Saturday, September 20, 2008

Art

Background Playing [Cold Water by Damien Rice]

Is suicide a piece of artwork? Tristan Reveur [a fictional artist] from the movie "Stay" [2005] once said that "an elegant suicide is the ultimate work of art". He burned all his works before he committed suicide and killed himself at Brooklyn Bridge on his 21st birthday. That way, his final suicide would be the most elegant of all and it did not matter at all what his previous works are. It takes great minds like Tristan Reveur to come up with such a disturbing yet intriguing quote. Strong emotions must have flowed through one's mind and body to think of suicide as an art.

Chronologically, it would have taken the form of unhappiness-sadness-depression-absolute resignation of hope-deciding-strength-belief-final release. When a person attains what I like to call absolute resignation of hope, he decides on suicide. Strength is thus present to motivate and encourage the individual that his choice is a worthy one. Still, belief is the most important factor to trigger the final execution of the elegant act.

An art........the movie is filmed and directed in such a beautiful way it brought tears to my eyes on several occasions. It's beautiful yet sad. There is this part where the blind old doctor [Dr. Patterson] is miraculously healed by the suicidal teenager [Henry]. The amazement in his eyes when he sees things in life for the first time is just so heart-warming-being able to look at his watch and telling the time, "It's 11.33pm" to Sam. There's another quote in the movie where Dr. Patterson said to Sam "The world is an illusion". The world is indeed all but just an illusion. Most of the times, things are just surreal, phantamagoric. That kinda explains why people commit suicide in a way. What is there to lose if the world isn't real? It is actually a wise thing to do-wiser than the what the ordinaries would think of it is.

In this world we live in, what is the ratio of happy people to unhappy people? This is a very contradictory question. On one hand, I would like to think that most people are generally unhappy. On the other hand, I would find that most people are generally quite happy-judging from the happy faces and smiles I see everyday from these "fake" people. Or sometimes I categorise people into two groups -

1] The ordinaries who gets through their everyday lives with laughters and smiles-as if they do not have any worries and most importantly do not ponder on what life really is about

2] The extraordinaries who try to decipher the true meaning of life, psycho-analyse the beauty of it and to extract joy out of little details of life most ordinaries would have missed out. The 2nd group of people are mostly avid readers, writers, song-writers, philosophers and script-writers. They are able to come up with songs and movies that could bring audiences to tears.

Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah is such a powerful and beautifully written song that delivers a message about holding on to faith [and the way I see it, a man with a broken heart]. He drowned in the Mississipi River in the 1997. A part of his lyric goes:

"Well I heard there was a secret chord [1]
That David played and it pleased the Lord [2]
But you don't really care for music, do ya? [3]
Well it goes like this : [4]
The fourth, the fifth, the minor fall and the major
lift [5]
The baffled king composing Hallelujah" [6]

The 5th line caught my attention as he was referring to the chords F-G-Am-F. He is delivering the chords he was playing in words. It is clever the way that not only the chords line up in the lyrics and in the music, but also because the connotations themselves of "major" and "minor" add to the meaning of the song. The "fourth" is a major chord based on the fourth of the key Buckley is playing in. Likewise the fifth is the major chord based on the fifth tone of the key. The "Minor Fall" corresponds to Buckley playing a minor chord based on the sixth of the key. "Major Lift" corresponds to playing the major chord on the fourth again. In a separate part of the song, Buckley said that "Love is not a victory march, it's a cold and broken Hallelujah". It is very beautifully written in the sense that love is not something to feel victorious about; it is more than that.

Brandi Carlile's "The Story" is yet another piece of art. In the lyrics, she describes the importance of having someone to tell your stories to in life. No matter how far you have been to, how great your achievements are, it is joyless unless you have someone to tell them to. Listen particularly to the part where her voice cracked. It is the best of all. Having found that soul-mate in life is the greatest blessing one could ask for-telling them about a road-trip you have just taken, the sunset you've just witnessed, the details, texture of the sky. It is all these little beautiful details that makes life beautiful, when you have someone to tell them to.

Irish songwriter-singer Damien Rice has an impeccable taste for music. His music brought tears to me on many occasions. A list of his work includes "The Blower's Daughter" from the movie "Closer", "Cold Water" from the movie "Stay" and "The Blower's Daughter Part 2". You will have to listen to his music closely to be able to feel the emotions he is feeling at that point of time. The emotions are very well-depicted in "The Blower's Daughter" video where he longs to love this girl but something comes in between them. And the part where the girl sings

"Did I say that I loathe you?
Did I say that I want to
Leave it all behind?"


is so beautiful yet sad.



This is a picture I took on a Friday night. Somehow it is filled with emotions for me. It looks peaceful and translates into having a sense of belonging to me. I feel joy just from looking at it. It's beautiful. It's an art.









2 comments:

Ai said...

love your entry. "what is there to lose if the world isn't real?" so right. all of us are cowards.

Just Someone said...

Thank you Ha Lam.
it's nice getting comments from stranger. can i access ur blog as well?