In Continuum.

Mood for Words

I dont remember how my love for the English language came about.I mean,you wouldnt expect a Taiwanese like myself to be more proficient in English than his own mother tongue.I admit,after being out of school for so long my chinese has been going downhill,with the only chance of speaking it being at home.It's rather pathetic if you think about it,but i guess you cant exactly blame me for my Western influences.I can never tolerate my friends wanting to eat at some Hawker Center at the side of the street,or some fast food joint.It's either Japanese food or Western for me.

In my family the difference is rather evident.In terms of musical taste i have a rather similar taste with my mother,who is into Jazz and classical stuff mostly.My sister is,as usual,into chinese pop junk while my father is not into music at all.Perhaps the sound of crispy new notes by the side of his ears,or the sound of my mother cooking some dish in the kitchen.Those are music to him,and anything else are noises.

Anyway,i remember myself being the human library in Primary School.I was into Goosebumps,and saw R.L.Stine as the God of Literature.Which is ridiculous because now that i look back on his writings,they were rather amateurish.But oh well,i was young and i collected all his books from the first to the last.However,his books did not make a lasting effect on me at all,not to mention being the chief reason of my interest in literature.I think it was because of Tolkien's works that got me really into writing.Not just the short stories i do,but rather anything that involves me putting my point across,feeding off my emotions into words,all that stuff.

"...When winter passed, she came again,
And her song released the sudden spring,
Like rising lark, and falling rain,
And melting water bubbling.
He saw the elven-flowers spring
About her feet, and healed again
He longed by her to dance and sing
Upon the grass untroubling.

Again she fled, but swift he came.
Tinuviel!Tinuviel!
He called her by her elvish name;
And there she halted listening.
One moment stood she, and a spell
His voice laid on her: Beren came,
And doom fell on Tinuviel
That in his arms lay glistering..."

--- Beren and Luthien, by J.R.R. Tolkien,from Chapter XI: A Knife in the Dark of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

That's part of a poem that caught my attention when i first read the book.Most of the people who have read the book usually skipped the poems,but i read through all of them and in fact,i thought the best parts of the books,or rather the universe Tolkien created,were the poems.I know,i can never write as good as him,all i can ever be is a bad imitation.But hey,i remember Tolkien once said something like "Imitation is the highest order of admiration",or something like that.

Anyway,i was looking through youtube.com and came upon a new singer/songwriter called Terra Naomi.She's amazing,and i wonder what took her so long to come up with those songs,now avaliabe on iTunes."Say It's Possible" is such a great song,and i did a cover of it after listening.It's just wonderful to hear the works of other singer/songwriters out there i guess,people who shares the same passion no matter how good or how bad you are.We are all in the same league,though some are in the Premier League while others are in the S. League.Yeah,you get the picture.

I noticed that,after years of writing songs myself,that interestingly the easiest songs to write are the depressing ones.It's rather morbid to think of it that way,since song writing is such a wonderful thing artisitically speaking.But it's true that when one is depressed,especially about love,we usually write the best songs.I attempted to write something out of that trend once,something on the cheerful side.I ended up sounding like a crazy lunatic right out of the asylum.Perhaps it is my voice,but reading the lyrics through alone was enough to make me cringe.It was immature,badly constructed,and most of all i shouldnt even have recorded it in the first place.

So i guess the most difficult task for a singer/songerwriter is to write something other than depressing stuff.Of course,you got to be as good as Ms. Yamagata is order to have your WHOLE ALBUM on morbid love subjects and still have all the listeners falling in love with you.There are a number of lyricists that i admire,aside from Ms. Yamagata.Jonatha Brooke writes awesome lyrics,another under-rated singer right there.John Mayer has the power to make you feel exactly what he wants you to feel while listening to a song,be it a song on growing older,heart break,St. Patrick's Day or traveling the world.He makes you feel exactly how he wants you to feel,and you feel like a puppet sometimes.Only,you are loving the control it has on you,and the strings on your limbs as the notes take you on this strange emotional dance.

"...Songs can be Trojan horses, taking charged ideas and sneaking past the ego's defenses and into the open mind..."

--- John Mayer, from November 1st 2004, column of Esquire magazine