See the pyramids along the Nile
Watch the sun rise on a tropic isle
Just remember, darling, all the while
You belong to me.

See the marketplace in old Algiers
Send me photographs and souvenirs
But remember when a dream appears
You belong to me.

I’ll be so alone without you
Maybe you’ll be lonesome too—and blue

Fly the ocean in a silver plane
Watch the jungle when it’s wet with rain
Just remember till you’re home again
You belong to me

- You Belong To Me, by The Duprees

Creative Betrayal

Music is larger than life. It is captivating to the point of bewitchery, beautifully wicked, unattainably grand, but in all its grandeur, oddly humbling.

Music humbles the performer, for however superb his technique, he is merely a servant to the composer, an interpreter of another’s ideals and emotions. As he only interprets, he may often find himself awestruck by the ingenuity of its creator. After all, it is the composer who defines music.

Yet, music is also humbling to the composer for despite him writing the most sophisticated passages and beautiful melodies, only a good performer can breathe life into them.

That is probably why music becomes more interesting, albeit frustrating, when the composer and performer is not the same person.

I firmly believe that the integrity of a piece of music must be retained by the performer. A performer must seek first and foremost to showcase the composer’s art, upon which he demonstrates his own virtuosity, in contrast to showcasing his technique by making use of the composer’s art.

Granted, some performers can, while retaining the integrity of the original music, revitalise it by injecting it with his own personality and charm (something like Bruno Pelletier’s jazz rendition of Billy Joel’s Just the Way You Are). Unfortunately, most tries at creative interpretations of the original music defaces it, robbing the composer of his craft.

Recently, I’ve been hunting down versions of Chopin’s Prelude in E Minor on Youtube. I’ve listened to performers from 8-year old kids to acclaimed musicians and even  many amateur exhibitionists. Many of them, including renowned musicians, performed this piece substantially different from the score, playing it in the way they want to hear it (Chopin must have made several turns in his grave). My favorites though, are those who played the piece superbly while keeping to the original score.

I guess we sometimes quickly jump into the trap of making changes for the better simply because it’s easier to do things the way we prefer than to step into another’s shoes and attempt to understand exactly why the music was written in a certain way, and what the composer really wants to express. Sadly, whenever we do that, we deny ourselves of a chance to be awestruck by the ingenuity of the composer and be humbled by music.

Swimming blind

It’s amazing how being blind seems to immediately make you feel self-conscious.

I left my goggles at home while going for a swim. What spooked me the most wasn’t the crashing into walls and people, and not even that disturbing feeling that came with imagining chlorine eating away at my retinas (munch munch munch). What’s really freaky is this terrible feeling of being ignorant to what everyone else sees, something like me fumbling in the water, and generally everything that others can see while I can’t.

The inconvenience of being blind seems so small compared to this constant sense of insecurity, self-consciousness and helplessness. It’s almost as though, being blind is perfectly fine… so long as everyone else is too.

Studying for fun

“You see, if you have an education, you have many sources of pleasure and intellectual stimulation. Ways of using your time.”

- Burjor Randeria, in Paul Theroux’s Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

This is the perfect reason for working hard on learning – you learn so that you can have more fun!

Certainly, nothing can interest (or sustain your interest) unless you have sufficient knowledge on the subject to appreciate and enjoy it. Everything that you don’t know about or don’t understand is one less source of entertainment. An illiterate man is a bored one.

So, life is dull not because there aren’t sufficient forms of entertainment. You have no hobbies not because nothing interests you. If all you know about is your mundane life, then your life will certainly be mundane because you enjoy little more than unimaginative dramas about lives like yours.

Considering that dance escapes me, and that I have two right feet (which I argue to be worse than having two left feet), I’m missing out on the whole field of dance – all that elegant prancing and sensuous movement. Every language and culture that I do not know is one that prevents me from fully appreciating the nuances and witticisms of a film in that language.

Yet, this begs the question: breadth or depth? There seems to be a tradeoff between enjoying many things a bit and enjoying some things a lot. Now, even figuring out how to enjoy life sounds challenging. We have no excuse to be bored.

Then I talked about literature. “People will tell you, ‘What’s the use? What’s the point of reading novels and poetry?’ They’ll tell you to go to law school or to be an economist or to do something useful. But books are useful. Books will make you thoughtful, and they might even make you happy. They will certainly help you to become more civilized.”

- Paul Theroux, in Ghost Train to the Eastern Star