Blame It on the Boogie

I love it when I suddenly have the impulse of jumping out of my chair to grab the guitar and sing. Just like in the old times! I don't know if this is caused by all the expectation, but music has a different flavor now. Maybe it's music's fault that I can't concentrate anymore. I'm typing up some boring report about who knows what, and suddenly it's Daryl Hall singing "Dreamtime". Back to the 80's, to my long, straight hair and miniskirts, posing for my aunt in my grandma's then gigantic backyard. It hasn't changed at all, but as I grew, it shrank.

Why do I keep talking about Daryl Hall? Maybe it's because his song (this particular song) never changed in me the way Karate Kid or my grandma's backyard did. I think I feel exactly the same sort of elation when I listen to it now than I did when I saw it featured in a Dtv Halloween special. I remember they took very onyrical segments from Disney movies, like Beethoven's Sixth Symphony from Fantasia and Alice in Wonderland. In fact, I cannot really remember the latter movie save the scenes used for this music video, just as I can't remember Snow White except for that scene in the forest with Pat Benatar's "You Better Run." Nobody can tell me there's no Pat Benatar in Snow White. It's all Dtv's fault. Music's fault, you see; my perspective's so distorted now from all the songs in my head.

I spent the whole weekend listening to Sinéad O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U," haunted by her voice like I never was before. It's as if it were an entirely new song, even though they played it tirelessly (perhaps still do) in the adult contemporary radio station I used to listen to throughout my teenage years. It's nice to discover new magic from old music. I think I did like O'Connor when the song came out in 1990, though. I remember getting a little angry at a magazine where I read her shaved head was 'out'. Funny to be a kid at a time when Barry Manilow was a subject for gossip...

I know I should get back to work, but I'm going to make a quick stop by the guitar first. Most probably the music and fresh sunshine will get me back on track.

If I have no words left for myself, how the hell am I supposed to find words for others?

To hell with homework.

Rouen

I'm thinking of nameless blue flowers bleeding blue, blue like the diva Plavalaguna from The Fifth Element. Then there are little blossoms of chantilly and pink and magenta, like an old Laura Ashley dress in the afternoon sun. And finally those surreal irises whose violet never shows on camera, how strange. I'll never remember them the way they really were if I rely on modern pictures and not Impressionist paintings or my own tricky mind.

Monet's art evolved from the almost photographic to pure color. It's as if he slowly acquired the ability to abstract color from everything he saw. Towards the end, shapes became completely disposable, and only light remained. Such a revelation takes forever to grasp, and yet he did! He was even able to express it brilliantly. Having been able to see that process of reduction (there was a huge Monet exhibition last year in Tokyo), of discarding the unnecessary and keeping the essential was fascinating.

Sometimes I wish I could keep a certain color, a certain light forever. The best camera cannot do that. Photoshop it as much as you want—it may become prettier and livelier, but not the same as the one you saw. I stare into that azalea bud covered in dew, and I know there will never be another chance to catch that vivid magenta if it's not through my eyes. And even then my mind will slowly blur it, distort it, wash it away. I wonder what will become of that azalea in twenty years.

I find myself at a loss with flowers, it seems. Unlike Monet, I find myself at a loss with spring altogether.

A Memory, a Mantra

I can turn old memories into new memories. All I need to do is concentrate really hard, look forward to that which happened long ago,... and buy a plane ticket.

What's the use of all this sunlight if it's not drawing squares on your neck? What's the use of all this space if you're not lying beside me?

"Dr. Chandra, Will I Dream?"

Arthur C. Clarke, 1917-2008

Astronauts

I picture them floating through cylindrical black and white chambers, chasing flying food balls like amoeba, orbiting around a marbled cobalt blue hemisphere. In utmost silence they dive into the void—slow-motion underwater ballet for medieval knights—and fix a solar panel or weld an antenna.

Thousands of flickering lights—stars among the stars—surround a crumpled picture. A family of three: the little boy with missing teeth and a crew cut now wears his yellow sleeves rolled up and walks a pretty girl with a pink cardigan down the street. Heavy memories in weightless nights, comforting yet useless to confront the mystery of a deceitfully unwavering crystal ball. How does it feel to see it all—that godly omnipresence from the distant skies—and yet miss every milestone of your loved ones' lives?

It is an undeniable feat, going where no one had dared to go before. People talk about these travelling heroes from their rocking chairs on cool verandas, watching their own children run and stumble on the grass. Meanwhile, there where they point with dreamy fingers, the loneliness within blends with the outside darkness, and no sun is strong enough to illuminate the spreading black ink of perpetual quietude.

I think I understand them, even though they're nothing but a blurred sketch in my mind. I do—for in drifting away, I, too, have felt the weight of my heart compelling me back home.