this video has been making its rounds on facebook and blogs lately. i must have watched it more than ten times, and still burst out laughing every.single.time.

ode to joy is hilarious too. don’t you just love beaker?

and the classic. mahna mahna!

it was supposed to pour for most of today, but the skies have chosen to remain gray, without shedding as much as a drop, leaving us with just that stifling humidity in the air that comes when it fails to rain.

i finally got down to tackling the stack of scores for this weekend, hitting my extremely tiny keyboard and clucking in frustration at how often i seem to catch two notes (or more) at the same time. i have fat fingers. ’nuff said.

it is nice to be able to make time for music again, living and breathing brahms for the next couple of months. it hit me earlier that i have never sung any brahms in all the more-than-ten-years i have been singing. what a humbling thought. and certainly, there must be many others. there is so much music in the world, and so much more being made every day. it makes me panic a little. how long more can i hold on to this voice i have now? 20 years? perhaps much less.

sometimes, i hear the voices of little old ladies with that… timbre and (excessive) vibrato unique to their age group, that they can’t seem to quite control, and worry so much about my own time coming that i feel as if i must, somehow, seize my moment. my now and here. the biological clock is invincible, whatever we may choose to believe.

the rain came down in sheets just as i stepped out of my room to get a cup of hot chocolate (or cocoa au lait, as it is elegantly labeled) from the vending machine at the lobby. i wish it would thunder as well, just to match my somewhat mutinous feelings right now.

the pain and reflux returned with a vengeance last night, for reasons i am not aware of, unless red peppers are also meant to be on the taboo list. i spent the night in bed, ravaged by pain and burping red peppers mixed with acid, and wallowing in self-pity. so much for a perfect day.

it all went on till this afternoon, and i had to plead off from choir rehearsal and a concert i had paid close to 40 bucks for. still, i must confess i wasn’t too sorry. these days, singing with others does not give me the same thrill that it used to, and it is such hard work dragging myself to all sorts of different parts of tokyo every sunday. i cannot quite put my finger on the reasons behind my lack of motivation – the music? the people? the money involved…?

losing something that used to be such a significant part of my life makes me feel rudderless. some days, i ache to feel that sense of satisfaction i get from simply warming up and being able to reach all the way to a high g; from getting a difficult interval right; from hearing how seemingly unrelated notes mesh together as if they were born to do so. singing in a choir, and singing alone at my voice class, used to make me so happy i did feel, literally, like i could burst.

these days, i cannot seem to feel the music with my heart anymore. i become frustrated, annoyed, dislike the way i sound, dislike the foreign sounds around me… there are many days when i croak out a sumimasen on the train and realize that i have not so much as uttered a word for days. it is so strange, this disconnection with sounds, with music, with myself.

i often say that i would hate to become one of those people to whom life is a vale of tears; who cannot stop whining; who is constantly depressed and seeking sympathy. but sometimes, when i stop to read through my blog entries, i see how dangerously close i hover to becoming just that, and jump back in alarm. i see that there is a lot more i could take into my own hands and i want to, i want to. i want to make so much more of my opportunities and the little talents i have. i want to pepper my days with tiny moments of pleasure; multiply those perfect days of mine exponentially. but why is it so much easier to slip into that rut of self-pity?

here’s a nugget that i heard at a choral workshop i was attending today. the clinician (japanese composer and conductor, ko matsushita) applied an interesting analogy to explain the importance of the tonic (doh) and the dominant (soh). the tonic, he said, is the father of the family – stable, head of the household, and the most important member of the family. the dominant then, (oh so aptly named!) is the wife. despite being secondary to the tonic, she is actually the dominant one.

oh, i know, not hahaha funny (and a little geeky), but rather clever still, and such a good way to help those who had no prior knowledge of music remember these relationships!

and then he went on to say that we feel most comfortable when a piece of music ends with the tonic – it is like father returning home at the end of the day. all other notes (members of the family) need the tonic to function- their place exists in relation to the tonic. but what happens when there is too much doh in a piece of music? my favourite bit comes in here (because i was reminded of the ‘tonic’ we have at home) – a piece of music with too much doh, he said, is like daddy being off from work too often, lying around the house, and getting in everybody’s way and on everybody’s nerves. i had such a good laugh at that.

we spent most of the day working through a couple of pieces in solfege, learning about moveable and fixed doh, relationships between intervals… things like that. i had heard most of it before, but was very much interested in observing how the japanese responded in such workshop settings, the types of illustrations and analogies they identified with, how they reacted to singing with people they didn’t know. these were participants from school choirs, okaa-san (mummy) choirs, male choirs, female choirs… what an assortment! and while it was clear that many of the ideas were very new to them, it was exciting to hear evidence of these ideas in the way they sang, even before the workshop was half over. i am always inspired by earnest hard work – how could you not love someone who tries, and tries, and tries?

i think i would very much like to be a music educator in my next life. if music still existed then, of course. (but how could it not?) for this life, i am simply grateful to be able to sing. i am rather sorry i whined about being in a strange, new choir. i am blessed, blessed, blessed… it went to my head, i suppose. now, humbled again, i will sing.

for the music.

and the friendship.

lunches. coffee. suppers. talks. encouragement. hugs. laughter. confidences.

lessons learnt.

but most of all, still, the music – inspiring, thought-provoking, challenging, beautiful, even warped.

thank you for the music. see you in a bit.

even as i sit here, with eagles and mountains, and the words of michelangelo and tagore running through my mind… even as i sit here, knowing, as i do, that it is february 11, and it cannot be much longer… even as i sit here with caffeine already running through my veins… i find myself fidgeting so violently i feel as if i need drugs to see me through this. i don’t remember ever having had to be this patient, or ever thinking that a person could really die from waiting. but it is so difficult, having to go through my daily motions, attempting to “finish things before i leave,” yet never really sure if i will even get to leave.

yet still i wait.

i think that one of my greatest gains from singing in the choir has been a renewal of interest in poetry. although i shouldn’t call it a renewal, really. as a student of literature, i was least interested in poetry, hated it when peers asked me to critique their works, and stayed well away from the poetry section during exams. i could not feel poems even when i understood them, and that made for dislike. but when we started singing works based on lorca’s poetry, something sparked; the lyrical beauty behind words so expertly chosen and put together touched me. there is something about saying so much with so little… there is music in poetry and poetry in music… so, there has been no turning back since. i wish i hadn’t come into it so late though. there is so much poetry out there, and so much more being written day after day after day. and, i cannot just read ee cummings all the time.

all these – meaningless, empty words that i wrote in an attempt to take my mind off the wait. oh i wish i knew, i wish i knew…

today, i wish i had taken my music education more seriously when i did have the chance. and then maybe, i might have had a shot at teaching kids do-re-mi instead of teaching bored semi-adults about society (when they clearly do not care which way the world turns).

i don’t remember learning music in school. we did a bit of solfege in primary school (yet never really found out what it was or, more importantly, what it could help us do), played the recorder (which i was a poor student of. somehow, i never could play more than a single octave!), sang the teapot song (i’m a little teapot short and stout, here is my handle, here is my spout…), and generally alternated between envy (of classmates who could play the piano) and boredom.

secondary school music classes were worse. we were herded into a classroom and made to copy music theory notes off a transparency (pre-powerpoint days) while the teacher spent the entire half hour smoking outside the room. and… since i was in a chinese school and those theory notes were written entirely in chinese, most of what they meant remain shrouded in mystery till this day.

to cut a long story short… (although the story is already a tad too long…) i wish our schools took music education a little (a lot?) more seriously. i wish music lessons were not that hour of the day you looked forward to because you didn’t have to do anything.

singapore, which boasts of children who can compute numbers and play around with test-tubes more easily than many others, also has (too many) children who cannot sing in tune; who cannot clap in a steady rhythm to a song; who cannot name a single composition by beethoven. and how much time or money would it take to teach them just a fraction of these things?

becoming a professor of sociology just doesn’t seem to mean anything anymore when you think about the fact that you could teach a child of five to sing a folksong in tune – something he would actually remember for life.

i don’t mean that at all. sometimes sarcasm takes the edge off things and makes life more bearable.

such fodder for whining! all of a sudden, i have four trips to plan – half of which i am not even keen on. i used to think that any form of travelling equals to loads of fun, especially when a plane is involved. but i am now old(er), and very, very spoilt; certain conditions just do not do it for me anymore.

then there is the pseudo-fever, the wheezing, the coughing, the chills… oh, and still, 24/7-ish work. i should be excited, really. a professional whiner could get so much out of all this.

a wake has been going on at the next block for three, four? days, and they’re playing an endless stream of chinese-y music… ranging from chinese opera to theresa teng. i’m just a little bothered, but for the most part want to respect the deceased, so have just let it flow past me. the chinese, i think, believe in huge, noisy send-offs (actually, we believe in huge, noisy, anything and everything). but i think i would loathe that for myself. i don’t really think i want to hear cymbals and gongs; i would likely get distracted and forget where i’m supposed to be going. no, none of that.

elevator music, or airport music – those ubiquitous tunes, unknown, yet familiar, seem apt somehow. not quite so intimate that i would not be able to tear my eternal soul away from earth; not quite so garish that i would cringe in my grave; not quite so cold and unknown that i would wonder if people i loved were around at all.

when you’re a freelancer, people somehow stop treating you as a normal person. they don’t care if you have lost an arm in an accident; if they want their work today, they want their work today. now. always now. so… hie-ho, it’s back to work i must go.

——————————

some six hours down the road…

the fever has subsided somewhat, leaving me a little more energy to look around me and stop whining for a while.

i am trying to grasp the enormity of the ‘black sunday’ events that are splashed all over the papers. i get what the papers say, but no amount of translating annual reports have helped me get the true picture. i want to know because i have some money locked up in the greenback and i may just lose several months of hard work through no action on my part; i want to know because they make it sound like another great depression is coming, and that is akin to war; i want to know because, well, at eight-and-twenty, i really do care more about the world than i make myself out to be; i want to know because i am a media student and yet, find myself unable to decipher if the media is understating or exaggerating the events. and then… i want to know because, simply, it sounds really bad, and it stirs up that kind of morbid interest a plane crash does.

what is happening to the world? should i be scared?

——————————

and then even more hours down the road…

i am so mad i can’t concentrate. this might be one of the few times i truly feel some semblance of anger toward s. and anger is rejuvenating, really. just… not the most conducive to work.

and i think, in my entire existence as a human being (not that i have ever existed as anything else…), this is the first time that i truly felt like i wanted to hurt a person. so there. i feel old now.

… i decided, instead, to blog.

my first pop concert! colorful and noisy and absolutely awesome! misia is an amazing singer on stage; much more so than on her recordings, in fact. she had boundless energy, singing and dancing and jumping and running on stage; we felt breathless just watching her. and her whistle tone…! i didn’t exactly hear her sing five octaves (she is supposed to have that range. i don’t know if that is even humanly possible) but there must have been at least 3.5 octaves between the highest and lowest notes she sang.

and part of me wanted to have that kind of power too – to make the audience dance and sing and clap and cheer, and walk away with huge smiles.

on a more sombre note, i dreamt that i died. and it wasn’t even the first time. actually, on second thoughts, i think i won’t go into it. it was too vivid, too terrifying… much more so than i would care to admit. i’m just not ready to die yet. i don’t know if i would ever be.

i am so tired! and there is so much work to be done. so much music to learn. so many errands to run. so many trips and dinners to organize. even so… there is always still time to do so much remembering, so much forgetting, so much wishin’ and hopin’.

the tiny bird that has forgotten how to fly. (really makes you want to change “tiny” to “fat,” doesn’t it? well, for me, anyhow.)

one of misia’s songs – just another one of those japanese ballads that i actually like. incidentally, i am going to watch her perform live in two days. my virginal rock/pop concert experience! i hope it will be horrendously flashy and unforgettably loud, yet more in tune than most pop singers manage to be when they sing live.

but that was a digression… my point is i do feel like a (fat) bird that has forgotten how to fly… “at some point in time, i have lost sight of something,” and i wonder when i will find ”happiness as great as the pain born of my wounds.” so many things, and so much pain… if i ever do, i think all that happiness will just overwhelm and kill me instead.

aren’t lyricists amazing? for some reason, at some point in time, at least one of them seems to have gone through exactly what the rest of us are going through, and managed to pinpoint our exact sentiments. brilliant. but i suppose the human journey is, by and large, universal. it is sometimes just… i don’t know… ego? self-indulgence?… that makes us believe our suffering is unique. maybe, just maybe, that belief makes us feel better, and we simply do not like others to empathise and say i understand (i know i don’t!); we do not believe they can.

not that the knowledge of my own self-centredness bothers me, really. is it all that bad to live for yourself?