The scent (sense) of book

I have a strange foible that whenever I'm in a bookshop, I like to breathe deeply. I love that scent of books which never fails to give me a nerve-tangling joy. Of course a primitive like me also like that solid and physical feeling of a real book - how you can count the pages which you have read, how a page creases by raindrops or teardrops, how pages are all turned yellow by the passing of time.

Book rocks! (e-book, boo...)

Sound like a book-lover. No, no, far from it. I read too slow and too little (I've only read 2 books so far this year *shhhh*). But book-making-lover? Yes, yes! I found great fun in it.





My first "proper" handmade book. (as in the past, my books are too "amateur" ;p)

sometimes i still hear it singing its wild songs

and see it collecting those worthless glittering.

The solipsist

à mon cher petit Robert
Son inaltérablemen fidèle et tendre ami.

I think he looked so much like carl barat in this photo.
Oh yes, I'm bored.

Little playthings

Ha, my friends are so frenetic about rubber carving recently. It's great that they provide much motivation for me to do some, though I clearly lack the necessary patience, eyesight and steady hand. Oh the roughness, I call it my style (i'm good at euphemism). Hope my usual 3-minute enthusiasm will not die so soon.


what should i do with them?

All I need is a great big congratulations

For a pretentious person like me who proclaims her fondness for those elitist you-name-it bands, it is utterly embarrassing to admit my love for a band labelling under the genre of easy-listening. I know I should hum the gospel of cliché melancholy like "sorrow found me when I was young...", but instead I just like to soak up in a great big congratulations. Frankly, for these two months I think I have listened to this album over hundreds of times, played it at least once everyday and sometimes the first thing in the morning was to play it loud, such a fervent addiction. To reduce my guilt, I have to express my hatred for their first album. Owing to those three hit singles contained therein, I categorized their first album as one of that disgusting hedonist Ibiza club music and the band as a mere hype (yes, I can be very pompous sometimes). But that was history right now. Because of my recent fondness for their second album, I now think their first album is not that bad, or maybe it's actually quite nice.

To analyze my recent enthusiasm is that I suck young blood/am anxious to find the next boys band really feel passionate about the 60’s psychedelic music, the sound of Love/The Doors/Sergeant Pepper's (for many reasons I always believe that in my former life I was a dirty ugly hippie who died in overdose). I like their music which makes me think of trees and cloud and sunshine. I also like their clever arrangement of sounds, sometimes layers of choruses are blended together, sometimes different tunes are even blended into one song (and it is so If-on-a-winter’s-night-a-traveller, so twisted and playful and fantastic, see, I’m pretentious). Of course it is also interesting to hear the explicit reference to substance (while sung by an innocent and childish voice). Reminder: please put this album on when you consume your mushroom tea.

Look up to wikipedia, I found that they were one of line-up in 2008 Glastonbury and 2009 V Festival. Oh but I did not love them at that moment, poor timing! (err, but in both festivals their slots were coincidentally clashed with Mr Doherty, and it's impossible for me to forsake Doherty, so in all occasions it's still bad timing). For I had neglected them for quite some time, recently I have been busy in catching up on their video clips and, clearly, I've got a pistol that's aimed at my heart.


two super cute losers (not lovers, ha)





(right, don't feel surprised if I blah about any worship for a korean or japanese (even chinese?) idol, i have a shift of taste)

Hiatus

Blogging is dying. It's true. We now are all content with those 140-characters mini blogs or the status-updating in social networks. For me, blogging is like a conversation with oneself. It's so introspective and contemplative. So unhealthily sentimental. Soul searching is absolutely tiring. So we are happy to update our status in twitter or whatever platform, be it just a glimpse of thought, an exclamation, a joke or a fact, the words are so light, humdrum and trivial. I can no longer keep honest to myself or encounter my own fragility and banality. I want comfort. Let's evade.

What difference does it make?

Are the songs different from those in the album? I really need a turntable.



saw a tiny note of contribution which bears the name of Adam, oh Adam.

All the songs died in the early summer

他整夜的坐在廣場裏面
等待著他的救星出現
他也許就站在你的面前
註視著你成長的一切
這是一個沒有希望的廣場
這是一個沒有希望的廣場
這是一個沒有希望的廣場
這是一個沒有希望的廣場
廣場上曾經奔跑的青年
如今已經失去了他們的信念
而你整夜的坐在廣場裏面
等待黑夜夜吞噬你的一切
這是一個沒有希望的廣場
這是一個沒有希望的廣場
這是一個沒有希望的廣場
這是一個沒有希望的廣場


- Carsick Cars, 廣場

The disappointment in travel

The night of Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City


I didn't have any disappointment cos' I didn't have any perception, impression or imagination of this city. Actually i quite like its food, coffee and handicraft, think its narrow houses, chaotic traffic and electric wires were interesting, though was a bit fed up with the propaganda everywhere. My mum was disappointed. She spent her childhood in Saigon when it was still a French colony. Maybe we all just romanticize the things in the past so what she saw nowadays was just ruins and dust.

Maybe it was just a wrong trip.

Photo floating

Ｄo you know weeds and flowers
are actually aerials and wires
words across the oceans
through the wind, the drizzle
and the whiff of fragrant

"shh -" silence







If a photo froze a moment to eternity
and i gave my passion in this moment
when i left it on the road
would someone pick up my passion eternally?

Copy

Got that magic copy of nme but what grabbed my eyes was the gig review about Suede. A pen is of course mightier than a sword. They probably have the power to build you up and knock you down, and then build you up again?

"Suede will never lead beery sinalongs at Glastonbury. They'll never have hubristic documentaries made about their reformation. This certainly isn't for the money. It's more personal than that because, for Suede, we're all part of the gang too... Suede were and are for misfits and lovers, obsessives and fuckers. Suede were and are romantic, preposterous, glamorous, decadent, political, arrogant, and brash; everything a band should be, and so, so few are: just trash, you and me; the lovers on the street."

I wish I could be that articulate.

About the beloved likely lads, I was wrong to anticipate the interview would be as emotional as that of the Tap n' Tin reunion. Love still flowed between gaze and smile, but in a much controlled way. They are more mature now, no more outburst of uncontrolled passion, not everything must be shown in front of the cameras.

I like that peter liked the second dirty pretty album album cos' it's really an underrated good album and he did listen to the songs of his ex, i mean his ex-bandmate (or present/future bandmate?)

I don't like that carlos felt so avoidance and dismay when mentioning Anthony Rossomando, though it was surely embarrassing or even sour to mention stan in front of peter. When asked about the view of babyshambles, peter replied "I don't know about adam."

there is no fairness in all kind of relationship.

did you see the

woke up at 2:00am in the morning, just for the fading image of memories and dreams. is it the same dream? a belief/promise/mirage i keep pursuing. this is the paroxysm of my own anxiety and joy, the soliloquy of an insane in the early morning.

have a nice one

Oh pardon me sir, it's the furthest from my mind
I'm just lookin' for a dear, dear friend of mine
I'm waiting for my man
Here he comes, he's all dressed in black
Beat up shoes and a big straw hat
He's never early, he's always late
First thing you learn is you always gotta wait


waiting to see the angel/little devil again.

stupefy; stultify

I always mixed up these two words and cannot tell the difference between them, I just think they are related to tiredness, being uninspired and stupid because of boredom, haha, so they belong to me, these are my words.

I haven't ordered many films for this year International Film Festival, though many said there are too many good films for this year, I may become mature (dumb) and say goodbye to the pretentious arthouse days. The bad thing is, I didn't feel bad about it.

Tears For Fear will come to Hong Kong! Oh they were my childhood's idol (shh)! It's so obsolete and uncool to admit of your liking for anything of 80's nowadays. Haha, no, their first album The Hurting is actually cool (and Lamacq just played Pale Shelter a few days ago, so it must be good! [idiotic]). This is an album which can poison a young healthy soul, haha of course in the years to come i received more poisonous albums and comparatively it is just a mild one. My mum also wants to see them!

All the souls that would die just to feel alive

Muse @ AsiaWorld-Expo, Hong Kong 06.02.2010


Paranoia is in bloom. It's true indeed. It's already two days after but my head is still full of muse, their music and visual of that special night. In 2007, I thought their live performance was like a supermassive karaoke. In 2010, I now think their live performance was like a supermassive hypnotism. We still sang their songs from the first to the last. But this time we lost control. We pushed, jumped and danced fervently, like we were under some sort of spell. The whole evening was stunningly powerful and overwhelming. We want to shout, we want to feel, we want to memorize the grandeur. That must be the magic of music. Christopher and Dominic were excellent and had a jam session and of course, Matt Bellamy was still very charming, a guitar hero and opera singer (try hard to suppress my idiotic fangirl tone now). Songs like Uprising, Resistance and even Stockholm Syndrome may hit the nerve of Hong Kong today, but they’re just too apt for the situation.






oh, all my pictures are only matt bellamy (cos i couldn't shoot anything else from where i stood)

she talked and talked and lost

"Now you feel ashamed
but he feels nothing of the kind
he talks of things he wouldn't mind to try, sometime"

I kept humming these lyrics in the lazy afternoon. We're all shackled by whatsoever important or stupid reasons. To escape, to run, to flee, whatever word you use, it's no difference and it's useless. No one ever escape. i mean it. To make this shackled life livable or at least tolerable, we make use of belief or religions or whatever. thanks for the lazy afternoon, well...


the pet society retro setting, for real.


"arm and arm we are the harmless sociopaths
arm and arm with all the harmless sociopaths"




Andrew Bird @ Grappas Cellar, Hong Kong 27.01.2010

It's incredible that i could see Andrew Bird in Hong Kong! Year 2009 was not a great year for me and Noble Beast was there with me for passing through so many difficult times. So you know how excited I was when i got the news that he would come to Hong Kong. Since he was the only band member in the performance, he was busy in playing his violin, guitar and also recording the loops all by himself, but of course he managed it well. To talk about the show then I will just praise so I'd better keep it myself. I expected to have Armchairs (my favourite) and Darkmatter but instead i have Sweetmatter. Maybe Mr. Bird was not feeling the dark anymore. I like what he said about Imitosis, how the "capital i" lives basically alone and traps inside this mortal coil, ok he just said "this body", humm but, yeah.


Recently it's strangely co-incident that I have many meetings with old friends, the friends that i miss a lot, the friends that we keep writing to each other but seldom see, or just the friends i haven't seen for a long time. It's horrible to say that it's like a conclusion of my life, ha, anyway i won't be too sad to say goodbye to the cruel world. no no, it's not my point. i just want to say, it's so strange, only god can arrange things like this.

decade again

oh i was there ten years ago, how time flies... that's one of my most precious memory in my life.




happy new year, my friends.

i've got a sad song in my sweet heart

some words are better to keep for myself, some thoughts are better to keep inside my head, not that i am afraid that they will be read by anyone else, it's just because i do not want to acknowledge them by myself. don't want to make anything like a shout for attention a cry for help. it's my n time feeling tongue-tied in my own blog, but what is the use of a blog if one cannot say what he/she feels?

at least i will still like to list out my favourite albums of this year:

1. Album - Girls
2. Noble Beast - Andrew Bird
3. Grace/Wastelands - Peter Doherty
4. Live in London - Leonard Cohen
5. Journal for Plague Lovers - Manic Street Preachers
6. Primary Colour - The Horrors
7. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
8. Further Complications - Jarvis Cocker
9. It's Blitz - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
10. Room 7 1/2 - Dot Allison



"i was feeling so sad and alone
but i found a friend in the song that i'm singing
i was feeling like a nothing inside
then i found it all in the song
and yeah yeah yeah uh-huh
it's coming straight from my heart
and yeah yeah yeah uh-huh
i gotta let it go
and yeah yeah yeah uh-huh

man i felt like i was going nowhere
then i found my way in the song i was singing
man i felt like i could lay down and die
then i found my life in the song
and yeah yeah yeah uh-huh
it's coming straight from my heart
and yeah yeah yeah uh-huh
i gotta let it go
and yeah yeah yeah uh-huh"

darling, the last song of the album, describes the exact feeling how i feel for the album. enjoy the girls while they are still young, sensitive, honest and daring (girls the band or girls in general?) debut is always the best (hope i'm wrong).

Retail therapy

I've been looking for this set for some time and it was sold out long ago, can't believe there are so many fans of ex-government in my hometown. It finally arrives:


made in britain

Plus:

dear red post box


The fact that i only ordered 3 of them means that i still have a bit self-control, but I was still complained by my mum that my matchbox home actually does not have any spare space for the sudden arrival of three big mugs .... and, my lateness for the ordering implies that my love for them is turning cold? wish it's not true.


what a rip-off!

歸園田居

Slow Attack - Brett Anderson

Frankly speaking, I didn't like this album from my initial listening. Or maybe I was just confused. I could not figure out my feeling. This is not the usual Brett Anderson I know, a complete department from the old way. After a few listen, it grows on me. This is a winter album, maybe for these few days my hometown is chilly and grey, so I started to understand and go inside it.

I may be one of those few who really like his debut "Brett Anderson" and his second album "Wilderness", because I like Brett to be the withered diva sitting in his dark room in London, drowned in his urban alienation, mourned for his loneliness (what a cruel fan). In Slow Attack, Brett still has a whiff of melancholy, but also with a sense of contentment. Hymn almost foretells an optimistic start of the album, "the climbing sun, the fading dawn, like a hymn to London, commencing with the day", it's a new morning. Brett's voice was perfect there and it made me think of his heyday (hell day) in The 2 of Us. The optimism may be due to his new-found stability, as it implies in his credit note "For my wife". Stability does not mean boring. Wheatfield paints a vivid picture of intimacy between lovers, raging and holy, and we know Brett was hunted then. And hey, why was there no printed lyrics? Brett's lyrics in Slow Attack are so picturesque, vivid images among the lines,(with my difficulty in deciphering and then misinterpretation). "And the snow in February falls, painting winter hollow. And the fields they are empty sites and the hills are like sorrow." What a winter photograph. Gone is the optimism from the beginning, but the tone is not as bleak as the first two albums. Brett seems to accept what life has offered him, it's a muddle, but it’s meant to be, "and we were born muddled, but it was meant to be... and your sun will rise again, and your moon will fall... through the endless rage, on the frozen roads." Or there's no need for such heaviness. It makes no difference if we really try hard or just lay idle for the rest of our lives, we still will be blown away someday. Maybe we should just learn the laid-back manner of Brett in Ashes of Us "the orchid grows, in a sunny place, where I sip my tea, with a scarecrow's grace." The songs I love most in this winter album are those mentioning summer (but I don't like summer at all). Layers of strings in Summer depict a scene of snow-falling, it's like under a snow-falling sky with the northern lights, it's so cold outside but you are feeling summer inside, definitely it is a song of a loved person, it even warms the heart of an unloved person like me. The last song, Leave Me Sleeping, a song for the oblivious, cruel and blizzard the world may be, we may still close our eyes and back to the embrace of summer or, of our mother.

This is a warm album, though with series of idyllic pictures in cold winter.

(oh I found the name of Kate St John in the sleeve. yes, from the first album I already thought that Brett in solo is so much like the sound of Kate St. John, what a co-incidence!)

one day goodbye will be farewell

sitting on the ferry, my ipod popped up this song. saddness.

now i know what the colour of sallowness is. i saw how life oozed out of you. sympathy or indiffence is both evil. there is no apt attitude. don't want to recall how you suffered. don't want to think how you spent your humble life.

until gravity feels sorry for you, and lets you go.

And you are free now. Flies to the light. Peace be with you.

being towards death

26th October 2009, the formal death of my own personal website. Its creation was a pure impulse after seeing the gigs of The Libertines in 2003 for the first time in my life. it's a tsunami, i mean, head over heels, in-your-face, no escape. Strange band, strange trip, strange people, but no danger. Felt like something changed, or part of my soul just left in london for good. With a strong urge to record the feeling (cos' i'm in love with the feeling), i learnt the simple html and made a simple website, to put down my own soliloquy (i.e. fangirl's rambling). I never have the heart to carry on anything constantly so the site was soon deserted, but it marks the history.


The front page:



the innocence and the perverse the demon and the angel the blessed the damned the cripple and the freak:



"drifting about in ice shambles, but all the warm people...":



I intended to write something about my favourite verse regularly, as sort of daily sport, but i just couldn't keep the promise:



Or maybe some random thoughts, comments, complaints, whatever... my beloved morrissey, take care! My review of his You Are The Quarry, of course (as usual) a page of praise:



Actually, Yahoo! has killed my web much earlier than the official deadline. With some unknown reason i couldn't view my uploaded photos since a long time ago, i love those pages but they were murdered without cause and notice:





As the owner of the site only has this mortal coil, the site itself of course will also be perished someday. It's just an illusion that we think the things online will stay 'til the end of time.

With years go by i feel my rationality gradually returns, or sadly i was submitted to reality once again. Has my love for the very band died a little? I don't know. I hope not. I don't want to see them reunion. I want to see them reunion.

mature words

what the heck is that? i just stumbled into a blog which contains the following mysterious link:

http://usokomaker.com/yoji/

it seems fun, though i don't know the exact japanese meaning.

kitty will be:

haha, i definitely do not go to bed early (but i won't object to the latter part, haha, shameless!)

my chinese name "__和" will be:

what? but it confirms that i really am a "pretty"? haha let's vomit!!!!!

my chinese name "鄧__" in english:

so it means i have this ability or not?

my usual name "kitty tang":

that explains why i always live in poverty.

and my online name "kittyshambles":

oh i love it most!!! yes, i do come from Planet Sensitivity.

Always, always, always the sea

British Sea Power @ Grappa's Cellar, Hong Kong 10.10.2009


I must say, the gig was unexpectedly good! Not really a fan of BSP, though their anthemic guitar is always my cup of tea and, after the gig, I think I may become a real fan, at least I really want to see their gig again.

The show was opened by The Yours. That was the first time I watched their show, though I longed to see them since 2006. I always had some sort of urgent matters that I couldn't attend their shows. Destiny delays our encounter. Anyway, they were as cool as I thought, in terms of the music and the look, but I was disturbed once again and couldn't see their whole set, fate!



The Yours

Then it was British Sea Power. Dress code of the Wilkinson bros was quite "unique", no shoes on, Hamilton with an overtly camp sleeveless top and Yan with a suffocated scarf in a room of insufficient air con. It all became insignificant when the music started. Powerful and anthemic, these are the right words to describe the music but not quite the exact words for the atmosphere. Err... yes, RAPTURE! Everyone was rapturous, for those on stage and those under... Noble not only played on the stage or up on the amplifier, he even jumped down the stage and played with the crowd. Mosh pit was dangerous, but we all were hypnotized, pushed your body, shook your head, continuous stage-diving, it's a mysterious ritual. Only when the barrier between the performers and the audience disappears, music becomes real alive and that's what live performance is about.


Yan tried the breakdance


What a Noble man


Yes, i always like this sort of scene


"throw him off!"


pornography


all bands come from rough trade must make this pose

Every poet is a fool

err, what can i say? Best wishes for someone, whether that AWOL was because of health problem or not.

I'm thinking about history

This is where i lived when i was a child. This is where when i dreamt about going home, i would go back there, and get lost. It is full of trees, songs of birds, sound of waterfall. Blue skies and daisy, daydreaming in classroom, hi-fi's volume competition, this is what my childhood like, of course also with nervousness and anxiety. My childhood's home will be demolished soon at the end of this year, leave in silence.






cherry house, so uk estate, my childhood's home

hay-on-wye

That is my ideal place for retirement. If I have loads of money, I really like to buy a house in Hay. It's a small town with no train connection, but its remoteness also sets a good vibe for this town of books, isolated, far from the madding crowd, with only second-hand, mouldy and dusty books. Old books always give a strange kind of charm, travelled far in terms of time and space, they always have their own story to be told, besides the stories written within. I like to think about the identity of the original owner, where the book came from, the number of different owner in-between... did it come from a personal library of a book collector, or was it just part of the domestic decoration of a pretentious snob? It is like a mysterious thread connecting different people, or even different centuries. Like those lending records attached to the books of public libraries, I always feel intrigued by the previous readers. I've bought a small book of poetry of lord bryon. All pages were yellowed and the cover was creepily stained by human touch. This book must have been loved by its previous owner(s). I can almost feel the fanatical savour of this person to the book. Another book I've bought, charles lamb's essays of elia, it looks brand new though it was published in the early 20th Century. It must be placed on the shelf for a long time as "decoration" only. I hope I will give the books the respect they deserve by reading them sometimes, though I am afraid (and pretty sure) that the books in my house generally are also becoming part of the fixtures and fittings only, I read too slow. Sorry, books.

solitude standing

I love those antique streetlamps in UK, elegance, solitude. No matter it's a peaceful night or a market full of hustle and bustle, they never fail to romanticise. They made me think of the lamplighter in the little prince. "A beautiful occupation", according to what the prince said, because whenever he lights a lamp, he adds one more star to the sky.




because they are beautiful, they must be useful.


We used to have them in the colonial past but in the name of modernisation they were all swept away.

"but then, he's very charming, and very, very sweet"

so i gave him two kissy kissy.




Must have item for every fan.

ambivalent

of course i really like to have this chair, but also feel much distaste for the overt commercialisation of this person, not his fault, our fault.



anyone will really sit on it? to imagine that he's around you? no, i won't (because i can't eat, drink or fart(!) on this chair)