mozart's piano quartet in G is quite nice. especially the first movement. i've never been particularly affected by mozart's music, for the same reason why i thought bach was boring. both are geniuses, but there are simply "too many notes" (from movie amadeus). both feel like a kind of show-off, and neither one stirs my emotions very much. such music i would categorise into the group which cannot be appreciated until you take the score and read and enjoy all the craftiness in the structure, and is a delight to perform. but after all is music a craft or an art? the function of art... what's the form for if that art cannot stir?

but the quartet in G is actually quite angry in the first movement, (and therefore sounds like beethoven a little bit). mozart's music is too pretty, except for some of his later works. i somehow feel that this clever man wasn't alive long enough to live life proper. his life ended shortly after the hedonistic youth, which he spent crafting pretty pieces, before he could experience any of the major emotions that he potentially could have exprience had he grown to be 40, 50 or 60. minimal bitterness in his composition. no frustration. not much anguish. nothing too profound. if he'd been through what beethoven did, i'm sure he could have written something brilliant. and it's indeed a pity. nevertheless, he's a genius, and above all, an interesting person, in the world of two categories of people. ah, and all interesting people are hated, all the time.

the first time i listened to steve reich, i thought what a genius. the more i listen, the more i feel that he's just a minimalist poser. like everyone else. Innovation can only be done once?

but dawn upshaw singing yanov-yanovsky's lacrymosa is just right. just right. so hauntingly beautiful. my hair kept standing. i would really like to see the score, cos i'm sure there's special instruction for the way the voice slides. upshaw slides on purpose for most of her performances and gets away with it with her celebrity license (and i do like the way she slides.) this piece, however, is slightly different in that she has virtually no steps between any two notes. all is sliding. (ok, maybe except for 2 places.) it's creepy.

fyi, the classical italian bel canto does not allow sliding of voice from note to note, although the central feature of bel canto singing is legato, meaning joining the notes. in fact, legato singing without much sliding is a very difficult technique. i see this a very unnatural phenomenon as most cultures have sliding in their singing (the so called "vocal"-ness in singing and playing). you see, singing without sliding is like mimicing an instrument because most western instruments cannot slide (except for strings). while the western europeans spend that extra effort to sing like an instrument, other cultures try very hard to play like a singing voice. the sliding lines in many chinese, indian, middle eastern and east european instruments, show such tendencies. i used to be criticised very frequently for sliding into and out of my notes, which i then concluded to root in my exposure to chinese music, in which virtually every instrument, especially voice, slides in and out of almost everything. i like it better that way, it gives the music much more room for subtle manipulation. don't you agree. it's beautiful when you have all that pitches in between.

Something i didn't know before, the part about how camera works. on a related note, i just got a new email address sangyu at flyeye dot ucsd dot edu. feel free to utilize my lab server space.

had to get the tv series crave out of my system way before sch starts or i'd just die. so i watched tokyo love story again. i thought maybe i was sillier 10 years ago, but no, i wasn't. the show is still good. you who have watched it know what i'm talking about.

but for sex and the city. the more i watch the more i don't get its point. it was supposed to be suggesting a new lifestyle for women, but the statement gets lost along the progress of the 6 seasons. in the end everybody was happily married or at least settled down for a better life to start. miranda and samantha might have avoided being a cliche like carrie(with big, ugh) or charlotte(with both men, ugh!), but they too were pressurised by either their biological clock or whatever that drove them into a settle relationship. in the end you get the feeling that such stress from life is inevitable and the only way women can find a better life is to succumb to it and conform. no more cynicism, of course, and sarcasm.

and so much for feminism.

Maths 'Nobel' prize declined by Russian recluse

So Perelman declined the Fields, but why wouldn't Nature just call it the Fields? considering the reader group of this science journal, is nature afraid that the readers won't be able to make out the significance of this piece of news had they put the title "Fields medal declined by Russian recluse"? what's wrong with them.

and leave the russian recluse alone.

This is quite amazing

after finishing running a gel at 930 and dragging my exhausted self home, i savoured an excellent pack of instant noodles. now i'm watching family guy on the computer, while snacking my friday night away on a horrendous looking but delicious white flesh nectarine, juicy californian raisins and a glass of instant Tang mango drink. oh, and wondering why i don't have a boyfriend.

while my professor was analysing beethoven's sonata in A for cello and piano today in class i was reminded of sth else that a musicologist said at the ethnomusicology conference.
- there's a common misconception, that music theory is actually a real theory.

Flipbook

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send-offs

we are familiar with parting scenes in poems, stories, movies and all that. the depiction of a send-off is of course flooded with the all-absorbing emotions, as if that is the only thing occupying the minds of the persons being sent off and the persons sending off.

in reality, when kk stood in the LA airport beside us, flipping through the stuff in his waist pouch- passport, i20, airtickets and so on , -careful and focused, i realized there was little room for sentimental thoughts. whether it is a feature of modern life, or of real life itself, sending-offs are very much less romanticised than what we know them as. endless things to pack and time constraints on packing bring tremendous stress to the traveller. therefore lack of sleep. therefore more stress due to fear of missing anything important to traveling. travel has become such a hassel, with the heightened security checks in response to more terrorist attacks. those who are sending the traveller off also become nervous, and spend most of the time worrying about reminding the traveller about things to bring, about catching that flight, or just worrying. packing, driving, send-off lunch, send-off dinner, getting to the airport, queuing to check in that luggage, queuing to swap ticket for pass, queuing for security check. by the time everything is done, it's already one hour from boarding. so everyone sits down, heaving a sigh of relief. and then silence and occasional jokes to break the silence. and a brief good-bye. and off he or she goes. at this moment yesterday i was thinking maybe after all, it was better to have that hassle than not to have it. or the combination of heavy hearts and the long hours might have killed us all.

Minty Acquisition

Before we sent our dear friend kk off the gang lunched at farmer's market in LA, and i chanced upon this beautifully designed tin of mints in a french store called Monsieur Marcel. Apparently it is part of a limited edition artist's series. I loved how green and transparent it looked, and the fairy tale like abstraction. The mints are fine. When am i going to stop buying candies for the tins?

Opportunity

Sad but true...

Ota Bengo

New York Times featured a photo story of Ota Bengo, the Congolese pygmy that was once exhibited with an orangutan at the Bronx Zoo. It is shocking how blatant the scientific racists were merely 100 years ago. More information on him at wikipedia.

There he stood in the parlour of the poky little house where she had taken him, waiting for her, while she went upstairs a moment to see a woman. He heard her quick step above; heard her voice cheerful, then low; looked at the mats, tea-caddies, glass shades;waited quite impatiently; looked forward eagerly to the walk home; determined to carry her bag; then heard her come out; shut a door; say they must keep the windows open and the doors shut, ask at the house for anything they wanted (she must be talking to a child) when, suddenly, in she came, stood for a moment silent (as if she had been pretending up there, and for a moment let herself be now), stood quite motionless for a moment against a picture of Queen Victoria wearing the blue ribbon of the Garter; when all at once she realised that it was this: it was this: -- she was the most beautiful person he had ever seen.

With stars in her eyes and veils in her hair, with cyclamen and wild violets -- what nonsense what he thinking: She was fifty at least; she had eight children. Stepping through fields of flowers and taking to her breast buds that had broken and lambs that had fallen; with the stars in her eyes and the wind in her hair -- He took her bag.

"Good-bye, Elsie," she said, and they walked up the street, she holding her parasol erect and walking as if she expected to meet some one around the corner, while for the first time in his life Charles Tansley felt an extraordinary pride; a man digging in a drain stopped digging and looked at her, let his arm fall down and looked at her; for the first time in his life Charles Tansley felt an extraordinary pride; felt the wind and the cyclamen and the violets for he was walking with a beautiful woman. He had hold of her bag.

-- Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

ok this is much easier than putting the clip on template and having to change template all the time. i would change the music when this post reaches the bottom of the page :)
forgive me for doign such illegal things.

vinci

i suck at writing book reveiws. ick

so i have just finished my long overdue reading assignment Da Vinci Code. I think dan brown is a reasonably interesting fellow, but i strongly feel that his command of the english language is rudimentary, his characters shallow and unattractive. after a while, his narration just started to bore me. there is absolutely no element of humour in the writing. nothing in it brought me even close to a faint smile. maybe it's the cliche of commercialization again, but the book feels like a mass-produced thing to me. like, telling the story for the sake of it, much like a certain dear friend's later oral creations such as the watermelon story . the plot is cool. and i enjoy reading about all the stuff from the book. but the reading itself, has no special pleasure in it. the movie certainly did a much better job in telling this story.

i have never thought of the word "alphabet" as "alpha"-"beta" before. which simply means A, B. not until i saw the hebrew word for it "alefbeit" "alef"-"beit". it's like a revelation. more than the time i saw dis and ease in disease many years ago.