closing of the blog

my blogging habits would be transfered to www.charleswu.tumblr.com, a slick new approach to blogging, aiming at detailed researches into archtiecture theories that concerns architectual intimacy, urban language, and cinematic habits that shapes our perceptions and habits. Instead of masturbating about city sickness and emptiness.

DAFT BODIES

DAFT FINGERS and DAFT BODIES have been on youtuve for quite a while. But when I come across this very sexy version of it, just can't stop marveling at what people could be doing in they own privacy behind curtains. It's stupid and hilarious, just funny.

I always like DAFT PUNK for its simplicity in bringing lots of innovation into disco music. After this, I almost think that the lyrics could be an anecdote to contemperary dancing.

Had a really interesting conversation with a friend John last night about Street Art. It's fine to say Graffiti is Street Art in the name of Christie's hordes of richies in suits betting for a million dollar Banksy. Afterall, my criticism of it is that street art falls into categories of being shallow and direct, going for the eye-catching 'wow factor', with messages to easy to interpret, and literally very little underlying fantasy.



It is not Dada. Same wanker like social jokes, same against establishment agendas, but utterly different breathe. Nothing wrong with that. I find Street Art amusing too, like instant noodles, but not to a point I would look at it on different angles, interpret it and attempt to build a history around it. Afterall it is just instant noodles. SO FAR.

VW

Don't understand when it started that Volkswagen becomes my dream car. GOLF appearantly.



It has the green, it has the fun. I love it. Can't imagine owning a car in London, but I still thinkif I get a second hand GOLF, I'd be on the moon.

New (all time) obsessions

I can't help but saying that I am a very conventional being. Consistency and eloquence and elegance turn me on. And they are certainly not words Deleuze would agree. After a terrible struggle with university work, I retreated into the preciousness of my shelves, possessions, things I once can't do without. Dusty, some has become my all time obsessions. nonetheless I'd love to list them down, for the sake of consistency.


HERMES EAU D'ORANGE VERTE
My favourite fagrance to date. Honestly I'm no expert in fagrance, but the sheer beauty of this smell, sweet, adventerous, energetic, fresh and elegant, even my moods get affected when I'm wearing it. I have the lust to crave it as my fagrance of a lifetime.


SLURP MAGAZINE
Ever since the editors of Daze and confused and i-D starting to become more than influential, over the top 70s close to the mass magazines are starting to emerge, playing the high-end, cool-chic, sexual, lomo outlook, all magazines with same fonts same layouts, almost blurring individual identities. BIG and WAD and CLASH stands out as something different, but still pack full of ads (like 30 out of 150 pages...?) whereas my new found SLURP, a wopping 430 pages bi-annual bible, with literally 6 ads in front. Daring full pages of stunning photography, occasionally with interesting interviews. I'm not a big fan of reading what's in those fashion mags who wants to go social or cultural, the tonality just doesn't attract me. Slurp it.


RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS
Never had a thought about this composer until i saw BBC's documentary about him, 'the Passion of Vaughan William' on iplayer. Making the unmissable unmissable is quite rightly put, as the next day I jumped out of the house and grabbed 2 CDs of his by the BBC Philharmonic. Symphony no.3 &6 are sheer amazing and heavy weight contemperary music, that has the same melodic and structuaral beauty as that of the Romantic Period. Lark Ascending slips into the landscape, showing you the way light penetrates treetop through shimmering string harmonies. I need to learn more about this man; and with this I also have to admit, Britain needs to be proud of how they have contributed to the contemperary music history, from Vaughan Williams to Radiohead, it didn't come easy.


PAUL AUSTER
The writer I have encountered so far, who has the closest resonance with my inter thoughts. I do not find his dragging descriptives embarassing, I don not find his emotional reflections pretentious. Everything he says seems to have a touch of reality, a sense of here. And I could not help marveling at his english writing. I'm at no point of being judgemental on writing (look at the blog and you should know why), but his precision on paragraph lengths, catch-phrases and topic sentenses simply showing a crafty wroter very aware his every moment. They do not only tie up his style, It is also a motive for the story's development, and most of all, it looks good on the printed pages. Try Invention of Solitude, a gripping auto-biograpgical portray of family relationships. I'm sure some of the pages of his manuscripts were stained with tears, it was genuine, candid, naked, and very honest. That's what an artist ought to be, I reckon.


CHRISTOPHE HONORE
It almost fee like he's there tosubstitute my emptiness for Ozon. I love both men, they're adorable, to look at and to experience. I can almost feel like falling in love with them, drowning hours over alcohol in a smoky bar, dimmly-lid and very drunk, fingering the rim of the glass and humming about love and despair. Ozon faded away, and Honore seemed to have picked it up from there, put on a Gordard-ish Nouvelle Vogue tee, and shuffling around like a brand new lover. It's true, Ozon is introverted, looking at details of relationship, lost and despair, SOUS LES SABLES, 5X2, LE TEMPS QUI RESTE. However, the grittiness of GOUTTES D'EAU SUR PIERRES BRULANTES,and the sexy 8 FEMMES seemed to have flown through Honore, LE CHANSON D'AMOUR is just about Paris and love as any french film could honestly be. Surprise to just look at Ludivine Sagnier, a little girl in 8 femmes, rebelious teenage in Swimming Pool, now a beautiful lady struggling for the omnious love of Louis Garrel. If Ozon and Honore do not flow the same blood, I just don't understand cinema.


YELLOW KNITTED TOP
This is not about Lousi Garrel turning gay, nor is it about him. It's about the yellow knitted top he wore in Le Chanson d'Amour. I'm So turned on by it, I tried to find one for myself today, unsuccessfully. The movie was shot with the greyness of 60s French film, not suprising regarding the technique the director shot the film. Characters all look like they're straight from a 60s wardrobe. Louis was wearing this knitted top with a dark purple velvet blazer. Very chic very 60s. I just LOVE it. Can't put a finger on it, but I loath retro. They're boring and unimaginative. Doing things people have done before. Shooting a movie like Gordard did 50 years ago, matching clothes people wore 50 years ago. how could we be exciting about it? Where's the identity of our generation? Camden 08 is just the brainless copier of Camden 68? But i'm still loving it, and I won't stop looking for one yellow knitted top of mine.

BEETHOVEN, bend OOOOver!

Some heavy research left me paralysed, I feel that if I wanna do music review, it should be posted seperately.

music review: MYTH TAKES_!!!

Oh BELATED! What kinda band name is that? What kinda music could that be. Nonetheless, you can't help taping you toes listening, and then tempted to put on out loud on hifi and jumping on sofas like Tom Cruise.

Pitchfork coined them as Punk Disco. So there you go, thanks to the Stokes. It's gone through a lot, Kasabian, falling from the Empire, the Battles, appealing but too mechanic. !!!, however, is mad, audacious and crazy, but never looses grip. Good catchy melodic lines, very over-the-top mixing, layered guitar riffs bring in the chrispy flavour. The lyrics add on the funk, 'Bend over beethoven, Tell mother the news', what else can you say. Not very tasty, it's the music for the masses, delirious stomping zombies with uncontrollable muscle cramps, 'coz it's gotta be true love baby!' BUY IT.

GAZA STRIP

Through the events of threating out all priorities of life, I realise how minute or gigantic architecture's role could be. Taking a picture from my friend JASMINE's facebook, the architecture is pulsating and interactive.

I have to praise the picture for giving such a vivid existence of architecture. The wall, look at the crack and stains. Time, water, life, you can almost conjure myriad stories about this little staircase. A desperate daughter caged by the manipulative parents ran away with her lover in the middle of the night on his little boat. Pitch dark, only moon light reflecting from the water surface leads their way.


And it goes beyond what's physical, architecture embodies everything, borders, thresholds. To put it in political terms is to embarass Hermes the god of transition. Yet, Gaza would always be on the map, controversy.

Western society and die heart environmentalists want to believe that Palestinians are suffering because of iron wrists of the Israeli, whereas Israel sees herself as victims and inevitably gear themselves up amongst her hostile neighbour.

It traces the history of Palestine, wiki writes, 'as a geographical, apolitical term, in its broadest application, it can be used to refer to ancient Palestine, an area that includes contemporary Israel, the Israeli-occupied territories, part of Jordan, and some of both Lebanon and Syria.In classical or contemporary terms, it can also be used to refer to the area once known as British Mandate Palestine, and today known as Israel, the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem.'

This is where it comes in, a brief understanding:

1. After WWII and in 1947 United Nations partition plan declared Gaza to become part of a new Palestinian Arab state.

2. In May 1948, a day after Israel declared independence, Egypt army invaded the area from the south, starting the 1948 Arab-Israeli War (5-day war).

3. The war dragged on. Instead, Israeli army took over more arabic land, and expelled all Palestinian-arabic refugees into Gaza Strip.

4. To end the war, in 1949, Armistice Agreements was signed between Israel and Egpty, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, and established the armistice lines between Israel and the West Bank, also known as the Green Line. Egypt occupied the Strip from 1949 until 1967.

5. Oddly enough, Egypt never annexed the Gaza Strip, and the refugees were never offered Egyptian citizenship. Palestinians in the strip are on their own.

6. 1967 June war broke out between Israel and her arabic neighbours. Israel took over hte Strip as a war buffer.

7. In March 1979 Israel and Egypt signed the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty. Among other things, the treaty provided for the withdrawal by Israel of its armed forces and civilians from the Sinai Peninsula which Israel had captured during the Six-Day War.

8. May 1994, Oslo Accords was sign in the presence of US President Bill Clinton and Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin with the PLO's Chairman Yasser Arafat. Palestinian Authority was established, declaring control over the Strip, and peace of the region. Israel would aid the reconstruction of the Strip by providing aids in electricity, water, economy and military.

9. However, many Palestinians believed that the Oslo Accords had turned the PLO leadership into a tool of the Israeli state in suppressing their own people. While benefiting a small elite, the conditions of most Palestinians worsened.

10. While 70% of the fundings to the Strip through Israel and EU were wired directly into Yasser Arafat's Geneva bank account.

11. The Second Intifada broke out in September 2000, leading towards Israeli disengagement of the strip in 2005. Israel still controls the strip's airspace, territorial water and offshore maritime access, as well as its side of the Gaza-Israeli border.

12. Even after the disengagement, questions still raised whether Israel is controlling the Strip, while closing its borders and limiting Palestinians from trade, job, access to other countries.

13. Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections. The region continue to refuse recognising Israel, renounce violence and agree to honour agreements previously made by the PLO, Israel, the United States, Canada, and the European Union froze all funds to the Hamas-controlled government. They view Hamas as a terrorist organization.

14. Internal disorder between Hamas and Fatah, a major Palestinian political party supported by the EU, started in Jan 2007, cuasing further damage to the region, and shape fall in GDP.

15. Israel closed its border, destricted trade with the Strip, declining jobs, leading to further deprivation.

16. Hamas has made no effort in controlling the continued firing of Qassam rockets from the Strip across the border into Israel, targeted at Israeli civilians. According to Israel, since the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip until the end of January 2008, 697 rockets and 822 mortar bombs have been fired at Israeli towns.

17. In January 2008 the situation escalated and Israel curtailed travel from Gaza and entry of goods, and decided to cut fuel supplies to the Strip on January 19, resulting in power shortages.

All these go on and on every day, now. It's not easy to put a blame, but usually we'll put it on the bigger, richer one. Human instinct. Whereas Israel did seem to have HUMAN RIGHTS issues towards the Palestinians (hot now between Tibet and China), it's still hard to tell how it could have gone that wrong if the arabs weren't killing each other, maintaining their anti-Zionist hostility, allowing corrupted and extreme government to rule. I cannot take side, just like I cannot say who more diabolic, Darth Vader or Anakin Skywalker?

powers of 10

objectivity, the moment is not the passing, empty; but the great moment of life in universe that pulsates in it, leaving mark from it movement, act, story after story. Such a strange paradox.



The powers of ten, where is the scale, possibility, beginning, just as the ends of the old one that looks like the new one. existence in the universe, interaction, behavious and activities. Craftsmanship, Plato and Chimpanzee. Stories of progress, realm of the real spirit is rarely achieved, evolution is endless retuition of zero. The end of the scale is the end of our knowledge. No more, oblivion.

I was first shown this movie when I was a 1st yr architecture undergrad. I didn't understand anything about it, now I think I do a bit more. Things keeps on recurring in our life, we didn't realise them because we were ignorant. I have a believe that people you meet in your life are those whom you have already seen myriads of times before. You didn't know them, you didn't see them.

碰撞而消亡

海洋最深處為北太平洋西部馬裡亞納群島以東的馬裡亞納海溝。馬裡亞納海溝為一條洋底弧形窪地，延伸2550公里，平均寬69公里。一般認為海洋板塊與大陸板板塊相互碰撞，因海洋板塊岩石密度大，位置低，便俯衝插入大陸板塊之下，進入地幔後逐漸溶化而消亡。

ATTENTION!

It reminds me of plenty. a beautiful intermission of Proust's a la recherche du temps perdu by Paris Opera Ballet. Ballet in recent years has picked up a lot from modern dance, even though it has maintained all ancient languages of balance, tempo, symmetry and complex leg work, croises and en points; it has also mixed with gymnestics, floor work, improvising quality and theatricality of contemperary dance.Does feel a bit awkward, but the emotion of the cello passages just drives you into the abyss of petty bourgeoisie entertainment.

MIAS NON! 2 male in skin suits performing like that, doubt the victorians had the appetite for that. Maybe it's a reference to Proust's vol 4 Sodom and Gomorrah, or maybe that public has already accepted the intimacy of musculinity as a matter of factly. Anyhow, no point seeing it as inclinating to homoerotic, the sheer beauty of form is just enchanting. from Proust ou les intermittences du coeur

And then, does anyone write Ballet music anymore? I used to have that dream, be like Tchaikovsky, or Prokovief. I know, it's funny :) but imagine, one day, nobody would know how to play a harp or a trumbone, when everyone has gone to play PSP and dansing on stage like psychics in muscle cramps.

Grizzly bear, I'm starting to love them too much.

not buying the FRIEND EP though, still find the band of horse and CSS versions a bit horrifying.

PS. Bjork lover as I am, have downloaded the 'POST' cover album at STEREOGUM.
Honestly it's aweful, But Ed's Possibly Maybe is alright. Check out the OK COMPUTER cover album too, it's equally bad, but exciting nonetheless.

consciousness

snow that came almost a bit too late. always uninvited but never cease to surprise, it went up my ankles.



cold air fills the space. I push my head out of the window, dig it into the thick air, sniffing oxygen so hard I want to snizz. What a beautiful feeling through the Oesophagus into the lungs. A chill so acute and unambiguous traces its way into the pores of the lungs, the temperature so alien to the body.

This is conciousness. Breathing, the most intimate and simple interaction with the environment. I've recaptured it in the wilderness of Gloucestershire, where waves of mountains covered by flat turfs of grass, where the individual becomes so small, and possibly so guiltlessly happy.

Have been stressing myself out so much with studies I've heard this aweful news about a classmate killed in a car crash during the holiday. Prompts me to review my life and all priorities I've set. To work hard and get a lot of good grades and praises and then whop! you die. What's left in your life to mourne about? who is there to remember you and carry on your spirit? How much would you have given to people you cherrish and love, and those who felt the same to you?

One of my favourite places is the cemetory, it's tranquil and full of events, both natural and imaginary. On the graves, what are now underground would always be protraited as 'doctor, and the loving father always', or 'to my loving wife'. It's family, the role we see with eager disdain, that carries on. My father, I dreamt a horrible dream about you, I just wish that moment never come.

Looking at the mirror and that face starring at me, I'd marvel at how beautiful some other faces could be, stern and dignified, composed as if it's gift of will; whereas this one, this one of mine's angular and asymmetrical, colourless and distant. Would all those beautiful faces lives with less remourse that I do? How much could I fall for this face in the mirror? Is this a practise of confidence? or is it just a life long struggle of defense? If the me that loves myself a bit too much does not exist, where will there be the grip to handle of the lightness of being? Or if I am as ignorant and arrogant as I could always have been, would you approach me with more eagerness and marveling at my beauty instead?

Enough moaning of insecurity. All is full just trouble missing. The saturdays devoted to getting rid of the whirling dust in my very room, the empty fridge to fill, eggs and milk all gone, all evians consumed, please don't even bother with the wine bottles, coz I still have to think about the colours in the dinner plate. All underpants are dirty, could that be my excuse for not turning up at school? Digging here and there, filling the leaking holes of life, I still need to figure out whom I love the most where to put the adjectives and how should I hold the glass. Inevitably minute and weightless details of being. life.

Becuase of the diabolic existence of STREAMING. I've seen almost too many films. There's never too many, so the ALMOST is essential.The only film I remember myself seeing in cinema is THE FLIGHT OF THE RED BALLOON. Coincidentally, It gives me these beautiful flashback of MARIE ANTOINETTE,a sketch of life in its very essence. This time it's the city of Paris, a balloon and a mother.



Plot. a week, a month, paris, a woman as a devoted artist, mother, friend, landlady. Period.

Life goes on, suffering, 'this is intolerable', enjoyment are being questioned, 'why do you have to buy presents?' the boy asks, 'so that everyone could be happy', the mother replied. This is life. All the hows and whys and when and whats, entangled by time, so exhaustive that Juliette is always out of breath, grasping her pace, and becoming passive by events and circumstances around her. Red Balloon's existense as an observer? an emblem of chinese heritage? a resemblence of the Au pair from beijing, floating and experiencing an alien city of smog and rubbish bins?

Where do I stand when it comes to PARIS? I love it so much I can't even fathom the facism of piss. Can the film be shot somewhere else? can the mother not be a puppeteer? can the red balloon not exist in the movie at all? YES, but NO.



The next one would ne THE FUNNY GAME. Knowing it's Haneake, it just would not be very funny. I have never been intimidated by challenges of the directors, but an escapism as expensive as £9 in the dark, I'd think twice. Lars van Trier and David Lynch are those I remember who could provide me with such 'cinematic thesis' of a weight so immense as if it's cardinal.



awaiting for CHANSONS D'AMOUR and PARIS. Christopher Honore again in a musical like investigation of love and sexual tension. I think DANS PARIS was an imperfect immitation of novelle vogue, a dirty attempt in doing what JL Godard did already too beautifully in A BOUT DE SOUFFLE and SLOW MOTION. Nonetheless Louis Garrel and Romain Duris and Juliette Binoche, can't be too careless.

can you see that coming?

Don't forget RADIOHEAD, and the fact that IN RAINBOW? is done and ready for download on the album webpage. THUMBS UP!!



Efterklang's New album PARADE out next week. that's the effect their music would stir up. Can you see that coming?

BEIRUT concert at ROUNDHOUSE LONDON 10 NOV 2007



accidentally bump into this young boy Zach Condor, and the idea of buying their debut when i was in Sister Ray. I got hooked on Gulag Orkestar, and how soon are they ready for another retropection into roots and histories of European music. Flying Club Cup will be out 10th OCT. I can NOT wait!

As a teaser, here are the quick-witted videos done for almost all songs in the new album

FLYING CLUB CUP video for GUYAMA SONORA, among many others

GOD, that song completely blew my head off

numbness of the opaque corner of Kafka

cities of capitalism prepetually allur people into laziness. accummulation of someone else's produce in the room, suffocating senses. laziness is like a black hole, it stops your senses from working in the way they are meant to. The nose skims the air, the eyes dazzling around the room, familiarity and habitual, they start to shrink into oblivion. according to the laws of evolution, the eyes would eventually diminish itself into a pore in the skull, numb and useless.

I have not been producing anything properly for a while. London life has consumed me, which I had been guiltlessly happy to embrace. To be social, according to the modern life, is to throw yourself out into this vast sea of people, laughing your heads off, or maybe dressing up in baby suits and dippers, lolling around sucking lollipops. Drink until your senses decided to loose their senses, and you can be euphoric. Alcohol is the ticket of escape.

And then, nurturing my hangover, I would have made 100 excuses to soak myself within the warmth of the duvet, submerge into dreamscape. In the dream, a sampleman came into my room, stood beside me and started giving me a message. He looked like some macho man in some second-rate porn, greyish short hair, with his tall and built physique hidden under the painfully accute straight grey suit.



he started messaging my shoulder and neck, and then my ear. I had no insentive to resist, then he bet over and kissed my neck, ever so softly. I missed him, and decided to find him at his office. A garage with greasy floor and smoke oozing out of a car's front lid. I turned a corner and found a small desk full of my possessions - my pencils and notes and corroded alloy steel pencil case. A girl with long hair tied up behind her head came over and handed me a bill. She obviously knew something between the sampleman and me. She laughed hyterically and said, 'you have stored your stuffs here for 3 nights, i'll have to charge you.' and she said down opposite the table over a roll of thick wire mesh. I looked at the bill, '£ 56' it says, with all small items listed above, all blurred. I hope he'd come and see me. I have this eagerness inside me. £ 56. I'm broke.




small details of life are easy to forget, like Mid Autumn Festival. Lanterns and mooncake, I do not see them anywhere, so I'd assume autumn has never came. We are cosumed, at the same time, by these small details, what to wear how to hold a glass in vogue, where to eat, who to seduce. They ARE the propositions of how to live a life. people write books about it, orally pass on ettiquete and small tips. We are more than welcomed, at 4:16 of 26th SEPT 2007, to eat as much as you want as long as you have a handful of pounds. Consume regardless of the ozone, regardless of your laziness.

To talk about laziness is to provide evidences of the non existence of architecture. A habitual act: to live. habiter. where? a house, room, behind doors and windows and walls. end of story. Whatever variations these architects do, they are just wankers, all they could achieve are DOORS, WINDOWS, and WALLS. fuck victorians and edawardians and Baroque. This moment, 57, 693 individuals are digging their head down staring at the crooked pavements as they walk and found a coin they could use for their next consumption. Where are the architecture?

Even I seem to have forgotten.



London bus drivers are agents used by the London Government to fuck up the working class. They could decide not to stop at the station they are supposed to, leaving 10s of people standing for another 20 minutes under the chilly rain; they could also stomp at hte brake and break a couple of neck every now and then as they dictate the locomotion of the bus and lives and 100 passangers. They could NOT care less.

Everytime I'm managing my bills and cards with the bank or the university or TFL, i'm a living dead in the skull of K. The opaqueness of the bureaucracy demand that you have a lot of time and patience before you could reach a bit higher. We are all living in THE CASTLE, where we move from inn to inn, imagining ourselves moving closer to the castle and getting your existence recognised, but whop! that's only your wishful thinking, London has never needed you, and you are as tiny as the trash afloat in the Thames. Look, there's Ken Livengton, looking like a DAZ detergent barrel floating under millenium bridge. Dark Vader's Mask... give me a break.

yesterday I hated London, I think I should leave and go somewhere else. Somewhere where your quality of life is worth the money you spend; somewhere where your dream could still go as close as becoming reality, somewhere where you could live a life you have wished to. That should be my EVILAND.

came along wasted and other objects

the unbearable lightness of being, even cats could feel it. 'life,' she says, 'when would it get bigger than a bowl of cat food?'



intimacy, into your hair, along your skin, interupts your senses.
what can i offer you?

when I'm at work, I know so clearly what I can give and what I deserve, my 'market value' that gives me my place in the profession. When I'm with my friends, I know what I should give and I'll give it all, my care my humour and my thoughts. but to a relationship, I really don't know. ask for everything, ask for nothing, if it's just warmth you need, you should discard me when daylight strikes the window. if it's sense and sensibility, I'm your horn of plenty, you should take but you find it awkward.

maybe i'm just shy and empty. I do not want to talk because of silence. Silence is calm and you start to listen only when silence is. why do we have to fill the gaps? they are beautiful that way. do you not agree? no you didn't.

cannot wait to see you again, we'll get pissed, we'll bump into a lightpole, sing into the night, where is your bag? come dance with me, hold my hands. Adrian. i'll see you again.

sidetrack, here's a very very very beautiful man,


music review: Apologies to Queen Mary_ WOLF PARADE


it's not easy to find songs with beautiful lyrics. either they are cliches about boys and girls, shaking ass and penises too small; or pseudo- saviour lyrics talking about saving the world and all the unfairness, so pretentious you start wondering what they'd do with the money they earn. Wolf Parade is different, well composed lyrics within a span of 12 distinctive songs. The album doesn't seem to come together neatly, as each song seem so individual and alien from the rest, which makes the whole album full of surprises. Song about hatred towards modern world, love of radio, the town, ghost from trees leading to a new world, it's errie, thoughtful and downright exciting. Music and mixing are a bit conventional, but the bassline does give out surprises once in a while. buy it.

give me a reason

just however disgusting I find myself, someone would think me worse. and yes they do, I do not blame them. I am fascinated by my own ugliness, I amplify it, exaggerate it, and it's just obviously there, no matter how secretive I am. I could not find my anchor, I do try, deeper under the current, I hold on tight to that man who isn't there; I become the boy too proud of his achievements within the white brick walls too thin to hide secrets, cemented by lies and consumed by fantasies. And my language, the house I live in, my language.

in the swim, I lost my mind and a lot of oxygen, I betrayed my weightlessness so that I could be focus and quiet, I listen to the air flowing in bubbles through my nose, pass my ears and gone. I cannot stop loving him.



music review: horn of plenty_GRIZZLY BEAR

another headphone music for the sleepless. hide under the blanket, whisper through the dark, the intimate sounds of friction between your skin and the duvet, this is the music for you. Grizzly Bear creeps through the landscape to reach you in the dark, a kind of pscho-folk so tempted to discard, but once you allow it, it grows on you, lulls you to sleep, but keeps you in a nightmare. And do not say they sound like Animal Collective, that's imprecision at its worst. Buy it.

the orchid wound

my dear friend he came to the opening of LMU's architectural exhibition. He looked tired and exhausted, but he brought me a bouquet of orchids. he wrote, 'orchids grow in most adverse environment, they're delicate but strong.' i wish to be like orchids, i wish to be like cats. They're delicate but strong, they're curious and wayward, they have an edge. Just like Judas. In a fortnight, they started decaying, and the dark clouds roam the sky, engulfed the sun and all light together with happiness. At that exact moment, I sat in front of the computer, consumed by the area schedule for an unknown residential project.

The orchid she became my scar, an exhibit of my naivity and detachment to reality, to the ground. I put it near the window, so it takes up sunlight and oxygen, so it flourish and mark my devotion to be outside the box. not before long did it start to wither, and my skin was punctured with deep long cuts, blood oozing out from underneath the delicate flesh, swell like diabolic pearls congealed on my skin. I am punished for being independent and shy.



so I coiled like a featus at the corner of my bed too large for my body but too empty for my soul, and dug myself a grave with Kafka. Night after night, i started reading from midnight to dawn, and realised how tranquil solitude could be. I don't want to be verbal, I want to be secretive and hysterical. I want speak as if nobody would understand.

and then morning comes, breeze through the curtain and made it shiver. I pulled my body half metamorphisized into the white shirt and tight trouses, and put on the mask of a motivated, self- assured individual of society, a profession.



in my dreams, I saw an alien, he ate up my date. I pushed it out the glass door, and it turned into a hairy monster, stretching its myriad hair through the keyhole, gaps of the door. I brought scissors and cut them all. It ate my date just the way he bite my skin when we sleep, just the way he suffocated me with his charm, jas the way he drowned me with his self obsessed ego. 'I can't help loving you because I think you are as handsome as I am.' how disarming.

music review: Caetano Veloso_CAETANO VELOSO


I am, and i assume we all are, superficial. Human are more visual than anything else. we know it's going to shake our world just by the cover. Tropicano's pioneer Veloso started his anti govermental revolution with a good cocktail; brilliant latin numbers, delicate and layered composition, raw, unprecise, intuitive, and topped with piercing lyrics. I am never good in language, but the english translation of the lyrics are just as exciting as sex. It's easier to be angry and sad than happy, Veloso criticised his world with an optimistic twist, you feel good being a rebel. How's that? Buy it.

the man who don't give a fuck

i am 22. I've fallen in love only once.
all those beautiful boys, kings and queens and crimial queers. i fell in love with one. it was so euphoric, eventful, and hard to ignore. the more I push it aside, the deeper it dug. i could consider myself lucky if this ever happens again.



Jonathan took this picture of me knackered in bed. people say your lips gets thicker with you sleep. I've always been extremely conscious about my lips. For whatever reason.

this entry was originally titled 'a reflection on the self', and I was just thinking of putting some beautiful pictures of fashionable boys, but the new title was exactly the answer i wanted. or i wished i could be.

started working as an architectural assistant for this big firm in London, HAMILTONS ARCHITECTS, obviously I'm a cast away because of my lack of 'professional knowledge', i.e. the size of the disabled toilets, the planning regulations for plantations, building frontage recess standards, etc. So I decided to shut my brain, and allow the hours to rush me by, as long as I'm paid and can use the money to do what I want. fair enough. I wonder, after all these years of sleepless nights and all these highs and lows, are good-sized toilets all I deserve?

I have a deficiency. I cannot connect with other people, they find me awkward, cold and indifferent. I think i could be a real passionate about things that matters, i'm very naive and straight forward, and I have a lot of bad jokes in my pocket. it just didn't work out.

the clouds are drifting swiftly in the sky, dragging the rain from zone to zone, through the ocean, right to your house. It knocks at your window, carrys the message from me, the boy too shy to speak up, playing with the rim of his glass. do you know, his longing floods the amazons? it was on the news.

if i sincerely ask myself, this is one of the reasons why I am here in London. I thought I've found out everything about home. I've found out most things that interested me about Hong Kong. How ignorant and arrogant I was.

if i sincerely ask myself, I'm just like everyone, I lust for beauty, I take the easy way out, I have cavity. it doesn't deny me as this shell of a good boy minding his own business. But I am faking if I dare imagine myself under limelight every split second. they look through me just as eager as I want them to look at me. The more you kick in, the harder the reaction attacks. fair enough.

remember, speaking english doesn't mean you are selling your soul to the devil, your origin and home, where you dropped your anchor. the effort.


music review: Strengir Hrynja_ TRAJECT


it's polished granite, drizzles on thin ice, deep caves of Scotish highlands, mist over Hudsons. Dark and divine electronics from Icelander Gisli Thor Gudmundsson, aka traject. he draws a back holes, and you decisively give yourself in in the deepest of night. Within, all colours in silhuettes, you saw orchids growing out of snow, but you feel warm, embraced. It's not industrial clashes that leaves you vulnerable, but tickles that clings to your skin and embraces you, surround you with distance and space that talks, resonate, and flows. Buy it.

drizzling july

the shittiest job in the world. being a profession. giggling about nonesense. all too bored. we count the area, name the toilets, be proud we have the tiles in the right sizes. thank god, how many years of studies, how much money poured in. work in a large firm, learn a bit of BS. I should be grateful, i'm attempting to be a professional. just for summer. it was canceled, it's cold, with occasional drizzles and hailstorms. i'm imprisoned for this summer. Casten should be glad, he should be really happy. But he'll never convert me. never.

upbeat

There are things i should have had acknowledged. London made me confront them. myself, me, i. depression, solitude, walls and silence.

move on, be faithful. i cried some more these days, last minute. i turned towards the corner, nobody was behind me. they used to call my name whenever i disappear. my illusion. i have nothing in my hands, i thought they were made of gold. snow. i thought i was gold, so i turned the corner. Looked back, nobody, they look through me. yes they always do.

a race, i am leading in front. final sprint, office corridor. a door at the end, the destination. my competitor needs water, he screamed, dehydration killing his brain cells. i had a sock and i threw it to him. he thought it was water and stopped. i took my time and ran faster, got to the door and push it open.

Vast room with a tv hanging at the corner. decent people in suits sitting on sofas everywhere, i couldn't see the carpet of the floor. they looked at me in shock, dismay and indifference. greenish flourescence i see no eyes only cheekbones and white eyebrows. I stood by the door, blank. an old man at the corner shouted, 'running that fast, could you still stand straight now?' a few chuckled.

the tv focused on the runner up who thought the sock was water. he was being interviewed. the reporter was asking his how he felt. He lost, and thought the sock was water, but he is the star. I was the unwanted winner, the undesired misfit. i hold on tight to my napsack, but the sheets never pull themselves together anymore. wishful thinking, you are not supposed to be by the door at all.

the facade. shadows and corners. my architecture. me. mediocre.

extra features: the creatures

standing there - BOOMERANG

look at that! from the BOOMERANG album. just see how they treat the music, the speed, the form, the rhythms. then look aat the video, the gothic mood, the spanish dance, the silhuettes, the motions and montage. It's beyond its times. remember we're talking about 1981. THIS IS THE CREATURES.

Here comes the CREATURES

Siouxsie and Budgie, husband and wife, started a side project called the CREATURES besides siouxsie and the banshee. Budgie is a great purcussionist, and you could hear it from songs in the later Banshees albums when he joined. the music, since then, sound milder, and much more 'composed', than the PUNK and NOISE period of the Banshees.

getting into the 80s, where minimalist music started to emerge with Philip Glass and Steve Reich, the CREATURES to me seemed to get into the vibe of primal sound and rhythms that creates deep impact to the audience. Budgie uses his creative and painstaking drumming and constantly varying rhythm to form the basis of the sound for the CREATURES, siouxsie, with her distinct throat delivered voice siren throw the music and giving life to each song, glues on really well together. The lyrics is sometimes hilarious and referenced. like this video, 'Miss the girl', took inspiration from the book Crash, by J. R. Ballad, and the video set was made by themselves. The video was banned for unknown reason (probably the pseudo spousal violence)




their lyrics, more notably ones from the Banshees, are vivid and fun.
'Slanted eyes meet a new sunrise
a race of bodies small in size
Chicken Chow Mein and Chop Suey
Hong Kong Garden takeaway' - HONG KONG GARDEN

'And don't forget
when your elders forget
to say their prayers
take them by the legs
and throw them down the stairs' - SPELLBOUND (i always laugh in this song)

'My so-called friends say you're not alive
I'll bake their bones for telling lies
Then pull the pastry from the pie
And pour the gravy in their eye' - SCARECROW

and some from the CREATURES, Gecko in particular, struck me

'Panoramic banana
A passion fruit samba
Pale skin is itching
A tropical fever' - wtf?! just can't stop laughing!

Steve Reich in 'drumming' and 'music for 16 musicians' brings on the questions of minimalist music in the 80s that studies the constant change of timbre and musical qualities through repetition. the music inevitably puts you in a state of trance, hypnotic quality. through the subtle changing of rhythms, depth and slight and continuous alternation and interplay of musical instruments and timber, overlaying rhythmic motives, minimalist music becomes an extensive and far-reaching area of musical history. Like impressionist music, Steve Reich and Philip Glass seemed to go too far and find no company. But the Creatures took this on, and even literally pulled in from Primal Hawaii, and Oriental drum sound from Japan, and turning them into music with a greater audience.

Sounds like the minimalist music would always be a cult.

the sweetest thing about THE CREATURES the ingredients they used are from places they did their recordings. they randomly put a pin onto the world map, and would do their album in that place. it sound like an extravagant dream to most, but they managed to pull out albums that come with spanish heat, Hawaii festivals, Japanese Godzilla, but always with this distinctive CREATURES sound. the content are always fresh, but the strategy and representation familiar. this is never easy for musicians.

i think i have come to the end of my research on this branch. This year have been outragiously fruitful. Merry Christmas.






PS some of the images i took from the following website
elhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifements

Siouxie and the Banshee

this is a cool video. Spellbound. Now i'm bound to Siouxie.
I've bought their BEST OF album. For £5 only I've enjoyed a rollercoaster ride of 80s chic music! coolest grungy rock and roll. Siouxie and the Banshee. Keep me motivated all day!

interlude

How weird. Morrisey and Siouxie singing together.
the woman had a solid voice of a man.
the man had a timid voice of a woman.
the song was good one though,
siouxie is always cool.



what seems like an interlude now,
could be the begining of love.
yick... 好梁啊

HONG KONG GARDEN

it seems too obvious that i am addicted to youtube.
found this from Siouxie and the Banshees, HONG KONG GARDEN
it was in MARIE ANTOINETTE too.
one of the coolest new wave bands. look at her moves. and her eye shadow... awesome
80s.



HONG KONG GARDEN

Harmful elements in the air
symbols clashing everywhere
Reaps the fields of rice and reeds
while the population feeds

Junk floats on polluted water
an old custom to sell your daughter
Would you like number 23?
Leave your yens on the counter please
Hong Kong Garden

Tourists swarm to see your face
Confuscius has a puzzling grace
Disoriented you enter in
unleashing scent of wild jasmine

Slanted eyes meet a new sunrise
a race of bodies small in size
Chicken Chow Mein and Chop Suey
Hong Kong Garden takeaway
Hong Kong Garden

DOES IT MAKE ME HOMESICK? DOES IT MAKE ME HOMESICK?

痴根

我笑左好耐好耐，真係好好笑。一定要睇到尾，痴根。

chessy

same people, same scene. comes out with something entirely different.
Uma Thurman and John Travolta in BE COOL dance scene.



i narrowly threw up on this... why are they so uncool this time?