Archive for the 'waffle' Category
A little downtime, a little reflection, but passionately desiring almost anything but. The seismograph needle suffers my schizophrenia. Back in a few somethings. Wish we were still walking streets in the Autumn chill, your hand over mine. And the city lights play back our soundtrack of laughter.
for the mood: the turbulent calm
tracks: (all files uploaded onto zshare.net. Music is rightful property of the artists. I don’t own any of these…Please buy their music and support them)
+ [Butterfly] – Yoko Kanno ft. M (Cowboy Bebop)
+ [Between the Bars] – Madeleine Peyroux
+ [Little Person] – Jon Brion ft. Deanne Storey (Synecdoche, New York)
October 24 2010 | music and travels and waffle | No Comments »
Happy 101th post! And very very belated birthday to pocket universe.
The reading page has been quite active lately. There is any number of reasons why there is a sudden upsurge in my page-consumption, but that is not the topic of this post. The topic is that I am becoming suspicious of my reading pattern.
Bear in mind – these books are all fiction only because upon returning from Aspen and re-settling, discovered all these books in my ownership still unread. Thus a pre-requisite was established.
The current book “on my floor” is I am Charlotte Simmons (Tom Wolfe), a tale of a small-town girl who exceeds her stereotypical small-town expectations to attend a very large, athletics-focused university but struggles to exceed her own limited mindset. She suffers and veers but ultimately finds what is presumed to be a redemption.
I have never encountered a book so infatuated by its own pretentiousness, stereotypes, and enjoyment of abusing its unbelievable heroine (Even only halfway through the book and no other writings of his in my repertoire, there’s actually no question that Tom Wolfe lacks capacity to write realistic women.) Bret Easton Ellis’s chronicles on similar themes are anorexic next to Wolfe’s bloated writing. Or maybe his accounts of the “shocking issues” on a university campus are unimpressive because what he details is essentially the lifestyle the majority of higher-education attendees experience – or at least are aware of – at some point in their years at respective institutions. And everyone knows that. But it’s also quite difficult for me to imagine that a small-minded but supposedly extraordinarily bright girl in a big university also lacks adaptability skills and self-sufficiency in a place that undoubtedly offered options.
Man, I lived under a rock- also known as the watchful eye of an Asian upbringing- for most of my life before college, but that doesn’t mean I became the rock either.
Maybe not incidentally, one of the universities Wolfe observed during the course of writing this novel was my alma mater. The book was given to me by a friend at the time as we attended said university together, which is the only thing keeping me plowing through (though it took me somewhere around five years to pick it up again after the first try.) This friend no doubt identified with much of the novel, but my place was in a different circle of the university planet and one that- detailed as Wolfe would like to think he is being- is completely overlooked in the novel. Therefore, I digress and totally rant off topic many years later when I’m attempting to concrete a post.
Anyways, prior to this high blood-pressure implement, I had steamrolled through The Song is You (Arthur Phillips), Solar (Ian McEwan), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Michael Chabon), Pattern Recognition (William Gibson), Zorro (Isabel Allende), and About a Boy (Nick Hornby) over the course of four weeks. All were decent reads- especially the Chabon, which had some truly beautiful, almost breathtaking writing and moments, though his prose has fair competition in the elegant stylings of Arthur Phillips.
Yet, there is a trail of themes between many of the books (which did detour for a bit even through those put aside for another time: After the Chabon, The Unbearable Lightness of Being was placed aside after only a few pages because I didn’t feel it would be healthy to read two Hitler-effected character narratives in a row. You Only Live Twice- yes, the 007 novel- was also stopped because it seemed such a silly caricature when presented in the footsteps of Allende’s loving portrait of Zorro- another iconic action hero.) If we water down the subjects, a strange path can be drawn them books that looks something like “story of a man of shady yet tragic motivations –> story of a man of shady and irredeemable motivations –> motivated boys create action heroes but unexpectedly become men during the process –> girl unexpectedly becomes action heroine –> origin story of an action hero who never really grows up –> dim grownup man guides boy to being a boy while boy guides dim grownup man to being a grownup –> tragically dim girl thinks she is growing up by interacting with men, every last one of them possessing shady and irredeemable motivations.”
Based on this current stream, what on earth will pop up on my bookshelf next?
“Dim, tragic girl unexpectedly becomes action heroine. Fights a man with shady and irredeemable motivations: Hitler.”?
Name the book.
September 22 2010 | waffle and words | No Comments »
Since everyone on the planet at the moment is giving me hell for this, I’m just going to come clean: Yes, it is true, I will be on television again. But just PBS again (Public Broadcasting System for any non-Americans; It’s our public television station) (What are those called in Europe? I am curious now.) and for all of 20 seconds.
So no, I am not and will not be any sort of television “star” and I’m pretty sure that I’ll be some kind of nervous and wibbly mess that makes the producer question why on earth she thought bringing in this violinist was a good idea.
ANYWAYS.
(A few months ago, my quartet was featured on PBS for one of their arts programs because the faculty quartet was unavailable. The producer for that program called about two weeks ago for a promotional project they’re doing. Something about being “articulate.”) (I do like adventures…)
May 05 2010 | music and waffle | 2 Comments »
On the eve of my twenty-fourth birthday, all I can think about (aside from how much grief happened in twenty-three) is my parents. Sometimes people might find it rather difficult to vocalize their appreciation for their parents, but I have somehow found myself doing just that pretty much every Sunday afternoon to the parents who wait patiently for their children to finish orchestra rehearsal. I just never really find that courage to say this to MY parents.
What can truly be said to thank them, though? I’m still alive (perhaps not as happy as they would have hoped) and that’s a big credit to them from the start. At this point, I really have to start to take the steps to end up at that place where I can turn right back around and give them back as much as possible. And to be as little a worry as possible (which is just about impossible.)
What was 23? 23 was destruction and reformation over and over. 23 was perseverance even through perpetual rejection, discovering the darkest sides of me (In other words: I learned to drive.), what it meant to unconditionally love, how painful that can be, and knowing who I am and will always be. (Though I confess, I’d my sense of humour back, please.)
Thanks, Mum and Dad, for all you do. Because of you, I have survived the path behind me and can keep stepping forward – no matter how difficult the path ahead.[/cheese]
—-
(all files uploaded onto zshare.net. Music is rightful property of the artists. I don’t own any of these…Please buy their music and support them.)
+ [Little Secrets] – Passion Pit
+ [Lullaby] (Noir) – Tulivu Donna Cumberbatch
+ [Adieu] (Cowboy Bebop) – Emily Bindinger
+ [Goodbye to Yesterday] (Metal Gear Solid II) – Rika Muranaka
April 17 2010 | music and waffle | 1 Comment »
First post of the new year (both Western and Chinese) and it’s now March. Life has gotten itself on an interestingly skewed track again and as soon as the confidence to put some persona of myself in the public returns, I’ll be back here more. I miss this semi-sanctuary and everyone one around it, but disrespect and ignorance hurts, and recovery is hard. Self-reflection has become almost as routine as a shower. Finding the courage to enjoy performing music – without fear, without inhibition – again is the first great obstacle. Family is beautiful.
So though there there’s been considerable slackage here, the reading list is still being maintained; not that there has been much time to read lately. The old habit of reading alongside a meal has been passed up to either not having the proper time to put towards this, to newspapers, or to having meals with kind, mostly new acquaintances – which is typically a good excursion too. In the meantime, every so often, something is written on the [Twitter] about the musical events around. And instead of reading literature, a few hours a week are spent reading a score alongside its recording. This activity is nothing entirely new (see previous posts on music) but lately it’s been happening on a kind of weekly basis.
I probably won’t include scores in the reading list though given that the manner of study is quite different from reading a book. I may start keeping list of performances, however, because I keep forgetting to sign into the myspace to update it.
This week’s composition of fascination is Michael Nyman’s String Quartet No. 2, particularly movements 3 and 4. I found the other three quartets somewhat underwhelming, but full of good intentions to complement the good writing. However, String Quartet No. 2 appeals to me in the same fashion as Bloch’s String Quintets and Gorecki’s String Quartet No. 3 – the intense but balanced exploration of culture, rhythmical architectures, and a certain kind of desperation and triumph pervading throughout.
Last week was Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major. That piece pretty much explains itself (especially if Martha Argerich is at the helm.) The second movement of the concerto is heartbreaking and unexpected while the overall intricacy and detail of the entire concerto is stunning. What was almost as surprising, however, was the ratio of string to wind players that were familiar with the composition. Apparently, many standard wind excerpts are taken from the concerto (The bassoon solo in the third movement is particularly impressive. During our next rehearsal together, my bassoon teaching assistant friend casually performed the excerpt for me on the spot – by memory.) but to many of my string colleagues, the piece is unfamiliar. I wonder which other pieces can be placed in this category.
March 07 2010 | music and musings and waffle | No Comments »
Why are we ever anyone but ourselves? When would we be? Why?
Agonizing is a luxury.
November 10 2009 | musings and waffle | No Comments »
The tiny trouble with constant fascination with fairly obscure works is that, well, they’re fairly obscure. Finally, after many loops, I finally have a copy of Joaquin Rodrigo’s Sonata Pimpante in my hands (to share…thank you, fantastic library ordering system.)
Then, it was a quest to find out what “pimpante” meant. Since Rodrigo is Valencian, I figured it would be Spanish, but all the online translations returned the original word, and my Spanish-speaking friends just made jokes so thank heavenly bodies for Google. “Pimpante” is Italian.
Lively.
The lively sonata.
—-
for the mood: distressed
tracks: (all files uploaded onto zshare.net. Music is rightful property of the artists. I don’t own any of these…Please buy their music and support them)
+ [Melody] – Nobuchika Eri
- I don’t know what she’s saying but the song is heartbreakingly pretty fluff.
+ [Me Muero] – Utada Hikaru
- Critics like her latest English album a lot more then the previous one and this track is particularly well done, but I still stand by my opinion that her first major English release was brilliant in its own right.
+ [Falling Away with You] – Muse
+ [River] – Tatsuya Ishii
- This is exactly the song you want someone to sing when it feels like nothing else in the world can go wrong.
June 17 2009 | music and waffle | No Comments »
We should probably never forget that most of the things happening in our lives don’t actually concern us; that in the end, what is meant to be will be, and that most of the time, we really don’t have control over it either. Mostly because we can’t control humanity i.e. each other. Just ourselves. …right?
And more often than any of us would probably want to admit, we just don’t appreciate what’s already in front of us. In fact, we completely ignore it because want something else so badly and are blinded by that. Here, in these cases, do you persist even when there’s something just as, if not more, wonderful staring at you in the face? Would doing so mean surrendering, conceding – could it connotate weakness in giving up or strength by facing what is really true? How much do you have to hurt yourself in order to get what you want or go the “right” way…or maybe even possibly both?
For once, I’m starting to think I know where those shoujo manga writers are coming from.
Last episode of Battlestar Galactica tonight.
March 20 2009 | BSG (and such) and waffle | 1 Comment »
I’m not used to being friends with rockstars. In fact, the situation is entirely weird sometimes. Granted, [The OneUps] aren’t exactly rubbing shoulders with those people appearing on the VMAs, but [Wil Wheaton] [isn't exactly someone you get to chum around conventions with everyday.] Coming off of yet another fantastic performance at [Penny Arcade Expo], the boys didn’t skip a single beat and released their second album – a two-disc affair known simply as Volume 2 – on September 2.
For some fans, this album could not come out fast enough. No one denies that the wait was well worth it.
But as I listened to the work of my friends and tried to be as impartial as possible, I could only marvel at the serious work that they have accomplished in the year (and then some) since we [first met] and wonder what the heck I did to even deserve a mention in the liner notes of such a significant achievement (in the history of video game cover music, at least.) These guys won’t stop at just fantastic, and I, as a musician, have to thank them for that, their inspiration, ambition, and – of course – music. I am incredibly lucky to call these guys my friends. With this album and their most recent show, The OneUps have claimed the full right to be ridiculously proud of themselves. For a little while, at least.
As for the album itself, let’s just say that as I listened to it during my search for a new bookbag, I drove worse than I ever have, parked better than I ever have (which is saying a lot), and for the first time that I can ever recall, found myself contemplating a lingerie section (I did not purchase anything from that store.)
I haven’t listened to the second CD yet, and probably shouldn’t do that when I drive out later tonight.
Many thanks go to the lady of zabe.net for her adorable photography. Volume 2 is available through the OneUps’s [myspace] and website. Rumour has it that the guys are already sketching ideas for Volume 3. Congratulations.
September 12 2008 | games and music and waffle | 1 Comment »
I hope that many years from now, when I am legally “old”, I will still have the spirit and energy I have today, and be as in love with that person (who and wherever he may be) as the day we recognize those feelings.
September 24 2007 | musings and waffle | 2 Comments »
« Prev - Next »