Life Letters

I'm back on Livejournal because I'm bored with Facebook

karcy — Wed, 18 Jun 2014 09:41:33 GMT

Hello, I'm back on Livejournak for a while because I'm bored with Facebook.

Why the recent 'Les Miserables' movie is a good adaptation

karcy — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 10:06:23 GMT

Left: The recent movie poster. Centre: The iconic poster image for the musical. Right: The cover of the edition of the novel that I own.

Les Miserables (2012) was really, really good, but you really need to have a stomach for melodrama or must have liked the book or the musical.

I ended up getting on fangirl arguments on Facebook, something I always thought was pretty pathetic and annoying -- but! yes! it! bugs! me! People who complain that the recent Les Miserables film was excessively sentimental and overwrought are like people who pick up Assassin's Creed video games and complain that it is full of excessive violence.

What makes a good adaptation?

I believe that an adaptation should interpret the source material and make it suit the demands of the different medium, while still remaining recognizable as the work that it was meant to be. The 'essence' of the original source material needs to be felt, even as scenes are cut and lines are changed. Sometimes, you do get directors who have a strong personal take on an adaptation and direct the story into a completely different way than intended from the source material: Stanley Kubrick is the most highly regarded for doing this. But you only ever hear of those who have done so successfully because most people who do attempt this and are short of 'incredible', 'amazing' or 'genius' are forgotten. Their works are recognized as they are: as bad adaptations.

There was someone on FB who said that the recent film didn't work as film, and that he would like a more 'slick and efficient' Les Miserables. It just so happens that the 1998 film adaptation of the book, with some parts posted on Youtube, is precisely that. I took one glance at the final scene of the 1998 film on Youtube and disliked it immediately. It is exactly as I would expect from anyone who made a 'slick and efficient' Les Miserables: it focuses entirely on the cat-and-mouse chase between Jean Valjean and Javert.

Victor Hugo was not just writing a thriller-drama that spanned several decades using two characters. He was writing a political tract and wanted to achieve that by pulling the heartstrings of the reader. It is unabashed 'art with a message'. It was shamelessly ambitious. It would be a historical document, a religious exploration on the virtues of justice versus forgiveness, and a lecture on the need for social and political reform for the benefit of the underprivileged. It is not entitled 'Jean Valjean'. It is entitled 'The Wretched'. So ambitious was he that Victor Hugo claimed that the novel was written 'for all' -- but it was certainly not for his critics and those who wanted more sophisticated literature; when it was first published, it was criticized for being sentimental and excessive even as the public lapped up volume after volume.

Such an ambitious, shameless, excessive exercise of the sentiments deserves a medium that is capable of conveying the extent of its ambition, shamelessness, excess and sentimentalism. It deserves -- a musical.

A musical should express and condense the emotions, thoughts and conflicts of the characters in song. In a musical, complex debates and conflicts can be made palatable and digestible through song and dance. Theological problems and personal epiphanies are all expressed in sing-along tunes. Just imagine if we could have "The American Gun Control Debate: The Musical". Everything in life would be better!

The problem that I have recognized, at least by listening to renditions of the musical numbers on Youtube, is that it is possible to sing the songs in Les Miserables without recognizing the emotional complexity of the character singing it; the songs are sung as songs, rather than as expressions of the character condensed in a few lines. The recent film adaptation does not make this mistake and instead charges every single song with all the emotional intensity the characters express in the novels, but condensed into spans of one to four minutes. The result is an excessive and relentless bawfest, with most of the actors crying through their songs and the audience brought to observe this intense emotional display on close-up, again and again and again.

It's hard for someone to wade through if they are unprepared for it or unaware of how sentimental and overwrought the source materials are, but in terms of capturing the essence of what Les Miserables is, the recent film succeeds extremely well. Is an adaptation really at fault if it is able to delight an audience for the same reason as its source material does, and frustrate the audience for the same reasons too? The only thing the film did not have is the extensive historical detail (and socio-political lecturing), but no one has been able to include that in any adaptation anyway.

Unlike some who feel that the film does not succeed as a film because it did not recognize the challenges and art of its medium, I felt that the film is a success because it captured the best (and the worst) of its source material and convey it in the very language of film. There are some who believe that this film is an Oscar contender for this. Knowing the Oscars, I think it is unlikely -- they don't like musicals -- but in terms of making the transition from book, to stage, then to film, I think it has done so extremely well. This may not be a film for all, but it is a landmark Les Miserables performance.

Melbourne Full Report Part One: The People and the Place

karcy — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 14:07:26 GMT

Coming from a city where pollution is high, crime is rising, politics is very dirty, and where many people with enough money and qualifications are making the decision to emigrate in fear of political or economic instability, Melbourne looks like paradise.

Melbourne is actually very small. You can easily walk from one end of the central business district to the other. The vast majority of Melbourne residents live in the suburbs, which doesn't look anything like Kuala Lumpur suburbs: there are no neighbourhood malls or showy condominiums, and it is scenery after scenery of one or two-storey buildings after another. For a Kuala Lumpur resident used to national debt-inducing mega structures, the suburbs look almost underdeveloped: not all the freeways have lights, and many of them have only two lanes.

Left: A portion of Bourke Street has been converted entirely into a pedestrian-only zone. Right: Transportation in Nicholson Street.

Melbourne city is linked by a tram network that was established in the 1800s. The existence of this tram network means that many residents of Melbourne are used to relying entirely on public transportation. The majority of Melbourne residents seem to travel on foot. They come into the central business district by around seven to eight in the morning. At around five in the evening, droves of them can be seen walking towards the main train station, Flinders Street Station. By seven at night the city centre is almost entirely dead, with the exception of a few cafes, bars and restaurants that open late.

Left: Old buildings are maintained, at least in terms of their external appearance. Right: St. Paul's Cathedral, an Anglican church located near Federation Square. It was built in the 1800s.

Melbourne does a good job of maintaining the facade of its old buildings. You will find many old buildings in Melbourne serving as homes to banks, offices, shops. There are also many churches in Melbourne, although I suspect that apart from the ethnic Greek population and the migrant Evangelical Asians, there aren't many devotees. I could be mistaken though. I didn't get to go to church in Melbourne.

The people are very polite. Melbourne residents speak in a very slow, mellow and polite manner, more commonly associated with the nature of small towns than of big cities. I felt very rude in Melbourne. Perhaps Kuala Lumpur in general is rather rude.

Left: A poster for a political campaign features a white man for Mayor and an East Asian man for Deputy. Right: One of the many Malaysian companies operating or planning to operate in Melbourne. Other Malaysian companies I've spotted include Papa Rotti and SP Setia.

This pleasant environment has brought in a wave of migrants to Melbourne, many of them from Asia. The city is almost 30 - 40% Asian. Melbourne Airport uses two languages: English and Mandarin. Many Melbourne whites can eat Asian food with little problem, and some can speak Mandarin. Although the countryside is still mostly white, the city itself is a strong Asian-Western mix.

It's not like the Asians are all working in low-class jobs either, doing dirty work that the locals won't do (the way it is in Kuala Lumpur, and how some Malaysians treat Indonesians or Myanmarese, letting them do all the dirty work for slave wages). In fact, there's very little class division in Melbourne. Serving in restaurants, cleaning tables, or working in hotels aren't 'lowly' jobs. Without this stigma there is less class conflict. There does seem to be a stronger likelihood of Asians working in shops and convenience stores, but when it comes to jobs like cleaning tables or collecting garbage, Australian whites don't seem to have an issue with doing 'dirty work' that cripple the employment choices of middle-class Malaysians.

Exhibition of aborigine peoples, part of the Melbourne Museum's displays. Their aborigine section was closed for maintenance when I visited it.

The name 'Melbourne' is not entirely divorced from terrible things. Australia has a terrible relationship with its aboriginal population -- the entire country is the creation of colonization. And unlike Malaysia, the colonizers were hostile, violent, and never left. To this day, there are a number of Australian aborigines who still regard the arrival of the white Europeans as that of foreign conquerors dispossessing them of their land: they call their version of national day, Australia Day, as Invasion Day -- the day they lost their land.

As someone of indigenous heritage, the plight of the aborigines moved me greatly. It was only a matter of luck and fortune that the colonizer of Sarawak, James Brooke, had some eccentric ideas of his own and declared himself a king of a new country with himself as a benevolent father figure over the population. This move protected Sarawak from intrusion of other colonial parties who wanted to exploit the native population there.

It also made me appreciate the fact that Malaysia has achieved Independence. It is not a perfect creation, and I can now understand why some Malaysians look to the Indonesians with high regard, as a country that fought for (and earned) its liberty by taking the Dutch colonizers to war, whereas Malaysia was granted its liberty simply because the British felt that they couldn't run so many colonies anymore. Our declaration of Independence was a very polite affair.

There is an area in Melbourne that reflects this conflict that Australia has with its aboriginal population: it recognizes that its past was established by dispossessing a people of their land and wants to make amends, but is afraid that making amends will relinquish their claim of ownership. In Victoria Market there is a plot of land that is not developed. Two aborigine warriors were executed and the place serves as their burial ground. A quick Internet search tells me that they were charged for murder of two whalers who had trespassed their land. This is the Australian version of our Rentaps, our Mat Sallehs and Mat Kilau. I feel that there should be statues or memorials built there, honouring their resistance. Instead the place is a carpark: an awkward zone that does not wish to offend sensibilities, but neither restores dignity to the wronged.

I really don't look good in this picture. Graffiti along Union Lane.

Melbourne is highly praised as an 'artistic city', with a large population of visual artists, musicians, and a number of writers. I haven't really delved into this scene, since I spent most of the time with my family. I managed to get some leads, though.

There was a very nice bookstore that I would highly recommend to other reading travellers called The Paperback Books. The lady whom I spoke to was the only person whom I bothered asking for recommendations of Australian writers, and she did not disappoint me with her recommendations. The shop was the only one that carried postcards with illustrations from Australian artists, the only one who seemed to be knowledgeable of Tan Twan Eng, and the only one who was distributing an Australian free art zine that I took home.

The Paperback Books is located to a very old Italian coffee and pasta place called Pellegrini's. It is a family business, one of the oldest in Melbourne, and probably the oldest coffee place there. Both The Paperback Books and Pellegrini's are located on Bourke Street.

The Hunger Games movie

karcy — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 15:24:15 GMT

TLDR: Although fans of The Hunger Games generally do not like the comparisons to Battle Royale, the comparison is apt.

I was prepared to not like The Hunger Games. When my students said that they really liked the book and when many adults said that The Hunger Games was good, I wasn't sure if I would like it. It made me think of me liking Harry Potter. I do like the Harry Potter series even if I don't consider myself a fan, but the only reason why I liked it is because I read the first book when I was eighteen years old. If I were to read any of the Harry Potter books as I am now, I wouldn't have enjoyed them, and if I could not enjoy the books I wouldn't have been able to enjoy the movies.

I went to watch the movie today and I'm happy to say that I liked it.

I've read the first few chapters of the first book. It was as I expected: it wasn't something I could really get into, but it wasn't bad. I got the impression then that The Hunger Games was Battle Royale for teenagers. Having watched the film, my impression of it remains. Although fans of The Hunger Games will say that the film shouldn't be compared to Battle Royale, the comparison is apt. While it's true that Battle Royale is a gore-fest and The Hunger Games is made to parallel Roman gladiator games, the message conveyed to the audience is about the same.

Like Battle Royale, The Hunger Games shares a similar premise: a group of teenagers are released into the wilderness as part of a game. There is only one way to win the game: be the last one alive. Like Battle Royale, The Hunger Games also functions as social allegory. Whereas Battle Royale was a comment on the viciousness of social mores that Japanese teenagers were subjecting themselves to ("it's a dog-eat-dog world, cram or die, top or nothing, etc.") in order to survive in their community, The Hunger Games could be seen as allegory for Western, in particular North American, concerns and fears about economic inequality: the rich control the supply of the community's food and resources, and the poor are controlled by the rich through social mechanisms -- such as the annual Hunger Games, where they literally fight to the death over what little resources can be bestowed unto them (the district of the Hunger Games' champion wins a year's supply of food).

Like Battle Royale, The Hunger Games has the same moral problem: while it condemns the violence that the teenagers are subject to, it also places the audience (or reader) in a situation where we become spectators of their gladiator tournament. As such, while we are required to condemn the violence, we are also invited to revel in it. It was hard to say that Battle Royale invited the audience to condemn the brutality that the teenagers were subject to when the film's most exciting moments seem to come from its most violent; and while The Hunger Games is less violent, the most energetic moments still came from the times when the teenagers were pitted against each other and forced to fight to the death.

Nevertheless, The Hunger Games does succeed in driving home a more humane message than Battle Royale. Whereas Battle Royale drives home the message that the world is essentially an evil place with little redeeming value, The Hunger Games makes it a clear point that survival is not dependent on being strong, but in being loved.

Katniss Everdeen, the heroine of The Hunger Games, is a strong young woman: she is athletic, tall, and very determined. She has a commanding presence. But it becomes very clear from early in the games that Katniss's survival is not dependent on her personal strengths but the goodwill she receives from others. Most of this goodwill seems to be completely randomly given. We're not told why certain characters grant her favour or not, they just do. Sometimes it is due to cunning and planning, such as when she receives sponsors. Sometimes it is due to appeal to self-interest, such as when the game organizers try to keep her alive in order to placate a potential uprising. And sometimes it just happens.

If I were to compare The Hunger Games to Battle Royale as an eighteen-year old, I'd say that Battle Royale was a lot like what the 'real world' was: that it is an evil place where only the strong survive. But as a 29-year old I'd say that 'the real world' is a lot more like The Hunger Games: it's true that it's a tough world where we have to scour and be strong to survive, but the reasons we do get ahead is often rarely due to our personal strengths. Rather, if we were truly honest with ourselves, we get by because of the often random and unpredictable moments when we receive goodwill from others.

There's a moment in The Hunger Games when Katniss meets a survivor of the games (a bearded, shaggy adult who has degenerated into alcoholism) from her district. Impatient with his cynicism and alcoholism, she demands to know how to stay alive in the game and demonstrates this by driving a knife into the table, narrowly missing his hand. Irritated, he then tells her that she has gotten it wrong: the secret to stay alive in the games is to be liked.

How true. Whatever its strengths and weaknesses are compared to other similar works of fiction competing for our attention, I liked The Hunger Games.

hitler stuff

karcy — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:53:42 GMT

I bought a copy of Mein Kampf. Never wanted to buy it before, it's like buying something called "Diary of a Serial Killer" or something. (And now, you too, can be privy to the Voice of Evil! At 20% discount if you purchase another book from us!).

But I'm teaching The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas in school, and the more I read about the Holocaust the more curious I was about the whys it happened. Then I saw Mein Kampf on sale for like, RM 40 (USD 10).

Ho crap, leafed through like a few pages of it and was scared to think of how Hitler's ideas took such easy rooting. I mean, it's not like he's writing a blog or something. He had a very clear intended audience in mind. He was addressing them in terms that both of them mutually agreed upon. We all know: Nazism took root in fertile ground, ordinary Germans were not all innocent. But leafing through Mein Kampf is gives you a different level of intimacy with that concept. You suddenly realize how that ground can be fertile...because you live a bit of it yourself.

The scariest thing is thinking about how that same 'fertile ground' exists in so many places still, in so many parts of human interaction and culture.

WHY

karcy — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 12:59:56 GMT

AAAAAARGH

I knew I shouldn't have looked on the Internet.

I saw screencaps from the recent Sherlock episode!! A SCREENCAP WITH THE HAT! Used for an LJ icon!

Going to unsubscribe from holmesian_news IMMEDIATELY.

Darn it, it wasn't holmesian_news, it was another community! How many of these communities do I have anyway????

HAPPY NEW YEAR

karcy — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 16:11:27 GMT

HAPPY NEW YEAR LJ FRIENDS!!

I love you all my dashboard confessional people

I spent the turn of midnight buying a cup of tea

Looks like digi's 3G network collapsed a little at the point of midnight. Yay for Starbucks wireless

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

Sherlock Holmes

karcy — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 01:29:58 GMT

On a less angsty note, I saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie.

You know, it really felt like this crew saw the BBC version with Cumberbatch as Holmes and simply gave up. A pity, I did like the Ritchie movie-verse of Holmes.

In the first movie, Downey Jr's Holmes felt like a believable take on the character, if you give room to some exaggeration on some of Holmes's traits. I accept the need for more action and more highlights on the man's eccentricity. But in this movie, he's barely recognizable as Holmes. Holmes is mad, but not that mad: in the first movie this is shown through him trapping flies in a jar (exaggerated but believable), in the second we have it hit over our heads with -- Watson literally calls him 'manic' while Holmes looks on with 'crazy eyes' in a room filled with tropical plants. Again, I suspect that they were going for Holmes as that bohemian Byronic figure in the first movie, only to see that Benedict Cumberbatch did a better job at it and weren't sure of what to do for the second. The result is a parody of an actor taking on the 'Byronic Holmes' role, all jumpy and nervy and not in the least bit resembling Holmes.

When Holmes isn't recognizable, the movie drops, but other things can still keep it afloat. Jude Law's Watson, in the first movie, is considered by many to be among the best Watsons we've had. Sadly his talents were mostly wasted. The only time I could feel 'that's Watson!' was in the beginning, as he walks through Baker Street for a grand total of a few seconds. Most of the time, Watson could have been any other buddy, but it probably doesn't matter now that Holmes could have been any other stock 'neurotic genius'.

The movie's fans on Rottentomatoes defend the film by saying that critics forget that Arthur Conan Doyle was really writing pulp fiction. In some ways this isn't entirely unwarranted; Roger Ebert claims to have read the books but forgotten that Holmes did cocaine, not opium, so you do wonder whether the critics were thinking of previous screen adaptations instead of the books. (I've always suspected that Holmes taking cocaine was a way of making him appear 'cool', like an arty person smoking marijuana, whereas if Conan Doyle showed him taking opium it would have been like a hero taking hard drugs.)

But there's pulp fiction, and there's ridiculousness. I'm disappointed at the lack of restraint here and the lack of dignity. You can make pulp fiction that is still -- well, respectable, for the lack of a better word. Guy Ritchie is able to do this; I wonder if the silliness in this movie is the studio's pressure for bigger means better, or Ritchie's own loss of creative direction.

In the last movie we had big action scenes, but they still felt comfortably Holmesian as long as you're willing to give Hollywood some leeway and accept that we need big action sequences. The ship action sequence is an example of that: it's a big action scene, involving a giant and a ship falling into the sea, but it still felt like something that could be in the Holmes canon, not in the grandiosity of the action but in the level of excitement it stirred. In this movie Holmes and Watson are running through some frozen woods while men who look strangely like Nazi soldiers fire at them with retro-futuristic bombs resulting in tree-splitting explosions. I almost expected seeing something with a mushroom cloud. It wouldn't be out of place in this Holmesian world.

Also, I'm disappointed that they had to make cheap gags at Sherlock's and Mycroft's expense.

To be honest, as a whole, I don't think it's the worst of Holmes pastiches. Fans of Sherlock Holmes had to endure Stupid Watson and all sorts of bizarre adventures in previous screen adaptations of our favourite duo. But it's far from a good one, and with the second season of BBC's Sherlock coming very, very soon, I'm afraid this movie isn't going to be remembered well.

By the way, the action scenes (particularly Moriarty and Holmes's) were quite well done. Guy Ritchie is an action film director, and if everything else flops in the movie, the action sequences nevertheless are great eye candy.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

Signal boost: Malaysian transgendered woman needs your help

karcy — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 13:39:11 GMT

Signal boost: Malaysian transgendered woman needs help.

I am acquainted with a transgendered woman in Malaysia who is currently in desperate need of some assistance now. Her name is Yuki Choe, and she is a writer and activist for transgendered causes.

She is currently out of work and living every day dollar-to-dollar. As a transgendered woman, it's very difficult for her to find work in Malaysia. She's currently applying for jobs but right now, she needs money to help support her day-to-day until she finds work. She needs money for food, transportation costs, and to help her get medication. She can't turn to her family.

I know that she is legit; she's been active in transgendered activism for a long time. You can visit her blog here. I also know for a fact that it is very difficult for transgendered Malaysian citizens to get well-paying jobs. This is why there are so many transgendered people involved in sex work. Yuki has no intention of becoming a sex worker and one of her concerns is that there needs to be more discourse in Malaysia concerning the rights of transgendered individuals who are not or who do not want to be sex workers.

How you can help:

1. If you do have some cash to spare, please consider donating some to her via Paypal -- the exchange rate for USD 1 = RM 4, so a little bit will go a long way. Her Paypal address is yuki.choe@yahoo.com.

2. If you are able to connect her to work of some sort that can be done virtually, that'll be really great. Yuki has some experience in writing and event management.

3. Signal boost this -- please let your friends know about Yuki. If you're not able to help her out financially, getting other people to know about this will do a lot of good.

Reading Thomas Traherne on the eve of my 29th birthday

karcy — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 08:58:39 GMT

Today is my birthday. Yesterday I discovered a new poet whom I think I will enjoy reading very much, Thomas Traherne. To celebrate my birthday and my discovery of his works, I will post 'The Salutation', his first poem that I read and which, coincidentally, is about birth.

The Salutation

These little limbs,
These eyes and hands which here I find,
These rosy cheeks wherewith my life begins,
Where have ye been? behind
What curtain were ye from me hid so long?
Where was, in what abyss, my speaking tongue?

When silent I
So many thousand, thousand years
Beneath the dust did in a chaos lie,
How could I smiles or tears,
Or lips or hands or eyes or ears perceive?
Welcome ye treasures which I now receive.

I that so long
Was nothing from eternity,
Did little think such joys as ear or tongue
To celebrate or see:
Such sounds to hear, such hands to feel, such feet,
Beneath the skies on such a ground to meet.

New burnished joys,
Which yellow gold and pearls excel!
Such sacred treasures are the limbs in boys,
In which a soul doth dwell;
Their organizèd joints and azure veins
More wealth include than all the world contains.

From dust I rise,
And out of nothing now awake;
These brighter regions which salute mine eyes,
A gift from God I take.
The earth, the seas, the light, the day, the skies,
The sun and stars are mine if those I prize.

Long time before
I in my mother’s womb was born,
A God, preparing, did this glorious store,
The world, for me adorn.
Into this Eden so divine and fair,
So wide and bright, I come His son and heir.

A stranger here
Strange things doth meet, strange glories see;
Strange treasures lodged in this fair world appear,
Strange all and new to me;
But that they mine should be, who nothing was,
That strangest is of all, yet brought to pass.

I don't think the formatting will come out right, but I don't know the right codes for disabling HTML. If you want to read it in its actual format, check out this page here.

End of Nanowrimo

karcy — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 23:14:38 GMT

I used to look forward to my holidays from the band. Just two weeks in my flat with a bottle. That’s when we write. But if I’m left with a paragraph after a whole world tour, I’m grateful. Most of it is bollocks. - Richey Edwards, from his last British interview

I wrote about 7,000 - 8,000 words this Nanowrimo. I'd completely forgotten that yesterday was the last day for Nanowrimo; I was hoping to reach 10,000. But that's all right. I'll be spending most of December writing. Since I won't have the social network of Nanowrimo going on at that time, I will have to be really disciplined about it.

Another day, another drama

karcy — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 16:17:52 GMT

For the non-sighted: a poster with the tagline 'Kill the Bill' vaguely resembling the movie 'Kill Bill'.

The government is screwing things up again. This time, they are drafting a bill to create rulings for peaceful assembly, which basically prevents most forms of peaceful assembly and protest altogether.

I can't be bothered to give a full update because I'm experiencing political fatigue, but you can take a look at this site for more information.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

Not third time lucky

karcy — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 13:33:26 GMT

I've just finished a lackluster performance and I am very disappointed with myself. I got just a bit of applause and some people got up and left while I was up on stage. That doesn't bother me though; it's the lack of any transmitted energy between myself and the audience. They didn't really hear what I was saying, and I can just feel it, you know?

I blame my not practicing and just going up there reading, but I know that some people go up with a piece of paper and still floor the audience. I really hate this; the idea that I'm just a mediocre artist/writer with hit-miss hit-miss hit-miss miss miss miss. No one who does writing as much as I do want to be just up there to express myself. I want to be heard so badly.

I'm scared that I can't channel the same energy I had while I was at Pod's to future performances.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

Richey

karcy — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 14:47:56 GMT

This is what my iPhone lock screen looks like:

For the non-sighted: Richey Edwards, missing guitarist/lyricist of British rock band Manic Street Preachers, posing for a photograph wearing sunglasses and a hat while holding a cigarette.

To be honest, I'm actually growing a little disenchanted with Richey Edwards.

When I first started looking up the Manic Street Preachers for the old hits I liked I didn't think well of Richey at first, there was something about him that I felt uncomfortable with. This opinion changed quickly. I began to admire him a lot over the past one month or so -- obsessively following Tumblr sites, reading his interviews, etc. -- because he seemed to be a Real Life Nihilist, someone who was burned through the intensity of his personal convictions (in this case, driving himself mentally ill and committing suicide). I admire radical people simply because I am not radical myself; I am conservative, I don't take chances, I calculate my costs. My friends have been imprisoned for their political convictions -- not long, though, a day or a week or a month or so -- but I am still afraid when I face a line of cops.

Anyway, Richey Edwards: of all the heroes I have -- from Doris Lessing to Dostoevsky to Temnyson's St. Simeon Stylites to John Keats -- he has been the most physically gorgeous, and he is probably the ideologically weakest. There's no doubt he felt very strongly about his ideas, but they were all a mess, all incoherent. It takes a while -- after shifting through the interviews and lyrics and sound bites -- to realize that there's very little you can string out of his thoughts to form a cohesive worldview. That's not to say it wasn't there, but when you compare it to the other guy I really got obsessed over and started imitating (John Keats) there's a real difference between the strength of their ideas.

(I know -- 29, and still imitating heroes? -- well, I don't have kids, I can be as young as I please.)

Anyway, the value that he's left me with is to recognize the value of physical beauty and performance. You can be a good writer, but so what? You and twenty thousand other people. Be beautiful, be explosive, seize the attention of the audience. Good writing is good writing, but a little performance will always help.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

The Sixth Act

karcy — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 17:27:58 GMT

I overheard a conversation on radio (BFM 89.9) that I thought was quite interesting, so I am going to post what I remember of it here. If there is any chance that any of you can identify the exact interview this came from, please let me know! There are some very good quotes in the interview that I might find useful one day.

Lady Guest: *midway reading a poem* ...And your hands do their duty, and strangles me.
Interviewer(Kam Raslan?): Wow. That's a very good reading. You know, there's something about poetry that needs to be listened to, that you need to hear it recited well.
Male Guest: You didn't say anything about my recitation, Kam?
[conversation]
Interviewer: So you wrote this poem to reflect the excitement you feel at theatre?
Lady Guest: No, actually -- I wrote this poem about the Sixth Act. You know, in theatre you've got the three-act structure? The Sixth Act is what happens after the play ends, when all the actors and directors come up on stage once again. In a play you witness all sorts of things, you witness murder, you witness suicide. At the end of the play, you breathe a sigh of relief: everyone comes back on stage again, the tyrant stands beside the rebel, and they bow to you, the audience. But then you go home, and you are left with an impression of what you have just watched...that's the feeling that I wanted to convey, it strangles you.

It might be uploaded as a Podcast soon, but I have no idea which series it might belong to. I'm posting this here until such time I find the entire transcript and context.

I highly doubt that this idea is very original, so I'm looking for where it might have been originally expressed in. A book on theory and theatre? Googling only returns what looks like unrelated stuff from Shakespeare and something from Oscar Wilde about relationships with women.

--
In the meantime, enjoy this photo as part of my re-kindled interest in Project 365:

For the non-sighted: picture shows a road sign pointing directions in a town square. Behind the road sign is a lamp post and a tree. There is a bunting advertisement for Houz Depot hung on the lamp post.

Today.

karcy — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 14:19:59 GMT

Today I woke at 12.30 p.m., then went back to sleep again at around 4 p.m. I wanted to watch In Time, which many people said was a good movie badly marketed as a Justin Timberlake vehicle, but I couldn't be bothered. I just slept; I dreamed about ghosts. I took a look at dream dictionaries and couldn't find anything that matched my personal experience, so the only thing I can think of is "sleeping past 12 p.m. is not the best thing to do".

I currently feel that art is pointless. It is pointless, but you can still muster some interest in it, have some sense of progression. The idea that you're developing something and building something is important not just to art but all sense of living, I guess.

I don't feel like reading a book, writing anything, catching a movie (although I did watch Gentlemen Prefer Blondes over Youtube several days ago). The only thing I do is listen to music, but it's only because it's simple to do instead of any real personal appreciation for musicality. I still can't play a single instrument beyond a few notes on my piano.

Did I mention earlier that I love Asian Dub Foundation? I love Asian Dub Foundation. I love the Youtube comments they inspire. I think it should be a sign of greatness: when you have created something that can be posted on Youtube and the comments aren't crap.

I'm hungry.

Stuff I'm loving

karcy — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 16:16:57 GMT

A few things I've been listening to:

1. Cee Lo - No One's Gonna Love You
If you loved Rihanna's We Found Love video as much as I did, you'd probably enjoy this. Very similar formula and art direction. I really like the song too; I've been wanting to get the Gnarls Barkley album for quite a while (not this month though).

2. Lady Gaga - Amen Fashion / Black Jesus, Mugler runway remix and original combined
This song is my mental soundtrack for my Nanowrimo novel. I like the concept behind Amen Fashion / Black Jesus; there are some lines that could be pretty good if it weren't accompanied by Gaga talking about her trying to break into the electronica scene at nineteen. The song was remixed for a Mugler fashion show, which improved the song a lot imho, is really popular but a bit...short. So here's the best version of the song: a fan-made mesh of the Mugler version swiftly followed by the original.

Digress: in case any of my Christian friends are wondering why one of my favourite Gaga tracks is one of her (slightly) more sacrilegious, it's because I've been listening to it exactly around the time when Seksualiti Merdeka, Malaysia's only LGBT rights fest, has been banned. I've been invited to perform or catch performances at SM and it's one of the liveliest events in Kuala Lumpur, so I'm kind of attached to it being there. I don't know if the ban is only temporary or for good, but it all goes back to what I've been complaining about lately: that every time we feel like we can move forward by having a discussion, like, a proper conversation about the things that matter to us as a society, we're banned from doing so. Every time these things happen the focus drifts away from the issues and into whether we're permitted to have these conversations.

Anyway: Gaga isn't stupid -- her knowledge of Christian theology is pretty good -- so she would know that the image of the Black Jesus has been used by various groups to show that there is a 'subaltern' in Christianity; that there is unorthodoxy that can be theologically orthodox. At that point I just felt that I wanted an alternative Abrahamic world, something more loving: celebrate a new compassion, Jesus is the new black.

You know, it'd be nice if I could do an academic study on queer identity and culture in Malaysia. Bollocks to the idea that proper Asian virtue doesn't do X, Y, and Z. Why do we keep confusing Victorian morality with 'Asian virtue'? Why do we allow our leaders to slather and slam the things that shape our past as 'yellow culture'? Isn't it weird that the term used is yellow, anyway? Our fairy tales have polygamists, our dancers cross-dress. Suddenly with our Westernized consciousness we become like Adam and Eve, ashamed of what had previously been so natural.

3. Sore feat. Atilia - Silly Little Thing
Sore (I pronounce it So-Re, don't know if that's accurate) is a band from Indonesia. Most of their stuff is in Indonesian; this is one of their rare songs in English. And it's a nice change from the gothy black-angel-wings manga-soundtrack alt. rock (Peter Pan, Sheila on 7, Raja, etc.) that everyone's started to associate with Indonesia.

Still alive.

karcy — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 22:48:29 GMT

Ah, the smell of insomnia is wonderful -- I love pre-work anxiety! >_< I slept for 2 hours last night!

For many years I was hunting for this macro of a moment of clear and incredible epic fail. I have finally found it, after all these years!

See more on Know Your Meme

How did that happen? Was it shopped? What happened after? Help? Also here is a choir of kids singing Still Alive. Children nowadays are very lucky!

Oh books!

karcy — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 18:58:40 GMT

I've just had the most AMAZING discovery at MPH bookstore. I found a series of stationery that could well rival the Moleskine Cahiers I've been using for writing, and they are about 1/15th their price!

Here's a picture of my current Moleskine Cahier that I use for writing my Nanowrimo novel. The Moleskine Cahiers are my favourite for writing because they use thread binding, are the perfect size, perfect quality paper, perfect length (if I use the regular Moleskine I will take a longer time to complete one copy), and perfect line spacing.

It's also very dear, but I figure that it's worth it.

Now meet the GoPalm Scout Book series.

The GoPalm Scout Book comes in various sizes and various binding methods. They're made from (I think) oil palm paper. The paper is very sturdy, making it good for both sketching and drafting. Best of all, the cover is made of brown cardboard, so you can draw and design your own cover.

The back cover.

The front cover with my personal illustration. (OK, the sun looks a bit off but it's meant for an audience of me, anyway.)

I bought three B6-sized thread binded notebooks, and they cost a gorgeous RM 4 each.

The only thing lacking in this series is that they don't have lined notebooks. If they ever come up with them, I'm never going back to Moleskines ever again.

Writing

karcy — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:26:02 GMT

A picture of my Nanowrimo:

I'm far behind the word count, but it's all right.

By the way, thank you those who commented on my previous post. I really do appreciate them. I'm feeling much better now.

Our electricity-charged life

karcy — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 16:14:50 GMT

As I am typing this (my computer is currently running on battery) a blackout has hit my entire apartment block. Power is being restored gradually, but slowly. 45 minutes have passed.

I hadn't realized how much clutter my life has been filled with. I didn't know what to do without electricity. I couldn't listen to music. My Internet isn't working (I'm posting this after my place resumes power). So I lit some tealight candles and placed them around the room. I did my evening prayers. I did some chores.

I've forgotten how much technology has cluttered our life. It allows us to do so much more, and also clutters our thoughts with so many more things. Ah, power is back on. We want to do so many things at the same time. We get distracted with so many things, so many thoughts, so many little ambitions.

Having power removed temporarily makes me think about de-cluttering my life to make it better. I'm old enough to remember a world without the Internet. I could switch off all the lights in my apartment, use candles. I will do nothing much except pray, read, write and do my household chores. Now I do so much, and so much of it is clutter. I surf and surf and surf. I wait for an update for something useless. I read comments on blogs that aren't mine or my friends'.

There is another purpose to all this: I earnestly and sincerely believe that human beings are on the path to extinction. I sincerely believe that our culture of consumption has gotten beyond sustainability. I sincerely believe that the economic collapse ahead of us is not merely a loop that we have to go through but the first steps of a gradual process of the world de-cluttering itself from us. Switching off electricity is a reminder to me that in that world, there will still be some beautiful things. Love will last forever.

Going to switch off stuff now.

Blah blah blah

karcy — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 06:43:22 GMT

I'm over-posting, but this journal is supposed to be a chronicling of my thoughts anyway.

This morning, while praying at church, instead of focusing on the icons I focused on the tree outside. I've long had an association of trees with worship of the divine, simply because there's a verse in Scripture that says something to effect of: if the Chosen People of God did not worship Him, then their Chosen state does not matter -- even the trees and the stones will worship Him. I've always taken that verse very literally, I think I literally believe that the stones and the trees worship God in their unheard way.

In the past few weeks or so this has changed; I've looked at nature and I don't see a God. Praying in church, facing the icons, is also an immersion into a constructed world. This is intentional. Every aspect of Orthodox church art is supposed to disorient you from the world that you come from and immerse you into a world where your mind is to be directed to the deification of your soul. This is the nature of Orthodox architecture, particularly, especially with the construction of the dome and the painting of the icon of Christ Pantokrator on its underside. Islamic architecture has taken that Byzantine architecture from the Christians (I have no idea where the Christians got it from) but I have no idea if the Muslims have given this architecture the same meaning.

Praying by looking at the trees was a different feeling; it was an act of reconciling the cognitive dissonance I experienced. Rationally, logically, I knew that there was no God. I also knew that I must not listen to that thought; it is a trial and temptation, though not evil in itself. As I prayed watching the leaves, it came to my mind that if someone were to understand the existence of God and Judgment as objective truth it would fill one's heart with fear. Perhaps this is why atheists and skeptics say that believers live in fear of Hell and Judgment. I've never been overtly concerned about Hell, to be honest.

Perhaps this is all a construction in my mind. It is a construction in my mind.

In some of the past weeks I've developed a hunger, or more accurately an articulation of a kind of hunger, a way of phrasing -- I want to live for the purest and most beautiful thing I can find and devote my entire self to it. And I have been drawn -- always been drawn -- to figures who embody this. Tennyson's St. Simeon Stylites. Richey Edwards. The photograph below.

But of late I've been dwelling on the absence of that pure cause to live one's life entirely for. I can say "Christ is the cause that I will live entirely for", but that is such a forceful, conscious decision that I know that I will be lying to myself at some point and will collapse. Whipping and whacking the world to fit into the Christian box of the way things work won't make Christ more real and applicable in the many situations one experiences.

What is purity? It is perception. In my initial response to this I developed a very individualized, self-centred set of principles: that the only things that matter to an individual is to live and die for that which that individual has decided to be the most precious. This relativity is unnerving. EVERYTHING IN OUR LIFE IS A CONSTRUCTION IN OUR HEAD! I've been reading Sylvia Plath's biography by Paul Alexander and Ted Hughes and her used to conduct seances via the Ouija board and Plath once stood at a tower that was home to Yeats and she said she could feel a spiritual connection with Yeats. Crazy talk, ghosts, construction in our head.

What is beautiful? I don't know what is beautiful anymore. What is good? I can tell what is good, but where does good come from? I turn to religion because it provides that Platonic state of transcendence that I've always been searching for, since I was a kid. I'm just one of those people genetically wired to want to seek purity. Perhaps the fact that my name is Catherine has fueled this ego, this self-perception.

Enjoy some silly poetry:

How can I say that I am a hero and you are a demon?
Your universe is also created entirely by your perception,
like mine. I desire self-immolation.

Cerebrum. It makes all statements that are worth making, all general observations that make universal facts, all value systems false statements. I think this bit of music is beautiful / I would like to achieve this level of goodness and greatness / I appreciate this moral code as noble and righteous -- what does it mean?

"Fan mail from 27 million..."

karcy — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 22:28:46 GMT

The irritating thing about celebrity fixation is that celebrities don't live lives like us. I don't hate Rihanna for forgiving Chris Brown, I hate that it has to be a big deal. Rihanna can forgive Chris Brown easily because she has never felt threatened -- mortally -- by Chris Brown's violence.

She has Jay-Z backing her up. He poured more than US$ 2 million into her as an investment when she was first discovered. Her sea of lawyers and professional advisors / consultants will work their asses off to make sure that Rihanna stays in her best physical condition. She'll never be in a situation where she is stuck in her house, afraid to leave and afraid to stay. Chris Brown never had that kind of economic, physical and social power over her the way domestic violence abusers often have over their victims.

Also, Chris Brown is her colleague. Of course she'll wish him the best. For all its orchestrated dramatics with musicians slamming other musicians, the music industry is all about getting along with the right people. Expecting Rihanna to bash Chris Brown and destroy his career is like expecting her to place a dynamite in her own.

Despite all of these, people will lap up the story of Rihanna forgiving Chris Brown as though it should be emblematic of how Ordinary People Like Us should respond to issues of domestic violence. Radio stations will mention it and talk about it as though superstars who never go out without a ton of make-up, get their photos taken by stalking paparazzis, and have billions in earnings and billions in expenses are expected to behave just like us, or that we are to behave just like them.

I like Rihanna. She's not 'one of us', she is privileged and she functions within that net of of privilege. Look, I think it's perfectly fine and sweet when Johnny Depp says that sometimes he just wants to chill like normal people by hanging out on his island. I'm not one of those who expect my celebrities to act like me. Rihanna is a young woman who shot to super wealth and super stardom and in her 20s, so it's near impossible for her to be able to have that kind of sense of realization about how her life is interpreted by Commoners Like Us anymore than I can guess how my life is interpreted by blue-collar workers.

I'm just bugged by how the rest of the world responds to the things Rihanna and Chris Brown does. I'm bugged because in social activism, I can't hide in my corner and pretend that I'm too atas for celebrity culture. I have to realize that the things celebrities do sends a message to the Common People.

The message that people get out of Rihanna and Chris Brown is 'forgive and forget'. The message they get, with the Love the Way You Lie songs (which I confess I do like, music-wise) is 'domestic violence is just passion overriding common sense'. They don't get the message about how frightening it is to live with an abuser. They don't get the message about how scary the next step of leaving is. They don't get the message of how tough it can be to leave, or how tough it can be in many cultures to be taken seriously. Those kind of things don't exist in the sphere of experience for someone like Rihanna and Chris Brown because they are backed and protected by billions in investments. But they are real experiences for us.

Books

karcy — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 15:46:32 GMT

I went to the Big Bad Wolf book sale today. Actually, I didn't want to go. I didn't want to spend several hundred ringgit away because I can't resist the temptation to read books like Twilight for RM 8 when I have to spend several hundred to get Sylvia Plath's poetry anthologies for the stuff I'm teaching. (I once spent RM 500 on stuff by Sartre and Camus just to have enough preparation to teach two simple works they wrote. Including Sartre in my syllabus was dumb.) It's like going into a cheap clothes store and saying "I just want to look, okay?" and then walking out several hundred poorer because you thought it'd be a bargain to grab that not-so-impressive-but-okay-looking top, and several of them on top of it.

I decided to go anyway, just in case I did find something useful -- and set my cap at RM 100. Here are the stuff I got, in random order:

1. Mental Fight: an Anti-Spell for the 21st Century by Ben Okri
2. The Diaries of Jame Somers by Doris Lessing
3. To Room Nineteen by Doris Lessing
4. When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa by Peter Godwin
5.. Watch Me Disappear by Jill Dawson
6. Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry (eds. Maria Mazzioti Gillan and Jennifer Gillan)
7. Sarawak Sketchbook by A. Kasmin Abas and Peter Kedit
8. Eros Unbound by Anais Nin (Penguin Great Loves series)
9. The Virgin and the Gipsy by D.H. Lawrence (Penguin Great Loves series)
10. The Eaten Heart: Unlikely Tales of Love by Giovanni Boccacio (Penguin Great Loves series)
11. Bonjour Tristese by Francoise Sagan (Penguin Great Loves series)
12. Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin (Penguin Great Loves series)
13. First Love by Ivan Turgenev (Penguin Great Loves series)
14. A Ready Defense: The Best of Josh McDowell compiled by Bill Wilson
15. Wild Adapter volumes 1-4 by Kazuya Minekura

All in all RM 110.

The stuff that made the trip really worth it were the two Doris Lessing books. I've been wanting to read Ben Okri in a while, but all his books are very expensive. When a Crocodile Eats the Sun and Watch Me Disappear are the only books that I picked on impulse without knowing much about the book or the author. It's just what I like to do; I just like picking up something in hopes of finding a hidden gem (or at least something I hadn't heard of yet).

The Penguin Great Loves series is just a selection of writing from some big-shots re-packaged into a series all sharing the theme of love. I thought it'd be a good sampler of some writers whom I'm not very well-versed in. I got Unsettling America because if I do further my studies in literature I want to specialize in the 20th Century and contemporary literature, so there might be someone in the anthology that I should be paying attention to.

Why Josh McDowell? - why not? As for the manga, I just thought I'd like Wild Adapter. I like how Kazuya Minekura draws her guys and I don't mind that they're simply the same characters from her other stuff dressed for a different story (actually, I like that they're the same characters dressed for a different story).

I couldn't stand the sight of books on Sarawak un-bought, as if they were unwanted or something.

So all in all, a small selection of 'artsy' stuff, some BL-ish manga, East Malaysia, and some Bible Belt-flavoured Jesus Christ. A pretty good set of books that pretty much reflects what I'm about, I think.

Steve Jobs

karcy — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 07:30:49 GMT

Steve Jobs has passed away. I am posting this via my iPhone.

"People sometimes have goals in life. Steve Jobs exceeded every goal he ever set for himself." - Steve Wozniak, quoted by the LA Times

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.