Charts don’t list them all.

Today I was blog-hopping and came across this gem. It’s from my friend Piramol, you can see her full blog through the link at the side of this page. I was truly moved because what she says is something that I’ve tried to put into words for so long and failed to do. So, Molly, if you’re reading this, I hope you don’t mind me reposting it here.

Sometimes people question my taste in music. I listen to U2, Coldplay, the Killers, John Mayer, the Fray, Snow Patrol, so on and so forth. Yes, it’s hardly mainstream pop. Yes, it’s excruciatingly hard to find people who share my taste in music. Yes, the songs all have meaning to them… The thing is when I listen to U2… I feel a connection. Primarily to fellow U2 fans, one of them being my sister. I didn’t know her that well but I do know U2 was her favourite band as is mine. So when I hear Bono’s impassioned voice, I feel like I do know her. I feel like I know what she likes, dislikes, loves, hates because when I listen to their songs I feel a connection. It’s inexplicable and cannot be phrased in words. When I listen to what I listen to I feel a connection to those who listen to it as well. A rather peculiar sense of belonging but a sense of belonging all the same. Because, people who listen to this sort of stuff… On some level, are the same. After all isn’t it everyone’s dream to look across the gulf and see somebody waving back? I see people waving back.
All the melancholy, sentimental souls, I wave to you.
Hello.

I know I’ve talked about music before, about what it means to me. There have been some pretty difficult times in my life when music has played a part in helping me through. Sometimes, I see fans of a particular band or artiste saying online that so-and-so’s music saved their lives. And usually, people just think they’re exaggerating or idolising to the point of obsession. Granted, sometimes they are. But that connection that pulls you in, that plays the soundtrack to your life, that reminds you of people and places: it’s on a spiritual plane. It goes right to the centre of your soul. It’s too powerful to be ignored and I agree, you can’t find it in the mainstream stuff at all. Because it’s more than just a catchy tune or a danceable rhythm; it changes you and the way you live.

Right now, the song that’s on repeat on my ipod is ‘Hurricane’ by 30 Seconds To Mars. Again, it’s not the kind of thing that would appeal to everyone. But for me personally, when Jared Leto’s vocals go over do you really want/do you really want me managing somehow to still sing with the effect of being on the edge of a scream, something inside me is in the words and the picture of a man shouting at the world with utter abandon. It is heart-rending and I am amazed at how he packs so much pain and emotion into just two lines. And everytime that part of the song passes through my earphones, I feel a deep sense of relief after it as if I was the one who was singing instead, hurling all my anger and sadness into the wind. The feeling that I was within the song and I asked and was answered that yes, someone wants you. You are not alone.

Sometimes, a song can understand you better than any person. It can tell you what to do when you’re lost. Sometimes, it can show you the face of someone you wish you could see again. It can give you hope, or comfort, or joy, or a place where you can cry in peace.

This is the reason why people are always eager to share their music with each other. They want you to feel what they felt and understand something that is close to their hearts. I don’t claim to know more about any of this. It’s just that sometimes one gets tired of listening to drivel on the radio and in shops that’s like a really shiny, colorful present, but empty inside. I’m not saying that you can’t though, everyone has their own taste and maybe they’re not looking for the same thing. I would just like to be able to say I like a song without being asked why. Being a chart-topper isn’t a definition or a gauge.

So, to music: for saving my soul. For bringing me closer to the divine in some cases.

I thank the people who make it.

(the part I mentioned begins at 2.33)

Speechless full moon.

My sister is a mysterious specimen who upon closer inspection appears vastly different from what you’d expect based on first impressions. Walking home after dinner in companionable silence, she startles me by asking, “Which do you prefer, the sky or the sea?” I reply with the latter but she shakes her head and says, “I like the sky better… It’s more distant. I can’t reach it.”

This philosophy in fact defines her. We walk in the cool night air past all the houses with their yellow windows, down the tree-lined avenue, and I think how wonderful it would be to just walk on and never stop because then the entire road and everything on it would belong to us. There are many kinds of ownership; a beggar owns the street he sits on more than the man with a title deed. And, in such a way, I am my sister’s keeper.

On the swings in a park, we want to be young again, though we’re not so old yet. But tonight I feel ancient, and maybe it’s only when the similar tap of our feet sound on the pavement that this feeling fades. There is a depth of connection between us, in the same way marshmallows toast over a fire. We have to have each other, it’s the equation that balances itself out. Anger makes me talkative and renders her silent. My emotion is in music, hers in art. I can’t get enough of romantic comedies but she detests them (and me too when I insist on watching). It’s endless; the division igniting the method of communication that is to meet somewhere in the middle of everything.

She’ll always be my little sister, the “Kid”, even if we’re just one year apart. She doesn’t know it, but I’d kill for her and be killed in return. I’d do anything for her.

And all the punks who think they can pick on her? Well, they’ve got another think coming because no one gets to call the shots on my sister but me.

They were sitting, they were sitting in the strawberry swing
And every moment was so precious…

I can’t wait ’til the morning, wouldn’t wanna change a thing
People moving all the time inside a perfectly straight line
Don’t you wanna curve away?
It’s such it’s such a perfect day…

Ah, now the sky could be blue, I don’t mind
Without you it’s a waste of time…

The sky could be blue, could be gray
Without you I just slide away… – “Strawberry Swing” by Coldplay

Puerile

Life is funny because one moment I can be fumbling in the dark for the light cord dangling from my fan and the next staring blankly at book spines.

It brings me back to taking the overhead bridge on a whim once, instead of the usual route past the construction sites to Macs. Looking down, all alone above the world, into a canal filled with choking weeds and green unflowing water, lumpy pieces of garbage. Beside it ran a parallel road, wide and efficient with the rumble of speeding cars zipping by, flashes of color against the grey. From that  view, suddenly a great and terrible sadness rose in me, though I did not understand why. Maybe it was because for a split second, I saw through those two lines, the stagnant and unceasing pathways, the futility of endeavor and the hope of innovation juxtaposed, ever turning and returning. And between them, no space. How simple the crossing from one to the other.

Every time I can’t find the cord, I am in that momentary existence of pure uncertainty. I am transported back to a still day on that bridge. I don’t know why, there’s no actual connection between the two things. It’s infuriating; but it makes me thankful for not having a boring switch to flip instead.

The end where I begin.

This week has been one of the most outrageous and tense in my life. It baffles me repeatedly how a piece of paper can change my future irrevocably. As to what some may call good fortune but what I would prefer to see as the answer to a question that I have been asking for sixteen years, I am simply amazed that I am alive and that I have achieved the grades I have longed for.

I was given a book during Christmas called “The Sparrow” by Maria Doria Russell. Over the week, reading it, I was filled with fear. I have never been so frightened while reading before. It was almost as if I was one of the characters, the words concealing a truth or at least one version of it that was too difficult to accept.  There is a difference between the knowledge of God and the sensory feeling that God exists. In those pages of rice-wine pale-lit white that I held between thumb and forefinger, a man was searching for the answer. I thought, am I like this man?

The problem, I realised, was that if I were to meet Emilio Sandoz, Jesuit priest and main character of “The Sparrow” who is in a way betrayed by God by what he endures in blood and tears on a newly discovered planet, I would be unable to tell him with absolute conviction: deus vult, God likes it that way. My faith was insufficient, and therefore shaken. The implication of such a realisation was the quality of fear I experienced, which in turn led to the masochistic momentum that prevented me from just putting the book down.

To love comes very easily to me. I could probably fall in love with a slab of concrete if I spent enough time with it. If God is love, then are we falling into God or does God fall into us and what exactly would that mean? Does it mean we can never love anything without God in the picture? Does it mean that God exists only when we experience love, but that would make him too temporary a deity. Who are the agnostics, the atheists, the skeptics if they know love but know not God?

And so pondering, I prayed and asked: please give me a sign.

Without hesitation, it came to me yesterday; twenty minutes later with the results in my lap, on the way home and weeping silently at last.

My life has begun again. And apart from God, as I thought back on the colossal preparations for the GCE O levels, it was a confusion of places, people, words on paper, music, roads, lectures, books, tears, laughter and pain. Fear, dulled but present, suppressed beneath the essays and textbooks, caught between the dark circles on a friend’s face. 6 a.m. mornings, 2 a.m. nights. All these fade into one another.

A voice from long ago saying, “You told me once to fight the good fight.”

I hope I have. And to all my friends who did not do as well as they expected, do not be disheartened. There is so much ahead for us that you cannot possibly imagine. God has a bigger plan for you.

Outside there’s a box called Waiting.

Pieces of the puzzle begin to fall together and now we play a little game. It is the back-forth flying of thoughts and longing and the feeling that anything is possible. Anything is possible because a long time ago someone asked a question: why? And the answer heard was, well, why not?

To be afraid is normal; is, in fact, essential. In the sunshine over the windowsill, I see my life reflected in golden-yellow hues. Everything illuminated, everything temporary. But that transient aspect has given me direction and made things precious. I can take pain; it is necessary for me to survive. And I don’t want to just survive, I want to take a dive into these icy waters with that one in a million chance that I will resurface. Until I die, you can’t tell me I was wrong.

People worry too much. When they stand in brightness, they cling to shadows and refuse to be free. They waste entire lifetimes in self-inflicted misery. What has been done, has been done. No turning back right? So, no regrets. No guilt. No shame. I have come through the fire and left such ashes behind.

An involuntary laugh comes. The sweet familiar taste of anxiety and joy together; how I have missed it. This time, for some unknown reason, I can’t back down till it’s over. I can’t give up or lose faith or stop trying because I have a feeling that is a fact, I smell the unmistakable aroma of certainty. I trust God, whatever that may mean to you.

The perfect path through confusion. Order and peace in chaos. Like I once heard in a movie, “There is the dream of someone.”

Well, I have a dream of something.

Stole a key
Took a car downtown where the lost boys meet
Took a car downtown and took what they offered me
To set me free
I saw the lights go down at the end of the scene
Saw the lights go down and standing in front of me…

In my scarecrow dreams
When they smash my heart into smithereens
Be a bright red rose come bursting the concrete
Be a cartoon heart
Light a fire a fire a spark
Light a fire a flame in my heart
We’ll run wild
We’ll be glowing in the dark… – “Charlie Brown” by Coldplay

Stop/Don’t Stop

Kid, if you don’t see the world the way I do, here’s how. You count to three, and spin around till you’re not spinning anymore but everything else is. Orange to red to salmon pink, it all looks the same. Yellow equals lime-green. Kid, if you want me to be honest, try to listen.

Walk little walk
Small talk big thoughts
Gonna tell them all just what I want…

Take a load of this.

If you don’t care, you don’t. You have absolutely nonexistent interest, then go incommunicado/incognito/whatever. That’s what I would do. For your information, “don’t” is short for “do not”. Which means: you do not text, you do not facebook, you do not blog, you do not talk, you do not call, you do not email, you do not pretend that you’re not pretending.

That street two streets I see you and me
Hanging on the empty swings
Count high low don’t worry my eyes are closed
I’m a superman and it’s my show…

Kid, don’t play games with me. You can’t win. I love you, I don’t love you, understand? There isn’t clarity in lying, no peace, no purpose. When I do something, I have a reason. Likewise, otherwise. Dante language; hell is knowing the future without knowing the past. That’s the way you move when your chess piece is concerned only with the outcome and not the reason, and you know you’ll only lose.

I don’t want to meet you at a party because when I meet someone, I have a reason. Maybe it’s because I feel they have contributed to my life, maybe I enjoy talking to them, maybe I miss them and I want to see them again, maybe I have business or work-related matters to discuss with them, maybe I consider it a good way of spending my time. If I decide not to meet you, and if I do not specify a reason, the reason is you do not fall into any of the above categories, not that I’m anti-social. In that case, I’m not sorry at all.

One shoe two
Gonna kick with my new shoes
I’m going to kick until I need new shoes…

One of these days, maybe not now but decades down the line, you will realise that the one reason why everyone you know is your friend was the one reason that never crossed my mind. Maybe then, you’ll wish I hadn’t let you go.

Kid, I’m gone. I’ll forgive you someday; just not today.

I said uh- don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop
Talkin’ to me
Stop, don’t stop, don’t stop
Giving me things
Stop, don’t stop, don’t stop
Laughin’ about it
Stop, don’t stop, don’t stop
Don’t stop… – “Color On The Walls (Don’t Stop)” by Foster The People

A heart to hold you.

Buoyancy of mind and a certain excitement is reflected in the sparkle that illuminates the eyes. Turkey in the oven, you will not be put to shame. Christmas tree, hold your boughs a little higher, and let your light shine out all the brighter. Candles, do not wane. Piano, sing me a new carol. Gingerbread men, dance with joy on the tabletop. Presents under the artificial holly and mistletoe, be patient; Christmas morning is on its way.

Ah, that unmistakable smell of Christmas in the air.

Hold me close, hold your entire year, and dream a new dream. Tonight the world is not the same. Love feels like it’s a little less out of reach, and God is here. Angels we have heard on high, sing once more; joy to the world, because I am alive and I know that I am not alone.

Merry Christmas, world.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made. In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not… He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not… the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth.“ -King James Bible, John 1:1.

At the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf.

Noise torrential swirls with color and the distinct smell of raisin scones. A woven tapestry of skin tones, voices, laughter, the taste of a sunrise smoothie in your mouth. The friend across the round coffee table grins as she tells you about…

Cut to the entrance. He walks onto this perfect staged idea of a crowded Friday afternoon, simple white t-shirt draped over lightly muscled shoulders, khaki pants, bag slung at side. His eyes are glued to the screen of a sleek little phone that he clutches in one hand almost as if it will slip away if he doesn’t hang on tight enough, which it probably will. Opposite where you sit, miraculously there is one two-seater that is unoccupied. He makes a beeline for it without looking up even once, and all you can think of is how he manages to refrain from tripping over the melee of bodies and tables littered about like messily strewn pieces of debris.

With a caution that borders on obsession, he picks the seat against the wall, glances apprehensively at the people sitting on each side, an elderly woman with bright red lipstick gossiping shamelessly to a friend, and a young girl in a blue sweater who is preoccupied with her laptop screen. The way his eyes dart between the two while he sits is almost ridiculous, as is the precarious position he assumes on the edge of the chair, both elbows resting on the tabletop, caught in an in-between pantomime of leaving and arriving.

Your attention shifts back to your conversation for a period and you stop noticing him. Before long however you find your eyes drawn back to him as if magnetized, the silence that breathes through him wipes out the commotion and sound, whites out everything like a virus ravaging infectiously. His head is bent to the screen over which his fingers move furiously, desperately, searching and prodding and speaking in a language you don’t understand. One clenched fist rests against his temples with a suspension that makes you think it might disobey him and pummel his face to bloody oblivion at any moment.

Then you notice with a mixed feeling of alarm and comprehension the long streaks of tears on his cheeks, the thin line of his lips set into a grimace pulled taut over gritted teeth, the tension in his jaw.

Shrinking rooms is a feat that appears in science fiction movies but right there, it happens. Nothing exists in the dead air that you suddenly feel upon you and the coldness emanates, you realize with subtle shock, not from the air-conditioning vents overhead but from him. His frenzied fingers take on a different significance. They are asking why and pleading come back or don’t change or how could this be happening to me or all of those things. Mildly, the clear piercing green of his eyes lift their gaze to scan blindly over the room. You look down as they move towards you.

There is a lump in your throat and the public happiness surrounding you becomes all at once heinous and distasteful. How can such bleak sadness exist in communion with such blatant enjoyment of life? It is obscene.

Calamity befalls without warning, it is definitely not his day. A boisterous Australian middle-aged couple move over and inquire of the girl with the blue sweater if they can sit down in the extra seats, paying no attention to notice that she is obviously not together with him. She smiles and motions dismissively to the chairs opposite herself and him. They sit down with a large tray, and talk ignites immediately. The blue girl has large headphones on. He is trapped behind the table in the face of inert pleasant day-to-day life, but the normalcy is at odds with his sullen composure. The shadows cast by the dim orange lights block his quiet weeping, and it isn’t long before he gets up, squeezes past and vanishes as ambiguously as he appeared.

You hear the man adjacent to your table remark snobbishly to his wife, “Hey did you see that guy just now? Sat down and didn’t even buy a drink.”

Somewhere a band is playing.

Reading Catch-22 makes fear look trivial, and for that matter, war. Of course, what it does inconspicuously is really make a big deal of both by seeming to make less of it all. As I ponder, I wonder if that is the secret to putting across something that can’t be exaggerated exactly because it is already enormous.

I like that I don’t know the date, or that I am surprised by glancing at the clock. It probably means that time is on my side. I like how my old portable stereo/disc-player still cranks to life, spins my music and blows it out in tip-top quality, despite almost a whole year of neglect on the bottom shelf. I like how everything looks different in candlelight. I like many things at the moment. This spirit has propelled me to move with light feet to the famous diminutive Gratitude Cafe so ardently patronised by those with so much less.

And I am grateful that somewhere, in the world or in the restless souls that inhabit it, a band is playing. That somewhere, someone is listening to a song, and that it is a song that reminds them of someone they love, or of a happier time, or of the very fact that love exists. I am grateful that I know with certainty it does.

A boy who understands the tenderness of a pianist’s fingers on the keys will someday be a very great man.

History repeats; there comes a time when even this becomes routine. The madman is perfectly logical, albeit that his logic is not yours. It’s as if I have remained standing in the same room for ten years while the walls have been knocked down, centuries have flown by, the cosmos have been swept away. And I am unchanged.

An escape hatch opens into the world that the music creates. If you cannot find me here, it is because I am there, swimming in words that are emotions, emotions that are memories, memories that are too difficult to erase. It never hurts there, pain exists in this dimension. At my table in the Gratitude Cafe, I place an order for the ability to remember. I’m not upset, you understand; people change, they always have. They have to.

To know that love exists, you have to know what it is to be devoid of it, to have it taken away from you. But if you spend your entire life out of love, you may soon stop trying to feel it or attain it. You may stop wondering if it’s real. It’s a catch-22; but you see, if love were that simple, who would strive for anything at all? So it has to be rare, hard, sometimes excruciatingly painful, and sometimes the greatest gift given to us as human beings.

It has to be set apart.

Of my assets, I bequeath all Lord of the Rings merchandise to thee.

Yesterday was perfect.

Going out with Alethea and being able to relax and just be myself was wonderful. After eating an inordinately huge amount of food and naming every song that played over the restaurant sound system (plus me choking over that very strange drink that was supposed to be some kind of green tea ice-cream float), we went exploring the shops next to the cinema. It turned out that all the shops on that floor were places that sold cosplay/videogame/comic-hero-merchandise kind of stuff, and since we are both Lord of the Rings fans (and proud of it), we hunted up and down for anything related. There were all these nerd types hanging around in their skinny/spectacled/polo-shirt way, mostly adolescents, some even with their mothers. It was hilarious: almost like something right out of The Big Bang Theory. I must admit it felt a little out-of-place being slightly more stylish and going to the videogame section, pestering the shop attendants for PC Lord of the Rings games, earning many well-deserved stares from aforementioned nerd types.

It’s one of the things most people won’t understand about me. None of my other friends would ever be caught dead with me swooning over a life-size Yoda figurine or checking out the price on a Batman t-shirt. That’s the great thing about Ale. While waiting for the seating sign to go on for our theatre, there was this ridiculous screen playing a series of dance scenes from some Bollywood Desi Boyz movie. I think we must have tempted a couple of people to call mental institutions because something came over us and we started grooving to the song right there in the middle of the shopping complex. Then, panting and laughing, we went in.

If you’re even remotely considering watching Breaking Dawn (Part One), forget it. The only reason we went was because Ale had seen all the previous movies and wanted to finish the series, even though she thought it was silly, and I went along to keep her company. We wound up laughing at all the wrong moments, and half the time Ale was asking me manically, “Do you think there’s gonna be a spine-cracking scene? I DON’T WANNA SEE IT!” And me saying no, where did you hear about that, I don’t know anything about it. I was, of course, wrong. After about an hour of the two-hour long film was spent aggravating the boring wedding and honeymoon nonsense, during which there seemed to be a sudden load of noise in the theatre, especially during the kiss/sex scenes, Bella gets pregnant with some kind of monster, and the spine-cracking scene came on. Not only was it completely illogical (she was neither paralysed nor put into a coma), it was also retch-worthy. I think I have been mind-scarred for life; what with the tangible cheesiness of all the lines, the unconvincing chemistry, the rib-cracking, spine-splitting and anaesthesia-free-cut-open-with-a-switchblade birth scenes, it was two thumbs way down. Not a surprise really, since Stephanie Meyer, author of the trashy novels that she dared compare to Shakespeare, also produced the movie. But Ale and I braced ourselves and I think we’re probably stuck as friends for life now because of the solidarity in that painful experience.

We cabbed to her place with bubble tea and ordered pizza in for dinner, then watched almost the whole of season 4 of 90210, up to where the show stopped. The writers of 90210 are insane because they keep pairing people up, and then just when you think everything’s going to be swell, it falls apart! It’s a very juvenile obsession that I have with 90210, mostly because (Ale agrees on this) practically everyone on the show is good-looking. That sounds really shallow of me, but seriously, who doesn’t want to watch a show where everyone could be a model!

I can’t do this with any of my other friends, and it’s something really special we have, that even if we don’t see or talk to each other for almost the whole year, we still make it a point to catch up, and it’s like we were never apart. There is no distance. We’ve grown up together, and I’m pretty sure it’s one of the things that will last for many years to come. Mostly because I have no inhibitions, and the trust between us is so absolute that it has become inconsequential, unquestionable, enduring. Because I know we love each other unequivocally.

So thank you God for giving me a friend like that.

So much craziness surrounding me
So much going on, it gets hard to breathe
When all my faith has gone, you bring it back to me
You make it real for me…

And I’m running to you, baby
You are the only one who saved me
That’s why I’ve been missing you lately
‘Cause you make it real for me…

I guess there’s so much more I have to learn
But if you’re here with me, I know which way to turn
You always give me somewhere, somewhere I can learn
You make it real for me… -”You Make It Real” by James Morrison