It’s been a crazy three weeks as I found a job for the next two months before I start teaching, played gigs, had rehearsals, was part of a wedding entourage, and even fractured my wrist! But more importantly, I was with the family and friends that I love.

Won’t say much more now, but I’ll let the pictures do the talking:

Played a stellar show as Shelves.

We played soccer as part of my friend’s stag party. He wasn’t the groom, but just tired. (like me)

I actually managed to fracture my wrist during the game. A hairline along the radius.

It’s tradition to gatecrash the bride’s home. So we brought vuvuzelas!

The bride makes her way.

A gentleman always gets the door.

Her gown was being stuffed into the car.

A very smirky groom.

Customary metaphorical closing shot. Cue end credits.

That said, my left arm is in a cast till August 10, so you’ll forgive me if I don’t type as much as I used to.

First off, @pixiedub is having me on her show, The Missing Crease, and I am SUPEREXCITED.

I love sharing music and talking about it! I totally geek out around it, and the only thing that beats spazzing out on music that shoots bullets into your head, is the kind you get to share with people! You know what they say, something is more fun when it’s shared. And @pixiedub seems like one of the most fun people I know on Twitter, plus I’ve listened to her show before, and she’s an absolute blast, like your past!

So here’re the details:
Tuesday, 13 Jul 2010, 10PM (SG Time, GMT+8)
You need to click here –> THIS LINK <-- to end up on the unpopular radio blog, and click on one of the links to listen to the livestream at 10pm!

I've already spent all night trying to perfect my list, cuz it's my first time. And that makes me nervous. So everything has to be perfect. You know how it is with first times.

What you can expect is a rather.. electronic mix that's filled with good beats, subtle hooks and a hazy air of melancholy. The best kind of music for a Tuesday night I'd add.

Next up, my band, Shelves, will be playing a set at Blu Jazz this Friday. We play at 10, and you can find the details below (Or above in the picture)

Blu Jazz Cafe
11 Bali Lane
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2010
Time: 10PM

IN FACT, you should commit to catching us play, while drinking a copious amount of beer and RSVPing to the Facebook Event page that Noel so painstakingly put up. Just CLICK –> HERE <-- and say you're coming!

Don't be a stranger either, come say hi! None of us bite, and all the guys are married, and I'm super awkward, so there'll be none of the lewd groupie shenanigans (If you are female).

We're also playing with rockers, Basement In My Loft, who’re also playing Baybeats this year, so you know they’re good! I’m telling you they are, because I love their songs too!

So yeah, good music all round!!! Seriously, come on down and we’ll party like beasts. Bring your friends, tell them to check out the best live music this side of Singapore. Listen to the show tomorrow!!!!

RAWWWWRRRRRR!!!!

blorg.

I want to get ink. Specifically that particular ‘X’ you see at the top. But just the ‘X’, and in black, not white. On the forearm where I can see it, and you can see it. Maybe I’m a bit of an exhibitionist in that regard, or an attention seeker. Maybe what I want for it is to be a talking point. Perhaps all I really want is to show what I think on my sleeve.

It doesn’t really mean anything. Simply because, there’s no real significance as to why I want to get ink. It’s a shallow, aesthetic reason, and maybe I shouldn’t hide from that. I’m going to be a teacher, and they do not condone this sort of deviant behaviour. I also go to a church, that while modern, is also rather conservative. And because it’s so shallow, so devoid of meaning, and such an immature, rebellious ‘up yours’ to the societal pressures around me, and I’m not really thinking it through.. an ‘X’ really is the most perfect symbol to remind myself that I took charge of my own life, didn’t care what other people thought of me, and followed my heart instead of my over-thinking, self-reflexive mind.

So if people ask, it’s the most distilled symbol to sum up the last 27 years of my life and how things are going to change around here.

The one thing that has been on my mind for the past week or so, could be dangerous thought. But I just have to put it down in words, just so I know how ridiculous it sounds, or maybe there might be a grain of truth in what I want to say.

“Kill your dreams, kill them now before somebody gets hurt.”

Okay, how’s that for shock value? I say this in the capacity that.. I don’t particularly think that living your dreams will make you happy, from the inside out at least. Jadedness or weary debacle and throwing in the towel because I don’t always get what I want on my terms and timings? I don’t really know.. but the more I look at it from this particular angle, dreams and ambitions are rather selfish things, and people get hurt in the process of us trying to realise our own ambitions. Also, when we don’t hit the targets we’ve set for ourselves, those dreams get dashed, and we become disillusioned and discontent.

And where there is hurt, discontent and disfranchisement, there is sadness. There is something in unfulfilled dreams that make us struggle more than enjoy what’s in front of us at present.

On the surface, it sounds like I’m telling you to throw in the towel, to aim for nothing so that you can hit something. Accept your lot in life and settle. But if you really know me, there is nothing that makes me sadder, and angrier than when someone loses his of her passion for life and decides to settle.

It’s all abit convoluted I admit, saying something, but meaning the other. But this comes from some rather brash and careful examination and deconstruction of the notion of “dreams”. (Son, when you grow up, you can be whatever you want to be.)

I think there’s hope, and there’s false hope. I think there are notions of personal gratification and comfort that are unrealistic, or at worse, damaging to the world we live in and the relationships we keep. More intimately, we kill ourselves for a dream that stays a dream. I think modern thinking to a degree has made us our own gods, and that it is our right for things to go the way we want them to. Our entitlement, inheritance or what have you. Oh the selfishness of it all.

In the chase of dreams, perhaps a concept introduced to us as far back as the fairy tales of happily ever after, of the protagonist verses the antagonist, good triumphing over evil (or in a post modern context, perceived truths and evils.) But the reality of life just isn’t like the man-made constructs we have of the themes of hope, happiness and triumphs. It is not in our dreams that reality exists, but in our realities that dreams exist.

The concept of dreams has been held in such high regard, that it paints a flawed picture of the reality and struggle that curses us in this mortal realm. It’s two dimensional to put it bluntly. It is also self-serving, and perhaps ultimately self destructive when we keep thinking that the grass is greener on the other side.

So I’m not saying kill your dreams totally by throwing in the towel, quite literally. The atrophy of such behaviour would be the utter stagnation of passion as we know it. A life, not worth living. Quite the contrary, if you’re a fan of my radical (yet utterly inane) notion, is that re-examine what it is that lets you live out your life passionately. Chances are, you won’t find them in some constructed dream you’ve cobbled together from watching too much TV.

Face up to this reality, that life is a struggle, but it is still worth living for. And one of the very first steps is to count all your blessings. We have more than we realise, people, friends, pets, ideas, love, hate, loneliness.. and ultimately, some form of hope. This last part might have been a bit confusing, but it’s a concept rooted in duality. You can’t hate if you’ve never loved. You can’t feel loved if you’ve never been lonely or undeserving of it. You can’t feel rich if you’ve never been poor, you can’t feel healthy if you’ve never been sick. Count your blessings, work.. find solace and joy in the struggle. And one day, I promise you.. it will all end, this mortal curse and blessing all at once.

After that, it was off to a social gathering organised by my church’s young adults’ network. I thought it was quite a nice gathering from folk, and I caught up with a few leaders who were older than me, and we talked about my decision to start teaching (in September). I suppose it was kind of cathartic for me, and also introspective to listen to the accounts of people who have been there before me.

So there was food, and there were sodas, someone made incredible cheesecakes (that were generous with the crumbly base.) But things really picked up when my friend showed up with his incredible “Horse Head”. If you wear this, you inadvertently turn into Horse Head Man. Here are the pictures:

“To kill a Horse Head Man”

Lens: Helga Viking
Film: Pisitl

“Let all creation sing..”

Lens: Helga Viking
Film: Pistil

“Validation”

Lens: Helga Viking
Film: Pistil

“Nothing to see here”

Lens: Quadcamera

If you would like, you can view the rest of the set here. –> link

And lastly, I was just thinking, before I die, or after I die, I would like to publish all my personal entries into a book entitled “The Published Work Of The Misadventures Of Brian Leery.”

Or something like that.

I decided to type in here, because I wanted to remember something, or how someone made me feel.

I met someone nice today, and even though nothing developed, I wanted to remember it, because it’s been awhile since I felt this forgotten, pleasant emotion.

That’s really the best I can do to describe the person and the emotion: pleasant, nice.

There’s no need for extreme superlatives, because I can’t extrapolate the future, nor did I go out of my way to impress said individual, it all happened like a casual conversation, she seemed down to earth and we didn’t really expect anything more, or anything less.

In case anyone (read: the two giraffes and three possums that read this blog) is wondering, she was not the “fascinatingly scary” girl mentioned in my tweets. –> here.

No. This was the simple, vanilla girl that took my blood sample and handled some of my administration when I went down to the clinic for a medical check up. Through casual conversation, she knows I’m going to start teaching in the near future, and I know she’s going to enroll in medical school later this year. Very plain things, but I’m a vanilla sorta guy, and it doesn’t get more vanilla than this. Okay, maybe going to med school’s sorta like having cookie dough in your vanilla ice-cream, but that’s it!

So there were no exchanging of numbers or anything, because, nice and pleasant as she was, I think she would be a little too young for the time being, or I’m not exactly back in the game myself (self-imposed exile since I have no work.) But I wanted to type this in here, because it was nice, to notice women again, or at least be attracted on that level.. y’know.. a tiny clue that your heart hasn’t completely turned to stone and that you still have some emotion left, plain as they may be.

I remember that.

It’s amazing how often I actually come into this blank space with nothing to say. It really is a blank slate, the title to this post probably won’t be thought off till something just randomly pops into my head closer to the end. Honestly, in this version of my blogging/writing style, there is very little thought that goes from brain to screen.

For example, my blogging platform (wordpress) just generated “353″ as my default permalink, of which I will definitely change, but I’m telling you that now to demonstrate just how much I am not thinking at the moment.

It’s nice to type in here without that sort of pressure.

I suspect I do not function well under pressure. I secretly am afraid, and pressurised if someone tells me that I write well, or do various things well. I usually just try to say thank you, and not let it get to my head. The moment I do, constant editing and a quest to write the perfect piece takes over, and I just get paralyzed. I’m the sort of person that flows, I react more than I plan.. it’s just the conditions I thrive in. These are not necessarily the skills that will make you a successful person, but you will find a richness in life that money doesn’t always buy. You see things that other people don’t see, you thrive on little quirks that make you raise an eyebrow, as you give a silent chuckle to yourself as you get the little inside joke that is inherent in all things life-related.

Today, while working on the video project, I guess I could finally articulate just what sort of creative person I am. I think I am a rather subtle person. Perhaps I would do better at a cinema-verite style of filmmaking where I just like things unfold in the frame. It’s a slower way of telling the story, but I think I like letting the audience unpack what they are consuming. Open to interpretation as they say. Leave a few visual markers here and there, light shifts in tone and pace.. nudges instead of signposts that lead you on. Where meaning is discovered rather than explained.

Perhaps I’m like that on a daily basis. As much as I’d like to know where I’m headed, I’m also very much intrigued by what is going to happen. Good things still surprise me, bad things are expected, but when you see something marvelous, it truly is a beautiful sensation. That’s why I’ve matured from just being a cynic, I’ve been lifted out from that pit that the earth is a cold dead place. I know that it is, but the wonderment comes from actually being alive, and being pleasantly surprised when life sometimes deals you a good hand.

In some sense, it’s perched on the old saying that you can choose how you want to feel. It’s true, in life you get dealt shitty hands, and you get dealt some stellar hands. But life isn’t figured out in a lifetime, as long as you are still open and you haven’t completely closed your heart, you just prepare yourself that much more should something good come along, or at least pass you by. When you close your heart, you close your eyes, and you only see what your brain’s been conditioned to think. It’s different from having an irritatingly sunny disposition, but an open outlook to both the beauty and darkness of the mortal coil.

As long as we’re still breathing, I’ll try to keep my heart and eyes open. If you blink, you might have just missed the spark that’s in all of us, in all created things.

Good night.

Where do we find love?
Do we find it in the places we shouldn’t look?
Or in the secret places?
The nooks and crannies,
The malls and the museums,
Or maybe, the leftover plenties.

Where do we find love?
How did we lose her in the first place?
Did she get lost?
Or did we just let each other go?
To faraway places, where no one could reach,
To strange alien lands, where no one bleeds.

Where do we find love?
I could spend this whole life searching,
For something that resembled a heart,
And yet, were I to find yours,
I’d forgotten where I last placed mine.

- brian.

Another day has passed and what a day it’s been. It wasn’t exactly my busiest day, but I feel like I’ve accomplished a fair amount today. I went to church to oversee a video project I’m working on, worked out some further kinks, and the soundboard looks complete. That is until some last minute changes came in, and I’ll have to go back in tomorrow to see just how much, or little changes need to be made.

But anyway, I then braved the rain to go for remedial training, which is a fine mess I’ve gotten myself in for not passing my Individual Physical Proficiency Test (IPPT), and also defaulting my last round of remedial training. That’s a nicer way of saying I failed the expected fitness of a Singaporean reserve in the army, and I was a no-show for my last bout of remedial training. I could be considered a felony in a more militaristic country. But the important thing is that I ran 2.4 kilometers in about 18 minutes? That is revolting. There was a time when I used to run it under 10 minutes, and now I’m reduced to this flabby pile of laziness.

Oh, then it was off to celebrate a friend’s birthday, and it was a great one! Many good friends at the gathering, many good conversations and laughs. One that particularly stood out, was when we were debating if Singapore had a culture. I supported the idea that we did, mainly because I’m a culture junkie, and I do think that there are things unique to Singapore. Unfortunately my opposition was more forthcoming in his arguments, and I generally lose to heated debates because I automatically lose interest. I suppose I was never born and bred in the fine arts of debate, haggling, confrontation or just saying no. I’m a dreamer, I hate to admit it, but I am. I like to see the good in people, and really do want to be surprised by someone when they do something so wondrously spectacular just because they believed in it. What I don’t see is the fighting and diplomacy that goes on. I’m just so blind to all these things that I never got to say what I really want to say, or do what I really want to do. Some people see the world as their right to pick, I on the other hand see the world for everybody to enjoy and don’t mind sharing what little joy I have.

And that scares me, going out there to get what I want, what I perceive to be rightfully mine. Where hard work isn’t enough, and you have to go further than getting what you deserve, and taking what you desire. I don’t work hard in that department at all. It saddens me, because I see all the nice guys finishing last, or not competing.

And that’s the question isn’t it? Are you in the race? Racing for the prize, giving everything up for the prize. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer here, the same way there’s no right or wrong answer to whether Singapore has a culture or not. I still believe I do, and I still believe that I don’t necessarily have to compete in the race to find happiness. All these benchmarks, or evidences and validations to prove our way is right, is not the only way to live this life, or be happy in it.

Maybe you don’t need certain things before you can be happy. Maybe you can be happy today when you have nothing, but you just can’t see it that way yet. I know I still can’t see certain things, but I hope I do.. I want to live in the light that shines from the inside and not the artificial ones that society shines on when they fawn over the latest do-hicky.

So sue me, I’m a hippie.

I came down with a cold, cough and sore throat this morning, even though I’ve been nursing it for the past three days. I think it has something to do with being stuck in a stuffy room with zero ventilation for three days that ultimately caused me to fall ill.

I hate being ill. I cough like Armageddon, I sneeze in threes (that feels good), but oh my, I can’t taste or smell anything and I have to avoid cold drinks. Avoiding cold drinks in Singapore is like walking on railway tracks. It’s stupid.

And now, I think my medication is kicking in, and I’m starting to feel a tad drowsy.

Oh, jammed with Leeson tonight. Man, we’re rusty.