| 재미없어 |
[May. 17th, 2012|02:05 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  sick | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Big Bang - 재미없어 | ] |
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| Tranquil |
[May. 7th, 2012|12:58 am] |
| [ | music |
| | Kendrick Lamar - A.D.H.D. | ] |
I ended up rolling through to Hip-Hop in the Park in Berkeley with a few friends and Alyssa yesterday. After Dumbfoundead performed, there were a few cats freestyling in the park that I ended up joining up with. As a crowd formed, a familiar face that I couldn't exactly recall where I know him from joined the circle. Someone said his name and though he looked skinnier and acted far less angry than from when I had seen him before, I realized that he was Tantrum -- the Chinese-American battler who was famously owned by Dumb in this video.
Random. Though Tantrum is by no means a huge celebrity or anything, freestyling with him was simply one of those "Huh... how funny." moments, and it led to me reflecting on how hip-hop has played such a key part in shaping my life the past 2 years. It's functioned as a means to experience and be part of so much. In a way, it's acted as a replacement for the community that I've been lacking since I left church. The unity developed as soon as someone steps into a cypher and drops a few bars is incomparable. To see people from all creeds and ethnicities, people as varied as a mom holding two kids while she spits about being grateful about life to hearing big bearded Middle Easterners speaking that swagger talk has been most gratifying.
Music, mang. It's just too damn awesome. |
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| Running On Clouds |
[Apr. 10th, 2012|01:54 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  awake | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Combined snoring | ] |
I never understood people shelling out hundreds of dollars for ritzy running shoes. To a certain degree, I understand that there are traits attributed to these shoes that can make running that much more pleasant, but unless said shoes massage your feet while running to the point where you think you're gliding by on fluffy marshmallow clouds, it really baffles me when there are people out there shelling out major cashage to look fabulous while doing something as mundane and simple as running -- an activity that we have been doing for thousands upon thousands of years without the need to gird our feet with neon pink shoes.
But I've been one to dish out an inordinate amount of money for the things I believe I need. It's all about perspective and values, I suppose. |
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| Freestyle Performance |
[Apr. 3rd, 2012|11:03 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  bouncy | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Jamie Cullum | ] |
Freestyle performance at the SickSpits open mic with the freestyle group I'm part of (Oakgrove Community Cypher). I got throne off by nerves, lost my focus and ended up swearing a shitload (which kills me since I don't typically swear to much when freestyling), using fillers, and didn't take a conscious effort in switching up my flow. But it's all a learning experience to keep in mind for next time. Incredibly blessed to have such an amazing group of people to kick it at with Davis. We'll be killing more performances in the near future. |
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| EPub |
[Apr. 1st, 2012|04:22 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  contemplative | ] |
"So it is…that we can seldom help anybody. Either we don’t know what part to give or maybe we don’t like to give any part of ourselves. Then, more often than not, the part that is needed is not wanted. And even more often, we do not have the part that is needed."
~ Norman F. Maclean A River Runs Through It
Downloading a bunch of books that I will either not have enough time to read, or the more likely alternative, be lazy to muster up the effort to read through. Regardless, wonderful quotes found in the process of looking for books to download though. |
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| Detox |
[Apr. 1st, 2012|01:29 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  calm | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Ruby Ibarra | ] |
Spring break was exactly what I needed.
The last month has been a shit storm swirling with substances, finals, sleeplessness, sicknesses, and worries. Though this break was meant to be a time to kick it with friends back in the East Bay, I haven't been able to go out much (or at all, in fact), as I've been stuck at home in San Ramon because of a minor surgery that I've been having to recover from. As a result, I've just been sleeping... and that's pretty much it. But it's given me a week to get all the substances out of my system, even out my sleeping schedule, and as a whole, feel better.
Looking for sunny days and better grades upon my return. |
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| Presence |
[Mar. 23rd, 2012|05:04 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | bouncy | ] |
| [ | music |
| | I'm a Cyborg But That's Okay | ] |
Forget GD's disastrous hair for a sec, and check the way he moves. Too smooth. There's an air of that devil may care recklessness infused with calm precision and purpose. Whenever he takes the stage, fully owning every single second for what it's worth, you know he's exactly where he's meant to be.
I'd love to bring a fraction of what GD brings to the stage. My demeanor on the daily is filled with awkward mannerisms, arms that I don't know how to hold, legs that trip on level floors, and eyes that almost seem polarized in their inability to meet those of strangers. So, it's always edifying to hear from those that have heard and seen me freestyle that the attitude I bring whenever I get to spitting goes hard. However, rhyming with friends in the car, someone's room, or even a cypher circle is way different from being on stage and performing to an audience.
Macklemore was asked in an interview what it's like to perform, and to perform the same songs so frequently. I be digging his response.
"It’s a nerve wracking thing, getting up there. And it should be! It should be. You should be getting those anxious butterflies. If you’re not getting those, you’re not doing your job right. You want to walk out there thinking, 'This is exciting, this is new, who knows what’s gonna happen in this moment…' You don’t wanna go out there going, 'This is exactly what I’m gonna do, this is all laid out, I have a perfect picture of how this is gonna go.'
Everybody can rap, everyone can learn the lyrics and do a good job, but there’s relatively few people who can get on stage and really engage the crowd. How do you engage the crowd? How do you give people an experience outside of just going to another hip-hop show? I want to give people an experience where they connect with the message and the music. You have to find meaning in the words you’ve written. It’s hard, some of these songs I’ve performed hundreds of times, and how do you connect to a song you’ve performed and listened to hundreds of times? You have to look into the audience and find the people who are hearing it for the first time, or maybe the song changed their life in a small or even insignificant way. Who knows? That’s something I really strive for. That’s extremely powerful. It’s like meditation or yoga. You can be just in a certain pose and in your head be having sex off in Utah, or you can really be in the moment and breathing into it, thinking about it. That’s what makes your presence on stage."
~ Macklemore
Absolute focus and attention is where it's at. |
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| "He dead" |
[Mar. 16th, 2012|08:24 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  restless | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Kendrick Lamar - Rigamortus | ] |
Kendrick Lamar's lyricism, rhyme schemes, and flow are untouchable. |
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| Christianity |
[Mar. 15th, 2012|05:53 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | contemplative | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Depapepe - This Way (B.O.B. version) | ] |
In a recent radio interview I was sternly asked by the host, who did not consider himself a Christian, to defend Christianity. I told him that I couldn't do it, and moreover, that I didn't want to defend the term. He asked me if I was a Christian, and I told him yes. "Then why don't you want to defend Christianity?" he asked, confused. I told him I no longer knew what the term meant. Of the hundreds of thousands of people listening to his show that day, some of them had terrible experiences with Christianity; they may have been yelled at by a teacher in a Christian school, abused by a minister, or browbeaten by a Christian parent. To them, the term Christianity meant something that no Christian I know would defend. By fortifying the term, I am only making them more and more angry. I won't do it. Stop ten people on the street and ask them what they think of when they hear the word Christianity, and they will give you ten different answers. How can I defend a term that means ten different things to ten different people? I told the radio show host that I would rather talk about Jesus and how I came to believe that Jesus exists and that he likes me. The host looked back at me with tears in his eyes. When we were done, he asked me if we could go get lunch together. He told me how much he didn't like Christianity but how he had always wanted to believe Jesus was the Son of God.
~ Donald Miller Blue Like Jazz
I was perusing through some old notes of a friend and stumbled across a quote from a book I used to love. Regardless of my religious affiliation now, I can still see loads of beauty and profundity in this excerpt; I hope that regardless of your own, you can appreciate it too. |
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| Perspective |
[Mar. 13th, 2012|11:17 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  groggy | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Watsky and Mody - Mrs. Robinson (ft. Danny McClain) | ] |
A friend of mine recently texted me, asking me if I had read Norwegian Wood. I replied, telling her that I had and that it was actually one of my favorite books. In response to my inquiries as to why she was asking, she said, "The narrator reminds me of you in some ways. But not you as actually act, more like how you as you perceive yourself to be. Like, if you wrote yourself into a book, this is the guy you would write."
I remarked on how perceptive the observation was as part of the reason why I'm so fond of Norwegian Wood lies in how Murakami crafted complicated, multi-layered characters I could empathize and relate with -- particularly the protagonist. Curious about what she meant when she was talking about the division between who I am and how I perceive myself to be, she said, "Because you were too hard on yourself to suggest you had any idea who you are. So I always built my perception of you on what you did over what you said. All decent people are too hard on themselves. Leaving room for improvement gives us hope there's still a better version of ourselves to grow into."
Just tidbits of wisdom that I felt needed to be shared with all the hurting, self-deprecating people out there. Perspective shifts everything.
Whenever I sit at the back of lecture halls, I usually look around a few times during the lecture and try to see what other students are neglecting the professor for on their laptops. Usually, it's nothing too fascinating; three fourths of the people are usually either on Facebook, YouTube, or Wikipedia. Occasionally, I'll come across little tidbits on people's screens that make me smile though. For example, the guy four rows in front of me has a Koala as his wallpaper. Raw. |
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| Facebook |
[Mar. 3rd, 2012|11:53 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | contemplative | ] |
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| One of us, one of us. |
[Mar. 2nd, 2012|12:07 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  tired | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Big Bang - Fantastic Baby | ] |
"Admit it. You aren’t like them. You’re not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the “normal people” as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like “Have a nice day” and “Weather’s awful today, eh?”, you yearn inside to say forbidden things like “Tell me something that makes you cry” or “What do you think deja vu is for?”. Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others..."
- Timothy Leary |
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| Big Bang is Back |
[Feb. 29th, 2012|01:03 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | bouncy | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Big Bang - Bad Boy | ] |
The progenitors of any swag that I may possess. |
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| Butterfree |
[Feb. 28th, 2012|12:36 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | calm | ] |
I've been bitten by the performance bug.
I'm not the most confident guy. There's few things in my life that I am genuinely proud of and can call unique to myself. I have difficulty looking at strangers in the eye and most of the time I'm socializing, I would rather retreat to the comfort of privacy and pleasantly bask in my own thoughts. They are relatively comforting and familiar after all.
It's a trait I'm making effort in breaking free of but old habits die hard.
But freestyling and rap. God damn, the catharsis that comes from it. And those little triumphs that you get when you mirk a beat, come up with a fresh line, or express something genuinely beautiful and personal... those moments have been keeping me sane for the past year.
Since August 2010, I've been exploring the nuances of my voice and the limits of my musicality. It's only been in the past few months that I've really become comfortable experimenting with my voice and deviating from the voice I typically used when I first started to rap, mixing in some singing (even though I've been debilitatingly insecure about my singing for years), making moves in controlling the flow, and being comfortable with who I become when I start to rap. To quote TOP, "When I first got on stage, I saw a new side of me that I didn’t even know existed." Deep beneath this gentle looking exterior, there's a lurking beast.
Recently, I've gotten involved with a freestyle group at UC Davis that I met through an monthly open mic called SickSpits, and a few of us in the group were privileged enough to freestyle at a poetry/short story/open mic event earlier today. I don't think I've been on a stage since I was speaking at churches way back when in high school, and even then, the thrill and the prestige and thanks were never supposed to be the main reason for doing any of it.
But damn, I loved today. Though nervous, I'm looking to get into performing more regularly -- whether it be freestyling or written sets. Let those burning butterflies just add to this growing entity.
That and coffee. Coffee stokes this building inferno quite a bit too. |
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| "If I go crazy, will you still call me Superman?" |
[Feb. 16th, 2012|01:28 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | tired | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Joe Hisaishi - Howl's Moving Castle Theme | ] |
Kryptonite grounds me. Not in the "keeps me grounded and real to my roots", but grounded like Superman in the presence of it: writhing around on the ground, drained of all ability to take flight and do good.
[EDIT] 2/16/12 4:21 A.M.
I got my eyebrow pierced a few weeks ago. In an effort to procrastinate that much more from the building amount of work I need to take care of, a picture was taken.
Featured above is an extremely stressed Ryan at 4 A.M. in dire need of rest; nevertheless, still cognitive enough to stay true to being a narcissistic bastard. |
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| Music to strut to |
[Feb. 1st, 2012|02:19 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  happy | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Elliott Smith - Baby Britain | ] |
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| Wall Flower |
[Jan. 26th, 2012|10:36 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | contemplative | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Yiruma - Tears On Love | ] |
It’s difficult gravitating to being an observer in a world where interaction is usually essential to what others would measure as progress. It's an extroverted man's world, and if you refuse to acknowledge the rules as such, it's difficult to move forward. At times, there are days when I think about how content I would be if I could lean against a wall, gradually disappear into it, and watch people go by -- observing their faces and body language, listening to the conversations of those in passing, and trying to sink into the energy and vibe of others.
I’ve heard before that my appearance belies my actual demeanor. What do I look like? A hype beast? Hipster? Dancer? A frat boy? Korean pop star? I suppose I could look like any one of these things on any random day, but if you'd look closer on any of these days, you're most likely to find an awkward mess. It's stupid to think that I should jive with my appearance, but there's almost an instance of cognitive dissonance going on here, where there's the person that I feel I should be based off what is expected of me and the person that lies hidden deep beneath repressed wants and the daily disguises I wear.
I see a pretty woman smile, or a friendly nod from a passing stranger and I don't know how to acknowledge it aside from letting the mere act register. Acknowledging it anymore than that means I'm opening myself up to interactions that I'm inept in tackling... and so generally, I give a curt nod or look away.
I know to observe life from the sidelines deprives myself of being able to truly live it, but on most days, where I'm utterly confused about how to live it, simply watching brings a sense of contentment and peace.
Too cute. |
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| Ego Death |
[Jan. 22nd, 2012|04:21 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | optimistic | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Joe Hisaishi - Requiem II | ] |
Yesterday, I lost my mind. I exited my apartment to explore Davis with some choice friends, and half way through it, walking through the little paths that I navigate through on the daily, I lost touch with myself and my ability to relate to the world around me. In that extended moment of clarity, I simply existed.
At the time, it was somewhat terrifying. With a toe still partially situated back across the line I crossed, with the precepts of reality still being vaguely heard as they echoed into nothingness, the fact that I was present in public as an almost empty shell absorbing all of life in without being able to respond to it left this fear in me that soured part of the trip.
Though the peak of the day might've left me unable to truly draw any deep or meaningful conclusions about myself or "society", as Ryan became "Ryan" again, I was able to witness all of the pieces that had hours earlier vacated my being return -- leaving me with a deep clarity of who I am, how I think, and how I need to rectify areas of my life.
A big thank you to anyone that I talked to yesterday. As corny as it sounds, my interactions with all of you help prune away the weeds that are detrimental to my growth, and in their stead, plant little bits of yourselves in me. Haha, damn, that's some corny shit. But much love and I hope I can be the very things you all are to me to you and more. |
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| Ego |
[Jan. 17th, 2012|01:01 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | tired | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Jason Mraz | ] |
“Fear of criticism kills spontaneity; it prevents men from showing themselves and expressing themselves freely, as they are. Much courage is needed to paint a picture, to write a book, to erect a building designed along new architectural lines, or to formulate an independent opinion or an original idea.
Any new concept, any creation, falls foul of a host of critics. Those who criticize the most are the ones who create nothing.”
— Paul Tournier Guilt and Grace |
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