laugh life in the face and then you cry.
written: 9:09 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2005

And I took one look at the song title in SLS lecture and I thought Jielun was going to try and imitate Chopin but of course he didn't; to do so would spell the end of his career, and so he did his own thing, the Jay Chou style, and you know what, I don't wanna marry the man, I wanna marry the music. It's brilliant. I can't fathom how he never disappoints and how he always lives up to expectation. Sure, he has a duet chucked somewhere in his sixth album with Nan Quan Mama's new girly member Lara whom I can't stand, but I'll take the Many good with the Minute bad, because the guitars, oh god the classical guitar as accompaniment is so pretty that it breaks your heart, and the piano, and it's a weak rip from the radio but you get over the shoddy quality of the MP3 and let the quality of the music shine through the murk.

I downloaded his song in SLS lecture and kept myself busy in SLS lecture surfing jay-chou.net and I found the lyrics and I came home and the first thing I did was to listen to the song and I played it over and over like what I always do when I get my hands on his first single before the release of his entire album. And people don't really get this strange anomaly, my fanaticism over his music, for he doesn't fit in with all the other shit I listen to; style-wise, he's on the other end of the rock 'n' roll spectrum (I don't listen to rock 'n' roll per se, but putting the phrase in there sounded better than simply sticking the word 'rock' into the sentence. Try it in your head and you'll see what I mean if you're smart), or rather he doesn't register at all on the rock 'n' roll spectrum, but quality music is quality music, a musical genius by any other name is still a musical genius, and he's a musical genius and he's the pride and joy of the Chinese race and no I don't care how chauvinistic that sounds because you know as well as I that it's the truth. Maybe he's formulaic but he can only be formulaic to the shallow listener. He grows with each and every album; listen to his albums chronologically and the maturity of his style and his direction is so obvious that I don't understand how anyone can say that his songs "all sound the same". And to be quite honest my least favourite album of his is his break-through album "Fantasy". I like it, of course; I like every single thing he's ever recorded. It's just that it pales in comparison to his more recent efforts, Qi Li Xiang is definitely superior, Ye Hui Mei as well, and Ba Du Kong Jian blew it out of the water the second it was released. And I will always have a soft spot for his debut album because it's his debut and because my favourite song of his of all time is in that CD (the last track) and because you can hear the potential of greatness in every single song. And I tend to like the non-radio hits better than the radio-hits, the mid-tempo songs better than the ballads, and as a general rule I like songs written in the minor key more than songs written in the major key (for some songs though, like Jie Kou, I can't really tell). Songs with a palpable Chinese flavour like Long Quan and Shuang Dao and Dong Feng Po have my immediate stamp of approval; songs that are non-generic like Nocturne just blow my mind.

I don't know and care about anyone else but he takes me by surprise and that's enough for me.

**

I find it quite stupid when you carry a novel around and people ask you, "What's this book about?" Sometimes I don't quite know what to say in reply to such a stupidly simplistic question. On the one hand, your first instinct is to give a brief overview of the plot as stated in the blurb; but on the other hand, you stop yourself and you think, "But is that what the book is really about?"

Like England, England. A prima facie answer to that question? It's about this entrepreneur who sets up an amusement park on the Isle of Wight that is supposed to be an imitation of England.

Like Invisible Monsters. It's about a supermodel who had half her face blown off and it's also about plastic surgery and transsexuals.

Like Flaubert's Parrot. It's about a Gustave Flaubert aficionado who embarks upon a journey to look for Flaubert's stuffed parrot, one that kept him company while writing a novel of his (sorry I'm not familiar with French literature at all, unlike Mr. Barnes who has a translation of a French novel in his body of work).

You listen to these outrageous words rolling off your tongue and you feel dissatisfied with the answer because you know that there's so much more to a novel than its mere plot, that the subtext of a novel is more fulfilling and significant than a simple narration, and that you want to go into depth and you can go into depth because you adore that novel to bits and pieces, but if you really go into a long story about themes and characters and style and technique you'd lose the other person's interest and more likely than not that person would just think you're crazy.

Which brings us back to our starting point: If they're not really interested in wanting to know what the novel is really about then why ask in the first place? The next time someone asks me such a question I'd ask in reply, "Do you really wanna know?" And I'd go into a lengthy grandmother's story about Palahniuk's disenchanted and disenfranchised characters who drift along the fringe of society, about Barnes's beautiful poetic style, about Dickens's satirical humour that successfully straddles the serious and the hilarious; or I won't even give an answer at all, and just dismiss the question with a flippant, "Just read it for yourself. It's much better than the fucked up law shit we're forced to read."

Well, that's my whole point isn't it?

I'm reading Joyce Carol Oates's "Man Crazy", a book I bought when I was 14 which was left on my bookshelf untouched for 5 years. Before I got my bookcase with the double glass doors my bookshelf was a white, open-aired (or so to speak) one from Ikea. There was no protection of my books from the wetness of the humid air and so the pages of my otherwise brand-new book are yellowed and dotted with patches of sickly brown, as if it has been invaded by a particular specie of worms that primarily feeds on paper.

I finished "Invisible Monsters" today and the ending felt a bit like a cop-out, but I suppose it's not exactly reasonable for me to expect the narrator to continue living her life choked with hatred and to continue free-falling into and beyond the abyss of self-destruction.

Just because the ending doesn't agree with the words that I could relate to, doesn't mean the ending is crap. It simply means that I don't feel like putting aside my troubled mess to see the novel holistically, is all.

Because it's a Chuck Palahniuk novel and because it's a Chuck Palahniuk novel the protagonist is fucked up and the idea of committing the biggest mistake you'd ever make in order to start living and turn your life around, the way you hate what/the person you love and can't have and how the only way out is to destroy it/him, such leftist and anti-social notions, god I love it so much.

But such things remain notional always, never enacted, and I can sit in my room all day long and sigh pretentiously at the words that I read and think that I've found a kindred spirit in the novel, but when it comes down to the doing I chicken out faster than anyone can say "rebel".

In my head I'm flipping the finger in Society's shocked and indignant face; I'm screaming vulgarities into my handphone and hurling it against the wall while walking down the corridor of NUS LAW SCHOOL; I'm taking off at 9.30 a.m. on a Wednesday morning after my mom has dropped me off at school and spending the entire day everywhere else but where I'm supposed to be; I'm doing the going-up-to-a-hot-stranger-and-asking-for-his-number thing, just like old times, getting back the devil-may-give-a-fuck attitude that I lost somewhere along the miles of a comatosed state of confusion and angst; I'm not repressed anymore, finally free to do what I want and getting away with everything.

In real life I'm thinking of my unfinished Contract Misrepresentation tutorial and my heart sinks; I'm thinking of tomorrow and Contract lecture and how it's just gonna be a repeat of today, when I was more interested in reading Khai's blog than listening to I don't even know what; I'm thinking of the next three and a half years of my life and suddenly suicide doesn't seem childish or stupid or scary or even wrong anymore; I'm thinking of the rest of my life and wow, look at that knife, it looks so inviting the way it beckons with an alluring and seductive wink!; I'm thinking of my A Level grades and how I was so stupid to not look towards greener pastures for I had a first-class flight out of here and somehow I chose not to take it; I'm thinking of MY LIFE and MY OBLIGATIONS and MY DAD and how I would DISAPPOINT MY DAD if I told him that I WANT TO DROP OUT and instead of flipping the finger I'm using my fingers to rub away the tears in my eyes.

I don't know how long this is going to go on for. The more mature, logical part of me says, Stop this fucking nonsense and get over your retarded angst; sadly, the logical part of me is but small and insignificant, and so the majority wins - well, since we live in a democratic world there's no reason why my mind can't be democratic as well.

But democracy carries an excess baggage with it everywhere it goes, and that's the fact that the majority of any population is probably made up of stupid people. And this rule isn't inapplicable to my brains, my consciousness, my mind, my heart soul self whatever the fuck you wanna call it. And so the logical part of me is actually right, but because Majority Rules and Majority is Stupid I insist on being morose and moody and unhappy.

Yes, tell me the words I so need to hear: You have everything going on for you. You're enrolled in a course most people can only dream of being in. You have parents that love you, a nice roof over your head, sufficiently pretty clothes. You're not in Africa/Iraq/insert names of other war-torn, povertised countries.

Tell me the cliches all over again and I'll give you the simplest rebuttal ever: So fucking what? Excuse my high propensity to curse but at times like these, using the F-word (just typing out that phrase is enough to make me laugh and my laughter will always be laced with spite and arrogance) is the only way in which I can convey to you how preposterous your propositions are.

Try to understand this: After you're done acquiring means to meet your basic needs (check), after you've been through the A Levels and then almost one semester in university (check), after you've lived for 19 years and have gained pretty in-depth knowledge of who you are (check) and what you want (check) and who you're not (check) and what you don't want (check), you stare at your life and you realise, it paints a picture of Banality better than any artist can ever dream of doing. Oh yes, it does, the sum of its parts does not justify its whole, you have all these things and yeah yeah I know, let's move on already okay? Why harp on the obvious and "give thanks" for what you have when you don't have what you want?

And so I continue being morose and unhappy and childish and immature and dissatisfied and hateful, because what I want only exists in stories and novels and my imagination that continues to torture me with its constant reminders of how dull and dreary and pointless my life is.

Maybe it's just catharsis, maybe it's not, more likely than not I meant every single word. If you're reading this and if you (the world at large, no one specific) care enough to be worried, don't be. I don't know what to say to justify that; I was going to say, I'll save myself in due time, but on second thoughts, maybe not.

I miss writing essays so much. I don't mean writing pseudo-legal documents that I don't even bother to re-read when I get them back and get a rather okay grade for them, unlike what I constantly did in JC, re-read my GP and Lit essays and revel over how smart I am for conceiving certain phrases and sentences and whatever else; I mean real essays, essays that come clean and pure without ridiculous headings, essays that I care for, that I'm interested in, that I feel for.

Why is it that I end up hating everything that I do?

If I'd known I was going to turn out this way I would've done something to make my parents abort me.

I'm too old for this teenage angst crap. I try to justify it and make it seem more serious than trivial teenage whinings about how the world hates me and how it's me against the world and other similar stupid cliches along those lines by invoking Chuck Palahniuk and his anti-social novels and writing pretentious things like "I'm always on the fringe of society" and fuck, a semi-privileged kid can't possibly know what that means!

But the reasonable, prudent man would find Invisible Monsters abhorrent and untolerable but I found it absolutely lovely. Not just because it's so darkly hilarious (and I mean hilarious), but because it's darkly hilarious and nobody normal laughs at such things, and because the ideas he writes about are just so attractive, as if they're the only thing that can save me from myself.

And being disillusioned and the whole fringe of society thing, it's not something monopolised by the poor and under-privileged. It's a mental thing as well, an ideological thing, you're not a rebel unless you believe in it and you don't have to be broke to be a rebel.

I'm not making sense. I'm not trying to explain. I need a saviour and that saviour used to be myself but now I'm my own worst enemy.

The benefit of hindsight should come neatly packaged with a time machine to take you back and undo your mistakes.

This has gone on for quite some time. I'd say that it began during the second week of school, but a red herring was thrown my way and I thought that was the reason; a few weeks later, a couple of months later, that red herring eventually decomposed and I thought I could finally get on with this shit but little did I know that Unhappiness and Dissatisfaction operated in a domino effect. Cumulative frequency. A tornado that sweeps up everything in its trail and leaves nothing behind in its wake as it speeds along its path of destruction.

Oh, yes. The notion of self-destruction.

It has gone on for a month now and it's this and that and me and a combination of everything and how it'd still be the same if you tore everything apart, and so it's nothing, really, and it's everything and anything and all things and no thngs. Memento mori, a flower a skull an hourglass. The flower's beauty symbolises transience, the transience of life which translates into death (the skull), the transience of life which translates into death which is aided by the hands of time (the hourglass).

The point? Carpe diem.

Yes, Dead Poets Society taught you that, but oh well, this is the real world and in the real world you live to fulfill obligations and not anything else and so you continue to trudge on wishing you could stop every step of the way and walk in another direction and oh, isn't that just so depressing.

Do you get it?

I didn't think so.

**

Jay Chou fans are retarded. Someone said that "Ye Qu" is "Night Song" when translated into English. Someone corrected that glaring incidence of stupidity and said that "Ye Qu" is "nocturne" when translated into English, and that Chopin wrote "a song" called "nocturne".

First, I never knew Chopin wrote songs. Second, he wrote more than one nocturne; in fact, he wrote about 19-23 or something nocturnes, I can't remember the exact figure. And third, 'ye qu' is translated from nocturne you bunch of retarded ignoramuses.

I bitched to my mom about this and lamented over how stupid people are and she called me on it and said I was mean.

I suppose I am.

Well, bite me.

10.41 p.m.

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