Till the sea knows my name

Photo update // Throwback to lake day.

We've been second-guessing for weeks, but now it's certain: Summer is over. Much to our chagrin, the sun has been setting earlier & earlier every day, while the temperature dips below freezing at night. I never thought I'd say this, but I miss the heat, the pleasant buzz of activity, the days where it was warm enough to take trips up to Roxen lake for a picnic & a swim. Lazy days. Mmmm. 

It is what it is

Most of my friends
are musicians in the subway stations
Making amends with a dark and different world
Paying their dues like a faulty underwater mortgage
Taking the cues from a nonexistent fantasy girl


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Gold Motel's latest, brimming with good summer vibes, as always. As if one needs a reminder that we're right smack in the middle of the hottest season of a calender year. Currently living under the oppression of a colossal heat wave, one which I can barely walk straight in.

Time's passing quicker than I could have ever imagined, which is strange, because the days seem fuller as compared to the past academic semester & I'm wondering why my weeks fall through my fingers faster than I can flip through my daily planner. Just came back from church camp a couple of days ago, which was an amazing but mad tiring experience, one I'm sure to blog about if time allows (great worship, lovely people, 3am nights). Then there's the endless parade of paperwork for Sweden, decorating up the studio for our acoustic sessions that's launching in July, time with family & friends & of course, church stuff. There's always something to do.


Everyday's an adventure; I'm wondering when things will finally slow down, slow down enough for me to catch up.

Out of bed, out of comfort

Antlers - We Were Evergreen

Tell Us Your Name - The New Limb

Drifting In & Out - Porcelain Raft

Overjoyed - Bastille

Build Your Kingdom Here - Rend Collective Experiment

Collective Mon Amour - Éléphant

Entertainment - Phoenix

Pompeii - Bastille

Everything's Gonna Be Undone - Band of Horses

No Other Plans - Sunny Levine feat. Young Dad

Big Parade - The Lumineers

Towers - Bon Iver

Charleston - Set Sail

Son My Son - Milo Greene

Wild Things - San Cisco

Cousins - Vampire Weekend

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Here's what I've been listening to lately, songs plucked out from youtube obscurity & also my Facebook timeline (!): The latest from WWE, tracks from the Celeste & Jesse Forever OST & the lesser-known from Coachella. These are the songs I could spend entire rainy days listening to, days like the ones we've been having, falling asleep beside melody & lavender tea.

I also received my We Were Evergreen package I blogged about earlier this year (x), all the way from London! I had to stifle screams of excitement as I ripped apart postage paper & airmail bubblewrap to get to its contents: a signed poster, handwritten lyric sheets for Penguins & Moonboots by Fabienne & best of all, their first album from 2010! Every track is different, slightly incomplete, but beautiful. There's a fifty-second demo at the end of the record entitled Verano ('summer', in Spanish), a mere fragment of a song which begins with nothing but whistles & a plucking guitar & repeats the lines 'Hang on to summer / Don't let go / Don't let go' over & over. It's perfect in its simplicity. I love how much you can fall in love with a song & how much comfort it can give & how it never asks for anything in return.


I don't know... I'm feeling strangely content right now, just listening to fresh music in my room. Haven't felt like this in a while & it's nice.

Summer camp

'Whitewashed minds. Delicate old men with nondescript faces. And all these people. So tired, you had to lie flat on your stomach & bury your face in grass but it was alright because you were young & beautiful. I was there too. I opened my eyes & saw only green & for a few minutes or hours or days, my world only existed in one magnificent colour, how I wished it was turquoise instead but then you said we are miles from the sea & the only blue I ever wanted was in eyes. Take me seriously, because the lights are fading & time is wasting away & it all comes down to this: I will love you if you let me. If you love me, let me know.'

(October 2012)

More Haiku

(I)
The cold begins to wane
& flowers wake from slumber
so new & alive

(II)
On a clear morning
A blade of grass battling heat
goes drowsy with sleep

(III)
Tea with the first drafts
& the town becomes vibrant
turning red with leaves

(IV)
Frost creeps in slowly
I am yearning for the day
when light meets darkness

The Only Place

Today I skived school & spent the whole day making photo collages on a new photo app. It was a day well-spent, I think. Sometimes it's alright to play hooky, only once in while, to catch up on life. I miss reading and my guitars. I miss summer.


I miss having time.

Cicada summers

Tomorrow will be the end of summer as I know it. Holidays are coming to an end! It's crazy. It feels as if the last exam of Y1S2 ended yesterday and I was just getting ready to relax with friends & a stack of good books. The thought of fourteen more weeks of assignments & stress... geez. Apologies, it's just the regular school blues. It's been a good summer though.

Every since seeing the scene in the movie Bridesmaids where Annie is handed a tall glass of pink lemonade by the classy waiter (so good that she had to stop & say, 'God, that's delicious.'), I've been trying to fabricate the summery beverage. God knows we need a drink for weather like this. The base recipe for lemonade is dead simple right? A mixture of water, lemons & sugar that you bung into the fridge to chill & twenty minutes later, voila! Lemonade. It's a bit harder than it looks though: the key to getting the perfect lemonade is to get the right ratio of ingredients to suit your taste. In my case, I like my drink more tart than sweet, the light pink shade that cranberry juice gives, & I love the extra fizz that soda water gives, unnecessary as it might be. Most of the time, the best things in life are the non-essentials.

I've been making this since summer last year, huge quantities at a time to last for as long as a week. It can easily be turned into an alcoholic party drink as well, just add a splash of schnapps or light rum, whatever you have in your fridge really. Garnish with lemon & orange slices, turn on a Beach Boys / Gold Motel album (or anything from this summer playlist), & sink back into relaxation.

Pink Fizzy Lemonade

You can halve, double or triple the recipe as long as you remember the base ratio (mine is 1:1:4). Remember that not everyone likes it as tart; you may have to add more sugar to make it sweeter, or more water to make a less-concentrated drink. Also, if you are serving this quite some time later, add the soda water to the mixture just before serving or all the fizz will be gone by then.

Ingredients

12 medium lemons (enough to make 2 cups of lemon juice)

2 cups of white sugar

8-9 cups of club soda

Cranberry / Raspberry Juice

Orange slices

Ice cubes to serve

1. Squeeze most of the lemons, leaving at least one to be sliced for garnish. Put lemon juice aside.

2. In a large pot, heat up 2 cups of club soda under medium-low heat, adding in the 2 cups of sugar slowly till it has dissolved into a thick sugar mixture.

3. Add the lemon juice, stirring constantly for about 3 - 4 minutes till everything has melded together. Allow to cool for a while

4. Pour the warm mixture into two large pitchers, and add the soda water. Add the appropriate amount of cranberry or raspberry juice to colour the liquid a light pink shade, while constantly stirring with a wooden spoon.

5. Put in the fridge to chill for about an hour. Add ice cubes, and garnish with lemon & orange slices.

Makes approx. two 1.5l pitchers 

Beyond the Sea

'I who lived in a harbour from which I loved you
The solitude crossed with dream & with silence,
Penned up between the sea & sadness,
Soundless, delirious...'

Twenty Love Poems & A Song of Despair, XIII

Pablo Neruda

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San Francisco is a such a beautiful city... It's like a perpetual flea/farmer/fresh market all year round! There's something about the smells of salt and warm churros and sea catch that make you feel a little more alive. We must have taken the ferry at least four times, to Vallejo & Sauslito (Beautiful places, both of them. More on that later.)

I love the pier. And that carousel? I mean, come on. 

Between Union & Ghirardelli Squares, Chinatown, the Bay Area & the above, SF is quite the experience. Such a perfect place to spend summer! I quite needed that break.

Where Light meets Dark

Come!

Let us leave this place,

This wretched place behind.

Somehow we will be enough for each other.

And we will teach each other to love

To love each other

We will learn

Yes

Somehow will be enough for each other

For what else is there but love?

I know nothing besides the fullness of it

If just sorrow lasts,

we will only melt into rain and become its cry

I believe that it is the dawn of love that keeps us alive

No?

Then what are you afraid of? 

What scares you to death & silence?

I only want oblivion

So come! 

Let us leave this wretched place behind!

Only do not ask me where,

for I do not know myself.

__________________________________________________

You say to me

The light in your eyes has gone out:

Once aflame,

now grown cold.

I do not deny

You make me weak in places 

that I had not previously known existed

And as we sat there, 

wrapped in sheets,

And as I breathed in the musk of your collarbones,

You painted me in fire,

Colours that speak of passion & boldness

You tell me of newer & better places

Places which I fear

And you said... 

Come.

But no!

I am so sorry

I am not one to go against the grain

I am not that man

Somehow this leaving, this departure

It sounded more elegant in my mind.

A backseat kiss

A Summer Playlist

All of the noise, all of the heat.

Cold Shoulders - Gold Motel

Violet - Thao With The Get Down Stay Down

Let The Record Go - The Mynabirds

Movements - Rend Collective Experiment

She Moves In Her Own Way - The Kooks

Saw You First - Givers 

We Bought A Zoo - Jonsi

When I'm Sixty-Four - The Beatles

Cape Town - The Young Veins

Blow Away - A Fine Frenzy

In The Sun - She & Him

Wouldn't It Be Nice - The Beach Boys

Tongue Tied - Grouplove

MFEO Part 1: Made For Each Other - Jack's Mannequin

Daylight - Matt & Kim

We're On The Run - Gold Motel

Fast & Free

Summer is here!

The days are longer and hotter, and the summer dresses and tank tops are back. I'm eating more ice-cream than ever and meeting friends for brunches and buying flowers for the Beatrix Potter vase, even thought they wilt every two days because of the heat. I listen to the Beach Boys & The Young Veins all day, because even music is seasonal. Wayne & Libby Huirau from Parachute band has come and gone, and it was a fabulous weekend of fun and learning and music, and appreciating our brief brush with fame (well, sort of).

I watched the season finale of Grey's Anatomy and felt a little bit sick inside. It came out last Friday and I was in the office, sobbing like a whale in the studio during lunch hour over Lexie Grey's VERY untimely death (and Mark crying and saying We're going to get married... we are meant to be. TOO MANY EMOTIONS). Shonda Rhimes has made me emotionally damaged for life. She seems to be very very fond of killing off my favourite TV surgeons and leaving the crazed fan base in agony with her cliffhanger season finales. Recall: Hospital shoot-outs, roving buses and people getting hit by them, cancerous melanomas, unexplained absences from multiple episodes etc etc. I know, I know, it's just TV! I tell that to myself every time I watch an episode, but it's not that easy, is it? 


Speaking of TV, Parks and Recreation renewed for season 5! Kristen Wiig has left SNL. Ted's wife still unknown (it better not be that asshat, Victoria). 

Work has been good so far. Tomorrow is Breakfast Birthday Party Day & that means waking up an hour earlier to make savoury pancakes for seven people. Last week, while cataloguing our music database, I stumbled upon a fabulous Christian Band, Rend Collective Experiment, a combination of Fleet Foxes and Mumford & Sons and Edward Sharpe. They are creative and inspiring, and best of all, they are in love with Jesus :)

And yes, USA for Bethel School of Worship! I cannot wait! Hello, California! I am blessed beyond words.

This post is a little self-indulgent... I won't do it again for a long time, I promise. It's been an interesting couple of weeks, and if I don't write it down, I forget!

I choose light

 

The words we say today, we'll say

And we'll see them again, we'll see them again

So I choose my words so carefully

Like the sun, make it glow, or they glare at me

Well, I choose light

Light that won't

Keep me up at night

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I am in love! I want so bad to be at Coachella now. There's a certain quality in their music that speaks of honesty and light and summer; it shines so evidently, even in the depths of a dark Brooklyn apartment. 

It frustrates me sometimes that I live here. I know I should be grateful to; there are so many reasons to be thankful for Singapore. But just by being here, I will never experience the secret pleasure of being at a clandestine underground gig, or feel the surge of thousands of people at a music festival become one, in the space of a song. 

The complete set-list 

hosted by La Blogotheque / The Switch

Saw You First

Atlantic 

Meantime

Up Up Up

Wandering 

The European Experience: Part 8

L'archetto & Antica Taverna
Rome

'I can't stand people that do not take food seriously.'

Oscar Wilde

And I do take my food very seriously indeed. As much as we may think massive cups of strawberry gelato are enough to sate our hunger, it isn't. After walking twenty kilometers worth of uneven cobbled pavement, which is approximately the distance from our hostel to Vatican City and back, there's nothing better than a piping hot plate of Italian food.

Stefano, our wrinkled and portly guide told us of a cafe not far from the Trevi fountain that served over a hundred kinds of spaghetti called L'Archetto. Apparently, locals frequented the restaurant because of its fantastically-reasonable prices and authentic cuisine, dining alfresco and downing liberal amounts of red wine as the night passed. We shared a table with a friendly middle-aged Australian couple who had been on the tour with us, and took an impossibly long time just poring over the menu and deciding what to order. Stefano was not kidding about variety.

I finally decided on the house' namesake specialty after an eternity, consisting of sun-dried tomatoes, bacon, mushrooms, flakes of tuna and chilli oil. It was quite literally, a gastronomic party in my mouth. Polished everything up, and ended the meal with some sparkling water and of course, the inevitable gelato.

Don't expect good service from the local waiters though. Stefano had told us that if we chose to eat at places which were relatively unknown to tourists (and places which the Romans frequent), waiters would often be brusque and bad-tempered, and impatient to boot! It doesn't help that tipping isn't mandatory in the city of Rome. The second place we ate at called Antica Taverna (an even more clandestine place along a tiny intersection which we stumbled upon) had similar 'service'; recommendations were done in a bored monotone and extracting a friendly smile was an impossible feat. For us, it didn't matter much, as we managed to eat like kings and fill our belly with excellent Italian cuisine for a good price!

Being the um, adventurous people that we are, we returned to these two places TWICE to gorge ourselves on the pasta and beef goulash and fresh bread. Good food is, well, good food! Hopefully, we didn't disappoint Mr. Wilde with repeated meals.

The European Experience: Part 4

Three bikes, a harbor & the Seaside
Volendam

It had been two days of tricking rain, with temperatures dipping to a chilly 11 degrees Celsius. Holland, or at the very least Amsterdam, was proving to be quite the disappointment. It didn't help that after the grandeur of beautiful Paris, all we had seen of the 'City of Tolerance' were its infamous coffeeshops and bored prostitutes standing behind shop windows, waving angrily at tourists like us. After taking a half-hour bus ride to the outskirts of Amsterdam to the countryside, the drab weather only worsened.

The next day though, after lots of prayer and God's grace, the skies finally cleared up and we spent a glorious day exploring the better side of Holland, minus the magic mushrooms and pimps. We rented bikes from the Hotel and cycled down narrow dirt lanes, which curved around miles and miles of green pasture and tiny inlets of water. It was lovely, especially after we had spent the past two and a half weeks navigating our way through crowded cities (not to say it wasn't fun, but still, you get sick of the bustling crowds.)

Maybe it was the fact that as city kids, everything seemed fascinating about small towns. Even seeing a sheep, or a homely-looking windmill along the cycling path was exciting! Although the main town was crowded with tourists, it was still nice walking along the beach, licking milky ice creams.

I'd have to say the best part of our countryside sojourn though, was sitting at the edge of the ship dock and wearing our Ship Captain caps, and having fish&chips and mussels for lunch. It was a good and relaxing way to end the trip, with an afternoon spent frolicking around the countryside. This, over dreary Amsterdam and its erotic museums any day.

What to do with summer

In three weeks, I would have been to five of these major cities (and then some) ! The thought of it is exciting and frightening at the same time. I hope to be able to be present in the beauty of the fleeting moment and of the city as well.

Thank you to God for allowing us to embark on this trip :) See you guys in a few weeks!

Take a vacation!

You know you're feeling worn out and in serious need of a vacation when you find yourself thinking of the sleepy 'hole' of a town you went to a month ago, and actually wanting to go back.

I miss a lot of places and people.




Another thing. Where on earth is all my online shopping?!

Happier.

You've got such a way with words
I'm at a loss
Pulling ideas out of my head,
out of my ear,
here they come

Violet candy on the floor
So now you know I think in purples
and reds and hues of blue
Spin spin spin
Into words of love
Or was it rejection
Now I'm confused

Don't speak and don't move
Don't speak and don't move
Don't speak
Oh so it does get better,
it does get better after all.

Blindingly Inspirational

You are
An instant-mix of joy
Add water
and enjoy

You are
ice-cream in summer
A catalyst
for lovers

You are
the finer things
that life will
ever bring

but most of all,
You are mine

All of the noise, all of the heat

'GOLD MOTEL doesn’t exist, but if it did, you’d find it on a winding road somewhere in the sun-drenched hills of Southern California'

Lauren Henry

The slow decline of The Hush Sound under the pretense of a 'hiatus' was devastating to watch; no one could be more gutted than I. For someone who has followed the band through the makings of their debut album So Sudden (Dorian Gray, anyone?), to Like Vines and finally, to the brilliantly-decadent Goodbye Blues, it was unlikely anything better could exist.

And then Greta Salpeter made Gold Motel.

It started from one of their first singles that appeared on a five-song EP, back when Greta was believed to be pursuing a solo project. 'We're on the Run' was featured on the Indie Rock Playlist, which is, by the way, an invaluable site for lesser-known genius. Greta's amazing vocals and inspiring lyrics caught me immediately. Hook, line and sinker. The amazing thing was that the rest of the band was made out of a mish-mash of musicians from This Is Me Smiling and The Yearbooks, particularly the notable guitarist of the former, Dan Duszynski. The chemistry of the five musicians was obviously too hard to resist, and thus, Gold Motel was born.

First things first, Gold Motel sounds near nothing like the Hush Sound. Granted, the Hush Sound may have been magnificent in its own right, but Summer House creates a whole new sound altogether. Greta's California-inspired summer lyrics filled with heartwrenching nostalgia will surprise a THS listener, but pleasantly. The ten-track playlist features simple and clean (but lovely, none the less) guitar riffs as compared to the signature distorted jarrs of Bob Morris, an absence in morbid lyrics and noticeably less keys by Salpeter. All in all, a light-hearted album dedicated to living life at it's fullest.

More than an album, it is a story. A story of road trips, love, and finding solace in summer houses. Something, pretty much incredible :)

So here's to you, Greta!


Side note: It will still be extremely sad if The Hush Sound never writes and plays together again. Bob Morris is still a guitar king. The Days of Chris Faller may be over, but hopefully, that will change! The Hush Sound <3