I survived

There is no sweeter word for it.

I actually survived.

Been doing this for the last two and half years... horrid all-nighters that start too late, agonising the whole night through in a battle of convoluted thoughts and words.

And despite saying that I would never go through essay hell again, and that I'd start early the next time, I always end up starting as late as I ever did anyway.

But last night was a turning point - it was officially the worst (essay-related) night I have ever had in my entire life. I was starting to make random noises to myself while staring blankly at my computer screen, willing in my mind for 5,000 brilliant words to appear, when my fingers refused to articulate accurately the swirling mass of thoughts in my head. I reckon between 0330 hours and 0800 hours of an all-nighter exercise is the worst period of the whole thing. I sat in front of my computer at 7am in the morning almost crying to myself - and then I thought, fuck it i'm not going to torture myself, I'm just going to give up.
But I have never given up any essay before - and it will be unimaginable to begin now.
So after getting some comfort food, I sat back down and convinced myself that I could do it.
And I did.
(although I was very late.)
The tiredness I have now doesn't have a name...
Remind me again: never leave things to the last minute.
Especially not 5000 word ones again. (3000 is still manageable)
I shall not be deluded again that it is possible to do that in one night without killing oneself.

To bed... and then, another 5000 word race to brace myself for next week.
Fun.

Advertising

The Warwick Arts Centre sent me a mail today notifying me of upcoming Christmas performances.

They were advertising this concert by an a capella choir called The Shout that promises to "bring you an unusual alternative to the traditional Christmas carol service"...


“Only slightly less startling than the prospect of electable Tories is the emergence of cool choirs. And the 14 professionals in The Shout are deeply cool. They prefer to play nightclubs rather than cathedrals.” - The Times


I love the way they used 'deeply cool'.
An ill-disguised attempt to connect with the more impressionable youth.
But fyi, I happen to think that performing in cathedrals is deeply cool too.
In fact, it's much more 'cool' than performing a carol service in a nightclub.

Letter from Singapore

"But the Straits Times as a model of dynamic, open-minded journalism? It will happen on the day that it starts to snow here on the equator."


I read with amusement this letter and its responses.

It's ironic how over-generalizations and sweeping statements never go out of fashion. It becomes doubly paradoxical that it is often those who proclaim self-integrity who commit the very crimes they attest to loathing.

Having said that, the amusing accusation is not without the slightest element of truth, speaking from personal experience.

Newsrooms should be a bundle of nerve-racking vibrancy and energy - not a burial ground for living corpses.

But I am too tired from thinking about two pending 5,000 word essays to say more.

(At this point, I am really tempted to begin another post about Tuesday night's Battle of the Dances at Leicester since I'm in a blogging frame of mind and will probably forget it all if I don't write it down.)

But, due to unforseen circumstances, there shall be no further comments.
Until further notice.
Or until I've sorted my life out.
Or when I can't be arsed with work anymore and am desperate to extend the degree of my procastination.

One of those things

Sometimes in the most randomest of conversations, something someone says presents itself in a mutated form to you in your mind and despite the disguises that this form takes it its many mutations, you see through it all.

And you understand.

You know exactly what it's about. Even if it may be repesented in a different person or character or situation. But you still know.

It's the simple truth. And it's sad that this simple truth, however shallow sometimes it might seem, nor how illogical it might be, is still undeniable.
And it still affects us.

Maybe one day when we've all grown old and are desperate not to live the rest of our lives alone in this world, cold in our beds. Then such recognisable 'truths' don't feature as much in our consciousness anymore. The truth takes a step back for the lack of choices.

I can't decide whether the truth is sad, then. Or if the lack of choices which forces us to forsake the truth is more so.

In the end, all men fall into either category. Or the in-between. It's recognising which catagorical shade you belong to that's hard. And if you ever do identify it..

whether facing that truth is harder.

Half-truths

Church doctrines should be adapted with discretion to the 21st century.

Disclaimer: Not meant to provoke reactions nor offend. Simply a thought.

Where do I begin

If there is a single consistent feeling I've been overwhelmed with lately... it's that feeling you get when you've got so much to do.. that you don't really know where to begin.

It's times like these I wish the day had 28 hours instead of 24, then i'd have the extra four hours to sort out my life.. maybe even find some extra work to get extra money.

But of course that is impossible with the amount of shit that's on my impossible-to-avoid agenda.

Am flying home next month on the 7th... can you believe it's already week 7 of term? I remember flying back to England and thinking to myself it's going to be ages before I fly the other direction again... and yet, that prospect now seems so near. And it's even scarier - because by that time, I would have achieved the impossible.
The impossible being:

1. A 5,000 word film aesthetic essay
2. Another 5,000 word national cinema essay
3. MA applications whose deadline is in freaking december, which involves writing a million essays, paying a million dollars just for application fee alone, and forcing oneself to do the tiresome job of finding letters of recommendations (what's the problem with all these American schools)
4. Two dance competitions (one to Leicester, one to Sheffield, the latter which I forsee myself having to drop out of to retain my sanity.)
5. Renewing car insurance/MOT/certificates. I hate doing administrative stuff with a violent passion. Fuck red tape and bureaucracy and the system.
6. Read 4 more novels for the two literature modules I'm doing.

on top of the 16 (sometimes 19) hour timetable I have... and the at least three times weekly dance rehearsals.
Can you blame me for going mental?

I think I need sleep.

Rufus Wainwright

I saw Rufus live tonight.

And it was unforgettable.

In all honesty, I hardly expected a big show or anything fantastically amazing before I went to see him. In fact, I thought paying 17.50 GBP for a ticket was a bit extravagant - but I have no regrets. And I would pay to see him again.

He's just got such a presence on stage. And it's not the sort of screaming-look-at-me-elvis-type presence... it's a subtle charm that almost diffuses to you across the stage, in his speech, in his songs...

There is just so much about tonight and all its details I wish I could remember as vividly as it happened then... already, I can almost feel fragments of tonight slowly fading in its lucidity.

Martha Wainwright (sister) opened the night.. she reminded me so much of Jewel's early days (before she, arguably, sold out) with the raspy voice, that sometimes had a hint of rufus's distinct sonorous quality, and all that angsty lyrics...
Singing about life, death, the usual angst-type themes... at one point, she makes a remark, mumbles a bit, trails of... and then as a recovery says, 'sorry...i'm so jaded'. I smile... the jaded, acoustic song-writer...it's too much of a cliche. She sings her first number and at some point, repeats 'bloody mother fucking asshole', which happenes to be the title of the song, naturally. The stark vulgarity of those words repeated in such a sharp register seriously amused me. I cringed somewhat. Music is meant to be beautiful.
She sang more angsty-about-life acoustic numbers... which were not without credit...
and then of course, after a break, Rufus came on.

Looking much better than he did the last time I saw him on Jools Holland. Then, he had spiked up tony-&-guy-ish hair... and for some reason, looked really poor. I had seen other pictures of him online and I didn't think he'd look that bad. But maybe just that night he was having a bad day... for he looked amazing, relaxed and really attractive tonight. He'd grown his hair out and he looks so much better with floppy hair. While singing he would occasionally be so caught up with the performance, he'd swing his head from side to side, with his hair falling about his face..
I was swinging my head too... but not so much because I was caught up in the music (which I wish that was the reason) but because two bloody male arseholes were sitting directly in front of me (despite being in the third row from the front) and their heads were blocking my direct line of vision to Rufus. So I had to swing my head from side to side to catch that full-on glimpse of Rufus everytime the two idiots in front of me switched 'head positions'. The fat balding guy on my left must have thought I was trying to get fresh with him, for I kept inching closer to my left (ie. him) just so I could see Rufus in between the heads. I occasionally leaned right towards James but the guy in front of me kept tilting his head to the right so I couldn't see either.

In the end, I'm glad to say I sorted a solution and reached an equilibrium. I found that when Rufus was playing the guitar, he was more up front, and I could see him directly, without having to move my head at all. When he was playing the piano, I slouched in my seat and for some reason, had more space in between the heads in front of me, to manouvere myself to see him, without pressing myself against the fat bald man on my left.

After achieving that, his music really hit me. It was just such pure music-making. I discovered after awhile, I was the only one around moving my head in rhythm, tapping my feet and generally moving about in my seat with the music. James reckons it's because the 'concert-hall' atmosphere makes it difficult for people to be less inhibited and fully participate with the music. He suggested it would be different if we were all standing. He also said the girl on his right was clapping the whole time. So I take comfort I wasn't the only one. I personally don't see how a hall setting could prevent anyone from not responding to the music. I have my own theory that you could identify musicians in the audience by looking at whether they were responding to the music or not. If you were a musician, there is absolutely no way you wouldn't respond - even if it was in the minutest way - to the quality of the music. For me, that is a true indication.

And then there were those in-between-songs moments where Rufus spoke to the audience. And he was so amusingly funny.

Rufus: So... what's there in coventry?
A covenant?
A convent?
(laughter)
R: I hear there's a cathedral here... what else is there?
(Someone in the audience says something...)
R: What? An asshole?
(laughter)
(Person in audience repeats herself)
R: Oh! A castle! Not an asshole, I see...
(more laughter)
Well, I will try to imagine the castle in my mind.

A couple of more brilliant songs later, Rufus has what he calls a 'political moment'.

R: you know, I think, in the end, it's better that Bush won the second term... only because..
(some in the audience starts to articulate objections)
...wait wait, let me finish. Only because...
there are so many problems and issues that this world faces, not just America, that I think no one, in that office, can solve.
(he mumbles something else, I couldn't catch)
If Kerry had gone to office... (he mumbles a reason.. I think it was something to the effect that the process (of fighting?) will be disrupted.)
So with Bush there.. we could go on fighting. Soldier on.
Actually, no, not really fighting. I meant we should go on loving.
We should spread the love.
Oh well, anyway, here is the song...

Rufus resumes his song... and an impassioned lady gets up from her seat and storms off to the exit on the right. Shortly, two men exit likewise, presumably to chase after her. She must have got offended by Rufus's apparently offensive (to her) political statement which was fair enough albeit irrelevant to his gig. The rest of the hundreds of people in the hall... didn't give a damn. Well, at least I didn't give a damn. In all objectivity, this US elections has been covered to death. I've read about it. I know about it. I want to enjoy his music tonight.. and I don't really give a shit for politics adulterating a night of quality music, and that lady ought to be shot for being a mature adult and behaving in that immature manner. (shot, figuratively. I'm not that harsh.)

Two songs later, I've forgotten all about the 'political moment'. Rufus seemed to have signalled the end of the night with an exit. But obviously after receiving rapturous applause, he's back on stage. And guess what? Complete with a witch's hat and black cape outfit..for himself, and the whole band. In honour of Guy Fawkes Day, so he says, which they didn't allow him to do on the Frank Skinner Show (which we missed tonight because we were at the concert! but there is a repeat tomorrow - friday). Personally, I thought the whole outfit, plus the orange spooky stage lights, made it look more like Halloween.
He procedes to 'oh what a world' which is amazing, and he starts dancing in quite a camp-ish manner with the cape. We are amused. James looks like he's in love. But it's just the exuberant quality in his performance and the most-times overwhelming quality of his voice that strikes a chord in you, quite literally.

One of my favourite moments in tonight's show was when he sang a cover of 'hallelujah' - the same one he sang for the Shrek soundtrack (it's track no. 8 on that). Nothing can quite articulate the distinctiveness of his voice, but if there was a word I'd use to describe his voice - it would be - sonorous.
It's not that his voice blew me away in a literal fashion... in fact, most wouldn't think it was anything fantastically amazing (Vic thinks he sounds nasal, which isn't true) but, as with all the great singers in the world, there is something unique and distinct about their voices - and it is that different, distinct quality that sets them apart from each other.

'Cigarettes and chocolate milk' was beautiful - Neon came out remarking that the amazing thing about Rufus which struck him was that he could move seamlessly from an intimate sound (solo piano, duets, thin, acoustic textures) to a very large, rich sound (violins, double bass, electric bass, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, keyboards, drums) effortlessly. And how true.

Tonight's show ended on a poignant moment. It exceeded all my expectations. And I will keep the memory in its full glory, for myself. For no matter how much I write about it, nothing will quite capture that experience the way it lives on in my mind.

I lean back on my comfy orange chair. Rufus is playing on my stereo.
I'm closing my eyes. The music reaches out...
I'm back in the hall with the smoky stage, bathed in stage lights, with the music amplified in my ears. Suddenly I'm there again with its fullness thoroughly intoxicating me.
The word is simply...

Divine.

If only, and I wish someday, I could reach out and do the same for someone else, with my music.

Heaven knows how ** long I've waited for this day..

I am finally resurrected.

I feel the microscopic bytes of information surging through my computer almost physically translating into the sensation of new blood coursing through my veins.
It's like being given a new lease of life, and no, I am not being melodramatic.

I cannot begin to articulate the mental paralysis that has plagued me the last MONTH (can you believe it has been exactly one month and one week since then..) and how orgasmic being connected feels for me. It's not so much the commodity of the internet I required. It was that channel of writing which I so missed, and could not seem to find a replacement for, in the absence of my blog. As C puts it, "all that pent up frustration... you're an addict!"
Very apt.

I even went so far as to open up Microsoft Word in the last two nights.. in an attempt to type out a month's worth of events, thoughts and contemplations. It's the first time in my life I've opened up Word, not for essay or administrative purposes for a very long time... it was seriously like all these things were ready to erupt inside me and if I held them back any longer I'd just go mental.

However, after opening Word, I realised that due to the last month's paralysis of articulating my thoughts in my usual manner, I couldn't write exactly the way I used too, nor did the words form the way I wanted it to. I shudder to think what regression this might have caused me... but now with life in my computer at my fingertips, I expect the situation to improve. Also, I can finally touch base with people on the other continents.

I shall stop going on about that - sorry to you guys who come back here to find one-liner type entries sporadically appearing for the last month or so - friend said yesterday she's stopped checking sometimes even... well, don't stop! I intend to make up for lost time. I promise.