I’ve maintained almost a stony silence since my last written post which I’d written at a palpably disturbed state. In retrospect, the matter has become more closed now than ever and I am more than happy to move on, my appetite whetted by the lure of the present tense with the past becoming of lesser significance, if not always serving as a great reminder than anything. The silence also had to do with my delving headfirst into finals, alongside all the mental processes and states of disarray a student falls into during the final weeks of an academic semester. Spring ‘12 flew by almost raucously, and the initially exhausting 17 credit hours (Pilates included, which got freakishly intense for my unfit and far-from-nimble non-athletic self towards the end) soon turned to a mechanical routine I dutifully followed but came to genuinely enjoy. The semester turned out to be a fruitful one; I had gotten quite partial to it and felt a genuine sense of sadness to bid it goodbye.

Media Cultures and History gave me an intricate look into the world of journalism, journalistic ploys and techniques used, alongside its adverse effects on the mass audience. I was introduced to elitist views, how news corporations often skew facts by incorporating their own personal opinions, how politics is often misrepresented… I learned about war as a truly uncivilized act, about the Holocaust, the Vietnam war, the underground press,  the origins of the abolitionist movement, the women’s rights movements and about gay and lesbian rights. These were all mostly new subjects to me and the journal articles assigned proved to be admittedly a loadful to memorize and ingest, with the workload often overweighing most courses. But towards the end, I felt sincerely enlightened by the teachings of Professor Durham, my Anti-Republican professor who strikingly resembles a more academic-looking Anthony Bourdain (straight to the black shirts, silver hair and alert yet bemused gait).

Rhetoric was amazing. I did not expect it to blow me away, but it truly did. I looked forward to Monday and Wednesday evenings every week with a vigor that was almost nearing to silly. Rhetoric helped me overcome my fear of talking in front of people and helped me in strategizing ways to convince the typical audience, be it verbally or vocally. Our teaching assistant, young and so minimalistic in nature assigned us rudimentary reading materials, highly applicable in many forms of life. From Orwell’s Rules of Writing (never use dying metaphors, if you can use a shorter word, use the shorter word, etc), to philosophical references which has triggered an interest for me to check out many books I would normally go out of my way to read, to Art Spiegelman’s Maus which opened up topics about the Holocaust, a topic that has been unsubtly alluded in the Malaysian syllabus, these topics have inspired a lot of thinking on my part.  I find myself knowing less the more I know and the feeling is simultaneously liberating and caging, but I’d like to think it is vital to feel this way.

By my final speech, I continued to detect slight tremors that bumped my voice and prayed the audience could not hear them as my face turned red, an indicator often verified by the warmth I could feel beneath my skin. But like a deus ex machina, confidence swooped in at the very last second and my voice had thankfully evened out by the 3rd minute. Like so many of the topics I chose, my final one was related to anthropology but dealt with something I felt the most passion for, concerning racial and cultural ignorance. The adrenaline of being able to use the voice as a tool was thrilling. I did not care if any impressions towards myself as a subject would be faulty by the end of my speech in the heads of the audience; that I was a minority presenting a speech about the importance of acknowledging Asians as not being “the same” or necessarily all “Chinese/Japanese/Korean”, of the problem of racial ignorance by all races, of how Blackface continues to be performed in K-pop with its constituents greatly unaware regarding the historical subtext behind it, and how racism continues to strongly strive today, was too crucial a topic for me to care of my own small stature. The bunch of freshmen were definitely listening to my speech after I summoned their attention with a joke (that wasn’t even anywhere near much funny, to be honest), I could tell. I had stated that not all Asians were math geniuses, into Pokemon or Chinese after all, and they found it funny enough to rouse everybody’s attention into perking up. But that was what I wanted, wasn’t it? The idea that I could move or educate even one member of the audience about something and that I would impress my TA motivated me and I was proud when I received an ‘A’ for the very speech I had so audaciously cared about. Even more so over the moon when I had received an A- for the course.

I suppose that in terms of life itself, things have tempered down to a stage that is minimal in nature. The truth is that in this period of my life, and at age 21, I have little to complain about and I am glad for that. If I were to argue about loneliness again, I could easily refute this with the bat of an eye. It would be a lie if I said that I felt self-conscious or didn’t enjoy doing things in the company of the only person who will forever prove to be a constant companion throughout my lifespan - myself. An ordinary day begins with me waking up, followed by making my bed and putting the kettle on the stove to fix a hot drink, usually Milo or my favourite blend of Earl Grey. I’ve learned that disorder only helps in arising anxiety and something as simple as maintaining a clean room and a neat house is helpful to prevent chaos in the mind. If you see me scrobbling Twin Shadow’s ‘Forget’ album on my Last.fm, chances are that I am in the kitchen, chopping and mincing, deshelling shrimps, boiling pasta, washing rice, or baking chicken in the oven. I sing in the shower on days where my mood is especially good. I have weened off coffee alarmingly well ever since I fell to the strains of a strep throat and a cold brought upon by the summer heat and dehydration a few weeks back. A lot of my time is spent taking walks on the crunchy grass with my flip flops, swatting away bugs and being reminded of the endless heat that awaits me in the months to follow after I graduate.

I remain a spectator to Iowa City being slowly vacated as the students leave to go off on adventures of their own over the summer. I spend my afternoons watching Masterchef Australia, perhaps my favourite show on the planet and the only show I can be assed to follow to watch. I look up recipes to try out and just only successfully made Hainanese Chicken Rice after a weeklong feverish craving for some (I had thought I would be driven mad, so strong was the craving for chicken rice). Occasionally, I meet up with people over coffee, lunch, or dinner, and I spend a majority of time talking with Lena. I have successfully refrained from getting into messy affairs related to the heart. My internship has just begun which will see me writing writeups and doing promotional/marketing projects for the campus auditorium and performing arts space. When I can muster the energy, I head to the gym to get on the elliptical, rising in minutes as my stamina continues to build. When I first started out, I could barely last 5 minutes, my thighs outright begged me to stop. But I think it gets better as it goes along. I get bored easily on the treadmill but idleness at home leaves me on the edge. Laundry continues to be my least favourite chore to do, alongside folding clothes. I check out stacks of books and movies from the Iowa City Public Library. Evenings and nights are spend consuming large volumes of words, Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” being the last book I’ve read.

The end of every semester or major exam period always sees me walking to the Village Inn nearby for a thick slice of pecan pie with vanilla ice-cream dripping by its sides, the thick caramel and nutty flavor often a testament of tasting what getting over something feels like.  A recent activity I have started enjoying doing is to go through racks in thrift stores to find articles of clothing that gives me joy in ways akin to buying a new book or a new record by your favourite artist. My latest buy was a 90s inspired shirt that looked like it came off straight from the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Watching Bill Murray movies also keep me company on nights when I feel a little down. I hope that man lives forever - you could present me with a movie of Bill Murray just shelling peanuts, and I would still watch it. With the year, I have started to present myself in an orderly state again. I care less about public opinion and hope to continue to be more perceptive towards others.

Summer is lazy and so am I.

Lazy days & little pleasures out of two-oh-twelve.

I woke up, knocked over and sprawled cold in the dead of night. My head was thudding, fragmentary thoughts were scattered as I rolled over in bed to slowly collect myself. I was convinced that it was time to stuff my flurry of papers into a bag and head off for campus but 1:47am could not possibly be the time for school, could it?

Rolled on my back, consciousness slowly emerged, its hungry flames flickering first around the edges, then gaining in roaring licks. You were in my dreams again, this time looking like the very image of chaos. Hair, unkempt; Body, a shapeless mess; Facial expression, distorted into a grimace. You were running away and there were people chasing after you. Your shrieks and squeals and your smile nauseated the crowd, but faces turned away before you could meet them. What you thought was the execution of a great escape led instead to your eventual capture.

A caged bird euphoric at its release, only to realize its wings are clipped.

Then the story shifts to a different frame just because this is a dream. This is a dream that I could not get out of and you were stifling me, even from afar, even with time, you were stifling me. This time, the situation is much more composed. I realize that you’re gone for good now. Somebody told me you died as a crazy man. A schizophrenic, he said.

The coldness hit me in the stomach. They did not know you. Could a person’s glory be based only on their final moments? You were a young boy once too, ambitious, and kind. But all of it, forgotten within the folds of time. Perhaps this is what it feels like to be crazy. My body was erect in a straight line as the terror enveloped me. My pale blouse was sticking to my spine, a thin sheen of sweat was covering my face, my stomach turned. The hot rush of nausea was traveling up my throat. How it shook me, the very terror of your demise.

And I proceeded to weep, and weep, and weep.

and yet, think of how difficult it is to go with oneself and not be terribly frightened or disheartened by the world.

these days, people forget that it takes a lot of courage to stand being lonely or rejected for standing by your own views. it takes a lot of guts to stand by your own thoughts and use your own voice instead of blindly echoing others.

fiona, you’re perfect.

Following the end of last Saturday night’s performance of The Antlers (my second time catching them live; the first was during last year’s San Fran escapade at the Treasure Island music fest), I pushed through the throngs of people to get to an ATM machine. I didn’t care that the provider wasn’t mine and that I had to pay a hefty ATM fee because I wanted to withdraw money to buy something, anything, that would prove a memento for the night which had moved me in spirits. Looking at the memorabilia, I was entranced by the cover art and decided to buy the critically-acclaimed “Hospice”.

As I got home, I listened to the record again and again. And again. And again. Something inside me tore away as I listened to it all the way to sleep. The night had left me astounded and cold, the music was spellbinding and privately touching. Shiva is one of the songs that I’ve been playing on loop these days because it takes me to a familiar time and space that I wouldn’t necessarily choose to like to visit. The whole of “Hospice” is a cathartic record from start to finish. Although frontman Peter Silberman has been reticent about how autobiographical the album is, it is clearcut that it is a staggeringly personal one. I may not have been in the exact scenario that Peter was in, but music is special in that you can relate to it and it succeeds in making you feel less alone. If I were to try to put to words how I feel when I listen to this record, it’d be akin to the warmth of a comforting hand on the small of your back, words of comfort whispered to your ear in the privacy of a bustling crowd, a sincere hug. It feels like being re-mended into a better whole, like an apathetic absentee who finally regains warmth as feelings stir in his self.

I’ve never opened up to this publicly in explicit terms but I will try to now in as concise a state as possible — my first relationship traumatized me. My previous lover fell to a disease of some sort, a near-brush with mental decline, possible schizophrenia/schizophreniform disorder. Being a million miles away in what should have been the best stage in a relationship, watching my first love disintegrate before me was heartbreaking, lonely, frightening. I dealt with the death of my grandfather during the same period and this broke my heart. Occasionally I still awake to the feelings I felt during this time and it still hurts in ways I didn’t think possible. The alienation consumed me and contributed to the worst months of my life. I returned home to find no familiarity or comfort in love and found a stranger before me who liked me for all the wrong reasons. The hand I held felt wrong as I tried my best to provide in every way I could; I skimped through the emotions I felt, I denied everything, my behavior and words turned ugly as I reached to the point of self-distaste and self-disgust. The self-loathing was nauseating, the tears were always heavy, streaming hot and embarrassingly so. I narrowly couldn’t have pulled myself through.

It is a silly thing to be so vulnerable; ah, how could I have pulled through without the love of others? I could say I cared with all my heart, and I’d like to believe I did, but it was just not meant to be. I’m not going to be angry with the world anymore or ask why me? because why not me? I could say a disease or fate stole you from me then, except I believe that things happen for a reason. There have been nights where I wish that my memory within you will never stray from the good ones. But in time, everything fades. The good and the bad slowly desaturates as time consequently heals and dulls everything. Nevertheless, even though we may be as close to strangers as ever now, I honestly wish you the best because you are a good person at heart and I know this.

Shiva is the week-long mourning period in Judaism for first-degree relatives: father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, and spouse. I did not lose a first-degree relative, nor am I a Jew, but whatever race or religion I am, I am also human, just like you and me. We all feel joy, sorrow, pain. I’ve not come to terms with my mourning period in a way that I’d properly like but I am also actively aware of this. I don’t want to be absent to myself in many aspects of my life and thus I will try to be more honest to myself about how I deal with things. Cleaning up is hard but I’m proud of where I’ve come.

Last year opened my eyes about many facets of life; of people, feelings, transitory stages. Not everybody will be there to provide for you, I’ve learned this time and again. I need to learn to invest less trust and hope towards people and at the same time, be apprehensive and intelligent and optimistic emotionally as well. It’s a delicate balance to juggle, it’s a hard way to condition oneself to feel. But the littlest things are phenomenal and wonderful and they help in so many ways. We all deserve a piece of kindness, be it in an unconventional or conventional way. This album is one such piece of indirect kindness to me.

To The Antlers: thank you for being an eye-opener, thank you for existing.

Here is a paper I wrote for my Jazz Cultures class. I had forgotten about the assignment and wrote it at the very last minute in an hour’s time with little editing, if any editing at all. It’s not one of my proudest works but I received a good score for it and my professor really liked it. In hindsight, I see parts where it succeeds and fails so I thought I’d share it here:

 The memory of living in a rental house right in the middle of a sleepy town called Subang Jaya may not now be crisp and perfect in resolution as it was a few years back, but in spite of the flickering edges, it still provides sufficiently as a canvas of my earlier years as a toddler and, subsequently, my first few remembered exposures to music. It must’ve been around ’94 - my father was not yet 30 then, a young IT technologist with a young wife and myself, their first child, who was only a four year-old at this point in time. I recall often fading in and out of sleep amidst a pile of pillows, the aftertaste of milk and biscuits from breakfast still in my mouth, as the television droned on and on with sounds that were barely decipherable in my state of mind. The colorful music of the occasional Bollywood (Hindustani) film often punctuated these afternoons. My mother was a big fan of these movies back in the day and being in a diverse, multi-cultural country, our offerings on television from other parts of Asia were often rich and varied, a delight to a child who could grow up with cartoons not only from Western countries, but also from countries such as Japan and Indonesia. The high-pitched female voices singing praises of love in Hindi provided a backdrop of India in a child’s mind, painted to be as vibrant as the sounds which often accompanied these vocals, a faraway land within reach in some distant future. Today, this music reminds me of lying on a cold floor and watching my young mother carrying out daily chores, her gentle touch often trying to lull me back to sleep as the image of star-struck lovers escaping from heavily-mascaraed foes danced around in front of my eyes.

Alongside the usual necessitated time capsules derived from the days of childhood in the form of lullabies, cartoon programs and the likes, somehow the music track which shines the most from my earlier years, particularly still back in ’94, that I return to often will no doubt be Robbie Robertson’s “Somewhere Down the Crazy River”, a track that was heavily played on loop as it was an evident favorite of my father’s at the time. I remember bearing the chubby, rounded limbs of a toddler and attempting to dance clumsily to this song as my parents laughed at my attempts and my father spiritedly sang along to it with a smile on his face. I did not particularly understand the lyrics of “Somewhere Down the Crazy River” then, but being a song with some talking parts in it, it certainly stood out as an unusual form of music to a 4 year-old then, and thus, this segment of it frequently stood out to me the most:

‘She said “There’s one thing you’ve got to learn

Is not to be afraid of it.”

I said “No, I like it, I like it, it’s good.”

She said “You like it now

But you’ll learn to love it later.”’

- Robbie Robertson, “Somewhere Down the Crazy River”

In retrospect and looking at it as a 21 year-old now, this part of lyricism from “Somewhere Down the Crazy River” is heartfelt inasmuch as it encapsulates an accurately personal viewpoint towards my view on music. As a child, music which my dad played from his record player was mystifying and frightening at times (eg. Pink Floyd music, in particular, seemed to be of nightmarish proportions then) but with each successive year that followed with age, I have learned to embrace the songs which my father has loved and have independently branched out to having my own preferences in music. Through these old songs that were his favorites, however, I have learned not only of his eccentricities and his personality, but also to love these songs for their own worth and to ultimately attach my own personal analyses and/or sentiments to them, a personal yet pivotal moment of growth which I noted towards the end of my teens.

My next transitory big change in music would probably be when I was a 15 year-old and on vacation with my family. Prior to the trip, I had downloaded several songs from some obscure bands on my iPod. The age of alternative music was going through a huge boom at the time and I had downloaded a song titled “Crooked Teeth” by a band called Death Cab for Cutie. The lyrics in the song were melancholic and simple and yet it echoed a wistful sense of loss, a personal testament I clung onto which propelled my interest in listening to lesser-known music. This song itself helped to become a catalyst in developing an interest to explore other often-overlooked genres of music. As a 15 year-old, my breath was taken away by how good all this music I was discovering sounded in comparison to Billboard Top 40 offerings of the day and this offered a sense of renewed excitement and hope towards music. To an adolescent who was very much a loner, the years of growing up amidst hormonal changes and many crises of identity was rather abrasive to one’s nature. Through writing and listening to music, I did not only attain refuge but also found a sense of identity as music provoked me to think more creatively, inspired me to look up things and read things, and most of all, inspired a love of language to be paired with good music. Listening to music provided as a companion on nights spent thinking and staying awake despite closed eyes. Music was also the balm which helped through hiccups in life and, perhaps more importantly, has definitely accentuated many, many happy and crucial moments of my life. For one, the art of constructing and exchanging personally handpicked tracks for mixtapes (complete with personally hand-drawn artwork) with my first love is a sweet remembrance of my formative years which I will never forget.

The sense of looking for comfort in the structure of words in music still remains as one of my favorite things to do till today and has led to my landing jobs for the campus radio as a DJ and as a writer for a music blog. Music, in all its essence, is a necessity in living, an all-powerful tool that perhaps words itself cannot fully romanticize at best effect. For fear of cheapening my appreciation towards music in this paper with overused, quasi-inspirational clichés, I thougth that it would instead be apt to choose to end it with a quote by Henry David Thoreau which echoes my sentiments in regards to music as a propagator of all the finer things in life:

“When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe.

I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.”

                                                                        - Henry David Thoreau

Attached is also a tracklisting of music that has been pivotal towards the development of my musical autobiography.

1)    Somewhere Down the Crazy River by Robbie Robertson

2)    The Great Gig in the Sky by Pink Floyd

3)    Lovesong by The Cure

4)    Waltz of the Flowers from “The Nutcracker” by Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky

5)    Fast Car by Tracy Chapman

6)    Evening News by Jason Lo

7)    Torn by Natalie Imbruglia

8)    Shiver by Coldplay

9)    Crooked Teeth by Death Cab for Cutie

10) Anonanimal by Andrew Bird

11) Elephant Gun by Beirut

12) The Zookeeper’s Boy by Mew

13) Sometimes by My Bloody Valentine

14) Crimewave by Crystal Castles

15) Made-up Love Song #43 by Guillemots

16) Nude by Radiohead