More music

Move by Lydia Chai

Here's what you can achieve with a zero budget, a talented crew & patient friends. Hope you enjoy my first music video :)


Lydia Chai - Move (super 16mm music video) from Unko Films on Vimeo.

On a lark

I've been making humble music lately. Chekkit.

Mokau horizon

This is the view from Mokau looking west towards the Tasman Sea. On this day, the ocean was as still as glass - like you could walk on it and keep walking until your feet found another land. 

You can see here the gentle curve of the planet. The same curve that determines the shape of a crescent moon. 

That horizon looks like many things: a tightrope, a silver wall, a fallen sword.

Einstein

Image (c) Lydia Chai

Einstein recognized that temporal specifications, too, are relative and depend on the observer. In everyday life, the impression that we can arrange the events around us in a unique time sequence is created by the fact that the velocity of light - 186,000 miles per second - is so high, compared to any other velocity we experience, that we can assume we are observing events at the instant they are occurring. This, however, is incorrect. Light needs some time to travel from the event to the observer. Normally, this time is so short that the propagation of light can be considered to be instantaneous; but when the observer moves with a high velocity with respect to the observed phenomena, the time span between the occurrence of an event and its observation plays a crucial role in establishing a sequence of events. Einstein realized that in such a case, observers moving at different velocities will order events differently in time. Two events which are seen as occurring simultaneously by one observer may occur in different temporal sequences for others. For ordinary velocities, the differences are so small that they cannot be detected, but when the velocities approach the speed of light, they give rise to measurable effects. In high energy physics, where the events are interactions between particles moving almost at the speed of light, the relativity of time is well established and has been confirmed by countless experiments.

- Fritjof Capra

Every day I build a bridge. Sometimes it leads me to other people. Sometimes it skews time and distance so that I can reach out to the horizon like a pillow and hold it close. 

Sometimes the bridge is Painting. Nowadays, it is Music. When I paint, my wolftail is loaded with ink and the paper drinks it dry. With every stroke, I build this bridge. With every song that I compose, I am reaching across a different continent. 

I think you know, the deepest longing is a subterranean river, moving even without you seeing it. It follows its own path. There is something inevitable about it, the way it wends around hindrances and forges new routes. You can suppress it but it will find its way into your dreams.

My bridge would not be there if the river were not there. My bridge needs the river to exist. As I build, I feel myself getting stronger, more capable, wary of the water but full of respect and admiration for it. 

It feels like a slow process. Water beating into rock. But that is how continents are shaped. So - what is time? We are near and also far - so, what is distance?

Sometimes I know. Sometimes I do not know.

Rangitoto

It's as if it calls out to me. Whenever the new year comes around, I feel compelled to visit Rangitoto, a volcanic island that sits in the Hauraki gulf.

As far as Auckland tourist destinations go, it doesn't get more exotic than this. Rangitoto has an intense terrain of loose scoria.

The volcano itself is six hundred years old but there still isn't much vegetation growing on it. Even birds don't yet feel at home here; when I stop to rest and close my eyes, I don't hear any birdsong.

So I think I go there while the year is still new because the terrain itself is like a carte blanche of sorts.

One of the joys of hiking in New Zealand is seeing the lichens that hang off the trees and carpet the ground, making the forest all velvety and mint-green.

At the summit, a sense of exhaustion and accomplishment.

And if it's a rainy day, one gets a marvelous view of the clouds.

After climbing this volcano a few times, the view doesn't really matter anymore. What I enjoy these days is feeling myself move in the world, a tiny speck of energy crawling over this side of the planet - moving while the planet itself whirrs, and while the ground beneath roils around like an insomniac.

Related post

Sailor

My friend, we seem to be the masters of time. We squander eternities. We are extravagant with our days. Near again, now again, then again, still.

Seasons greetings from our art collective

Parlour is (from left) Kirsten Dryburgh, Harriet Stockman,
Vera Mey (getting a massage) & Lydia Chai...

Parlour gave away free massages, lemon cake and lemonade this weekend.

That's it from us this year.

Enjoy your holidays and see you next year when we launch our new projects!

Christmas is round the corner

So I painted a series of wrapping papers. But I don't have any gifts. Perhaps the wrapping could be the gift itself. It is late Spring now and the honeysuckle have blossomed. It would be great if I could capture their sweet vanilla scent and wrap it up with these sheets of paper for Christmas. 

Berlin

Reading Kafka & nibbling on chorizo

Recent activity

Oh yeah, my friends and I started an art collective called Parlour.

So far, we have organized one online project and also kick-started a series of exhibitions in artists' living spaces.

In the future, we also plan to organize informal critique sessions for artists.

The dope's all here!

Something like sharpening pencils

words

I write the words but I feed on them too. Not quite like cannibalism. It is like purging myself in order to create more space within. Then, once my words are in the world, they transform unexpectedly. Almost instantaneously, they sow seeds and grow into something else. I think the creative process is about that movement, having that breath, like pumping the blood in and out. Keep putting things out into the world so that your soul can breathe better and nourish itself once more.

sounds

Today I have been thinking about sound... Perhaps sound waves are the very definition of Life because they denote movement. Nature abhors a vacuum and all that. Li-Young Lee wrote in a poem that the 'first sound' was Water - a biblical image. Then I started thinking about the sounds we don't hear that are all around us. We are bathed in soundwaves all the time. We are sound itself, and we form part of that ongoing musical score that the universe is performing.

goodnight

Have a good week ahead, everybody.

Meditations on a Saturday night

When faced with an obstacle, dance through it.

Move with it so that it becomes a part of you.

When that happens, there is no more obstacle.

The shoulders of giants

My strength comes from the knowledge that I walk with my ancestors; they have paid for my crown, how can I not wear it? It's 2011, I'm a Malaysian woman making a decent living and doing what I love and I am making art. All this is possible because of the people who fought for my independence before I was born. Thank you so much.

"Poetry has now become something extraordinary; it has now become a weapon"

National laureate probed over 'seditious poem'. (27/6/2011) "Poetry has now become something extraordinary; it has now become a weapon," he told a throng of journalists jostling to hear the soft-spoken man.



Unggun Bersih

Semakin lara kita didera bara—
kita laungkan juga pesan merdeka:
Demokrasi sebenderang mentari
sehasrat hajat semurni harga diri.

Lama resah kita—demokrasi luka;
lama duka kita—demokrasi lara.
Demokrasi yang angkuh, kita cemuhi;
suara bebas yang utuh, kita idami!

Dua abad lalu Sam Adams berseru:
(di Boston dijirus teh ke laut biru):
Tak diperlu gempita sorak yang gebu,
diperlu hanya unggun api yang syahdu.

Kini menyalalah unggun sakti itu;
kini merebaklah nyala unggun itu.


--

24—25, 6.11. A. Samad Said, Malaysia's national laureate.
Listen to our dear poet's recital (with guitar accompaniment!) here.
An English translation has been attempted here.