy in the EXCO.
Xiumin for covering up for my utter administrative incompetence and for being an absolutely swinging pianist.
Clara for being the hardest-working secretary EVER and making sure everything ran smoothly (albeit is smoothly as jazz will ever get)
Chermaine for being a ball of sunshine despite pretending to be angsty (rubbish!). Especially when I needed the smiles.
Sara for being there for me to talk to when things got difficult, and for putting up with my nonsense.

It may be over, but it sure as hell isn't OVER. Alumni here I come!

adam

Bought 2 albums today. John Coltrane's A Love Supreme and Herbie Hancock's Head Hunters.
A Love Supreme is concentrated post-bop awesomeness. Massive awesomeness.
Head Hunters is funk before it got stupid. Fantastic stuff.

It's tomorrow grrrrrrrhhhh. Then it'll be finally over and I guess i'll have to get to studying which I really don't want to do but oh well A levels loom there isn't much choice I guess. I want it to last forever but I'm only getting one more night. I'll make the most of it.

Life is not measured in durations but in moments.

adam

It'll be over in 3 days. Nothing in the world has made me feel so out of my depth like the chairmanship. Sometimes I'm so afraid of letting people down that I can't do anything but lie down somewhere and cry. At the end of it I hope I've done an OK job - it's been fun but I'll be glad when it's over.

adam

EAT MY DUST PW

honk

A spectacular vindication of the principle that there are 'no wrong notes- only wrong resolutions' is Dave Liebman's wild rendition of the sound of music classic 'My Favourite Things'. About halfway through his solo the guitar-and-bass rhythm section cuts him loose to explore freer territory with lots of emotive honking - and somewhere in there Liebman cuts loose on a huge abrasive flurry of notes that stretch the tenor sax range from the squeaking highs to the gasping lows and ends with a huge 'plonk' on the 3rd of the tonic chord.

At this point, all is truly right with the world.

adam

Southbridge

Went to jam at jazz@southbridge tonight with shawn. Played two long pieces, Softly as in a Morning Sunrise and what is quickly becoming my signature tune, Soul Cowboy.

Overall I think it was a pretty good jam, in that there weren't any harmonic clams or sudden dry spots and everything sort of flowed, but I think it was also lacking a bit in coherence. I tend to noodle or play a lot of outside licks when I run out of ideas. Comping was predictably bad - too soft, out of time and repetitive - will have to work on that. Mario Serio said I had 'nice lines' (although i'm sure he was just being nice - i need a reason to feel good) and I got a free drink from some guy who turned out to be an SSO player (!). Ken, I think.

Anyway, I've decided on an after A levels project. I'll need to get a band together to see if we can tackle the late-50s music of Miles Davis (pre-electric period, second great quintet) or any post-bop kind of styles. I've pretty much figured that's where I want to go musically from now. Of course it's still a bit far off, but a guy can dream! Mark will be in UK by then, so i'm taking offers for a bassist slot.

adam

EDIT: Martinis taste fucking awesome. Should have ordered one for myself. In fact, will do just that when I turn 18.

EDIT: I'm also looking for a trumpeter. But don't bother unless you are excellent.

EDIT: I will call my band Sex Machine. In honour of the late James Brown, and also inspired by the fantastic US band Sex Mob. The word Jazz originally had a lot of sexual connotations, if you all didn't know.

I think the state of my room reflects the state of my mind.


Currently it is very, very messy.

THOMPSON BIG BAND BASH

Hello to the diminutive readership of this blog! I'm performing at the BOTANIC GARDENS on the 25th of march with thompson jazz band. It's at 5 pm so come and watch! And don't miss the Thoroughly Embarrassing Guitar Solo either.

Ulysses is killing me. Day 3, i'm at page 21 - which is a good 7 pages a day. To tell the truth I don't quite understand Joyce's writing at all. He has a certain sense of humour which is pretty absurd, but no LOL moments, so far.

Also, he uses 'scrotumtightening' as an adjective. Whee intellectually degenerate happiness!

adam

a heap of broken images

Just went to Kinokuniya today to pick up a copy of Ulysses! I feel excited at the prospect of slogging through the 600-odd page nightmare. Interestingly, I was talking to Cheng at the Lit (J) section - we couldn't find a second copy of Ulysses which cost less than 30 bucks - and we wanted to change the terms of our massive Ulysses-reading suicide pact to something like a Portrait of the artist as a young man-reading suicide pact and then Cheng said
- No, but Ulysses is the challenge
and some random woman said, NO, Finnegans Wake is the challenge

which came out of the blue but was roughly consistent with what I'd been told. Hmm.

School is a miserable slog. Everyone comes, everyone goes, nothing happens, it's awful. But I know i'll have to start studying at some point which is a TERRIBLE prospect but inevitable I guess.

I just read Abby's blog and it got me Thinking. I complain a lot about school but if it ever came to the crunch I doubt i'd give it up. I mean, I could probably do without studying. Or homework. Or insidious references to invisible poultry. But School... maybe not. I think it's become too much a part of me that when I'm finally cut loose I think i'll take a few months if not a whole year just adjusting to the shock of not having to wake up in the morning and grope about for my uniform or having to wander about the house half-naked in the unholy hours of the morning griping about yesterday's frisbee game in which I sprained my knee. That's a scary thought.
It's scary that despite my unspoken promise to myself that I would never let school become my life, I've gotten emotionally involved in it (and it's a terrible thing to be emotionally involved with the enemy). There are some baggages i'll be leaving in the corridors of RJ, and Raffles Institution.

I didn't ask for it. I've tried for years to make school inconsequential because I can't deal with responsibility, so that I could do it with my eyes closed. There's still things which, against my better judgement, I like about school. And i hate that.

adam

A new blues that I can't explain

Woke up this morning, I feel 'round for my shoes
You know 'bout that babe, had them old walkin' blues.
Woke up this morning, I feel 'round for my shoes,
You know 'bout that babe, Lord, I had them old walkin' blues.

Leavin' this morning, I had to go ride the blinds.
I've been mistreated, don't mind dying.
This morning, I had to go ride the blinds,
I've been mistreated, Lord, I don't mind dying.

People tell me walkin' blues ain't bad;
Worst old feeling I most ever had.
People tell me the old walkin' blues ain't bad.
Well it's the worst old feeling, Lord, I most ever had.

--

My favourite blues ever.

I've come to the startling realisation that jazz is the blues and the blues is jazz and there isn't any difference. Ornette coleman plays the same blues that Robert Johnson did. Of course it's an infuriating matter to tell anyone what you mean by 'the blues' - at some fundamental level it exists only as an abstract idea or just a sheer feeling. But I'll have a go.

The blues is a descriptor for the African-American experience of life - it originated as a kind of working song, for shouting in the cotton-fields where a lot of african-americans worked as slaves, then later as sharecroppers.

So, on one level when we say 'blues' we're talking about a genre of music, the so-called 'country blues' which was a direct outgrowth of these working songs. On the other hand, the sheer number of other things which have been attributed to 'the blues' is mind-bogglingly upsetting. The Original Dixieland Jass Band plays 'St. Louis Blues'. Robert Johnson sings the blues. John Mayer says he's got a 'new blues I can't explain'. Charlie Parker tells B.B. King - 'I'm a blues player, B, we're all blues players.' But their music is worlds apart.

So where does that leave the blues? Nowhere, it seems. I don't have answers, if you were hoping. Sometimes you get an inkling though, of what it all means - what I have now, is that the blues means honesty. It means uncontrived emotion. What charlie parker and B.B. King and ornette coleman are playing sounds impossibly different, but at the centre of it is humanity, an uncluttered humanity; an african-american humanity.

Uncluttered is an interesting experience. What i've come to perceive is that some novice players tend to play better than people with very advanced technique. Case in point : I play the blues better on electric bass than on guitar. Highly disturbing, considering how much time I practice on the six-stringed annoyance. The explanation, as I see it, is simple enough : some technically proficient players tend to impose ideas on their playing. It doesn't work, it causes improvisation to sound contrived, unnatural, un-bluesy. What works is an un-judgemental state of listening, where what has been played and what IS being played filters through the collective of experiences present in our subconscious, and is used to come up with something else. No amount of intellectual posturing can account for the complexity and the emotion present in our experiences. THAT's the blues.

adam

Life is good.

School still sucks but school =/= life SO THERE. *rude gesture*

In any case, managed to one-up council today by organising an en-masse pulling-out of all the bands in talentime due to unacceptable working conditions. They panicked and caved in immediately. Haha. I guess revenge is slow and sweet.

I kind of felt bad about feeling good about that for awhile.

HELLO CRUNCH I AM SORRY YOU HAD TO BEAR THE BRUNT OF MY COUNCIL-DIRECTED ANGST. I DON'T HATE YOU. I JUST HATE YOUR ORGANISATION.
(could someone tell crunch please?)

Talentime song went pretty well too, considering all the stage-presence pep talk i've been getting from terence. Still not perfect, but my twitching-and-flailing act is still a step up from standing still. I guess.

adam

I've had a horrible week. Like most horrible weeks it took many little horrible things to make.
The first horrible thing was coming to terms with studying. I'm still in a transition state, my fingertips still itch a bit where I press the strings, but I'm doing alright. I heard Wynton Marsalis play a minor blues somewhere, and I nearly lost it right then. I needed to figure that line out, but oh well. Mixture of laziness and despair.

I bought a file, and I put all of my things in it. It's grey.

The second horrible thing was jazz club, and everything that goes with it. I'm losing control already (which kind of shows how much of a control freak I am) , can't deal with anyone, not sure where we're heading or what we should be doing. Just really low on self-confidence. At least I hope some of the j1s will stick around. First prac was a nightmare (not because it was bad, but because I didn't know what was going on).

The third thing is church. I've stopped going for youth meetings on sunday, though I still go for mass. What's the point. I don't believe in half the things you all believe in. You're wonderful people but I feel like a hypocrite standing there. Please go ahead anyway.

So, angst, depression. Whatever. I still rate very highly on the happiness and satisfaction scale (see blogthings), which may prove that i'm a bit of a masochist. At least i'm not bored.

And there's still stuff to do. I vow to live forever by never having enough time to lie down somewhere and die.



adam

I guess this should go on my other blog, but whatever.
I got to play at the esplanade!
I am really happy about that. Got dragged down to the outdoor theatre by mark and shawn to join the mosaic jam and there were all sorts of pro people who played the pants off us. We went up anyway (kicking and screaming, as it were) and I think we did ok. I was very, very scared.

But... wow. Achievement, even though it was just an open jam and we kind of < everybody else. It was fun and I got to meet all the cool people backstage. I kept the little 'artist' tag they gave me too .

adam

I hate this. I hate everything.

It's 2007. 2007 means J2.
J2 means A levels.
A levels means studying.
Studying means no practice.

First off, I hate studying.
Studying is for the sort of people who grow up to be withered shrubberies in some meaningless post in a backward university, teaching the next generation of withered shrubberies.

I am also deathly afraid that when it comes to the crunch i.e. practice or study, I will be completely unable to choose the latter.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

adam

meme#2

Got this from Ryan.

Comment and I'll give you a letter; then you have to list 12 things you love that begin with that letter. After, post this in your journal, and give out some letters of your own.
My letter is O.

1. Orange. Orange is now prescribed in tablet or syrup form at your nearest clinic for cases ranging from mild depression to suicidal tendencies. No known side effects except uncontrollable happiness.

2. Ozzy Osbourne. Ozzy INVENTED screamo. Black Sabbath FTW.

3. Othello (the character) for being so amazingly screwed up, but STILL great. I like Othello a lot.

4. Ornithology (the Charlie Parker tune, not the discipline.) Only song which I have 3 versions of all by the same artist.

5. Opus Pocus by Jaco Pastorius. Favourite pastorius tune ever, and one of his best.

6. Orion, the constellation. Probably the only easily recogniseable one from Singapore. But I don't do stargazing so maybe I just don't know. If the night is clear you can always see the three-stars-in-a-row belt of orion.

7. Ostinatos. Listen to Hiromi's 'XYZ'. She is entirely composed out of awesome, as Ryan would say. Not that I think he'd like Hiromi. But he talks like that.

8. Obfuscate. Obfuscate. Obfuscate. Obfuscate. Obfuscate.
Obfuuuuuscaaaaaaaaaaate.

9. 'Of' the word. Without which we would have no 'Heart OF Darkness'.

10. Orkz. Even more dakka!

11. Onomatopoiea. I can spell it.

12. JAMES BROWN. OK, I cheated. But I think he deserves a mention.
My heroes are dying one by one and I can't do anything about it.
My man, you are Soul Brother number one. You are a sex machine.

adam

New blog.
http://cosimavoodoochild.blogspot.com/

But it isn't replacing this one.

adam

There are 2 kinds of people in this world: Those who don't understand what Pat Metheny is doing, and those who don't understand what Pat Metheny is doing, but listen to him anyway.

adam

Gigs

I'm happy now, because I've got lots of gigs.

And I love it when i get to perform. Ok, given... the wedding today was a bit of a screwup. But nobody noticed! (Or at least, it being a wedding, they were obliged to be nice.) I guess you can count on Nobody At All to understand what a jazz band is doing. In fact, we survived a dangerously teetering rendition of that most hated song, Fly me to the Moon, and made a sort of careening way through My Funny Valentine, and came out the other end looking slightly bruised, but not really worse for the wear. It has been worse before.

For example, taking a gig with mark who shows up 15 minutes before and asks what songs we're doing. The thing is, he can do it. I can't - therefore, echoing Descartes, I suffer.

To anyone who reads this blog, if such a hypothetical person does in fact exist, COME DOWN TO WOODLANDS CC TOMORROW (Sunday). There's an open jam session at 1.30 .

Voodoo Child (Slight Return)

Well, I stand up next to a mountain
And I chop it down with the edge of my hand
Well, I stand up next to a mountain
And I chop it down with the edge of my hand
Well, I pick up all the pieces and make an island
Might even raise a little sand

'cause I'm a voodoo child
Lord knows I'm a voodoo child baby

I want to say one more last thing
I didnt mean to take up all your sweet time
I'll give it right back to ya one of these days
I said I didnt mean to take up all your sweet time
I'll give it right back one of these days

If I dont meet you no more in this world then
I'll meet ya on the next one
And don't be late
Don't be late

'cause I'm a voodoo child voodoo child
Lord knows I'm a voodoo child

Jimi Hendrix

MEEEEEEME.

I guess this is revenge for the 'hanxin smashes head, then smashes Ryan' comment.


Once tagged by this entry, the assignment is to write a blog entry of some kind with six random facts about yourself. Then, pick six of your friends and tag them; no tag backs. This explanation should be included.

1. First thing that came to mind - i love it when it rains. Especially when it rains outside and i'm indoors... somehow i find that very comforting. Must be linked to some childhood thing i can't remember. I have a big transparent door that leads from my room to outside so i can see the rain and the plants and the garden slowly flooding up. I find it fascinating. Although, now there are plants and the garden doesn't really flood up anymore. It's still good.

2. I have incontrollable bouts of nervousness before public performances. Despite all my experience with that sort of thing it never goes away.

Notably, the worst was before my first debate in the Julia Gabriels national debating competition. I remember sitting in the canteen outside the debate room and being paralysed. As in, I actually felt breathing difficulties and dizziness. I went on to win best speaker, but that was the last and only time and eventually my team dropped out at the quarter finals.

The other time was before band concert this year in which hyqel and I were guest performing. We were both novice jazz guitarists at the time, barely able to decipher a 'D7+5' chord (doesn't that make it a D12?), let alone navigate the intricacies of fingerboard harmony. Worse still, we were accompaniment. Hyqel told me he got it too. Strangely that somewhat alleviated my panic... and I realised that the best antidote to nervousness is empathy. And winning.

3. Perhaps my favourite musician of all time is the electric bassist Jaco Pastorius, even though I don't really play bass much. I wouldn't say that his music is terribly profound compared to the likes of john coltrane, but it just radiates an energy that is incomparable. I don't think I will wax lyrical about his music right now. Rather I think i'll note that up to the 70s and 80s electric bassists were progressing hugely by co-opting electric guitar technique. So much so that I think (at least as far as jazz is concerned) they overtook us. Now I think it really is time for guitarists to start learning back from the bassists.

4. I used to be a swimmer. As in, I used to swim competitively. This is in spite of the fact that i'm horribly unfit and I have never taken my gold survival certificate. It also was around 8 years ago, so whatever swimmer is left in me has probably drowned. I still regularly owned my non-swimmer classmates in secondary school though.

5. I always use (almost) full english when I SMS or email or use msn. I don't shorten things which don't need to be shortened like 'You' or 'like'. I can understand using shorthand for long words or phrases like brb for be right back, but I can't stand people hu tok lyk dis. Seriously. You've saved, like 4 letters at the expense of looking completely retarded.
I also don't use a qwerty keyboard. I've switched to Dvorak which is faster and easier on the hands.

6. I really only speak one language : english. My chinese is good enough to express myself in a very limited fashion. I usually just resort to english and gestures. I also know a little French, but not enough to speak fluently. I can understand rudiments of Bahasa Indonesia, but not enough to speak as well.

I am tagging RYAN, ABBY, ELI, NATALIE, GERARD and SHARON.

Sorry Ryan, if this takes too much time away from nanowrimo then please tell me.

adam

EDIT: sorry, had to post this. This is brilliant.
I think it's important that churches are up to this right now. I think it's a step in the right direction.

Have been feeling very insecure lately, about everything. I put it down to hormones, but that doesn't make it any less shitty.

In fact, I've been pretty emo this whole year. Whoever it was on that documentary about teenagers got it right. It's a terrible time and a wonderful time.

Mr. Pastorius

I saw Jaco Pastorius and his band play 'Liberty City' on Youtube.

It is heartbreaking to see a man so happy.
Toots Thielemans, the harmonica player, came over to him during a rest and said something I couldn't hear and he laughed. He threw his head back and laughed like a little kid.
It is heartbreaking because in that instant I knew my life's goal is to be that happy some day, in the same inimitable, exuberant way.

Hey, I don't even know the man. I don't claim to. Never before have I seen a person, let alone a grown man, so joyous.

So I'm sitting here and I'm listening to 'Liberty City'. It is infectious. I wonder what it must be like on the other side, if just listening is such a moving experience. What's it like behing the score, behind the instrument, putting out such wonderful noise?
You couldn't listen to his music and not be moved. You couldn't play his music without being changed forever.

I found a vid of Jeff Carswell and Richard Bona covering the piece with the Jaco Pastorius Big Band. They're grinning like idiots. I wonder if they've seen that same performance and that same huge grin that I saw.

I wonder if they felt the same bittersweet regret that the world might never see such a smile again - at the same time knowing that a piece of him lives on regardless. Maybe they somehow felt inadequate.

Few know that 14 years before the 2001 terrorist attacks made the day infamous, on the same day ocurred a smaller but no less profound tragedy. Jaco Pastorius was beaten fatally in a club on september 11th, 1987. He died 10 days later. Until I saw that laugh I didn't think anything of it...

It is heartbreaking, it is heartbreaking.

Nu-metal. What a stupid name.

Disturbed has renewed my faith in modern rock.

Let's just say, if, for the last year or so you were to place a little camera in my room, unbeknownst to me, you would be hard-pressed indeed to find me headbanging to anything.
I mean, Velvet revolver, yes. Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Nirvana. All great, but not really headbanging-like.

I can truthfully say i've never had the urge until about 10 minutes ago. Nu-metal is my one weakness when it comes to modern rock-derived music. I've never given a second thought about anything from punk-rock to death metal - but from the start i was sort of attracted to linkin park. I recall intensely liking a Korn song from awhile back. I shamefully admit having listened to limp bizkit for a short, short period.

Those were dark days.

Eventually linkin park's teenage-angst lyrics and hip-hop leanings began to annoy me. I never heard another Korn song in my life. Limp bizkit thankfully faded from any of my playlists.

Never once though have I had the urge to headbang. I guess it's one of those things I figured was for uncouth teenagers with pimples and bad breath - at best, woefully unrestrained, and at worst just utterly silly. Which intelligent rock band would want their fans all to develop whiplash? Seems kind of counter-productive.

Anyway, GETTING TO THE POINT. Disturbed is fantastic. They've got the nu-metal thing going on. They've got a groove, and some fantastic song-writing. They have a half-decent guitarist (far better than the quarter- and eigth- decent guitarists present in other rock bands.)

So i guess i sort of broke down and headbanged.
A little.
I'm watching my pimples.


adam

I can't shake the feeling that sitting alone at the Coffee Bean, reading a book and nursing a vanilla Ice Blended somehow automatically brands you as a social outcast without any friends.

I tackled that hypothesis gallantly this afternoon with a copy of Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Haven't finished it yet, but it is proving to be a fantastic book with thoughtful (as opposed to mindless) humour. And it is Very Funny.

For me this is a good reprieve from the apocalyptic we are all machines doom-n-gloom drugs-and-sex-and-violence imagery of Neuromancer (which i'm doing for h3 lit... go me).

On the other hand, incest isn't much better.
Haha.

adam

We can NEVER win against the world. It's like a casino on a mind-boggling scale, the odds constantly and consistently weighted against us. We claim our victories in the mute flashes of our lifetimes. The sudden jingle of slot machines. The sound uplifts our sordid, lonely souls for enough the time it takes for us to fade into the mists of eternity, forgotten.

I think it's the greatest irony that those of us (and I speak categorically) who reject what we perceive as a 'system' and rebel eventually become systems ourselves. Only now we are systems of rejection, the scientific method. But we claim our bright moments of victory before we are trampled and forgotten.

Destruction is beautiful. It's a sordid, animal impulse. Tell me you've never experienced a moment of catharsis seeing a fallen tree, mangled by fire. It's as if the world for a moment became a voicing of the hatred that burns inside all humans. Or if the dust of our bodies for a brief moment felt the kinship of the oblivion that is our inevitable destiny.

Haha you have got to try this.

I was playing Pat Metheny's 'all the things you are' on itunes in the background while surfing the net - then I (somehow) navigated to someone's (super emo) blog which was playing that 'how do i breeeeeaaaaaathe without you' song. The resulting mix was quite shocking. I almost laughed.

For nonteknischen, that version of all the things you are is a fairly liberally interpreted (even by modern standards) version, and mixing it with sappy love ballads is HILARIOUS.

My next project is to find 'my heart will go on' and mix it with Song X. Maybe i'll call it 'performance art'.

Giggle.


adam

I feel horrible... open house rehearsal was such a screw up. We didn't know what we were doing... mostly underpracticed and underconfident. Everything was off... timing, tuning and stuff. We can't keep playing like this...

I promise we'll do better. I promise.
And to Julie Andrews, i'm sorry for mangling the song that you sang. We'll do better next week.

adam

sonya* it only hurts when i breathe / freedom! (= all the things i wanna do with my life, here i come says:
A BAT IS IN MY ROOM!
HELP

sonya* it only hurts when i breathe / freedom! (= all the things i wanna do with my life, here i come says:
HELP
HELP
MAKE IT GO AWAY


If i wasn't wondering what on earth I should do, I would've fallen off my chair laughing :P

adam

http://www.todayonline.com/articles/144186.asp

Shit. They managed to execute the people. The 3 Christians accused of inciting violence against Muslims.

The promos are like breakfast cereal.
Except without the sugar.
... and most of the carbohydrates,
and the dietary fibre,
and the 7 essential vitamins and minerals,
and come to think about it, without the fancy packaging...

and all you're left with is crunchy despair.

Life sucks bad.

adam

Global Personality Test Results

Stability (40%) moderately low which suggests you are worrying, insecure, emotional, and anxious. Orderliness (30%) low which suggests you are overly flexible, improvised, and fun seeking at the expense too often of reliability, work ethic, and long term accomplishment. Extraversion (50%) medium which suggests you average somewhere in between being assertive and social and being withdrawn and solitary.

Take Free Global Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

Glancing at my blogger dashboard, I realise that I have six blogs: This one, WB, triploidy, portfolio, logblog, and the never-even-started band blog. (The band went on hiatus before we managed to do anything. Haha.) I blog entirely too much.

Unrelatedly, I keep thinking that poetry is an easy way out for writers without the patience or ability to come up with plots/compelling characterisations. Probably isn't true one bit, but at least at the amateur level it does seem that way.

I mean, on one hand it is meant to be extremely dense, meaning-wise, but coupled with the fact that it takes some skill to extract this meaning, it isn't hugely difficult to come up with some nonsense claptrap which sounds philosophical.

On the other hand, I guess poetry does fulfil functions unsuited for prose, or story-writing. I mostly find stories more compelling than poetry, however, and it infuriates me how I can't seem to write any stories. I just don't have the knack. Will keep trying.

adam

Steve Irwin's dead. I don't even know why I care so much. He was always on the verge of getting on my nerves.

Yet something deep inside of me - the primal snake-grappling, crocodile-wrestling savage that exists inside all of us (die, Josef Conrad!) is profoundly sad. The world has lost a great man.

I'm stilling grappling with it. People like Steve Irwin don't die.

This is a cruel world, but we will remember you in it, Mr. Irwin.

adam

*Edit* It was a fatal sting from a stingray, I just found out. Oddly poetic, but I would never wish it on anyone. Truly, the man was an icon; a loud, blustering, manly, enthusiastic icon. He is undoubtedly taking this new development very well; but the world will not so soon recover from its heartbreak. Rest in peace, Steve Irwin.

The air this morning wasn't raw or sandy. When i woke up it was an awful taste of purple and depression. Not the artsy kind either. Wake up and grope for the stimulants depression. No amount of teenage angst will make that pretty.

I've never felt so confused. Angst is our way of making depression beautiful. But when you're just depressed, it sucks - not low enough to indulge in self-pity, just low enough to feel awful, awful. Everything I do reveals some new silliness, some ugly scar (I thought was healed over). Not enough honesty to finish this hundred -

100 words
13 May Saturday

adam


edit: Thanks to everyone for the concern, really. It's better to angst here than to be off in some dark corner slitting my wrists or doing LSD. Actually... doing LSD... mmmm.

Haha. I hope that left you all suitably non-comforted. But thank you anyway.

Mother

NO! You and your silly strings
you putter 'round and fixing things
you stay on your spot and turn about
you head is made up of undoubt

You makes the kitchen very clean
you makes the party you isn't seen
you do the work you do the time
you makes the words in poems rhyme

you tie things up you tie things down
you sings your happy songs but frown
you de-mar-kate, you draws the line
you injured but you still is fine

You eighty-five you living done
you got daughter you got son
you dying but not wonder how
you tired but you happy now

by adam

"Meaningless! Meaningless!"
says the Teacher.
"Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless."
- Ecclesiastes 1:2

So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me.
- Ecclesiastes 2:17

i guess i've had time to re-examine my value systems.
I'm not a good person by far... I really have no spiritual qualms about lying, cheating, vandalism and various forms of petty larceny... The reason i'm not a criminal is because I can't deal with the consequences. Does that make a person virtuous? That on it's own isn't half as disturbing as the fact that i'm not disturbed by this at all.

I don't believe in anything. I guess I'm a bona fide cynic that way. Nothing moves me. I don't believe in happiness. I don't believe in love.

I don't even like people.

I believe in God, but I believe even more that the people who also believe in God are sometimes the most screwed up.

Sometimes I think I only wake up to thank God for the fact that I can lie to people about how much I dislike them and how unhappy I am. I hope that isn't true. I hate myself for the fact that I have no justification to be miserable. Life hasn't been bad for me.

I guess you could say something for the purity of my dislike for everyone... like Iago's evil, it is motive-less and enigmatic. It isn't hate, not at all. I wouldn't, for example, suicide bomb a building to alleviate my discomfort. It's just a certain feeling I get in the mornings that the world is out to get me. It is not a noble lust for vengeance, or a tragically misguided hatred for all living things. It is a limp, futile dislike, an annoyance and an irritation.

I am twisted and perverted in that way. Honesty is what I value most in other people. I feel sometimes that the worst way to insult someone is to be conciliatory. People should have their feelings out at one another. The highest good is to be honest with yourself about what you are... lie to others, not yourself. Sometimes it means you face something terrible and ugly, a brooding monstrous gloom. The people who tell me we are fighting a 'spiritual war' against wordly temptations are idiots. I am my first demon.

adam

Treatise on improvisation

"Since I can't read music and everything, I find out that I do the best when I just... listen for where, where i'm trying to go with it, where it can go, and not try to rush it, not try to make up things as i'm going, just let them come out, then I'm a lot better off, if I start trying to pay attention to where I am on the neck, or this is the proper way to do this or that, then I end up thinking that thing through, instead of playing from the heart I'm playing from the mind, and that's where I find that I get in trouble."
- Stevie Ray Vaughan

I was just listening to some records of yesterday's gig. My solo sounds truly awful... noodly non-phrases everywhere and no resolution whatsoever.

I realise the problem now, having just a minute ago done a few recordings which are surprisingly satisfactory.
The phrase given by some of the musicians i respect the most : Zhaohan, Shawn, Xiumin, Hyqel - 'Just whack" is far more profound than I initially thought.

On one level, you need to understand why a solo works. How the artist manipulates notes, phrasing, harmony in order to create an effect.

On the other hand, I realise that thinking about your solo ruins it. There is a place in the soul where both art and the appreciation of it comes from, which slowly assimilates every revelation in listening, in reading or in viewing and makes it part of you. Innately, just by appreciation of it, the musician understands intuitively the effect of what he hears, and this intuition goes here and becomes part of you, and this is the only part of you which understands it well enough to use it.

No amount of theory will correct for a deficiency here.
Solos come from here, not from analysis, and to force an effect on your solo is tantamount to editing your very being. It doesn't work; human beings are far too strong for that.

This is not to say that musicians (or, for that matter, writers and artists) should not transcribe, memorise and analyse other people's work. This is essential; it adds a body of physical technique that can be drawn upon when improvising. Without physical technique musical ideas cannot be realised. Thus when the musical sense demands the sound of, say, a tritone substitution of D7, one must actually be able to play it in order to have any effect.

That is the beauty of any art, be it music or writing or visual; it cannot come solely from the rational mind which is so easily duplicated with circuitry; it must come from the part of humans (call it the subconscious, call it the soul) that responds to the world with a wonder that may never be replicated.

adam

*edit* in a quick update, i'd just like to note that having spent 2 hours on my dismal soloing I have FAILED COMPLETELY to do my lit essay. GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAh.

I am a bundle of empires
and towering desires
held together by the singing of a song.

HOLY SHIT I AM GROWING OLD BEFORE MY TIME

You Are 24 Years Old

Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe. 13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world. 20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences. 30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more! 40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.

What Age Do You Act?

I took this 6 months ago and I was still 14 i believe. Shit!

Abby's blog reminded me to re-take the quiz, btw.
lifethrujesus.blogspot.com

adam

the blind man is singing in Irish
He get his money in a tin dish
He just a corner serenader
once upon a time he could've made her, could've made her


Lyrics from Dire Straits (still in my opinion the best rock band EVER, up there with Queen and Nirvana)

That could be me. Siggggghhhhhh....


adam

In one fell swoop I will shatter the chains of tradition, and prove to the world that I have no life.

I will blog because I'm happy.

I am inexplicably happy - it's like there are a million things that happened today, none of which would justify having a good day (in fact it was rather terrible, adding to the inexplicability) on its own, and ...

I guess in total it just makes you happy, which, as I have established in previous, angst-filled diatribes, is rare. The world is good, creation is good, and wonderful and colourful and even processed air feels alive, like there's a little song and a little story in every note of a cricket's call

or the sound of the TV outside, that's someone's story too. And all the little stories they add up and you can feel them humming on the air, and with a contented sigh you let back your strained eyes and know for sure that your story... MY story... is up there, in the air, and somewhere is making someone else happy as well.

adam

"Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education."
- Bertrand Russell

Actually, mostly because I'm just bitter about my GP marks and need to rant about something.



I can't muster enough vitriol to bitch about the school anymore. Actually, i think school really is kind of great. I really enjoy it. Education, on the other hand, just sucks. I wish we could come to school and not learn anything... I don't believe in learning anyway.

Ryan D suggested to me earlier today that we should just be given straight As for our 'A' levels in the true spirit of the raffles programme, because they've already assumed for the 'O' levels that we're the top 3 percent of Singapore, academically and thus going a step further isn't such a logical leap. Sounds like a good scheme to me.

So CTs were bad.

Somehow I wish I cared more about them. My studies are in shambles, but I don't think i'm quite agitated enough to do anything about them. Siggghhhh... It seems like everyone else has been shocked into a state of frantic mugging.

The last few days have ground my willpower down completely. I think i'm caught in a self-destructive cycle... when I can't find energy to do anything else, I practice. It cleans the soul, I think. When I practice, I have even less energy to do anything else. Net result : homework suffers.
Is it better to have a clean soul and be a failure at life?

adam

I've gotten back on the piano. It feels quite good, even though my hands are stiff from months of neglect. Looks like I'll have to re-learn everything, which is, to tell the truth, quite an exciting prospect.
Maybe i'll even get xiu min to teach me something about jazz piano, hmm. But I don't think i'll actually start official lessons again, that's way too stressful. And somehow i enjoy the process of self-learning. In any case, my piano-playing aspirations sort of died with my ABYSMAL grade 8 results. In a way, it forced me to prioritise, but the more immediate result of scraping a bare-minimum pass was that I doodled on gershwin for awhile, tried half of poulenc's novelettes, made a rather pathetic attempt at a Beethoven sonata (pun intended. Score!), then eventually just gave up the whole thing.

Feels good to have it back.

adam

The Teenage Textbook is a cheesy, obnoxious little novel that would be completely insufferable if the author had not written with such ferocious honesty that any form of linguistic silliness becomes permissible, and beautiful.

Adrian Tan possesses a quirky, raw sort of genius.

-adam

Ah! an original poem by adam

this is the sound
this is the sound
this is the sound the raindrops go

pitter patter
spitter spatter
on my window a bitter blatter

a scritch, a scratch
a rhyme that won't match
between the spaces the raindrops flow.

-adam

uncampable! haha.

CCAL camp was a rush, of mud and rain and seawater and stick-like things. I think I shall not recount the happenings, so as to allow epic verbal recountage, but it was very, very fun.

Group D3, you guys made the experience possible. I think we sort of clicked earlier on, and we just drove each other with humongous enthusiasm. If there's one quality i respect more than any other it's enthusiasm - not bubbly haha enthusiasm but seriously putting your entire being into the one thing you love. That's enthusiasm, and we all somehow know that.

Having been through a number of camps/similar programs I'm actually quite cynical about the whole 'team spirit' thing. I don't believe that people somehow magically click and work together as a team without months if not years of knowing each other.

So. I won't say we'll be wonderful friends. I won't say we'll never forget each other. I say we might, but for group D3 my cynicism was tempered with a lot of respect for you all. It was a good 4 days, we cheered and we achieved, but the journey starts now I guess. We WILL keep in contact, and at the end of this year at least I hope to call you all friends.

Verbose thanks are directed at QM James Lee, who is an inspiration to me, and i have immense respect for. Thank you for the letter. You embody all the qualities of leadership that we were supposed to learn in camp, and I know you're a much better person than I'll ever be. I suspect I'll eventually fumble my way through with Jazz Club, but you'll succeed whatever it is you're doing.

For the last time maybe, D3 power! Will see you all in school... for now it's back to the jazz.
adam

the holidays are here

School ended just in time, I was starting to lose control of everything already. Responsibility is such a screwed up word. I've got to keep up appearances to everyone else to keep doing the job that I love. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing... but it just sucks.

Last few days of school were a desperate stretch to make it to the safety of holidays. I scraped through, skipping lessons and rushing homework. Now everything's in a mess. CCAL camp from 26th to 30th, then some performances.

I think i'd better start cleaning up.

adam

I'm turning 17 tomorrow. I'm anticipating a little more love than last year (hope it goes well) but i guess i shouldn't ruin it with too much expectation. There are so many things I want and can't have, and so many things I have and don't need. I think though, that this year I shall just be happy. I shall call it a birthday present, and no-one will know any better, least of all myself.

This year I vow not to play it safe, to do too many things and make more mistakes than I’ve ever made in my life.

100 words

- adam, who is 2 hours and 29 minutes short of officially being 17.

Little Wing

Well she’s walking through the clouds
With a circus mind that’s running round
Butterflies and zebras
And moonbeams and fairy tales
That’s all she ever thinks about
Riding with the wind.

When I’m sad, she comes to me
With a thousand smiles, she gives to me free
It’s alright she says it’s alright
Take anything you want from me, anything
Anything.

Fly on little wing,
Yeah yeah, yeah, little wing

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

This one's another hendrix tune. I've heard 3 different versions (SRV and ZZtop, Clapton and Sheryl Crow, Satriani and Vai) and they're all amazing. They sound completely different, but the beauty of hendrix's songwriting still gets through.

I really can't say much. It just hit me so hard - this is why I play guitar. I could cry playing this, i really wish I could.

adam

Mornings. Hazy, dusty mornings in the dun-hued sunlight; these are the essence of life. Not Nights- nights are dark and angst-filled. Evenings are just pretentious.

Mornings are real and gritty and sleepy-eyed, intruding on your comfortable sleep, nagging like a mother. You can feel the sandy air in your lungs, the last dreams escaping from beneath eyelids. The clumsy, bleary-eyed first steps.

The shower shocks; and then it's railings, staring out at the sun and the buildings. It is a quiet brightness, raw and unmitigated. Smiling at the sun and the dust, I turn away.

100 words

adam

It seems that now everyone's angsting about their lost secondary school days. Various blog entries, conversations and even a chinese model essay (!) serve as evidence.

I don't get it, am I missing something?
Was I asleep, comatose or incapacitated for a good 4 years while time flickered by?

I have no memories of secondary school life. No nostalgia. Ms Kuang told me in sec 3 that i'd grow to love my class by the time graduation came. I never did stop despising them. I'm sorry Ms Kuang. Nothing about any of my CCAs struck me as particularly engaging. Bowling- i quit out of boredom after 2 years. String ensemble- I was a second-rate violinist anyway, and I didn't feel connected to the performance the way some did. Debate- I never got anywhere. JGs RI team 2 was great, but we were team-mates and that was pretty much it. Half the team was juniors, and I don't meet them anymore.

I never found the joy of shared experience because I was angry at everybody.

I told myself i'd give a new start in JC. I did - no-one else did. Like dissolves like, and the rest float and linger.

I'm sorry, i'm sorry, i'm sorry, i'm sorry.
Now I'm stuck between people and the afterimages of others' remembered past.


-adam

Jazzpiration

Jazzpiration was a huge success, and i thoroughly enjoyed the performance. I think thanks are in order...

to band-mates Boyle, Chermaine, Gao Yuan, Sara, Tania - Thanks for putting up with me. You people are wonderful. Thanks also for the smiles and reassurance - i really needed that at times.

to other jazz club people who also worked tremendously hard for the concert. Especially the j1 bands - kelly's band and sneha's band, who've had to learn everything in slightly under 4 months. I know what it feels like.

to the seniors for teaching us everything in such a short time, and organising everything. And also for still being very, very l33t.

to the senior-seniors (or basically Mark) who came down to teach us stuff despite having NS.

to classmates from 07S03N. Class <3! Thanks for putting up with my complete non-functioningness these 2 weeks, and for covering for all my undone tutorials, assignments, all the lectures i've missed, and for lending me money to buy coffee. Also, for buying tickets and supporting.

On a more personal level, i need to thank God for everything that went right, and some more for everything that didn't. Yay to Sara for instant pre-concert prayer meeting. And perhaps most of all, i want to thank God that it's over.

adam

EASTER !

Easter is wonderful.

I feel inexplicably happy today, which doesn't happen often to people like me. :D I even used an emoticon in a blog post, woot.

I guess it started in the morning. Woke up on decidedly the right side of the bed, and even no breakfast before church didn't dent my spirits like it usually does. The grin stayed on through easter mass (which is the best mass of the year. trust me on this. My heart does a little jump whenever the choir sings 'Easter song' no matter how out-of-tune, out-of-time, sleepy and drugged they are. ) We had to stand up too because the church was too crowded, but somehow it didn't matter. Verily we are slaves to our own negativity- the amount of good things that happen to you is proportionate to how happy you are.

Went out to meet some relatives who're over from indonesia/australia for lunch at Sizzler's. DECADENCE! The fast is over, truly. Then just shopped for awhile, ate more sushi than should be legally allowed, and went home.

Easter is really great. I must be allowed to say that again. Easter is really great. There was something horrible and looming on my chest for the entirety of lent, and suddenly it's off and it's great. Maybe that's supposed to happen, hmm...

adam

Christ is risen, Hallelujah!
Happy Easter to you. That means you.

it's a small world...

I returned to my old house today with my dad. We're moving back in a couple of months, and since the tenants have moved out we now have to refurbish the place, which is in quite an awful state.

I'll say it quickly: the place has shrunk. I've caught myself many times in the past year dreaming of going back to the vast open-spaces, the tall angled ceiling, the endless corridor, the attic with so many doors. I grew up in that place, and growing up somewhere kind of entails the assignment of the size of imagination to places that seem so little now.

Going back was eye-opening - I felt like it was no longer a house, but just a miniature scale model. I could remember everything about the rooms, the corners, the precise shade of blue that the toilet is. I could say, here. Here is where i sat and stared at the way the wall meets the ceiling. Here I lay down sideways on my upper bunk and dreamt of leaping off, sprouting wings before I hit the ground. But it no longer holds any fascination for me; I can almost reach the ceiling by jumping now. It didn't feel like it was the real house; just a scale model for me to point and say, here, here are where my childhood memories are.

I walked through the house. They've chopped down the tree here (it's dying, they said) and that thought seemed to present an ominous symbolism in my mind. I couldn't help but think that ten years ago I would never have walked somewhere assigning ominous symbolisms to dead trees.

It saddens me to think that I've now lost something. One might say, with added height comes a diminished perception of size. With added experience comes a diminished perception of importance. Rubbish, I think - I squatted down and the garden didn't seem any bigger. No matter how I flattened myself against the stucco wall the corridor refused to stretch to encompass infinity.

Have I lost my childhood? No, I still remember everything as vividly as the day; and those were (in hindsight) some of my happiest. But that is sentimental nonsense.

The house is still there. I think i've grown with self-awareness, awareness that my body occupies some space that is far from negligible, and now the rooms are smaller for it. I've lost the carefree idealism (which expands like an ideal gas to fill all available space). I've lost the ability to colour and fill, with the infinity of imagination, the white hard walls.

I've grown up, one might say. But has the world really just gotten smaller?

adam

be happy ALL THE TIME

Be happy all the time.

Because if you aren't happy at any moment, you may die the next second of an aneurysm and then you'd die miserable. How much does that suck?
Even if I've had the shittiest day of my life, the thing I should do is sit down somewhere and force myself to be happy. The human capability for self-deceit is one of the few truly infinite things in this world; even so in most cases there's no need for such.
If there's the tiniest shard of good news buried in my angst-ridden soul i assure you there's some way I can be happy about it.

adam

angst!

It seems RJ has awakened a wellspring of angst in me. Maybe it's the environment, the girls, the competition and the need to impress people.

Lol. Since when did angst impress people?

Anyway, I long for days long past when I was younger, carefree-er, perhaps slightly more conflicted, and far less sane (yes 3n, you have been spared the worst. haha. ) The most surprising thing about life so far is to realise that I harbour and treasure a little part of myself, perhaps buried deeply sometimes, that is proud to be just a little mad. I think to be completely sane and well-adjusted is to give yourself up to the world and become part of another inanity.

I believe you should keep a part of yourself separate, always questioning, and always laughing, always cynical, always slightly dead to the world, and always slightly disjointed, malfunctioning, slightly disconnected and dysfunctional and slightly disillusioned. It gives me a perspective on things. I think people who are truly sane are also truly silly. Then again, people who are truly mad are also perhaps not worth being.

"I went mad for a while,' said Ford, 'did me no end of good." - Life, the Universe, and Everything by douglas adams

adam

All along the watchtower

"There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief,
"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth."

"No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke,
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
This song just exploded in my head. A combination of Bob Dylan's inspired songwriting and Jimi Hendrix's furious guitar playing, it manages to be cacophonous without being heavy, and Jimi manages to capture the quiet melancholy even while playing loud and fast.

A dead simple 3-note riff behind the entire song really drives the song but never gets boring because Jimi keeps the lead part interesting with constant changes in rhythm, register and texture, jumping from a spacey, echoing phrase to a dramatic fuzz-wah and many other changes which manage not to be gimmicky.

In today's scene, with many musicians doing the hundred and two-hundred beats per minute, and many other effects made available to technology, it's easy to discount simple lyricism and musical sense. But while he may not be as fast as modern players, the genius of Jimi Hendrix is timeless.

adam

one more member

The call must go out again.
I'm looking for a vocalist for my band, tentatively referred to as No Thesis Statement. Contact me personally for samples of the kind of stuff we'll be playing.
Also, I'm looking for a keyboardist/saxophonist or blues harp (that's harmonica to the rest of you). Improvisation is necessary, and preferably you should be able to sing, especially if you're a keyboardist. [because keyboardists are cumbersome and you must be able to do something if there is a) no keyboard part or b) no keyboard]

Respond please. If you know anybody who can do the above, even if they can only sing, please tell them i'm looking for a vocalist, even a temporary one.

Current band members are Huang Lu and Jian Wei.

adam

The rest of the mosaic festival was predictably amazing. After the Blues event, it started on wednesday with the Pat Metheny concert. The man is a genius.
After starting with some light acoustic pieces, he quickly melded into serious, avant-garde jazz. Admittedly I didn't really understand the more experimental pieces, but the rest of his set list was... brilliant, to put it one way, and enlightening, to put it another way. I didn't know so much sound (and so many sounds) could come out of 3 instrumentalists. Also, the double bassist is scary. At the end of the concert he received a standing ovation and performed 2 encores - I believe the second one was entirely made up on the spot - check for a guitar lead-in, check for 12-bar-blues progression. Amazingly, by the end of the piece, the whole band was marvellously synchronised.

I am awed, impressed, and determined.

adam

(more on the other events later)

Thanks Chermaine for arising new feelings of self-doubt in me. I stopped writing because writing is a silly, facetious, sel f-indulgent thing to do and I only ever did it to impress people not because I actually enjoyed it and even if I became good at impressing people I gained nothing from it except other people's adoration which I don't need currently because my ego is swollen enough as it is and I'm trying to focus on more important things.

I needed to get that out of my system. Who the hell am I kidding?

Haiku 03

watching from my window
the quietness
of the leaves

-adam

wish list!

I'm looking for the following albums, if anyone would like to buy/lend me, that would be really, really amazing.

John Mayall's Bluesbreakers - the 'beano' album. i don't know what else it's called. it's got Eric Clapton reading a copy of 'beano' on the front.
Cream - Wheels of Fire
Cream - Disraeli Gears
Derek and the Dominoes - Layla and other assorted love songs
Miles Davis - In a Silent Way
Miles Davis - Bitches Brew (both of these are VERY difficult to find, according to mark)
Eric Johnson - Bloom
Eric Johnson - Tones
Anything by the following artists:
B.B king
Pat metheny
Chick Corea/Thelonious Monk/John Coltrane
Yes
Pink Floyd
Stevie Ray Vaughan (anything but the 'Texas Flood' album, i have that.)
Louis Armstrong
The Electromagnets (that's Eric Johnson's band... apparently quite difficult to find too)
Alien Love Child (also Eric Johnson's band)
Wes Montgomery

the blues is a feeling

Paul Ponnudorai has restored my faith in the Singapore music scene. I went to watch the "Blues Men' event at the Mosaic Music festival yesterday. Quite stunning. He possesses a huge, fantastic stage presence that i've never before seen in an actual Singaporean, not even Winston Hodge (sorry Mr. Hodge); the audience was quite helpless other than to stand around and scream and clap. Performing is about more than good music, evidently.
All 3 performances (Tania, Paul Ponnudorai, ublues) had something to offer, musically- all excellent singers, guitarists, bassists, keyboardists, and yes, harmonicas and saxophones. These are no laid-back musicians, there's plenty of screaming, hopping, just dancing about, and silly theatrical tricks. In the end though, i was very impressed, and thoroughly satisfied. Paul puts it right - 'the Blues is a feeling. It's an attitude'

adam

The RJ band concert and jazz performance at Suntec are looming. Sometimes (when it's really quiet) I think that I've really gone in the deep end and I'm going to drown in my stupidstupidstupid commitments. NO! I'm sick of being useless. I'm going to get something done, even if it kills me.

In other news, jazz today didn't happen, because the J2s had some surprise GP common test (just how do you achieve that?) but I showed up anyway with my guitar and jammed a bit with huang lu and kelly. I think (despite what he says) huanglu's picking up the bass pretty quickly - I've asked him to join my band already since terence is giving up. So far the lineup is
Jian Wei - drums
Huang lu - bass
Myself - guitar
- making for a nice power trio. Now we just need to round off with a vocalist... i'm not necessarily looking for quality of voice here. RJC has plenty of good singers, but scarce few frontmen. I need a frontman. Charisma, personality, and if you can scream like Kurt Cobain, that's a bonus too. We're playing mostly blues, maybe a bit of early rock, but I want music to stay focused on one thing at a time.
All of the above is subject to change. If anyone is interested in fronting for my band, you can tag here or email me.

adam

product placement

Franz Ferdinand is so horribly, unforgiveably infectious, that they should be made illegal.

--

Dear Diary,
The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that the harder I try to put something wonderful and profound and philosophical here, the more and more of an idiot i'm going to look like - and maybe I can't think at all, but I'm just pretending. Do you think that if I try too hard I ruin the art or the flair or just that magic of it... or am I trying too hard already?
The irony of it is, the more and more I try to tell you about it coherently the less and less I know what I'm talking about - have you felt that before? Sometimes I think that the world is too caught up creating profundity to stop and listen to themselves blither in a horribly, beweaponedly silly manner.
Dear diary, sometimes it's tempting to think that there's no such thing as honesty- only different degrees of fabrication and contrivance. But that's a horrid thing to think - let me tell you something. You know, sometimes, you can look at the world and what a terrible time other people are having because they're so forsakenly blind and then you think, 'wow, that's terribly silly', and then - you suddenly realise, wow, that's ok. I can still live on. Sometimes being the most profound doesn't matter. And that's the most wonderful feeling.

adam

Talentime's over. The results came as a massive surprise, especially since the judges gave us one of the lowest scores (if not THE lowest). Okay, let's not fool ourselves- i think we screwed up quite badly, and the good results could be due to any number of things quite rather unrelated to how well we played.

I think that a musician's ability falls under two important spheres: technical ability with the instrument, and ensemble ability to work with other musicians - and for last night I quite feel that we somehow didn't manage to click together like during rehearsals. The judges said it quite well- we looked like 5 individuals on stage. Gah.

Anyway, immense respect for the other performances, especially the other 2 bands who I think are MUCH more deserving (esp. the first one), and will definitely have to tighten up for the next gig.


adam

EDIT: 7 good things about this week.
Standard tuning is good.
Listening to the blues is good (die rockers!)
Single-coil pickups are good.
Working cable jacks are good.
Colours which aren't black are good.
Gain set to anything less than 9 is good.
Best of all, not having to play the bloooooody riff from 'slither' is good. I have no idea Dave Kushner does it all the time and doesn't go completely barmy.

Metheny vs G

http://www.carrothers.com/pat_metheny_vs_kenny_g.htm

This is hilarious. Pat Metheny slams 'smooth jazz' and their sax-blowing head honcho, Kenny G. Okay, it was a little shocking to hear this sort of comments from a professional musician, but it WAS on a relatively personal forum, and I completely agree, so Pat is forgiven.

Apparently, Pat was majorly pissed off when Kenny G overdubbed himself over a louis armstrong track. He calls it 'defilement', and "spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing all over" all of which I agree with.

On the other end of the spectrum, it is (as Metheny mentions) immensely frustrating to musicians as a whole to see people with the fewest bits of talent making it successful. No, I wouldn't exactly hold it against them for being successful, but if the world has come to this state then perhaps musicians (and other people) should take a couple steps back and see where exactly our entire culture is headed - and I can assure you that it's a fairly ugly place.

Simple Plan is like the Kenny G of our generation. Again, nothing against them for making money - after all, there are PEOPLE who buy their records. However, it's kind of sad to see grown men still making music for 13-year olds, and perhaps even sadder to see people of MY generation listening to it. It's kind of frustrating, as a budding musician and writer, to see that this kind of standard is given even the tiniest iota of professional credit.
I honestly hope Simple Plan stays well within their teeny-bopper circuit, because if they trample on the long and noble roots of contemporary and classical music like Kenny G did to Louis Armstrong, there will be an uproar.
Please, sell your records, but don't step on my music.

adam

I only write this because the pain on my fingertips has rendered me incapable of practicing.

I was doing my daily practice, having finished the scales and the finger exercises and the playing of the 'crazy little thing called love' solo over and over and over again. I turned up something by Clapton, I think it was 'Crossroads' or something. It is, if you don't know, a pretty trepidating song as in the past I've found myself pretty much unable to get my fingers round the fast bits, so I was feeling a bit trepidated. I figured, what the heck, screw Clapton's solo, I'll improvise something. That wasn't out of the ordinary. The track started.

It was a full half a minute into the song before it occured to me that I was already playing. The notes just flowed out. I wasn't looking at the fretboard, I wasn't squinting at a tab, or trying to figure what to play next. I escalated, moving up the fretboard to higher notes.

Of course, at this point, the surprise pretty much ruined the rest of the song, but it was really... odd. The most surprising thing was that it sounded good. I wasn't shredding or playing faster than my normal or anything, but every phrase suddenly seemed new and inventive, I was making intervals and licks that I'd never really done before.

I guess as a guitarist the hardest bit is to forget that you're playing a guitar in the first place, and get the music out. Everybody's got music in their head, but when it comes out that's a really great thing. Anyway, I didn't get the feeling back for the next hour or so, so obviously trying doesn't help.

My fingers didn't start hurting until after I took a bath. Now they feel like they've been sanded flat.

adam

I can't help wondering if I've already given up on writing. It used to be something I did so often, for so many reasons, but somehow I don't enjoy it anymore, and, well, recreationally anyway, I can't bring myself to do anything I don't enjoy anymore.
I'd like to believe that writing requires a certain breed of anal-retentiveness which I somehow no longer possess, but that's bunk, even if it's quite amusing to think about.
In any case, i read some of my old blog posts and (gasp) some of my old poetry a few days back. It isn't as bad as I thought it would be, so I guess I really was kind of good for something in the last few years.

Gay music!

I've realised something -

Many of my favourite composers, writers and musicians are/were all gay. Gay as in homosexual. Let's list them out...
Tchaikovsky
Francis Poulenc
Oscar Wilde
Freddie Mercury (who was also Indian, and in fact one of the first famous rock stars with Asian descent)

In fact, many of their works strike me as hauntingly familiar, but until I've completed my degree in Sociology i shall remain unable to qualify this strange similarity.

It's like they share some strange, iconoclastic, outsider perspective which is lighthearted and somehow angst-free. Perhaps it has to do with the ostracism and prejudice experienced by gays historically. Then again, many traditionally ostracised and prejudiced-against groups have also contributed notably to the arts, and a shocking lot of them write incomprehensible angsty rubbish. What makes this set of homosexuals different?

Ideas pls.
and I am NOT GAY.

adam

Just had meetings for my 3 different CCAs on thursday and friday.

Writers Inc meeting on thursday. We played some ice-breaker games. There was this interesting game called 'name mix-up' which is sort of like Whacko (you have to call out someone else's name when your name is called) but you have to respond to the name on a piece of paper which you find on your chair. It's more confusing than it sounds. We were all so lifeless! Maybe we were just tired or something.

On Friday, Raffles rock auditions at 3.45. I of course didn't prepare anything, and scrapped my last-minutep plans to play 'smoke on the water' when I discovered somebody else (Edmund) was auditioning with Van Halen's 'Eruption' and some piece by Joe Satriani. Clearly, my technique loses here. So I grabbed some other guy named Boyle (sp?) and we jammed 2 minutes of improvised electric blues. ><. I think I panicked halfway through and my soloing kind of lost its feel. Oh well, they seemed impressed.
Overall i've seen a few Raffles Rock performances: not entirely impressive to be honest, but I'm in it for the CIP. We were told that we'd go once a week or once a fortnight to teach people about music, and I'm all for that.

Jazz workshop at 5.00 on the same day. I went early and we jammed for a bit - it turns out there's 2 different versions of 'the girl from ipanema' with completely different chord progressions, so there was quite a bit of confusion. The workshop opened with the J2s performing a brilliant rendition of 'the way you look tonight' in various styles (I think I still like the Bossa Nova best), following which we split up according to our instruments for more detailed lessons.
I just want to register how impressed I am with this club. They're a bunch that really knows what they're doing and what they don't, they're committed to learning. It's almost scary to conceive that the J2s will be gone in a year, and that's the amount of time we juniors have to replace them.
Anyway, auditions are next week. Will be practicing like a madman, and Wang had better follow suit.

-adam

I have a group on my msn messenger labeled "Raffles". Today that list has a female contact on it, in fact, several. I'm not trying to be misogynistic or anything, but for so long 'raffles' was just a guy affair, and now having both genders included feels a little weird.
Then again, I've been in a guy's school for so long... maybe I'm the weird one, not the circumstances.

Food for thought, haha.

by the way, orientation was great.



adam

new year

45 minutes to 2006. I'm in my room blogging, and I can't really think of anything to say. Something melodramatic? It's been, all round, a rather shitty year, and I don't want to dignify it with some pompous soliloquy. People change after having shitty years, and in retrospect this one was a good change, and I think I'm happy about it.

Next year I will be happy more often. That's a resolution.

God Bless,
adam

The "5-question bloggy thing game". Thank you, denise.

1. 90% of the music I listen to dates before 1990.
2. I know 3 other people who share my birthday.
3. I have 2 unrelated surnames!
4. I can play 3 instruments! Piano, violin, guitar. And i'm currently learning the harmonica. thanks to anne. (casually)
5. I like dolphins. Yay!

I want the following 5 people to do this...

Tim swee, anne, joel, jessica, and mark the new guy.
If you've done it already just tag.
merry christmas!
adam