We're All in the Dance

Life's a dance

we all have to do

What does the music require?

People all moving together

close as the flames in a fire

feel the beat

music and rhyme

while there is time

We all go round and round

Partners are lost and found

looking for one more chance

All I know is

we're all in the dance

Night and day

the music plays on

we all are part of the show

while we cana hold on to someone

we know life won't let us go

feel the beat

music and rhyme

while there's time

We all go round and round

partners are lost and found

Looking for one more chance

All I know is

we're all in the dance

We're all in the dance

Andrew Holleran asked: "How can we distinguish the dancers from the dance?"

Facing the spectacular view of the Paris city, all we need is someone next to us to say, "It's so beautiful." We all know, by being there, the view is beautiful. What the other half says is not suggestive, but confirmative, reassuring us that in the world, there's someone to share our view.

Time and What to Read

Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung) in 2046 says: "People like me have too much time."

Chow Mo Wan is everywhere. It could be you, and it's definitely me, currently. Having too much time, to many people, is a kind of luxury. They would sacrifice money to get it; I would do the opposite. Not wanting to dig into the perplexing academic books, but still wishing to keep track to the academic domain, I choose to read some magazines - not the local tabloids (not to mention cable channel 13 is suffocating us with information we don't need to know).

Philosophy Now (http://www.philosophynow.org/) is an easy read and fun-to-read for people with a certain background and interest of philosophy and culture (both ancient and contemporary). Those thinkers (scholars worship them as 'great' thinkers) spent five to twenty years to write a book that needs at least years to decode. Then, one need to dig out the secondary resources on the debates on such books and their ideas. Possibly, it's going to make you age faster than you should, with a sense of helpless and bewilderment upon encountering difficult ideas. Yet the magazine provides people with a fast means to understand the basic framework of such ideas. I am not a fan of Wittgenstein, whose PhD thesis, I was told, was written in one paragraph. But I find the following anecdote very intersting:

One morning, when Wittgenstein appeared for breakfast I noticed he was not clean-shaven. (This was unusual as W was always so well presented.) "Ludwig," I asked, "are you growing a beard?" At this he looked angry and replied: "Not shaving isn't the same thing as growing a beard!" He paused for a moment then continued:"...though to grow a beard certainly requires one not to shave."

This issue features two articles that most interest me: Alan Kirby argues that postmodernism has been dead, and what we have been thinking as postmodern texts, or phenonmena, are what he calls 'pseudo-modernism', which requires a great deal of interaction from the audience or viewers. For example, Channel 4's Big Brother could not survive if no viewers phone in from the families, or the game shows would not have been produced if there's no participant contributing to the drama of the plotlessness of the programme.

There's another article (actually a film review), comparing two films about the 9-11 incident: United 93 and World Trade Centre. For people following my blog, it would not be necessary to stress how much I value the former than the latter. The reviewer, Thomas Wartenberg, points out how the structure of United 93 resembles a Greek tradegy. Interesting.

The English is plain and is written to make the readers understand, instead of arousing further confusion. Philosophy Now is published bi-monthly in England, but you can get a copy at Page One, rather regularly (HK$59.00).

It's time to think about ideas in relation to the culture we are situated in. There's no need to agree with the thinkers. Instead of being engulfed by our surroundings, I urge for a need to ponder on why and how (even though there's no possible escape from capitalism) we are eaten. A reflection is needed, and it needs time to take place.

W.H. Auden: Love requires an object.

"Language has not the power to speak what love indites:

The soul lies buried in the ink that writes."

John Clare

Thank you for meeting me on 14 November 2006, at Fortress Hill.

Thank you for existing.

Little Miss Sunshine (2006, USA)
Directors: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris
Running time: 101 mins

I like watching films and TV dramas about fucked-up people. They're especially humorous and witty and bitterly sweet. Six Feet Under, American Beauty, Weeds and I am glad that now I have Little Miss Sunshine on my list.

The film is sketpical about the contemporary American culture, which in many ways, the global culture. Yet, it's also a fucked-up culture: a father who is too obsessed with the idea of winning though he himself is a loser career-wise; a grandfather who is proud of fucking so many women and occasionally sneaks into the bathroom to snort some heroin; a daughter who is intoxicated by the beauty myth and dreams of the winner of a beauty pegeant; a son who refuses to talk until he enrols into the air force and draws the portrait of Nietchze; a suicidal gay uncle who is a well-known scholar on the French writer Marcel Proust.

Interestingly, the wife is the most normal person in the film. She is not uptight about her housework, not the kind of sad happy housewife we see in Desperate Housewives. She just smokes twice in the film - I smoke more than she does! So, she's perfectly fine.

It's an independent film and also another road movie. All road movies are about the road, from the starting point (Alburquerque, Nex Mexico) to the destination (California). During the course, the characters would have a Joycean epiphany (i.e. a recognition, an awakening). The film offers a chance for the typical dysfunctional American family to reunite their bonding among each other. The film is recommended - it's entertaining, quick, funny and unpretentious.

"Life is a beauty contest after one beauty contest". This is not original anymore. We, as adults, know that our lives are not any easier than the school days. We blamed our teachers for making our school life so hard, but we could not blame anyone but ourselves after we leave our dreary campus. The importance here is not 'contest', but 'beauty contest'. Everything is about 'visual' now. The New York Times earlier published an article saying a film degree is as worth studying as an MBA in any famous institutes worldwide simply because film studies allows you to analyze visual language, which bombards us every day. The daughter (Olive) is bombarded by the beauty of Miss America; the uncle (Frank) was depressed because his boyfriend ditched him for another nice looking Proust scholar with a Maserati. What is beauty? The film may offer an optional answer: family love. For me, I will leave Alan Ball's works to answer this question.

One thing I should take note of is the ending. The DVD bonus offers four more alternative endings, among which, there is a more crazy one, which talks about how the family steals the trophy and the crown of the beauty contest despite the daughter's fucked-up talent performance onstage. I personally would like this ending rather than the official one, which is too predictable, too safe and too neat.

My recent favourite song:

還好我懂得抬頭走
更不須人援手
直到我遺忘你那碗粥比親吻燙口
今天愛過你的日後成為誰密友
離合不講理由 甜密不必持久
多少情人日夜相處仍淪為朋友
天大地大並沒並多少快樂時候
來來回回寧願在你掌心中向右走
尋覓我未相識的摯友

人人都想有傾城之愛
似山伯英台　卻得到將來
人人都想有愛不完的愛
有天意青睞　但世上缺乏人才

"Shall I have to go away again,

leaving everything behind -

my research, my book?

Shall I awake in a few months,

a few years, exhausted, disappointed,

in the midst of fresh ruins?

I should like to understand myself properly

before it is too late."

Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea.

叱o宅組合新力軍: (金) Zarah (銀) 農夫 (銅) Project Early

叱o宅男新力軍: (金) 關楚耀 (銀) 杜汶澤 (銅)鄺祖德

叱o宅女新力軍: 衛詩 泳兒 (position not confirmed yet) (銅)胡琳

唱片: Human 我生 (古巨基)

唱作人: Most difficult category. Finalized later. Three out of these six: 軟硬天師 / 張繼聰 /張敬軒 /方大同 /梁漢文 / 王菀之

叱o宅組合: (金) Twins (銀) 軟硬天師 (銅) E02

叱o宅女歌手: 容祖兒 /何韻詩 (position not confirmed yet) (銅) 薛凱琪

叱o宅男歌手: (金) 陳奕迅 (銀)古巨基 (銅) 張敬軒 /側田 (not finalized yet)

This year's 叱o宅 results are very hard to predict, especially the 'bronze position' of all categories. I guess the top ten songs to date are as follows:

1. 愛得太遲 (古巨基)
2. 華麗邂逅 (容祖兒)
3. 小峽谷之1234 (薛凱琪)
4. 大大時代 (譚詠麟)
5. 光明會 (何韻詩)
6. 大愛 (許志安)
7. 愛你變成恨你 (吳雨霏)
8. 愁人節 (謝安琪)
9. 笑忘書 (張敬軒)
10. 好兄弟 (軟硬天師)

Uncertainty: Not sure if 903 will give the award to Alan Tam, if not, one of the following songs could appear on the list: 三生有幸 (鄭中基) / 紅綠燈 (鄭融)

Missing here for a while. My laptop broke down now and then in the past 3 weeks, owing to the curse of the octopus card I picked up in a taxi (which I used to buy 2 packs of Kent M3). I am not a digitial culture person: no MP3 (surely not MP4rrrrrrrrrrrrrr either), no i-Pod, no palm pilots, no blackberry, no PSP or NTS. But once my laptop breaks down, my life is so fucked up. I guess those cultural critics are right: we are all cyborgs now, we are so in debt to the machines, which not only form parts of our lives, but also part of our bodies. Anyway, my laptop is fine now, at least with my most important thesis backed up.

Another semester just ended and the new one would not start until 29 Jan. God - more than 1 month of time. Koa found a new job, which would occupy him more time, which means I need to be more independent (which I could, I guess) and I could do some reading finally. I also want a part time job, anything will do. I always fantasize myself working in a coffee shop and shit like that. Kind of charismatic and romantic. Anyway, I just finished the season 1 of Weeds, which surprised me a lot with the mean but witty lines. I also got myself two books (coincidentally both on existentialism): Paul Auster (same birthday as mine)'s Travels in the Scriptorium and Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea. Maybe I should also go back to Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Camus's The Outsider if I have time.

People like me have too much time, too less to do. Wanting to buy a nice new jacket for the function that Koa asked me to go with him proudly as somebody of his, yet financial limitations are always with me. I have a bad habit that I can't get rid of - comparing myself to other people. I know I shouldn't. But I can't help it. My formal training told me that every individual is different and my mindset tells me that I don't give a shit to what people think. Yet, I still compare. I am going to be 28 in two months' time - I am still what I was. Hopefully, I will have one more degree by August 2007, which means I have 3 titles already: BA, PDipEd, and MPhil. Why the fuck would someone need 3 titles? Honestly, the current culture does not value this, meaning the people living in this culture don't either. I am fine with the way I suffice myself - yet my family and my partner are the one whom I need to support with my financial solvent. Speaking of work, god knows what the fuck I will do. Ask Susan Miller and Paddy Ching. My fate just has not got the signs for me yet.

Not being able to fit into the mainstream makes someone an outcast and the culture always thinks it is the outcast who has problems. That's why we have so many stupid self-help books in the market. Rule 1: don't read self-help books; Rule 2: burn self-help books; Rule 3: Write one if you wanna get rich as it doesn't take knowledge to write one.

28 - what will I be like when I am 28? I hope the people around me still admore me as what I am and remind me of this as well. I shouldn't be what I am not.

Koa sounded tired on the phone. SUM TUNG. I know you are doing your best. I love you.

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