Posts tagged with "music"

so I had to go out and find love of another kind

All I tend to do nowa­days is tin­ker on the gui­tar or uke. It’s nice to have projects, to be able to exper­i­ment and explore and scream. Music is such a won­der­ful medi­um.

And the small rit­u­als1 — mois­tur­iz­ing cal­lous­es before bed, fil­ing nails, tun­ing, clean­ing, adjust­ing the action — always bring a com­fort­ing famil­iar­i­ty when every­thing is per­fect. Not to men­tion that won­der­ful­ly juicy feel­ing when hit­ting cer­tain chords just right.

Larissa

 

Ever since I left my Tai Chi stu­dio, I’ve been look­ing for a hob­by to throw myself into. Something just as com­plex and slow to mas­ter. It’s nice to feel like I’m improv­ing myself some­how, and the best part is I don’t need a part­ner or a sub­ject or any­one else.

  1. Ironic, me being a Taoist. []

Pendulum — The Island

I’ve always main­tained that a per­son isn’t alive if their heart does­n’t pound out of their chest when lis­ten­ing to The Island by Pendulum1.

It’s a grad­ual build-up, most of Pt. 1 Dawn being the devel­op­ment until Pt. 2 Dusk hits (at about the 5:20 mark in the video) and the beats real­ly kick in. Then it’s just waves and waves wash­ing over my body like small orgasms and every hair stands on end.

It’s mes­mer­iz­ing to lit­er­al­ly see how this music makes me feel, as the rip­ples of goose­bumps crest and sub­side. I can trace the paths of shiv­ers across my skin; some last longer, though they may not be as strong, while oth­ers come and go quick­ly, my body unable to sus­tain the cli­max.

This is the only song that has this kind of effect on me. There are plen­ty of oth­er tracks that give me goose­bumps, but none of them do it so many times or with such inten­si­ty. By far the strongest peak is dur­ing the bridge at 7:10, when every­thing sub­sides to the organ, and it’s like you’re being bathed in the warm light of a sun­rise.

  1. To get the full effect, you def­i­nite­ly need head­phones. Otherwise, it should be loud enough to war­rant a noise-com­plaint by your neigh­bours down the street. []

gotta go on

This is my cur­rent anthem. T‑Dot rep­re­sent.

Sometimes I won­der if I only love Toronto because of the peo­ple. There are always things to do and friends to vis­it, and it feels like my home­town. I hate the dri­ving, I hate all the cops down­town, I hate the fact that it takes me at least half an hour to get any­where, but I always look for­ward to going back.

baby sun conure

Baby sun conure. This lit­tle guy was just start­ing to grow feath­ers, and kept in an incu­ba­tor.

The iso­la­tion was nice, but it got to the point where ____ would say he was proud of me just for hav­ing lunch with some­one. Now I find myself going out more and more and it’s a refresh­ing change of pace. Not that I felt like I was uncom­fort­able being home alone; more like the urge to be out over­took me, even if that meant I was still alone among oth­ers.

I won­der if my her­mitage was just an extend­ed stretch of time I need­ed to recharge after my trip to Europe. Or maybe it was know­ing that the next stretch of time until the sum­mer was going to be busy.

This time it does­n’t feel like a tran­si­tion peri­od, because I know it won’t last. I’ll even­tu­al­ly go back to extend­ed time alone, and I’ll for­ev­er be in the flux of socia­bil­i­ty and soli­tude, win­ter and sum­mer. The only thing that’s con­stant is hap­pi­ness. Sure, there are flash­es of mis­for­tune, but they’re fleet­ing, con­tained, and just a part of day-to-day life, noth­ing out of the ordi­nary. Maybe this is why I’ve been find­ing it hard to write. I’ve always been fueled by suf­fer­ing in some way or anoth­er, but all that’s left now is this con­tent­ment.

One measures a circle, beginning anywhere

Been liv­ing on too much sin and not enough sleep, though most­ly it’s in the form of calo­ries and sug­ar. Thank god I have an Asian metab­o­lism.

Things are hap­pen­ing so quick­ly around me. Chris is get­ting seri­ous with his girl. Pat and Jen had their first baby, a boy named Kyden. ____’s get­ting mar­ried in April. (What? Yeah. What? Yeah.) Funny how I’m start­ing to feel like the one who’s all set­tled.

It makes me fan­tas­ti­cal­ly proud to say that I’ll be assum­ing best-man respon­si­bil­i­ties, though I still asked ____ who he was going appoint cause I nev­er feel like I can take any­thing in our friend­ship for grant­ed. His anger at my hav­ing asked was prob­a­bly the warmest ges­ture I’ve had in a while. That means with the bach­e­lor par­ty, the wed­ding, and anoth­er wed­ding I’ve to film, I’ll be dri­ving to Toronto three times between now and spring.

I’ve already lost ____ to an extent, as he’s only had about two months to plan his wed­ding, and he’s been busy with such. But even though our phone calls were my main form of con­tact with the out­side world, I haven’t noticed their absence, or as much as I thought I would at least. I think I’m get­ting used to being so out-of-touch with peo­ple. There’s so much ful­fill­ment one can find in a book or a movie or an instru­ment, let alone the vast­ness of the inter­net.

One of my ven­tures was mak­ing a tri­al World of Warcraft account1, just so I could try being social at a dis­tance, but I still could­n’t both­er inter­act­ing with oth­er peo­ple. And since the whole point of pay­ing a month­ly fee for an MMORPG is to have that kind of inter­ac­tion, I stopped when I maxed out at lev­el 202 on the third day. Good thing too, because it was the only thing I did for those three days.

I used to feel so guilty about being alone, think­ing I should be tak­ing advan­tage of some oppor­tu­ni­ty to be social. Then I real­ized that if I ever got too uncom­fort­able and lone­ly, I’d get up and do some­thing about it. I’m too hap­py and too com­fort­able here right now. I think that’s why I can’t tell if this is where I’m going, or where I already am.

  1. Which I’d pre­vi­ous­ly vowed nev­er to play, know­ing my addic­tive nature to any char­ac­ter-build­ing games, and WoWs nev­er-end­ing game­play. []
  2. The max lev­el for tri­al accounts. []

Larissa — Takamine F370SS

I sup­pose I should make a for­mal intro­duc­tion.

My dad knew I was look­ing for a gui­tar so I could start teach­ing myself, and his co-work­er’s daugh­ter hap­pened to be sell­ing hers. I decid­ed not to buy it cause I had no idea what it was, not to men­tion the fact that I’m noto­ri­ous­ly picky about these kinds of things. He bought me the gui­tar any­way (using my birth­day as an excuse), and I drove to Toronto to pick it up the first chance I had when I got back from Europe.

I asked Steve to do a demo of the gui­tar because his skills can real­ly show it off.

Takamine F370SS: guitar front

Takamine F370SS sol­id wood acoustic dread­nought.

It turns out the gui­tar is absolute­ly gor­geous, with sol­id spruce on top and sol­id koa on the back and sides. And being hand­made in Japan in 1999 — the only year this mod­el was in pro­duc­tion — makes it an instru­ment that will nev­er be replaced. An heir­loom I’ll pass down to my chil­dren if I ever have any.

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