Poems galore

I've been posting my poems in a separate, private blog for the last couple of months but I decided to make it public. If anyone's interested it's here.

They're not that great but what's the internet for if not watching porn sharing?

Listening to right now: the GazettE - 「瞞し」

What goes together better than heartbreak and alcohol?

Currently looping Lee Seung Gi's "Love Taught Me To Drink". Okay, really I've only been looping the first 2 minutes because the rapping in the middle kind of broke the mood for me, though it does fit the song in its own way. After seeing the name of the song and then hearing the song I could totally imagine poor Lee Seung Gi sitting at a table by himself in a bar drowning his sorrows in soju (for all I know that's probably exactly what the video is about, haha... note to self: watch the PV!)

I forgot what a great voice Lee Seung Gi has. He has such a smooth, sexy voice and he's a great singer. I love his ballads but his voice also suits more upbeat songs really well. I didn't like his first album so much because his voice was very gravelly but his subsequent albums had a much smoother sound. I also wanted to watch his acting skills in the drama "Shining Inheritance" but I couldn't even make it past like half of the first episode... which is unfortunate because I don't think he was even in much of that first half. I just found the setting up of the whole story to be very slow and boring, though I'm sure the drama itself improved thereafter.

Anyway, I just thought I'd write a little post about it since this song inspired me to write a poem that flowed completely effortlessly with very little thinking involved, and on the very first listen no less! Of course, that doesn't mean that the poem's good but lately I've been thinking way too hard about my poems while I'm writing them.

Listening to right now: 이승기 - 사랑이 술을 가르쳐 [Lee Seung Gi - Love Taught Me To Drink]

A twisted hope

Sometimes I wonder if I can just start my life over from scratch.

There are so many times that I find myself wondering what the heck I'm really doing with my life, am I really happy doing what I'm doing, am I even the person I want to be? I envy the people whose lives seem so fluid and versatile, as though they can just change their path in a heartbeat and follow their dreams. Maybe it's just a phase, or a case of "the grass is always greener on the other side" but I often feel this way.

It may sound somewhat strange but I have this weird belief that gives me hope. I don't really believe in reincarnation per se, but I have this image of one collective consciousness. Like sometimes I sit and think how odd it is that everyone else thinks the same way that I do, in the sense that everyone thinks in the context of "I". I watch other people and they are just that to me: other people. But each of those other people has a consciousness and feelings, and it makes me feel like there are clones of me walking all over the place. But it also makes me feel that one day when I eventually die, there are many other consciousnesses, many other "I"s, and thus many other opportunities for me to experience what I missed out on in this consciousness.

In the end, it just sounds like a twisted version of reincarnation, doesn't it?

Except that it's not like the current me dies and another is reborn but more like all of the "me"s are co-existing and somehow, someway, on some higher level I'm accessing their lives and experiences and personalities even if the current me cannot.

Yeah, I know, it doesn't make a whole lot of logical sense in my own mind either.

Listening to right now: hide - Inside the Pervert Mound

The man without a nose

I present to you: Reita of the GazettE, also known as the man without a nose.



Just kidding, I'm sure he has a nose. Maybe.

Anyhoo, I was fangirling him a few weeks ago and was super excited about writing a blog entry about him. So excited in fact, that I wanted it to be perfect and awesome like the man himself and thus never got around to actually writing it.

Reita is the bassist of the GazettE, and his trademark is that band over his nose. Or a bandanna, but usually it's the nose band. Basically, the idea is to just never show his nose. There are, of course, pictures floating around of a nose band-less Reita from back in the day but let's face it, that nose band adds infinite sexiness and badass-ness to his look.

Ordinarily I'm vehemently against putting actual people as my computer wallpaper but I gave into the temptation and Reita is now proudly flaunting his hotness every time I boot up. Lately I also refrain from saving pictures of celebrities on my hard drive, mainly because I feel like an obsessed fangirl doing it, but again I gave into the temptation and now I have a folder full of Reita pictures.

Obsession is a dangerous, dangerous thing.

I also really like Reita's hair. It hasn't changed all that much over the years (from what I can tell) and overall his look is lot less feminine than a lot of other visual kei J-rockers, including his fellow band mates. Even his style hasn't changed much which, when you consider how often J-rockers take the wrong turn down the path of omg-who-the-hell-let-you-out-looking-like-that, is nice.

His headbanging in the Filth in the beauty PV is also really cute (since half the time he's really just kind of swinging his head from side to side) and his voice is just... omg. *melts*

I'm still in the process of really getting into the GazettE's music so I can't say much about his talent as a bassist... though I do like the bass line in Cassis a lot.
It's also somewhat amusing that he throws (or at least used to) his bass guitar up in the air during lives and then catches it. I guess impressive might be the better word to use, though he did drop it once. ><

I'm not really sure what's a good way to end the fangirling post, but a picture is worth a thousand words, right?


Mmmm, don't mind if I do.

Listening to right now: the GazettE - Filth in the beauty

Note: I take no credit for these pictures. I found them all using Google.

Edit: I feel compelled to add something actually music-related to justify labeling this post as "Music". I listened to the GazettE's 'STACKED RUBBISH' album after my bandwagon post and I was kind of disappointed; totally not what I was expecting. I almost wrote another post saying that I was no longer on that bandwagon but luckily I listened to 'NIL' (which came before) and 'DIM' (which came after) first and I liked both those albums much more. I looped 'DIM' quite a bit... I believe it's their most recent studio album, released in 2009. So umm... yay for not falling off the bandwagon? :)

Moved to tears

I randomly listened to a piece by the Korean pianist/composer Yiruma called River Flows In You and... omg, it's gorgeous. It's only about 3 minutes long but it's amazing. And it's probably the only song/piece that has moved me literally almost to tears within the first 5 seconds.

I've heard of Yiruma before, just by name, but I've never heard any of his music or Wiki'ed him. Turns out he's well-known worldwide and River Flows In You is one of his best-known pieces (I can see why). After hearing this piece I'm definitely going to check out more of his stuff.

The initial "moving me to tears" feeling has gradually faded after looping the track like 5 times in a row (oops) but it's still an amazing piece.

On a related side note, I thought it was weird and mildly interesting that according to Wiki his two pieces River Flows In You and Kiss the Rain are "widely misattributed as Bella's Lullaby from the soundtrack to the 2008 film Twilight." Umm, what?
(And no, I've never watched any of the Twilight movies.)

Listening to right now: Yiruma - River Flows In You

Jumping on the bandwagon

So the GazettE seems to be ridiculously popular (am I just stating the obvious?) and since I've only heard a few songs from them (again, back in 2004/5) I decided to Youtube 'em and see why it is that I never jumped on the omg-the-GazettE-is-awesome bandwagon.

I still don't know the answer to that because I'm pretty sure the songs I've heard recently from them were post-2005 songs (Cassis is late 2005, so still after I stopped following J-rock) and thus were released when I stopped listening to J-rock on a whole anyway. I started off with Cassis, Filth in the beauty, and now DISTRESS AND COMA... and... I'm not gonna lie, I don't particularly like Ruki's voice. I know there are probably thousands, maybe even millions, of fangirls who will vehemently disagree with me but I'm sorry, his voice just doesn't float my boat. It's growing on me (i.e. I can tolerate it enough to actually listen past it to the music) but it almost turned me off the GazettE completely. Which would have been a shame because I do like their music. I haven't listened to many of their songs yet but they seem to be incredibly versatile in their styles of music. I've also liked their PVs so far; they're actually visually worth watching (and not just because of the members).

They've been around since 2002 and have always been visual kei as far as I know. I'm not ashamed to admit that a motivating factor for me to keep watching their PVs and staring at their pictures is that I really like their appearance. I find that a lot of the newer visual kei bands are just over the top or are much darker and scarier than I personally like. But the GazettE's style is much simpler comparatively, without the crazy outfits that look like they're hell to move in much less perform in.
Don't get me wrong though, there are some bands who wear crazy outfits that I also love watching, haha. Of course, I'd only watch them if their music was worth listening to.

Anyway, I can see why the GazettE is so ridiculously popular. Even though I didn't really like the vocalist's voice initially, I can still get past it and really listen to the music which as it turns out... is pretty awesome. So consider me as having jumped squarely on the GazettE bandwagon.

Listening to right now: the GazettE - Cassis

Aki likes shiny pants

I happened to come across a random Youtube video of some amateur visual kei band covering SID's "Watashi wa Ame" in Harajuku (well, supposedly it was a band... there was only one guy playing guitar and singing in the video) and I remembered just how much I used to like SID. Before seeing this video the only two songs I really remembered were "Ajisai" and "Alibi"; I had forgotten how many other awesome songs they have.

I'm not that familiar with their more recent stuff (recent being 2006 onwards) since I haven't kept up with J-rock since around 2005. This makes SID a little unique for me in that most of the bands I like have been around a lot longer and so I'm more familiar with their later, non-indies songs, whereas I'm much more familiar with SID's indies stuff than their later work. So I rummaged around and found their Renai album, and I'm beginning to re-familiarise myself with them.

So far, I've noticed that a lot of their later songs tend more towards the mainstream pop sound, with a lot less of that jazzy yumminess that was so prominent in their earlier songs. This doesn't mean that their current sound is bad; just that their style has changed pretty significantly, imo. Maybe the bass is also more prominent in their earlier songs? (Haven't listened to enough of their newer songs to say this for sure.)
Two of their recent songs that I've been looping are "Uso" and "Memai"; I especially like "Memai" because it's a little harder (rockier?) than their other stuff, even compared to their indies songs, and very very catchy.

They've also de-visualised for the most part, and unlike some other de-visualised bands they actually look pretty good. I watched a 2009 interview with them though and apparently they still consider themselves to be visual kei? I don't know if they're referring more to their music or to their appearance or both but I wouldn't have called them visual kei. In fact, I was under the impression that they didn't want to be visual kei anymore. This is all hearsay of course, since it's just stuff that I read online. And really, it doesn't matter to me whether they (or anyone else for that matter) consider themselves to be visual kei.

I just watched a video of their live performance of "Memai" and there are a few things I noticed:
a) the lyrics are awesome... I've never looked up their lyrics before but I definitely will now.
b) Mao would sound great in a screamy song and
c) Aki rocks out so hard... harder than I would expect from a bassist. o_O
d) Oh yeah, and Aki likes shiny pants.

Listening to right now: シド 「眩暈」　(SID - Memai)