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Youngest kid of six with an inferiority and black sheep complex, but determined that God saves not just his soul to heaven but the remainder of his manic-depressive life, so others won't say he became a Christian and remained a jerk.


MAIN THEMES

On identity
i won't be transparent before i'm opaque. and you'll get to know me starting from the small things: who my favourite bands are. what kind of movies i like. who are my heroes.

On Christianity
I’m convinced that when confronted with sincere, real love, the Jesus factor will become obvious. But let’s not plant the cross before we carry it. I’m not trying to con you.

On dreams
Some dreams are meant to be achieved. I know that. But maybe other dreams are meant to drive us, privately. Never known to anyone but ourselves.


OTHER THEMES

On melancholy
It is a sadness that, when choosing between crying and sighing, will choose sighing. I'd almost say that melancholy is being sad about sadness itself.

On memory and nostalgia
It saddens me when life moves forward and people decide that certain things are worth forgetting.

On language
I've learnt that the word irregardless is filed as a non-standard word in the English language. That's a lexicographer's way of saying it's not a real word.

On politics
Crowds are fickle things. So when we stand in the thousands and cry against the present government, do we know who we're actually crying for?

On society
People always want the best for themselves. But I want to sometimes take second or third or fourth best, just so that the loser down the road doesn't always have to come in last. It must feel like shit to always come in last.

On growing old
Leasehold property make me feel sad. It doesn't matter how old the family photos are that you put on your wall. It's your family but it's not really your wall.

On philosophy
I ask you, if God loves everyone, and if God is also incapable of loving evil, how can there be such a thing as an evil man?

On a daily basis
One line quips, like this.


CHAT





Tuesday, June 12, 2007
NOT ALL KILLER

The quest for perfection is sometimes so frustrating. the perfectionists among us will know how long it takes to get something - even as benign as a blogpost - looking just right. the critic among us will testify that it's rare that something so intact rolls into town for us to bask in its spotlessness. for me, this obscure object of desire lies in my favourite albums.

most of them have blemishes in them - songs I don't like, songs that don't fit, songs that are absolutely gross. which makes it really annoying, and a crying shame because these are my favourite albums. they're the ones i'd bring to a desert island if i really had to go there. how can the bulk of my favourite albums not be all killer no filler? to establish this point, i shall run through some of my most personal and dear records.

the stone roses' self-titled debut album is the ultimate debut album, backed by mega singles on like I wanna be adored and Made of stone and finished with timeless album songs like Shoot you down and This is the one. killer, killer, killer all over the record. all except that one very annoying track 4, Don't stop, which is essentially a backmasking of the hit single Waterfall. ok, credit to the roses, i think they backmasked the song, learned the backward words and did the vocals forward while everything else went backwards. very smart. but also very, very dissonant and absolutely impossible to listen to. bad roses.

the raveonettes' Chain gang of love is a glorious noise-drenched homage to 1950s rebel boys and the good girls they turn naughty. beautiful melodies are hidden beneath a wall of feedback so that only the brave will ever hear the deep-lying beauty of songs like Noisy summer and Untamed girls. but of course, the album is marred - at least to me - by the second last song, The truth about Johnny, where Sune Rose Wagner repeatedly drones "Joooohhhhny.... wheerre you been?" between some much more bearable guitar solo twanging. it's not as unlistenable as Don't stop's backmasking. but it still calls for that 'next track' button.

my third example is stereophonics' Just enough education to perform. but this time, the marr comes right at the front, in the form of album opener, Vegas two times. don't get me wrong, the song's not really bad. it just doesn't fit the album. JEEP is a lazy sunday album, languidly meandering from Lying in the sun to the slow stomp of Mr Writer and then rambling about old shoes, going out, having a nice day, watching people "fly sundays" and taking caravan holidays. all of this makes a heavy rock brawl about las vegas wrong wrong wrong. the only saving grace is that it's the first song on the album, so i can skip it and start the album with track two. but it's still wrong.

you see - it's hard. there are many other albums that carried me through some of my most meaningful times in life. and those records mean a lot to me. some of them are legendary by any standards. but almost all of them have songs that shouldn't be there. why?

is perfection so elusive? do we go out there to break it? to dismantle that which is glorious for some abstract, deep reason? when i was a child, i remember reading that persian carpet makers would intentionally marr their rugs, if only by a stitch, to remind themselves that God is the only perfect creator. havelock ellis said that "the absence of flaw in beauty is in itself a flaw".

it's a lot more than just a killer album, isn't it?

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Genusfrog [ 4:26 pm ]

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