the boy named X

foreword

this is part of a series i recently got inspired to write about. all characters are fictional by the way. so don't start guessing who it is. here goes...

once upon a time there lived a boy who was invisible. he wasn't literally invisible, of course, for we all know that can't be possible in real life (and even if it was, we wouldn't know anyway). so, back to the boy - people called him X. now X was the epitome of mediocrity. he was relatively book-smart, but never had the makings of a top scholar; without having to study extremely hard though, he made it into college - unseen, of course. X was also relatively inclined towards the arts. he played a musical instrument (now i can't remember what that was, but he did), but was never very good at it, even after playing for about a decade. he continued playing anyway, for he felt comfortable.

X, of course, had parents, who doesn't? his parents weren't alcoholics, compulsive gamblers, nor were they workaholics who never had time for their children. for one reason or another, however, they were too cooped up with their own lives to take a second look at X. now they were the type of parents who didn't believe in expressing their love towards others outwardly - conservative, traditional, whatever you wanna call it. perhaps it was a vicious cycle - parents didn't wanna take the initiative to find out about son's life, son feels like a stranger at home, son stays out, parents assume son doesn't care, and it goes on. no one knew how that cycle started, but it's like a slippery slope.

one would expect X to embrace a life outside home, but being the mediocre himself, he was pretty invisible to everyone. he didn't make the effort to make himself seen or heard anyway. so that's it, X had few friends - he was always alone. in fact he actually enjoyed that kind of solitude, although he wished he had a person to turn to sometimes. that yearning seems to grow by the day, but at the end of it, there was still no one. is it too late to start?

needle in a haystack

exactly, this is what i've been! a needle in a haystack, as much as i hate to admit it. and it's not like i can help it being that tiny, insignificant needle. exit from the scene and not one person will bat an eyelid. alright ignore the bad english, just let me grouse, for once.

to think i've failed to realise it all this while - there're probably 476 other people who can offer what i can offer. and did i mention they could give more than i can? no, i'm not even wanted in the scene. i forced my way in, grit my teeth and foolishly tried to climb through that huge haystack, hoping to reach the top, just so that THAT one person will take a second look. but oh, how foolish can one get? i am but a tiny needle.

alright it really is time to pick up the pieces and move on. don't look back. in restrospect, however (not trying to sound oxymoronic here), i never should've entertained the thought of diving back in when i first decided to move out of it. one big mistake i made in my life. BIG MISTAKE. then again, who doesn't make mistakes? oh wells.

alone in the kitchen with an eggplant

i have always loved cooking since the age of say, 1o? and yes, i DO mean i love cooking, as much as i love to eat. more often than not, and sad to say, however, i haven't been immersing myself in the process of preparing food all these years. as much as i'd like to, i just don't usually have that luxury of time; it's a race against time (trust me, i mean it) whenever i prepare dinner for my family (i don't have a very patient mother). well, yes, cooking for your loved ones is a huge blessing in itself because it probably means u actually have loved ones to cook for.

i digress.

so, today, i actually took some time to marinate some 24 chicken wings for tomorrow and boy, that was some therapeutic experience (okay i've tried my best to bring across that point without remotely sounding like i'm making some sort of revelation). well, so i took my time at it - washing the wings, cleaning them with salt and flour to get rid of any hint of the "frozen" smell (okay i just revealed that i use frozen chicken wings). then i gotta rinse the salt and flour away and chop 'em up one by one into 2, and squeezing any excess water away before putting them together into my mixing bowl. so that's the PRE-marination steps that took the bulk of the time. all this while, i was just focusing on every step and movement and my head was just BLANK. or maybe, i was thinking about those wings (and their owners perhaps). in any case, i came out of the entire process feeling pretty refreshed.

moral of the story? marinate your chicken wings the night before so you can take as much time as you want to think of how the wings might look if they had the feathers on and the number of chickens slaughtered for your family's dinner (okay if you thought about those you'd probably not eat them the next day).

so, to wrap it up, here are two excerpts from one of my favourite books - alone in the kitchen with an eggplant:

Call it seven-thirty on a Wednesday night. No one else is at home. A slight hunger hums in your body, so you wander into the kitchen. In front of the window a plant's stem wave like arms from their hanging basket. In the pantry bin, potatoes eye the onions slipping out of their skins. An apron hangs from the closet door like the shadow of a companion. Reflexively, you open the refrigerator and nod the the condiments, grab the hot sauce, and close the others bank into cold darkness. Bottle of sauce in hand, you gaze around the room, inspecting the contents of the cabinets, the pile of paper menus from nearby restaurants, the spines of your cookbooks. You turn from the bookshelf and catch a glimpse of yourself in the window. In the heat, your hair has puffed wildly. You experience one of those weird lost minutes inside your head. Loneliness, you think, loneliness with its lyrical sound; you look like a lone lioness. You hear Alvy Singer, the young Woody Allen character from Annie Hall, say, "The universe is expanding." Bananas Shaughnessy from The House of Blue Leaves cuts him off: "My troubles all began a year ago - two years ago today - Two days ago today? Today." Then you remember your mother mixing cream cheese and lox into a pan of scrambling eggs.

You don't need a literal eggplant on hand to realize - with the pleasurable shock that comes from recognizing a small truth - that you are alone in the kitchen with one.

- Jenni Ferrari-Adler

Dinner alone is one of life's pleasures. Certainly cooking for oneself reveals man at his weirdest. People lie when you ask them what they eat when they are alone. A salad, they tell you. But when you persist, they confess to peanut butter and bacon sandwiches deep fried and eaten with hot sauce, or spaghetti with butter and grape jam.

- Laurie Colwin

music, culture and passion

i recently read a non-fictional work by jay rubin entitled haruki murakami and the music of words. this work includes not only rubin's interpretation of all of murakami's works in the past 2 decades or so, but also interviews with murakami himself as well as other translators of murakami's works such as alfred birnbaum.

one thing that hit me in this book is murakami's view on "a writer's societal responsibility". this was something lacking in his earlier works such as hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world, pinball and 1973. as he grew older and matured as a writer, however, he slowly grew out of his detached and "cool" self and focused more on many nagging societal issues usually shunned by the masses.

as a musician and writer (if you would call me one) myself, i have always neglected (deliberately or subconsciously) this "responsibility" i have on the masses at large (not that i have a large readership or any readership to speak of at all). apologies for sounding like i'm imposing a certain standard on people. so here's a disclaimer before i really start on my topic - i'm not trying to be an authoritative figure on the topics i am going to write about; they are purely my opinions and anyone is welcome to critic or comment on them. so here goes... music, culture and passion.

most of my friends would identify me 1st as a musician, then as something else (student, general working population or whatever). but as an enthusiastic and active musician in the past 8 years, i have never really taken the initiative to (or never recognised the need to) express my views in my writing about music and have never posted any writing (other than my special tribute to "khalid") on music.

over the years as a growing young musician, my tastes and my style in music have changed drastically. from a wide-eyed young boy introduced to a world of wind band music to an intermediate commercial performer, the things i listen to and play slowly shifted towards what most classical musicians would frown at, but these are also stuff that the masses could identify with - top 40s, evergreen, pop. slowly, i began to get labelled by certain people here and there (not that i really mind) to be one of those who "strayed". it's odd how the local scene is but that's the way people are over here.

once again, i'm not trying to dictate who or which is superior; my belief stands strong that every piece of music comes from sheer hard work of talented composers and deserve equal treatment by musicians. non-musicians may not be able to appreciate certain genres. but as musicians, to discriminate or segregate stylistically different music just comes to show one's narrow and immature views.

i suddenly recalled something that jeff conner, trumpeter of boston brass said when they were touring locally in 2008. conner was posted the question "how do you approach contrasting genres of music such as jazz and classical music?"

his reply left a deep impression on me, "personally, i feel that music is actually labelled for convenience sake. as a player, rather than labelling THIS as JAZZ and THAT as CLASSICAL, shouldn't we approach every piece of music individually according to how the style demands us to play? so if you ask me, i approach every piece of music the same way, playing to its stylistic demands."

as much as i have distanced myself from wind band and orchestral music, i still do enjoy listening to all of those. my constant reluctance to attend a local wind band concert, however, does not stem from the genre of the music itself, but from the culture of the growing local band scene. the easy access and high availability to musical instruments and music "education" today definitely shows a quantum leap in the growth of our local music scene. however, such an improvement seems to have far more adverse effects on our youths.

in the tokyo gas attack incident in 1996, some 5000 people on 5 different tokyo subway lines inhaled this poisonous sarin gas which left many of them crippled for life and killed 11 people. this disastrous crime was allegedly commited by this group of people known as the aum shinrikyo cult. the cult is led by their leader - shoko asahara - a self-declared messiah who outlines a doomsday prophecy where an armageddon will wipe out all of human race other than aum followers. offering "valuable advice" in life, the cult attracted many graduates of japan's elite universities and thus dubbed as "religion for the elite".

so why did i bring up this seemingly unrelated incident into the picture? we can see a parallel between the aum cult and our band scene today, albeit with some exaggeration. today there are too many educators of music whose ultimate objective is fame and recognition. not only did they neglect the noble job of an educator, but also they're trying to fulfill their hunger and greed at the expense of our young musicians; most of these people do not actually know what they're doing. these poor children thus grow up to become photocopies of their instructors - claiming knowledge in many aspects that they themselves had been misguided in.

with a growing scene, our internal "pool" of musicians actually starts to fill like an overflowing pond, so much so that we can barely see the banks of this already gigantic lake. "empty" and arrogant instructors start to focus on reaching the top locally, introducing "cultures" and "concepts". more importantly, the yearn and desire to learn from even better musicians overseas die out; the significance of humility in learning has been outshone by the greed for fame and money.

the local band scene has thus turned into nothing more than a rat race and a game of politics.

it irks me nowadays to take public transport with secondary school students with gig bags engaging in a session of criticism about **** person or **** band. this display of ignorance sets me wondering about the direction of our music scene and the kind of musicians we are producing locally. it is indeed disheartening to learn that this culture is producing musicians who want to "win". win what? beats me.

our system has taken the music out of musicians.

recently i back to my junior college to take look at their preparations for their upcoming concert. i was extremely encouraged to learn that the theme for the concert is actually jazz. finally there is some hope to open up narrow minds in our scene. my visit however, has only left me with even lower spirits.

when i stepped in, the band was rehearsing this compilation of standard glenn miller swing tunes.

"cool, swing's pretty challenging," i thought to myself.

in most circumstances, i would never speak up when observing rehearsals. but that day, this guy up on the podium was getting it ALL WRONG. anyone would ask "why are they sounding like this? it ain't swingin'!" what really disheartened me was not that the band couldn't swing ( as a matter of fact, i can't swing too) but the fact that their "leader" (the conductor on the podium) was so stubborn to listen to comments and the kids down there chose to listen to their misguided leader. sounds like the aum shinrikyo eh? elite youths, misguided leader (no gassing though, thank God).

now i'm just praying that people attending the concert don't know jazz (or should i be hoping the people actually know jazz, so they don't get a wrong idea of what jazz is?) whatever the case is, the incident left me fuming mad at first, and later just utter disappointment.

how is it that the culture can change so much over such a short time? (i'm not that old by the way) youths used to jump at the chance to learn new things, to actually LISTEN to new genres of music. now people are just comfortable where they are, looking for the shortest route to "success".

culture. that's one thing that made me never look back at the local band scene, never want to attend school concerts, never want have anything to do with it ever again. maybe this is a phase. for murakami's case, he fled japan for the states because of the culture of japan's literary scene; how writers are supposed to conform to publishers' whims and fancies, to write in a certain fixed style to gain official recognition as "pure literature". on a larger scale, japanese individuals are treated no more than just expendables. under the very skin of "civil rights" and "individual freedom" lies a bloody flesh of japanese imperialism, left behind since the times of the war. murakami's departure, however, does not equate to escapism. it was during his time overseas that he was able to look at his homeland in greater detail, which in turn made him realise his responsibility as a public figure, as a writer, as a japanese to daringly and openly discuss issues that hinders his homeland's development as a civilisation. again, murakami does not regard (and dislikes people to regard him as) an authoritative figure in the issues he brings up. he prefers for people to realise the problem and speak from their hearts too, about these issues that are so close to them.

like murakami, my passion has made music something that's so close to me, but i have not enough courage, ability or societal standing like him to embrace and inject change into this thing that matters so much to me. all i can do is to pen down my views here in this little space on the worldwideweb and pray that fellow musicians actually do recognise the devastating culture that is taking away something so dear to us as music.

credits: haruki and yoko murakami, jay rubin, jeff conner, glenn miller

depressing friday

"TGIF!"

an acronym overly used to express joy for the approaching weekends.

it's friday today but i'm certainly not in the best of moods. though trouble never stops coming in, life recently really haven't been THAT bad. not bad enough to spoil a friday at least.

okay to put it in the shortest possible way, friday's been depressing so far, no signs of it getting any better, but i can't put a finger on what went wrong exactly. well, the weather's horrible, i had a big time cramp on my left calf last night during my sleep, i'm stuck in the office with a pathetic number of colleagues (half of which i barely even talk to), n i'm here updating this derelict blog which i left untouched since 20th may this year (ok that's about 5 months).

frankly, there have been moments in the past 5 months when i get this urge to write something on this tiny (and somewhat insignificant) space in the worldwideweb. the furthest i got, however, was the beginning lines of what seemed like the longest thesis in the world. i always get held back by this - as people would say it - mental block. okay i'm not gonna attempt to illustrate it, too much of a hassle. i mean, what's the point right? not as if people are not gonna understand the term "mental block".

so after a few occasions of trying and subsequently giving up, i sort of decided not to try anymore. i mean, who wants to read about me?! with such a routined life (with occasional hiccups, sometimes burps), there's really nothing much to talk about most of the time. and i'm not about to start telling the world how many times i yawned or how many grains of rice i've eaten in a day.

i digress.

okay back to depressing friday. i've had enough of dots and dashes, ticking metronomes, overdose of decibels and frequencies for the week. so after this morning spent on perfecting 1 crotchet, 1 semiquaver and 22 demi-semiquavers (where 1 crotchet = 4 semiquavers = 8 demisemiquavers, for the benefit of music-illiterate readers), i told myself that's enough for the week (though those 2 bars still sounded crappy).

after a good serving of laughter over the lunch table, i was back in this gloomy office complex, thinking about how i'd spend the rest of this friday afternoon. so here i am, after 5 months, picking up this blog (not exactly where i left off).

so, a little on recent (or not-so-recent) happenings. may through august was just lots of prep for the usual national day thingy, and also the band's trip to canada, which turned out to be an eye-opener (as usual). the nature of the trip was of course, work, but it had the slightest feeling of a retreat from this hectic city lifestyle. so that was the trip in 2 lines. capsule project took off (finally) and had the 1st jamming session not too long ago. thank God for eef to be there to iron out all the kinks in terms of admin and public relations. things are relatively smooth so i can't complain much. then there was prep for my ltcl coming december. mundane are the days locked up in the studio practicing (but never perfecting) the same things day in, day out, rain or shine, good or bad. honestly, there were times i was so sure i'm never gonna make it. but oh wells, having already registered AND PAID for it, giving up ain't really an option.

and of course, there's my once-hectic social life, which is actually going downhill; me on my part not giving a damn about anyone at all. and my recent refound addiction to reading's just not helping the situation in any way. an afternoon at a coffee joint with a latte and my latest murakami novel would more or less paint my ideal afternoon portrait. well, i guess that's what overdose of work does to people, besides looting their health.

having said this much, i still don't feel my mood lifted by even an inch; friday's still pretty much depressing, for reasons way beyond my comprehension perhaps. not that i hated fridays to begin with. in fact, i used to look forward to fridays. oh well, at least i burnt the time i could have spent brooding over today writing all these nonsensical stuff which i doubt even anyone would bother to read. haha.

and so the sound of the tuba continues behind me, the metronome continues its lifeless tick...

"tick... tick... tick... tick..."

this is friday.

a tribute to "khalid"

i have been in a reminiscing state of mind recently, savouring and reflecting on the good times and bad times in the distant, and at times, the not-so-distant past...

standing at where i am and looking back down at the footsteps i've left behind, every footstep - deep or shallow - tells a story; of different stages of my life, different people i've met, and more importantly, how these people have created an impact, in one way or another, in my life.

one particular person that left quite an impression on me and my life, more so than ever now, would be this man by the name of J. Necola Caesar II, better known as "khalid".

"khalid" was my first saxophone tutor when i picked it up at the age of 13. 8 years down the road, playing and teaching as a career myself now, his favourite little quotes still echo in my head from time to time. as a professional jazz saxophonist performing for over 30 years himself, he was more than just a tutor to me; he was a friend, a great buddy who never thought twice about giving invaluable advice to growing musicians like myself.

being primarily a classical saxophonist for almost all of my career so far, i never really thought jazz would ever become such an integral part in my life. at a tender age as a musician, i was indoctrinated with the mindset that "jazz is not the way to go"; the system taught me to read little dots and dashes off a piece of paper, to emphasise on 1 and 3 (apologies to non-musicians reading this), to follow.

now music was never such a "feel" thing until khalid came along with his good ol' 1948 selmer paris balanced action and his bebop, latin and swing riffs and licks. he would always tell us to play whatever we felt like, setting the "boundaries" and "rules" to only as far as the chord changes. now THAT was not what the system preached. his bright and cheerful tone was a "no-no" for the group, the music i was playing.

the artistes i'm listening to right now - dave koz, gerald albright, david sanborn, eric marienthal, kenny g - were once familiar names; they were people that khalid had recommended me to listen to, but these were also the very names i've erased from this musical journey i've embarked on for way too long, because those styles and sounds were not what the system embraced.

so, for 6 years or so, i chose to bury his sound, his style, his spirit in a deep and forgotten part of my memories - so much so i almost forgot about the mere existence of this great man. i chose to play within my comfort zone; within this tiny little circle. so, just as any other angsty teenage musician (which i was back then) would think, i thought i was a fantastic player; my ego grew and music became no different from academics to me. it was about producing results, about medals and achievements.

for a few years i didn't enjoy playing at all; practicing became a chore (it still is sometimes now =x) and on 15 May 2006, khalid passed away. the news didn't hit me as hard as i'd expected until quite some time later. i was practicing one particular afternoon back in junior college and it suddenly dawned upon me how much khalid had moulded me into the musician i am. at that moment tears welled my eyes.

today, i feel that i'm in a better position - more so than at any point in my life so far - to write about this; i listen to a wider range of artistes, play a wider range of genres, i'm exposed to things i've never seen my entire performing career. i'm still learning though, from artistes' recordings, from my mates in the big band and many other people here and there. or should i just say, the stuff that khalid played and listened to has became such an important part of my life. this is the point of time in my life i think about khalid, about how he talked about jazz, about ideas, about improvisation, about licks; his sound and little wise quotes ever so deeply etched in my head.

it's also now that i regret not listening, not accepting new ideas and shutting myself out from jazz and commercial playing when i was much younger. in retrospect, it was such a great blessing to have a mentor like khalid; with him in the room, music never seemed half as boring as sheets of paper lying on my music stand.

regret, however, is just a passing phase. with God's grace, i'm here where i am now, with a great bunch of guys around me, with so much more for me to learn.

khalid was not so much of a music teacher to me, if you would look at it. he never really taught me for a long long time. it was more of his spirit that infected not only me but everyone else around him. i believe his flame of passion will continue to burn in the hearts of many.

"You can't expect your horn to start playing if you leave it in your case! You gotta pick it up and start practicing!"

"No one sounds cool from the start, I started out sounding funny. You just gotta keep on trying and playing."

"A loud mistake is always better than a soft correct note."

"fluff fluff fluff...." (When we play like a buncha weaklings)

"Mister drummer! You gotta keep that hi-hat on 2 and 4 going man! You're the heartbeat of the band!"

"I played with Kenny G once, and that guy just can't stop playing!"

In loving memory of Khalid Caesar,

departed peacefully on 16th May 2006 at the age of 52

all young and budding musicians out there, never be satisfied with what you think you know, open your minds and you will see so much more.

music is not about the notes you play, it's about feeling every single line, enjoying every single sound, whichever genre, whatever style. i'm enjoying it, are you?