Monthly Archives: January 2010

Oh my fuck

Remember how I was all like I can’t stop lis­ten­ing to Love and Greed, and it’s not even the best song on the album? But I nev­er men­tioned the best song on the album, which is Violet’s Constellations, here:

So Darren sent me this e‑mail today:

from: Darren
to: Jeff
sub­ject: i don’t real­ly know

he says whereeeeee where are you­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­uu he says where are you goooooo-annnnnn!!!!!!!!!!

sheet

I’m gonna go see Magneta Lane with Jeff on Feb. 12 ion toron­to
COME COME COME!!

CF a lit­tle lat­er? I’m wait­ing for some guy to release some shares online

And the sub­ject + first line are the lyrics in the best part of Violet’s Constellations in the last verse, when Lexi is singing as the key­board kicks in again.

This is how in tune I am with Darren.

And then news of them IN CONCERT, when I had to miss the Blonde Redhead con­cert in Toronto last time to take part in Pat and Jen’s wed­ding rehearsal. I’ll def­i­nite­ly be tak­ing the day off to join them this time around. Maybe vis­it my dad too, since that’s his birth­day.

(Isn’t it insane that out of 2384 posts I have right now, I can remem­ber the entries for these spe­cif­ic events?)

I'm the hero of the story

(This first. Listen to the clar­i­ty of the low­er octave notes that Regina adds in waves and waves at the end of the cho­rus; you can tell it’s a qual­i­ty grand piano just from how those notes res­onate — an upright would sound much mud­di­er at the low end. This is the song that plays on day (408) and it’s fuck­ing per­fect. Also, title from the lyrics.1)

It would appear that some­one made a movie of my last rela­tion­ship, and (500) Days of Summer is to #8 as Eternal Sunshine was to #4. The inter­est­ing part is that it was released ear­ly last year, dur­ing the rela­tion­ship, and I won­der if it would have changed any­thing on my end, had I seen it then. And if she saw it now, would she under­stand things from my per­spec­tive? Or does she under­stand already? And if oth­er peo­ple saw it, would they under­stand how one could unwit­ting­ly get their hopes up when things are so clear from the begin­ning?

I’m so glad Marc Webb, the direc­tor, treat­ed the mate­r­i­al with such grace. You can tell it was based on expe­ri­ence because the ten­der moments come from a real place (co-writer Scott Neustadter admit­ted Summer was based on a girl who “returned his kiss­es but not his ardor”). In an inter­view, Joseph Gordon-Levitt said, “I’ve had my heart bro­ken before. Truly, tru­ly bro­ken. But when I look back at me in my heart­bro­ken phase, it’s pret­ty hilar­i­ous, because it felt so much more extreme than it real­ly was. One of the things I love about (500) Days of Summer is that it does­n’t make light of what we go through in romances [empha­sis mine], but it is hon­est about it and shows it for what it is, which is often pro­found­ly fun­ny”, and I com­plete­ly agree. I also appre­ci­ate the fact that they don’t vil­lainize Summer because she nev­er takes advan­tage of Tom2, and at the same time, it does­n’t make the ago­niz­ing days he goes through any less sig­nif­i­cant or dif­fi­cult. In a pro­found way, it brings jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to every­thing I was (or am) going through. I sup­pose I’m just wait­ing for the punch­line.

Hah.

Watching it has left me feel­ing emo­tion­al­ly dev­as­tat­ed late­ly, almost as if I’ve regressed, and lost months of progress. Perhaps it’s because see­ing it was like see­ing her again, reliv­ing the entire thing from day one, from when we had met in the office. Like a recov­er­ing alco­holic falling off the wag­on and tak­ing his first sip in 5 years. That does­n’t mean I don’t appre­ci­ate the mes­sage, and as well as the rec­om­men­da­tion to watch the movie from Darren.

Even though I’ve tried to com­plete­ly for­get and move on, I’ve come to learn it’s not that easy. It’s almost as if you have to accept the all the mem­o­ries, both good and bad, as much as you accept your own qual­i­ties and flaws.

The days, months, years you spend with someone significant will inevitably change and shape you. To deny them is to deny yourself.

I found it fas­ci­nat­ing to trace the plot devel­op­ments to parts of my own sto­ry. The entries I’ve writ­ten over the last two years echo the sen­ti­ments so strik­ing­ly in dia­logue, songs, and voice-overs.


Things in block­quotes are either nar­ra­tor voice-over or direc­tors notes. I list­ed the events lin­ear­ly too (even though the film is pre­sent­ed in non-lin­ear fash­ion) for the sake of clar­i­ty. It’s also inter­est­ing to see how the cal­en­dar title cards change back­grounds, from bright and sun­ny, to red and sim­mer­ing, to grey and bleak.

(1)

This is a sto­ry of boy meets girl. The boy, Tom Hansen, of Margate, New Jersey, grew up believ­ing that he’d nev­er tru­ly be hap­py until the day he met “the one”.

From my entry The Penultimate Letter — “My whole life, I looked for some­one like you. Someone who was capa­ble of rais­ing me to my poten­tial, some­one who was wor­thy of the love I have to offer. But even then, I nev­er knew I was capa­ble of a love that res­onat­ed so deeply in my per­son.”

Continue read­ing “I’m the hero of the sto­ry”…

  1. Or is it? []
  2. Ironically, the gen­der roles are reversed, and it’s Tom’s date who’s the voice of rea­son here. []

Night Of Black Magic

Bunny

Thumbnail: Lloyd and Felicetta
Thumbnail: Patti and Chris
Thumbnail: Me and Lloyd
Thumbnail: Mike
Thumbnail: Trying on hat

Thumbnail: Dark ritual

I was invit­ed to a night of black mag­ic (as well as some tasty antipas­to), and I did­n’t know what to expect. Part of the instruc­tions were to bring a large piece of con­struc­tion paper, a white pen­cil cray­on, and a piece of paper with some­thing writ­ten on it that I want to be rid of in my life. Turns out the con­struc­tion paper was to make our hats and chains, and the pen­cil cray­on was to fash­ion said hats and chains with our pow­er sym­bols (some­thing with mean­ing to each per­son). I was also giv­en a phrase to mem­o­rize and incant dur­ing the cer­e­mo­ny.

There were glow sticks, good food1, and great peo­ple. I won’t go into details about the rit­u­al, for reveal­ing too much, as I under­stand it, is akin to telling peo­ple your birth­day wish. Needless to say, I hope to wake up to some growth down south (aka expan­sion to drilling oper­a­tions in the wildlife pre­serve) one of these days, if you catch my drift.

  1. I got to try some kind of home­made peach juice, which was a thick as glyc­erin, but very tasty. []

(499)

I know it’s late, but I’m in a jit­tery mood. I know I won’t be able to sleep until I get some­thing down, because there’s so much going through my mind. But first, take this. A gift. One that I was plan­ning on keep­ing to myself, but to do so would be an injus­tice to music and the artists.

Listen.

Just, lis­ten.

Mogwai is an extreme­ly influ­en­tial post-rock band, and like most bands in this genre they usu­al­ly pro­duce instru­men­tal music, so when Stuart sings, it demands atten­tion. And yet his voice evap­o­rates and becomes an instru­ment with which we hear our own sto­ries pulled apart with del­i­cate ten­der­ness, like boys pulling wings off flies.

There's so much happiness and sadness to be felt down the spine in seven brief minutes. The latter from the tone, the former from the beauty.

If only we could see life so sim­ply. If only we could sep­a­rate the good from the bad, the love from the heart­break. But we can’t. That’s why songs like this are com­posed, and that’s why words like bit­ter­sweet exist to help us define what can’t be explained.

It may feel like you’re con­stant­ly wait­ing for the next dawn to wash away the dust with sun­light, but at some point life ends, and life begins again.

All it takes is one day.