I am far too sad
To go to sleep without a
Story in my head
slovenly
coffee became a solid meal
your thighs shrunk with pride
you became a poser in button-down shirts and black panties
you drew from plastic pens like they held the wisdom of a cigarette
people stopped saying "you're clever"
time became a volatile essence
those orange paperbacks, in such simplicity of irrelevance, were your unobtainable ideas of euphoria
an obstinate streak of exhaustion rendered you stagnant
your intake of mind-numbing pop culture became nocuous
fears materialised and your own words of diffidence were a basis for the truth
the hours before midnight touched you in every way but that of sleep
the chronic remorse of a passing day stunned you into consciousness and an inconsolable whimper
and ultimately you wrote down those few contrivances in a note that affirmed the
suicide of your intelligence.
r.l.
Auld Lang Syne
I would like to (at least modestly) broadcast a valediction to the waning hours of 2012, a year so diverse and opulent in the curiosities it inspires that it seems almost wrong to place these abstract wisps of experience under the same archive of four lustreless digits.
As always, it pains me to say that I have nothing of profundity to attribute to this topic. At this particular moment I fail to recall everything that could have possibly mattered in the year that has passed. And there is living proof of this in the twelve coloured Moleskine cahiers, most of which stand empty, the rest devoid of true substance. (My inability to record what I wish to remember has proved itself chronic, and the severity of such a problem has induced an embarrassing magnitude of emotional strain.)
Though it has probably materialised in my head, I probably won't be producing a list of New Year resolutions as things nearly always fall short of tangibility once they are in written form.
Here's to a month-or-so of correcting twos into threes on nearly every paper I write.
As always, it pains me to say that I have nothing of profundity to attribute to this topic. At this particular moment I fail to recall everything that could have possibly mattered in the year that has passed. And there is living proof of this in the twelve coloured Moleskine cahiers, most of which stand empty, the rest devoid of true substance. (My inability to record what I wish to remember has proved itself chronic, and the severity of such a problem has induced an embarrassing magnitude of emotional strain.)
Though it has probably materialised in my head, I probably won't be producing a list of New Year resolutions as things nearly always fall short of tangibility once they are in written form.
Here's to a month-or-so of correcting twos into threes on nearly every paper I write.
Gatsby on his (Inflatable) Deathbed
The circumstances that surround Gatsby’s death create a sense of symmetry between the life in pursuit of the American dream and the inevitability of death, which brings an end to something as limitless as success. Like the meretricious grandeur that dictated Gatsby’s life and the perception that people built up of him, the way in which Gatsby died , the visual spectacle of his dead body floating along his private swimming pool, downplays the emotion usually associated with a death, and competes to overtake the decease of such a characterless individual. It provides a near-perfect mirror image to Gatsby’s life; the extravagance and outlandish parties that became his social image were always there to overshadow him as a character, and the same thing has happened to him in his death.
The death of Gatsby itself, and the literal circumstances of his physical surroundings are a representation of the limitedness that come with materialistic values of pursuing the American Dream. The typical phrase of “you can’t take it with you” is played upon with in the setting of Gatsby’s death, as he was shot in the pool that he never swam in, and now he has literally taken the pool with him to his death; the clarity of the water - and meretriciousness of its purity when contained in such an extravagant vessel as a swimming pool - has been contaminated with his blood, which is the purest physical embodiment of life and the loss of life itself. The swimming pool provides a representation of Gatsby’s life; a metaphor of how one can take something as simple as plain as water, place it in a vessel of such extravagance as a swimming pool, and watch it become a spectacle that is larger than life.
Of all the imagery and symbolism that Scott Fitzgerald (easily one of my favourite authors) creates in The Great Gatsby, it was the scene of Gatsby's death that I found the most poignant, and haunted me in a most perennial fashion. It seems that I am one of the few to prefer analysis to creation in a lot of areas, English literature being no exception. Here is my interpretation of the death, written almost a year ago I believe. I haven't edited the content of this, but I do disagree with myself on the idea that he was "characterless".
Artless Beauty - II
Arabesques of single-stroke as a fluid stream
Cascades and creases of artless cloth
mottles plain of greater canvas
Wind adorns the looking-glass sea; thrums
of turquoise in monochrome ebbs
Cream-white paper, recumbent
In a leather-bound embrace
- sallow with time
Their words, modest as they form
In curlicue spires upon consonant pillars.
Stoic, unornamental, austere
Great complexity in regress
The void of guile, one finds, beguiles
As they exist, chaste in hue,
Without one wish to coalesce.
Concertare
The concerts I have been to - in chronological order
- Green Day
- Deep Purple
- Mika
- MGMT & The Whitest Boy Alive
- Iron Maiden
- Deadmau5
- Two Door Cinema Club (I met them!)
- The Vaccines & Kasabian
- Laneway 2012 (full lineup here)
- Noel Gallagher
Upcoming concerts:
- Laneway 2013
- Big Night Out 2013
- Bloc Party
Plans for tonight;
- Pizza,
- Woody Allen movie (toss-up between Alice and Zelig - I've seen neither),
- Exercise my pretentiousness in an artist analysis
- Finish off Oh Comely submission
- Polish off (the unpublished parts of) my new short story The Old Man Visits Solitude
I'm suddenly starting to feel a lot better. This may be due to my reaching the centre of a humbug.
Laneway 2013
The past couple of weeks have been a time of great suspense and anticipation for indie music-lovers across this tiny island. Girls (and guys too, of course) who have screamed their lungs out for the likes of Two Door Cinema Club, The Whitest Boy Alive, MGMT, The Vaccines, Bombay Bicycle Club - and, naturally, the entire lineups for the previous two Laneway Festivals - have been speculating, impatiently waiting for and even arguing over the quality of the dozen-or-so names that are to grace the festival's set list, and it goes without saying that people pledged their attendance in the hundreds the moment the date was announced.
The wait is finally over for those who find themselves forever explaining to (the not-so-likeminded) others a reasonable jutification for the inarticulate phrases of excitement and high-pitched hyperventilation when a band that isn't Maroon 5 comes to town.
Of course this isn't the first we have heard for laneway artists this year; a list of all artists doing the rounds at this festival have been common knowledge for some time, whereas the line-up of the Singapore leg of the festival has been a point of speculation.
I have several points to make that should begin with phrases synonymous to the words "Admittedly, I..."
Admittedly, I was initially disappointed - not even skeptical, just disappointed - with the first announcement of the line-up (that is, when the list encompassing all artists in the festival was released). My immediate reaction stemmed purely from the fact that it was clearly not as great (to me) as the line-up last year, I seemed to dwell on that outlook for a while. The myriad of headliners seemed to chiefly be people that I had either heard of or never heard of, though I did know how revered they were by some of my friends. The line-up of 2012 contained a lot of artists that immediately settled with me, or that already resided comfortably on my list of favourite artists.
Oddly enough, the narrowing down of artists for the Singapore festival made me more appreciative of them, and the fact that it's a saturday this year is an absolute godsend. The venue, however, is a matter of slight skepticism; for all it's simplicity I love going to concerts in Fort Canning, and it really helped amplify the festival vibe last year.
I must confess that I know very little of the artists that I am genuinely looking forward to seeing. Without sounding like the biggest mindless poser ever, I really do think that it can be enough to know of the acclaim that band have received to want to go to a concert.
The bottom line is, I can't get my ticket soon enough.
The bottom line is, I can't get my ticket soon enough.
Most looking forward to [in no particular order]; Of Monsters and Men, Kings of Convenience, Gotye, Cloud Nothings, Tame Impala, Bat For Lashes
Most curious about; Alt-J (I find it shameful to admit that I haven't listened to these Mercury Prize winners!), Yeasayer, Kimbra, Divine Fits
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