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