Like Chocolate Sprinkles
Summer Loving
Some things don’t change, and make you unbearably happy.
Some things change, and sadden you.
Some things change without you knowing, and that is worse.
But over summer certain things have come to a beautiful resolution, and I can only say I am happy – right now.
It’s lovely having three worlds to escape to, but it’s awful when they meet in an awkward collision. Then it’s up to you to do something about it.
On a side note, thank goodness I have a constant.
Stringing the Notes Together
Si, si si, si da na da...
Every now and then I come across a new reason to keep singing.
In junior college it was for the people I sang with. I thought that was the ultimate, the deal-sealer, the Holy Grail of my quest. I wrote a lot about how much I loved Raffles Chorale, how much I would miss them when it all ended, how I wondered if I would ever find this somewhere sometime in the future. Raffles Chorale taught me that singing in a choir was defined by the people I sang with. That is, I discovered recently, a mistake. I was just lucky to have found such a passionate and loveable group of people to sing with in my two years in jc.
Which was why when I got into Chamber Choir at warwick, I was deeply disappointed. After a few weeks I knew it couldn’t be the same way it used to be. I held on to a secret hope, however. So I volunteered to be librarian. This was probably also a big part of why I signed up to go on Chamber Choir tour, which ended just about a week ago. I needed to build a bridge that could connect my heart to Chamber Choir. And I was hoping that this bridge would be the people, the hugs, the explosive and overjoyed hellllloooooooos I used to give and receive in jc. The worst thing was most of the others in the choir seemed to have this…this connection, and I felt like I was the only one out. My ex-flatmate would have pointed this out as another symptom of my chronic need to feel included.
(That is probably partially true, as well.)
Anyway, the point is, I embarked on tour with this purpose as my foremost aim – to feel like I belonged.
And so, being so focussed on trying to feel like a part of everyone, I was caught completely off-guard when I found other reasons that made me feel so happy to have made the decision of going on tour.
We went to Cornwall, all 25 of us, and, each day, stopped by at a different town to sing at its local church. Most of the audiences we got were elderly ladies and gentlemen. It’s always kind of a gamble when it comes to the number of people who will turn up – if we’re lucky it’s about 30, if we’re not it’s slightly above ten. We always have a good laugh when only about 10 people turn up – we joke about how we can be our own audience, etc.
At St. Petroc’s Church in Padstow, only about 10+ people turned up. So as usual, it was a laugh, we took it lightly, and we just sang anyway. One point to note about singing in a choir: When we do well, or when we do badly, everyone knows without having to say anything about it. Singing in a choir comes with understanding an unspoken language.
So I don’t remember singing particularly well on this night, unlike the night in Penzance, where everyone left the stage exhilarated and refreshed. But much later, about a week later, when we were back at campus singing for the degree ceremonies, Fran passed a card around. It was a card that had been posted from Padstow.
It was a note from a lady who had attended our concert at St. Petroc’s, and she wrote to say she had been thoroughly moved by our music – and she just wanted to congratulate us on being such “talented young people” who were “a credit to our generation”.
At that moment I felt incredibly touched, a tear came to my eye.
We could and never would know who else we might have moved in any of the audiences we had sung to, whether large or small. The fact that most of the audiences were elderly people made it all the more poignant. Who knew what they had seen, what hardship, what luxuries, what joys and sorrow- at this age? What did our music remind them of? Did our rendition of O Magnum Mysterium, in all its heavenly, echoey, splendour of beautiful chords, ring a little bell to remind them of (touch wood) imminent passing and heaven and God? Did we lift their spirits that night, or make them stronger, or make them feel at peace? Or was it, to some, simply a night of pure appreciation of music and music alone, with no other connection whatsoever?
Coming out of the blue from a university to randomly sing at someone’s overfamiliar local church, did we change his or her life in any way?
Did we inspire people? Did we inadvertently give anyone an epiphany?
These are thoughts that are especially tempting to entertain. The way I see it, it’s completely plausible, romanticised or not.
After what the lady specially wrote in to say, it’s made me realise that this is one of the best and most important motivations I could ever ask for. The possibility that sharing our music could really have made a difference in someone’s life.
Listen to this – the sexiest piece of choral music alive, also on our tour repertoire – Oh Magnum Mysterium by Morten Lauridsen:
And now. Tell me it isn’t possible.
Daily Lesson Number….I Lost Count
I don’t really have anything to say.
I just wanted to record this moment -
at 2.40 am in London,
amidst the rather exaggerated horror of swine flu,
in pyjamas I’ve been wearing since the morning,
slightly nauseous,
with a nose that bled about four times in the past two days thanks to tamiflu,
with the curtains partially drawn,
the light from another flat a solid yellow square on the glass sliding door,
I have never felt happier to be awake, right now, in the wee hours of the morning,
right here in London.
Strange how life works sometimes.
In Retrospect
I’ve come to realise that most of my life has been and is still revolving around expectations.
I’ve always been expected to act a certain way, achieve a certain level, conduct something in a certain manner….so much so that this is how I’ve come to view people.
I expect people to follow a certain set of moulded expectations. Adults are always mature. Doctors are always intelligent. Friends should always be openly caring. Etc. And when they deviate, I feel disappointed, and I judge ever so harshly.
I guess this applies to relationships as well. Like how sometimes i feel like I don’t tell Alex enough and then I get quite upset about it. But is there the necessity to regale him with every single little thing in the first place? I just expect that I should tell him every tiniest detail. By tiniest detail I mean, “Oh my hard disk is full!” Which is wrong. Because that’s really not the point of the relationship and getting upset over that just because you EXPECT that it should be is just not right, is it?
Of course some measure of expectation is fair enough but…it’s give and take, right? Never lean too much on one thing, too many eggs in one basket?
Maybe someone was right in telling me that I do need to open my mind after all. And love people for who they are, and not because they act like how I hoped they would.
And maybe that way I’ll find myself disappointed less often. And then feel generally happier. Maybe?
When in Prague
We saw a boating competition.
We attended 5 minutes of the United Islands 2009 music festival.
We walked down Charles Bridge almost everyday, with St. Vitus twinkling in the distance.
Everyday we looked out for the railway bridge, because it meant home.
We ran after Tram 17 once, much to the excitement of cheering young men onboard, but intentionally missed the tram after that because we were so embarrassed.
We watched our friend walk right up to a group of Asians and stare openmouthed because she thought it was someone familiar.
We traversed the streets and stopped at random pubs and restaurants to eat, because the food was so good and so cheap.
We drank beer everyday, because it was cheap, and because it was all brewed in the restaurant itself.
We saw the 80000 names of Czech Jews who perished during the Holocaust, and the graves of 40000.
We saw the paintings Jewish children drew in times of adversity. We saw their manifestations of hope, dreams, fears, love and innocence.
We saw their dates of death. It wasn’t very much later.
We learned something new about Prague everyday.
We shopped…at Mango.
We happily gushed about our very nice B&B owner everyday, guessing his age, a different guess each time.
We frivolously gossipped about the Swede girl who kept hitting on the tour guide.
We watched me fall with a splat onto the paved ground while sitting on my luggage bag.
We bought an icecream to eat everyday – be it a gelato or a Twister.
We walked, and walked, and walked, for hours, one instinctive, one paranoid, one happy to just accomplish her mission of snapping photos and looking for watermelon gelato.
We cut through Wenceslas Square and the Old Town Square everyday, snapping a different picture of Tyn Church each time, set against different weather, different sky, different people.
We climbed uphill, downhill. Through alleys. Through parks. Across bridges. Across roads and tram tracks. Along the river.
We watched the sun rise outside our window, we watched it set over River Vltava.
We said hello Prague by the river.
And it was also there where we said goodbye.
