One Day Holiday - Oh Need Uh?
*One day Holiday is an unscheduled, published-whenever-I-feel-like-it column for Hafeez, a resident blogger for this blog. This column is centered mostly around music and random stuff that ranges from the coherent to the absolutely absurd.
I just received not less than a minute ago a text message from my father saying my third sister, who sat for the PMR examination this year, got all A. I can sort of imagine how proud both my parents, the person herself, and my other two sisters are feeling at the moment. I even told about it to some of my colleagues and they voiced their congratulatory joy. Perfectly understandable; perfectly appropriate. Barring me.
On Monday and Tuesday, I went for some kursus at the majestic brand new UiTM Puncak Alam campus, located somewhere in between the fringes of Shah Alam and Kuala Selangor, and Holy shit middle of nowhere. In one of the talks by the guest facilitator, he touched on the topic of classification of types of person in accordance to the majority content of the person's heart. Or something. My memory of it is a little scant. Some scientist did a research on that topic and found out that the physical content of a person's heart affects or determines the characteristic of a person. If let's say the person's heart is majority covered in blood, then that person has a lively character. Or something. My memory of it is a little scant.
I, however, found out, as I suspected it would have been, that the major content of my heart is nothing but slime. Because according to that research, it says that if the person's heart is covered in slime, the person's emotion has the same responsiveness rate of a sleepy slow loris. In other words, the person's emotion is very hard to be triggered, and very slow at giving response. Imagine waking up from a nice afternoon nap and straight away had to score a Mensa test. That is how I am like when it comes to responding to something that involves the emotion. Because my body was designed in a way that the glass jar labeled 'Emotion' was kept in the top shelf. You can never reach it. It's never 'there'.
Which, predictably, supposes me to react in exactly the same way when I listened to Oneida's Rated O. Oneida has always been an interesting listen, and I suspect will forever be one because they are one of the select bunch of musician whose existence is to defy classification and genre all for the sake of the art of making music. They make music not to appeal to any specific niche or style, and because of that I have an immense respect for them. They are what I reckon should be referred to as the Renaissance man of music. They have all the music instruments and gadgets that man have invented in the world, and they put all of it to good use. They don't go for the tried and tested formula; they don't tread the known, charted path; they just simply let go and be adventurous. And inventive. Without being unpredictable and messy.
The really nice thing about this band is that they have the inventiveness, the creativity, the idea, and the means to execute all of it and yet the final product sounds remarkably civilized. Amazing stuff no doubt but it also is the beginning of a problem for me. You see, I have been listening to Oneida for four years now, spanning a number of studio releases. Not enough to warrant a scientific, thorough and intelligent study of the subject - yes. But I've listened to enough Oneida's extensive creations and there is always an invisible buffer to their stuff. It's like I can never reach to the heart of their materials.
The sole reason to the existence of artistic music I believe is to allow the listener to engage themselves, to immerse themselves in the sound, in the tune, in the craft of a song, and experience music to an entirely new height (or new depth, whichever you prefer) because like how I have always stressed before, music is a living creature. It's an existence, an entity. Music is a lonely but beautiful creature, and it longs to be touched and understood by those who enjoys its company. That's why we frequently hear how people label certain songs as 'beautiful', or 'mesmerizing', or 'heartfelt', or whateverelsehaveyou.
Oneida's music however shies itself not from just pigeonholing but also revealing its heart. It is not just content on being intelligent, but also distant. It is not just content on being smart, but also unfriendly and closed. And because of that, their music has always been smug. It is too proud of itself that it shuns other people who actually might want to get close to it. It shuns itself from other people who are genuinely attracted to its beauty. Oneida's music is, in a way, very much like my emotion: kept in a glass jar in the top shelf. It is never there, never reachable.
*One day Holiday is an unscheduled, published-whenever-I-feel-like-it column for Hafeez, a resident blogger for this blog. This column is centered mostly around music and random stuff that ranges from the coherent to the absolutely absurd.
I just received not less than a minute ago a text message from my father saying my third sister, who sat for the PMR examination this year, got all A. I can sort of imagine how proud both my parents, the person herself, and my other two sisters are feeling at the moment. I even told about it to some of my colleagues and they voiced their congratulatory joy. Perfectly understandable; perfectly appropriate. Barring me.
On Monday and Tuesday, I went for some kursus at the majestic brand new UiTM Puncak Alam campus, located somewhere in between the fringes of Shah Alam and Kuala Selangor, and Holy shit middle of nowhere. In one of the talks by the guest facilitator, he touched on the topic of classification of types of person in accordance to the majority content of the person's heart. Or something. My memory of it is a little scant. Some scientist did a research on that topic and found out that the physical content of a person's heart affects or determines the characteristic of a person. If let's say the person's heart is majority covered in blood, then that person has a lively character. Or something. My memory of it is a little scant.
I, however, found out, as I suspected it would have been, that the major content of my heart is nothing but slime. Because according to that research, it says that if the person's heart is covered in slime, the person's emotion has the same responsiveness rate of a sleepy slow loris. In other words, the person's emotion is very hard to be triggered, and very slow at giving response. Imagine waking up from a nice afternoon nap and straight away had to score a Mensa test. That is how I am like when it comes to responding to something that involves the emotion. Because my body was designed in a way that the glass jar labeled 'Emotion' was kept in the top shelf. You can never reach it. It's never 'there'.
Which, predictably, supposes me to react in exactly the same way when I listened to Oneida's Rated O. Oneida has always been an interesting listen, and I suspect will forever be one because they are one of the select bunch of musician whose existence is to defy classification and genre all for the sake of the art of making music. They make music not to appeal to any specific niche or style, and because of that I have an immense respect for them. They are what I reckon should be referred to as the Renaissance man of music. They have all the music instruments and gadgets that man have invented in the world, and they put all of it to good use. They don't go for the tried and tested formula; they don't tread the known, charted path; they just simply let go and be adventurous. And inventive. Without being unpredictable and messy.
The really nice thing about this band is that they have the inventiveness, the creativity, the idea, and the means to execute all of it and yet the final product sounds remarkably civilized. Amazing stuff no doubt but it also is the beginning of a problem for me. You see, I have been listening to Oneida for four years now, spanning a number of studio releases. Not enough to warrant a scientific, thorough and intelligent study of the subject - yes. But I've listened to enough Oneida's extensive creations and there is always an invisible buffer to their stuff. It's like I can never reach to the heart of their materials.
The sole reason to the existence of artistic music I believe is to allow the listener to engage themselves, to immerse themselves in the sound, in the tune, in the craft of a song, and experience music to an entirely new height (or new depth, whichever you prefer) because like how I have always stressed before, music is a living creature. It's an existence, an entity. Music is a lonely but beautiful creature, and it longs to be touched and understood by those who enjoys its company. That's why we frequently hear how people label certain songs as 'beautiful', or 'mesmerizing', or 'heartfelt', or whateverelsehaveyou.
Oneida's music however shies itself not from just pigeonholing but also revealing its heart. It is not just content on being intelligent, but also distant. It is not just content on being smart, but also unfriendly and closed. And because of that, their music has always been smug. It is too proud of itself that it shuns other people who actually might want to get close to it. It shuns itself from other people who are genuinely attracted to its beauty. Oneida's music is, in a way, very much like my emotion: kept in a glass jar in the top shelf. It is never there, never reachable.
Labels: oneida
posted by Hafeez at 8:23 PM
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