*Something I stumbled upon*
It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.
It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, 'Yes.'
It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
-Orion Mountain Dreamer
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
out of whack
After three days of performance all I have to show for it is an aggravated tendon injury and my right thumb currently wrapped up. To have to choose between putting a cast or going for a steroid jab seems like a foregone conclusion - but the decision now stands as doing neither and just waiting the pain out. It seems to have made me a bit more cranky and off tangent and moody, almost as if I were contemplating end of life issues.
So I was flipping through a reading on gerotranscendence and some of the descriptions I felt were particularly apt descriptions of my current state of mind. Some defining characteristics of gero-transcendence include 'a decrease in the interest in superfluous social interaction' and 'a decrease in the interest of material things'. Now, all the free time I have I try to spend at home, and I'd most gladly welcome more time rather than have money.
In a recent conversation with a friend, she asked, 'So what are you going to do after you graduate?'.
"Retire", I said.
She laughed, probably because the reply seems incongruous, given how it is expected that I should engage in this thing called A Proper Job - where one of the defining characteristics includes CPF. But that's lame. (Or so I say, for now).
One of the conversations with quartet this past weekend, while holed up in the dressing room backstage, was that regarding friends. Someone (I forget who, maybe DT or oxy) mentioned it is difficult to go out with friends who are not from the music circle, because half of the nights we spend on rehearsals, the other half we just want to not do anything and rot at home or catch up on heaps of work while trying not to fall sick, and not to get fat from all the late night dinners/suppers.
And I suddenly recalled what one of my friends said about himself, in the past, not wanting to make friends with those people who are not on drugs because they inhabit a different world and it occurred to me that how I felt was not that different from his situation. We gravitate to those most like ourselves, not because of some narcissistic streak, but because of the shared experience - talking about so-and-so's weird behavior at rehearsal, keeping the similar night/no-life schedules, and simple things like not having to explain what is 'desk partner', and the difference between a good desk partner and a not-so-good one.
You know how sometimes artistes say that they hang out with their friends not from the circle so they can 'remain grounded'? I never really understood what they meant but I think I'm starting to get it. Maybe I'm elevating the music circle beyond its deserved attention, but the more I answer questions about what I'm doing now, the more I see how people take a while to grasp things that we take for granted, I realise it's like a different world - different times (mostly at night), at different (secluded/restricted access) places. And after disappearing from Above Ground into a small enclosed sunlight-less double locked heavy metal door room for a period of time, meeting other people again in places of sunshine, meeting family again - it's not that difficult from, say, getting out of prison and trying to reintegrate into society.
Ok so maybe I over-dramatise a bit. Maybe everyone inhabits their own version of Above Ground and belowGround - the places or situations that make them feel so out of whack with the rest of the world, it's just whether they share it with other people or not. Everyone has their own dark place, I presume.
And somehow in the course of all the interviewing I've been doing, I think I'm starting to understand the life of drug users, and how maybe it's not that much different from mine, at least.
So I was flipping through a reading on gerotranscendence and some of the descriptions I felt were particularly apt descriptions of my current state of mind. Some defining characteristics of gero-transcendence include 'a decrease in the interest in superfluous social interaction' and 'a decrease in the interest of material things'. Now, all the free time I have I try to spend at home, and I'd most gladly welcome more time rather than have money.
In a recent conversation with a friend, she asked, 'So what are you going to do after you graduate?'.
"Retire", I said.
She laughed, probably because the reply seems incongruous, given how it is expected that I should engage in this thing called A Proper Job - where one of the defining characteristics includes CPF. But that's lame. (Or so I say, for now).
One of the conversations with quartet this past weekend, while holed up in the dressing room backstage, was that regarding friends. Someone (I forget who, maybe DT or oxy) mentioned it is difficult to go out with friends who are not from the music circle, because half of the nights we spend on rehearsals, the other half we just want to not do anything and rot at home or catch up on heaps of work while trying not to fall sick, and not to get fat from all the late night dinners/suppers.
And I suddenly recalled what one of my friends said about himself, in the past, not wanting to make friends with those people who are not on drugs because they inhabit a different world and it occurred to me that how I felt was not that different from his situation. We gravitate to those most like ourselves, not because of some narcissistic streak, but because of the shared experience - talking about so-and-so's weird behavior at rehearsal, keeping the similar night/no-life schedules, and simple things like not having to explain what is 'desk partner', and the difference between a good desk partner and a not-so-good one.
You know how sometimes artistes say that they hang out with their friends not from the circle so they can 'remain grounded'? I never really understood what they meant but I think I'm starting to get it. Maybe I'm elevating the music circle beyond its deserved attention, but the more I answer questions about what I'm doing now, the more I see how people take a while to grasp things that we take for granted, I realise it's like a different world - different times (mostly at night), at different (secluded/restricted access) places. And after disappearing from Above Ground into a small enclosed sunlight-less double locked heavy metal door room for a period of time, meeting other people again in places of sunshine, meeting family again - it's not that difficult from, say, getting out of prison and trying to reintegrate into society.
Ok so maybe I over-dramatise a bit. Maybe everyone inhabits their own version of Above Ground and belowGround - the places or situations that make them feel so out of whack with the rest of the world, it's just whether they share it with other people or not. Everyone has their own dark place, I presume.
And somehow in the course of all the interviewing I've been doing, I think I'm starting to understand the life of drug users, and how maybe it's not that much different from mine, at least.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
this weekend
*ok the video has been taken down by youtube but it was 曹格－新不了情。*
One of the pieces we're playing this weekend (15 to 17 Feb) at the esplanade concourse. 3 sets starting at 7 15 8 30 and 945 pm respectively. It's part of the Huayi Festival thingy - I'm so not into cheena music but this one is not bad. For those intending to come, the set with the best mix of music (I think) is the 9 45 pm one. Cos it has the more modern Chinese songs. But I cannot be biased - the other 2 sets are not bad too!
All in the Chinese New Year mood.
One of the pieces we're playing this weekend (15 to 17 Feb) at the esplanade concourse. 3 sets starting at 7 15 8 30 and 945 pm respectively. It's part of the Huayi Festival thingy - I'm so not into cheena music but this one is not bad. For those intending to come, the set with the best mix of music (I think) is the 9 45 pm one. Cos it has the more modern Chinese songs. But I cannot be biased - the other 2 sets are not bad too!
All in the Chinese New Year mood.
Saturday, February 02, 2008
when's the next?
Just finished playing in the Singapore Bible College concert and it was most hilarious. After the end of one movement, my desk partner's bow bumped into my peg and I heard the most awful sound ever, the sound of a slipping peg/unravelling string. And not one but two strings. So there was this awkward silence when I was deciding whether on not to go off stage and tune, but there was no 'off stage' because the venue was a hall, and there were only 2 cellists, and the conductor was waiting patiently (or so I hoped). So I began the slow process of tuning up, and thankfully it was tuned pretty fast.
Halfway through next movement, I heard the sound of a loosened peg again, and I did mental somersaults wondering which string it was. It wasn't the A and the D string, because I was playing on those and they sounded fine. Then when I hopped onto the G string I was keeping my mental fingers crossed that it wasn't the G string that went out of tune, and thankfully the culprit was the C string which I later found was two tones off.
I was so glad that my first three strings were in tune that I played harmonics incessantly just so I could hear the nice ringing sound of an in-tune string.
Something tells me that was retribution for making funny faces during one movement where everything unravelled.
Well it wasn't that bad, actually it was quite a cool concert, because the music was pretty nice, I had a chatty desk partner, and it was the first time I felt I could play the cello. Recently I have been plagued by the greatest insecurities about my playing, so much so that I try not to play the cello when I teach, and I was outed by my student.
"You never play the cello during lesson!"
"No I do! " I vehemently protested.
"See, I play studies"
"That doesn't count."
See, what nice students I have.
Halfway through next movement, I heard the sound of a loosened peg again, and I did mental somersaults wondering which string it was. It wasn't the A and the D string, because I was playing on those and they sounded fine. Then when I hopped onto the G string I was keeping my mental fingers crossed that it wasn't the G string that went out of tune, and thankfully the culprit was the C string which I later found was two tones off.
I was so glad that my first three strings were in tune that I played harmonics incessantly just so I could hear the nice ringing sound of an in-tune string.
Something tells me that was retribution for making funny faces during one movement where everything unravelled.
Well it wasn't that bad, actually it was quite a cool concert, because the music was pretty nice, I had a chatty desk partner, and it was the first time I felt I could play the cello. Recently I have been plagued by the greatest insecurities about my playing, so much so that I try not to play the cello when I teach, and I was outed by my student.
"You never play the cello during lesson!"
"No I do! " I vehemently protested.
"See, I play studies"
"That doesn't count."
See, what nice students I have.
Friday, February 01, 2008
My first SSO concert in a long long long while. Sarah Chang playing Sibelius! The last classical concert I attended was by The Perfect Orchestra *straight face*, playing Sibelius (again) Symphonies.
Sibelius Violin Concerto is the only violin work I like (talk about fidelity to the cello). That is despite having a pretty good violinist in the quartet who is always pulling out some tune or another very loudly.
The first time I heard the Sibelius violin concerto was in the music room in RJ. Someone was playing Sarah Chang's recording and me in all my ignorance went 'What's that?". It was stormy and angsty and quiet and lonely and drama. It was as nice as drinking Bailey's coffee, where you get this warm feeling in your stomach.
That's not a very good analogy. Whatever.
Today she played like a guy. Bashed the violin way more than Joshua Bell, and she had this occasional constipated look. Playing was pretty tight but a bit too airless. Airtight. Hmm. (I'm talking to myself!)
Notably, it was like Koreans Night Out. Front back left right, all Koreans, I never knew the community in Singapore was so large. Great display of ethnic/national solidarity. If there was a Singapore band performing in the US, would any Singaporeans go and watch? Then again, if there was a Singapore group performing in Singapore, the turnout might not be great either.
Except of course for singers who break into all the other Asian markets and then return back to Singapore.
Sibelius Violin Concerto is the only violin work I like (talk about fidelity to the cello). That is despite having a pretty good violinist in the quartet who is always pulling out some tune or another very loudly.
The first time I heard the Sibelius violin concerto was in the music room in RJ. Someone was playing Sarah Chang's recording and me in all my ignorance went 'What's that?". It was stormy and angsty and quiet and lonely and drama. It was as nice as drinking Bailey's coffee, where you get this warm feeling in your stomach.
That's not a very good analogy. Whatever.
Today she played like a guy. Bashed the violin way more than Joshua Bell, and she had this occasional constipated look. Playing was pretty tight but a bit too airless. Airtight. Hmm. (I'm talking to myself!)
Notably, it was like Koreans Night Out. Front back left right, all Koreans, I never knew the community in Singapore was so large. Great display of ethnic/national solidarity. If there was a Singapore band performing in the US, would any Singaporeans go and watch? Then again, if there was a Singapore group performing in Singapore, the turnout might not be great either.
Except of course for singers who break into all the other Asian markets and then return back to Singapore.
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