So my friend wrote the above. She asked the question; "Is it true that one will only have self esteem if one does not have ANY negative qualities?" (我是要让自己所有的缺点消失才会相信自己是好的吗？) Because you tend to think lowly of yourself because of your negative qualities, and sometimes, if you're feeling exceptionally low, you think, "oh, if only I wasn't _______". But everyone has their weaknesses, and most people have self esteem regardless, so why isn't it possible to feel good about oneself?
She continues to say that our weaknesses are part of our identities; that they are inherently part of us. She asks the question, "In the end, won't I have to change my entire personality in order for me to have confidence in my own abilities?" (到头来，只有改变成不是自己的自己才能让我更相信自己的能力。)
Which made me think about how I regularly think about myself. (meta-thinking!) In the end, she encourages everyone to "love themselves a little more". (自恋一点，自爱一点，自信一点。) <3
Wednesday, October 06, 2010
hello!
So today there were more than the usual blogposts in my feed aggregator.
I'd like to respond!
I don't care what I did in RJ or what I did as part of school or what I did outside academics. I don't care about anything in relation to RJ. I don't care :D :D :D
fin.
Monday, October 04, 2010
B-quartet again! I picked this one because there's drums in it and you can see the DRUMMER. (more about that later)
Anyway. Went to see them again on saturday, and they are SO much better live. Admittedly everyone is better live (except Backyard Surgeons, who are better on myspace) but this was a really different experience. I think they tried to make it an integrated audio/ visual thing, because there was a projector set up, as well as an OHP, for light demonstrations.
To start, the whole set-up made a difference to how you would listen to their music. The performance was held in the Substation Theatre, and the entire band was spread out across the room. The audience had to sit on the floor in the middle of the band, so to speak, and some people were sitting really close to the bass guitarist, or the supporting vocalist. The lead vocalist was at one end of the dance-studio sized theatre, the sound engineer and guitarist were next to him, OHP was right in the middle, the drummer was near the OHP projection, the other guitarists were at the corners of the room opposite the lead vocalist, and the supporting vocalist was at the corner opposite the drummer. (unfortunately, I am not learned enough to identify who was playing bass.)
In this way, with the audience in the middle, you could see the leader of the band communicating with his bandmates, and the vibe they had going on. Rather than playing to us, I felt that B-quartet were playing through us, so to speak, as if we were a conduit for their music. When we were all sitting on the floor, you could feel the drums and the bass vibrating through the floorboards, and you felt as if the music was possessing you for a little bit. I said earlier that attending a gig was like giving permission to the artist to take some of your time, and I really enjoyed giving B-quartet my time and mind space.
All this time and I haven't even discussed how they sound like! The whole time I felt as if I was being reminded of something, and then I realised that they're is like Jack Conte and Ursula Rucker COMBINED. I like the range of instruments they use-- they used an oboe, and ethnic malay instruments, among others. The lead singer plays as if he is in his own world (hence the resemblance to Jack Conte) They also do spoken word to some impressive riffs and synth music. (hence the resemblance to Ursula Rucker.) I like the way they use the pedal to record and playback and loop :)
The drummer is also super INTENSE and really into it. I can't describe it. It's hard to find any online recordings that is remotely like what he plays, because the live experience is so different, and so real. It might be a far stretch, but if you listened to Brian Viglione's drums on the last few tracks of Face of the Sun, it's just like that. The drums are mesmerising and they almost put the audience into a trance-- I could feel myself moving to the same beat, along with other people in the crowd, and the guitar players were also getting into it at the same time. That's why I like live music-- it's like sharing the experience with total strangers in a collective body. They played music video-like film at the same time, and the images were kind of surreal. There were lots of jump cuts, obnoxious, blinding flashes, and playbacks of mundane things like rain falling on a window pane. Do you see what I'm getting at? To describe the experience as "trippy" is an understatement.
I was talking to a guy after the show:
PERSON: So how did you find it?
ME: I liked it; it was like an acid trip 8D
PERSON: So have you had one before? *cough* excuse me, I meant, have you heard them before?
