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.