Yo-yo Ma plays "the Swan"

When I grow up I want to be like Yo-Yo Ma. :)
This reminded me of a time when I never cared about anything but playing this song on the piano over and over again until I perfect it to the note and rest in every bar and every measure. My 10-year old dainty hands were painful but rewardingly stretched from octave to octave. My pinky eventually got its strength from much practicing.

I’ll always love this piece and I will always be in awe of Yo-yo Ma.

I always love low notes maybe that’s why I enjoy hearing the cello and the bass. I don’t know if it’s because of being a lefty that I like pressing the low A’s and D’s but I definitely love hearing them in full dramatic tones. Well, I’m often this way –loving the sound of drama and raw, moving resonance.

"Beautiful is such a certainty, but uncertainty is more beautiful."

I just remembered this poem quoted in the HK film "Turn Left, Turn Right". And with nothing to blog about these past couple of days (or there's something I'd like to blog about but I'm too shy to write a non-metaphorical blog). Well, I was sorting through my dvds and cds, I found Tinay's copy of Turn Left, Turn Right and remembered this poem. I loved the film and the whole idea it presented. Unrealistic though but I loved it.

Love at First Sight
by Wislawa Szymborska
translated by Walter Whipple

Both are convinced
that a sudden surge of emotion bound them together.
Beautiful is such a certainty,
but uncertainty is more beautiful.

Because they didn't know each other earlier, they suppose that
nothing was happening between them.
What of the streets, stairways and corridors
where they could have passed each other long ago?

I'd like to ask them
whether they remember-- perhaps in a revolving door
ever being face to face?
an "excuse me" in a crowd
or a voice "wrong number" in the receiver.
But I know their answer:
no, they don't remember.

They'd be greatly astonished
to learn that for a long time
chance had been playing with them.

Not yet wholly ready
to transform into fate for them
it approached them, then backed off,
stood in their way
and, suppressing a giggle,
jumped to the side.     There were signs, signals:
but what of it if they were illegible.
Perhaps three years ago,
or last Tuesday
did a certain leaflet fly
from shoulder to shoulder?
There was something lost and picked up.
Who knows but what it was a ball
in the bushes of childhood.

There were doorknobs and bells
on which earlier
touch piled on touch.
Bags beside each other in the luggage room.
Perhaps they had the same dream on a certain night,
suddenly erased after waking.

Every beginning
is but a continuation,
and the book of events
is never more than half open.

Mumblecore Dream

It was a perfect dream. But a friend used to say that "Dreams are, and will always be, fleeting moments of insanity as unreal and unreachable as the sky". 

The subconscious manifests in a time when your guard is down. Then it makes you realize the hopes and dreams that you try to discard but instead it got stuck somewhere in between your frontal lobe and limbic system.  

Well, my dream was something out of a mumblecore film -- the walk, the talk and the profound candor. It was you, me and philosophical banter. Enough said. I might as well be sleep blogging and writing love notes and foolishly describing and adoring your eyes like some lovesick admirer. 

This is the third consecutive time that I woke up at this weird hour when it's almost four. Hmmm what a bummer. Oh well.

I look up. The orange sky tells me its daylight soon. Okay.. coffee to get me started. 

Baguio City Palengke Hits: Manong's cover of the song by the Youth

"Bakit ang pera may mukha? Bakit ang mukha walang pera?"

Loose Cannon

Faster than a bullet train
more than back tattoos and twisted IMs
it was a split second hesitation and I’m gone.

Be the chip on my shoulder
And I’ll knuckle tap on your book
turn it on again
let’s listen to Thom

Gobbled down pride,
Petty high five
You’re my loose cannon
Oh what a loose cannon

A week old fingernails
they visit my la la land
so I take a rain check
sleep a  little shorter
dazed a little longer

I’ll play with spelling check
catch a single night of folly
coz you’re my loose cannon
Oh what a loose cannon

Gobbled down pride,
Petty high five
You’re my loose cannon
Oh what a loose cannon

Walk-a-Thought

I took that walk again during my lunch break. I would have wished for more clouds to hide some of the heat but I’m used to not getting what I want so what the hell, right? (Haha!) A 15-minute walk or so around the quiescent suburbs is my dose of calm. Just trying to jumpstart this week, I guess. The past 13 days have been really intense and disconcerting and it doesn’t help much when I listen to a lot of Muse and Radiohead. So I draw good energy by switching to more of It’s a Musical, She and Him, Bobby and Blumm and some light Juliana Hatfield. They are my meds, my vitamins.

Do you sometimes feel that way? Do you feel as if you don’t belong and you’re like some kind of quirk of nature? Well, I do most often than not. My friends do not exactly understand my peculiar tendencies. Maybe because at times, I would just rather watch the sky slowly unfold into ethereal beauty than go party. But they love me anyway and I heart them too much that I wouldn’t stay holed up too long.

Well, as I turn on the corner of Schusley and Goldpark, I feel that sense of calm coming over as expected. I know myself well enough to know which hum strikes my soft spot. Oh how I just wish this August is over. I’ve always been so out of balance every year on every August night breeze. Remember my 080808? Yeah, that was some crazy. Well I have a couple of days to waste away and September will come. I will always love my Septembers and the friendship with my beloved Virgos. We all grow old but not exactly wiser. But what the hell, this life is too complex to try to fit in a music box. 

---------------------

“And Jane came by with a lock of your hair

She said that you gave it to her

That night that you planned to go clear"

-          Leonard Cohen

I am grateful. I am drunk.

I guess I kinda lost the confidence to create new stuff and to write something that is fit to be words that would somehow make sense and pass for something some other person would say "yeah whatever". Maybe because I was too scared that I couldn't do that if it weren't for the guys who were there to make music with me. But you, who I daresay to admit that I look up to, posed a challenge. You gave me freedom to work on something new and something of my own that wasn't just like editing what you already created. I'm deeply grateful and profoundly flattered. It's a challenge and I can't promise something great but I can only promise that this work, whatever comes of it, may it be too simple or too trying, is something from some part of my soul that I still hold on to... some part where little of random and more of tanquility dwell like it's home. 

I am grateful. I am drunk.

my affair with the universe

I try to be quiet to be slow. I need slowness to remind myself that life is more than gossip and nonsense. I still believe that life is full of undiscovered wonders.

I can't be tied down to some illogical routine that eats up the part of me that I love -- the part that makes me appreciate the little things and the simplicity which I find so beautiful and sad at the same time. 

I find it suffocating sometimes to be surrounded by people because there's the need to listen, to understand, to respond and to please. On the other hand, the universe asks nothing from me. And so I keep to myself. I can be who I want to be without prejudice and standards. I just observe and watch the universe unfolds and she gives back a blue pail of wonder and a sense of contentment. 

As the moon slowly goes down, I smile and send a kiss to the sky to thank the universe for making me feel less lonely on this cool august night breeze. 

Pilgrim

A force pulls you back to slumber and you'll waste the day away. You could be out there discovering new and profound clarities but you chose to be idle. Your autopilot brain leads you nowhere.

Like old toys and fixtures in your house, they are simple. You don't despise them but they can't challenge your thoughts anymore. So go on, travel with weight and look for the one thing that will feed your famished soul.  

Come on and get that ass off a 48-hour unmade bed. Stop being insignificant and search for that moment you lost - when the world was at your feet and random thoughts pour in to wrap around a celestial intercourse. 

Admit to yourself that all else are second best. You'll only feel alive when the moon is in place and you're sitting on the front steps of a vacant apartment deciphering philosophies, making new ones and contradicting the world that stated the impossible. 

Look into the eyes that softly tell you how strangely amazing you are while you carry on with insightful incoherence... and you'll find yourself in love for the first time... again..

.. Unexpectedly destined like apple tree bearing oranges 

Finucci Boogie

from 1991 comedy film Oscar starring Sylvester Stallone.

-One of my most favorite comedy films of all time. :)