Category: Music

A Playlist For No One

Jolens1 Comment

夢 中 人 – Faye Wong

You liked Chungking Express, didn’t you?

Have I told you that Chungking is among my favorite films of all time? Why, you ask? Maybe it’s the actors, the fact that I find them both very attractive. Maybe it’s the little details too, the fact I now associate canned pineapples and broken plumbing pipes with longing and loneliness.

Or, hmm, maybe it’s just because of that “Dreams” song, that Cranberries cover which I dearly love, and which I’m guessing you love too — do you? Or are my clairvoyant powers failing me again, huh?

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Music Questions, and other stories

Jolens14 Comments

Do you have any fan merchandise that is unusual?

I don’t think so, no. I was a broke-ass kid so I was never the type to spend money on fan merch.

I used to be surrounded by artists though, and they used to give me the coolest hand-made gifts. A teacher once gave me a wooden kunai (the ninja weapon from Naruto) which he carved out of mahogany. A schoolmate also gifted me a guitar pick with the Natin99 pattern that he painted himself. The paint (acrylic?) easily chipped off when I started using the pick, and so this guy reminded me that the gift wasn’t made for actual use: “pang-collector’s item kasi ‘yan!” Shet sorry naman! Haha.

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Searching 3.0: OPM and Figures of Speech

Jolens15 Comments

I found an interesting query in last week’s Search Terms:

My OPM favorites post has a few examples but it doesn’t explicitly state which lines count as personification. Hopefully the kids who were searching still found it helpful; I bet they were actual kids cramming for an English or Filipino assignment. 🙂

Anyhow, I decided to do some further digging and write about the different ways figurative language has featured in OPM lyrics. I initially wanted to explore at least 10 figures of speech but because I tend to get way too chatty about these things, I eventually narrowed them down to three: simile, metaphor, and personification.

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20 Songs

Jolens6 Comments

I’ve been out of sorts since the 25th. Christmas was fine, all right, but my headspace? Not so much.

My room is a mess, my hair is a mess, and my wallet is a — it’s missing. I can’t find my wallet and I don’t remember where I left it. I know it’s just somewhere around the house but I’m just too drained to look for it, man. I’m exhausted even though I haven’t been doing anything. Ah shit, I hate this feeling.

Anyway I needed some sense of faux-productivity tonight so I did this tag from Sleeping Suburb. Twenty questions, twenty songs. I discovered some of these songs only this year and, hmm, should I write a year-end essay too? I’ll think about it, but maybe only after I find my wallet.

Your favorite song

One of my favorite songs this year is “Lose It” by SWMRS. The opening lines hit close to home, and then I got to the chorus: And tell me / why d’you have to have such a damn good taste in music? / Yeah if all my favorite songs make me think of you / I’m gonna lose it.

I fucking lost it.

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Shuffle the Music

Jolens4 Comments

I couldn’t bring myself to write a proper post so I’m doing another tag that I found via the search bar. This time I’m supposed to shuffle my music library and comment on the first 15 songs that come up.

I couldn’t bring myself to write a nicer intro or a better transition either so, um, voila:

Tokyo – Lianne La Havas

Love these lines: “all I’ve ever known is / how to be alone / it comes naturally.” Sometimes it bothers me how comfortable I am with being alone — a self-fulfilling prophecy, correct?

Beautiful Girl – Jose Mari Chan

Mama explained this song to me when I was a kid and was way too young to understand English. Maybe this is why I never really had a problem with the phrase “love at first sight.”

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