Thank You For The Music Already

A friend recently made the astute observation that this blog has become almost exclusively devoted to music. That's true. One reason is the fact that I don't blog about work (I feel it's generally a bad idea). The larger reason is that, between the start of the year and now, music has indeed become a much larger part of my life.

In celebration of my renewed enthusiasm and fanboyishness, let me share what's got me geared up for 2006:

Gigs
When I visited Manhattan in May, I made the observation that about 5 'big names' (at least, big to indie kids) were performing there every night...more than what Singapore gets in a year. Well lo and behold, by March next year we'll be halfway to breaking that record. Look at who's dropping by our sunny island in the space of a single month:

1. Franz Ferdinand 'live' at the Singapore Indoor Stadium, 16 Feb
2. Oasis 'live' at the Singapore Indoor Stadium, 23 Feb
3. Kings of Convenience 'live' at the Esplanade Concert Hall, 16 Mar

This is an exciting development. To add to the madness, right smack in this maelstrom of performances is the Bangkok 100 Rock Festival from 18-19 Feb, which boasts two of these acts and six others, plus some Thai bands to boot. After the gigslutfest that was Manhattan, I had no idea I'd be doing the whole lyric-memorising shebang again so soon. And the dancing too...the FF and Oasis gigs have General Admission (i.e. free-standing) areas!!

Albums
Every year has its best newcomers, but since I can't tell the future, I'm looking forward to the new releases of perennial favourites:

1. Morrissey: Ringleader of the Tormentors (20 Mar)
2. Pet Shop Boys: Fundamental (Apr)

Morrissey's album will be a shot in the arm of indie nights all over the world, not least of all Singapore. Popsluts may get an anthem to replace "First of the Gang to Die". Judging from his typically dubious song titles, I'll wager that the new stomper wil be "On the Streets I Ran".

What can I say...roll on 2006!!

Ingredients for the Perfect Christmas Weekend

What more could I ask of the long weekend just past?

1. House Party on Friday
Truckload of university mates. Naughty gift exchanges. Staying behind longer with the ones I'm closer to. Playing drinking games. And more drinking games. And even more drinking games. And getting a rare insight into the loneliness of someone I hitherto thought was unshakeable.

2. Mother of all Poptarts on Saturday
Heading with friends to the maddest Poptart ever, complete with snow sprays, bodysurfing, non-stop pogo-ing, staggering across the street to the 7-eleven to tank up on alcohol, and dancing till the point of physical injury. Not to mention supper, watching the cops clean out a nearby club, and witnessing a mind-blowingly surreal formation in the sky. It has never been this crazy, and the two first-timers among the six of us couldn't have chosen a better Poptart to start with.

3. Indie Night at Cafe Cosmo on Sunday
Great conversation; nice atmosphere; a birthday surprise for one of the regulars; discovering a band whose latest album cover misled me to believe they were unlistenable; getting inside info on the big acts coming to Singapore in 2006. Couldn't have been a better way to enjoy indie without aggravating my dance injury.

4. Jamming at Boon's Studio on Monday
After years of false starts, false hopes, too much self-belief and too little faith from others, it finally begins. It's come a long way from that innocent reply to an online forum thread back in April. Yes, the amps were lousy, the guitars were shit and we were absolute amateurs. But we have original material, commitment and a great deal of momentum. The three of us get along really well, too. At the tail end of 2005, the defining feature of my life in 2006 has already been set in motion.

...did anyone say anything about work?

Sunday Night Ennui

7:15 pm

I'm rushing through my dinner on a Sunday night, so I have time to finish up one of two submissions due tomorrow. The TV happens to be tuned to a channel showing a documentary on Krakatoa, the site of the largest volcanic explosion in recorded history. It's something I don't need. Watching the re-enactment of lives that ended more than a century ago, I can't help thinking of my own mortality. Contemplating the destructive power of nature, I can't help feeling like an inconsequential statistic in the endless speadsheet of history.

I can handle this sort of thing when I'm relaxed and reflective; not when I'm feeling the life squeezed out of me. I need to regain control. I need to feel I matter. So I quickly finish up the last few bites of my dinner and dash into my room, locking the door and turning up the radio. Surrounded by things no older than I am, I once again become the centre of my universe. Looking out the window, the calm electric lights of the neighbourhood remind me there is nothing else in this world but the here and now. Every cell in me awakes, and I get back to work, ready to face tomorrow.

11:30 pm

And so it goes: over 3 hours spent on a submission, with three appendices included. It's the most productive I've ever been on a weekend. It also raises the question, however: why do I even need to be productive on a weekend? I didn't sacrifice people time, leisure time and housekeeping time just for fun. I did it because I'll be too burdened and badgered at work if I didn't. I'm not complaining about my job--most desk-bound corporate jobs are like that these days. I'm just wondering why it has to be so.

I think about Karl Marx, who wrote on the alienation of workers in capitalist societies, and how a man should ideally have the freedom to be a hunter in the morning, a fisherman in the afternoon and a poet at night. I'm also feeling faintly nostalgiac about my days of autonomy as a student. I stop and wonder why my life--indie scene, prospective band and all--only began after I graduated and stopped having time to live. Oh the irony.

It Was 25 Years Ago Today

R.I.P. John Lennon 1940-1980

You are remembered, loved and hated by many people for many things. You have been deified in rock history as a songwriter that could do no wrong. You have been elevated as the patron saint of world peace. Yet you were the everyman, doing drugs, having noisy sex at a party as your wife listened in the adjoining room, nicking other people's work and getting sued for it, migrating and undergoing primal therapy. You were no (working-class) hero. You stumbled from one identity to the next--mop-top to hippie, Liverpudlian to New Yorker--as lost as any of us. Your struggles came out in your solo material, borne aloft by your distinctive whine that grew thinner and cracked as you searched for redemption in your later years.

Your 'bagism' and anthems of love, therefore, may not have been visionary--they may have merely been fashionable posturing; self-delusional reinvention; an attempt to stand for something. It is easy to read your biography either way. But I know deep down you really cared about people, and had a profound understanding of the beauty of life. I know because of a song you wrote in 1965. It is my favourite song of all time, and I don't care what the popular opinion is. Screw "Imagine", "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Power to the People", really. This song sets you apart as someone with a truly uncommon grace and largeness of heart.

In My Life

There are places I'll remember
All my life, though some have changed.
Some forever, not for better;
Some have gone and some remain.

All these places had their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall.
Some are dead and some are living;
In my life, I've loved them all.

But of all these friends and lovers,
There is no one compares with you.
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new.

Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before,
I know I'll often stop and think about them
...In my life, I love you more.

Six years after learning these words, this song still gives me goosebumps and brings wetness to my eyes. It touches so close to the bone of the human condition, and what it means to live and love. Thank you, John, for leaving this as a reminder to all of us.

Looking Back in Anger

I think, deep inside, all of us know this: at the end of the day, the most precious thing in life is not fulfilling one's grandest ambitions, achieving wild popularity, or even doing great works of charity. The most precious thing is to be comfortable in your own skin; to be at peace with yourself, the people around you and the general scheme of things.

Even though I am a passionate person by nature and covet many things, in my quieter moments I recognise that the drama and spectacle of life is very much in my mind. And in such moments, I like to think that I am ultimately content with who I am and what I've gotten out of life.

Yet, it only takes the smallest reality check to realise that there is still a great deal of unhappiness buried within; that there are wounds that haven't healed and things I will never come to terms with. To some extent, I will always be on the run from people I once knew. Not because of any closet skeletons--there are none--but simply because many of these people only knew the work-in-progress I once was, and assumed it was the finished product.

Well, this product is still far from finished, and that doesn't make things any easier. Last week at lunch, I self-consciously avoided two previous acquaintances. One waved to me from a distance; I waved back and walked in the opposite direction. Another happened to sit down right across table I was eating at, but I kept my head buried in my bowl of noodles, pretending not to notice. A few days ago, I was forced by circumstance to acknowledge a large group of ex-schoolmates. Until that incident, I looked back on the years I spent with them with some fondness. But the sheer discomfort and indignity that raced through my skin as I answered them made me realise that any fondness was an illusion caused by time and distance.

Some might say that it's my own fault that things have come to this. Others might say that I'm merely imagining the antagonism and awkwardness in these encounters. To some extent, both these conjectures are true. But there are some dynamics in social relationships that are just unfortunate, unfair and irreconciliable. Some people experience this acutely; some never do and blame the people who suffer for causing their own misery. Life is just capricious in that way.