Friday, August 19, 2005
I think different people will thank God for many many different things, but one of the most important things i would thank The Creator for is music.
Music is just this ethereal ideal that transcends matter. You can't see, smell nor taste music, yet its something universally appreciated.
I used to think i was really shallow to like Japanese music though i understood not one word they were singing, yet somehow i memorized the words to the dot. But being the person i was who didn't really care what other people thought, i still do, and even though more often than not nowadays english translations were readily available i couldn't be bothered to find out what the song meant as long as it sounded good, either that or the translations don't stay in my head long enough for the words i sing to make sense anyway *beams with pride* The same went for French and Latin Jazz.
It was nice to know therefore that quite a while back when my good friend Louis(e) [i'm sorry Louis(e) i just can't spell your name with the E in there confidently because i'm just too used to knowing Louise with the "E" is a girl's name, but Louis isn't your name either so i'm kinda stuck i guess lol] came back from Thailand with a few Siamese CDs, he understood not one word they were singing either, but it just sounded good so he kept it playing in his car.
Better still, a while back when Aaron, Ryan, Rachel, Tamar (Nithya my housemate reprimands me for being crude when i collectively refer to the 4 of them as the Hobson people just because they live on Hobson street, even though they refer to themselves as that as well) and me threw a surprise birthday party for Atsushi, a Japanese exchange student (i could post the link for Tamar's blog so that you can read exactly what happened during the party (such as the burnt cake), but Tamar posts on her blog much more often than i do so it'd likely be in her archives by now, and knowing you the reader you'd be too lazy to go through her archives to look for that specific post, yet i could have saved myself all the energy of typing all of this and hypothesizing that you wouldn't look for it by just putting up the link anyway).
Atsushi brought along his Korean friend, and we all had pizza, and Aaron, in an attempt to create ambience, brought out his Creative Zen and his portable speakers and played some Japanese and Korean music, only to be disappointed that Atsushi knew close to none of the songs he had in his playlist. Atsushi's Korean friend, Tae-Gyu fared much better though, and was (from his facial expression) very impressed that Aaron had such a sizeable collection of Korean hits (i found out later its probably because Aaron had taken a few modules on Korean Culture and Appreciation back in Singapore), but looked somewhat disappointed when Aaron said he didn't understand what the song was singing about (like me). And Aaron, like me, had by then memorized the song by heart (i hear he even sings some of them to the pitter-patter beat of the shower), but understood next to nothing about the song.
This is not specific to Asian music. I remember seeing a music video in conjunction with some UNICEF event showing the poverty of some parts of the world about almost 15 years ago, and the song in the background stuck in my head. I never found out what the song was because it was in French, only knowing that the chorus was a duet between the French singer and an English-speaking female, therefore i extrapolated the song was called "Seven Seconds Away" since they kept saying that. I finally managed to find the song a few years back (to my relief), and to my dismay my girlfriend who had taken French as a 2nd language told me the song wasn't French because if it were French she would at least understand some of it. I was though relieved to have found the song, crest-fallen to have thought it was French and therefore had probably been looking in the wrong places and took such an absurdly long time to find ONE song. It would turn out the song WAS French, according to a French exchange student in SMU, only the French sung in the song was used mostly in previously French territories in the African region (think African French, like the English we call Singlish). I just shrugged and said, err ok, as long as the song's nice. I still don't understand a word of the song other than the chorus.
And when it comes to music, everyone has their different ways of appreciating it.
Me and Aaron though petrol-heads, have completely different preferences of what songs to play while driving.
Elisa from Flat 6, completely immerses herself into another world when the headphones are put on, a world where there are no other people other than her and the music, as quite a few people who know her realize to their horror when meeting Elisa with headphones on that she absolutely stares right through and walks right past people.
Aryan BLASTS his music so loud so that no one else can hear him when he sings (its probably better for our health that way).
Ryan complains that Tamar hums completely unrecognizable tunes, and has in the few times i've been at Hobson, threatened to record her humming and blackmail her with it.
Me? Lol i love listening to my tunes on headphones where the clarity is orgasmic, and the problem comes when i start feeling lifted by music enough to start singing. I imagine it must be really pissing off coz i'm singing (probably very badly) yet there isn't any music to accompany my singing, nor even the splashing of water in the shower to muffle it. So there i am immersed in a world of perfect sound, ambient noise completely filtered out by my headphones, so though i'm singing i only hear the singer singing. To everyone else i'm the madman chanting occultic hymms to nothing. I'd probably be burnt on the cross in the 1800s for suspicion of witch-craft had i done that back then.
I'm blabbering on about music quite possibly because i just got news i passed my Theory exam (yay), so now i officially have an ATCL level Diploma. I hated to practice whenever my mum told me to, but now that she couldn't care less coz my sister's already more than a handful, i'd do it willingly, just because she isn't telling me to. Sigh, i miss my piano...
Dr@n|xX at 12:00 PM
