Number One?

Spending my time slacking off, as usual. Different name, same person! At least this will encourage me to think instead of just drivel.

There's something about being in your own house that just makes productivity plunge to record new levels. A house is a home is a place of comfort, not a work cubicle or a desk. Makes me want to sleep/play more Final Fantasy/doodle/sleep/eat/sleep more than think or engage in the slow avalanche of books which is threatening to consume my desk/other desk/mahjong table-cum-desk.

Stage

The lights out are brighter
than any other lights
somehow cleaner, clearer, the colours
More authentic
(Even if this is stage(d))

When the lights go out
The darkness it blends itself into
Is somehow
Also darker
And more lonely.


I like stage lights. I wish I'd payed more attention during the time when I was able to learn about all these things; MXes and cycloramas and moving lights and washes and all of that other technical garble that turns into nothing but garble without the massive rigging and the control panels to back it all up.

Where have all my words gone? Somehow I feel tired, even if just a day ago I seemed to have so many things to say or do.

Backstage, In The Wings

Backstage, in the wings,
There is this metal wire mesh
Metal squares with square holes
Just large enough to put my fingers through
To play with before the next spotlight
In the silence and all the bustle around
I put my fingers through and tugged, gently,
The wire mesh beat out, and then went back in,
Enthralled, I did it again
Beat
beat
Beat
beat
Beat
beat
It sounded like a heart.

Crazy "Learn Latin" Initiative

Just to pull out of the hat of tricks when feeling the need to sound pretencious/extremely intellgience.

• Argumentum ad crumenam --- argument based on financial considerations (ho ho ho, $$$$)
  
• Argumentum ad hominem --- argument based on the principles of the opponent ("you are a fat cow, therefore you are wrong!")
  
• Argumentum ad ignoratiam --- argument founded on ignorance ("the moon is made of cheese. Cheddar, I think.")
  
• Argumentum ad verecundiam --- argument appealing to decency ("BUT THAT MAN HAS NO CLOTHES!!")
  

St. Augustine apparently said, "audi alteram pertem": hear the other side.

Dum spiro, spero: while I breathe, I hope (do emo kids breathe, then? xD)

Epicurean! "Dum vivimus, vivamus!"

Cremona; Stradivarius, Guarneri, Amati.

Cremona violins: as a young kid I always wanted to play the violin. My cousins, too much older than I, had passed one down - or rather, given a broken pile of woood and strings - to me. It was fourteen years older than I was, and probably cost less than a meal at a fast food restaurant. The amazing, thin g-string had long snapped. The bow that came with the musty old case was dropping hairs, just like an old man. I put the bow to string anyway; no idea what I was doing, no idea whether it was on or off tune. It still made noise, still made music: not good music, certainly, not trained music, not even more than sound to some, but it was music.

So what makes a Stradivarius or an Amati so great?

The Red Violin thinks it's because some were made with the blood of loved ones; and I think maybe it comes from generations of love. But what really? "No one has ever come close. Let them try." (New York Times, June 3rd 2007)