Saturday, September 18, 2004
--- I ---
Recently I've noticed that I have problems composing and arranging music.
It seems that the ideas are always there, but when I commit them to paper, they disappear. Or as I concentrate on one piece, there will be some inner devil urging me to write another one. Eventually I stop writing altogether and fret over which piece should receive my first attention.
I hate being only able to write during the weekends. You just want to rush yourself to write as much as possible to exhaust the ideas that have been accumulating over the week so that you can return back to camp with an empty brain with no debts behind. And I hate rushing over a piece of work because it ends up with shoddy workmanship.
Composition and arrangement should be a daily activity. Whilst daily you should also have a knowledge of the time to stop, so you know how much more you are going to write. In camp, I have no freaking idea when I am going to be called down. It always happens particularly on a Monday. After area cleaning, we retreat to the bunk to wait for the first lecture. I will take this opportunity to write. Suddenly, there'll be a shout, "Fall-in NOW!" Then shit, I have to stop whatever I'm doing. Most of the time, I don't even get to touch the score until I return home. It's just so sickening. I hate leaving things dangling in the air. You may say that I can write at night during our free time before we sleep. There're actually lots of things to do at that time. Preparation for the next day; bathing and keeping the clothes and filling water bottles - if I'm unlucky I don't even have the time to brush my teeth before I sleep. What more can be said about writing music? Besides, I always want to sleep before the lights-out timing. Early sleep is a very precious luxury. If you can, sleep early, otherwise you'll feel very groggy the next day, and incur the wrath of your commanders particularly if you sleep during lectures, or sleep in the bunk after lunch.
No wonder it is said that the army kills your passion. Indeed, I find my compositional taste dying at a very slow rate.
--- II ---
I run into Chong Tang aka Elmo today at Citylink Mall while heading towards the Esplanade. He's still the same as ever, with the recruit-style haircut (or botak, as he likes to say in the past) and his slightly-hunched gait. It turns out that we're in the same formation - engineers. He's a field engineer; I'm an armoured engineer. He thinks my vocation is supposed to be better, because we have our armoured vehicles to ride in everywhere. For them, their luxury is an occasional ride on the tonner.
He asks how my NS life is. Siong, I tell him. I forget to mention how sucked up my company is.
Which reminds me, I have to email my new home address and home telephone number to everybody. I've moved house for one and a half months - six weeks to be exact, but I still haven't told anybody about my new address. How forgetful can I become? With increasing reliance on the cellular phone, I presume that I'm still contactable.
* * *
If I can recall, the Library@Esplanade closes at 8pm on Saturdays and Sundays. Shit, it's 7:45pm. Perhaps I can be there in time, grab a few stuff and fly.
I dash up the escalator to the third floor. To my horror - yes, absolute horror - the library is CLOSED. Shit! Why did they close so early?
I make my way to its main entrance. There is an easel, with a signboard on it saying: "The library will be closed at 4pm today for an annual staff event."
Wait a minute. I thought the staff event was last week?
Or is it this week?
Shit! No ABBA, no Brahms Symphony No. 4, no Rachmaninoff Symphony No. 2, no Sibelius Violin Concerto, no Ionisation . . . damn, even my wish list exceeds the limit given to premium membership holders.
P.S. at last the library has some sense to allow us premium membership holders to borrow audio visual materials with multiple parts and RETURN THEM AT ANY BRANCH LIBRARY!
* * *
I visit the bookstore at CityLink Mall to search for Michael Crichton's newest book. Instead, I find Dick Lee's aka Richard Lee Pang Boon's memoirs.
The lucky shit didn't have to cheong suah! When he went for his medical check-up at CMPB on enlistment day, he was told that his eyesight was way past the limit. The medic checking him quelled his disbelief: "You want to shoot your brudder ah?" So he was given something like PES E. He didn't even have to go through BMT because he couldn't even qualify for it medically. It also means: NO NEED FOR RESERVIST TRAINING!
His first vocation was doing administrative work, filling up the details on the 11As (as the military ICs were called then) manually. Excused uniform as well! Can't you believe that? Such a good life!
As it happened, he auditioned with the MDC, and won his way in with his talent in singing and dancing.
Fuck. Me living life as a pioneer with such a fucked-up company and an equally fucked-up unit . . .
--- III ---
I am starting two new blogs.
One is called "Left your left your left right" - very obviously it contains all the army songs that I know, or those that I've written (these are marked with "composed by AUGUST LUM") to add to the repertoire as a Song I/C in my platoon. Some of the lyrics may be offensive, but I can tell you that army guys become horny. The FHM is like one of the most common things in the bunk, even more common than The Straits Times. If you're keen to listen to what the song sounds like, drop me an email and I will send a Sibelius / Scorch / MIDI file to you. I've not prepared the scores though.
The other will be something like Reader's Digest, whereby emails or articles that I find amusing, interesting, enriching or sarcastic will find their way there - the exact principle upon which the Reader's Digest magazines work. Currently such posts are placed on Opus 1.
About Opus 3 - the travelogue - which you've probably read about in Opus 2, indefinitely it is not ready. I am still trying to figure out how I should begin writing, and I am still constantly reminding myself NOT to write about airport and in-transit experiences because they're just so . . . boring.
¶ 9/18/2004 01:09:00 am Recently I've noticed that I have problems composing and arranging music.
It seems that the ideas are always there, but when I commit them to paper, they disappear. Or as I concentrate on one piece, there will be some inner devil urging me to write another one. Eventually I stop writing altogether and fret over which piece should receive my first attention.
I hate being only able to write during the weekends. You just want to rush yourself to write as much as possible to exhaust the ideas that have been accumulating over the week so that you can return back to camp with an empty brain with no debts behind. And I hate rushing over a piece of work because it ends up with shoddy workmanship.
Composition and arrangement should be a daily activity. Whilst daily you should also have a knowledge of the time to stop, so you know how much more you are going to write. In camp, I have no freaking idea when I am going to be called down. It always happens particularly on a Monday. After area cleaning, we retreat to the bunk to wait for the first lecture. I will take this opportunity to write. Suddenly, there'll be a shout, "Fall-in NOW!" Then shit, I have to stop whatever I'm doing. Most of the time, I don't even get to touch the score until I return home. It's just so sickening. I hate leaving things dangling in the air. You may say that I can write at night during our free time before we sleep. There're actually lots of things to do at that time. Preparation for the next day; bathing and keeping the clothes and filling water bottles - if I'm unlucky I don't even have the time to brush my teeth before I sleep. What more can be said about writing music? Besides, I always want to sleep before the lights-out timing. Early sleep is a very precious luxury. If you can, sleep early, otherwise you'll feel very groggy the next day, and incur the wrath of your commanders particularly if you sleep during lectures, or sleep in the bunk after lunch.
No wonder it is said that the army kills your passion. Indeed, I find my compositional taste dying at a very slow rate.
--- II ---
I run into Chong Tang aka Elmo today at Citylink Mall while heading towards the Esplanade. He's still the same as ever, with the recruit-style haircut (or botak, as he likes to say in the past) and his slightly-hunched gait. It turns out that we're in the same formation - engineers. He's a field engineer; I'm an armoured engineer. He thinks my vocation is supposed to be better, because we have our armoured vehicles to ride in everywhere. For them, their luxury is an occasional ride on the tonner.
He asks how my NS life is. Siong, I tell him. I forget to mention how sucked up my company is.
Which reminds me, I have to email my new home address and home telephone number to everybody. I've moved house for one and a half months - six weeks to be exact, but I still haven't told anybody about my new address. How forgetful can I become? With increasing reliance on the cellular phone, I presume that I'm still contactable.
* * *
If I can recall, the Library@Esplanade closes at 8pm on Saturdays and Sundays. Shit, it's 7:45pm. Perhaps I can be there in time, grab a few stuff and fly.
I dash up the escalator to the third floor. To my horror - yes, absolute horror - the library is CLOSED. Shit! Why did they close so early?
I make my way to its main entrance. There is an easel, with a signboard on it saying: "The library will be closed at 4pm today for an annual staff event."
Wait a minute. I thought the staff event was last week?
Or is it this week?
Shit! No ABBA, no Brahms Symphony No. 4, no Rachmaninoff Symphony No. 2, no Sibelius Violin Concerto, no Ionisation . . . damn, even my wish list exceeds the limit given to premium membership holders.
P.S. at last the library has some sense to allow us premium membership holders to borrow audio visual materials with multiple parts and RETURN THEM AT ANY BRANCH LIBRARY!
* * *
I visit the bookstore at CityLink Mall to search for Michael Crichton's newest book. Instead, I find Dick Lee's aka Richard Lee Pang Boon's memoirs.
The lucky shit didn't have to cheong suah! When he went for his medical check-up at CMPB on enlistment day, he was told that his eyesight was way past the limit. The medic checking him quelled his disbelief: "You want to shoot your brudder ah?" So he was given something like PES E. He didn't even have to go through BMT because he couldn't even qualify for it medically. It also means: NO NEED FOR RESERVIST TRAINING!
His first vocation was doing administrative work, filling up the details on the 11As (as the military ICs were called then) manually. Excused uniform as well! Can't you believe that? Such a good life!
As it happened, he auditioned with the MDC, and won his way in with his talent in singing and dancing.
Fuck. Me living life as a pioneer with such a fucked-up company and an equally fucked-up unit . . .
--- III ---
I am starting two new blogs.
One is called "Left your left your left right" - very obviously it contains all the army songs that I know, or those that I've written (these are marked with "composed by AUGUST LUM") to add to the repertoire as a Song I/C in my platoon. Some of the lyrics may be offensive, but I can tell you that army guys become horny. The FHM is like one of the most common things in the bunk, even more common than The Straits Times. If you're keen to listen to what the song sounds like, drop me an email and I will send a Sibelius / Scorch / MIDI file to you. I've not prepared the scores though.
The other will be something like Reader's Digest, whereby emails or articles that I find amusing, interesting, enriching or sarcastic will find their way there - the exact principle upon which the Reader's Digest magazines work. Currently such posts are placed on Opus 1.
About Opus 3 - the travelogue - which you've probably read about in Opus 2, indefinitely it is not ready. I am still trying to figure out how I should begin writing, and I am still constantly reminding myself NOT to write about airport and in-transit experiences because they're just so . . . boring.
