i am almost ashamed to say but… the soundtrack to this blogpost will be lily allen and her new album, ‘it’s not me, it’s you.’ there’s something about her voice that i love, and the relatively simple melodies of her music, as well as the sharp tongue in cheek of her lyrics combine in such a way as to be rather entertaining for me. even more than that, there’s an element of real pain or desperation in her voice that i can connect to, she actually sounds genuine in her romantic ruminations.
i have been suffering from horrible insomnia recently. getting large gaps in my nightly sleep and being exhausted throughout my ever longer days. i have no idea, why but it’s definitely been one hell of a downer.
but along with this are really really vivid dreams, even more than usual. you gotta unnerstand that my dreams always have a lifelike quality to them, a strength and a reality that often makes me feel that they’re as tangible as a fist to the face or a hand caressing a cheek. i always wake up from my little naps or from my few winks during a mostly sleepless night with this sense of bewilderment as to where the hell i am. some of the dreams are utterly sad, and i’ve found myself waking up with tears in my eyes… i was recently woken up by a friend from a particularly angry nightmare and i slugged him by accident.
sorry btw.
i don’t know what to make of it all, but in all honesty… i kind of enjoy them. i guess it’s either the masochistic element of my being or the fact that, goddamn it, feeling something, even in your dreams, brings you a little bit closer to being human.
building on all this and what i meandered and blabbered on about in the last few days, i’m going to post a poem and a video of a song and talk about them a little bit. these are both pieces of art that are really, really close to my heart, and have affected my growth as an artist, but more importantly as a person.
the first is ed bok lee’s seasons of hair.
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Seasons of Hair
I know men who survive
by their women’s hair, its scent
a force field each winter dawn
shuffling steps at the bus stop
In spring, smiles resurface, hands
hungry to unjam storm windows,
re-thread bolts and grease bicycle chains;
clanks under engine blocks
drive wasps crazy; a dancing
ankle turned on a wine bottle in the grass
Summer evenings around a picnic
table metropolis’d with food and condiments,
the man’s fingers sweep the moon
from his wife’s black mane, humming
of lovers in an oarless boat on the East Sea…
While breezes blanket our exhaustion
from an afternoon full of trees
But my favorite season is autumn,
when my father’s evening tea changes color
for all the leaves fallen into the river,
and my mother rests on the sofa
after work and asks
me to remove any silver
from her hair
like sewing in reverse
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how utterly beautiful is that? furthermore, how… i don’t know, i want to find a word that means heartbreakingly quietly joyful. ed brings an intimacy with his imagery that brings me into the piece, even as i find parallels in my own life. he conveys emotion with a subtlety that manages to say so much even as though it is relatively sparse. as a love poem to the women that he knows, that are in his life, its elegance and grace bear great testament to their character, as well as the fucking brilliance of his writing.
go buy his book, real karaoke people. it’s actually one of my favorite book of poems, along with howl and ted koozer’s book. weird combinations huh?
next, in a sharp contrast, but as an interesting juxtaposition to ed’s piece is the Pogues with fairytale of new york.
this is actually my favorite love song. yes, it’s not as sugary sweet as most love songs, and it has an element of ugliness to it, but i feel like that’s real. there’s a wistful romance to the music and even more so in shane mcgowan’s voice that utterly breaks my heart over and over again. then again, i’ve always been one to root for the fuckups and the broken people. the lingering anguish at the squandered dreams and lost hopes that are so easy to find in nyc brings it that much closer to me. and how do you not love that element of… i want to say ‘married good-natured resentment’ as i have no other words to the lyrics. yes, the characters in the song can hate each other sometimes, but when can’t we all? that element of resentment even as it’s born out of love takes this song so far past any other love song that it’s not even a comparison.
finally, let me end this by doing two small things… first is re-plugging my project because i need many many more stories and experiences than i’ve received.
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love poem to an asian women series (as an ideal): in trying to explore the concept of identity, i’ve been trying to come to grasp with the fact that it’s very often small events that shape us irrevocably, as if we were sculpture and one small chip changes the entire composition.
as such, i’m asking that if you’re an asian woman, that you please email me a description of a few experiences that you feel shaped your identity as the person you are today. they can be long or short, but please be as detailed as you can. email them at vinh [at] vinh-hua [dot] com. as this can be sensitive, feel free to email me anonymously.
these experiences will be used to inform a series of poems about asian and asian american women.
why particularly asian women? firstly because ‘love poem to a vietnamese woman’ where i tried to explore the identities of vietnamese girls is still one of my favorite poems. furthermore, i’m hoping that by writing about asian women, i can separate more of myself away from the material and explore the subject more thoroughly. some of it is admittedly arbitrary. i kinda wanta write a poem to my momz and itll be part of this series.
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… finally, i just wanted to give you this quote from the main character in one of my favorite movies of all time, dedication.
“Life is nothing but the occasional burst of laughter rising above the interminable wail of grief.”
Yes, horribly depressing, but i think, great imagery. he has a fuckton of these, each one of them completely bleak and with a definitely neurotic flavor to them. i think i might write a piece centered around the phrase life is.
life is a scream of joyful defiance into the glacial face of time.
oh and shameless plug for my myspace of course…