Careless Interpretation : The Diary of A Music-Junkie

this time going to write about bossanova. or is it Chic? or about 1 year commemoration of my writing blog? or on French? huh.. so much interesting theme to write. so much diversion. so much idling. so much procrastinating.

im exhausted.

instead of nothing, ill just sort of to Astrud Gilberto, whose songs are soothingly filling the airwaves in my room right now. an easy but unexpected escape to a genius artist to be explored.

the genius about astrud gilberto "the artist" is that she is not even an artist at all. she was the wife of joao gilberto (this one is really an artist in his own right) who, upon recording the Girl from Ipanema, needed a singer to sing it in English. Fortunately for Astrud, even though she had a little knowledge of English, she was the only one known to Joao who had any grasp of foreign language, and more importantly, she was present during the recording. and so it went, the discovery of perhaps the definitive mellow, bashful, and the most child-like innocent artist of all time.

im not going to biograph astrud’s life in this blog (you could easily go to Wikipedia or some other official homepage for that), but what i’d like to do is explain how she affects my life during all the years that i had known her - through her records that is. now that, i believe, you will not find in any website beside mine..

Astrud, the soft floating voice that fills your head as quick as a shot of high dose of 70% vodka. its nauseating, at best, and tripping at worst, but all in a perfectly good way. consider it drug but without the drug. that’s astrud, to me..

i can’t really remember when was the first time i notice of astrud, but i can’t tell you, once i knew her, there was just simply no question about it, she was the champion of all my music (at least for some time). i remember i felt terribly proud to be keen on her especially in the context that nobody else around me ever heard about her, at least nobody below 40 years old. she is my ultimate joker card, for chilling out, for doing the homework, for driving the car, for basically many usages. i felt like ive got something astoundingly cool in my hand that i just got to share it to someone.

her songs: Ipanema, Take Me to Aruanda, Agua de Beber, Insensatez, etc, are just incredible. they are incredible in the way, the wind breezes through my hair; or the rain that drips slowly outside my window in the rainy night. they are just so natural to me. like a key that was meant for opening my soul, was lost long long time ago and now had just been found again. everytime, the ‘door’ is truly open and it feels so great. there was never any resistance to these songs, my heart. it just surrendered. some kind of magic really. playful like Sesame Street, coy like Audrey Hepburn, stringy like Henry Mancini, and cool like Danny Ocean, but also introvert and lonely like a cozy corner in a Paris café in a rainy day. Especially when Getz join the club, its all just completely ramshackled. Total melancholisch, so the Germans say.

check this lyric out of a song about being in love:

I’m as restless as a willow in a windstorm, I’m as jumpy as puppet on a string
I’d say that I had spring fever, but I know it isn’t spring
I am starry eyed and vaguely discontented, like a nightingale without a song to sing
O why should I have spring fever, when it isn’t even spring

"It Might As Well Be Spring" by Astrud Gilberto, written by Rodgers & Hammerstein.

look at the underlined verse. when i heard Astrud sang it, i just like: "oh God, how can you describe something that you feel so metaphorically beautiful yet so very correct?" this is a song of the deep. of the gods, the myths, and of the methaphysics. of magic power. Rodgers and Hammerstein suggested it, but when Astrud whispered to my ear, i become fully understand.. one has to listen to understand..

astrud gilberto grew old with me over the years. she in America. me in Indonesia. we never really knew each other. but she was there. she was always there. on my nights, on my days, sometimes on my lonely driving through the streets of Bandung, more than few on the embrace of girlfriends, occasionally on the background during a warm chat with some good old friends. i felt she was always at my important moments. patiently standing there, waiting for me to sing her ballads for the uncountable number of times to my ear..

astrud was in a league with the original bossa people. she was truly a ‘new wave’ (bossa nova). a new wave of brilliant collective that contribute to the world a music called bossa nova. a collective that amalgamates jazz and traditional brazillian music into a head-lightening, life-is-beautiful, form of music. these people - her, jobim, joao, getz, eumir,.. - are the sentimental type. the sensitive type. the taletellers and the heartbreakers. the narrators of feelings.. the balladeer whom you easily relate to. an intermediary to face life and all its melancholies..

as i was riding to Zoologischer Garten on my daily underground train to get my awaited Modjo Classic magazine release, a snapshot of a very familiar face came to fore on the subway TV. it was Audrey Hepburn. on the side, a paragraph of explanation emerged and translates: "the british New Woman magazine had just declared Audrey Hepburn as the most beautiful woman of all time of its ‘100 most beautiful woman of all time’ list."

as i was still in the middle of reading the ending chapters in Ian Woodward’s Audrey Hepburn biography, and in my bag i just received a copy of the DVD of Audrey’s "Two for the Road" that i bought from a seller on Ebay just a few days ago, not to mention witnessing the winning arrival of the newly published Hepburn biography that came from the highest authority so far in the Hepburn estate, her first son Sean Hepburn, therefore adding a new member to the already prodigious releases of other Hepburn affected books including the remarkable fashion-esteem ‘Audrey Style’, a single, most vivid, conclusion appear before my eyes:

Audrey Hepburn Never Dies..

Jam 11 malam. dan gw baru saja selesai nonton Gie, film Indonesia terakhir yg berhasil gw peroleh berkat bantuan seorang saudara. tanpa basa-basi, gw langsung ke pokok permasalahan..

Gie, film yang suram, diangkat dari masa2 yg suram, dengan tokoh yang tak kalah suramnya. sepanjang film gw tidak berhasil melepaskan film ini dari korelasinya dengan film2 perang dunia kedua Jerman seperti Schindler’s List, atau The Pianist, film2 drama rasialis Amerika, seperti Malcolm X atau A Time To Kill, bahkan minimnya dialog sering membawa gw kepada adegan2 di genre film2 Eropa karya Krzysztof Kieslowski dan Wim Wenders (walaupun Gie lebih miskin fluktuasi pada plotnya, lebih terkesan datar). Riri Riza tampaknya sudah mampu membangkitkan dramatisasi kesuraman itu, dengan trik-trik dramatik vokabularinya. Contohnya menampilkan figur2 orang2 tua digabung dengan gejolak revolusi yang chaos dan tiada harapan. Dan mimpi2 Gie yg ‘mengiring’ penonton sedikit demi sedikit ke dalam akhir cerita dimana Gie akhirnya berjumpa kembali dengan temannya Han dan akhirnya menemukan pantai bersama. Ya, cukup adil untuk mengatakan sutradara2 Indonesia sudah bergerak di arah yang tepat.

Gie lahir di tengah2 masa penting di Indonesia, bahkan dunia. Euphoria pasca perang dunia sedang tinggi2nya, sebentar lagi perang dingin masuk. Indonesia berada di tengah2. Dijepit antara poros2 komunis dari Cina dan Rusia, agama dari seksi2 internal Indonesia, dan kebesaran Barat dengan demokrasi ala mereka, Soekarno terdesak untuk segera memutuskan pilihannya. Saat itu tampaknya, wajah Indonesia terhadap ke ‘kiri’, yakni tepatnya sampai suatu kejadian ‘muncul’ tepat di dekade 60an.

Yang menarik di film ini adalah, Gie berasal dari era yang berbeda sama sekali dari kita, tepatnya dalam hal ‘musuh’ yang ia hadapi. Jika dalam tiga puluh tahun terakhir, generasi kita terbiasa pada perlawanan terhadap sosok2 cendana, dan memproklamirkan lagi Soekarno sebagai pahlawan bangsa yang tiada duanya, Gie pada masa itu malah sedang dalam perlawanan kepada sang pahlawan bangsa itu sendiri, Soekarno. Adalah menarik untuk mengamati bahwa Soekarno sendiripun, sebagai founding father bangsa ini, ditentang hebat oleh mahasiswa2 pada masanya; hampir mebersitkan ilham bahwa memang mahasiswa tidak pernah pandang bulu melawan otoritas yg melanggar janjinya pada rakyat, walaupun itu sebuah nama besar seperti Soekarno.

Dalam kerangka kacamata objektif sejarah Indonesia, yang terlepas dari motivasi pembuat film ini yang memang ingin mengangkat Gie karena karakter menariknya, Gie cukup, walaupun belum bisa dikatakan revolusioner, meninggalkan pengaruhnya dalam perjuangan indonesia, setidaknya dalam kapasitasnya yang pada saat itu adalah sebagai mahasiswa dan pengajar. Sebagai pengajar dan mahasiswa, Gie berhasil: memperingatkan sahabatnya akan malapetaka didepan mata yang akan mengancam PKI; kedua menulis beberapa artikel di media cetak yang mengungkit penanganan militer yang tak berperi kemanusiaan terhadap PKI. Dalam kapasitasnya sebagai seorang pengajar dan mahasiswa, yah, peran ini cukup. Namun untuk mensejajarkan Gie dengan pahlawan2 Indonesia yang sudah diakui seperti Dr. Sutomo, kisah Gie hanyalah satu lagi kisah seorang tokoh ‘tanpa nama’ Indonesia yang berjuang melawan penguasa dimasanya. Mungkin yang benar2 menarik dari diri Gie adalah fakta bahwa dia keturunan Cina dan fakta bahwa Gie seorang mahasiswa sebuah universitas ternama di Indonesia yg masih berdiri dengan kokoh yang otomatis membuat dirinya mudah diasosiasikan dengan keadaan penonton hingga dimasa kinipun.

Melihat Gie, kita menyadari betapa Gie adalah sosok manusia anti kompromi yang melawan kekuatan otoritas di lingkungannya. Mulai dari guru, pater, sampe ketua2 organisasi mahasiswa rekan2nya semua dilawannya. Bahwa seorang wakil rakyat tidak bisa memutuskan nasib rakyat itu sendiri dengan semena2 menjadi dogma buat Gie yang memperkuat dia dalam perjuangannya. titik2 penting yang menentukan seseorang menjadi pahlawan atau tidak muncul selanjutnya dalam hidup Gie, apakah dia akan diam saja dan memendam pikirannya? atau dia akan menulis dan mengungkap kepada masyarakat apa yang sebenarnya menurut dia terjadi. jawabannya seperti kita ketahui ‘is history’.

politik ‘tai kucing’ yang dibilang Gie sedihnya membuktikan bahwa bangsa selama 50 tahun belum berubah. perkara wakil rakyat yang idealis berubah menjadi konformis demi keamanan jabatan dan power adalah kisah klasik yang sudah begitu lama menyakiti rakyat. untuk mencegah ini menjadi diskusi normatif, harus ditegaskan bahwa kelemahan2 seperti ini sebenarnya tidak pernah benar2 hilang (Amerika dan Inggris pun masih memiliki kelemahan ini satu waktu atau yang lain), namun proses mengeliminirnyalah yang penting. seperti banyak hal didunia ini, process matters more than ending. yang harus kita pikirkan adalah bagaimana sebenarnya proses itu dibuat, agar korupsi dan lobby2 rakus demi kepentingan pribadi dieliminir dan komitmen pada rakyat dikembalikan kepada seharusnya. saya yakin Gie pun adalah orang yang cinta proses. sebagaimana buruknya suatu keadaan, selama perjuangan yang untuk lebih baik itu masih ada, seorang Gie paling tidak pasti mampu bertahan. keputusasaan Gie melihat bahkan rekan2nya sendiri melencong dari kebenaran, memilih untuk mengejar posisi2 politis dan kekuasaan berbasis fraksi2 di masyarakat seperti agama dan ras, yang tidak berpihak pada rakyat secara keseluruhan, sebenarnya menonjolkan pikiran Gie yang nasionalis, yaitu semangat kebangsaan yang tidak memandang/tidak memprioritaskan golongan, agama, atau partai diatas segala2nya. Disini, gw sangat setuju, konsep nation-state itu harus jadi nomor satu, pelepasan identitas2 yang malah cenderung mengakibatkan perpecahan dan tidak relevan dalam hal kesejarahan dan rumpun keberasalan harus dilaksanakan. untuk direnungkan, pra renaissance circa 1500 di eropa, bangsa eropa masih sebagian besar merupakan Holy Roman Empire, dikomando oleh Pope, mengambil identitas agama kristen sebagai dasar segalanya, namun event2 yang mengikuti terutama lahirnya Protestant Reformation, Scientific Revolution (Galileo, Copernicus), meletuskan ide munculnya national state. dalam bukunya berjudul A Concise History of the Modern World, William Woodruf memaparkan…" this shift in emphasis during the Renaissance toward the secular, toward science, toward action, toward constant change, toward the quest expresses the genius of European civilization…the outcome of (secularism) within the universal Christian Church was the decline of the power of pope and the holy roman emperor. In their place appear a variety of national states, all of them concerned with national territory, power, prestige, wealth, security and independence." dalam pencerahan seperti demikian, rakyat indonesia mestinya harus mulai mengidentifikasi dirinya sebagai ‘rakyat Indonesia’, bukan rakyat yang dipecah2 oleh identitas agama sebagai satu atau lain hal. bila saja kita sadari betapa kuatnya dan betapa membanggakannya sebenarnya konsep kebangsaan tersebut.

benar ketika Gie bilang bahwa sejarah manusia tidak akan pernah ada tanpa adanya pengkhianatan, namun lebih tepat lagi jika Gie bilang sejarah manusia tidak akan pernah ada tanpa kehausan akan power. Kebutuhan akan kekuasaan adalah karakter manusia yang paling primal - untuk menjadi ‘aman’ dan mempertahankan kesejahteraannya adalah tujuan utama. Yang sudah menjadi usaha selama ini - selama manusia mulai berkoloni dan membentuk masyarakat - adalah bagaimana menciptakan sistem yang sedemikian rupa sehingga pemenuhan kebutuhan akan kekuasaan ini bs dilakukan secara harmonis. dengan kata lain setiap orang terfasilitasi untuk pemenuhan hasrat akan powernya, namun tidak dengan kompensasi mengambil hak orang lain untuk memenuhi kebutuhan akan powernya. dalam bukunya Critical Mass, Philip Ball menyarankan bahwa konsep dalam The Leviathan (buku karangan Thomas Hobbes, filsuf besar inggris di abad 17 yang menangani hal2 mengenai filosofi pemerintahan) menekankan harmonisasi pengaturan kekuasaan ini. Dengan kata lain pemikiran pemikir2 besar state2 eropa yang jauh mendahului era Gie sudah sampai ke sana, sayangnya di film Gie hampir tidak sama sekali menyentuh diskusi ini; diskusi tentang sistem yang optimal yang dapat mencegah kesewenang2an yang mungkin dapat menjadi kunci segalanya.

kehadiran Gie dalam perfilman Indonesia, menurut gw, sangat ‘menyehatkan’ pemikiran2 anak muda, termasuk gw, yang konon hobinya yang condong ke ‘barat’ dan kapitalisme (sebenarnya menonjolkan fakta betapa kita korban marketing perusahaan2 besar Amerika dan Eropa, yang pada ujungnya memakmurkan Amerika dan Eropa lagi melalui relasi tax antara perusahaan dan negara). Film Gie berkontribusi dalam memicu kembali semangat untuk bertanya pada penguasa dan, yang juga tak kalah penting, dalam menampilkan sosok Gie yang seolah2 mengajak penonton untuk kembali kepada classical literatur untuk menjawab pertanyaan2 tersebut; menyindir penonton untuk sejenak keluar dari section buku2 fiksi (atau chiclit atau chicken soup) di toko2 buku dan kembali ke bacaan2 ‘bergizi’ yang fundamental dan didalamnya mungkin terdapat jawaban masalah2 bangsa. di akhir kata, tidakkah kita ingin menjadi bangsa yang besar? gw yakin dalam perjalanan Gie kedalam literaturnya, memperhatikan kedigdayaan atau sejarah2 mengagumkan bangsa Inggris, Amerika, Jerman, atau Perancis yang dibangun dari sosok2 kehebatan pemikir2nya, ada sepercik keinginan dalam hati Gie, how great it would be to have a Great Powerful, and United Indonesia State in the worldmap..

Have you ever wonder why people often mused over the past, claiming how illustrious it was, and immediately resort into that romance mode which only seemed to make them even more favourable over the situation in the past than the present? Well i have. in fact, often times i am one of those people. that’s right, i am truly a great reminiscer.

Factually, reminiscing romantically on the past is not terribly my own proprietary indulgence. Everybody has, at one time or another, done it. Television station put it suggestively by making it into programs, as famous as the program Tembang Kenangan in indo TV, music groups identify themselves as a product of old cultures revived back (e.g. Naif, Club 80’s), advertisements that exploit the imagerial of the yesteryears. Put it simply again, everybody reminisce.

myself, i like to think about the past years, ponder, and contemplate about them. not least because of my rather affectionate character, but because most of the time it makes me happy to observe the past who always seems more…romantic, and also because it provide me the chance to do some reflection. The latter of the reasons i find most important, for it almost casually encourage me to analyze the past and the current, especially in the great prospect of finding out the answer to enduring questions such as: why does in the past (almost) everything always seemed so nicer to me? why does it feel so romantic to reminisce about them? all those thoughts brought me to this discussion and later to a rather plausible conclusion whom i will try to expound here over.

my perspective over the past in here does not exclusively affiliated to those of mine. indeed they are of extreme importance for me, however, when i used the term ‘past’ here, it does not necessarily mean MY past, but more specifically to ALL past stretching before current time, or now. my past could be the 90’s, could be the 80’s and even further way back to 50’s, only bounded to times whose knowledge about i can hardly reproduce.

Now, the questions are: what makes the past is such a delight to remember? why is it such a well to dwell upon?

these questions prompt us to discern on the too-oftenly-missable aspect of the people in the area of time called past. This aspect is the living and the technological situation of the people. The observation should not be done in absolute, self-standing manner however, but more importantly, in a relative manner to the present; to address the question of what is the fundamental difference between people of the past and people of the now.

along the dimension of time, lie parallel along the dimension of civilization. civilization has a nature of accumulation; itself builds upon itself because humans live together and share knowledge and ideas among themselves and their descendants. under the roof of our civilization, technology is a key factor that prooves itself as an agent of change to human’s way of living. Since the first axe was incidentally found by the primal men, men has change their way of living from hunting and gathering foods, agriculture and breeding cattle, trading, selling, industrially producing, to biogenetically producing - and that’s just from the food point of view. Human change his life as a new technology is invented and this is, by far, not discordant to the real purpose of technology itself; which is to provide usefulness in accomplishing human task. But what is exactly happening hidden behind this growth of technology and civilization is one fact that we often miss. A simple fact that people lead an increasingly effortless life.

Instead of walking, first men utilize animals such as horses to cover long distances, which effectively reduced efforts needed to travel. then they decipher the wheels and used it to construct the first ever vehicle, even if its human driven then animal driven; this is a revolution that became the tipping point to domino effect in technology in human civilization. the understanding of energy and the development of physics as full fledge science resulted first in nature driven engines, which were the forebears of steam engines (by great help from James Watt), and eventually gas engines in the modern days. by this time, efforts from human - not only in travelling - has reduced extremely significantly to say the least, in startling fact, allowing human to capture the impossible and otherwise unthinkable new goals such as landing on the moon and bombing countries thousands miles away with target rockets. mothers of nowadays homes do not have to cook their own foods, let alone grow foods which took a considerable amount of time and patience and energy and knowledge whom their counterparts hundreds of years ago must absolutely done to survive. from a different situation and time frame, a student nowadays does not have to busy himself at the library of the school to gain knowledge, nor does he need now to travel to faraway places just to find teachers and libraries of books such as those in Cairo, Damascus, or Cordoba, Spain during the reign of the Muslim world in 9 to 10th century. everything is simplified.

In a point of view, this all heads in a positive direction. by reducing the efforts of man to do a specific task, he will be relieved of the usage of excessive resources, and therefore able to allocate them to other useful and contributive things which would ease efforts of others, such as developing leading edge technology, train himself to be a better human resource of the industry, etc. and the spiral goes on, forming an unstoppable helix toward who knows where (perhaps until the earth finally takes its ultimate toll toward human). In another, somewhat sentimentalistic point of view - a view which will be used in this discussion to compare the past and the current - the advancement of technology and the reduction of efforts do not exactly produce the ‘healthy’ effect, Sentimentally that is.

imagine when you were little and you have to sneak around the kitchen just to find out where your mom might keep the delicious and delicate black forest cake that she had only in the rarest occasion (such as your birthday) made for you.

now imagine wishing to eat a black forest cake and suddenly you realized that what you have to do is simply fetch it down the alley of a supermarket which is by walking distance to your house that opens nearly 18 hours a day 6 days a week (almost always available).

now let me ask you? which one is better, romantic-wise? or put it simply, which one is MORE ROMANTIC? having to sneak around the kitchen and wait for mom to eat the blackforest, or, line up in a supermarket cashier while holding up your blackforest, fresh from the supermarket oven, and passing your credit card to the cashier woman to pay for it?

i doubt you would say the second came even close the first.

the first situation might appear 20 years ago, when blackforest is still a rare thing, and therefore most enjoyable thing, to enjoy; where supermarkets were barely existent, and the only resort to these kinds of delight is to count on to the kind-heartness of your ol’ sweet mom.

the second situation is a situation commonly known nowadays, where even the slightest wish could be fulfilled excessively quite effortlessly and easily - as long as you got the money. technology has allowed black forest to be produced massively and easily. a wish of black forest could easily be fulfilled, and further extended with perhaps the unnecessary purchases of cheese cakes, apple cakes, or crepes or anything imaginable to your mind.

the first situation corelates to a state of civilization arguably less than now, nevertheless it does command a higher state of romanticism than that of the now. how could that be? the answer: the efforts involved.

imagine Clark Gable who kissed Vivien Leigh in the unforgetable scene of the monstrous epic Gone With The Wind, softly, gently, mannerfully in the lips, that is after years of longing for it.

now imagine a pair of highschoole sweethearts, who just after their first date, resorts to a hefty volume of French kissing, full with kissing marks all over the girl’s neck.

the first case constitutes of immense efforts of winning hearts. a display of remarkable efforts of love. and, as can be shown in the Gone With The Wind case, it happened in the past.

the second case relates with a saddening amount of efforts. from the male perspective, it bares little efforts of gently caring over his intention over his spouse and, from female perspective, little or no evidence of significant efforts is shown in postponing such a daring activity in keeping of the old traditions of women’s pride and dignity. bear no doubt that this scene, to myself, as a class of 90s, is very familiar. and it is logically possible almost only in the present world.

imagine a man wanting to know all about the Pyramids of Egypt. a man from 100 years ago would prepare its travel baggage, prepared himself for a journey that might not only endanger the status of his financials but also of his life. a man of 10 minutes ago would perhaps go to the nearest internet terminal, which perhaps lie in his very own chamber, and browse everything he needs to know about about Pyramids, complete with text, pictures, sounds, and motions.

now, which is more romantic of both?

a man in need of fulfilling one of his basic human desire, sex, waited for the right woman to come, tirelessly and hopefully, for him to later married that woman. binding them in the ties of marriage and proceed to their most enchanting first night of not only sex but love.

now compare with another man, in need of sex, a basic human desire, decided to go ahead to scourge the sleazy city street corner in order to settle himself with the right prostitute. takes no time, takes no sweat, just money.

which of both is more romantic?

i hope you get the idea by now.

technology has change our effort into money. the need to do something is replaced with the need to get money to exchange for that effort, that is to purchase somebody else’s power to do that effort. in "Das Kapital", Karl Marx addresses this power as the labour power, the commodity that creates value.

as we pay money to exchange our effort (like paying money to make blackforest), we are ‘losing’ our need to do something. whether this is a really good thing remains to be disputable. but at least, as i said, from the romanticism point of view, our civilized and capitalistic world, that have succesfully and effectively trades money with efforts, had and Have manage to gradually degrade the romanticism of its own time.

its even more interesting when we conceive the plausible fact that all the concept of romance we got now were sourced mainly from the past. in fact, we study so much from the past, especially about what romance is. there are countless models that we now so know and love; from the scene where Humphrey ‘bogie’ Bogart kisses Inggrid Bergman in the classic Casablanca. from how Audrey Hepburn finally comprehend how great the love George Peppard has for her in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. not to mention from the love stories between our mom and dad when they were young and still a couple of lovers without bonds. from every imaginable bit of memories and documents available to us we study. the cinema, television and other media often times simply revive these memories into a production of films or programs.

in the process of being more "civilized" and "advanced", we all seem to forget that in every effort we do, even in the tiniest of amount and whether it turned out succesfull or not, lies a sense of achievement, whom the build up creates in effect a sense of beautiful romanticism and a promise of delightful reminiscences, ones that will always be worthy to fill this short memory of ours. No amount of money could ever replace this sense of romanticism.

lastly never did i say in this discussion that romanticism is like a commodity that can run out. that there is no romanticism in the world is the same as saying there is no more human in the world. Romanticism, for my part, is always there, lurking behind all those effort we do, either in the departments of love, work, family, or others. Periodically, romanticism will always exist, since each age represents its own difficulty to overcome therefore commands its own distinctive efforts. There are two important characters about romanticism that we must consider too: first that romanticism is always at the eye of the beholder; second, romanticism is (almost) always judged in relativistic point of view (e.g. from the future to the past). There are still wide spaces that justify for the existence of romanticism in any time period in the human history, either one that had happened or one that going to be. This discussion is only to enlight how different the amount, and perhaps the depth and kinds, of romanticism between the past us and the present us, how efforts determined our state of romanticism, and how much had our so called "civilized" world took away a certain degree of our own romanticism in compensation for all the comfortable and convenience that we all crave for but perhaps in reality being fulfilled far far too excessively much more than we needed.

“I heard a definition once: Happiness is health and a short memory! I wish I’d invented it, because it’s very true.” - Edda "Audrey" Kathleen Hepburn-Ruston.