invisible monster.
written: 9:51 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 17, 2005

I have David Tao's "Zhao Zi Ji" (Finding Myself or whatever) stuck in my head right now and I'm wondering why the melody of the song is so upbeat and happy when the lyrics are actually quite the opposite. The melody is written in one the major keys - I obviously do not have perfect pitch and I'm bad at music so I can't tell which one it is - but the lyrics talk about going back, maybe in time, to a better, prettier place in a bid to run away and to find oneself. The first verse paints a picture of the Sahara desert where the speaker is singed by the sun, and all of a sudden there is a huge downpour which washes away the speaker's accumulated perspiration that is a result of being stuck in the Sahara for forty days; then, right before his very eyes a rainbow appears, then an oasis, and a tree and he sits under a tree and bites into an apple, and an epiphany strikes him - which is extended into the second verse.

The second verse talks about modern, city life, a crowd of people hurrying to destinations unknown for purposes that ultimately elude them; going to work on the bus packed like a can of sardine; and marriage where there is no more love between the couple who stay together for the kids. Is this the true meaning of life, the speaker asks. He tells you of his wish to go back in time to a purer place to find himself, to escape from the modern banality of day-to-day life in an endlessly bustling and hustling city, and he also tells you not to tell him that he's day-dreaming (maybe because such a place, a sort of utopia of sorts, doesn't exist) or that it's all wishful thinking on his part, perhaps because he's happy revelling in his epiphany.

And maybe that explains why the melody is so upbeat. He has an exclusive, almost sacred knowledge that no one else has; he understands that there's more to life than emerging first in the jam-packed rat race, and so he's contented simply sitting under his roof or wallowing under his blankets on a rainy day, listening to raindrops splashing against his window. Maybe it's the small simplicities of life that inject meaning into the things that we do to survive, that ejects you from the sphere of mere existence into that of living, because the speaker makes it clear with the rhetorical question in the second verse ("Is this the real meaning of life?") that he doesn't buy any of the shit that urbanity tries to feed him.

And so he attains something that resembles a state of nirvana and enlightenment and thus he's contented.

This song is a requisite K-Box song for me and the first time I heard it was on Jay Chou's The One concert CD (he gave it a Spanish flavour and changed [I know there is a more technical word for it but sorry MEP teachers I don't remember anything you guys tried to teach me] the key to a minor one) and I even took out the CD inlay to look at the lyrics for you can never make out what Jielun is singing; but all this time I've never really looked at the lyrics beyond what it says. Now that I have, it's even better than I'd initially thought.

What is Fight Club about

Essentially (to me) it's about the lack of human warmth and hating what you can't have and infusing life with sharp dichotomies that wake you up to how banal your life really is. It's about white-collared workers who are disillusioned with their jobs and their lifestyles, who finally begin to feel through extreme violence. The physical injuries mirror their emotional ones and they see their scarred faces, half-falling apart, and they get it. And it's about how nobody cares at all about you until you're almost dead, how hypocritical such pseudo-concern is, how we don't have any time for those around us, how the efforts we make always fall short of what could've been. Cancer support groups monopolising the market on human warmth. Nihilism as a way of life. It's amazing.

What is England, England about?

More than A Level Lit Paper 4, all that talk about utopia and its unattainable nature. It's about fabrication and farce and camp, our relationship with history and how that shapes who we are today, the way nature has been superceded by human arrogance, old traditions paving way for new liberties founded upon a world driven by pure animalistic market instincts. The heart and humanity giving way to the moolah, or the moolah driving out, annexing the heart and humanity. At the heart of the political, social commentary is a character sketch of a woman so real that she seems to be you, the reader; the story of her failed aspiration towards a personal utopia, profound ruminations on the nature of humanity that strike you as the ultimate truth, how you falsely grow up expecting life to be wonderful when you get to the state of being "older" and how life eventually does nothing but disappoint.

And I'm reading Invisible Monsters right now and it's almost as brilliant as Fight Club, because "the person you love and the person that loves you is never, ever the same person" and because "What I need to do is to fuck up so bad I can't save myself", because I do feel this way, almost like I'm imbued with a strange inclination that leads me towards the path of ultimate self-destruction. I want to fall so badly and break every single bone in my body, tear down this fucked up image of pretend happiness and expose myself for who I really am, saunter down the road to self-destruction and stop and smell rotting roses along the way, and not give a damn at all about the consequences of my actions. And I can't explain this, why I keep feeling this way, the urge to be reckless and not give a damn, to break out of this scene and its filthy banality, flip the finger to the establishment and tell everyone involved, I DON'T GIVE A FUCK.

Would it make me feel better? I don't know. Things have been absolutely fucked up as of late and my only reprieve is Literature.

And I think I can finally honestly say that I genuinely, from the bottom of the heart, hate everything with vehemence and passion.

before sunrise // before sunset


Previously:
- - Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2017
I'm moving. - Sunday, Jul. 11, 2010
In all honesty - Tuesday, Jul. 06, 2010
What I want for my birthday... - Sunday, Jul. 04, 2010
On Roger's behalf. - Friday, Jul. 02, 2010