24.12.13

永眠

I DON'T GET IT.




I DON'T LOVE.




listen as loud as you dare




there is not much in this world that i do not despise.

love is not a feeling.
what i thought i felt to be love was not love at all.

if there is an organ somewhere in my body responsible for the feeling of emotions i would like to destroy it as soon as possible.

i don't trust many people because their words and their faces betray the truth.

i seek only truth.

cloudy days do not exist to me.

-

i stare up at the glow stars i have placed on my ceiling and envision my own universe lying beyond those pinpricks of light. i imagine the constellations and how history shall create meaning for them. i imagine my face in the stars, my face made out of stars, my flesh and bones mere stardust. i see moonlight shining through my skin as translucent as if i were a giant window in space. i am a vessel for space to exist. i am a carrier of stardust sent to explore more of the universe. are you coming with me?

-
 

Coil - Dublin, City Hall, October 23, 2004




this is the final performance of COIL before jhonn balance died a few days later. 54:40 is the beginning of the song "going up" off of ape of naples. it is perhaps the most heartstoppingly beautiful thing i have ever seen in my life, this performance. that song perfectly encapsulates everything i feel COIL was about, or at least a majority of it. i can't stop listening to this song and "i don't get it" for i can't envision anything greater than these two things existing simultaneously in my head.

-



this is me singing a song to you.
**** ***.
-throws it on your doorstep and runs away to the other end of the universe-

i sincerely do not like most people. i do not like your personality, i do not want to know you. i do not want you to talk to me. what makes you think you can shove words in my ear? what divine right do you have to make me conscious of whatever you choose to say? what makes you think you can try to influence my mood or even my thoughts?

shut the fuck up and leave me alone

-

click to enter paradise


are you ready to go now?

11.12.13

aquarium-filtered light

i am obsessed, obsessed with this album:

4hero - Parallel Universe (1995)

lost in

and my favorite track off of it, "Follow Your Heart (pt. 2)"



i find it very fun and enjoyable and astounding to listen to. i would rather listen to it above most other things.

-

i recently watched a documentary on the pianist Glenn Gould in which his life is explained with great detail. i have come to realize him as one of the most important and greatest pianists this world has ever seen. i can't speak much for his recordings of other composers, but i find his bach works absolutely definitive. i enjoy his mozart renditions a whole lot too. they are so completely different from what one has become used  to, yet entirely better for it.

he was also so dreamy and magnetizing to watch.

the desert

my current favorite mozart of his being the sonata no. 12, k. 332, in f major. the first movement, an allegro, played rather detached but in a very charming way, and then the second movement, one of the most beautifully rich adagios i have ever heard in my life. gould gives it depth, character, and really embraces what at times seem like strange harmonies. all is not what it seems.



as for bach, i have shared a video earlier of the e major fugue in which it is quite possible bach achieved perfection. not just in the aesthetic sense, but when broken down into parts the piece seems to have simply no flaws. divinity at work through the hands who composed it and the genius who now performs it. i can't get over how each line is given roundness, meaning, just by how it is conceived and executed musically. the notes themselves hold nothing particularly special, they really don't. their arrangement, their resurrection from the page, the auditory transformation from a lifeless staff to very physical sensations, moving lines and voices that attract your ear, pull at you from far-off places, stop your heart for a moment; these are things that only the highest evolution of human can achieve. these are things that can be replaced by nothing else in the universe.

here is gould playing the ending of the first movement to bach's keyboard concerto no. 1 in d minor, BWV 1052. i find the part at 1:10 to be rather lovely, intimate.



sometimes you have to wonder, what does it all mean?

soaked in

i recently started reading raymond chandler's first novel, the big sleep. i haven't seen the film yet in its entirety, but i will probably wait until i'm though with the book. so far i find it incredible and rich. it reminds me a lot of the murakami books i used to love; i am pretty sure he was even influenced by chandler's hard-boiled detective motif. there are great similarities between writing styles, too; very straight to the point, lots of talk of alcohol, the male characters being brutally honest, cynical yet not entirely heartless, while the female characters remain very peculiar and sometimes insanely annoying. i really hope most girls aren't as flimsy as they are portrayed.

wet dreams

also really super super loving this track by burial and massive attack, "four walls." her voice reminds me of the girl from elysian fields, very sensual and mystical. the fuzzy textures overlaying the beat seem to take precedence here, as opposed to what one might be more familiar with in burial's output.


-

i wonder if i am at any stage in my life to which i could attribute a season, a time of day, or anything symbolic like that. i suppose that in a chronological sense at 20 i would be considered in the summer, or in the mid afternoon when the sun is highest in the sky. everything is rising to its fullest potential and blooming and exploding and moaning with raw desire for newness and sensation. i get it. but did the desire for everything i can possibly withhold in my body originate from within me, or am i soaking in what is merely expected of me?

i want to hang out with myself and do things. i feel like i understand myself pretty well and would be able to have fun. but at the same time, i think a lot of the things i do are for the person i am with. what fun is it when there isn't anyone to show off to, right? grrrrrr

i do want everything, it is true. and i feel like i can have anything. i do not feel limited, or at least to the extent i did in the past. there are so many possibilities, it feels like i am constantly squinting because the force of the sun's rays are overpowering my senses... i do not walk blindly but with some obscuring factors in my path. i do not resent these however, for perfect clarity does not strike me as possible or even human. who can claim that there is nothing hidden from them? perhaps it is best not to care, but to just move forward, stumble a little, without rest.

who can afford that?


dear diary, i must take risks -
i must not be afraid of failure.what do i need to give up?
crystalline ladders, shiny things, mirror-balls…


i just found a review that i used to love from years ago. it completely blew my mind. the review is of coil's moon's milk EPs.

4.12.13

arrière-pensée

COME ON DIE YOUNG


this track reminds me of feelings that i don't even remember ever feeling, places i don't remember really being but still hold deep significance. car rides underneath trees which now stand dead and bare. hands held, once warm and full of life, in a human-shaped space now empty and cold. basically, this song brings to life the ghost of myself who has lived out each potentiality and from whose transparency i am left with the remaining memory and sensation



happiness isn't always explicit, it's not always direct or overt or even visible
tangible, ready and willing
sometimes it is resting under the surface of your every day life
like morning light behind clouds
just fucking bask in the light
stop suffocating it
stop your desperate attempts at unmasking its true form
that is not for you
it was never for you
so lie still



this isn't just isolation. this is hell

-

why must he plague me with his face
his memory is like a world of sights, sounds, smells, sensations that will never be felt again
a world of loss and losing
a world that will spin and spiral infinitely away from me with each passing moment

the saddest fucking thing to ever experience.

fuck trying to see this positively
i feel ruined



sorry for the negativity guys. maybe this video will help inspire you to believe in a beauty, or at least some kind of salvation to be felt throughout your life. orchestrating pure sounds in the air and experiencing what it means to be human through music. i am fed up with trying to cultivate my own sensations, trying to force the feeling of being alive upon myself. all it leads to is unimaginable disappointment.



another song in which i find it very easy to lose myself

-

all i wanna do is make music
and explore sounds
and feel weightless

days and hours lose their importance as i drift through life
happiness is not a priority
breathing is
i guess



me dancing in these holographic lights
they form around any shadows that intrude their path
which i was happy to do

-

would you let me sing to you?

12.11.13

the breath of regions where one goes hat in hand

listen.
r.i.p. one of the greatest composer of our times.



the universe


everything feels different, my life is going in a completely different direction now than a few months ago... even a few weeks ago. strange how suddenly you are completely removed from the plan you had previously conceived for yourself, and how violently you had stuck by it, how estranged you were from everything that  suggested even the slightest deviation. and yet, right under your nose, it happened. you are at that place. that place you were always trying to go, under the surface. there isn't a perfect little word to capture the emotions i feel, but maybe that is because i feel kind of numb. not because of any lack of feeling on my part, but because of the strangeness of this new world. i reach out and can make contact with nothing, yet. it's still being shaped from a formless blob into a vibrant technicolor world in my mind where i can engage and interact with what has been laid out before me.

THIS IS LIFE, DUH

you feel me?

is

le musique, as always

a

dave brubeck quartet in germany, 1966
9:47 is one of the greatest jazz performances i've ever seen, it's called "forty days" and was composed by brubeck. 19:14 is another beautiful one, it's called "koto song" and has some of the most beautiful jazz piano improv you'll ever hear. he is a big inspiration to me!



johann sebastian bach's prelude no. 6 in d minor from WTC I, performed by sviatoslov richter
1:26 is when the amazingly beautiful, somber fugue begins. i just can't get over how beautiful it is, and richter plays it with such sonority. i started learning it today.



chune - "one man dream machine," big hat, no cattle (1996)
lovely, if you ask me.



mark fry - "song for wild," dreaming with alice (1972)
psych-folk classic



natural snow buildings - "away, my ghosts," the dance of the moon and the sun (2006)
my god.



me singing to you:



other things:

drake, random songs
Scarlatti sonatas
Haydn sonatas
the strokes, angles
burial, untrue
mule driver
federico mompou, charmes et suburbis
jon hopkins, immunity
souls of mischief, '93 til infinity
AIDAN BAKER & TIM HECKER, FANTASMA-PARASTASIE
this video
this nail polish color
everything here

-

haunted house


i got a new job, and i am excited for the future. that's all i can hope for right now. i am learning things at school and trying to take in as much as i can. i talk to everyone i can no matter if they intimidate or belittle me. i have to be real with everyone to prolong my solidity as a human lest i fade back into a holographic shadow.

i'd like to thank myself for not breaking down and crying every day
i'd like to thank myself for not missing things that aren't worth missing
for realizing what really matters in life
for climbing out of a hole
for realizing that you were digging a hole in the first place
for not being afraid


Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness; but it does so by setting us bodily free from our surroundings and giving us back our primitive, unattached state. Yes, it can even, in the twinkling of an eye, make something like a vagabond of the pedant and Philistine.


EDIT

holy shit listen to this!!!!!! especially 4:28
so yummy sexy gorgeous and good.

2.11.13

drug me with visions untrue

Nina Simone, live at the Montreux Festival (1976, 1987, 1990) 
 

45:50 is when she starts singing "feelings," an absolutely amazing song

HTRK, "Synthetik" (Work, Work, Work)


there is something in this video that touches me like fingers on my skin, but from the inside out.

-

i need to walk and empty my mind with each step. i need to cleanse these cavities in my chest and head of all the gray matter. there is so much to me outside of what i am to other people. in fact, it might be most apt to say that what i am to other people encapsulates an entire self other than my truest form.

yes, that must be it. a shadow of me, the sun shining on my back and the world sucking up my reflection as i gaze straight ahead towards the horizon.

there are many places i wish i was right at this moment. where i am is not one of them.

soft feelings that can only be achieved with the presence of another

-

toxic


something that consoles me is a warm place in my head that i am becoming more familiar with

is is a place where no one else is allowed
it is a bed on which no one else can lay
hands on me that i put there
things inside me that i meaningfully placed

i feel so warm knowing that these things are mine
no abandonment by anyone or anything can make me feel like i have experienced loss
when what i experienced has been retained inside me
and i can cultivate the garden as i please

dreaming

^ isn't that the most beautiful photograph you have ever seen?

21.10.13

there, over there...

alive, it is i

transformations undergone, i have

happened, things did.

-

i have come to quite enjoy the taste of coffee, masked with sugar or milk of course but not heavily so. the coffee taste still needs to be there for it to have any meaning.

people fascinate me but i do not spend time being fascinated with them. they are like pretty, revolving metallic things hanging from a ceiling in a museum. a whole labyrinth of these sculptures. some repulse me.

you can't be easily lured, easily fooled, easily made into a fool. you just can't afford to let that happen to you. right? so stop letting it happen!

-

god music is the strongest and most pure form of hopeful wandering i've ever discovered

it the most holy and sacred salvation to ever be offered to me

-

the pleasure is all mine
to finally let go


björk - "aurora" (vespertine, 2001)





a tribe called quest - "buggin out" (the low end theory, 1991)



*shels - "the conference of the birds" (sea of the dying dhow, 2007)



elliott smith - "between the bars" (either/or, 1997)



drake - "over my dead body (feat. chantal kreviazuk") (take care, 2011)





some random songs i have come to love a lot.

looking hard for moments of shine

7.8.13

quand une chanson me touche . a love letter



i'm gonna tell you something personal. not like i haven't done so already.

if you were to enter my very soul from a backdoor, like a white porch from the garden, this song is the first thing that you would hear. it represents some configuration of desire that i feel deep in my soul. it has always been there, waiting to be awoken, and this music alerts me to the presence of something in my core that is alive. it is the soundtrack to the awakening of my true essence. pretty intense, huh?



Last night in my dream
I traveled for years and years
Galaxies, centuries
No one was there


oiseaux tristes

My darling. I'm waiting for you. How long is the day in the dark? Or a week? The fire is gone, and I'm horribly cold. I really should drag myself outside but then there'd be the sun.

We die. We die rich with lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we've entered and swum up like rivers. Fears we've hidden in - like this wretched cave.

The lamp has gone out and I'm writing in the darkness.

une barque sur l'ocean

sometimes
sometimes...

i want to be static electricity that places my hand behind your ear and on the warmth of your neck
i want to be the space in between our lips while we inhale the same glowing air

as we breathe through each other

i want to be the hands under each others' clothes
i want to be your closed and smiling eyelashes
i want to be the skin we caress in places we cannot reach
i want to go in that secret special room in your heart

you are in everything
you fill up the previously empty spaces and wells and cracks in solid walls
uninvited, unintrusive, you stay with me
you are there



reflets dans l'eau

a wise man told me once that unconditional love is when you love someone in spite of everything. all other love is conditional, including "i love you if or because of" this or that. like familial love. you wouldn't betray any member of your family (in theory), no matter how much you can't stand them or wish they would just leave you alone forever. there is an unspoken bond in our double helixes that dictates we love each other forever, no questions asked. how beautiful is that? and i firmly believe that you can create this bond after birth with another, or allow it to be created according to your will. i think this could even be the meaning of life. to re-create that unspoken bond with someone else and make them family, make them a part of your genetic code. swim up their body, if you will. travel through each others veins at painstaking speed, each cellular wall a new and precious treasure.




i would love to go my entire life with you by my side. i am not one-fifth through with my life, i an one-fifth closer to a better life. one with meaning, purpose, dedication.

i would love to be the old couple down the street who does everything together. going to the supermarket to buy a pie we might eat two bites of, some foreign chocolate, some really strong alcohol, sparkling water and perhaps some napkins. we are gonna have a party every night. we'll take walks each and every day down nondescript streets and enjoy each others company, the weather, and whoever or whatever passes us by. this is all we will need because THIS IS LIFE! this is what our life has become, and we shall enjoy it as it happens with no what ifs, ands or buts. maybe we won't end up talking very much, but it's because we'll be like some kind of transformer that has almost completed the assimilation to its final form - we'll have attained a oneness that no one can question or judge, because it is the most natural thing in the world.

i promise i'll hold your hand every chance i get. your skin is like a drug, your touch and your emanation of pure peace in the world. no one who hasn't been in love can know the feeling that came over us as if it was second nature. we so easily cultivated something out of nothing that most people spend their whole lives trying to find. an understanding of someone else that some thought impossible in this day and age... it means the world to me to know i can feel this way about anything at all. i wish i could go to you now and bring you some flowers that smell really nice.

so many wishes

i feel as if i am praying to some sort of god. i want to be channeled into your heart, i pray that i will be connected to you by a divine operator who sees that our wires aren't properly connected. like audrey praying to agent cooper to come save her from one-eyed jack's. i just hope you can hear me, and if you can, you will listen.

4.8.13

boobs

god it just hurts so bad.

have you ever felt pain so enormous and so life-altering that you have no words to say to it? you are just faced with this endless black forest, you look up and see no sky, you look down and see no ground, you are floating in space and there is no trapdoor through which to escape. it's a punishment, and the worst part is you know you actually deserve it. you tell yourself that it might just be an unexpected journey, a splendid alice in wonderland type-story that you've managed to infiltrate. it will be so much fun to be lost and confused and have to dig yourself out, maybe you'll even find some help along the way. except as the time passes, slowly and slowly and slower each day, each second moving like a year, that excitement gives way to thought. pure thought, as vast as the biggest desert or field you've ever seen, as vast as the ocean view from the beach, which encapsulates your being and and from which there is NO ESCAPE. a depth of feeling so great and startling, you have no words.

upon waking


i am isolated from the one i love. i have been deserted on an island of eternity that i created for myself in a dark room somewhere long ago.

when the moon sails out
the water hides earth’s surface,
the heart feels like an island
in the infinite silence


and if suddenly


how could i have gone so long without feeling, i have to wonder. it is funny. it is the only explanation for the stark difference of what i am going through now - like night and day. maybe i have never really felt anything before now. but something is here now, and not going anywhere. i am a bruise all over and with one touch i might spiral back into a dark recess of the heart that i should have boarded up forever long ago.

i hate the word raw, because it is true. raw is a thing, and it is what i am. it is the only word to describe the past 2 years of my life, including the days i live now. raw, and new. unforgettable. unforgiveable. rawness. why am i such a sensitive ball of flesh.

the way one looks at distant things


i want to watch a miyazaki film under the covers with someone warm. i want to heal myself and my body. i want to peek through sheets at lights through blinds and feel the pure warmth of the sun on my skin. i want to be heated up from the inside out. i want to shine through every opening. i want to never close and never harden. i want to breathe and really release, really rid myself of the breath, and take in some kind of newness with each inhalation. the only constant in life is the breathing, the beating of the heart, the blinking of the eyes. simple mechanisms that define our existence. without getting fancy that is what we are - machines working in time with each other to produce life. that is comforting, i guess.

comings and goings


i am thankful for my body. i am thankful for its shape and its function. without it i would be a lost soul, and though that seems appealing, it is not what i want at this point in my life. i am thankful for my mind, and that i am aware i exist. i am thankful for the things that i touch, the air that i breathe, everything that rises up to meet me on a daily basis, for these are the things that make up my life. i am thankful for the tasks that i achieve, because these are the things that take up my time. i am thankful for the opportunity to be a speck of dust on a pinpoint of light in this universe.

no one can break my heart.

-

john tavener - "the protecting veil" / yo-yo ma, david zinman, baltimore symphony orchestra



aspidistrafly - "countless white moons" / a little fable


-




i went mourning without the sun

24.7.13

we have to make new love

i am surrounded by both the most beauty the world has to offer
and the trash that comes with it

the price we must pay for living in a wondrous world
is that we are what we are
and we are scum

we infect
we are a plague upon the ground

what is left to enjoy but the dregs of the disgrace
the final outcry of nature
for us to leave and never come back

a last attempt to rid the original from the sickness

everything can be made into a sickness

this love i feel
this vision
this privilege of breath

it affects someone in some way

-

i long for clarity and
redemption
a world of see-through glass and no mistakes

a world of unparalleled forgiveness

and

and

-

this is an enormous task to undertake
effort and time must be spent

what we have now must be sacrificed
if we want to change anything
anything, if we want to change anything

we have to make things new







here is björk performing one of my favorite pieces of music


i guess i just don't really understand the meaning of feelings, of what is felt. we expect them, though, and the absence of them is cause enough for us to worry. we would rather live in a world full of feelings than a world without them. and by feelings i don't just mean a reaction of the senses, something involuntary and common, but rather a unique set of sensations that one cannot discern, cannot summon, cannot control. a spreadsheet of innumerable configurations of colors and temperatures that affect one so deeply, so far inside that you almost dare not follow through to the end.

sometimes i will be near a window or open door and recall a long-lost sentence from a book. souls whirling through the air, a fast-moving object constantly spinning away just out of the reach of your eye - you see just the last trace of its path and then it is gone behind trees or corners of buildings. it puts you in a funny state of mind. why were you chosen to see this phenomenon, and what could it mean? do you follow it in its journey, or trace your steps back to safety? is it a shadow from the past wishing to impart to you secrets you never knew about? or merely a bird, a plastic bag blowing off course...

i long to design and be in control of my living space. there is just too much that i do not know, incredible amounts of knowledge that lead to desired results that i just will never know. i must be taught, i must be shown, like a baby is shown how to accomplish menial tasks. what i desire is a vision of beauty and originality but what must be done to accomplish it cannot be by my own hands. i really don't know what i'm talking about anymore... i just wish i could SHOW the world what is in my mind, i wish i could show myself the reality of what i imagine but it is far too great and just that, imaginative, that it could never exist in real life. why is it that the real world is so unimaginative, yet in my mind anything is possible and completely rational? people go to great lengths to reproduce their dreams and visions yet fall so short, disappointing themselves and leaving many shattered pieces lost in a forgotten hole. maybe that is why daydreams are the only escape, but i don't want to just escape i want to live the dream, i want to live the vision i create! ...

this sounds so ridiculous, like everyone has thought these things before and i am just now realizing a well-known fact. oh well.

i am learning a beethoven sonata that i am not very familiar with despite its very obvious popularity. the appassionata. i think it will go well, i have been spending a lot of my time trying to make friends with it and somehow... make it come alive.

i am so full of anger. hatred towards nothing in particular, just a feeling with nowhere to go and no particular time to shine. just constantly there. is any hatred natural, or is it all placed there by a subliminal force? i cannot hate something without being told why i should hate it, or shown what is hateful about it by another, or lured into the popular opinion of hating it. right? no one goes up to a grape and hates it on the spot. they might dislike it on the basis of taste, but to hate something so harmless is purely the doing of humans. i wish these kinds of feelings would go away and stop taking over my entire state of being when i least expect it. nothing is worth that hatred, this world has some terrible things in it but to waste my energy hating it would be to wither myself away faster than i am meant to wither away.

love is a much greater source of energy. it is an unending spiral of complicated feelings, mazes of confusion, infinite darkness and infinite light. it has no beginning or end, it follows no rules, it isn't created nor destroyed, it merely exists all around us and inside us for eternity. much like music. these are things we attribute words to yet have no idea what is really confined inside their essence, we just know the most basic and fundamental elements that present themselves to us as these things. we try to connect dots between them, find some semblance of meaning... despite all of our science and great leaps and bounds we are so clueless to the things that ultimately run our lives.

the end.


to be open 
delineate 
and savour

29.6.13

IT TAKES A THIEF

It's a really weird feeling when your heart breaks, and the waves that sent the heart breaking come from an unknown direction. You just know you should have avoided it, at all costs. You let yourself down. You let yourself feel empty and hollow, you lied to yourself and said that something could fill the void when the cruelty of nature demands that nothing could. It is an unfillable hole, passing from each bond you create and destroy with another person right through the center of your body... a wormhole. It has no dimension, no depth, just a presence that swallows you up. I wish I could visually represent this but I have not the skills.

I actually relish the feeling of intense and immediate sadness, for the most bittersweet moment is when you first realize that all was for nothing, and all was lost. You can finally breathe and rest your tired heart and your tired soul. You can stop longing now, you can stop searching and hoping, the long hard wait is over. Time continues but the struggle is over. Your mind can stop playing its tricks. Your sleep will be undisturbed by pangs of emotion and flights of fancy, and only daydreams daydreams daydreams will remain.

People are nothing more than warm bodies to rub against, to project love and fantasy-filled worlds upon, to weigh down with your own heavy, heavy burden. How could you ask that of someone? What did you really think would happen?

If only the feeling of someone's warm body beside you wasn't such a treasure, such a rare rare prize to find and keep for yourself. If only there were things more important to you than feeling the gravitational pull of a body to yours. If only late nights were warm and full of hope, the promise of rooms hidden upstairs or something like that, again... maybe hearts would be stronger, made of steel, truly ready for what can happen.

Protect yourself. Protect what is sacred. You are the only one who can do that for you, and when you fail, no one else is to blame.

me most of the time

have been listening to:

Aphex Twin
Federico Mompou - Piano Music
Nikaido Kazumi (二階堂和美) - Mata Oto Shimashita Yo
Burial - Untrue, a forever kind of album
Lana del Rey
"are you listening to what i'm trying to tell you?" (Carbon Based Lifeforms)
"i feel nothing more than existence/this is not paradise" (Death in June)
Eddie Marcon - 綿の煙の招待状
COIL



i took a walk late in the evening after a storm had blown over and washed away my sins, but the storm was still raging behind deep and far away clouds. picture a sticky, humid, golden landscape of fallen-down trees, an unsure twilight and blackened, dampened streets. everything dripped and everything smelled ten times more like what it was, everything smelled like earth and with the absence of a downpour - as if the absence of the rain that just dominated everything for many miles around gave everything new meaning. walking on your squeaky flip-flops through the carnage, you notice everything is different, somehow. billions of lifeforms teeming in pools and fleshy green beds of leaves and stems and shoots and buds just had their entire systems of organization and order wiped and washed away. along the lush, dark forested areas thick armored foliage bulges out with dripping arms asking to be shaken and released of the shimmering droplet dress it has been adorned with. there is no sidewalk, no path. there are hidden areas you must keep away from, but you are pulled to them because the road isn't for you. you are in a jungle hidden right beneath the noses of those who live there in the giant white house, yet you fear nothing because everything that might harm you is just trying to recover now... the lake broods and buzzes with newly relocated life, and the sky is gently, sporadically pulsating with energy. you push the branches away and climb over any number of fallen branches to finally see what you had came all this way to see - an unadulterated view of the sky, brightened by a distant setting sun, colored by the final streaks of sunlight, clouded by the remnants of a fierce storm, and the electric light show playing behind dark still-brewing clouds. nothing can describe the power and the beauty and the immensity that i felt watching the sky. it was so at odds with itself, the beauty and the destruction, the power and the naivete. i wished nothing more than to melt into it and experience the most careless thing in the world, the most heartless, beautiful thing in the world, and be one with it.

and so, i rest my head in the lap of music, i give myself up to it, and that is all i can do. it melts with me and allows my sorrow, it welcomes it and lovingly embraces all of the jagged edges, renewing me to a self worthy of the most fantastical morning sunrise over fjords and cabins and hibernating bears.

please, God, let me live the most perfect dream life in a snowy cabin far away, and let me have all of the music i have ever wanted to fill up my ears so that i may never be empty again. AMEN.


What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.

1.6.13

call me when your heart is empty

summer summer summer
l'été l'été l'été



it's so hot i could die
life is going by so slowly
but not in such a bad way

music is there
reaching out to me
taking its time
and i am taking mine too

it's a wonderful feeling
to be completely
weightless in this season
of warmth, emptiness
and satisfaction

darkness is not welcome here
light and the shelter from it
neither hurt me
or make me feel less than

ME~

the random music, as always

songs: ohia - "being in love" from the lioness






jóhann jóhannsson - "odi et amo" from englabörn






dean blunt - "the redeemer" from the redeemer






bright - "lake killala" from point






plvs vltra - "parthenon" from parthenon



2.5.13

a prayer to the shape of your mouth

sibylle baier - "the end" (colour green, 1970-1973/2006)





what on earth could really go wrong with you and me?

20.4.13

yevarj renlekba

i cannot stop listening to abner jay. especially his albums true story of abner jay, one man band, and the last minstrel man. here is one of my favorite songs of his right now. hopefully it will give you a sense of what his sound is all about. it's imperfect storytelling that in turn makes it absolutely perfect in every way.

"St. James Infirmary Blues"

 


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another thing that is possibly the most amazing thing in the world to me right now. RAVEL. oh, how did you guess? his string quartet, in particular. it's just literally the most perfect thing on this planet. here is the second moooovement just to give your earholes a taste of the gorgeousity.

String Quartet in F Major, II. Assez vif - très rythmé 


-

 i love Ivo Pogorelich. i have had a recording of the complete works for piano by Ravel on my computer ever since i started this blog and never knew who the pianist was until i did some searching on youtube last week and found out they are indeed Pogorelich. i mean, who else can play this "Ondine," in the top five most difficult piano pieces ever written, half as well as him? i don't hear it, i mean truly hear it, unless it is being played by him. that goes just the same for all of the other Ravel works he's done... i am just really infatuated! oh noes!

Gaspard de la Nuit, I. Ondine

 

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this is a song most people might think is "ugly." i just can't disagree more. doc corbin dart was a member of the punk band the crucifucks, with whom i am not that familiar, and i'm not even really that familiar with his solo work either apart from this album (patricia) but whatever this song is really great

"Patricia"

 

-

some black metal that i am re-discovering my love for. it is a fucking intensely beautiful track by the german black metal band luror (from album cease to live).

"Already Dead" 


-

some REALLY really really hardcore dubstep that i'm also obsessed with. this is by shekel, an israel-based dubstep/filthstep artist, and this is off his mindblowing groundbreaking EP mind fragments. it's definitely my favorite track, and every time i listen to it i notice even more levels of amazing grotesqueness. clips are from the EVIL DEAD movie (original) btw.

 "Number of the Beast" 


and here is me trying to explain something that is impossible to explain. i cut my hair all short all by myself aren't it wunderful

 

also obsessed with:
Stravinsky - Le Sacre du Printemps (Joffrey Ballet version)
Beethoven - Sonata No. 15 (Holy. Fucking. Shitszu.)
Matthew Gregory Lewis - The Monk (hilariously inaccurate yet really well-written)
learning Chinese disliking school
ET CETERARETEC TE



Where is music actually going? 
Where has it arrived?

11.4.13

words, sound, words

i haven't written here in a long time because i never really wanted to write much in here anyway. and to add to that, reading past entries always makes me cringe harder than anything else. i really should work on some things about myself. oh well.  before i delve into my pseudo-intellectual side, i will recap what has been occurring in my life.

- took greyhound bus for 8 hours last week, back and forth up north, overall not a terribly bad experience
- sort of started working out, but i think i'm doing it wrong because i hurt everywhere and don't know exactly if anything is working
- school is almost over but i feel nothing close to excitement or relief, just an empty void
- immense love for piano is still there, i know that now, but there are just so many things overpowering it, layering over it so heavily that i can hardly even scrape away and get a good experience to grow out of all my subdued passion
- time flies by really quickly because i am not really present in any given moment; i can recall moments of discomfort and impatience but these soon pass and are drowned out in time, meaning inevitably that i had slipped away to some other place not governed by our laws of time
- feeling disappointed in myself for neglecting schoolwork, especially in classes that i really really enjoy and wish i could get more out of
- increasingly unsure about future, constantly worrying about money, constantly worrying about a career, constantly doubting myself and my (lack of) abilities
- figuring out some (not so new) interests, such as culture, cooking, language, and how they all intertwine
- want to spend a lifetime in each country, starting with germany, austira, china, japan, vietnam, thailand, india, france, england, all of south america, mexico
- whenever i overhear spanish-speakers i am so incredibly jealous, and it's not really just spanish-speakers, but all speakers of foreign languages that are amazingly crafted and contain words/phrases/compound words/hidden meanings/sayings that are just pure works of art and flow so easily from their speakers' lips
- really interested in late 19th-century music and especially that from Austria and Eastern Europe
- really want to be able to appreciate things i'm learning at school that are hard to appreciate; equal divisions of the octave, atonal/12-tone rows, double-tonic complex, chord progressions that cannot be represented by roman numerals, the absence of functional tonality, etc etc



things i must look up and study and find out all about as soon as possible:

Composers

- Gustav Mahler, all Symphonies, his relationship with Strauss, his letters to his wife and other composers, just everything about him
- Richard Strauss, Salome, his relationship with Mahler, Second Viennese school, pushing the boundaries, etc
- Alban Berg, Wozzeck, what Shostakovich thought of it, production with the factory workers, it's fucking incredible and amazing
- Richard Wagner, just everything, Tristan und Isole, Parsifal, the Ring cycle, i want to gain a complete (is it even humanly possible?) understanding of his works, i want to see what the big deal is, i want it to encompass me, but how on earth do i even start, there's just so much all at once
- Carl Maria von Weber, Der Freischütz, so so beautiful
- Johannes Brahms double concerto (violin and cello), major thirds sequence
- Beethoven, Symphony No. 9, study with score, then move on to other symphonies, how can you even write a symphony after beethoven i just don't get it?
- Modest Mussorgsky, Boris Gudonov, historical significance? impact? irony?
- Frédéric Chopin, Ballade No. 4, this amazing fucking beautiful thing, i want to learn it
- Béla Bartók, Burlesque III. Capriccio, start working harder on it
- Arnold Schoenberg, Verklärte Nacht, piano suite, he deserves respect and appreciation but i cannot enjoy hearing his music, i know no note is random and his 12-tone rows hold the piece together, but it still does feel like randomness and strangeness for the sake of strangeness, "emancipating dissonance," Second Viennese School, students Berg and Webern
- RAVEL, HOLY FUCKING SHIT, the more i listen to him the more i play him the more i just can't, i just can't even comprehend or begin to describe how wonderful it is to me. his chords, his tonality and harmonies and the places they take me and the places they can, will, will not go.. the things he does with pure notes in the air, the things he sees and hears and instructs you to also hear and feel and do, obey, there is just nothing like it.

i want to sit down in a room somewhere with all of this music, all of the scores and all of the recordings, and maybe some writings to help me understand, and just absorb, study, and never leave. that is my dream. i hate hearing music without a score to guide me. i hate watching an orchestra play, i want to see the black on white manuscript and see the markings made by the minds of these geniuses among men. i seriously have so much fucking respect for composers, i want to dedicate my life studying them. how does one even write a symphony? how does one write Brahms' Second Piano Concerto No. 2, or any of Ravel's piano works, where does the inspiration come from? what pushes them to create such unimaginable beauty? i feel so sorry for anyone who does not get the chance to feel this way about music, to experience the greatest things ever created in this world. i know i am only touching the tip of the iceberg here, but i really feel like my calling is somewhere in this direction.



Books (to read)

- The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross
- Anything on Mahler, Strauss, Wagner, all that stuff
- Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler
- Pincher Martin, William Golding
- The Monk, Matthew Gregory Lewis
- The Truth About Chernobyl, Grigori Medvedev
- The Case of Comrade Tulayev, Victor Serge
- Jamaica Inn, Daphne du Maurier
- The Black Cloud, Sir Fred Hoyle
- The Kraken Wakes, John Wyndham




"Other" Music

- Lullabies to Violaine, Vol. 1 (Forever)
- Mata Otoshi-mashita-yo, 二階堂和美 (Nikaido Kazumi)
- Cease to Live, Luror
- Black Secret Technology, A Guy Called Gerald
- Dichterliebe, Op. 48, Robert Schumann
- Omodaka
- Orange Mighty Trio
- Shadow Music of Thailand
- MORE RANDOM STUFF




i've become recently entranced with this Youtube channel, called Tastemade. especially their "thirsty for..." videos, in which they artfully re-create traditional drinks from other cultures, from hot fruit punch to spicy hot chocolate to strange concoctions you'd never imagine existed, but all look incredibly delicious. i also love how culturally significant the ingredients they use are, and i just wish so badly i could have intimate connections with delicious foods like that... like seeing my mother grow them in the backyard, or feeling some sense of nostalgia when introduced to the scent of exotic fruits of the earth... it's these rare, exceedingly overlooked parts of the "human experience" i honestly feel like i am missing out on. for me it's not winning the lottery, not having sex with anyone i desire, not even the impossible hope of world peace... i just find food and cooking traditions from other cultures that were born out of necessity, poverty, reaping the land and respecting what it gives you so unbearably beautiful and worth treasuring, forever. i can seek some of those things now, as an outsider, and attempt to feel or understand or just barely grasp what it means to be a native, a native speaker, a primal being born in a country where nothing is sure; where there is no "american dream" but just what you see outside, what you have on your back, under your feet, in your heart, in your hands, but it just is not the same.

i would die to have been born in and live somewhere else all my life. still, one lifetime is not enough to grasp centuries of tradition. i want to learn every character of every Asian language, and know and appreciate what early symbols and signs they were to represent, and how those radicals came to be what is used today. i want to know and understand every German word, how several are often combined into one huge long word, and yet make perfect sense; i want to laugh at jokes people have saying for centuries, things passed down from ancient civilizations.

i must read, read read read - i want to be educated! like Robert Schumann... or Mikhail Bulgakov! i have to read the classics, ancient greek mythological works, and those important to philosophy, psychology, astronomy, whatever. Goethe, Kafka, Mann, all the great German writers and thinkers. Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, Dumas and Hugo, Wilde and Joyce and Ibsen... i want to read plays and novels and poems, i want to know who was inspired by them, what was created because of them, who or what inspired the authors and composers of everything, who took a piece of someone else's art and made something new, perhaps a whole new artistic movement out of it? there's just too much...

-

what else? right now i am in a place i usually am not. today has been a quiet one, as has this week. hence the periods of not really being here as i mentioned earlier. it's weird when you feel like you haven't spoken a word to someone in what seems like years. it's like, am i really here? why can't i think of anything to say? why do i want to be so far away from these seemingly nice people? why can't i be a part of this big happy scene, too? it is impossible for me to fit in this puzzle. i am not even a puzzle piece, i am a figment of someone's, something's imagination. but i still dream... often of very strange and unsettling things.

nothing has changed. i recently have been thinking, "oh, i'm such a different person now than i used to be! i'm almost 20, my teenage self is long gone. thank god." but it's not true! i'm no different... i might have a little less space in my brain due to some accumulated knowledge (the opposite could very well be true as well), my body might be built slightly differently, my hormones calmed down somewhat or something, but my mind is the same, and my perceptions of the world haven't really changed. i can only write when pushed to the edge. i can only think positively if lied to. i can only be some semblance of happy if i am completely distracted. i can have a dream, but it does not appear tangible, even in my mind where anything is possible it is just a cloudy figure. time is simply escaping from me. where is it all going? i will look at the clock and two or more hours have passed, and for some reason the minutes have remained the exact same... 3:22 turns into 6:22, it's always the same when i look again. is something controlling me? who does this?

i can't sleep at night because i am afraid. YES i saw a scary movie recently, an extremely extremely terrifying movie to someone who is scared easily, but still. it's been over a week and even in complete daylight i feel like there is a demon coming to possess me. in reality that doesn't sound as bad as the movies make it, i guess... but i wish i could stop having a feeling like something really scary looking is always watching me or creeping towards me. when i was younger i was obsessed with a book that had a scene of a young boy putting on magic glasses and seeing all the demons that really exist in the world around him; the room was packed full with demons of every shape and size and color. he (and i) had nightmares for the rest of our days.

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here are some musical examples of the gorgeousity i have been submitting myself to as of late:


Richard Wagner - "Prelude" from Tristan und Isolde / (1857-1859)



Carl Maria von Weber - Act II, finale, "Wolf's Glen Scene" from Der Freischütz {The Magic Rifleman) / (1821)




Frédéric Chopin - Ballade No. 4 in F minor, Op. 52 / (1842-43)




Modest Mussorgsky - "Coronation Scene" from Boris Godunov / (1868-1873)




Johannes Brahms - Double Concerto in A minor, Op. 102 for violin, cello and orchestra / (1887)


This incredible piece was the last work Brahms wrote for orchestra. It is beyond words. One of my favorite moments is at 10:33, when they both just climb alll the way to the top.


Arnold Schoenberg - Verklärte Nacht (The Transfigured Night), Op. 4 / (1899)




Gustav Mahler - Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor, IV and V / (1901-1902)


Unf.


Maurice Ravel - "Menuet sur le nom d'Haydn" / (1909)


This piece was dedicated to Haydn marking the 100th anniversary of his death in 1909. Along with other French composers such as Debussy, the notes B-A-D-D-G were to represent H-A-Y-D-N, and the minuet begins with this motif.


Alban Berg - Orchestral Interlude and Scene 4, Act III, from Wozzeck / (1914-1922)


This is the absolutely gorgeous interlude from the final of three acts in the opera. The act is made up of 6 Inventions (go Wiki them, they are a cool concept), and this one is an "invention on a key" (D minor).


Here is the fourth scene in the third act, "invention on a rhythm" (the rhythm representing his obsession and paranoia). The lead character, Wozzeck, has murdered his wife (Marie) after finding out about her affair. He is just now realizing what he has done, and is attempting to hide his sins from the world. But, as he soon realizes, he cannot escape them that easily, and ends up drowning in the pool. I cannot get over how incredibly gorgeous this opera is, go watch the rest of it! It's on youtube...

"Is all the world going to proclaim my guilt?"


The Son of P.M. - "Plaeng Yiepoun", from Shadow Music of Thailand / (1960)


"Shadow Music" was a term used for the 60s Thai guitar pop psych/folk/garage-inspired movement that used traditional Thai melodies with a spin of some modern Western rock-and-roll traditions.


Cocteau Twins - "It's All But an Ark Lark" from Lullabies EP / (1982)


Definitely one of my favorite, if not all-time favorite track from Cocteau Twins. I first found it on the Violaine compilation. It's one of their longer songs, and as such it reflects a more focused song structure. The atmosphere is a lush, dissonant haze reminiscent of early 80s post-punk. I don't even know what else to say, there are no words for why I love it, exactly, I just know I can't stop listening to it at maximum volume.


Orange Mighty Trio - "Long Zoom" / (2009)


This piece by a modern maverick chamber group is inspired by transportation. Something you don't see every day! Very talented musicians and songwriters.


revolution is flight