I Lost

2009

In the blink of an eye, one full year has passed. My last post was written and published days before I handed in my pink IC and changed it for a green one. One that reminds me of my 'Military Personnel' status everytime I enter a club; everytime I play Left4Dead; everytime I open my wallet to explore its contents out of boredom. Surprisingly, while I find the two words cool, I feel a lot different when the 'personnel' it refers to is myself.

But this post is not about National Service. Like any other male person in Singapore, I can be a tad too whiny about still being in service and I can see myself boasting and gloating the very minute I ORD. All the more, this post is a summary of my year and the many changes that have taken place.

In February, I passed out from SISPEC and was posted to the Air Force. I rejoiced as my Infantry days were over. Being posted to the Air Force would allow me to learn some new and refreshing things, not just a bunch of ambush weapons and advanced techniques of cover and concealment, though I found all of the above quite fun. However, this newfound excitement was not to be longlived as I realised that my job in the Air Force was basically to ensure the security of the Base and to respond to any threats or intrusions. Sure, slightly different from what I've learnt so far, but utterly dull and boring as each day passed.

At the end of the year, all I can say about 2009 is that I've been blessed with the opportunity to have run into so many different situations that made me question why I even exist in this world. I now know how it feels to be doing a job you really don't want to be doing - that you're not even a little bit good at. I know how it feels to have everyone hate you. I know how it feels like to countdown the days to your girlfriend going away for studies. I know how it feels to not know what on earth to do with your life. I know how it feels to think that you know what you want to do with your life only to find out that you don't have the money to do it. I know how it feels like to have people around you who think like yourself. I know how it feels like to have people around you who think the exact opposite. I know how taking a train to Gemas from Singapura feels.

But most importantly, I know how it feels to have 9 more months to go in the military so that I can just move on with my life - whatever kind of life that may turn out to be.

That Glimmer Of Hope

A couple of weeks back I met up with Leon and some of his colleuges at Timbre for drinks. Leon told me that they will be wherever Fatt and Pamela play as often as they can because they really like to listen to 'their music'. I won't go into the whole cover-original issue which all musicians face at one point or another - especially in Singapore, but on a finer point that can actually be quite soothing to the musician's soul.

After drinking myself to my last dollar and managing to get a ride back in one of Leon's collegue's car, I found myself squeezing in the back seat with another of Leon's collegues, Pamela and Fatt. It wasn't the first time that I'd shared a ride back with musicians but for the first time it actually dawned on me: why was this paying customer (and Timbre's not the cheapest place around) actually willing to send the musicians back home even though their destinations were not what one would call 'on the way'. Just to paint a clearer picture, it was past 2 in the morning on a working day, everyone had a few beers too many and there was the office at which we had to show our faces at at 8.30 the next morning. And yet nothing else ran through my mind other than the question.... why???

It was only yesterday when I was walking around with (surprise, surprise) my mum at Orchard Road that I realised why some people actually take the trouble to get to know pub musicians, buy drinks for them, remember their birthdays and yes, send them home after work. After the musicians' work that is. It is because pub musicians and singers are not just an analog version of a CD player nor are they live versions of people's favourite songs; they sit up there on stage not to prostitute themselves by singing songs that weren't written by themselves but to belt out songs that their audiences love to hear - songs that audiences can relate to because they are familiar and because they have been picked out by the latter as 'relevant'.

Danny Loong once told an aspiring 16 year old boy - and these were his exact words, "People are depressed. Every single one of them out in the audience sipping on that beer, whiskey or coke has got problems in their lives. We're here to tell them, 'Hey, life doesn't suck!'. We're here to let them know that they're not alone."

I don't think there could be a more accurate description of the role a musician plays. Just as jesters used satire and witty humour to give rulers their much needed wake up call to reality, pub singers and musicians deliver funky songs that cheer us city-dwellers up as well as melacholic songs that let us know that we're not alone in whatever sorrows we may have.

And in those few short sets that they play... there is always a glimmer of hope.

Rootless Tree

What i want from you is empty your head
They say be true, don't stain your bed
We do what we need to be free and it leans on me
Like a rootless tree

What i want from us is learn to let go
We fake a fuss and fracture the times
We go blindwhen we've needed to see
And it leans on me like a rootless...

So fuck you, fuck you, fuck you and all we've been through
I said leave it, leave it, leave it
It's nothing to you and if you hate me, hate me, hate me
Then hate me so good that you can let me out
Let me out of this hell when you're around
Let me out let me out, let me out of this hell when you're around
Let me out, let me out..

What i want from this is learn to let go
No not of you, of all that's been told
Killers reinvent and believe
And this leans on melike a rootless...

So fuck you, fuck you, fuck you and all we've been through
I said leave it, leave it, leave it, it's nothing to you
And if you hate me, hate me , hate me,
Then hate me so good that you can let me out , let me out, let me out
Let me out of this hell when you're around
Let me out...

And fuck you, fuck you, i love you and all we've been through
I said leave it it's nothing to you and if you hate me
Then hate me so good that you can let me out let me out...
It's hell when you're around

-Damien Rice

Hurricane

Lying awake thinking of ways back then
How it would be different
The story you told was never the one
I wrote for me; it isn't the same
Will I be the same

You fell from grace into my arms
Because of you I stayed around
I didn't count on things to go my way again
But were those just games

I can't explain the changes in your eyes
You're just my hurricane

Promises made faded away in time
Now it is so different
You never returned
Vanished from here
Without a trace
Was it in vain
Could I be the same

There was a memory of a place
It took me in on one embrace
I never thought the sun would shine again
Now are those just games

I can't explain the changes in your eyes
You're just my hurricane

When you said we were through
Was it me, was it you
Now I can't face the truth
This is me, it's not you
There's nothing wrong with us
It's just me I can't trust
So why'd you wanna stay today?

Lying awake thinking of ways back then
now it is so different

You fell from grace into my arms
Because of you I stayed around
I didn't count on things to go my way again
Now were those just games
I can't explain the changes in your eyes
You're just my hurricane

My only hurricane

-Jack & Rai

Vulnerable

I've slept sweet the past few nights, especially since I had so much fun on Friday night.

It's nice to sit in a pub sipping on beer with amazing company, listening to live music without thinking about how far I can go in music.

It's nice to wake up at 9 am after 4 hours of sleep and yet feel energised and fresh. Things like that don't happen to me all the time (or rather, I don't let them happen).

It's all been very nice for me. Till last night's dream.

I called her up and told her I wanted to see her. That I wanted to give the both of us another shot. She agreed to meet me and when I saw her face, the problems just came back again - how she couldn't look me in the eye for more than a few seconds without switching her focus to some guy who's passing by; how she would regard everything I say as nonsense; how something sweet to me seems nonsensical to her (if I had written a song for her she would have chuckled while giving the 'what-the-hell' look before saying "so sweet" most sacarstically); how it felt to know that no matter what I did, it would never ever be enough for her.

Furious at her attitude and behaviour, I let the words "You slut!" escape from my mouth. To my surprise and further fury, she didn't even look at me or look angry. "You know she's a slut," I thought, "Why am I wasting my time here?"

I turned to walk away, not without telling her melodramatically, "If you're not going to say anything, I'm gonna go.. and I won't want to to ever see you after that."

Not surprisingly, she let me go. I felt this deep pain eat me up from inside which throbbed a little harder with every step that I took and I couldn't believe that I had let myself go through all of that again.. after literally vowing never to let someone treat me like that ever - especially her.

The rest of the dream means little more than nothing to me for I ended up throwing my wallet and handphone into a swimming pool and had to dive in to get it.. the pain still etched inside of me. And eventually, I think I began to dream of things I can now no longer recall.

My best friend once said that he would rather have nightmares and scary and sad dreams than nice, sweet ones because no matter what kind of dream it was, you would always wake up at the end. When you wake up from a nightmare, more often than not, a good feeling would come over you and you'd start to thank god that it was just a dream; but when you wake up from a fairytale-like dream, all you want to do is to go back into that wonderland where everything just seem(ed) so perfect.

This morning when I woke up, I felt that something was not right. I began to think through the events of last night but nothing could have sparked off the weird mix of emotions that I was feeling because we were jamming all the way till I went to sleep last night. But there was something that was haunting me that even made me think of calling in sick today - thank goodness I didn't.

It was not until later in the morning when I was looking through my own blog posts about her that I realized that she screwed me over once again - in my dreams this time.

They say that dreams are the manifestation of one's subconscious - things that you think about without even thinking about them. So what this means is that I think of her without even having to think of her.. and this scares me quite a bit.

When someone asked me just last week what my biggest fear in life is, I answered almost without hesitation that it would be the fear that I may never bring myself to put myself out there for someone again. It's a funny question coming from someone that I actually feel vulnerable to for some inexplicable reason; but I can only wonder how long more I can actually let myself live like this cause I really don't know anything anymore.. except that I cannot go on like this forever. I don't want to.

I've said this before and I'll say it again. Leave me the fuck alone.

Here Without You

"I'm here without you baby but you're still on my lonely mind.
I think about you baby and I dream about you all the time."



There are few songs that can evoke so much emotion in me that I could just stop, put everything down and play the memories that still remain of you in my mind.

I need to move on. I sit here right now without you, occassionally drifting in and out of my life and I know that nothing is going to change. Not because I don't want it to. If I had a choice, I would give my entire existence to you just because it felt so right with you. Nothing mattered at all when I was with you. Everything around us, to me, collapsed when we were together and left just the two of us standing in our own little world with no one able to touch us with their distorted images of what a perfect couple is supposed to be.

But distorted they were, and it took me a long time to see that. You never cared about what I was feeling inside, as long as I dressed up the way you wanted; as long as I said the things you wanted to hear; as long as I spoke the way you felt was cool.

You set the rules of our relationship - for me - while you went on to break every single rule. With each time you broke those rules, a part of my heart slowly but surely went down with it, never to be rebuilt again. Now all that it does is to pulsate at regular (or irregular) intervals pumping blood through my veins, transporting oxygen.

I would like to tell the world that I never once said that I hated you. But the truth is, I never dared admit it. I've always believed that love and hate are not opposites, just different sides of each other so admitting that I hated you meant telling everyone including my girlfriend that I was still in love with you. So i tried convincing myself that you never mattered anymore.

Of course, that didn't go down well with the girlfriend. And eventually, it got to me. I was still in love with you and while you kept hinting that letting me go was what hurt the most for you, you still went on from one guy to another.

You changed a lot these years. Though your room still smells the same, you've changed. And while I figure out how and why you could simply let me go if I really meant that much to you, I'm not as strong as you. Most guys aren't.

So I need to move on. Let me go. Just like you did back then, let me go on with my life. I know for a fact that I won't last much longer in this game you choose to play over and over and over again. I'm not a sore loser and in fact I don't have a problem losing games at all. But you know what?

At your game, I choose not to play.

But do I really have a choice, dar?

Leave me the fuck alone. Stop making me mess with my own mind.

"A thousand lies have made me colder and I don't think I can look at this the same.
And when the last one falls, it gets hard but it won't take away my love"