Glee Had Lost its Plot
Posted: January 21, 2012 Filed under: Things I Find Interesting Leave a comment »There I finally said it. Glee has become unbearable. Here’s why:
1. The plot appears to be driven by songs selection. The dialogues foreshadow or allude to the song lyrics and as a result they appeared to be contrived, forced and inorganic.
2. Plot and storyline gravitates towards one which offers the most opportunity to slot in songs. The recent episode contains a shameful example. Will Schuester intends to propose and asked students to suggest some songs by, yes, putting up full-fledged performances, complete with choreography and theatricality. How believable is that when a mere song suggestion (thrown out verbally, by pronouncing or spelling out song titles) would suffice? More so when the same group of students have their national (regional) show choir competition coming up and they appeared to have not done anything substantial.
3. Can we see less of Lea Michelle? And increasingly, Matthew Morrison too. Other characters deserve a chance too.
4. In the heydays of Season One, I loved the characters for their depth and dimension. Now the very same characters and their characterization seemed to be dictated by the songs selection that controls the plot line. I cringed when Sue Sylvester became a nice lady suddenly, dancing along when Emma (not Sue’s friend at all) sings.
5. There are too many “song ex machina” (for lack of better term), referring to the quick-fix resolution of storylines through song. For example, Person A has been having a rough time. After singing a song, she feels better. Not that life isn’t like that, but it’s been used too often and sometimes the song just isn’t compelling enough to effect such dramatic changes.
6. General lack of direction for this season. Back in Season One, it was about a new glee club consisting of underdog school members that have a lot to prove via show choir competitions, will many interesting sub plots in between that still eventually adds to the larger plot. Right now I don’t sense any over arching plot that coheres into a whole.
I will still watch Glee because I remember how it speaks to me powerfully back in Season One. I hoped that will return in upcoming episodes.
2012
Posted: January 14, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »It’s been fourteen days since the new year and I haven’t had the time (and will) to embark on the “ritualistic auditing” (I need to stop running my life like a corporation) that I always do for previous years. You know, the reflective, sober and contemplative piece detailing the achievements and missteps of the preceding year, not to mention bringing back last year’s resolution to the table and nervously running through the list to see if any of them accomplished.
Last year has been one of the most accomplished years, and the single most important drive was to be able to leave my current location and go to a “big city where dreams come true”. I remembered sleepless nights, stress, the occasional “falling apart” feeling, the frequent “glass half empty” disposition, tears, fears, depression, car accident, arguments, flaring tempers, insomnia, career burnout, and yawning on the job. In exchange, I won some awards, published a pop song, became a music arranger, acted in a play.
Quantifiable accomplishments aside, I was officially labelled “socially inept” – to quote a certain someone, verbatim, while others used the term “socially awkward”. Usually it didn’t irk me one bit as I’m (thanks to years of reading highly venomous books) convinced that nice guys don’t get corner office, and that the future belongs to controversial, often iconoclastic people. Apparently, Steve Jobs isn’t nice too. Look how he is now posthumously glorified and his products unprecedentedly worshiped.
I must admit that I do care and it is beginning to induce a need-to-do-something -about-it sentiment in me, all because I, by some fateful turn of events, befriended someone, a friend. He showed me what friends are for. Admittedly I have not reciprocated his goodwill in equal magnitude. I haven’t learn how to react to his kindness. I am used to dealing with people who wants something from me and would exploit me for their ends. I’m not going to pretend that the world works on the basis of altruism and genuine goodwill.
I can’t say for sure if this friendship is a blessing, for it completely shook my confidence for my worldview and my justification of my lifestyle. It forces me to review my ambition, my reckless Type A-ness, my priorities, and my alone-but-not-lonely decorum that I had lived by for most of my life. Suddenly I became less confident. I became purposeless and questioning. Eventually I spent a good few months trying to seek (re-seek?) those. Purpose, confidence, answers.
On new years eve, I spent time cleaning my room and throwing away many stuffs that I keep for remembrance. I’m not sure why. Perhaps there was just too many baggage, physical and emotional that I didn’t want to bring into the new year. As I reluctantly drag the trash bags towards the trash outside, I had an inner resoluteness to be a better person. I wanted to start start all over and do it without the baggage of my past.
Moving forward, I haven’t had any yearly plans. Something which I’ve grown wary for I haven’t in full achieved last year’s resolution. Though I have migrated to a more-manageable quarterly system of setting goals (Ok, I really need to stop running my life like a corporation) in which I aspire to continue making headway in music industry and be a confident person by the end of the first quarter of 2012.
Happy new year.
Five things I learn today
Posted: December 5, 2011 Filed under: Lessons I pick up from life Leave a comment »1. Sometimes when you try to get things done at dizzying pace , life gives its first warning. Like in a form of a car accident. The trauma lingers on, not so much by the accident itself, but by the post-accident procedures in the likes of having to run around to four different police stations in different parts of the city. As such, it is time to slow down, both in life and on the road.
2. My ego and pride is hindering my progress. But assuming one progresses the most after a certain amount of ego-free period and achieves abrupt success which might then trigger the repossession of pride and ego, can one retain sanity living from one explosion onto one’s self esteem to another? Will one descend so deep into the depths of despair to the point of never seeing the light again?
3. I should not bring work to my bed. So I have a total of nineteen songs to produce and arrange by this year and it stays in the computer room.
4. Self belief and confidence is really the key.
5. Mediocrity is an option. The most important thing is to start somewhere. Hence this blog post. Otherwise I’ll put it off till I write the perfect post.
Good Things. Bad Things.
Posted: November 16, 2011 Filed under: My Wild Ambition Leave a comment »Once again I was surrounded by glitz and glamor, within the margins tuxedo-clad glasses-clinking powerful men. A few approvingly nodded to me. I am … to be sure, nowhere near the league of these gentlemen. Certainly nowhere near the pinnacle of my career and ambition. But from where I am, nestled between a grand piano and an grandiloquent wall of a posh hotel, I was afforded glimpse of my possible career peak.
Hours before, I was on national radio station, playing the keyboard for a certain pop star. Indeed, good things are happening lately. Such that it afforded me the confidence to believe that if I hang on to it for a little longer, I’d be on top. I am networking, increasing my visibility and slowly cementing the roots of my reputation.
Only, as the excitement weathered, I realized the tuxedo-clad glass-clinking men can never be powerful enough. Same goes to the national radio and the pop star, whose sphere of influence and popularity never extends beyond the border of this country. This is no New York, Hong Kong, or any “big city where dreams come true”. While all these can be interpreted as my growing elitism and disdain for all things local, I however believed that kind of discrimination is necessary in attaining global greatness.
Awards. I clinched two for my virgin musical work. I remembered that night in precise resolution. Stage lights beamed attention on me. I must have been too dazzled by my sudden new found pride. As it turns out in retrospect, this isn’t the Tony Awards or any top global industry accolades.
My conflicting thoughts knocked me off my trajectory. Suddenly I didn’t know what to do next: I should begin packing up skills, knowledge and expertise, set foot on the “big city where dreams come true”, start anew, climb to the top. But I should also stay because as they say, in the land of the blind, the one eye man is king and I might not have similar opportunities, more so when we talk about competitive landscape in the “big city where dreams come true”. But I should really go, NOW, because I’d get inspired, be exposed to the best of the best, and even if I don’t get opportunities at the highest level I can start small at a local level and climb to the top.
Undoubtedly, I need to leave. But with everything good going on, when the time arrives, when the exit door cracks open and I need to bolt through it before it seals again, would I unroot myself from everything that I’ve sowed: contacts, networks, visibility, reputation. Would I have become too comfortable, unwilling to start from scratch in foreign city?
Hello world.
Posted: September 18, 2011 Filed under: Lessons I pick up from life Leave a comment »Is there anyone out there reading my blog anymore?
Okay, I hear only echos and a deafening silence. I mean, surely no one cares about a guy who writes vociferously and somewhat passionately and then evaporates without a trace for several months and then come back again, right?
Not that I expect readers for my blog (a statement to coat my modest blog readership numbers with derision not unlike the fox who pronounces the grapes sour – a curious behavior that’s taking shape lately) but if you are out there reading please be assured that I am still around, and definitely “not lazy, just busy” (just something that I begin to say recently which – by virtue of its simplicity and clever, impeccable rhyming – is now one of my signature catch phrase). But really, I think my blog has just become one of the loneliest out there by virtue of my own making.
There used to be an avenue for my regular literary retreat where after the daily action of highly ambitious life all I did was to sit down and unwind and reflect, crafting meaning and expressing my feelings with artful configuration and groupings of alphabets, which was of course conspicuously missing in the recent not-lazy-just-busy months. Right. Blogging.
But now I am back. So much has happened to me and I don’t know where to start. But in summary:
- The composition album with my composition in it is finally out. Sold at 30 bucks local currency. Nah, don’t bother buying it. Albums are the new vinyls. Torrents are the new albums.
- I sold my first song to a Hong Kong girl group. Apparently they are quite popular in Hong Kong, but frankly I’ve never heard of them and I may have fidgeted in horror (with a tinge of disdain) while checking them out in Youtube. But we’ll see when their album is out.
- I am officially signed to this publishing company as a songwriter, although, I have yet to ink my John Hancock above any dotted lines. Right, time to make that phone call.
- Taking freelance music arrangement work seriously. Not very confident about my work for now, but will get there.
- Doing a musical production now. Rehearsals almost everyday.
- Tumultuous period of time characterized by insomnia, anxiety, general lethargy, occasional inability to focus and pay attention, glass half-empty mode and subsequently acne outbreak. Partially because of stress and work, but mainly because of relationships and confidence crisis.
- Acting in a play in about a month. That means, a month to work on pronunciation, enunciation, mechanics of sound production, subtext and physicality. Another round of tumultuous period if you ask me.
- Got headhunted by this artiste to play the keyboard for him for an upcoming radio show. Small role, but quite a milestone. In the process I discovered how horrible the local entertainment industry is, how it is pervaded by mediocrity at every corner I turn to. Which leads me to …
- Seriously consider relocating to another city. Someone once told me that one’s external environment can be affective to one’s well being. If I continue to stay, I fear I will be mediocre, arrive late at every appointment, cancel appointment on the eleventh hour, and take everything, no matter how urgent, trivially.
Quicksand
Posted: June 2, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized 1 Comment »So I know that it is a matter of time before my inevitable Time magazine cover appearance *run fingers through hair, rolls eyes, smirk at your derision/scepticism*, among many other accolades that will soon be bestowed upon me one after another, but apparently getting there is not easy – and this is not informed by some cliched words of wisdom uttered by some apparently quote-worthy, highly accomplished individuals, but by my first hand experience. For the past month or so, I have been working on …five jobs … at the same time. So the rate of busyness is equal to the previous madness of working on a national competition during high school, preparing for major examinations, and working on a songwriting competition .. combined.
At some point, I experienced an unprecedented state of mental disturbances in what I would regard right now – in retrospect – as “me falling apart”. Shortly after that I was (self-)diagnosed with what people called General Anxiety Disorder – if the web pages that I fished from the Google search bar were reliable enough. Compounded by my lack of sleep for several days, I became curiously anxious at every turn of event, imagining the worst of everything to the point of waking up each morning wondering if today is the day where something bad is going to happen to me.
I attempted to calm myself down by counter feeding my mind with positive thoughts, but this in fact exacerbated my situation. I was in a quicksand. The more I struggled to dismiss the negativity, the more anxious I get for having had the thoughts. This creates a vicious cycle and thus the deeper into this conundrum I sank. A few days later I – Aaron Lo, suave, ambitious, big dreamer (among other self-approving adjectives) – had stopped functioning completely. I couldn’t remember what I was doing, but in vagueness and drowsiness I remembered the endless Youtubing and Facebooking, watching tv, staring at street people for no apparent reasons. I had no sense of purpose, no goals to pursue. I wasn’t so upbeat about my life and all the good things that are happening to me anymore. So much for ambition.
I’m better at the moment, all by pacing the speed of things and prioritizing my task accordingly. Fear and anxiousness still pervades my mind occasionally though not as severe as before. But ambition could be a double edge sword if I am not careful – that’s a lesson for me. And someday when I am on the cover of Time magazine (and therefore quote-worthy) I would then tell that to other aspiring cover-gracer.
On Singapore’s Election
Posted: May 6, 2011 Filed under: Governance Leave a comment »Singapore’s general election will be held tomorrow, but what has that got to do with a Malaysian?
Plenty. Especially since the issues of the day are foreign talent and immigration. Malaysians, especially the ethnic Chinese, are by far the largest immigrant group in Singapore. Every Malaysian have family members or at least know someone who works in Singapore. And the reasons are obvious – it is close to home, not too culturally distant, and the pay is good. But most importantly, meritocracy is practiced (at least in a way better than the Malaysian version of “meritocracy” – but let’s not go there).
Personally, I root for PAP. As an outsider I would prefer the status quo to be maintained. The reason for this is that in the recent months or so, I have been hunting for jobs in Singapore only to decide it wasn’t time yet. Now I am slightly regretting it because it looks increasingly likely that people are going to vote for opposition. And even if PAP retains power, they are either going to have slightly less majority or they are going to learn a lesson and I am afraid they are going enforce tighter control on the inflow of workers and students. Looks like I have to be male gigolo in Geylang or fake a marriage with a local to get there.
But then, should the Singapore government tighten inflow of foreigners, then it negates Singapore’s pull factor in the first place. The main reason I looked to Singapore is not the money, and of course not the political climate, but because the concentration of talented and competent people. It is a city that has the what I called “New York effect”, at least in the region. It is all about efficiency. When people are concentrated – especially if it involves highly competent people/talented people, then the “sum is greater than the parts”. Location matters. A good example: a fashion designer based in New York is more likely to make it big than a designer based in say, KL. He gets to study with world-class designer teacher. He gets the best fabrics in the world. He gets inspiration from a melting pot city. He gets the attention of global press organizations and that includes international fashion magazines. His work gets the endorsement of international celebrities. Let’s just say, Jimmy Choo wouldn’t be Jimmy Choo if he didn’t leave Penang for London. Same goes to other accomplished Malaysians – they all make it elsewhere, and that is telling. So I need to leave to become who I want to be.
That said, I believed Singapore will continue to need people to sustain economic growth and counter low birth rate and I do believed that there are enough wisdom on the leadership to import foreigners while managing and finding solution to counter growing anti-immigrant sentiment and local economic woes. Discriminating based on nationality defeats everything that Singapore stands for. If it preaches meritocracy, then it should discriminate based on competency level.
Born This Way
Posted: May 1, 2011 Filed under: Lessons I pick up from life Leave a comment »The latest episode of Glee “Born this way” hit me right in my bosom in a rather timely manner as I negotiate my recent insecurities and record low confidence level. Lately I’ve been up to a lot of things that I used to be afraid of and while I honestly do think I deserve a *clear throat in the most nonchalant way* pat in the back for my audacity, I haven’t been feeling great about myself. At every turn of event, I am a loser and a outcast whom the entire world conspire to watch me fall hard.
Watching Glee, it suddenly dawned on me that I haven’t been very self-accepting. I am not entirely happy with who or what I am now. I am almost always in the process of changing things, setting goals and working towards achieving the goals. Someone once told me that in order to change, one has to firstly accept oneself. Paradoxical, isn’t it? I can’t reconcile the paradox – if I decided to be happy with who or what I am now, doesn’t that mean I am settling for mediocrity or anything less than my idea of perfection?
At least after Glee came along I was able to see some light, though the paradox remained. But I think I get what it meant by accepting oneself before changing, at least I am going to try to make sense of it – it just means I need to acknowledge my own history – my strength, my weaknesses – and I should be comfortable with myself at any given time – comfortable in a sense that I know change is going to happen to me, as opposed to comfortable in a I-am-entirely-happy-with-who-I-am-and-I-will-not-change-a-thing-about-myself sense. And all these realization came about in the scene where the teacher, Emma, decided to wear a t-shirt that says “OCD” just as she decides to seek medical/professional help.
While I am at it, I think the latest episode of Glee is the most brilliant episode ever. The t-shirt idea? Super brilliant. Soon people are going to start wearing those t-shirt and garment manufacturers are going to mass produce these t-shirt and they are probably going to call it “Born this way” t-shirts. This is going to be like how the “I heart NY” logo became a cultural icon that it is currently. Television is a great tool to spread trends, precisely why I aspire to work in media/television – screenwriting or whatever, which is currently still an elusive goal.
But I will get there eventually. (I think I just felt a little more comfortable than before saying this.)
The horror
Posted: April 29, 2011 Filed under: Miscellaneous Leave a comment »I’ve been busy on an unprecedented scale lately. The past few days has been about work, work and work to an extent that it is affecting my sleep for several consecutive days. This morning as I looked into the mirror I saw a pair of dark shade enveloping the lower part of my eyes which is none other than the up-till-now-elusive dark eye circle. The hor-rorrr.
And since the narcissistic part of me cannot allow this to persist, I decided that I need lie on bed and sleep for the next 48 hours. Wake me up when April ends.
Happy Birthday to Me
Posted: March 13, 2011 Filed under: Lessons I pick up from life, Milestone, Music Leave a comment »I hate birthdays. I usually wished nobody would remember and that it would pass by uneventfully.
Two days ago, the 11th, was my birthday. Yes, my birth date was the same as Rupert Murdoch’s (That’s the only thing I care about). Actually bringing up Rupert Murdoch is apt, because I always feel under-accomplished vis-a-vis my age. I mean, here I am, 22 years old, and I don’t feel very accomplished in a way that amazes me and makes me wow in disbelief when I had the chance to sit down in solitude and reflect upon my life.
When I was 21, I made significant progress in songwriting, beginning with my demos accepted by publishing companies (as opposed to having them tossing to the bin without even listening), then joining a songwriting competition organized by a major reputable record label and making it to the finals, have them signed my song, being put on the mailing list of record companies looking for songs, meet some recording industry people who were kind enough to give me some guidance along the way, and upgrade music production equipment like sound card, vst, softwares, and of course a midi controller which I bought a day after my birthday so you can called it a birthday gift). Not to mention that I’m playing the piano in the most expensive and exclusive place to shop in KL, an endeavor in which I took tremendous pride.
Most of these progresses and attainments were a big deal back then, but in retrospect, it doesn’t make me feel accomplished, now that I am viewing things in perspective and I know that these are still quite far from my eventual goal. What would make me feel accomplished? Maybe if I managed to sell all songs that I wrote and if they all topped the charts and ruled the airwaves, chanted by masses on the street, set as ringtones on teenagers’ mobile phones, flooded the playlists of the iPod on every single palm, requested by patrons in clubs and lounges, covered by contestants on reality show. Yes, those would be what I called accomplishments.
Maybe it was because I was overly ambitious or maybe because I always want to get things quickly and then move on to other things, or maybe – bluntly – it is the modesty of my intellect that prevent me from achieving more. I think I have walked some journey. They say it’s the journey that matters and not the destination. I am still learning to believe and behave in this, to be amazed by the journey and not the destination.
Though I hated to be reminded, thanks for the wishes on Facebook. Actually, more like ..thanks to the very algorithm on Facebook that alerted people that it’s my birthday. A couple of people asked me where I was. It was as if I was kidnapped by aliens. But come to think of it, I don’t really hang out with people I used to know anymore, not because I am anti-social, I think, but because I am really busy attending to my ambition. Plus, I don’t have a car and this severely restricts my physical mobility.
All in all, I think I’ve done alright in the previous year. Maybe next year I’ll be amazed by the journey I’ve embarked on my 22th year on the planet. We’ll see.
