At the risk of sounding flippant, I'll like a relationship with someone whom I can love at least as much as films. Or reading. Or running. But not music since music is my holy grail... I'm highly dependent and no good without music, and it's scary to love someone that much. Or maybe I've got it all wrong, and I can't love till I can love someone as much as music.

My life was only fueled by music,
Now it's moved by you.
- My Computer, Majic Flat

My idea of romantic lyrics, because music is a tough act to beat.

The documentary gem I picked up from the library yesterday.

Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.
- Leonard Bernstein

Just watched the film Black Orpheus, which has a wonderful bossa nova music score by Antonio Carlos Jobim. Every Brazilian in the film seems to have music in their soul.

What I want:
An EP entitled This is meant to Hurt You by a band called These Arms are Snakes.
Words to finish the longest piece I've ever written (and possibly bother to write again).
More time to research and watch films; read; run.
The past 3 months' back issues of Sight & Sound which were mysteriously not delivered to me despite my email complaints to the UK distributor.
When asked to recall my last happy and sad moments, to remember a happy moment more readily and nearer the present time than the sad one.

Dr Goat. Welcome back!

For the second night in a row, I ended up at the same club. When I left, an indian girl was crying and resisting being held in the arms of a caucasian guy outside the club. I wonder what that was about... if he was dumping her right there and then.

Some things can't be drowned by music.

Random thoughts while waiting for my hair to dry so I can go sleep after a late night weekday gig. (see how I manage to squeeze all that into a line, hohoho!)

I'm thinking about some folk's remark that they don't know me till they've seen me dance.
And how I'm amazed at the way people can bestow casual endearments.
And the strange way this year has gone.
And how my hair has grown longer without me really realising.
And about how I'm proceeding to reinvent myself.

But before all this, I need to sleep first.

Today I've found out that my laptop battery lasts about 3 hours fully charged, and that the power sockets in Coffee Bean and Burger King in Holland V don't have electricity throughput. Tell me if you know of any place that allows people to siphon off electricity though.

Words form the thread on which we string our experiences.
- Aldous Huxley

The magician's assistant substituted a magic cloak for the trapdoor in her disappearing act to spare the small boy the truth, but this just wasn't enough. He was disappointed to hear that she didn't go anywhere when she disappeared. And he never came back to see her perform again.

"I've seen your performance many times," replied the small boy. "Your eyes always looked so distant, like they were already seeing that place you'd disappear to. Then when you disppeared, the rest of your body would just be joining your eyes there. That is where I want to go."

The magician's assistant looked at the small boy standing before her, and wondered about telling him the truth. But truth is mundane and commonplace, and sometimes truth kills the spirit within us. Then she slowly spoke. "I've a magic cloak hidden in the box that I step in for the disappearing act. When I put on the cloak, I'll turn invisible. Sometimes I'll step out of the box unnoticed, and go walk around the hall to sit next to the audience. I've sat beside you before, and when you were staring hard, fascinated by the box.. I was just next to you, ruffling your hair. I always return to the box in time to remove the cloak and reappear. I didn't go anywhere actually. I've always stayed here."

Scariest thing I learnt today. Way back when I just started my blog, I googled on "vaya" and hit 77 webpages without hitting my own blog. Today I found my blog is #1 on the google hit list. Urgh.

Eyes closed and plugged into her Discman, the magician's assistant was sitting on the staircase behind the backstage. She was listening to yet another song on auto-repeat. You could ask what difference it could make to listen to a song just once or forever on repeat, but if you needed to ask then you wouldn't understand anyway, and this moment isn't about that song.

Instead, this moment is about the small earnest-looking boy who stood before her and tapped her arm urgently till her eyes flew open. Whose words she couldn't hear till she took one earphone out of her ear lazily, and then what she heard was his curious plea: "Where do you go when you disappear?"

"That's a good question," she said to him. "But do you really want to know?"

The magician's assistant continued to disappear and reappear as expected in the magic routine after all. It wasn't rewarding but then again it wasn't a difficult job. It was easier to smile and carry on being invisible while she dreamt she was a member of the audience instead, someone who could walk out on the show any time they wished. She wasn't learning to be the magician's apprentice; she saw through all his tricks anyway. All the magician's assistant craved was the interval between shows where she could have a beer, and teleport her mind far away.

Today the magician's assistant didn't feel like being a beck and call girl. She didn't feel like disappearing and reappearing on demand; she wasn't ready to wait inside a trapdoor for the upteenth time while the audience ooh'd and aah'd at the magician's flourishes.

Today the magician's assistant felt dangerous. She could choose not to disappear, and remain resolutely solid in front of the awkward magician and uncomprehending crowd. Or she could disappear without a trace and never come back.

Either way was fine, as long as she did what she felt like doing.

Mondays are like Tuesdays & Tuesdays are like Wednesdays
- title of an album by Acid House King

Another album title which amuses me.

Just woke, tired and reluctant. I didn't wake up derailed by a life-changing message and nothing's going to be different today.
Thursdays are like Wednesdays too.

Brief summary of today:
Woke dreamless. Worked restless.

I need to fall deeply asleep and have major inspirational technicolour dreams. Oh yah, and wake up coherent enough to remember them. Here goes.

[Disclaimer: this is not the you you're thinking of, if that makes any sense]

What I'm thinking of right this moment. Strangely I'm thinking about seeing your ring again if we get to meet when you're back in the country. I'm wondering about how you've shaped your ring now, since I think you're still wearing it quite a bit. The people and places your ring has seen and been, and how much shinier than mine it seems to get.

If you're wondering about what peace is, peace is being able to wonder idly about a ring that's roaming round the other side of the world, and hoping life's fine for it and its wearer.

I'm just helping out on my best friend's wedding today but strangely I have pre-wedding jitters. I couldn't sleep, so I woke up to log on and check emails. I bumped into you online, and sent you a hi message first cos recent events emphasized again how short life is. But it's been such a while since we last communicated that every line of our short online chat seemed trite and forced.

How odd it was that chatting you came sandwiched within 3 days between a funeral wake and a wedding. And stranger still that though you're the one who first insisted that we should be friends, you're also the one who won't make it.

I've moved on, slowly but surely, and I've made peace.
Time to try to sleep again.

One of the books I bought today: Roger-Pol Droit's 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life. Quite cool really, it'll be fun to try out some of his experiments.

Yesterday I saw the documentary Winged Migration at the Asian Children's Film Fest. 5 teams spent 3 years following migrating birds over 7 continents to make this film. I think the adult audience was more impressed than the kids by the sheer effort put into this venture. I don't remember being in a cinema with so many chatty children before, and strangely it felt ok.

Yesterday I felt out of sorts. I went in and out of 3 meetings before I realised why. I was sampling a new perfume (Estee Lauder's beyond paradise) and it smelled sweetly cloying. I didn't smell like me.

Yesterday I was experimenting with the number sequence on my dress code ring. Now the ring reads:

0000 <- side pin is locked onto this sequence
1111
2202
3313
4004
5115
6006
7117
8208
9319

If you can imagine each column as a number band, you can see that only the first and last bands allow permutations from 0 to 9. The second band only allows permutations from 0 to 3, and the third band from 0 to 1. This means I can't have the maximum number of permutations on my dress code ring after all. I wonder why it's designed like this.. is it so that the ring can never have a complete jackpot effect (ie. every row will have the same number)? Is it so that people can wear the numbered bands individually?

Yesterday.

To a dear friend. I remember the last time we played pool, I suddenly stopped and stood still. You took one look at my face and hugged me awkwardly gently. That was the kindest gesture, and I only wish I can do the same for you.

All I'm reading are scripts now. Just finished Hal Hartley's Amateur and now reading Hanif Kureishi's My Son the Fanatic. Bought these among 7 scripts 4 years ago from a HMV in London, and finally they're seeing the light of day.

I sleep so much nowadays and yet I still feel so tired. Nothing is new. Somehow I'm sleepwalking through my waking hours and hoping that a story will bubble to the surface of my consciousness while I sleep.

My latest CD purchase: Lamb's Between Darkness and Wonder. Tried to convince my best friend to play Lamb's drum & bass love track Gorecki on his wedding but not successful. I guess it's like a wedding soundtrack by proxy, if you know what I mean. lol.

Today I bought a Dress code ring from Swatch. Basically it's a stainless steel ring with 4 moveable number coded bands linked together with 2 side pins. The bugger costs as much as a basic Swatch watch, but I thought it'll be cool to have a 4D random number generator on my finger. Sometimes I wonder about the things I buy to amuse myself.

Steve Cobby of Fila Brazillia is spinning at Velvet Underground on 26 Nov. Weekday or not, I'll definitely go. Maybe it's time to buy more Fila Brazillia albums over the weekend.

What I'm doing more than ever. Trying to rest my left wrist by forcing it not to levitate over the keyboard as I was unconsciously doing while typing. The rest? They will sort themselves out.

Most shots in most films only take concrete shape as the result of a series of deductions which both programs them and progressively diminishes opportunities for the visual along the way... The scene is deduced from its function in the script; the shot is deduced from its function in the scene; the composition is deduced fom its function in the shot; and the attack is more often than not deduced from the readability of the composition.
- Alain Bergala on Godard

Strangest request yesterday. I've been asking around for people to go attend the Duran Duran concert with me. Not that I'm a big fan of theirs, but cos so many concerts were cancelled this year due to SARS that I'll like to attend this anyway. Finally found someone willing to cough up the steep ticket price, but only on the condition I don't cut my hair till then. Hair? What does that have to do with music besides the musical entitled Hair? Anyway, I've sealed a bargain with the Devil. lol.

Running on a few deadlines.
Blogging's the last thing on my mind.

Most memorable scene in tonight's movie. Air raid. World war 2. French countryside school. 2 boys dodge going to the bomb shelter to play jazz piano while laughing happily. Music and friendship was all it took.

Just bought Ryan Adams' latest album Rock n Roll. Funny how I've procrastinated against buying his previous acclaimed, folksy albums but bought this one without hesitation. I guess that's the kind of music I started with before I veered off into dance & electronics, and now I'm revisiting it somehow.

24629

Have I said it before? Or maybe I've not said it enough.
Today's a beautiful day and you've reached it.
Today's the day to try something new.
Today's the day to make amends.
Today's the day to make someone else smile.
Today's the day to be true.

Today, the head honcho came on a tour of duty to our itsy bakery, and asked me something like whether I could commit myself to generating cake sales for every other household in the country. Madness. I told him flatly I would hang up my apron first. Hohoho. Career suicide. More and more often I dream about giving up baking and doing something that's true to me.

Heaven gives its glimpses only to those
Not in position to look too close.
- Robert Frost

[Courtesy of my ex-colleague in Poland who sent me this excerpt]

First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons – but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which has lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And some how every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as best he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world – a world intense and strange, complete in himself. Let it be added here that this lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ring – this lover can be man, woman, child or indeed any human creature on this earth.

Now, the beloved can also be of any description. The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. A man may be a doddering great-grandfather and still love only a strange girl he saw in the streets of Cheehaw one afternoon two decades past. The preacher may love a fallen woman. The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes, and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone else – but that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp. A good man may be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someone a tender and simple idyll. Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.

It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is for ever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain.
- Carson McCullers, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe

I am not a stupid woman. I am aware that there is a world out there that functions without regard to me. There are wars and budgets and bombings and vast dimensions of wealth and greed and ambition and corruption. And yet I don't feel a part of that world, and I wouldn't know how to join if I tried.
- Douglas Coupland, Hey Nostradamus!

Behold, I tell you a mystery;
we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet;
for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable,
and we shall be changed.
- I Cor. 15:51-52

A few years back, I attended a one and only screening of the Nick Drake documentary Skin too Few at the Singapore International Film Festival with my best friend. He and I would not remember this as well as the short film with naked women bathers of all ages (and believe me, they're not erotic) which was screened just before the Nick Drake documentary. The screening wasn't that well attended either, but somehow people who also watched the movie and whom I didn't know then would resurface later in my life. They would be guys who were moved to tears watching Nick Drake while sentimental me didn't shed a drop.

I was just chatting with such a friend today, and we dreamt up a conversation in which he could foresee the future and had come up to talk to me at that screening. He would say something like:

Hi. You don't know me yet but like some of the others here, I'll reappear in your life some years later. I'll call you up one lazy Sunday afternoon to hang out, but you'll tell me the weather's bad. And it'll be true cos there will be unpredictable hot sun and sudden rain. And you'll tell me that you're watching DVDs but can chat on the phone for a bit. And I'll know that you can be convinced to come out if I wheedle a bit harder, so I will and you do. We'll sit for three and a half hours during which we'll consume 5 drinks and a slice of strawberry swirl cake, and I will finish smoking a pack of ciggies. Our mobile phones will not have any incoming sms or calls the whole time.. it'll be as if the whole world has forgotten us. Our minds will wander and we will lapse into comfortable silence sometimes, and you will watch traffic closely (both human and cars), and wonder why there isn't anybody we know. And you'll tell me you want to blog about this moment, and I will say ok, even though I've never read your blog and won't ask to. Then you'll ask me what nickname I'll like for myself, and I'll say "Flim Flam Man" without any hesitation. Of cos you'll ask why and I'll explain it's a song by Laura Nyro. But that'll be some time later. Now just enjoy the movie and don't worry about fucking up too much.

Again and again I've realised that I'm no good without music. Today I'm in love with Dan the Automator's remix of Willie Bobo's Fried Neckbones and some Home Fries.

I was chatting with another acquaintance whose job required her to travel round frequently. She was so bored staying alone in her service apartment that she bought a vase and a huge bunch of flowers to do floral arrangement to amuse herself. We laughed over this but I felt sad. Things we do to waste time.

I've been thinking about a recent Get Fuzzy comic strip where Bucky the cat was making fun of Satchel the gentle mutt (as usual). Bucky said Satchel could be fooled into thinking he's in another country when he's not. Then in the next panel, Satchel was sitting on a chair looking at a poster which said "Welcome to Italy!" and he went something like "Wow! The chair is in Italy!".

I can't explain why I have a soft spot for Satchel when I'm really more a cat person. Maybe cos he's sort of delusional in a way I can empathise with. Or maybe it's cos he was genuinely happy for the chair to be in Italy, without thinking that since he was sitting on the chair, maybe he himself was in Italy too. Satchel was just selflessly happy.