the fingers of your thoughts are molding your face ceaselessly

this essay question I'm doing, I suspect I picked it just because it makes me feel better about the scholarship. like, you know. a bit less useless and unnecessary :P

"‘We cannot talk about public opinion’s role in foreign policy without an understanding of the influence of the media.’ Discuss."

I quite like the academic more-or-less consensus on this topic. even if it's mostly based on America and Western liberal democracies.

so, The Decemberists on 19 November at the Coronet Theatre. the setlist went something like this, sans maybe 3+ songs I can't remember in the second part:



You know how some/many Decemberists songs sound clean and polished and sometimes even mild? Not so, live. not mild at all-- they sounded almost raw, but in a good way, and slightly rockish. except for the softer songs, but even then they sounded edgier than on the records.

they played the entire Hazards of Love album. ALL OF IT. EVEN THE CREEPY CHILDREN'S SONG (hazards of love 3, which I was totally cringing through cos I could hear the lyrics and I knew what it was about and it's just CREEPY OKAY). how rare is it that a whole album is played through! in its entirety! and this one was complete with becky stark as the princess, dressed all princess-like in a flowing white dress and pretty hair, and shara worden as THE QUEEN, who was one of my most favourite parts of the entire thing. THE QUEEN. she was dressed in black and looked wonderfully formidable. both the queen and the princess were playing at the back of the set, and whenever it came to their turn the princess would float gracefully to the front of the stage, while the queen would sort of...stomp purposefully in time to the music. the queen was sublime. :) I am such a huge fan of shara worden now. (and I've heard stuff by her before! in her my brightest diamond incarnation...ah such a treat to see shara worden live.) seriously the first time she came up I squeed very hard because she was that awesome.

colin meloy and the rest of the band, on the other hand, weren't dressed up! I suppose it's cos he's both the protagonist (william dude) and the antagonist (the rake) so distinguishing between the two characters via costume/accessories would be a pain everytime he switched cos it was so sudden and he's the frontman and he plays. they were all in suits though, I think. becky stark though I think was the weakest vocally of the three vocalists; while she did fine in most of the songs she was slightly weak in Margaret in Captivity...you know, the bit where she has to sing O MY OWN TRUE LOVE dramatically while the rest of the music is crashing in a crescendo around her. not an easy part to pull off and I don't think she did :/

so yeah I thought it was great fun, and innovative. it felt like a whole series of ballads that could almost have been a musical but without the acting and with heaps more focus on the music, but very atmospheric at the same time. before I went I already knew I liked The Wanting Comes In Waves/Repaid, but I hadn't counted on it being THAT awesome in person. it's a great line to begin with, and whenever the music/mood shifts within the song into the rock bit when it switches from william to the queen, and the queen stomps up, IT OWNS. I also knew I liked Annan Water, but again it was just nicer live. I had no idea I'd like The Hazards of Love 4 so much, though. as in they were supposed to be drowning together and in love in death so it's already pretty emphatic but again, just seemed so much more emotional live. and it was a pretty good way to close off the hazards of love set, too, even though its soulful mood was pretty different from most of the rest of the set. which was an hour long. which didn't feel like an hour long.

and that was only half the show.

the main difference between the first and second halves, I think, is the audience participation. as in, the first half was great and fun to watch, a visual and audio treat, but the second half was more singalong-ish and colin meloy interacted a lot with the audience-- from getting us to do this three-part singing thing right before they launched into 16 Military Wives, to THE MARINER'S REVENGE SONG.

THE MARINER'S REVENGE SONG. that was, I think, a great way to end off the encore. by itself it's already SUCH A FUN SONG, but it was EVEN MORE FUN LIVE. for one thing, some fans brought a giant inflatable killer whale, which got a bit irritating sometimes but on colin meloy's orders security chucked it back into the standing crowd at the WHALE SCREAM part, so there was this giant inflatable free willy just crowdsurfing. lol. the whale scream, of course, was great fun for the audience. and towards the end of the song when it just gets louder and faster colin meloy and...er I can't remember but it was either chris funk or john moen started dancing while playing, it was grand. and you get to see jenny conlee do the dead mother wailing thing live haha.

so yeahhh I had such a great time :) oh the decemberists. I had no idea they'd be like this live.

the Great Lake Swimmers live @ the Jazz Cafe on 18 November:

It was a really cosy gig. I'd say less than a hundred people were there. and it was at a really awesome location too, the Jazz Cafe-- there's a standing area in front of the stage, and an overhanging balcony above the stage with small tables and limited seats. really cosy. plus the band members had to enter the stage from the stairs leading down from the balcony, so they walked past yan_min and I a couple of times lol. I daresay there was a significant number of Canadian fans in the crowd from the sound of the cheering-- the band's Canadian, after all-- and some Canadian jokes I didn't get.

I found the fact that they were all wearing checkered, collared button-down shirts SO ENDEARING. I also had no idea there were such cool instruments in the band-- there was an upright bass, a mandolin and a banjo. I love banjos. I digress. yeah! it was cosy and nice and the music was quiet-ish but as usual somewhat louder and more rocked up given that it was played live. but it worked, it worked. there were some songs where it was only tony dekker playing (imaginary bars, concrete heart), during which the rest of the band headed to the bar or something lol, but that worked too because they're very calm, quiet and slightly sad songs that sound personal.

I first got to know of the Great Lake Swimmers through a couple of fanmixes on livejournal communities (including the Phoenix and Scott/Jean ones by melancholise), and I pay disproportionate attention to lyrics, so certain songs will always remind of certain characters, especially when certain lines are sung. Various Stages made me think so hard of Scott/Jean, and Everything is Moving So Fast of the Phoenix :P

yeah so this is roughly what was played, the order might be slightly off in the middle because I don't have perfect memory and I might be missing a song or two, but here:

( rough setlist: )

lol I was a bit sad that New Light wasn't played because it's my favourite song in Lost Channels, but seven of the twelve tracks on it were played and everything else was pretty cool, so oh well obviously I can't have it all :P

I also really, really liked I Could Be Nothing-- I hadn't heard it before that night, but it was so pretty and I really like the lyrics. it's the most poetic description I've ever heard of...geography and erosion, haha: O water and patience, pressure and time / Cuts through the faces of rocks we have climbed. SO PRETTY RIGHT.

and yes I am definitely going to blog in detail about Andrew Bird and the Decemberists as well! but later :P

I've been looking at the lolcat pictures I saved on my computer (procrastinating la) and...quite a few really remind me of my friends HAHA. like really more than just one or two. (sunhorizon: the most apply to you.)

so if you want, comment and I'll try and dig up one or two that reminds me of you :P

[/random]

this is without a doubt the worst period of rain I can remember* in London since I came here slightly over a year ago. it's been raining since-- well, I can't remember, but it feels like forever. a couple of days, maybe? it's just been raining and raining and raining and raining and I've never had it this bad before. seriously when I sleep, it's raining. when I wake up, it's STILL raining. with like one hour patches of no-rain or something. the wind's pretty loud too but at least I'm used to howling winds in Singapore in my 29th-storey room.

thank goodness I don't get depressed by the weather and early nightfall.

* it is probable I don't remember worse times, or that I wasn't around when there were.

Nite-Owl: Rorschach...? Rorschach, wait! Where are you going? This is too big to be hard-assed about! We have to compromise!
Rorschach: No. Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never compromise.

so you’ll nurse your love like a wounded dove
in the covered cage of night
every star is crossed by phrenetic thoughts
they separate and then collide
and they twist like sheets ‘til you fall asleep
and they finally unwind

possibly some of the nicest lyrics I've discovered in recent times.

this is why autumn is my favourite season:



(in the AU where I went to America, that sentence would've been written this is why fall is my favorite season!)

four ways in which my life is currently, unashamedly, awesome:

1. so, lunch yesterday with miss ng and another junior. we brought cake and tea, and 'lunch' turned into a nine and a half hour conversation. I watched the sky go dark. we drank copious amounts of tea and went to the bathroom millions of times. NINE HOURS. WHAT UP. there are no words for how much I love this teacher.

2. I saw a fox run across the street yesterday on my way home. A fox. I mistook it for a stray dog at first, until I looked closer and realised it was actually a fox. A fox! Then it leapt into the hospital basement and I couldn't see it anymore. ):

3. This month, I'm going to see Andrew Bird, Great Lake Swimmers, The Decemberists, The Antlers and possibly Lisa Hannigan live in concerts/smaller gigs. I am such a spoilt person. But oh man oh man when these bands come you can't not go because you don't know if you'll ever get the chance to see them live ever again in your life!

I love London. Everything comes to London. which brings me to #4:

4. My father's coming to London this week YEAH!!!

it's 24th october and it's miss ng's birthday and I and another junior are going over to her flat for lunch which she's going to cook there are quite possibly no words for this (if there were they'd go something along the lines of oh no I am not worthy haha.)

it's 24th october which also means HAPPY BIRTHDAY melancholise! :D

This, right, is brilliant oh man oh man I totally marvel at its brilliance.

this is incredibly random right but if I were in the harry potter universe I would totally have discovered the half-blood prince's potions book since

1. I never buy any books, but borrow them (from the library and photocopy the relevant chapters)
2. I find annotations by the sides very useful and use them

http://comicbooks.tumblr.com/post/208622920/agentmlovestacos-marvelfest-nyc-2009-10-28

the only time I ever wished I was studying in NYC instead of London. :P

just watched the royal tenebaums. really really like it even if and especially because it's offbeat at parts. (gwyneth paltrow is mad awesome, then I again I tend to like the female characters in everything anyway. I can't believe the only other thing I've seen her as is pepper potts in iron man.)

going to st andrews next weekend to visit nyx!! finally. it's too good an opportunity to miss- I can leave on thursday afternoon and come back on monday afternoon. this is like- going to visit the life I'll never have which I almost did? it's sort of like diving in to view a parallel universe for a bit, the one where char chose st andrews instead of lse. I can't deny that I'm curious.

a bit scared of my OCF group. afraid that I won't fit in my group- not outgoing enough. last year there was no pressure being in my OCF group, I could just be myself and everyone accepted me anyway cos I was a fresher and OCF loves freshers. and my group was really wonderful to the point that I kept going to strand even though it was incredibly out of the way. I miss my old group already, especially just after we had dinner at gold mine to celebrate my birthday (!!) last night. this year I feel some slight pressure since I'm a group leader. sigh.

my birthday this year was infinitely less lonely and angsty than last year; last year I didn't know anyone here yet since it was my second day in london and I was homesick and angsty and sad.

living in a (rented) flat/apartment/house is awesome, by the way. this feeling was totally absent last year- the feeling of coming back from wherever I went out to, turning the keys in the main door of the building and then our unit door, in a non-student neighbourhood, to a room that is mine, a contained space that is (mostly) mine, a kitchen, a toilet that I have claim to. I suppose I just really like that sense of possession and ownership- and above that, that sense of belonging manifested over an actual physical space.

I also like anchors, and familiarity, and compasses. and home.

I'm flying off to London tomorrow afternoon (26 September) on the 1245h flight. not sure how long the internet at my new place will take to be set up and fully functional, so this is an indefinite brb!

sorry this is super geeky (yeah yeah the most common refrain on my LJ here nowadays but eh it's my LJ so whatever), but regarding Dani Moonstar- I know 'Mirage' is the most accurate codename she's had so far, since she "originally possessed the ability to create illusions of her opponents’ fears or wishes. (She later developed a wide range of psionic and energy manipulation powers.)"

but surely it's tactically unwise to CALL her Mirage when she's fighting villains? it just gives away the nature of her power of calling up illusions to scare people, that it's unreal no matter how realistic it looks. isn't that completely undermining and self-defeating?

I've never read the short story, but for esmé with love and squalor seems like a gorgeous title. I mean, seriously the effect of putting the words love and squalor together is stunning! not a commonplace combination, and the contrast turns out very nicely. and there's just something about the name esmé that sounds very french, very exotic and suited for love and squalor. definitely a line I want to quote if I ever...get a chance to play with the stepford cuckoo, or something.

edit: also I really, really like the name Esmé. check it out- it means esteemed; loved. HOW GREAT IS THAT?

I got this video link off a friend's facebook page- night time in Singapore. it's very pretty!

(also, highlighted my hair today but it's not showing very well- the red's far too dark, looks more like dark brown. sadly. next time I'm going either fully redhead or dark blue or dark purple! then again that's what I said the last time :/)