Plane Sleep

*Something I wrote on the plane back home, accompanied by one of my favorite songs ever–”Ja’i Dormi Sous L’eau”-Air. Photo via: akitherese

Wandering. My eyes keep wandering off to the side, to the ceiling, and to the floor. Plain sleep, I mutter. There is something so inherently vulnerable in the way human beings sleep. Sleep renders every human exterior to a replica of each other: the same lack of inhibition, the similar sensation of floating, fighting, gloating without control. Maybe the reason I don’t like sleep is that it is one thing I am forced to commit to completely and surrender myself.

Yet I sometimes wish that I were asleep when all this change occurs.

This Is It

In honor of Julian Casablancas’ new solo album release, I decided to review one of my favorite rock  albums: Is This It by The Strokes.

Is This It

When the Strokes first came out in 2001 with their album Is This It, NME practically gorged on the band–their obsession with The Strokes quickly brought them to the spotlight as the”savior of rock and roll.” The hype seemed to last till their 2nd album “Room on Fire,” but by the time their third album “First Impressions of Earth” came out, it seemed to flicker away. It’s true that their 3rd album isn’t as strong as their first–but I hate it when they’re called “another victim of the NME hype.” That’s to judge after their 4th album comes out.

Nevertheless, The Strokes are the ultimate hip NYC-garage rock band, with their impeccable style (undeniably a major part in my infatuation), the “don’t care” attitude and uber cool music. They’re also very solid in terms of musical skills–they do what they do pretty well.

So if you’re into the “I-don’t-give-a-****,” laid back, booze-dripping rock, you’ve found your man: nothing other than Julian Casablancas’ low drawl pulls it off better. Don’t try to find your life’s mantra here though. This is NYC underground we’re talking about.

By the way, did I mention how much I love Julian Casablancas’ voice?

Track reviews:

• Is This It: this is how you open a perfect album. You put in a perfect song. The Strokes are at their elements with the bass strumming away, the guitars creating the tension, the drums rolling and Julian mumbling.
• The Modern Age: a funkier, “thump-thump” beat number.
• Soma: summer-colored vibes flashing through.
• Barely Legal: the classic “I don’t give a f**k,” Strokes style.
• Someday: the happier days, some days. Love it.
• Alone, Together: the edgy guitars make and break the tension–a very interesting song for the Strokes to put in.
• Last Nite: corona-soaked Julian’s voice+ blues guitar=perfecto.
• Hard to Explain: the lyrics create the common ground for all of us..
• New York City Cops: on days that the world gives you the finger, this is a song you’d listen to for revenge and a good laugh.
• Trying Your Luck: another all time favorite. Shows an uncanny sense of rhythm.
• Take It or Leave It: “Take IT! Or leave IT!”

P.S. Sorry about the title–couldn’t resist.

*Image via (Click)

Speaking of Halloween

*Photo by me. My attempt at a joke.

Yeah, so I was going to write this super-interesting post about an article I read arguing that there’s nothing wrong with thin being “in” in the fashion industry. I’m a fashion maniac, so issues like these, no matter how trite they may seem by this point, do pique my interest. (It seems that the articles that I read only concern food or style. Which explains my shallow insight about worldly affairs. Ha.) But I’ve been editing an iMovie for about 10 hours straight, and my brain’s been fried, scrambled, then fried again, so instead, I’m going to talk about Halloween.

Korea doesn’t celebrate Halloween. Of course amusement parks wouldn’t miss out on the opportunity to sell fake vampire teeth and bloody skeleton jellies, but the concept of Halloween itself is almost non-existent here. I’d dress up as a human traffic light, as a wrestler, or as Kim Jong-Il if Halloween was a custom here. (Actually I did anyway, regardless of the strange looks I received on the subway.) Yes, I would actually support trick-or-treating if kids were to come to my house. But I barely know my apartment neighbors, and I don’t think they’re willing to get to know me either.

I feel at loss sometimes on Halloween in Korea, because it’s one holiday that you don’t have to care. No holiday gifts, no vomit-inducing love letters, it’s pretty much a bundle of jokes and treats that I don’t get to enjoy everyday. Your diet goes on halt, you dress up as abnormally as possible, you make people laugh with your best Captain Jack Sparrow imitation–I love it. It’s one day I can really feel light-hearted. But it doesn’t exist here.

I’m not saying that Korea should mimic America and copy this festival of quasi-horror and candy splurges. I just wish people could have a day to lighten up, have the freedom to laugh with (and at) strangers. ‘Cause in the subway, I didn’t see anyone laughing with me about my purposely stupid human traffic light outfit. Of course I know that people don’t know or don’t care that it’s Halloween here, but I just really wanted to make someone laugh. Maybe I should have put on the yellow plastic sunglasses on?

Crumb-Pickers

Recent ramblings written while reading Falconer outside.  Short and sweet, with no apparent connections to the book.

1. Pigeons

Helpless little crumb-pickers. See, one of them found a huge piece of rice cracker and bypassed it for the crumbs. It’s the matter of convenience, I suppose. I feel like I shouldn’t be like that.

2. Bees

A bee is crawling up a woman’s arm. I wonder whether I should warn her or not. It creeps up her forearm. Then to her biceps. Then to her armpit.

Then she notices it and shooes it away.

3. Persimmons

One of them grew too large and the branch fell off.

The end.

*Photo by me.

NET

All photos by me (myfingerisringless a.k.a. idontdrinkbutidobatheinflowers).

Music produced via Garageband by me.

A slideshow I made with my photos to show off my first Garageband masterpiece. Walah!

I’m quite proud of how the song turned out, despite the fact that all the songwriting skills it involved was assembling beats and synthesizer effects from Garageband. Yeah, I know. So much for composing. It’s named “NET” for no reason. The word just reminds me of “net force” which probably is a product of my physics class knowledge. Anyways, enjoy!

(Weird) Sex Sells?

I daresay that Lady Gaga is the most interesting person of the moment. Why?

Because she manipulates her sex appeal in a way that no other female artists do.

Surely we’re well-acquainted with the sexualized violence in MTV music videos. As Sociological Images asserted, it’s very probable that sexualized violence is one of the contributing factors to the undying rape rates and sexual assault against women. But we also know that sex sells. Or, to be accurate, abusive sex sells. It’s the reason why pornography abounds and ads grow provocative.  From the Freudian perspective, it’s a “spectacle” for the men who inherently fear castration. So we can’t blame Lady Gaga from wanting to manipulate the human psyche, even if we consider it unethical or immoral. She’s a business, and one that thrives on attention, whether it be positive or negative.

But while I find myself growing numb to Rihanna’s cleavage shows or Britney Spear’s underpants, I am both intrigued and taken aback by the way Lady Gaga markets her sex appeal. The “established” equation goes:

“Female singer+feminine clothes (dress or underwear, depends on choice)+singing live/lipsynching = billboard success.”

But Lady Gaga’s goes like this:

“Lady Gaga+outlandish and conceptual clothes+always singing live=billboard success.”

Her clothes are revealing, but not in the traditional sense. She wears no pants, but knee-high lace-up boots; no shirt, but a bra with spikes protruding from the bust. The Mickey Mouse sunglasses, the exaggerated make-up, and feathered hats are enough to surprise–or even repulse–the audience. The shock value from her performances are enough to repel the male fans and the female fans. Her recent performance at the VMA Awards 2009 featured her clad in white underpants and a glittery bra, accessorized with a neck brace and wheel chairs. She staggered across the stage and bled all over her stomach, yet the controversy only seems to have worked in her favor.

Lady Gaga, VMA 2009

How do we explain her sex appeal against the norms? Any thoughts?

*Images from: #1, #2

“I Swear I Left My Brain In Hyperspace.”

Is having no patterns a pattern too? I hope not.

High school has always been hard for me because most of the people I encounter are realists (for a lack of a better word). I used to be somewhat of a realist too, but after I went through a (traumatic) fight with a friend, I left my brain in hyperspace. Not a lot of people understand my penchant for random statements (“I think my favorite word to say is mushrooms!”) or queer little actions (i.e. pretending that my bangle is a cookie-cutter and pressing it against the skin of the nearest classmate around). I blame it on my lack of social skills. Making small talk or responding to someone’s questions are tasks that require the delicate art of social networking. Most of the time I can’t think of something to say (or end up spending too much time thinking about what would be the normal response) so I blurt out anything. Hence, the random statements that realists either ignore or are confused by. But the fact that I’m not a realist doesn’t equate to the fact that I’m an idealist either. I’m not. The world I live in is concrete, after all. I have to deal with practical issues, like it or not. So I don’t really belong anywhere. In fact, I would hate to belong in any category.

If I’m becoming definable or predictable, then I am quickly deteriorating to a massive pit of dullness. This is why I consciously reject the notion of being “me” all the time (truthfully speaking, I’m not even sure what I am anyway). I quite like having flexibility in self-identity. Obviously everyone adjusts their behavior according to the person they are dealing with, but my concept of role-playing is a bit more elaborate. One day I would show up in red pants and two clip-on cross earrings. The next day I would clad myself in a lady-like blouse and a neat skirt. The following day would be a perfect day for Bangladeshi bangles and a sharp blazer. I dress according to the character I want to play for the day and flirt with self-concepts and behavioral habits. And within the same day, I would play multiple roles of a good student, concerned leader, and a wacko, regardless of my fashion. It’s even hard to put it in words, this idea of non-belonging and belonging simultaneously. But the ideas I’ve brought up are probably the cheesiest cheese ever anyway. It’s an inevitable fact that I am a replica of one another as someone is a replica of me.

*Image by: uuiuu

On Food

"Das good! FOOD!"

1. I like eating frozen bananas. The inside of my cheek is numb from eating one just now. The problem is, maybe because it’s a little too cold, I can’t restrain myself from eating one too many of them. I’d start with a quarter piece, then a half piece, and another quarter piece, until I’ve finished an entire banana. Okay, I’ve just finished another banana. I guess you can say frozen bananas are binge-eating worthy. Sometimes though, I wish I hadn’t eaten all of the frozen bananas in the freezer because my mom can’t make raspberry shakes without them in the morning.

2. I am positively convinced that half my brain is stuffed with mushrooms. “But I hate mushrooms!” I would say. “Mushrooms remind me of allergies!”

Mushrooms have nothing to do with my allergies.

3. I have a habit of staring at food I can’t eat. It’s usually the pretty food I like to stare at. I unknowingly spend quite a bit of time during the day lusting after pictures of cup cakes, candies, cookies, and crackers–to sum it up nicely, junk food. I can’t eat most of these because they either have eggs, walnuts, or too much food coloring–ingredients that I am allergic to. Despite the fact that I have not had a chance to taste most of these, all the savory senses imaginable by human kind explodes in my head as I click through one picture after the other. One corner of my brain would be sunk in the bottomless well of chocolate cream while the other parts would be grubbing for pasta sauce. Raspberries would tumble down my nostrils and my hair would be wrapped in a rich whiff of vanilla essence in the heavenly cloud of food pictures. It’s only natural that the pleasure of the image translates to the pleasure of my taste buds, I suppose. But I think I have a skewed perspective on food that partly resulted from my allergies and partly resulted from my obsession with healthy eating that shoots me scurrying down the stream of flavors every single day, unable to indulge or accept the fact that I just can’t eat them.

*Three little ramblings about food, inspired by the book I’m reading currently–On Love, by Allan de Boton.

*Image by: Bob Duck

The Dark Is the Light

There is something greatly reassuring about the dark.

I don’t mean to be emo–it’s just that the idea of going against the inherent fear of darkness is somehow comforting. Frankly, I didn’t always seek comfort in the darkness. I was the sort of kid that needed a lion-king night light to go to sleep till I turned 4 or 5. My parents put me to sleep until I turned 9. Though I never believed in monsters living under my bed, darkness was always the villain that slept beside me.

Now I sleep with it. Well, in less provocative terms, I sleep in it. Somehow I managed to break through the initial discomfort of the dark and even find peace in it. To think about it, it’s probably the closest I can get to oblivion. The darkness is much like another dimension where matters pertinent to the real world lose their value. As soon as I turn off the lights and stare into the dark, I am exhilarated with a sense of victory. Victory over the complexity of real life. Victory over fear. Victory over human nature.

Such a grand thought for a simple concept, no? But at least in my world, the dark is the light and the light is the dark.

*Photo via: ImaginationAlone

It’s True.

“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”
-Albert Camus

Image via: Wikipedia