Careless Interpretation : The Diary of A Music-Junkie

Zeppelin had resurfaced back to earth. As if the separation of the member all these years had tear down also the breathing life of the mighty band, on Dec 10 2007, the members united to incarnate the long dormant monster of rock by the name of Led Zeppelin.

Jimmy’s hair is white now. He had developed a grandfather-like figure, complete with the tired face, bloomy belly and a bowing spine. There was also that finger incident which stalls the concert for 2 weeks from the planned date of 26th Nov to 10th Dec, which happened while Jimmy’s in his house, cleaning his garden. To stop short, let’s just say that Jimmy is definitely not the wild rocker with rock-and-roll lifestyle as we used to recognized him anymore.

So too with Percy and Jonesy (and Bonham too I guess, if he’s alive). To cut the story short, Zep is aging. And you think gods don’t age..

But what about the music? Does it age? Does it vanish consumed by periods and styles, and hip hop and electronica? Does it loses it’s gnarling teeth, that decades ago disembodied the very notion of rock and roll established in the mind of fans in those days and turned it into a whole new animal? Has it lost it’s position as the determinator of the term loud, beaten by the booming sound of house music and trance, and funky basslines of hip hop?

Well, Zep isn’t about to retire on that one..

In Dec 10, Zep reappear. Posing their gnarling teeth once again before the world, made of crystal clear heavy rock-and-roll sound, the concert was to be a reminder of everything I personally believed as the hardest yet the most powerful music ever appear in this world. Checking out Good Times and Bad Times, Stairway to Heaven, Since I’ve Been Loving You, Kashmir and of course the anthem which was built upon the mega riff, Whole Lotta Love, I was convinced once again that in fact gods don’t age. They just live on and on and on, until they die.

However, there are far more than just the songs that made Zeppelin Zeppelin. Zeppelin is Zeppelin because it raises anticipation. And if you asks what causes them to be able to raise anticipation, my answer is it’s in their blood. They are born to raise anticipation.

Firstly let’s go back to earliest days of Zeppelin, even before Zeppelin was born, when Zeppelin was named The New Yardbirds. A succesfull outfit that boomed in the late 60’s and crashed and left Jimmy Page, a former session guitarist and a relatively new member in the band, responsible in filling tour dates that was set for the band. From this early on, Jimmy, already a master of his craft at that time, has already cited anticipation among his fans. Jimmy was a session guitarist. He had filled the main guitarist position for Tom Jones’ hit “It’s Not Unusual” among others. As an experienced professional guitarist with extensive flight hours, who has taken more than many styles in his playing, who was involved with one of the most famous band in Britain in the sixties, the burden of forming a new, worthy to perform, band awaited Jimmy with waves of anticipation from his and the former band’s fans. It was simply had to be good with Jimmy around, after all, he was the experienced session guitarist and members of the Yardbirds wasn’t he??

So right from that very early moment, Jimmy was anticipated.

In his days, Zeppelin also has antiques off stage that sometimes far transcends their performance on stage. They were pure rock and roll bastards. The very role model of sex, drugs, and rock and roll behavior (Hotel rooms trashing, TV out of the window flying, drug taking, groupies poking, etc) – all the band following Zeppelin practically copied this sort of behavior after Zeppelin paved the way first. Their unpredictable real life persona featured side by side with their musical and concert column in the newspaper or magazine. Their life was a dream to many teenagers at the time, and it’s really not a dream at all. As audiences who hear waves after waves of stupendous behavior, the prospect of seeing the band performs life was an anticipation that renders going to classes or going to the office not particularly interesting anymore.

Add these with the ultimate determinant: the songs. Zeppelin had great songs, no doubt about it. But just how great is it really? It’s so great that it takes American black blues, revamps it into a louder form, add it with own mixture of folk, eastern, funk style, build it upon wide range guitar, drumming, and keyboard techniques, record it with genuinely expansive sound producing techniques, and last but not least, infuse it with a simple flair of just transcending everything that is already around, Zep found a form that is Zep and Zep only can produce and at the same time build an army of followers that ultimately come nowhere near the original.

But ok, maybe the recipe style description doesn’t give much help to anyone, since you don’t necessarily have Zeppelin even if you have all the ingredients. Let’s take a deeper look at the songs background.

The songs of Led Zeppelin were created by extremely creative musicians. This was apparent when one sees each member’s personal background. Jimmy and Jonesy were session players – a guarantee for skills and musicality. Percy and Bonzo were young players but already known individually in their own career paths. Percy for the psychedelic venture in the Hobstweedle, and Bonham for simply hitting the drums loudest compared to other drummers of his time. Assembled together in playing room, the sum of these individual’s interaction far surpassed the sum of it’s parts. And as the ultimate result of their venture, the songs they produced during those 11 years remain a cornerstone of heavy rock music even until now.

Zeppelin might as well be named Zeppelin the anticipated. There they were at the status of super stardom when suddenly Bonzo’s untimely death struck them. Zeppelin suddenly broke apart. Then they decided that they cannot go on. The world is poignant.

The passing of Bonzo fuels another anticipation about Zeppelin. Zeppelin was getting more and more matured. Their reputation, musical and otherwise, grew stronger and stronger. In short no one expects anything like the passing of any one member. They were indeed still very young at the time – Bonzo was only 32. And suddenly the next morning, the world woke up losing one of the great bands of the 70s. The surprise was too much.

Zeppelin went on to show 3 times more during the passing of Bonzo until the 21st century. It was barely enough. And they were not fully prepared, indicated by the poor performance they’ve showcased and the poor reception from the audience. The fans were anything but satisfied. The memory of the great Bonzo still pops hard in the head, the memory of the great Zeppelin hovers around like a desertly thirst went unquenched. People need Zeppelin. They were truly anticipated.

In Dec 10 2007, a clamor of sound went to being in London ’s new U2 arena. The water has poured. The thirst quenched even if only for those 20.000 lucky ones. The mighty Zeppelin didn’t go down as Keith Moon – the inventor of the name – predicted it would be. They fly alright. Swoosh after swoosh of rock world’s toughest and most majestic songs burst from the guitars of Pagey and Jonesy, from the howling of Percy, and from the beat of Jason Bonham, the son of the late drummer. The result?? Press can’t stop raving about it since then, fans scream for more, the world witnessed the hammer of the gods re-live their myth. It was an encore of outstanding proportion. Zeppelin the anticipated has filled the anticipation.

Curse is the act of someone hoping for something bad happen to you. It may be due to misbehavior, it may be due to heartbreak, or what ever, but one thing for sure is it sure is a bold dan incriminating word to say, reflecting the subject’s insistence of an idea that someone somewhere out there expects the worst for him. Well this might or might not be true. For one thing, I felt that I had a curse upon myself. But the funny thing is it is not particularly expected by anyone. But myself.

I feel that I’ve been cursed because of something I do myself. It happened to me everytime a certain event occurred. It most probably occurred wheneverytime I got involved with the other sex. It recurs when a certain connection has occurred. It persist when a significant attraction exist. It is certainly recurring and by every occurences of it, destructs my very ongoing and eternal aspiration of having a decent and civilized relationship.

It started after I met a girl and as our relationship, at whichever depth or from whatever initial intention that is, begin to crystalize. The fact that keeps occuring over and over again is a definite pleasure will come out of every instance in the history of this relationship. We will have definite fun. We will have found ourselves loving every minute of it and cherishing in remembrance afterwards. Phrases and counter-phrases like “im having so much time with you” and “me too” will be common. It will be so common that it’s really hard to think that these moments would end anytime soon. Unfortunately, just to get the facts straight, it usually will.

Right at when we’re having our most high moments, something is lurking underneath, ready to devour us. Yes, devour, since it’s action will be severely detrimental later on to our relationship. Very devious this assault is to us, I feel likening it to a ruthless sniper who attacks just when the prey felt really safe and got off guard.

At this particular point in the relationship, at which time I myself as the perpetrator of this venture could not exactly pinpoint, there exists an emotional and intentional intersection that we both pass together but come out in different ways. To make things easier to understand, let’s name one way in this intersection as Road A and another Road B. Previous of this intersection, both party in the relationship walks together on Road A. But after this intersection, while one remains firmly on the road A, another has slipped off from the road A into road B – a road which, as we shall see later, not only requires more than road A but also entitles more.

Now, there’s definitely more to say on Road A for sure to make our reader understand. What is Road A? Assume Road A is a path in the relationship in which no additional submission in the man and woman relationship required – and by additional submission I mean no significant increase of requirement for the man to devote more than what he devotes now. Simply, he doesn’t need to add more engagement to this relationship - Road A is the way it was at the start and it is if nothing’s change. Road B is initially only an optional road, a road most oftenly exists only due to one party’s deeper underlying wish – Road B is a path created out of passion, love and those inexpressible expressions of one side and one side only, not in conjunction, nor collaboration with the other side of the relationship. It seeks an extensive and more devoted path of relationship than the other party expect. It’s only problem however, and a major one, is it’s unilateral nature.

When one party, usually the woman, in my case, has, consciously or unconsciously, take side to Road B, while I, as the man, stick in Road A, then our relationship is bound to have problem.

You see, relationship is about going together. Being side by side in the same step, sharing each other’s mind, sharing each other’s perspective and concepts, and most importantly, sharing (and I mean here having the same) projections about the relationship. It is more of a pre-requirements than a view of an ideal relationship. When this pre-requirement fails to complete, the lack of synchronization will produce frictions and incidents whose effect will be to reduce the energy of the relationship, and in long term forced it to stop. That is, unfortunately, what often happened in many, if not most, of my relationships.

When the woman had taken the Road B while I stayed in Road A, gradually de-synchronization within our relationship grows. Road B, which exists only within the woman state of mind, charged with bigger expectations in the relationship for the man. Road B, which was taken by the woman at that certain point in the relationship, instills this bigger expectations simply because the woman had somehow underwent mis-valuation about the relationship itself, which happened right at the point of the intersection that separates into Road A and Road B. The value of the relationship from both parties respective to each other are now no longer even (even like an even scale), but tilted, with the direction more heavily to the woman than to the man. To say it in another way, the value of the relationship is now bigger to the woman than to the man. And from this slide of balance, comes all sorts of following effects.

One effect of this imbalance on the perception of value (much similar in the case of a buyer and a seller having different perception on the price of certain commodity) is the differing size of resouce commitment and emotional commitment asked by the woman to the man compared by the man to the woman. When value of a relationship increases for a woman, a woman tend to expect more from the relationship (or practically, from the man), than the man to the woman. The woman went on to form a special image of a man which unfortunately not of his own. This special image is an image of a man that can fulfill all the resource commitment and emotional commitment askings of the woman – even the amount of these commitments are yet only known by the woman. The woman, in this respect, has acted unilaterally, by single-handedly created an imaginary object of the man and the relationship which are all entirely hers and not shared in anyway with the man (in fact the man will know very little about this ideal image of man the woman had created). The woman ceases to face to the truth of the relationship (by truth I mean is the conventional truth, that is the truth that is derived from the agreement of both parties) and instead, due to factors she “saw” at the moment of the intersection, chooses to make her own truth. This different reciprocality means the man will have fewer resources and emotional capacity than the woman asks for. In the other direction, the man will ask fewer resources and emotional capacity than what the woman expected to give. The woman will then receive significantly little of those resources and emotions and give away significantly little also. In basic men and women relationship mathematics, this means trouble.

The woman who receives little and can only give away little is pregnant with dissatisfaction. Especially when all of this is done by the man that she was seeing as the special man. The man she grew an image in her head about. The man she “thought” would be able to give her all the resources and emotions she needed and the man she “thought” would be the object of her enormous need to discharge her huge allocation of resources and emotions. In both directions, the man has failed to match her. All due to the imbalance of the perception of value of the relationship.

In practice, the woman will feel continually dissatisfied. Shelfish will be a common word mentioned in the numerous quarrels lying ahead, just like I had during these times. The woman will feel badly battered, hurt, and, more often than not, tried to avenge his unfulfilled askings by doing offensive gestures to the man at the intention of hurting him emotionally. The man will feel utter break of self-belief, mostly due to the guilty feeling he produced for himself for hurting the woman without he even wanting and meaning to. Significantly hurt, the woman’s mood and emotion toward the relationship and the man will tend to be unstable – one example would be sometimes she would be joyous but when a slight inconvenience occurred she would be fuming. This marks a major problem which will deter the ongoing of a normal, healthy relationship.

In this broken state, the only way to make the relationship work is for the man to be patient. The option of the man himself turning to Road B – a road which was by definition built upon one’s imagination – would prove dangerous and even could be fatal. Since the Road B that the man created and the Road B that the woman created is not necessarily the same one, since they exists only in the mind realm of each party, both the man and woman may never again found each other again in harmonious and reciprocal relationship. For short, for survival, the only way is for the man to take the woman back to Road A – which is most definitely not as easy as it was explained. Other two options, be patient or quit the relationship, are uneasy options that wins no one.

Now, having learned the poor situation that could occur due to imbalance of value perception, we could wonder what causes it to happen. In a question, what causes the woman to build the un-true image of the man and the relationship into the relationship? Or, in another way to put it, what causes the woman slipped to Road B, instead of staying on Road A together with the man?

The answer to previous question is not an easy one. It could be that the specific (but mysterious) nature of the woman’s mind force her to value a relationship gradually more and more. It could be also that this transition to Road B is what some would understood merely as the impact of love. Or, more graspably, it could be the result of the man’s doing. More often for myself, the latter seems to be the most probable than the other causes.

The reason why I feel that my own doing seed the imbalances of value perception is the frequency of this phenomenon. Many (more than 3) serious relationship I’ve had were marred by this problem. This fact more or less eliminates the variation exists between the different women. The question now is what’s wrong with me? Hence, what is the curse with me?..

The fact is I don’t know what’s wrong with me.. I don’t know why women tend to “regress” to Road B when involved with me. That is, I don’t know why women tend to gradually view the value of our relationship bigger than what it is to me. Why is it that I tend to make women asks more of me, while I am always stable on my askings to them? Am I a complacent man? Am I ungrateful? Am I too cold a person to be swept away by love? Too logical to think the irrational such as love? I could be, but one thing I know is I’ve always been the one who is able to remain coolheaded throughout the relationship, without losing my sight on the “road” which I take, without losing grip of what level of resources and emotional commitment I am able to request to the woman from the start of the relationship to finish. I am in my point of view always remains the same! The fights, the quarells, the bitter silent periods, all the hardships mostly started when the woman I had relationship with started seeing me differently while I don’t grasp the good enough reason why I should become what they wanted to be.

i know it’s been quite some time now i have done the crime of abandoning my blog. i felt deep sorry. not to anyone particular actually, but rather to myself and the pitiful realization of my commitment to write a blog every single time periodically. i felt helpless with inconsistencies i cannot avoid.

right now, i would like to talk about a film. i had rather many engagement of movie-going this past week, particularly due to the coming of Jiffest days. i had a lot of enjoyment watching them. i felt many times that i want to write something about them. but i simply haven’t the time, among other things that is (one of them is my rather naive idealism that rounds in the worry i had of the amount of time had to be wasted in order to write, which of course it’s far from absolutely correlated).

but the film which triggers this writing, which is in indeed on the last day of Jiffest, is a film about children most definitely. it is played brilliantly by Johnny Depp, adorned by the screen-glittening Kate Winslet, and enlivened beautifully by scores of children and children and children and children and their most beautiful innocence. It’s name is Finding Neverland. And i’ve rarely been so touched.

Watching Finding Neverland, i have unconsciously been swooped away pieces by pieces into an air of lightness, pleasantry, happiness. I found myself dropping a tiny tinkle of tears every now and them, even if it more often manifest itself only in form of a weight on the chest. It was exactly the sort of catharsis i am looking for, now and then, that feeds the truly inner libra-esq-ness i am born with.

Finding Neverland is about writing yes. it’s about innocence of the children yes. it’s about powerful dialogues about love and family yes. it’s about that soft English manner and amicability yes. and it’s about so many other things i can’t even began to expound without starting to sound too much.

The story tells about JM Barrie, notably the writer and playwright of Peter Pan, who finds that the love and conflict of a little family of 1 mom and 4 children had truly ignited the whole story on which Peter Pan was based. And that was the review-esquely way to describe it. There’s more to it definitely, most definitely in fact, for i won’t find in myself such great an impression if it were just that.

JM Barrie found himself amazed with the four children. or more appropriately, he was in love in fact with these children. But it was not his love in fact that made Peter Pan. But it was his love and his writer-ly imagination, which never ceases to put forward imaginative, otherworldly, yet so familiar, scenario, that steams the engine room of his mind from which the innocence-invested Peter Pan tale would later prevail.

James Barrie take some pieces of these boys life to knit them to his own fabric of story. Meanwhile, Barrie deeper and deeper involved in the real tragedies that is occuring around and, later, in the family.

First the relationship between Barrie and the family, headed by Winslet, a widow mother of the four children, was hardly approved by their community. This gives particular strain more to Barrie, although the family suffers alienation too. Second, as the good children will bitterfully realize except little by little, their mother is very ill. Their mother hide this fact, and the children, some of them became far more mature than his age because of his realizing his mother concealment, suffers themselves from the fact that their mother hiding the illness from them. They felt belied, which is logical. There was one line from the film, said by Barrie to George, the oldest child: "in the last 30 second, the boy is gone.. he had turned into a man". This reflects the phychological strain that the boys endure in facing the bitter situation about their mother that in the process turned the boy from exceptionally poor-conditioned to be exceptionally matured. This transition of boy to man depicted in the film contains so much drama power and value and pregnant with beautiful, beautiful morale and dialogues, the nomination for the a true dramatic achievement will hardly come as a surprise. For myself, the opportunity this movie provides for a 2 hour of aspiring catharsis is downright worthy of any praise i am capable of summoning.

Not, in micro-inches, less importance, the film boasts the power of children more than any film i have watched this year. there was children of heaven, which made me deep in tears, there was life is beautiful, which also wet my handkerchief, but none had provide that child-like delight and happy feeling i experience when watching Neverland.

it was the laughter of the children that continually lives within us. When asked how he can fly, the gamine Peter said "you have to think of lovely, wonderful thoughts, and they lift you up in the air". truly this is something which is to be taken seriously only when you’re a children! but in fact that’s it..that’s Barrie’s point: to bring up that Eternal Child in you. the child that bears no burden about the world, the child that was riped with limitless imaginations, without the slightest bother about logic, and regulations and all those complexities that adults has to deal to, the losing of sickening boundaries, the drowning of the sense, now only of joy and innocence and happiness. it is quintessentially freedom which i see in children. and indeed it is freedom what i seek, and all human seek, in their short life in the world.

The movie also expounds memorable words, phrases. wise words. wise phrases. contemplative in its nature. "it’s only a play mother" said Peter, the 3rd child, of the play he had really really looking forward to see in the face of his ill mother. "boys should have never put to sleep because they will wake up one day older. next thing you know they will become too old".

The finale was not in any way less dramatic and engaging than the other. The powerful imagination bought to life by Barrie in the finalized play of Peter Pan was put as an inspiration for the 4 children, and especially Peter - from whom the name Peter adapted - to make remembrance to his own mother who by the end of the film passed away due to sickness. "She went to Neverland" Barrie said, "and you can visit her anytime you like. If you just go there yourself..". "how..?" Peter answers with dreary eyes. Barrie replied "by believing Peter.. just believe" channeling the spirit and the most encouragement the child badly need at the passing of his beloved mother.

Finding Neverland reminds me of stories from Hans Christian Andersen and all other children story tellers. Children storytellers will always be loved. The world would become much more gloomy and cold without them. I love Finding Neverland, i found comfort in the sweet and honest and hence, the powerful innocence of it. I will consistently look back to it whenever i want to feel the simplicity and good feeling, the true mathematics of love. I adore films like these. i will consistently wait for their alikes.

So, how do they connect?

Jakarta has a chaotic urban development, everybody knows that. Tiny roads, neglected size of pedestrian, dizzying scatters of commercial, traffic lights, electrical cables and traffic signs placed between seemingly unorganized rows of buildings, all pointed to the chaos of Jakarta. When you see this picture of Jakarta from the skyline, you’ll really get a clear view of how messy this is.

Now, how and when do these problems show up? Management of the city could be the number one answer, however something even bigger is looming in the horizon: capitalism. Why do people wanted to build buildings? to offer a multistorey place right? why? for efficiency.. why efficient? so that business owners who don’t have land capital don’t have to go buying lands when they want to open up business. Commercials..why do they appear? simple, because they are a medium or messenger of a message of a producer to its consumer. The reason we are seeing those commercial is because WE are the consumers. We are their target. Why are we made target? because we have the ability to buy the producer’s product. We give them income. Now traffic signs..when do they show up? they show up just when people get a bit out of hand to manage. Why a bit out of hand? Jakarta is the most condensed place in the world and its citizen needs badly traffic management. Why condensed? Since 60% of our country’s capital flow in The Capital, all sorts of capital and luxury lives here, this make people come. Why does people come for capital? because that’s how capitalism works: personal profit can be acquired from investment of capital and employment of labor - that is you need to invest capital in order to make personal profit, and later re-invest this profit into capital and make new profit, and so on.. Now finally, why do all these things show up in Jakarta in such a mess that if you really think of it, it really looks like a jungle? Answer: capitalism, especially free market capitalism.

to be continued..

Why capitalism fail?.. This question finished a period of long deferred intention to write blog again.

As i was looking at the skyline of jakarta, the poluted air and the deep stirring inside myself how i miss mother nature with its naturally built sceneries, i realize how capitalism has failed and its going down.

How do skyline, poluted air, and natural sceneries click together with capitalism? Easy…i’ll tell you about it tomorrow when i finished this blog.. Really sorry but it’s just past my bedtime now.. =)

      Magazine seems to be a medium which keeps evolving. Recently printed media world just introduced a new magazine concept: free magazine – a magazine without a price, located for grabs only in special places.
     Is the magazine business is such a lucrative one? So enables much innovation going around? The answer might come as a bit of a surprise.
     The margin of magazine business is so small. Without advertisement, there would in fact be no margin at all, but significant losses. This is how it really is in magazine world – at least according to one resouces. Advertisement is what saves the magazine medium from drowning. The price on the cover merely cover the printing costs.
     If advertisement is what really pays the bill and revenue from given prices is insignificant, then why not put most of the content as advertisement spaces and lose the price tag? This is what the free magazine people did. They put the entire burdern of costs to the advertisers, and in return make most of their pages as advertisements. In essence, the magazine is turning into a big catalogue.
     Is this ethical? To sell magazine as product advertisements? They say there is nothing ethical these days, especially when it comes to surviving. The reality simply said, without selling out, you can’t pay in your bills.
     It is even more ironic when one realize that most money actually came out of and get into corporations. A free magazine who wants to pay for their expenses and costs waits the corporation to churn out advertisement cash for them. The consumer who didn’t have to pay the magazine “pay” to the corporation by way of buying the corporation’s product. So, instead of having money flows: consumer – magazine, now money flows: consumer – advertising corporation – magazine. Corporation is becoming the intermediary, especially in terms of cashflows. What is afraid of is: since the corporation become an important stakeholders of the publishing companies, what if the content reduces its idealistic qualities and become only full of the interests of the advertiser companies?.. this could just of course be a overfearfull thinking, but imagine the possibility, when the magazine is under the power of corporations, then of course the corporations would press all the magazine potentials to reap profit, especially when the sacrifices to do that is only soft and incalculable things like ethics and idealism.
     The worry above may not be a reality, but building a buffer against total dependency of advertisers is always good – at least for times when advertisers interests in free magazine decline. Building a price tag is maybe one small way to do this. It bridges direct connection of cashflows between the reader and the journalist/publishing companies, without the money ever have to enter and leave corporations. This allows certain (financial) dependency of the publishing company. A price tag is a small form of buffer against total dependency of advertisers.
     Apart from the emerging reign of advertisers companies, other thing is also worth noting: the costs involved in printed media is still enormous compared to the purchasing power and market size of its market. This explains the minute margin. The heavy burden of the publishing companies to cover costs forces them to “sell around”. The consequence of “selling around” is of course the reduction of dependency, especially to the advertisers. Dependency in turn leads to reduction of real content, and more to commercial content, producing in the end thick magazines consists mostly of advertisements. Again, the question is again ethical: is it ethical to have magazine all filled up with commercials as in a catalogue?
      The problem of huge publishing costs turn our heads toward the internet. The internet is revolutionary because it introduces medium for publishing with very little costs. Moreover, it is interactive (requires user to participate more in browsing the page), can involve movies and sounds, and easily updatable – what more could a reader want? (the complain of course is that internet pages are not printed pages, therefore untouchable and less portable). Apart from its unprinted medium, the internet is a direct threat to magazines. its low cost publishing remains its winning factor. If magazines do not lower its publishing costs (I think this is unlikely, since paper prices will increase due to usages of wood is more controlled), or offer some other new breakthrough to overcome internet’s winning points, then there could be a big possibility where magazines will perish from the face our media world.

CONCLUSION

     Magazines should not be depended too much from advertisers companies, since this will deprived them from the independence much needed in the world of quality journalism. Second, magazines should innovate new ways to overcome internet’s major winning points, otherwise general public preference of internet over magazines may threat the very existence of magazine medium.

      Thousands of people crept slowly and calmly into wembley stadium’s 50k+ capacity’ gate. Pressing themselves together, they let their individuality walls go down for this day to celebrate a coming of a king-band to town – Oasis.
     Liam showed up belatedly as usual after the whole band came out on stage. It is presumably a deliberate act to show to the audiences who the real star of the show was. As he enters, his fingers kept forming a familiar shape: the peace sign. He walks in his proprietary style also familiar in the way of walking of certain primal mamalia, i.e. monkey. His mouth was blabbing lividly, as if inciting someone to fight him. This is the act people waited for - the return of the rampant rock king who knows no respect to nobody.
      I was his big fan: the rampant fan of the rampant king. “fuck off you arseh***s” he said to the audience, as I mimic him too, at least quietly. His attitute was just right for me. Those cheeky elders with those cheeky manners was just too much hipocricy to take, and Liam set the right behavior for us, the rebels, to face these sickening, profoundly political-in-every-way individuals which we called “orang-orang tua”. To the rebels, they are the menace to our existence, the pain in the neck.
     But time has passed. I am no longer the rebel who fight against the “orang-orang tua”. I am transforming, little by little, into “orang-orang tua” themselves. I am now, almost formally, a part of the whole hipocritic culture itself, where, sadly, idealism crumbles and business rules as usual. I am moving away from the Liam and his way of life.
     It’s natural. That’s the least I can think of about our difference. We are increasingly becoming very different people. Liam wasn’t always living near the center of this hipocritic world. He was a bricklayer once for god sake. He was the lowermost layer of the industrial society in terms of income-achievement. He is happily secured in his bar along with his bricklayer friends, drinking carelessly most of the time, singing his Manchester City football team anthem, without ever having to think, let alone do, diplomacy or business or all those activities where hipocricy is firmly understood to be a part of. He was, some might say, a common people, with little education, living simply, just to survive every single day. Even though now he’s rich, he still never had those experiences of living in the business world, in which people often times have to kiss assess or being smart, without they liking it even a bit. He just never got the chance to do something he doesn’t like. And that’s why his tolerance is few. That’s why brute is what comes out of him to the surface. As far as his job concerns fortunately, this bruteness is what is most needed to become a real rock star, whose essential job is not just to entertain, but to inspire and remind people to “break the rule”. Life for Liam is never complicated. His life doesn’t keen on difficult thinking, manouvered diplomacy, let alone political venture. His was just cut out from that sort of tricky activities. And this, exactly this, is what serves as the intersection where he and I must part.
     In less than 2 weeks, I have to plunge myself straight into the business world. Where being assy-kissy is essential, where the tolerance of considering some bullshit things essential is essential, where bullshit things have to be lived in, discussed excitedly about, and, even more sadly, put a lot of effort into a lot. I am increasingly forced to neglect my own passion, to take responsibility of bigger roles, as a man of family, as a good citizen, etc. I am adapting myself to the pressures of life, which, whether one like it or not, often pay no respect to one’s identity nor passion, but solely to his ability to be a labor of economy – the true hipocritical act of the human life.
     Liam is going toward the mike. As usual, he stationed himself firmly under the tall microphone. He started to cross his arms at the back. With a swift movement, his mouth closes to reach the mike, body a bit bent and legs forming an O. With his head tilted upward below the mike, he looked like he is in a hanging-crackers eating contest where he’s not supposed to touch the crackers. Noel said that that gesture was a mechanism to help him face his guts when facing those thousands of fans. I looked at this always with a smile. The days of imitating Liam had passed. But I still remember it and cherish it quite religiously. It’s just a phase of my life I had to go through. The feeling is the same like when you see your old house where you used to live in before you. You know you love the house, but you also know you can’t ever live in it again.
Farewell my Gallagher buddies. Keep on being an icon for the rebellers and the rebellers to come. This rebel still respect you so much. And when the time come, when the burden of capitalism has pressed so deep above me, I know I’m gonna need you and this I am very sure of it.

There is nothing conceptually better than Rock N Roll - Lennon

       Can you proof something that you only have faith in? That’s the main question that pushes the story of the 2 hour fiction flick Contact. Jodie Foster played alongside Matthew McConaughey in this film. James Spade and Angela Basset were there, and also a host of other rather unfamiliar yet nevertheless great cast of characters. Robert Zemeckis wore the captain’s helmet behind the camera. The story was made from a novel by Carl Sagan.

      A movie of this sort doesn’t come often. I couldn’t keep my eyes of the television set for almost the whole duration, except of course for those annoying moment when I have to go the loo. The dialogues are amazing, the scenes, especially the space shots, are incredibly vivid and realistic, and the characters.. they are just so powerful as if each character himself can be turned into a movie of his own.

      I can help but feel respect to the director Robert Zemeckis in this film. He crafted the work so well, I can’t help being captivated by every scene he produced. The plot, I tell you, is amazing. Suspenseful to the very end, if you just loose 5 minutes at the start, or at the end, then you’ll lose a big puzzle that might just give clues to this movie’s unpredictable conclusion - that end factor you love that makes you discuss the film zealously with your friends when you just got out of the cinema. Personally i just can’t help thinking, in movies like these, how smart the director was. He was just basically many steps in front of us in every way. In the explosion scene in which the suicide bomber blew the “machine” that Jodie has to ride on, Zemeckis had given numerous clues in the earlier part of the film about who the bomber was. If you pay attention very well, then you’ll know who this guy was and what was his motive and intention for being there. These clues was given very smoothly that when I watched him for the first time, I thought he was just unimportant part of the scene, but actually, later on, he will be an essential character of the story. Or, the part in the end where Jodie’s whole experienced was being questioned and doubted, Zemeckis made every proof available from the beginning that the whole experience could exactly be it, just a delusion, while, in fact, we watched the whole show and witness ourself that it wasn’t – heck, it even made me questioned my judgement myself. In short, Zemeckis was just supernatural in this movie. Brian de Palma, handling the ultra-intricate first Mission Impossible film, was perhaps, in my view, the only real contender to him in terms of intricacy.

     Most importantly, this fim, which tells the story inside a life a scientist (Foster) who long to prove alien exists, in the process, points out the most paradoxical fact human has struggle with for centuries: that God do exists, we can feel it, yet there is no way we can prove it.. This is the core of the film for me, at least. The film shows why we can’t always proof something, yet we know what we see or hear or feel is completely TRUE. The film corroborate our understanding about this problem by way of bringing up a character who has based her whole life on proofs and facts and placed her in a situation where she has to present to the audience something she knows really true but without any proof nor fact.

      The mindblowing morality about this film is human often can know something is true without being ever able to proof it. And this is what happens when we think of our divine creator, our supreme being, God. God is something we can feel and we know true, but yet there is no direct proof to support it. Watching this simple concept evolves into a tangle of stories, powerful characters, vivid pictures and realistic sounds is such a delight to see and what made this Zemeckis/Sagan flick will still be intriguing and unique compared to many other ubiquitous hollywood flicks that had graced our cinema screens from time to time.

"There are two ways to approach our cultural crossroads. You can either wring your hands and lament that literacy today has less to do with Wordsworth or Faulkner and more to do with "how we find our way through the digital forest of information overload".

Or you can… pick up a copy of Professor Pierre Bayard’s best selling How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read.

Prof. Bayard, a 52-year-old professor of literature and a psychoanalyst, has gotten this far without ever having picked up Oliver Twist or finished Ulysses. …In his view, to engage with one book is to give the acquaintance of many others."

"Say what you will about Prof Bayard, he forces us to confront a paradox of our age. By one estimate, 27 novels are published every day in America. A new blog is created every second. We would appear to be in a midst of a full blown epidemic of graphomania. Surely we have never read, or written, so many words a day. Yet increasingly, we deal in atomised bits of information, the hors d’oeuvres of education. We read not in continuous narratives but by linkage, the movable type of the 21st century. Our appetites are gargantuan, our attention spans anorectic. Small wonder that trivia is enjoying a renaissance. We are very good on questions like why men fall asleep after sex and why penguin’s feet do not freeze.

Recently Ms Cathleen Black, president of Hearst Magazines, urged a group of publishing executives to think of their audience as consumers rather than readers. She’s on to something: Arguably the very definition of reading has changed. So Google asserts, in defending its rights to scan copyrighted materials. The process of digitizing books transformes them, the company contends, to something else; our engagement with the text is different when we call it up online. We are no longer reading. We are searching - a function that conveniently did not exist when the concept of copyright was established.

All of which sent us back to te king of content-free reading, the Ur-blogger. There was to be no tough sledding for this consumer, who never bit his nails over Aristotle. Among distracted readers he has no equal; as disjointed, derivative writers go, he is a man for our times. Five centuries ago, he pioneered Prof. Bayard’s reviewing technique: Leave the book under discussion unopened before you. Then write about yourself."

STACY SCHIFF

The writer is the author, most recently, of A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, And The Birth of America

"Suatu kali ada raja yang telah membangun tidak terhitung jumlah tempat ibadah, datang ke Bodhidharma. Dengan bangga, raja bertanya, saya sudah membangun ratusan tempat ibadah, berapa pahalanya? Tanpa menoleh, Bodhidharma menjawab, "Tidak ada pahala-pahalaan!"

Inilah persoalan kekinian. Berbuat namun melekat. Tentu saja ada pahala karena ini hukum alam. Tetapi, melekat jika tindakan harus diikuti pahala, bertindak membuat pelakunya tidak bebas, kotor dengan ego, salah-salah kecewa. Ini yang diledakkan Bodhidharma dengan: "berbuat, lepas, ikhlas".

"Meledakkan kemelakatan menghasilkan keindahan, layak direnungkan, wajah kebenaran dan kesucian yang mengerikan. Zen sudah meledakkan kemelakatan sebagai inti semua ini. Setelah kemelekatan diledakkan, ternyata oleh keikhlasan dibukakan keindahan. Ini sebabnya orang-orang di jalan ini berbisik, "God is beautiful, that’s why He loves beauty."

GEDE PRAMA

Penulis Sejumlah Buku, Bekerja di Jakarta, Tinggal di Desa Tajun, Bali Utara