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Thursday, October 31, 2002
I can't believe anyone watches soap operas.Soap operas operate on the premise that their viewers are idiots. They hinge on several key features like sex, beautiful people with lots of money, and soundproof hospital curtains. The acting is pretentious, overdone, and altogether a second-hand display of anything remotely histrionic. Take John Black for instance, from Days Of Our Lives. Some odious creature must have passed along the horrible fallacy that John was attractive and sexy. So now what do we have? His pretentious eyebrow wiggling and forced husky voice. Everything he does seems to have been pre-meditated under his distorted perspective of 'sexiness'. In short, he's gross. If the acting is bad, it's not as bad as the writing. If anything, it makes their acting look good. Admittedly, you must have a shred of talent if you're going to deliver a line like this with a straight face: "So it turns out, honey, that Bo and Hope both had microchips planted in their heads and thus forgot about their true identities: they used to be some sort of super sleek kung-fu secret spies!" I'm not making this up. Only in soaps can you find amnesia attacks as common as sense (which they seem to lack). I can't believe anyone with any credibility as a screen writer could possibly let this go on the air. To illustrate, do you know what the latest is on Days Of Our Lives? Aliens. The whole crew of them at Salem are secretly being cajoled into conversation and friendships by two, not surprisingly, good-looking evil aliens. I mean, we're supposed to just swallow this kind of drivel. "Roger swam in the West Keys where he fought a shark and lost his arm when he was only 10 years old. Luckily he was able to find an Indian shaman who miraculously made his arm grow back. Unfortunately, the shaman grew back the wrong arm, and now poor Roger has two right arms.. and, so, (weep bitterly), the news is he can only swim around in circles now.. He used to be an Olympian swimmer, you know." I hate Bo, Brady, Hope, John, his stupid wife, what's-her-name-with-the-hips, Philip, Chloe, Belle who somehow can bleed three stripes on her cheek and scar within minutes from a mere slap of the hand. I hate the whole idiocy of the soaps. Not that I watch them, I mean. Tuesday, October 29, 2002
What is it that makes people think musicians don't really work?Trust me. We work. And those of whom aren't practising musicians, aren't enrolled in some sort of institution that makes you realize this is about to be Life, and aren't thrust into the ghastly world of pressure and judgment may never come to understand this. Let's say the ratio of doctor and patients in Ontario is 1 to 10. Do you realize the difference of ratio for musicians? The top line of doctors, let's say the brain surgeons, are practising more or less in their city, or, perhaps, at most, their province or state. The top line of musicians, let's say the soloists, cater to several different countries. So just as one doctor who has a hard time making a living in New York may choose to live in Thunder Bay, so does the exact option close itself completely to a lesser musician competing for the same line of respective work. The demand for soloists is limited. Before I hear another flower-sniffing, philosophizing philomath gush to me about how easy I have it to make my life in music, I'll explain to you the similar discourse I have written out in The Irrepressible 8W. Admittedly, few of us need to memorize, study and practise the basic mechanics of dialing a phone. The margin of error is fairly generous when it comes to putting your fingers where it counts. But when it comes to music, here come the restrictions which make art so artful. Without getting into posture, the incredibly precise and thought-out movements of general playing (which in itself could fill whole textbooks -- textbooks which seem to be the only path of worth for some people), even a millimeter from my left hand can make a note out of tune. I hear another flower-sniffing, philosophizing philomath gush to me about how easy I have it to make my life in music Often when I leave my friends, they moan to each other about how much studying they have yet to do. I tell them I'm going off to practise. And you know what I get? A bunch of groans and "I'd trade my life for yours" type of deals. I just want them to know that it takes as much if not more concentration to practise diligently as it does to study. Some liken my practising the cello to their playing the guitar. "C'mon man, even I don't have to play the guitar every DAY." All I can say is that their guitar playing barely pushes the limits of their instruments as does classical, spanish guitar playing. You have several sets of chords in which you rely heavily on your frets and seriously... there are complexities between basic contemporary guitars driven solely on power chords and its variants to the cello and its very demand to strive for perfection. Classical music is one of those things passed down to us where perfection is its highest calling. More often than not, if I mess up in classical music, you will know. The harmonies are so intricate, its masterpiece so detailed, and its beauty so close to perfection, a sour note is seen as it is. But within these sets of what can be done, these high laws against thoughtless playing, we have the restrictions to make something truly beautiful. (Read the side notes in The Irrepressible 8W.) You can mess up in your contemporary music however. Mistakenly play a D minor seventh instead of a G, and all of a sudden, your mistake is fresh. It's your style. And to me, it's a shame that what others will level with classical music is a music that allows for slips of hands and misplaced fingers to be the key-in-lock for things promethean. Maybe I'm generalizing, but we must realize in comparing the two, that people spend whole lifetimes attempting to get to the intermediate steps of making this type of music. It took me four years to learn how to hold a bow right -- and even now I'm not more than half-way there. Not that it wasn't conceptualized properly. Neither is it because I didn't work hard enough at it. No, but to hold the bow properly and execute all the myriads of different bow strokes in the name of such an art as music takes that long. People who aren't geniuses can pick up the guitar in a few years. Within their desired music perimetres, they start to feel they understand it. It being their music. And rightly so. But people who aren't geniuses pick up the cello and realize, after 12 years, that the rewards are great but the challenges stronger. They realize that the more they know, the more they don't know. It's fun. It's got its immense rewards. But it's extremely taxing and fully deserving of respect and professionalism. Label me a purist. Call me stereotypical. But you only have the right calling me stereotypical if you don't blanket me with the preposterous notion that music is not work, just because we 'play' our instruments. Friday, October 18, 2002
I saw old footage of Michael Jackson with the Jackson Five in this info-mercial the other night, (um.. I'm a busy guy, really). He was by all accounts a good-looking, talented, and promising kid. He is now, by all accounts, ugly. Ugly to the point that if I see him on television unexpected, I might just bring back up breakfast. It's really sad.I bet when he was a kid, someone said something about his nose. I remember fond flashbacks of hilarious situations and reactions to common insults. I could laugh at my friends' names, their hairstyle, their clothes -- as long as it was done in moderation. I now feel bad for constantly making fun of Chris Avgerinos' gigantic ears back in OAC. All of us laughed and all, but, what happens if he pulls a Michael Jackson and his whole head shrinks to the size of a pea? There's always been this unspoken law that you shouldn't tease someone about something they can't change, one that I've only half-heartedly allowed to invade my conscience even now. I think in the next twenty years, making fun of someone because of their behaviour is going to be mean simply because it will be seen as something you can't change. Instead, making fun of someone's nose or physical appearance will be fine -- because, if one wanted to enough, he could, with two pennies, a dime and fifteen minutes, buy a chin-tuck and nosejob. But telling someone they should curb their homocidal tendencies is going to be mean because it would take way too much work to change it. Thursday, October 10, 2002
To answer the questions by curious readers regarding the video shoot: it was for my solo song, Hollow, which features my playing the cello while rapping, it was shot in a beautiful wooden-beamed church (thanks to the generosity of Grace United Church), and it will be finished around the end of December because I still need to oversee and okay the synchronization between the video images and the actual song. For new readers who still have further questions, please consult Stephanie's Brilliant Email before bombarding me with certain pre-conceived notions about Chinese cello rappers. hahaha.. Cello rappers. That sounds funny. Peace. Oh yeah. And for more songs, you may visit Blunt Ethiks for some more tracks from my boy Epidemic and yours truly. (Sorry. the release of "Hollow" is only available upon CD release. Wow. I sound important. But I'm not. Just buy the CD when it comes, cool? Cool.)
Monday, October 07, 2002
Some of my great friends (either they are great friends or mildly-entertained fans of hip hop) have asked me in person how the video shoot went. Without making too much of a contrived essay on the matter, it went. Very smoothly, actually. Think eating a filthy piece of cabbage in China and then reaping the dire consequences smooth. I can only thank God for such an opportunity, for such a smooth denouement, and for such wonderful people, both David, the cinematographer, and Michelle, the bubbly director/compiler/mastermind of the whole thing. By lunch, we had finished shooting three-quarters of the music video, and things looked good all the way through. And yes, for all those dying to know, I did have to wear make-up -- and yes, it was because there was much need for it. The make-up artist, bless her heart, Michelle, was seemingly at my heel between shoots (I loved it) to dab more make-up on. I don't think five minutes went by where she didn't blurt out, between a flurry of cotton balls, foam cubes, and powder puffs, "Yo! Are you sweating?!" Only one set-back, however. During peak moments of desired emoting, David would take his camera and zoom in extra close to my face. So close, in fact, the lens would at times be mere inches from my face. When that happened, Michelle complained about a sparkle in my eye, a nascent smile, a horrible reaction of 'happy' muscles running across my face. "No. This is a serious song.. you're going to have to MEAN it, Adrian. No smiling at all. Not even a smirk. If there's a smirk, it has to be dark and cynical." A dark smirk? I tried that, and Michelle shook her head. "No. Uh, you look like you're trying to seduce me. We're going for serious. I didn't say gross." After three or four takes, it obviously wasn't working. And I figured out why. From age three it would seem that I've been trained to smile and look damn pleasant in front of a camera. Any camera. School projects, family videos, family pictures, school pictures, pictures with friends, pictures with dogs, any pictures. All of a sudden, the shutter and lens was supposed to be my afflatus to a world of dark seriousness that, up until then, had been the bullwhip and crack to smile and say "Cheese". It took ten minutes of a break and pure concentration to finally get it right. I had to re-think and re-evaluate and re-categorize what that lens meant to me and the appropriate reactions to it. There's a happy story here. Not only do I have a music video in the making, and a bunch of brilliant pictures taken from a previous photo shoot under the same cinematographer, but I also came out with a 'new' me. A new Adrian that can also look happy and pleasant in front of a camera as well as.. sullen and pouty. Cucumbers, watermelon rinds, and Visine. This blog's publicized nostrums portended a virtual barrage of good-hearted e-people with even more pimple advice. Ranging from the complicated to the idyllic, Joanne Chan recommended a Clearasil brand of zit-fighting cover-up, Jon thoughtfully added raw egg whites to his long list of questionable smearing remedies, a girl from Georgetown gave me a very specific, and thus amusing, procedure to popping pimples, and three other readers emailed me different urls to zit-preventing websites. You are all very kind. The way you individuals, friends and strangers, have used the internet to evince e-concern, e-care, and e-advice is touching, reaching the definitive example of Webster's newest word, "netiquette". In return for your hard work, I would like to announce to you all that it was relatively clear today, with only a 20% chance of prezititation tomorrow. (It might be that sleeping well, drinking water, and Cetaphil is something to add to the list.) 
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