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| 10 may 2002 taiko taiko taiko! i'm fucking dead tired from going to bed at 4am for the second time this week, but it was well worth it because of the pictures that were taken. my last year (1997) in stanford taiko, we had this guy named stan who took these fabulous black and white pictures from our spring concert. ever since then, i have had a strong desire for the current group to get some "glamour shots" of itself in full gear and costume. good for publicity stunts! so yesterday, i let adam know about the dress rehearsal for tonight's spring concert (8pm at dink), and i was so happy when i turned around and saw his ponytail bobbing as he was setting up his tripod. those four pictures up there are mine (from top left, clockwise: musashi, haiku, sprint, tatsumaki), but the ones that adam took are fucking good. i have serious camera envy over his digital SLR. i mean, i'm sitting here with my wimpy sony p1 which struggled like mad at the tough shooting conditions. i mean, of the 50 pictures i took, there were only a few shots that were actually in focus, and after the first half of the run, my camera's battery had completely died from the strenuous long-exposure shots. my camera even started heating up! yeah. i dunno. adam's camera fucking rocks. it made me think, "dude, if i had the money, i'd TOTALLY want to get into photography." i had reservations about being able to capture the spirit of taiko in frozen, muted pictures, because so much of taiko is in the movements and most importantly, the sound. last night, i realized that i am so glad that i bought a digital camera. when i got it last april, i wondered if i would ever use it that much. but i'm starting to feel that infectuous burn of wanting to take more and more pictures. you can see from my latest entries that i've been taking a posting a lot of pictures recently... and the nagging thought here is that if i keep doing this, i'm going to fill up my free geocities space really fast. ----- so when i dropped by braun rehearsal hall last night for the first part of the run-through, and the group started playing one of the classic songs, "hanabi," i constantly got SHIVERS running through my body. it was pretty emotional for me, like hearing the long lost voice of a person you love. i mean, i've been to taiko concerts since leaving the group, but there's something about the proximity to the drums that gave me flashbacks to my stanford taiko days. on one hand, i was close enough to feel the full reverb effects of the booming bass through my system. and on the other hand, i wasn't actually playing, and that performing experience is completely different since i wasn't concentrating on my own movements and the song. instead, from where i was standing, i got specific directed flashbacks of my last two years in the group, when i was a director and helped run practices. i didn't play that much those two years, as much of my time was spent observing the group and critiquing. i missed playing a lot, but on another level, i was in a position with more responsiblity, helping the group improve from practice to practice. usually, i'm quite content to be in a follower, and i don't take leadership roles often at all, so my tenure as performance director was really special to me. and from my visceral reaction last night, it must have been something i loved. is it obvious that i dwell on my past too much for my own good? ----- anyways, the concert should be good. the four new songs are all pretty fabulous. ideally, i wish the group had two more weeks to really polish the performance, but then again, every performing group would probably wish that they had two more weeks, right? i'm actually semi-dressed up for tonight's performance. it kind of stems from my decision to wear my springtime khaki jacket i bought last weekend, and thus i had to work my outfit around that piece of wardrobe. ----- my cube is all packed up. they gave us the empty boxes yesterday. yup, i'm leaving the company. yesterday, i got fired for farting during a meeting. HAHAHAHA. just kidding. but i wasn't lying about the packing part. since we've expanded beyond the limits of the current office space, we're moving this weekend to a bigger lot in the next building. and who knows. i might even decorate my future cube. i know i said earlier that i didn't want to get emotionally involved in my company, and i'm not admitting that i'm doing that, but i just want to make my cube more accomodating. i miss my posters. i've been thinking lately. it goes back to my wonderment about the importance of arbitrary rules and social conventions that fall under "manners" and such. most people try to shield their thoughts behind a mask of what is "socially acceptable." but yet, if they had to be honest, those same people would eventually admit that, of course, they have perverted and vulgar thoughts. so what, praytell, is the point of keeping all of that in? i mean, i'm not advocating that we just curse and act like total perverts all of the time, but if a genuine thought of that nature comes up, what's the harm in letting it out? why pretend we're better than we really are? i mean, are people afraid that other people will not respect them much? but what is the value of that respect if it's based on a completely false facade? and if so, why doesn't it bother us that our "mature" life is basically a huge charade? i dunno. i mean, i struggle with the whole respect issue because at work i dress like a teenager, and i know that i could be more "professional." but it just hasn't hit me that it's really important to me right now. i'd much rather just be me. and really, what is the big deal of being crude sometimes? to me, it does not follow that crudeness means a person is bad in any way. in fact, i think it's a much better way to be. but i bet i'm in the minority here. i really like what eminem says in "the real shim shady": "i'm like a head trip to listen to, 'cause i'm only givin you things you joke about with your friends inside your living room the only difference is that i've got the balls to say it in front of y'all and i don't gotta be false or sugarcoated at all" alex's site has been down for a while now. i wonder what happened. a few weeks ago, she wrote: "Sometimes, not right now in particular, I dread the ending of this wonderful thing I have going with my darling boyfriend. It's sure to happen at some point, statistically, I do believe. And since it's horribly naive to think otherwise, I am resigned to the fact. I wonder how it'll happen, and why. Hopefully it'll be something painless, like sudden mutual amnesia when lost at sea (in different sea.) Or let me be in a coma for the whole ordeal. Or lobotomized! Anything but involved." pretty "aware" thoughts for such a young person. this is what i wrote back: it doesn't surprise me that psychological studies have shown that people with deluded or unreasonably optimistic views of life tend to be happier than those with more realistic views. when i got together with [k1] when i was 17, one day i wrote her an e-mail saying "i know our relationship will end someday." and what's worse, she agreed with me. i wanted to believe that there was some tragic beauty in all of that, like we were two people admirably fighting our destiny. but when it all ended, i just couldn't help but wonder if we would have done better had we not gone in with that fatalistic attitude. sorry. don't mean to be didactic. it's just that your entry reminded me of myself. speaking of lobotomies, i have wondered sometimes about whether i'd be just as happy (or happier, even!) if i got one. sure, i wouldn't be able to write ASIC code, but i'd most likely smile at something as simple as an ice cream cone. that's all folks. the weekend is coming up. and they're kicking us out of the office at 3:30 so i get a SANCTIONED release from work. taiko dinner at 5:30. concert at 8. and alan's rafting trip fell through, so i'm hanging out this weekend. life fucking rocks. |