Songs this month #1

Seb's blog gave me the idea to also do my top 5 songs each month... I guess it can reflect my mood and things that are taking place in life! So it's 5 days into February but anyways...

• Caroline - Aminé

This song is so cute! It was very much a summer song and I don't pay attention to charts so I never got to know this until end of January when it was played at a birthday party. I watched the music video and I found it adorable. Not to be a grumpy old man who says all the music videos these days have butts and drugs! but I was happy it wasn't about butts and drugs. It was just Aminé and his friends having fun in the sunshine, laying in the grass, goofing off. The song is also really nice and has a really strong beat. It's full of sunshine! Something to warm up the winter.

• Eastside - Bohan Phoenix

Bohan's new EP came out at the end of this January. I actually didn't really like the title track JALA. I don't know why. I guess it sounded a little too similar to his previous work, or maybe I'm just not in the mood for such a hyped, excited, jumping-up-and-down-in-a-restaurant track. I mean, it's winter... I'm also a little embarrassed to listen to Group Exercise because it's so sexual, so I never added it into my playlist. Eastside was a bit of a surprise. It's slow and quite contemplative, with really interesting production. A gentle, nostalgic, thoughtful song. Like a Sunday afternoon. The featured artist was also really nice. The other two songs with the Higher Brothers were great, with such strong flow. So I guess I liked these featured tracks. I like that Bohan is constantly developing his sound and just generally having a lot of fun.

• Redbone - Childish Gambino

I think I listened to this when it first came out, but for me the first listen never really registers. I heard it again on the bus on the way to Chamonix and it's so great. I love the pulsing 80s sound and how romantic it sounds. (Don't know what to think of the title, though. I know Childish Gambino has often been accused of misogynoir and Asian fetishism amongst other things. And people got upset that Frank Ocean used "redbone" in like one line in one of his songs, but I personally haven't encountered any discourse on this song... I haven't sought it out though.)

• Oceans - Frank Iero and the Patience

Ah, My Chemical Romance. My first love. My lifelong companion. The Seb to my Mia in La La Land: "I'm always gonna love you." I listened to Frank's solo work this month and found myself drawn to Oceans in a visceral manner. It's very painful and full of angst. I love it! It squeezes my heart.

• Words Don't Come Easy - Mamamoo

Around the new year I decided to foray into K-pop. I kept an open mind. However I found myself disliking a lot of the work. Not disliking... just didn't have a spark I guess. I don't like that polished veneer of perfectly-produced pop songs. It didn't really interest me. I went through a lot of girl groups and boy bands. Just as I was going to give up, I found... Mamamoo! Wow! This group is so great. Their sound is a mix of soul and R'n'B and jazz and it's just so appealing. And of course they have that minor-key Asian pop dramatic chorus too. I love this band. 

subject: your zine

hello! 

this is jiaqi (editor in chief of sine theta) and i hope this isnt weird but i checked out your site after you emailed us and i looked through your whole zine and i just wanted to say i found it really beautiful. the photography was really nice and i really liked your use of the flash and how it makes the often mundane objects look like they are wreathed by solitude contemplating an uncertain future. i really identified with this abstract fear of the future its not terrifying but its a huge amount of discomfort lodged in your throat -- i am graduating high school this year and its the first time where i dont know where i'm gonna be in ten months and how my life is gonna be like -- i barely know what country im moving to -- freedom is so hard and i just want to stop time and be a little girl again but i also want to get out of here and i dont know how i feel because high school stress has rendered my emotions into a perpetual sludge of monotony and nothingness. i love your lists and your descriptions and your omissions. i would love a copy of your zine HOWEVER i have no money sorry as i am saving up for a summer trip that felt like a coming of age trip but as it gets closer it feels more and more empty and meaningless, and i also dont want a black and white copy because im really enchanted by the washed colors from the zine, so apologies

anyway your work is great and i hope wherever you are now you are doing well! i also cant wait to see what you submit to our mag (i guess i should say this is a personal message and does not guarantee a feature in sine theta ha ha h) 

best,

jiaqi

La La Land

I'm sure nothing I write will not have already been covered by far more knowledgeable and insightful critics. I don't have much to say. My mom may be disappointed as she liked my reflection on Paterson. That film touched me a lot more than this one. This one was very good, and I did in fact cry (I think I can relate very much to the fear of not being good enough and not achieving one's dreams) but I didn't have a special love for it. I can confirm that it is excellent and gave it 5 stars on Letterboxd, but it also didn't talk to me in the way some other films have. I didn't think La La Land would be able to live up to its hype, a thing so massive that it seems to have developed its own sentient mind. But it really did. From the first moment in the traffic jam I knew I was going to enjoy the film. Ryan Gosling's charm made Mansplainer Seb rather likeable. The large amount of montages in the middle didn't seem like a drag when I was watching it –– I only realised how many of them there were later –– because it was a time when the film indulged in its own lush production design, which is really one of its biggest selling points. The colors! A film for people who are sick of the rain that makes their toes wet, a film for people who are left exhausted by headlines, a relentlessly optimistic film. I very much enjoyed the ending. When she first kissed a different man I thought it would pull out to reveal she was actually shooting a movie and that Mia and Seb were happily together. I was very sad and disappointed. But after that marvellous parallel montage, I realised it was for the better.

It is a sincere, wide-eyed ode to Old Hollywood, a sopping romantic that pays homage to traditional cinema and gleefully plays with clichés. It is truly a breath of fresh air, a wondrous feel-good film that leaves you with an eye for the beautiful small details of the world. In a way, it is the musical of all musicals, deftly signing off the epoch. I expect all future musicals to look forwards, not backwards.

The Léman after La La Land:

Quoth the raven:

Today I unrolled by blinds for the first time in maybe a week or two, my hair still flush with that warm damp air of the hairdryer and the tips of my fingers cold. As I looked out of the window into the park of my childhood a flash of black flew across the windowpane –– a raven, plump with food, dark feathers slick with this morning's rain like oil slowly pouring across –– he was joined by a second, which spread its wings too as it adjusted itself to land, its body filled with a kind of heaviness. So much more graceful in flight than on ground. They waddle across the grass seeped with wet greenness like fattened ducks whilst sparrows flit about in the trees –– carefree. A third and a fourth arrived and then one left, and the three stood in triangle composition around my past –– one at the picnic table that gave me splinters –– one at the ping pong table that sheltered myriad weeds underneath where we played attrape-pieds –– one at the football goal with the dilapidated netting where we used to play and sit and that we used to drag around. There used to be another bench that we'd put near the slide set so we could swing off the pole and use it as a landing pad to spring onto the ground, clambering around, our limbs swift and agile, like we owned the world. Once I asked my friend –– if you could paint the sky –– how would you do it? She said she'd use pulsing blues and stark purples, clouds like Mantegna, a night sky scattered with stars that stretched out thin like cling film. A few years later we became too old to make the effort. Next-door neighbors who saw once another maybe once a month. Their parents divorced. Their father used sit on the doorstep in the evenings to smoke a single cigarette under the porch's yellow light.

Bad Poems #5

The Luminaries: a series of haikus

I [Aries]

I have just finished

reading The Luminaries

(Eleanor Catton)

II [Taurus]

I do not really

have an opinion. It was

quite good. Mysterious.

III [Gemini]

Didn't really like

the ancient style of writing

Author's presence was

IV [Cancer]

too pronounced. Narrators

should be omnipresent third

person amorphous

V [Leo]

immaterial and

unreal and unacknowledged

or a character.

VI [Virgo]

I didn't like that

it was written like someone

was recording and

VII [Libra]

transcribing. Unseen.

Then rearranging for us.

A fly on the wall.

VIII [Scorpio]

Yet nonexistent.

Anyway. It had a lot

of astrology

IX [Sagittarius]

and constellation

symbolism. I guess if

you analysed it

X [Capricorn]

You'd find some deep stuff.

Elaborately set up.

So much so that the

XI [Aquarius]

ending seemed a bit

like a disappointment. Not

a big reveal but

XII [Pisces]

a gradually

unravelling mystery.

Onto the next one.

Hmm. I just remembered there are a bunch of unresolved questions. Like how was Anna able to read and write on the deed if she... couldn't read and write? Or was she just pretending? That was never made clear. Also, I'm confused about what really happened to Emery Staines. And how could Lydia speak perfect Cantonese? Anyway, that's all really weird, and I'm mad they were just left hanging. I guess the point wasn't the mystery, but more the soul-mate-ness between Anna and Emery Staines. Ughh.

Manchester by the Sea

So I watched Manchester by the Sea yesterday. And... I don't know. It was good. But I didn't find it Oscar-worthy. It was sad and very contemplative, very much, I think, a study of one man and his relationship with the world, whether it's the town or the wave of people with whom he interacts. The humor was quite well-done but I'm not sure how well it sits with the very sombre tone of the film... without the humor, the film would've been worse off, but I don't know if it was handled that well, I guess? And I think the music got kind of boring. They would always play classical music really loud so that it drowned out the audio and the diegetic stuff would go mute... and often there would be slow motion with those cuts that are abrupt but not too much so, so that they suggest the passing of that slow kind of time. It was overused, I think, and got boring. After a while it just seemed kind of pretentious. But it also shows that the film was a very visual one. During these moments, the story is told entirely visually, a bit like a comic strip, or a photo series. The funeral scene in the middle (when everyone comes to the church and shakes hands etc) brings to mind a photo album on Facebook called "Joe's wake" where a professional photographer has been hired to help commemorate the occasion. So, very visual, kind of vignette-y (if that's the right word to use here, I guess it isn't, but the only one I can think of). And I enjoyed the scene between Michelle Williams and Casey Affleck when they confront each other and their voices overlap, trying to be polite, stuttering, stammering, yet full of pain. It's the best scene of the film, and I know this because it featured prominently in the trailer AND is the basis of the film poster (at least the one I've seen). So I've actually seen Williams with that "look" (the I-want-to-see-your-manager PTA mom haircut, and that really ugly plaid jacket) a lot of times, and I have to say it looks so bad and plain that it was actually detrimental to the scene. Overall it was okay. I didn't even cry. I think if I'd cried I'd've liked it slightly more. Eh.

Bosch dream

The other night I had a dream that our whole grade went to this kind of haven-like hotel. It looked like the school at first. You could do whatever you wanted. I remember my friend said he'd killed someone, and that it was okay because there were no rules. And he gave me a gun. I was in the art room and I was wondering whether I should kill someone just because I could. In the end I didn't. On the last day there was a big pool party in an indoor pool that had one large pool, and some smaller ones. But it was also a day of, I guess, punishment for everything we'd done. Those that did nothing bad, like me and some others, were allowed to have fun. There were a lot of people scattered about. And there were some executions (hangings...) for people who had committed murder and stuff. Now that I think about it, it was very Bosch. But a lot more scary and disturbing.

And I was reading a text on Korean Buddhist art from the Goryeo dynasty, and just learned a new word: Thalassocracy. The rule of the sea. I love the blatant Greekness of it. It's so extra. It's very beautiful.