Here I am, trying to get another entry down, but there’s a movie playing on OMNI.2, one of Canada’s premier multi-cultural channels. Although the programming of OMNI.2 is aimed for 22 different ethnocultural groups in 20 different languages, Saturday nights are always in Cantonese. Almost just as invariable are the romantic comedies of Hong Kong cinema that they broadcast around this time.

It makes sense of course; studies have shown that by 2017, visible minorities will top 50% in Toronto and Vancouver, with Chinese people making up over 500,000 of that percentage. Add to this the growing fascination of younger people with the Asian culture, and recent flicks from Hong Kong are the perfect way to build a strong market presence.

Unfortunately, the movies are mostly trite: a collection of predictable, saccharine love stories with little artistic intent, and the one on now is no different. I have to admit though, as simple as these movies are, they still affect me. When I see the characteristic neon building signs, homely food stalls filled with wok hey, and claustrophobically busy streets of Hong Kong again, I’m filled with a certain inexplicable romanticism.

And I can’t seem to get over it. All I want to do is go to Hong Kong again and share the experience with someone. An experience that’s heart-racingly poignant, like the adolescent memory of a first date, when you’re building up the courage to hold someone’s hand. Perhaps, like Humbert Humbert in Nabokov’s Lolita, the memory of my childhood has frozen something in me. A memory that’s beautiful.

Simply, purely, beautiful.

I admit that some movies, some scenes, some songs, some moments, still rub me the wrong way. In general this is a good thing: the harder it is to let go of something, the better the experience it was. I’m also given hope in understanding that these things will pass, as all things pass, and everything will be put in its right place. Fortunately, this is easy to accept because of the fact that I’ve already gone through a full cycle with others. Perhaps I’ve also become accustomed to some residual emotions, kept alive by the memories of the origins of lessons learned.

But all of this still doesn’t detract from the fact that some things still rub me the wrong way, as if my skin was peeled and every conjured sensation was a salt water burn. I can feel that sound in my ears, feel the prismatic dancing of light in my eyes, feel her say, “prismatic”, explaining the colour of her hair.

It’s not even the person with which I share these experiences that makes it important, it’s the experiences themselves, because they mean something. A change in my life. A change that may have not have happened otherwise.

And I realize that it’s not that I can’t let these memories go, it’s that I choose not to.

I wanted to thank you for changing my life.

Then I realized that you didn’t do anything. You were completely selfish, completely inconsiderate. I picked myself up and made the best of what you left me as. Loving you was the important part, not anything that you had ever done.

I realized that it wasn’t you who changed my life. It was the experience. It was the conscious effort to turn my life around.

It was me.

The two longest relationships I’ve ever been in, both bordering on the two-year mark, were meaningless. I learned a great deal from them, making them great experiences, but in all truth, that can be said about any of the relationships I’ve had.

My shortest relationship, which never even got into the three month range (and also happened to be with the only girl to break up with me), was the most meaningful.

And toxic.

I shouldn’t have been in that relationship, and I knew it. It was unhealthy, it was destructive, it was painful. Yet I kept going. I kept apologizing instead of accusing, I kept storming without releasing. Was I weak? Perhaps. Was I in love? More likely.

But I was scared most of all.

Scared of giving up a chance for happiness, scared of forever wondering, “what if?”. With lack of choice comes freedom from regret. It took more strength to push on, knowing that it wouldn’t last, than it would have taken to end it myself.

It wasn’t weakness. It was determination. It was an attempt at perseverance. It was an attempt at stoic resignation. I knew she was going to end it.

Because I never would.

I really have to say something about No Motiv. When I first heard them, it was in preparation of a concert I was going to when they were opening for Strung Out about four years ago. I didn’t really like their first two albums aside from a few songs. They had a distinct sound, but their lyrics, like advice from a comforting friend, didn’t quite match. This band was like those kids I never really knew in high school, who weren’t popular but had their own clique nonetheless, and spent their free time making up songs and practicing their instruments. The guys I’d sort of root for, not because their music blew me away, but because there was no one to appreciate them.

Their latest album, however, takes things in a different direction, hinted at in the album title “Daylight Breaking”. It’s darker, it’s moodier, and it’s more developed. Jeremy has clearly become more confident with his singing, and this goes hand-in-hand with the new range of sound that they’ve developed, from quiet and barren to heavy and angry. In previous albums, he sounded constricted, but now screams emotionally with controlled unrestraint. The lyrics demonstrate a new maturity, and present a logical progression from their previous work. This is the album that they were meant to write, an album that makes them musicians and not just band members.

Now, as I listen to their older material, everything clicks, and I realize that I just wasn’t ready for this music four years ago. I don’t have any music that’s quite like this; a journey through a coming-of-age that’s filled with energetic hopefulness, along with the ups and downs associated with personal growth, a sort of inspiring sadness. The lyrics bring me back to being a teenager again, when I thought people on TV were normal, and believed that I should have been going through the same dainty problems. It makes me think of what I wanted to experience a long time ago, but never had the chance.