Sometimes I lose myself in my frustrationPerhaps of some bad romanceStuck in a complicated situationWe escaped into the wild A million sunbeams seep through the treesA thousand winds whisper in my earsThe Great Escape with our own stavesAnd the routes we choose to take To somewhere no one knowsTo ease our sorrowful souls I drown…
Tag: music
Lizzo Twerked with Madison’s Flute (Caturday)
We actually learned a lot this week. Those of us who didn’t know, found out that Lizzo is actually an excellent flute player. She doesn’t just do it as a gimmick. I’m reminded of the times David Byrne sang an operatic aria or two at his concerts and did just an ear-blisteringly awful job. We…
Reality Check: The Afterlives of Indie Musicians
Zane Stroud and I used to be bandmates; we left the band and started new lives, and Zane is now heading in my direction–to become an academic. Zane and his wife Bessie drove Zoe and me to Clearwater Bay to celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival. We took this double date quite seriously, because it was our first…
Bach & Beethoven: Oops I Made Rock Music
I have this friend I really like messing with. He’s brilliant in his areas–math, economics, music, athletics, computer pro… He has a lot of areas. But I can still occasionally find ways to put one over on him. One of our overlapping interests is music, but he is much more into rock music than I…
Jabin Law: Live from the Living Room
Prologue I introduced Jabin Law, an independent singer/songwriter from here in Hong Kong, in a previous essay, but I think he deserves a full article about him, for I promised him a review (which has not materialised) on his double-album Ahistorical. Perhaps a reflection on a concert I attended instead. Life under the mask mandate…
Comfortable Dancing: The Importance of Sex Ed
I grew up in a suburb of New York City, which is widely known as a bastion of tolerance and liberality. But as far as I knew, there was only one queer kid in my grade. Out of a class of some 250. Which is to say the others did not feel welcome. This of…
Queer Pride and Self-Care
I’ve written a number of pieces for this website about my experiences as a rape survivor. I’ve written about how important it was for me to change my own language about my experience–to use the word “rape” instead of “sexual assault.” And I’ve written about consent and mental health, I’ve written about the way we…
Solitude and Music: The Silence Between the Notes
“Couldn’t put my phone downScrolling patientlyIt’s all the same to meJust faces on a screen, yeah I’m trying to realizeIt’s alright to not be fine on your own” (comethru – Jeremy Zucker) Alone | Together Recently, my musician friend Jabin Law starts a new music project “Alone Together”. Alone Together is a follow-up project of…
Make Literary Analysis Personal: The Rose
I have always had a fondness for the personal literary analysis. The kind you see in novels. Someone is talking about a work of literature, but they’re really talking about themselves. In my opinion, all literary analysis is personal. Nobody picks a subject of study unless they’re not just interested but invested in it. Yes,…
London Letters #6: A Tale of Two Pianos
Playing piano is one of the main reasons I am surviving the pandemic. If we recognize (and if you don’t, I have some news for you) that the mind is part of the body, and so emotional health is physical health, then it shouldn’t be surprising that within a few weeks of the lockdown (so……