song of the week: led zeppelin, rock n roll. catchy as classic hell.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeJkDewhTEw
see also: kashmir
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW_WLxseq0o
basically the song that led zep is most proud of. they sure don't make bands like they used to.
i find it funny that sometimes the most well-received songs are ones that the makers aren't the proudest of. for example, smoke on the water, sweet child of mine, stairway to heaven.
i hesitate to write about personal emo stuff because i don't like to be reminded of it. in fact, if i ignore it, it goes away. and i usually like to be stoic about this sort of thing. ineptly, shruggingly, stoic.
but what's the point of having a blog and not being ten kinds of emo?
went and smacked golf balls today. felt hell of good. fixing a swing isn't fun unless things click into place, and then it feels good. i actually prefer fixing this kind of thing by myself. i don't like coaches and i don't like people who give advice about technique. mainly because i'm observant enough and i know myself really well, i work from basics, i'm methodical, and i work hard. and partly because most people talk through their ass.
no. i'm too proud. but the first part is true. i really do like to fix things myself. it feels like a self-realisation journey, a mental process that leads to physical prowess through designed repetition. i like to make sense of how my body acts, i like to feel things work, forces play, limbs flow, mechanics operate. i like to feel it.
i like those moments when i realise what i'm doing wrong, and what i can do to fix it. i love those moments. it's kinda sad that sometimes the same thing creeps back in. but it's human of me, right. i mean, we'd all love to have perfect 'something', just pick up something and intuitively understand how to use it, and precisely when to use it. but that's not true in most cases. most people really do work like hell to make things look effortless. we can emulate them, but without individually grinding away at the basics and at the flaws and bad habits, we'll never be truly good, we'll never be able to apply our borrowed skills in varying scenarios.
one good thing about playing multiple sports, or being good at multiple things, is of course, stretching yourself in different ways. sometimes the same things i learn in one thing can be applied, with the necessary modifications, to allow a moderate degree of success in another thing. but the habits that develop for one thing also tend to become impediments to others. i like to leave something for awhile and come back and discover i'm still pretty good at it, but when i don't it's actually quite depressing. haha. but that's life.
"... you will be children of the most high, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. be merciful, just as your father is merciful." - i was thinking today why i don't go to church anymore. well, it's been on my mind for awhile. i mean, what kind of proper christian doesn't go to church? i love God, but i don't love church. in fact, i don't like it at all. church is to me one of the most uninspiring things that christians do. but still i wonder if i should faithfully, sheepishly (as in like a sheep, i.e. obediently), go. i want to give more. it feels like i'm asleep. not cold, just dormant.
and sometimes the thing that pops into my head is, why can't i find a girl to like that likes me? why can't things be so simple? why don't things happen the way they used to? and in the end, i find that these are uninteresting questions. i don't like to complain, and i don't think these questions are really worth reflecting on. i guess i just have less answers than questions.
school this semester has been terribly inane. i don't want to talk about it. i hope to get Bs, because i'll memorise the stuff. not terribly inspiring. my favourite part of the day is actually... reading a book for fifteen minutes before i lie down to sleep. sigh, i almost need more things to look forward to (stuff like, girls).
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Thursday, March 17, 2011
LX - reflections on a hobby
song of the week: duane allman, goin' down slow
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkFOBZRAbMU
clearly the man. his work makes me smile.
haha. think i'll talk a little bit about my guitar hobby.
you know, my favourite work pastime is to listen and trace guitar players' playing and influences. guitar music history, basically through wikipedia, interviews, fan pages. behind the music, there's a tapestry of story, musical history and collaborative interaction between the great guitar players of each age. many musical threads run together to create each guitar player and each band and each rock genre and each age. in the chaos of making music in a band different styles and aspirations meld in tempo and key and time signature and musical understanding to create a sound that both depicts and defines the players. it's wonderful.
i'm not going to talk much about guitar tone specifically. suffice to say that it... it is really wonderful. different guitars sound so different. you could tell by listening, and then understanding their technical characteristics, and then by listening to the type of songs they are used for, and then sometimes, if i'm lucky enough, by getting to play them. every man is an indiana jones of tone. it's a bit connoisseur-ey, cos you really have to know what and how to hear things sometimes when people get all excited talking about their tone. tone is a pretty sexy thing.
the second guitar that i ever bought was off an ad on luthermusic classifieds. heh, it's still there. but obviously most people use soft nowadays. anyway, it was a craftsman les paul, flamed top. don't know what it had and what it was made of, but well. can't remember too much about it, now. i think i first tried to learn november rain and fade to black on it. haha, that went alright. pretty squawky in a bad way, that one. sold it off and got an epiphone sg, also pretty squawky in a bad way. but it was an alright guitar, pretty light. should have changed the pickups, but back then i didn't know it would have made a difference. it was basically the guitar on which i learnt to play rock.
it's interesting that i didn't really buy much stuff back then. in some ways, having soft really sped up that part. i guess if you don't think about needing something then you just won't need it, which is true of a lot of things. and i guess i didn't think about things like tone and quality and feel. i just played with what i had. but it's hard to go back to being a minimalist when it comes to guitar things, at least in the sense of having less quality. having less things is not so bad, because really a good guitar and amp is basically all you need to be awesome. i could do with just those two, but i'd envision a three thousand dollar guitar and a two thousand dollar amp. i mean, i could play pretty well if i went back to the two hundred and fifty guitar and one hundred and ten amp, and i could probably feel pretty good about it and all, but i'd be cookin' with the first set.
having good stuff doesn't make up for not being able to play, and i'll be the first to say it. i'm happy with where i am, and i know where i am, going forward. i miss playing in a band. it's hard to want to improve without the band; it's much easier to stagnate. of course, improving on technique is clearly my own thing to work on. there's cycles to applied learning, but it takes time, which i find quite precious lately. i do some recording when i feel like it, but it's songs that are recorded, not guitar playing. haha. i used to think of myself exclusively as a guitarist, but usually when i record it's cos i want to sing. and i think singing has to be whatever is true; there's no bad singing if it's true. must be brave to sing.
the first really classic thing i bought was the fender stratocaster. jimi, ritchie, stevie, eric... i thought i'd save for a les paul first, but when my sg had problems i actually first got the stratocaster, cos it was cheaper than a les paul. i like it alot. it feels like i'm a part of something, a class of guitar players who mainly play the stratocaster. it's such a classy guitar. when i hold it i feel like i'm holding a real art piece. i actually think guitars are cooler than cars. i mean, you drive a car, and basically it's not important how well you drive it, long as you get from A to B without knocking the thing. it's a box with four wheels, right. a guitar, on the other hand, talks about music, and music, in the humanly pursuits of this world, is truly noble. i mean, it's not a violin, and it's not a piano, it's kinda more recent than those two, and it obviously sounds a lot ruder, but the idea is basically good: the pursuit of music.
and the guitar has been good to me for very very long. a lot of times i feel sad about things and i pick up the guitar and play until i feel sleepy enough to fall instantly asleep, cos i don't like having to wait to sleep. guitar playing makes me feel bluesy which is alright when i'm sad about stuff. it's like a voice coming out of my hands, coming from my heart. it's not the best voice in the world but it's not bad, and it's alright to me. playing makes me think of all the guitar players who play when they feel emotional, and it feels like i'm drawing from this emotional relatedness. a lot of these people look really grandfatherly, and talk like that too. they play like they miss things that they love. i like that.
a lot of the time, playing in a band must mean that each instrumentalist must play less to play more. i've come to accept that, and embrace it. i've come to value the role of each instrument, understand how it forms part of the sound. bands, like any other combined human endeavour, have their problems. how five people with different motivations and values and valuation systems come together to produce something that is them is pretty amazing. i mean, every now and then i pick out something that i don't like that i want to say, but would be pretty hard to take. i don't like to do things just to have fun, in fact i sometimes despise people who say that. my idea of having fun is to be good. anyway, i guess my point is that constructive communication is as much a skill as it is flattery and fortune. so even if the band is just, really, to bang on things and make loud awful noises, i want to do it with some semblance of accomplishment. and i suppose as we get older it's going to be harder and harder to play together, or at or for something, if at all. i mean, how many lawyers' meets need rock bands. haha. but it'll be fun all in all lar. i guess we could play at weddings. or someone could run a bar and... hire us.
there's still so much to do out there on the horizon. some places aren't meant for me, but some are, and i don't intend to miss on them. i honestly think i'd rather be at home getting to where i want to be with the guitar than travelling. haha, at least if i'm single. guess that's one for the future.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkFOBZRAbMU
clearly the man. his work makes me smile.
haha. think i'll talk a little bit about my guitar hobby.
you know, my favourite work pastime is to listen and trace guitar players' playing and influences. guitar music history, basically through wikipedia, interviews, fan pages. behind the music, there's a tapestry of story, musical history and collaborative interaction between the great guitar players of each age. many musical threads run together to create each guitar player and each band and each rock genre and each age. in the chaos of making music in a band different styles and aspirations meld in tempo and key and time signature and musical understanding to create a sound that both depicts and defines the players. it's wonderful.
i'm not going to talk much about guitar tone specifically. suffice to say that it... it is really wonderful. different guitars sound so different. you could tell by listening, and then understanding their technical characteristics, and then by listening to the type of songs they are used for, and then sometimes, if i'm lucky enough, by getting to play them. every man is an indiana jones of tone. it's a bit connoisseur-ey, cos you really have to know what and how to hear things sometimes when people get all excited talking about their tone. tone is a pretty sexy thing.
the second guitar that i ever bought was off an ad on luthermusic classifieds. heh, it's still there. but obviously most people use soft nowadays. anyway, it was a craftsman les paul, flamed top. don't know what it had and what it was made of, but well. can't remember too much about it, now. i think i first tried to learn november rain and fade to black on it. haha, that went alright. pretty squawky in a bad way, that one. sold it off and got an epiphone sg, also pretty squawky in a bad way. but it was an alright guitar, pretty light. should have changed the pickups, but back then i didn't know it would have made a difference. it was basically the guitar on which i learnt to play rock.
it's interesting that i didn't really buy much stuff back then. in some ways, having soft really sped up that part. i guess if you don't think about needing something then you just won't need it, which is true of a lot of things. and i guess i didn't think about things like tone and quality and feel. i just played with what i had. but it's hard to go back to being a minimalist when it comes to guitar things, at least in the sense of having less quality. having less things is not so bad, because really a good guitar and amp is basically all you need to be awesome. i could do with just those two, but i'd envision a three thousand dollar guitar and a two thousand dollar amp. i mean, i could play pretty well if i went back to the two hundred and fifty guitar and one hundred and ten amp, and i could probably feel pretty good about it and all, but i'd be cookin' with the first set.
having good stuff doesn't make up for not being able to play, and i'll be the first to say it. i'm happy with where i am, and i know where i am, going forward. i miss playing in a band. it's hard to want to improve without the band; it's much easier to stagnate. of course, improving on technique is clearly my own thing to work on. there's cycles to applied learning, but it takes time, which i find quite precious lately. i do some recording when i feel like it, but it's songs that are recorded, not guitar playing. haha. i used to think of myself exclusively as a guitarist, but usually when i record it's cos i want to sing. and i think singing has to be whatever is true; there's no bad singing if it's true. must be brave to sing.
the first really classic thing i bought was the fender stratocaster. jimi, ritchie, stevie, eric... i thought i'd save for a les paul first, but when my sg had problems i actually first got the stratocaster, cos it was cheaper than a les paul. i like it alot. it feels like i'm a part of something, a class of guitar players who mainly play the stratocaster. it's such a classy guitar. when i hold it i feel like i'm holding a real art piece. i actually think guitars are cooler than cars. i mean, you drive a car, and basically it's not important how well you drive it, long as you get from A to B without knocking the thing. it's a box with four wheels, right. a guitar, on the other hand, talks about music, and music, in the humanly pursuits of this world, is truly noble. i mean, it's not a violin, and it's not a piano, it's kinda more recent than those two, and it obviously sounds a lot ruder, but the idea is basically good: the pursuit of music.
and the guitar has been good to me for very very long. a lot of times i feel sad about things and i pick up the guitar and play until i feel sleepy enough to fall instantly asleep, cos i don't like having to wait to sleep. guitar playing makes me feel bluesy which is alright when i'm sad about stuff. it's like a voice coming out of my hands, coming from my heart. it's not the best voice in the world but it's not bad, and it's alright to me. playing makes me think of all the guitar players who play when they feel emotional, and it feels like i'm drawing from this emotional relatedness. a lot of these people look really grandfatherly, and talk like that too. they play like they miss things that they love. i like that.
a lot of the time, playing in a band must mean that each instrumentalist must play less to play more. i've come to accept that, and embrace it. i've come to value the role of each instrument, understand how it forms part of the sound. bands, like any other combined human endeavour, have their problems. how five people with different motivations and values and valuation systems come together to produce something that is them is pretty amazing. i mean, every now and then i pick out something that i don't like that i want to say, but would be pretty hard to take. i don't like to do things just to have fun, in fact i sometimes despise people who say that. my idea of having fun is to be good. anyway, i guess my point is that constructive communication is as much a skill as it is flattery and fortune. so even if the band is just, really, to bang on things and make loud awful noises, i want to do it with some semblance of accomplishment. and i suppose as we get older it's going to be harder and harder to play together, or at or for something, if at all. i mean, how many lawyers' meets need rock bands. haha. but it'll be fun all in all lar. i guess we could play at weddings. or someone could run a bar and... hire us.
there's still so much to do out there on the horizon. some places aren't meant for me, but some are, and i don't intend to miss on them. i honestly think i'd rather be at home getting to where i want to be with the guitar than travelling. haha, at least if i'm single. guess that's one for the future.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
LIX - haha, oh yeah. more licks.
song of the week: lynyrd skynyrd, tuesday's gone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT9_tEzjtIU
best classic country rock song, best classic country rock band. well there's grateful dead too. my dad loves this stuff: dylan, young, the eagles, crossby, stills and nash... but tuesday's gone is my choice.
the most important passages in the bible to me are where faithful people challenge God. Abraham pleading for Sodom. Job. Jonah. i can't think of more. does Jesus count? there's very few, which is a pity. maybe in Yancey's book, disappointment with God, which is based substantially on Job, there's more. life is struggle, and it's different for everyone. if 'to live is Christ and to die is gain', what are we missing? who's ready to say that; but shouldn't we all be? i feel skeptical and inadequate at the same time. but i'm human. everyone has their struggles.
i never knew how absurdist i was until wikipedia showed me:
i know i'm supposed to be in the second column, but my physical being feels very sympathetic towards the third. very, very sympathetic. and i know in a table form it looks like atheistic existentialism is quite different from absurdism, but sartre's wiki article makes me feel sympathetic to existentialism too, maybe more than sympathetic. see where charles de gaulle vetoed sartre's arrest for civil disobedience, saying, "you don't arrest Voltaire". haha.
there's so little we know about history and great thought of the past. it's amazing and tragic. when we try to look for records (well, wikipedia is basically reliable) on things they did, it's so much based on secondary sources. it's something like a pity that most brilliant people were misunderstood or suffered or didn't live very long. but they were brilliant in their time, and they overcame so much adversity, with and for their brilliance. and we know so very little. i mean, there are so many ideas and theories that have been discovered before us, and which could mean so much to us if we could be aware of them, but we're so ignorant, so blissfully ignorant at that. we are... cogs more than we are cognitive. no. we must make an effort to embrace the work left by men and women before us.
the parallel in popular music is too obvious. what will be the music of my son's and daughter's generation? will they forget allman, clapton, hendrix, page, vaughan ... all my heroes. like i've never known... bach, mozart, mendelssohn, beethoven, chopin, schumann, hadyn, tchaikovsky. sigh. i must do better than that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT9_tEzjtIU
best classic country rock song, best classic country rock band. well there's grateful dead too. my dad loves this stuff: dylan, young, the eagles, crossby, stills and nash... but tuesday's gone is my choice.
the most important passages in the bible to me are where faithful people challenge God. Abraham pleading for Sodom. Job. Jonah. i can't think of more. does Jesus count? there's very few, which is a pity. maybe in Yancey's book, disappointment with God, which is based substantially on Job, there's more. life is struggle, and it's different for everyone. if 'to live is Christ and to die is gain', what are we missing? who's ready to say that; but shouldn't we all be? i feel skeptical and inadequate at the same time. but i'm human. everyone has their struggles.
i never knew how absurdist i was until wikipedia showed me:
|
i know i'm supposed to be in the second column, but my physical being feels very sympathetic towards the third. very, very sympathetic. and i know in a table form it looks like atheistic existentialism is quite different from absurdism, but sartre's wiki article makes me feel sympathetic to existentialism too, maybe more than sympathetic. see where charles de gaulle vetoed sartre's arrest for civil disobedience, saying, "you don't arrest Voltaire". haha.
there's so little we know about history and great thought of the past. it's amazing and tragic. when we try to look for records (well, wikipedia is basically reliable) on things they did, it's so much based on secondary sources. it's something like a pity that most brilliant people were misunderstood or suffered or didn't live very long. but they were brilliant in their time, and they overcame so much adversity, with and for their brilliance. and we know so very little. i mean, there are so many ideas and theories that have been discovered before us, and which could mean so much to us if we could be aware of them, but we're so ignorant, so blissfully ignorant at that. we are... cogs more than we are cognitive. no. we must make an effort to embrace the work left by men and women before us.
the parallel in popular music is too obvious. what will be the music of my son's and daughter's generation? will they forget allman, clapton, hendrix, page, vaughan ... all my heroes. like i've never known... bach, mozart, mendelssohn, beethoven, chopin, schumann, hadyn, tchaikovsky. sigh. i must do better than that.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
LVIII - having passed a few roads, on the way to nowhere in particular
i was looking through this blog a while ago, looking for something reassuring, something of me that was comforting to read. and i thought that i couldn't find it. i looked for something that would show me my character, yet it was strange that i'd be looking for it in my words. maybe i wasn't in the mood. but it reminded me that this blog is not like that, or even impliedly for that. these are my reflections.
song of the week: rolling stones, wild horses
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhVLiHPUOIM
this is the loveliest song in the world to me.
i often wish that i was reading norwegian wood again. it's something i want to forget and to read again, for ever and ever.
i think that reading the bible again has made me... calmer. i don't think it's more than that for now. i don't think i've ever forgotten anything the bible has ever taught me. but i do think that i've been following a slightly different path for a very long time. and time with God is... right. in my heart. i'm more skeptical of the bible and i think it is better to be that way than to always be absorbing information without making it truly yours. there was a time when i really loved bible words, but somehow the etchings have slowly eroded off my heart. well... i guess i'll dust them off abit.
i think that i listen to old songs to... go on. there's for me a profound sense of sadness, although not a deep one, in being alone, and thinking about it once in a while, that is very quieting and vaguely empty. i read an old blog that i wrote about the girl i thought i first loved, and the feelings remained the same. no end in sight, just open, open, ocean. i don't complain about it, and i don't have anything to. moving on seems further from stuff but not nearer to anything, which is a shade wistful to me.
i don't like to be emo, and i don't think i am. seasons change, and feelings. that's all, i guess. sometimes couldn't be better is the truth that covers my dreams. and dreams are... whatever they want to be.
and freedom, oh freedom,
well that's just some people talking,
your prison is walking through...
song of the week: rolling stones, wild horses
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhVLiHPUOIM
this is the loveliest song in the world to me.
i often wish that i was reading norwegian wood again. it's something i want to forget and to read again, for ever and ever.
i think that reading the bible again has made me... calmer. i don't think it's more than that for now. i don't think i've ever forgotten anything the bible has ever taught me. but i do think that i've been following a slightly different path for a very long time. and time with God is... right. in my heart. i'm more skeptical of the bible and i think it is better to be that way than to always be absorbing information without making it truly yours. there was a time when i really loved bible words, but somehow the etchings have slowly eroded off my heart. well... i guess i'll dust them off abit.
i think that i listen to old songs to... go on. there's for me a profound sense of sadness, although not a deep one, in being alone, and thinking about it once in a while, that is very quieting and vaguely empty. i read an old blog that i wrote about the girl i thought i first loved, and the feelings remained the same. no end in sight, just open, open, ocean. i don't complain about it, and i don't have anything to. moving on seems further from stuff but not nearer to anything, which is a shade wistful to me.
i don't like to be emo, and i don't think i am. seasons change, and feelings. that's all, i guess. sometimes couldn't be better is the truth that covers my dreams. and dreams are... whatever they want to be.
and freedom, oh freedom,
well that's just some people talking,
your prison is walking through...
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