the land of what will never be
Don’t wish. Don’t start.
Wishing only wounds the heart.
Archive for tag Playlist
at odd hours
It’s a terrible thing, not being able to sleep. Tonight is the second night I’ve woken up around 2 am in a semi-panic, not knowing where I was or how soon I had to get to work. And I don’t know what’s worse, the initial disorientation, or the coming to terms with hard reality.
Last night, I lay awake for a good hour and a half, staring up at the ceiling, twisting and turning and trying to find some position where I was comfortable, and not all tense and taut. Eventually, I ended up listening to my iPod, hoping that the songs would put me to sleep.
- Sigur Rós “Saeglópur”
I guess it’s fitting that this means “lost at sea” in Icelandic, as that kind of describes how I feel these days. It’s been over a week since I went to the Sigur Rós concert at Copley Hall and I’m glad I went. I’ve come to the realization that no matter what I lose (whether imagined or real), I’ll always have the music. It took me back to my days as a 3rd year med student wandering the streets of Chicago with no purpose. That year, Sigur Rós came out with their untitled album—(), sometimes referred to as the Bracket album, and on a whim I bought a ticket and checked them out. It was kind of a surreal, almost religious experience. Sigur Rós also makes me think of that winter I spent wandering the Central Coast by myself.
- Toad the Wet Sprocket “Crowing”
This song always struck me as being about a relationship that failed to happen, because the guy was too broken and shattered to ever show his true feelings. Then again I may be projecting, and it’s kind of funny how I find myself in the same situations over and over and over and over again. But it’s too damn late, and I give up, and it will be yet another long time before I ever think about changing my mind.
- Toad the Wet Sprocket “Windmills”
The allusion to Don Quixote is actually pretty explicit since the album this song comes from is entitled “Dulcinea.” I think I’ve come to internalize too much of Quixote—always finding myself enmeshed in some irreal world while real events passed me by. And then there’s that line from “The Impossible Dream”, to love, pure and chaste from a far, as I’ve doomed myself to, quite possibly for the rest of my life. For some reason, this song also makes me think about the Altamont Pass in Northern Cali, and about going home to L.A.
- Death Cab for Cutie “Title and Registration”
This song has sat on my iPod for quite some time, and I’m sure I’ve heard it a few times before, but I never really paid attention to the song lyrics until last month, when I made my pointless drive around eastern San Diego County. This song came up as I made the last few winding turns right before the 76 meets up with the 79 by Lake Henshaw, and the last stanza really grabbed me:
There’s no blame for how our love did slowly fade
And now that it’s gone it’s like it wasn’t there at all
And here I rest where disappointment and regret collide
Lying awake at night
And I’m forced to think about all the times I’ve failed to say how I’ve felt, all the times that fell apart and turned to ash, and somehow, remarkably, I was able to drift off to sleep.
does it make sense to mourn what never was?
Since you and I never came to be…
said it was the only solution
Sometimes I try to do things and it just doesn’t work out the way I wanted to.
I get real frustrated and I try hard to do it and I take my time and it doesn’t work out the way I wanted to.
It’s like I concentrate real hard and it doesn’t work out
Everything I do and everything I try never turns out
It’s like I need time to figure these things out
she leaves with someone you don't know
I’m a sucker for these song about unrequited love and failed relationships, failed attempts at connecting. I don’t remember when I first heard this song, I just remember it was while the sun was shining down upon me as i drove south on the I-15 somewhere between Corona and Temecula, a lot happier than I am right now.
And it starts…
sometime around midnight
or at least that’s when
you lose yourself
for a minute or two
As you stand…
under the barlights
and the band plays some song
about forgetting yourself for a while
and the piano’s this melancholy soundcheck
to her smile
And that white dress she’s wearing
you haven’t seen her
for a while
But you know…
that she’s watching
She’s laughing, she’s turning
she’s holding her tonic like a cross
The room suddenly spinning
she walks up and asks how you are
so you can smell her perfume
you can see her lying naked in your arms
And so there’s a change…
in your emotions
and all of these memories come rushing
like feral waves to your mind
of the curl of your bodies
like two perfect circles entwined
and you feel hopeless, and homeless
and lost in the haze
of the wine
And she leaves…
with someone you don’t know
but she makes sure you saw her
she looks right at you and bolts
As she walks out the door
your blood boiling
your stomach in ropes
and when your friends say what is it
you look like you’ve seen a ghost
And you walk…
under the streetlights
and you’re too drunk to notice
that everyone is staring at you
and you just don’t care what you look like
the world is falling
around you
You just have to see her
You just have to see her
You just have to see her
You just have to see her
You just have to see her
and you know that she’ll break you
in two
song dedication
To a woman whom I failed to communicate how I feel about
Good Riddance
Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road
Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go
So make the best of this test, and don’t ask why
It’s not a question, but a lesson learned in time
It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right.
I hope you had the time of your life.
So take the photographs, and still frames in your mind
Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time
Tattoos of memories and dead skin on trial
For what it’s worth it was worth all the while
It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right.
I hope you had the time of your life.
It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right.
I hope you had the time of your life.
It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right.
I hope you had the time of your life.
a song I wish radiohead would play again
Blowout
In my mind and nailed into my heels
All the time killing what I feel
And everything I touch
(All wrapped up in cotton wool)
(All wrapped up and sugar coated)
Turns to stone
And everything I touch
(All wrapped up in cotton wool)
(All wrapped up and sugar coated)
Turns stone
I am fused just in case I blow out
I am glued just in case I crack out
Everything I touch turns to stone
Everything I touch
(All wrapped up in cotton wool)
(All wrapped up and sugar coated)
Turns to stone
don't follow me/i'm lost at sea: a status update
- Brand New “Millstone”: a punk rock retelling of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
I used to be such a burning example.
I used to be so original.
I used to care, I was being cared for.
Made sure I showed it to those that I love.
I used to sleep without a single stir,
‘cause I was about my father’s work.
Well take me out tonight.
This ship of fools I’m on will sink.
A millstone around my neck.
If you’d be my breath, there’s nothing I wouldn’t give.
I used to pray like God was listening.
I used to make my parents proud.
I was the glue that kept my friends together.
Now they don’t talk, and we don’t go out.
I used to know the name of every person I’d kissed.
Now I made this bed and I can’t fall asleep in it.
Well take me out tonight.
This ship of fools I’m on will sink.
A millstone around my neck.
If you’d be my breath, there’s nothing I wouldn’t give.
Throw me that lifeline.
This ship of fools I’m on will sink.
A millstone around my neck.
If you’d be my breath, there’s nothing I wouldn’t give.
I never hit the brakes,
there’s no time to save him.
He just ran out in the street.
Anybody know his name?
I think I recognize him.
Sure it’s him?
He sure as hell paid for that mistake.
So take me out tonight.
This ship of fools I’m on will sink.
A millstone around my neck.
If you’d be my breath, there’s nothing I wouldn’t give.
To save my life tonight.
This ship of fools I’m on will sink
A millstone around my neck
If you’d be my breath, there’s nothing I wouldn’t give.
- Nine Inch Nails “Everyday is Exactly the Same”, the industrial rock take on the Myth of Sisyphus
I believe I can see the future,
‘cause I repeat the same routine.
I think I used to have a purpose,
but then again
that might have been a dream.
I think I used to have a voice.
Now I never make a sound.
I just do what I’ve been told.
I really don’t want them to come around.
Oh, no.
Every day is exactly the same.
Every day is exactly the same.
There is no love here and there is no pain.
Every day is exactly the same.
I can feel their eyes are watching
in case I lose myself again.
Sometimes I think I’m happy here.
Sometimes, yet I still pretend.
Every day is exactly the same.
Every day is exactly the same.
There is no love here and there is no pain.
Every day is exactly the same.
I’m writing on a little piece of paper.
I’m hoping someday you might find…
I’m still inside here.
A little bit comes bleeding through.
I wish this could have been any other way.
But I just don’t know, I don’t know what else I can do.
Every day is exactly the same.
Every day is exactly the same.
There is no love here and there is no pain.
Every day is exactly the same.
- N.E.R.D. “Sooner or Later” the R&B finale, explicating Murphy’s Law, and the typical course of what happens whenever I find myself infatuated with someone.
Sooner or later it all comes crashing down (crashing down),
crashing down (crashing down)
when everyone’s around.
I bet you would’ve paid up all your cash down (your cash down)
and not make a sound (to make a sound)
but everyone knows now.
So your sad
about the moment
you lost your love (damn),
you couldn’t see her leaving. (You were gay.)
And that sucks, don’t it,
‘cause God yanked the rug,
and holding your heart will not help you breathe.
Sooner or later it all comes crashing down (crashing down),
crashing down (crashing down),
when everyone’s around.
I bet you would’ve paid up all your cash down (your cash down)
and not make a sound (to make a sound)
but everyone knows now.
It all comes crashing…
down…
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
So your sad,
and you should own it
that you fucked up (damn)
you thought that you were the team. (You were gay.)
And now your opponent,
he wears your gloves.
A nightmare just ate up your dreams.
Sooner or later it all comes crashing down (crashing down),
crashing down (crashing down),
when everyone’s around.
I bet you would’ve paid up all your cash down (your cash down)
and not make a sound (to make a sound)
Everyone knows now.
It all comes crashing…
down…
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
So your sad,
Could have had so much done.
You blew it off.
Your chances passing you by. (You were gay.)
Time waits for no one,
and it costs for a loss.
A cosmic joke.
Should you laugh or cry?
Sooner or later it all comes crashing down (crashing down),
crashing down (crashing down)
when everyone’s around.
I bet you would’ve paid up all your cash down (your cash down)
and not make a sound (to make a sound)
but everyone knows now.
it all comes crashing…
down…
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
down…
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
the the past comes bubbling up to the present
Apparently one of my neighbors is either reminiscing about the past, or feeling heartbroken, or both, because he/she was playing this song from TLC from yesteryear:
I never asked for this feeling.
I never thought I would fall.
I never knew how I felt
‘til the day you were gone.
I was lost.
I never asked for red roses.
I wasn’t looking for love.
Somehow I let my emotions take hold
and guess what, all at once
I’m in love.
Oh, I miss you so much.
I long for your love.
It scares me
‘cause my heart gets so weak
that I can’t even breathe.
How can you take things so easily?
Baby, why aren’t you missing me?
Why did I act like you mattered?
It was silly of me to believe
that if I just opened my heart
things would come naturally.
Joke’s on me.
I did not ask for love letters,
so why did you give them to me?
How could I let your intentions
get hold over me?
So in love,
so naive.
Oh, baby.
Oh, I miss you so much.
I long for your love.
It scares me
‘cause my heart gets so weak
that I can’t even breathe.
How can you take things so easily?
Baby, why aren’t you missing me?
And, oh, how I hate what you have done.
Made me fall so deep in love.
Got no cure.
You’re the only one I want.
That I love.
Oh, baby.
Oh I miss you so much.
I long for your love.
It scares me
‘cause my heart gets so weak
that I can’t even breathe.
How can you take things so easily?
Baby, why aren’t you missing me?
Baby, why aren’t you missing me?
Baby, why aren’t you missing me?
—”I Miss You So Much” by TLC, on Fan Mail, 1999
What a way to wake up in the morning.
i'm not here, this isn't happening
An incredibly haunting piano and vocal re-interpretation of Radiohead, entitled “How to Disappear Completely”, found on Kid A
That there, that’s not me
I go, where I please
I walk through walls
I float down the Liffey
I’m not here
This isn’t happening
I’m not here
I’m not here
In a little while
I’ll be gone
The moment’s already passed
Yeah it’s gone
I’m not here
This isn’t happening
I’m not here
I’m not here
Strobe lights and blown speakers
Fireworks and hurricanes
I’m not here
This isn’t happening
I’m not here
I’m not here
brain on fire
OK, so maybe it was a little counter-productive to only sleep for four hours last night. I felt compelled to finish my blog entry, even though the ending of it was probably too rushed, and a little forced. So it wasn’t until 2 am that I finally surrendered and went to bed. Unfortunately, I had to wake up at 6 am today. (It’s going to be even worse tomorrow.)
I had forgotten about the band Embrace. I remember having a bunch of their tracks, but I guess they fell off my iPod playlist. This is one of my favorite tracks of theirs:
“Ashes” by Embrace
Now watch me rise up and leave all the ashes you made out of me
When you said that we were wrong, life goes on, just look how long I’ve agreed
“Nature’s Law” by Embrace
I tried to fight the feeling, the feeling took me down.
I struggled and I lost the day you knocked me out.
Now everything’s got meaning, and meanings bring me down.
I’m watching as a screening of my life plays out.
Every day I fight these feelings.
For your sake I will hide the real thing.
You can run all your life, all mine I will chase….
You should never fight your feelings
when your very bones believe them.
You should never fight your feelings.
You have to follow nature’s law.
I’ll live with never knowing, if knowing’s gonna change.
I’ll stop the feeling growing, I will stay away.
Like a broken record stuck before a song,
a million beginnings, none of them the one.
Every day I fight these feelings.
For your sake I will hide the real thing.
You can run all your life, all mine I will chase….
You should never fight your feelings
when your very bones believe them.
You should never fight your feelings.
You have to follow nature’s law.
I wrote her letters and tried to send them.
In a bottle I placed my hope.
An S.O.S. full of good intentions.
Sinking, will you give it to me? Don’t make me wait.
You build me up, knocked me down,
but I will stand my ground
and guide this light that I’ve found.
You should never fight your feelings
when your very bones believe them.
If you let them show, you’ll keep them.
I know you hurt, but soon you’ll rise again, again, again….
You should never fight your feelings
when your very bones believe them.
You should never fight your feelings.
You have to follow nature’s law.
“Target” by Embrace
Out of sight behind these eyes you’ll stay
Where everything is possible
It’s beautiful
You’re the first and the last time that I’ll ever try
so dry your eyes, I’ll say goodbye, I say goodbye….
This just goes to show that I have to re-sync my iPod to my computer more often than I do. Who knows what other cool songs I’m missing out on?
easier said than done/15 years/too little, too late
I seem to be stuck in a time warp.
Andrea Frierson as the Goddess Erzulie, singing “Human Heart” from the musical “Once on This Island”
This particular musical has arrested my imagination. It happens to be a rendition of “The Little Mermaid” complete with the original turning-into-foam ending a la Hans Christian Andersen, with some geopolitics and post-colonialism added into the mix.
There is some kind of poetic justice that this is not a happily-ever-after story.
N played the leading role her senior year in high school while I was a freshman in college, and maybe in some ways, that was the beginning of the end.
It so happened that, like many college freshmen, I found myself sucked into the vortex known as identity politics, and came away with a deeper understanding of where I fit in terms of the inexorable forces of history. It is no accident that my parents landed upon these distant shores. Their homeland has the ambiguous distinction of being one of the few actual colonies of the United States. The Filipino Diaspora was one of the initial symptoms of global capitalism, resulting in an archetypal scenario played and replayed in all the developing countries of the world.
Locked away and freeze dried into this mix is the so-called “colonial mentality”, which this musical somehow gives voice to, interspersed within the over-arching love story, coupled to the fantastic aboriginal mysticism.
The book My Love, My Love upon which “Once on This Island” is based has an entire vivid scene evoking the ritual of trance. It wasn’t until I took a Southeast Asian Studies class that I realized where our culture came from. Until then, it never occurred to me that the Philippines has never existed in a vacuum. It is no accident that Malaysians and Indonesians share many of the same morphological characteristics that my relatives and I do. It is no coincidence that the Malayan tongue and the multifarious tongues of Indonesia have significant similarity to Tagalog, Ilocano, and Cebuano. My ancestors roamed the sometimes tempestuous waves of the Indian Ocean and of the great Pacific, reaching as far west as Madagascar and as far east as Easter Island (and possibly beyond)
And trance was a key part of Southeast Asian cultures. The Islamic tribes of Mindanao in the south of the Philippines have incorporated much of the indigenous animism into their faith, just as the Christian tribes of the Visayas and of Luzon have imbued the Catholic saints with animistic powers. The ritual dance of Singkil made a lot more sense amidst this context. It wasn’t just something pretty and complicated that the Bayanihan Dance Troupe fabricated to wow the audience. There was an entire story hiding in there, telling of Prince Bantugan and Princess Gandinggan. The bamboo poles weren’t just props. They were instruments, to keep time along with the drums and the gongs and the magical kulintang, which were the keys that opened the portal to the trance state, and to the other worlds.
Everything took on a different sheen when I actually went to the Philippines in 1995. Songs from this musical kept playing in my head as I found myself on Borocay, the ultimate tourist trap. On the road from Caticlan to the boat launch, we came across Ati who were getting ready for the upcoming Ati-Atihan, a festival involving trance and ritual, supposedly commemorating the first meeting of the Ati and of the Malay of Borneo. “We Dance” immediately makes me think of the Philippines—with the formation of the Bayanihan Dance Troupe, Filipinos are perhaps known world-wide as dancers. It seems like every Filipino child’s first ambition is to become an actor, a singer, or a dancer, or perhaps all three, and I still wonder about that to this day, and why does no one want to become a bench researcher, or a theoritician, or a social scientist?
It all culminated when my sister adapted the story *to* the Philippines, with the Pearls of the Orient replacing the French Antilles, and the Spanish (and the Americans) replacing the French, all translated into Tagalog.
Oddly, Bn. somehow found a children’s production of “Once on This Island” in San Jose that one year, and A. came with us. The feminist issues of the Little Mermaid, and the post-colonial issues raised by the adaptation to the French Antilles can generate a lot of discussion. Interestingly, the composers for “Once on This Island”—Lynn Ahearn and Stephen Flaherty—later together penned the score for the non-Disney animated film “Anastasia”. This also, in many ways, marked the beginning of the end (although how does something end when it didn’t ever actually begin?)
But like many of the blog posts over the past few weeks, this is another piece of errata that has somehow followed me all these days, randomly popping up from time to time, and now probably sitting somewhere on my iPod.
I keep imagining that things are a lot more solid than I think they are. I don’t know where this strange certainty comes from. Every now and again, I want to doubt it. But there is something unshakeable, unflappable, about this particular narrative. I hope that I’m right for once, and that this isn’t just some more of the same misleading portentousness that I’ve been feeding myself over the past 15 years from time to time.
And speaking of time, it seems that it is continuously running out. Eventually, my path will be determined by sheer attrition. (Although the 10 of cups popped up twice, promising otherwise.)
When I die all alone, I won’t have anyone to blame but myself.
reminiscing/high school days
Whenever I hear this song, I can still feel those cold autumn early mornings after pulling an all-nighter, writing an English paper or a History paper, fully saturated with caffeine (a total of 230 mg would usually tide me over), with no one but Sluggo on KROQ to keep me company.
“Stay (Far Away, So Close)” by U2