TWO CENTS FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES

Sup, errbuddy?

There is a fine line between the simply personal and the confessional. As an artist, I constantly ride the fence. Blogs are an interesting medium as they represent the digitization of the journal or daily diary, albeit in a public sphere (even if it's not published, Googly Googs knows what you're thinking... they know...). Blogs represent the temptation to type a constant outpouring of neurosis and insecurity writ large all over the internet. Even established journalists have to park the personal in favour of a broader, more objective journalism, but again, the ease of confession on such a wide scale remains Damoclean for the individual and his thoughts and opinions.

So what does a fence-rider like myself do about such a glaring spotlight? I perform well under pressure and literally in the spotlight, but any performer adopts a stage persona, even if it is only loosely fictional. The internet provides a pseudo anonymity that allows the inner devil to the forefront of argument, and boy, does that devil like to argue. Everyone gets their 15 minutes; their two cents. Unfortunately for some, that's a constant stream of back-to-back, 15 minute fame sessions and many should have gone broke by now for pitching in their two cents. Hell, if I had a quarter for every time I put in my two cents, I'd have recouped at least ten years of shoddy emotional investment at an alarmingly favourable interest rate!

I suffer from the anonymous devil inside. I think of myself as reasonable, logical if often passionate; but not blind nor deaf. Anyone with a Burner account knows this dichotomy: Burner accounts allow total anonymity as they are not linked to Gmail or Facebook or Twitter, etc. but the blind passion with which one can rant in forums can lead to an obviousness of character, solidifying the ranter as an actual, human entity on the internet. The beauty of a Burner account is when one is burnt out, so to speak, the account can be deleted forever. Not the "be right back" forever of Twitter and Facebook, but actually gone forever. As long as the browser cookies are set to remember the Burner password, the account will exist. Clearing the cache and refreshing the browser can act as a sort of cleanse for toxic, trolling activity.

Exhibit A: we've all been on one end or the other

Many have inadvertently left their indelible mark on the cave walls of the internet. Perhaps a data-mining anthropologist of the future will find my Facebook wall deep in the strata of the digital past and interpret it as an important message left for the citizens of the future. Perhaps other strata will reveal a self-important, cat and sloth worshiping culture glued to their glowing, corporate, deified altars. The galaxy of would-be stars that are every individual on the internet further proves our insignificance in the universe. After all, if everybody is a star, then we are all destined to burn out and fade away anyways. If everyone is special in their own way, then nobody is special at all.

Here's to expressing our individuality... just like everybody else.

LITTLE RED ENVELOPES AND ALL THAT JIAOZE

2014: Year of the Horse. More like 4712!

I look the part, but I am about as Chinese as the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley in Iron Man III or the plastic restaurant chain). My family has no formal meal the night of; no vegetarian cleanse the day after. This year, my mother had a culturally existential crisis on the matter when a family friend told her nothing short of "you are not Chinese enough; you need to learn your heritage". My mother is almost seventy and her friend is in her forties. 

Tough break, eh? I digress.

I am throwing a last minute Year of the Horse party at my mother's house for a few friends. It will be as sloppy and informal as it is last-minute. I write this before I've even come up with a menu. All I can think of is that this is a perfect excuse for a party. "Happy New Year" is the rough English equivalent of the only thing I can say in both Cantonese and Mandarin and even then, the Cantonese is my late Grandmother's dialect.

Relevance? There are a million other things I could be doing today, many of which are far more productive than my feeble attempts at maintaining some kind of sub-culture or family tradition.  I may look the part as I have mentioned, but then again I look the part for anything but black; though I have been mistaken for such through the sheer ignorance of my accuser and my choice of attire. Chinese New Year has always been that strange, exotic thing that I embraced as a part of my bloodline. In kindergarten, the teacher asked me to tell the class about it. I just described the glorious spread that used to push the family to the margins of the dining room on Lord Robert's Drive in Scarborough. I've never known the significance, if any.

Chow Kien & Chow York-Ying

Chinese New Year for me has always been about food, friends and family. China is no longer exotic, with Mandarin paving the way for a new lingua franca. I've been told I was "not Chinese enough" in my own time, albeit by a triad gangster addled by MDMA at a rave. If I choose to throw a party and give away jiaoze (dumplings) and booze instead of cash money in little red envelopes, is it "not Chinese enough"?

Who cares? Well, I obviously do a mote, or I wouldn't feel the need to write this. It would have been easier to go grab dim sum and then get drunk. It would have been of no significance if I did nothing, or simply joined the guys at the pub like any other Friday.

Little dumplings and tall cans of beer. That's what the year of the Horse is getting kicked off (har har) with.

To the glorious diversity of my ridiculous generation.

J

Xin Nian Kuai Le! Goong Hey fat Choy!

PS: I'm allergic to horses...

GEEK EMOTIONS

First of all, this is a funny theme for my first post in over a year, but hey, what's a guy to do.

I've been hard at work on my graduate thesis project for Game Design at George Brown College. I'm jumping between designing The White Shadow War: Touch Tactics and composing music for it. It all started as a little test to see if I could get the emotion right for the game. I think I may take a stab at the final music myself, or at least hand my compositions off to my highly talented musician friends, but either way, it's a great way to take a break from trying to figure out game mechanics, or write an original story, (or thinking about how the hell I'm going to actually make this thing work without a programmer!). The game itself is highly derivative of classic SRPGs like Final Fantasy tactics or Tactics Ogre: Long Winded Japanese Name Goes Here, but I do feel I will have a unique take on a classic game genre, especially if it does come to fruition on all our brand new, touchy-feely devices. Not only is the game itself obviously "inspired by" but I find that the music is coming out of the woodwork (woodwinds?) as very reminiscent of Nobuo Uematsu or Yatsunori Mitsuda (famed game composers). Having performed and composed Hip Hop for more than a decade now, it becomes incredibly hard to escape those reins when I sit down to make a track, but by studying a completely unique form of music (game music) and by incorporating many different styles and influences, I think in the end I will have something I can be proud of.

This post is not about my game music, though later posts will be. While searching for inspiration, I got on the 'tube (YOUR tube) to hear the sounds of classics like Chrono Trigger's 600AD theme. What I found myself listening to was many a talented young musician offering their own renditions and arrangements. Cover songs are a dime a dozen on YouTube, but there a few gems out there that truly deserve praise. It might be game music, it may have been composed with blips and bleeps, but the emotion is there, the mathematically perfect pitch and composition is there and the sheer beauty is there. It takes me back to some the happiest moments of my childhood. I was by no means an introvert, but holing up with Final Fantasy III (6) for hours on end sparked such wonderment and awe that a bunch of pixels and 8-16 bit audio could choke me up. God, am I ever a geek. Anywho, check these geniuses out and judge for yourself:










If I can get anywhere near that good, I can die a happy old man if kids one day upload interpretations of WSW:Touch Tactics music on FutureTube, or whatever it will be.