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For the first time on my blog, an album review=D
Album: This Delicate Thing We’ve Made Artist: Darren Hayes Release Date: 20th August 2007 Number of Tracks: 25
Album cover
Alright people, I’ll be straight up and honest from the start-I love Darren Hayes. Seriously, I love his music, the way he shows off his natural talents, and his enigmatic style. I have followed him since he first launched his solo career with the Spin album; I sacrificed a week’s pocket money in Form 4 so I could buy his sophomore album, The Tension and the Spark. I was just about to go on a sailing trip to Indonesia at the time, and I listened to the album the moment my journey began-by the time I got back I’d memorized all the songs. Lots of people have laughed at me for liking Darren Hayes, calling me lame and saying that I possess a weird taste for music; I digress however.
The former frontman of Savage Garden’s latest effort is a double disc album entitled This Delicate Thing We’ve Made; personally, my biggest concern was that he would not be able to match the stellar heights created by The Tension and the Spark. In a way however, he did.
But in a few other aspects, he didn’t. So is it as good?
The moment you pop in the CD, it is evident that Mr Hayes has changed his sound completely. The album opens with the very different A Fear of Falling Under, a simple track which takes a full minute to build up, all the while creating an atmosphere that we have never seen before in Darren Hayes’ previous works. The track then segues smoothly into Who Would Have Thought? which was incidentally one of the teaser songs for the album. As I said, things have changed-we now have a air of questioning, mystical sounds and an all-round theme of imagination versus comprehension. This idea is extended by certain recurrent themes in the songs; Mr Hayes is questioning nature, commenting on the current state of world affairs, examining quantum physics, even challenging God in some respects. The tracks A Conversation With God, Bombs Up In My Face and How To Build A Time Machine are among the fore-runners of this theme.Once again, Hayes does not fail to amaze us with his breathtaking voice control and talent; check out the falsettos on I Just Want You To Love Me and the raw power of the ballad Words; or even the steady pitches of Casey. It is tracks like these which powerfully remind us of who he is and what he has achieved. However, beyond the amazing talent lie a few unseen foes which sadly harm the album in some ways.
One of the problems here is quantity. Yes quantity-there are too many songs, and to be honest very few really stand out like how Dublin Sky did for The Tension and the Spark or Insatiable for Spin. This is not to say that there aren’t any gems in this album-there are, but only if you care to look hard enough. In my humble opinion, some tracks could have been simply left out, and the cohesiveness of the album will be that much better; a song that frequently comes to mind is the tepid Walk Away, which sounds like nothing more than poetry being sung. And bad poetry at that.
In extension, the fact that Darren Hayes is maturing as an artist does not escape our notice-the downside to this is that the songs which tackle issues-such as AIDS and the modern lack of love-sound like they are abandoned AIDS patients themselves. To me, the problem lies in the lyrics and the lack of real earth-changing power in the songs themselves which in turn makes for dynamic songwriting and enjoyment. A song of worldly lamentation eg. The Great Big Disconnect is fine, but turn on the melodic turbines if you don’t mind.
In terms of lyrics, no REAL standouts like those in the 2001 song Heart Attack; no hidden innuendos like those in Insatiable and no Dublin Sky-esque style of writing. Not bad as a whole, but I don’t find myself rewinding back just to check out what Hayes has just sung. The plus side is that most of the songs are very listenable, and that they make fairly good entertainment-which is what they should be all about.
Reading other reviews of the album, I note that there is a fairly healthy debate as to whether the techno-themed Bombs Up In My Face is one helluva tune or a lame attempt at a rhythm. For the uninitiated, the aforementioned song is one weird track that revolves on digital voices sliced apart by falsetto bursts and funky beats; one contemporary reviewer commented that if you heard it randomly “you couldn’t guess who was singing in a thousand years“. Lol, I’d agree with that. However, personally, I like the song >.<
Yes I’m dropping the bombshell (pardon the pun): I like Bombs Up In My Face!!!
Overall, not as good as The Tension and the Spark, which isn’t really a bad thing, as seeing that the former was a masterpiece. But the nagging feeling that if about ten songs were removed the album would be altogether better off kinda bugs me. Go get it if you’re a Darren Hayes fan, or someone just looking to try something new.
Selected Tracks: Step Into The Light, Who Would Have Thought?, I Just Want You To Love Me (AWESOME vocals), Words (love this one), Neverland, Me Myself (and I) and uh…Bombs Up In My Face.
Duds: On The Verge of Something Wonderful (ironically the first single =.=”), Walk Away, A Fear of Falling Under, The Only One.
FINAL SCORE: 77% (for your reference I thought MCR’s The Black Parade was near perfect, and I’m giving it a 90%; Jojo’s The High Road was lame and it gets a 53%)
Can someone please Step Into The Light!?!
I wish a million Atifs read my blog everyday so I can finally hear criticism on my latest work-Like Toy Soldiers; parts of which can be seen in the posts “Entah, tetiber jer” and “Step Into The Light“. I don’t wanna sound lame and desperate, but I am…so no news there=(
*clenches fists and brings forearms close together a la Keanu Reeves in Constantine*
Into the light I command thee!!!!!
Yesterday was a blast!!! I went to Carleton University-which is also located in Ottawa-for the day; and no I did not go there for the view lol! I went for a DEBATE TRAINING SESSION woohoo!!
I joined the University of Ottawa English Debating Society (EDS) back in my second week on campus; since then I have had the opportunity to get to know a whole bunch of Canadian debaters, novice and seasoned ones both and I must say it IS a change from my RMC Debate Team days. And yes the TUC 1 days too Atif. Don’t get me wrong, they were great fun but it is nice to actually get a hands-on view of real university debating for the very first time.
On the EDS first; believe it or not, it is almost as old as the university in which it was founded lol. And no that’s no small number as seeing the university itself will be 160 years old next annum @.@ Anyway, the EDS was founded in 1880 (yes it’s seen a HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SEVEN WINTERS >.<) and it is in charge of all English related debate matters in the university. It was formerly known as EDS-SDF, the SDF denoting the French Debating Society. The SDF has since separated from the main body, thus causing the original society to be known as the EDS. The EDS is also the organization which founded the SFUO-Student Federation of the University of Ottawa-and the university paper, The Fulcrum. Due to its huge role in influencing the university to develop into the way it is today, the EDS has been given a special status and is NOT listed as a club in the university’s list of student clubs and teams-it apparently is a society onto itself. Cool huh?=)
The EDS, along with the Carleton University Debating Society organized a one day joint training session at the Carleton University campus yesterday. The trainers were the senior debaters from both clubs-which included former North American champions and people who have broken into the knockouts at Worlds-coupled with, wait for it:
Erik Labelle Eastaugh and Michael Kotrly. No idea who they are? Erik is an alumni of the University of Ottawa, World Universities Debating Champion 2005; Michael Kotrly is from the University of Toronto, Hart House-even the mention of Hart House should get your spine tingling by the way-and he was Worlds Champion back when it was held in Dublin in 2006=D
From left: Michael Kotrly and Erik Eastaugh
Cool right? The day began with a briefing by the former World Champions, providing background on BP debating and giving hints and strategies; also sharing some stories-Erik spoke about how in 2005, when he partnered Jamie Furniss to win Worlds (it was in MMU Malaysia by the way) they nearly lost in the octofinals because they were sleepy and probably had too much to drink the night before lol!! The other senior debaters chipped in from time-to-time, and their contribution was marvellous as well.
There were two rounds of debate after the seminar, with around sixteen teams from Carleton and the University of Ottawa participating. We were ranked after every round, and Erik Eastaugh and Michael Kotrly, along with the other seniors would act as judges for the debate-too bad I didn’t get any of the World Champions as one of the judges for my round=( It would have been AWESOME to have them evaluate you methinks. My matchups and results are below, and for easy viewing I am naming my team “University of Ottawa Z”:
ROUND 1: THW Deny Prisoners The Vote OG-University of Ottawa A (3rd) OO-University of Ottawa Z (2nd) CG-Carleton University A (4th) CO-University of Ottawa B (1st) ROUND 2: THBT The United States Should Provide Amnesty To Illegal Immigrants OG-University of Ottawa Z (1st) OO-Carleton University B (4th) CG-University of Ottawa B (2nd) CO-University of Ottawa C (3rd)Second place and a win…not bad=) I partnered Brett, a Political Science student from the University of Ottawa, and I gotta take my hat off to him because although he admitted he had not debated since grade 10-that’s like our Form 4-he was great, defending our points effectively and with brilliant ideas, especially in the round where we won.
The training session was enlightening for me because it finally gave me the motivation I needed to do something I had been planning to do for a long time: totally change my debating style. Some of you who are reading this blog may be familiar with seeing me debate, having went up against me or giving me the privilege of partnering you at some point in my career; thus you should all know by now that I tend to be aggressive, fiery, focus on case construction, and above all fast as hell >.< Thus earning my moniker The Fast and The Furious =.=”
I want to change that now. Admittedly, the former style has served me very well-PPM Finalist twice, HELP Champion, best speaker awards at times…even helped me break at NHSD lol-but I feel it has since degraded and has effectively outlived its usefulness. This is partially because I no longer partner Mohd Asyraf bin Mohd Sani Ng of RMC 1-my favourite Prime Minister of all time-whose case set ups are very well suited to my style, but it is mostly because the kinks in the style have evolved into harmful issues: repetition, swallowing of words, and is getting blander and unattractive.
Yeah the time has come. One of the University of Ottawa seniors spoke to me after my round and recommended that I adjust my speed and fix some gaping holes I always had…I did that in my second round and in his opinion, this round which he had judged again was a lot better. So I’m going to do one better sir-I’m changing my style completely. Therefore I have never debated before, I have no idea how to win, and I want to learn all over again.
I am looking for a style that is the voice of reason. Steady, well-paced, inventive, quick off the mark, allows for ample changes in mood, analytical and compensates for my natural weaknesses i.e voice power and shortcomings of language. I look to adopt the Western style of debating that is more conserved in the hope that I can merge it with the Malaysian fire that I brought here; not just to help me be a better debater, but a better speaker,one who is adept at making others around him comfortable. And I ask for your help in the coming days-help me change-as this process will take quite a while.
As Nathan, one of my debate colleagues in the University of Ottawa,would say about my intent:
“Now I have two words for all of you to signify the intent of this side of the house from this point onwards-’Forwards, not backwards!!!’“
THIS DARK DOESN’T BLIND YOU:
TRIUMVIRATE 2:
Around, it transpired, did not materialize for about another two weeks. I was already caught up full-swing in the hectic life of a college student, and barely had enough time to put my extra change in my piggy bank, let alone head down to the bottom of the garden to watch what Jadon might be up to.
And truth be told, at times I felt like I did not want to, for apprehension of what I might witness. I know that I sometimes appear to be a bit on the relaxed side; a tad too lackadaisical. I was introduced to a new word to describe this uncanny adjective way back in my first week at high school – my school master called me complacent. A very convenient term to describe an attitude kink that leads top athletes to slow down on their training, take a breather, and then chew their nails in pantomime horror when they finally look up and realize their world mark has been beaten five times over. Complacent…a soft term; sort of removes the vile sting of ignorant and the jarring effect of oblivious, I muse sometimes. Interesting that the sound of a word should describe its meaning so aptly; almost ironic.
“It’s ironic of how it is almost always the most untouchable of people, the least corruptible forms of civilization which are always the first to fall.”
I was sitting in Jadon’s sandbox again, knees drawn to my chest, my arms hugging them in turn. In front of me stood Jadon, striding up and down his play field; one whom incidentally complacency failed to taint – a colossal figure whose word was law. I had been there a full ten minutes now. Above us the Saturday afternoon sun slowly climbed into the sky; gentle shadows were lifted onto the sandbox and the soft daylight wove its way to where the two of us sat.
I peered at Jadon behind the edges of my Psychology textbook. “Like Rome?” I asked, speaking directly to his back.
The funny young lad did not answer straightaway, busying himself with his toy contraptions, his back still to me. Today the contents of his sand box had taken the form of a castle overlooking a small channel of sand. Jadon had told me it was supposed to be a strait – the busiest and most polluted one in the world apparently. The channel was now filled with paper ships and cardboard replicas of gunboats. Some of them were torn – moments earlier he had had played at bringing a full scale invasion down on the castle, complete with examples of damage for some extra realism. Now he got to his feet and walked over to the rows of action figures beside him.
“It’s always the same way – inner corruption, traitors from the inside – ” with his right hand Jadon picked up a clay figurine donning a oblong shaped crest from the castle’s balcony “- weak leaders abusing their position of power.” His free hand fingered a gray wristband just below the sleeve of the faded t-shirt he was wearing.
Suddenly I was powerfully reminded of my class monitor back in the fourth form who had used the sizeable clout available to him to remove the names of his cohorts from the list of classmates to be disciplined. Then I realized that I had never seen it happen in any of my lower grades before. Suddenly I was filled with a whole new feeling of respect for the boy in front of me; or more precisely, for his youth and the lack of bias that came with it.
I gave a small chuckle, somehow feeling more relaxed than I really felt each time I was in the boy’s company. “Go easy on them Jadon, they’re just toys,” I teased.
Jadon nodded. “But they’re like real people,” he added a moment later, almost as an afterthought.
I hefted my Psychology textbook again and leant back against a stack of old wooden crates. “You have fun okay? Tell me if you do something interesting.”
The afternoon wore on steadily. Jadon worked silently on his playset. It was a very still day, and the Ditch was deafeningly quiet even by its own sorry standards. Once a dog yelped twice somewhere in the settlement and it was abruptly muted, as if ordered silent by some supreme being. As the thick of the evening approached, grey clouds began to swell together just over the horizon, slowly casting a dim shroud over the plains behind the Mayak factory. I lowered my tome and set it down, suddenly realizing that even the black iron horse in the distance was unusually lethargic today. The deathly quiet before a rainstorm was clearly settling in now, and the humidity in the air rose as the swelling nimbuses drew closer.
I checked my watch, having done with all pleasant things in the Psychology textbook. The hand of time rested on the half hour mark. In the distance I heard a soft whistle and somewhere behind the Ditch’s bleak dust a young child let out a cry.
Above, the clouds’ cavalry had arrived; there was the unmistakable sound of thunder.
Then with a lurch the dark blue army came forwards, screaming a unified curse to some unknown god. On the other side of the plain the red army began to march forwards as well, their summons undefeated in intensity.
In front of me the two armies clashed on the barren battlefield. Screams of agony and yells of frustration split the terrific din. The thunder sounded again, and the number of men who had fallen began to number in the hundreds. The enraged blue army hacked away senselessly, not seeming to care if their furious blows struck one of their own. The redcoats in turn fought in a more orderly fashion, but there are times when even the best military formations cannot overcome pure numbers and human desire.
There was a loud trumpet call and an entire battalion of cavalry stormed out from behind the blue army. The red militia was mowed down, leaving the path to the castle behind them clear – it was a complete rout. A single dragoon detached himself from the head of his convoy and made a circle – a complete revolution – around his men and raised his sword, screaming them upwards and onwards.
Victory was near. The once mighty redcoats fell aside, well and truly beaten. Stragglers fled the field of war, only surviving for as long as it took for the dragoons to catch up with them and mow them down where they stood.. Thunder sounded one final time, but to signal victory.
A bell rang. Once, twice, thrice…and on the seventh blow, it cracked.
But no matter, it had served its purpose – the birth of a nation founded on one of the bloodiest revolts was complete -
“The world beware,” voiced Jadon. His eyes had the bright light of a boy who had just finished commanding his troops to an imaginary war victory. Around him lay most of his spent toy soldiers, red and blue both. Now the long-standing castle was inhabited by three infantry painted a complete blue; Jadon had them stand on the balustrade and overlook the field of carnage through which they had just passed.
The puppet master then sat, drawing a paper boat towards him. It was larger than its brethren which now lay ripped and overturned in a heap nearby; I saw that this ship was different from the others in one other way – it had a particularly well-sized toy soldier in its alcove.
I watched the labour-powered paper ship glide over the sand and towards the conquered castle. The play figure in it was lifted out and erected in the sand, facing the body of sand which its transport had used to traverse across earlier.
Suddenly I understood. “It’s a token of friendship,” I said, half to myself.
Jadon had heard. His magnificent head inclined in my direction and a small smile eked out an existence on his face.
Then slowly he turned the erect army man around, and made it face the castle. His small forefinger pushed down hard on the toy’s neck. The plastic construct was not pliant, and I imagined numerous toy sinews creaking, screaming with silent protest with the strain of the bow, and the pain of being made to obey -
“The fresh new hope for mankind – ,” began Jadon, “- started off on the wrong foot”. He reached out for the small group of clay figurines which had featured in his previous scenarios and assigned one to each of the soil shacks he had rebuilt that evening. To every attachment a blue toy was delegated along as well. Soon an entire row of shacks were populated with a black clay figurine and a blue military counterpart.
I noticed for the very first time that each of the clay figurines were moulded in a way so that none of them were taller than their blue masters.
Jadon spent the next five minutes interswitching the clay figures with each shack. Occasionally he would fish out a toy animal from the pocket of his shorts and add it to the bartering process that was going on. As he played, his brow furrowed in concentration, his mind contemplating some unknown dilemma.
Looking up, I realized that the storm was almost over the Ditch now. A pack of crows flew over the Ditch in the direction of where the wind was blowing, desperately trying to delay their comeuppance catching up with them; completely blind to their pointless art of fabrication.
Beside me Jadon’s human trade was at an end. Doubtless some powerful and well-meaning government administration had read some act that put a stop to it, judging by the way the boy was mimicking the subsequent public support. The castle now sported extra sand battlements; an entire row of toy soldiers – presumably makeshift civilians – were lined up in front of it.
Goddammit the boy was speaking to himself again.
I forced myself to listen:
“- and so you go stronger and stronger, and then time you are a global superpower; ironically something which was not one of your initial goals.” Jadon stood up – he was getting agitated, totally mired into his play; they were fused together, the evening game and him, no one could tell where one of them began and where the other ended – he was both judge and jury, and convicted prisoner all at once.
“You take part in wars, however unnecessarily – ” Jadon fingered the gold star on the red lapel he was wearing on his t-shirt “- such arrogance.” He said the word like it was a curse; a vile cancer that mutates and consumes all, no matter what one did against it. He strode around to the rear of the castle to examine the row of toy cannons he had placed there; he picked one up and looked at it hard.
“Refusing to back down no matter what; unrelenting, unkind, an unnecessary ego in this world,” he muttered, striding up and down the aisle of toy cannons. Jadon glared down at the guns which aimed far and away at some enemy too far to see. “Of this world, in hindsight,” he spat. Another agitated revolution; a part of the castle was kicked away in disgust.
“And you fail to be humane when it matters the most; so what if you have the bigger stuff – does it mean those under you have the better heart?!” Jadon took another enraged step, and then whirled around, ready to provide judgment.
“You disgust me.”
I imagined the multiple gun barrels firing at their manipulator in loud protest, and the entire battalion of grouped civilians below screamed in denial – that is not who we are, that is not what we are, this is not how we are!
“And this is what I think of you!” Jadon screamed the last word and kicked the entire row of toy guns away as hard as he could. Then he ran over to the front of the castle and threw the platoon of toys away; just picked them up and hurled them to the ground. Then he turned his attention on the bowed statue and it went down quick enough, having been dealt a cruel blow. Jadon’s rage had consumed him completely and turned him into something entirely different. His curls, always shimmering, now seemed to blaze in the fading light.
Evidently the shock I was feeling at witnessing his actions had shown in my face, because when he chose to look up and then glimpsed my features, his rage vanished like a fey spirit with the coming of dawn. A fey spirit that could disarm and evaluate you down to the core, I reminded myself.
And suddenly he was a little boy again, a child standing in the middle of a destroyed sandbox, half-scared by what he had done and totally lost in its confusion. We were strangely silent for a moment, the pair of us; neither dared to speak lest we broke the holy vigil of apathy. I began to walk towards him, wanting to say that it was all okay, but the boy took a step back and I stopped dead in my tracks. Jadon stared at his hands and then looked up at me, willing any one of us to say something, but our ability to speak had both been denied bail.
Somehow he managed it first. “I’ve had enough of playing today,” he croaked. “I’m going home.”
And he ran out of the garden, sprinting down the dusty lane.
I watched him go for a moment, believing it to be a lost cause, at least for now. I bent down and picked up my textbook. By the time I got my upper half back up, the road was Jadon-free.
Up above my head the drums of war rolled again, and I scurried into my house.
But the clouds would not burst on Little Ditch that day – after all, they were busy chasing a pack of crows.
* * *
Dinner that night had an unusually sordid atmosphere even before any of us had sat down at the table, and from the moment Mum came in from the kitchen holding the bowl of chicken casserole she had made I knew that something was terribly wrong. Grace sensed it too, and we looked at each other, silently asking each other for answers which neither of us could provide.
I decided to wait for it, and tried to use the way Mum was biting her lip as she served us all as a yardstick of the damage that was lurking unseen. Dad was rather diminished too; he ran his around the rim of his plate and almost sighed. Mum finished doling out the chicken and sat down beside Dad, just opposite to Grace and I.
“Go on, eat up,” said Mum in a slightly downtrodden tone. She reached down for her spoon and fork; I was about the follow her example when Dad suddenly caught her arm.
“I think we should let them know first.” Mum nodded but remained silent.
Dad raised his head and looked at the both of us. His sorry brown eyes looked gently, almost fearfully at Grace and I.”I’m sorry to have to tell you all of this; ordinarily I wouldn’t have, but I believe that both of you are young adults now and should be able to face the truth -
“My company’s factory was impeached this morning by a rival corporation. They called into doubt the Mayak plant’s adherence to about a dozen environmental and worker safety regulations -”
I looked down at my plate. If that was what happened then there was only one sure way out.
” – unfortunately they were all true and painfully accurate…we can only guess that there was some insider at work – Mayak was never famous for it’s employees’ wages…but that’s beside the point.” Dad looked at me straight in the face. “The local law enforcers have closed the plant down pending further investigations, but it’s safe to predict that in all likelihood the factory is going to be shut down and we’re going to have to move back out.” Dad’s face took on the air of someone who has heard the bad news a dozen time but has not yet managed to remove the brunt of the blow.
Grace stood up, and her face was livid. “What?!” she shouted. “We’re going to have to move out again? Again?!”
I grabbed my sister’s hand roughly and yanked her down none to gently, forcing her to fall back into her seat. She turned to me, eyes blazing, and ready to retort with the loudest she could manage; but I got there first. “Shut up Grace!” I yelled at her – the shock of the news and my indignation at watching my sister let loose her anger – knowing that it was exactly what I felt like doing – had blown away the cool head I was feigning. “It’s not confirmed okay, cool it!”
“You expect me to shut up and listen?” Grace half-shouted back. “We’ve moved a dozen times across the country in the past two years – have you any idea what it’s been like for me? Having to start all over at school again and again?”
I opened my mouth to curse, and retort loudly that it was not easy for any of us – a pathetic imitation of a selfless argument as I was already angry at my parents myself – but Dad spoke up and silenced us all; it was not the words he said, instead it was how he said it that made the two of us stop yelling. Dad’s voice was barely more than a whisper, and if I had not seen his lips move out of the corner of my eye I would not have even believed that he was speaking.
“Please, stop.”
I turned to look at him. To my eternal regret I realized that tears were rolling down his face. Not the small tears that mask the features of funeral-goers when the coffin is lowered down into the earth, but the very real droplets of a man who had just been defeated for the umpteenth time, and realizes that even what little that has been left to him is about to be torn away. I could not bear to see my father in this state; I gripped my chair and looked down – up until then I had not realized that I was standing.
Beside me Grace fidgeted uncomfortably in her seat.
The entire table was unbearably silent. My Mum spoke for what seemed like the first time in ages. “Michael, won’t you sit down?”
I forced a small nod and sat down, not daring to even look up. The deafening silence carried on, shattering eardrums and reaching infinitesimal values of decibels. In front of me, Dad continued sobbing gently; Mum had put her arm around him and was squeezing his shoulder gently.
Grace spoke up, perhaps anxious to make up for her outburst of self-agony, “When will we know the results of the inquiry Dad?” She spoke the last word gently, displaying the mutual fear that we all had for the fragility of mind that the sobbing sole provider possessed.
“In about a week,” Mum answered.
The provision of the time frame set everything in perspective for me. This was it – no more Little Ditch, no more weekly trips to the city college I was enjoying so much; I would have to say goodbye to Jadon. Would he keep up his simulation of reality after I was gone? Maybe predict unimaginable circumstances for his little world? I looked up, not wanting to create more mental smoke and mirrors.
Dad had gotten a slight grip on himself. Gently but firmly he removed Mum’s hand from his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry it turned out this way.”
“It’s okay Dad,” I said quickly – too much so as I attempted to get Grace to mirror my remorse, which she thankfully did.
Dad looked at Grace and me. Slowly I felt a burning shame at my anger and had to look down, wishing I was someplace else. Suddenly, I felt a hand grasp mine; a slight shudder from Grace told me she was experiencing the same sensation as well. Dad had taken hold of both our wrists and was now speaking to us – all of us – softly.
“Promise me we’ll all stay together, no matter what happens….we’re all what each other’s got…we are not rich, and this is all I can provide for the both of you…promise me.”
I could tell by Dad’s voice that tears were rolling down his face again. I continued looking down and pretending indifference; I listened to his tearful sorrows for a while, lending my sympathies to a plight that was not really mine, knowing confidently that it was just something that I was inconveniently part of.
Then I realized the sound of the sadness that I was so attentively listening to was in fact ours.
THE LIGHT ENDS.
PS-As always, comments are most appreciated.
PPS-Btw Atif, there’s an allusion in here that you should get; you really should…seeing that it was you who reminded me of the title of the original work=)
“If I have understood correctly, velocity equals the distance travelled, divided by time.”
So sings Darren Hayes on one of the songs in his latest album, the title of which is shared by this post.
I don’t think he has understood correctly…do you?=)
I hate it when I can’t write as often as I would like. Sigh.
Like Toy Soldiers is on an indefinite sabbatical (kinda definite actually-the timeline is from “NOW” until to “WHEN I GET MY FRIGGIN’ HOMEWORK, LABS AND ASSIGNMENTS DONE!!!“)
Argh, but it’s so long ago since the first excerpt of the story, I wonder if anyone actually remembers what the story was all about. And I wonder if anyone actually cares lol >.< Does anyone even remember? Hands up if you do…Atif, put yours down-you’re not counted because you’re a constant; a constant that should not interfere in the results of an experiment. Go and get dimalarkan lol=p
Anyway, just in case none of you peeps remember (or even know) what I am blabbing about, here’s a refresher course: Like Toy Soldiers is the working title for my half-finished, possibly over-ambitious latest work of fiction. It’s aims are simple: push the author’s boundaries of writing, incorporate the knowledge he gained in English 4U of the Taylor’s University College ICPU course, and share with the world an opinion that said author has had for a long time…
The short story is approximately half-way in completion, is indefinite in most parts, and is meant to be a simple collage of our times and the events that have governed those times into being. I repeat, none of it is final, but all of it is what I have worked very hard at, and is something for which I would very much appreciate criticism and pointers, regardless of the source. It has Easter eggs and numerous allusions to symbolic literature, which is aimed at strengthening the core of my message and to solidify the concrete-ness of the writing. I may have failed, but it is by all means an honest attempt.
So that is Like Toy Soldiers - a personal work, and more importantly, my way of penning down the uniqueness of the human spirit on a personal and holistic fashion. Thus ends my brief on my upcoming short story. Now do you remember what the original excerpt was?
What about now?
And now?
To help refresh your memory, here is the Antebellum section of the story – it has been updated – and the first part of the Triumvirate.
ANTEBELLUM:
The roads of a city have no real beginning. They just appear, widening out of the narrow dirt roads that form the crux of small towns and estates before plunging and twisting away into the depths of the concrete forest, almost like the very intestines of the monster that many call the urban nightmare.
And almost as quickly as they arrive, they begin to depart, branching out into the darkness, far and away from the many electric eyes of the thing behind it. Tentacle-like they spread across plains and arid landscapes, some heading into the countryside, mercifully fleeing the dust and smoke that give an eerie life to the snoozing fiend behind it. Others turn out to be mere blood vessels, connecting one metropolis to another.
This one unnameable city has such roads, each as bland and dusty as the next; filthy stereotypes. The city itself is out of a book on being generic – it is straddled between two smaller metropolises; its skyscrapers tower over them like monoliths, and the shadows they cast reduce many places to mere slums where the light cannot reach.
But halfway between the two largest concrete blocks of this city, a sidestreet suddenly branches out from the main canal and streams steadily towards the edge of town. After a while you perceive that as it progresses, the city does the reverse. When seated in a car traveling down this road less taken, one can easily notice the dilapidated old buildings replacing the shiny new city blocks; dirt grey pavements slowly giving ground to vandalized alleyways. The metal jungle takes a while to clear, but when it does God shows you the town which locals call Little Ditch.
The Ditch is located on a plain which register the colour brown to one’s oculars at all times, even if you looked at it from the windows of one of the city’s smog-blanketed skyscrapers, hundreds of feet up in the air. This plain stretches for at least twenty miles before the nearest city breaks its momentum, and the only things on it until then are the Ditch and the reason why something as sorry as it was even built – the Mayak chemical factory.
Before we moved to the Ditch dad told me that this small backwater town was started back in the late eighties, by the workers of the Mayak factory themselves. At the time it was little more than a row of squatter houses, and one could easily locate the foreman’s home by looking for the house with walls not made out of rotten plywood.
And as the factory grew, so did Little Ditch. The industrial boom arrived to the locale in full swing, and Mayak Co. Ltd decided it had to keep chasing the gravy train. The imagination tends to supply the mind with a history book of its own as it tries to comprehend certain phenomena. Thus when I heard the story of the Ditch’s growth for the very first time I had the uninvited – but still welcome – mental image of the factory hiring new workers every fortnight or so, and when the cranial cinema arrived at the part where the new employees asked the proprietor where the nearest town was, the imaginary director solved it all by having him point over the workers’ heads to Little Ditch – it seemed to be the only way to justify the backwater town’s frenzied growth.
Even here in the middle of nowhere people were rushing to get rich – it was the gold rush all over again, and the Mayak factory was one of the best mines in town. Job opportunities were as plentiful as the dust that was vented from the Mayak iron horse at the end of every workday for a good many years. Things stayed that way for a while.
Then in 1997 George Soros got uppity – that’s how Dad always phrased the economic downturn to me – and the Mayak Company was hit hard. Its workers, now numbering in the hundreds, could only guess at what was coming; the goldmine had collapsed – the well-paid miners had to go.
Before each of the Mayak employees knew it, they were handed a month’s wages and pushed out the door. Retrenchment became the way of this brave new world, and the Ditch slowly fell back to being the slum that it was at its very beginning as people began moving out. In its prime the settler town had a row of terrace home stays coupled with lower-priced town houses, the population was battering the census’ doors with a relatively astronomical number of three hundred, and – despite its rather poor locale in terms of environmental stability – was one of the best places to stay outside of the monster that many call the city.
By the time our family car pulled up the driveway of our new home, we were the proud owners of one of the few town houses left standing; the others were contributing to society through their bricks and mortar which walled at least a dozen churches and schools in the city nearby. As we got out of the car and stepped on the Ditch’s soil for the first time, I felt like we’d lived there for years – there was a certain air of familiarity about the place that smothered the idea of alienation – threw it right out the window – and turned off whatever my cranial proprietor was showing at the time.
In the months to come I would attribute it to Dad’s hours-long lecture on the Ditch’s history on the drive to our new home. The man has that effect on me; over the years I have realized that I inherited his love for history and the idea that everything in this world has a beginning. He also reminded me once that every man who has escaped the abyss of failure – and had the privilege of overlooking it, knowing that he was safe, sound, successful – once started his ascent looking up at the colossal entity that is the manifestation of the unique dreams of all human beings. And those initial visions of the mind will be – and are – the parts and sums of the journey that will be taken towards it, which at the very end will define us all in its own way if we scale that final peak. Then at that moment of success, we are all incorruptible – in that instant untouchable – where we are protected by the brevity of our vision and empowered by the journey we have taken. But sooner or later every ball of yarn will meet its final stitch.
The four Fynns – Dad, Mum, my sister Grace, and I – now stood on the driveway, each with our own thoughts. I thought I knew what each of them were thinking – for one, I could almost see Mum’s brain working on overdrive as she planned how to make this new house of ours a home. She’d want to replace those gray curtains with one of our white ones, maybe get the kids to do the driveway tomorrow, zip down to the city and stock up on groceries for the next few weeks…that’s Mrs. Abigail Fynn for you.
Grace was walking around the driveway, kicking at loose pebbles and stomping around in that slightly haughty way she has. Just beside her, Dad was fiddling in his pocket for the house keys – Mr Fynn’s the reason why we moved here, and the shiny new employment card the Mayak Company gave him last week is still stuck onto the dashboard of the family car, despite Mum’s insistence on using up the cheap glue we had bought a year ago.
On the other side of the road, one of the Mayak factory’s numerous horns blared and a huge clump of black smoke began to vent from its many funnels. The smoke began to drift westwards towards the city. The monster’s many pinpricks of light had just begun to come on, and they blinked tentatively in the evening light. I looked at Dad – his eyes had misted over, and I knew he was thinking of his own pinnacles, and whether he had been right to take the Mayak job. At that point, I couldn’t care less for any of these philosophical musings – I just didn’t see anything in this waste land.
My name is Michael Fynn, and a slum though it may be, I hindsight I am glad we moved here to Little Ditch. Because if we had not, I would never have met the person who would change the way I saw the world – a boy whom I noticed for the first time as I crossed the driveway to stare at our house’s sad attempt at a garden.
There he sat, surrounded by mounds of silicon, and with the unbiased thoughts of his own innocent child’s mind for company. As I watched, he put the finishing touches on a castle of sand in the sandbox beside our house and then clenched his fists decisively, savoring the small wonder of architecture that he had created.
Then at that moment, as if he realized that something had shattered his aura of assessment, the boy looked up and saw us. So absorbed he was in his castle-building that he had only just noticed our presence. He scanned us for a bit, carefully deciding if his presence was unwanted. Then our gazes met; for an infinitesimal moment we looked at each other, really looked at each other. Feeling somewhat disarmed, I noted that he couldn’t be more than ten years old.
Behind me, Dad slammed the house’s bolt locks open, ending my truce with the boy.
TRIUMVIRATE 1:
There would be sounds of a child at play coming from that sandbox for as long as we stayed there. Right from the start, Mum and Dad made it clear to the young boy that they had nothing against him coming to play outside our house whenever he wanted to. This as good as set off the routine hustle and bustle of that tiny enclosure; on weekdays the sounds of a child’s imagination at work began early in the evenings, and ended just as the sun began to dip below the borders of the Ditch’s horizon. It was a different matter altogether on weekends, the dead garden in front of our house coming alive by eight o’ clock every day, its ten year old caretaker having come back from giving up the sandbox the previous evening so that he could spend the whole night planning what to do with it next.
By the second day we moved in I had started college, which required me to commute back and forth to the city nearby on a daily basis. This left me out of the flow of things for a bit, but by the end of our first week I gathered that we had began calling the sandbox Jadon’s Pit.
That term as good as summed up all I knew about the young boy for the first two weeks of our stay there – his name and his evening pastime. Aside from that he had seemed to avoid the banner of notoriety, the sandbox seemingly shielding him from the prying eyes of us lesser mortals.
It was not until the afternoon of our second Friday there that I heard that otherwise elusive name mentioned, sans the suffix that would turn the term into a locale:
“- that boy keeps to himself mostly, but he does know how to make friends, that young Jadon. I’ve seen him at it.”
My mother was in the kitchen, talking with one of our neighbours from down the road. From where I sat in the living room, their shadows were just visible through the gap that was the open kitchen door. I watched my visitor’s shadow gesticulate wildly, and audio support was not lacking in quality.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that the kid’s a bit funny in the head. Stuck in that sandbox all day and all evening, now which kid does that nowadays?”
I looked away and imagined Mum folding her hands over her chest as she provided a calm reply – certainly her next words would support those actions – “But the boy should have the benefit of the doubt, shouldn’t he?”. A grim smile would not have seemed out of place too, as she added a few choice words:
‘Especially if what we hear goes on at home is true.”
My neighbour let out a breath that signaled the giving of ground. “True Mrs. Fynn, sadly true – a drunk for a father and a worked-to-death Mayak employee for a mother – poor child.” Mum’s shadow nodded, and on cue, the voice of a child at casual play wafted in the windows adjacent to them.
“Bless him.”
I am not one prone to acts of impulse – especially those which are directly related to conversations which I have eavesdropped on – but I somehow chose to rise from my seat and make my way up to the front of the house, where Jadon’s voice and juvenile sound effects began growing clearer.
Presently I found myself outside the sandbox which would have been ours – provided there was a Fynn not born before the economic downturn in the household. A young boy sat cross-legged in the middle of the small mounds of sand, completely at home in the habitat of ant-lions and minuscule insects with names so obscure that I wouldn’t care to remember any of them. A slightly grayed fold of greying curls was splayed over the boy’s head and down over his ears, giving him an amusing resemblance to individuals presiding over a court of law. On his face, an intent pair of eyes brooded over a faded t-shirt which covered a slightly undersized body also decked in shorts and startlingly white socks.
Right in front of the pair of us was a huge sand-castle – at least two feet tall – which the boy was completely ignoring for the moment as his attention was completely focused on an army of toy soldiers arrayed in clumps around his feet. I approached the sandbox.
“Hello there” I said. My voice seemed painfully out of proportion with the boy’s controlled surroundings, and I felt like I had just disrupted a court in session.
The boy turned and focused on me with his startlingly clear eyes; again I felt his disarming power and saw his oculars slowly scrutinize every portion of my anatomy that was up for visual cross-examination. They were of a vivid green, and reminded one of the tinged hue which an especially green field always seems to leave in the head even after you look away. I realized for a brief moment why my neighbour thought Jadon was different than the rest of us – when he looked at you, just looked, the first impression that runs across your head is that of being evaluated, closely scrutinized. It is as if he knows your faults, somehow reads them all in a unit that is unmeasurable by time – infinitely long, yet unbelievably brief – and is about to provide you with knowledge of your invincibility, or doom you to permanent incarceration by uncovering your deepest follies.
“Hello,” replied the child calmly. “You’re Michael Fynn.”
It was more of an statement than a question, and I nodded my acknowledgment smilingly. Unperturbed by my arrival, he turned to his sandbox and picked up a red toy soldier before placing it just in front of the castle. The child was quick to re immerse himself in his own world.
“My, look how lucky and rich they are!” cried young Jadon, the moment the earthen construct overlooked the mobilized toy figure. The hand that was still holding the figure jigged up and down in the direction of the sand castle.
I squatted down a few inches behind him and examined his surroundings for the first time. The fortress which now stared down the red toy soldier was inhabited by at least a dozen other play figures – a princess dressed in pearly white accompanied another toy soldier – painted a rich blue – on the castle’s only balustrade. White cardboard cutouts that appeared to mimic furniture of the early 1700s also decked the same platform, and two other figures – black suited individuals this time – flanked the toy relics, presenting a butler-like appearance. In the castle grounds – designated by a row of carefully arranged chopsticks – corps of other toy soldiers from the same blue battalion were kept busy with imaginary patrols.
Around the castle were smaller buildings which resembled low cost houses and simple shacks. Jadon moved to one of them and shifted another pair of worn toy figures to the face of the castle. One of the toys was an action figure capable of limb movement; both arms were oriented upwards in an unmistakable mimicry of reverence.
“God hath blessed them, the privileged,” whispered Jadon as he reverentially lowered both figures down on the ground. Despite myself, I was growing more intrigued with the child’s play with every passing moment. “Mind if I watch you Jadon?” I asked, speaking directly to the boy’s back.
“I don’t mind” answered the boy with his back still to me. “You can stay here all you want Michael Fynn”- and then came cryptic words that suggested I was talking with a boy who was well aware of the goings-on in the real world – “it is your sandbox, after all.”
He turned around suddenly. “Can I call you Michael? Just Michael?”
That disarming look again. “Of course young man,” I replied. I smiled down at him and added, “And may I call you Jadon?”.
The boy smiled for the first time. It was a deep, almost tactful half-smirk that promised never to deceive. “Of course, young man.”
I grinned at the boy’s wit. Perhaps unwilling to be drawn into a conversation in which he would have no power – as compared to over his toys at least – Jadon retreated back to his play set. An invisible barrier seemed to have come up between us in the short lapse of time that it took Jadon to get back to his set of toy soldiers and paper furniture.
I watched Jadon pick up two toy cars which had lain by his feet, unseen. He rolled them up to the castle and made the small group of toys there jump back as if startled.
“Cars have always been the symbol of human development, and also of position.” Jadon jigged the figures in his hands back an inch. “Especially if you’re outside looking in.” He set the toys in his hands down. Now the toy figures stood adjacent to the car, unmistakably being made to observe the two vehicles just outside the castle. “And so you will revere, and you will wish.”
By now I felt like I had just been told to observe and be silent.
“Will that position ever be yours? To be given license to be soft where you were once hard, and weak where the masses are strong?”
Almost unconsciously, Jadon extended a hand and brought one of the nearby earthen shacks down with his palm. Then he picked up the red soldier and held it close to his face, eying it closely.
“Even despite the early warnings from those who know better, we still want it.” Jadon got up and placed the red soldier on the balcony of the castle, where the butlers stood and the paper furniture gleamed away. “Join those who possess and enjoy early, my rich boy.”
Jadon lowered his hand, and as he did so his wrist struck the edge of the nearest parapet, throwing sand and dust into his eyes. He coughed and sputtered, wiping at his face. I ended my verbal fast. “Are you all right?” I asked, reaching out a hand and drawing myself nearer.
“M’fine,” Jadon coughed back. “Jus sand in m’ eye.” He wiped his eyes one more time and hastened to check whether his sand construct was still in good shape. I waited for the coughing fit to subside a little before gently asking him, “May I know what are you at play with here?”
Jadon sputtered and turned away – the residue was still irritating his eyes; he rubbed them and looked at me through a layer of tears. Even through the grit and wet, I could tell he was sizing me up again.
“I’m playing with my people,” he said simply. “And seeing what there is for them.” I nodded slowly. That made sense in its own way. Jadon stood up and headed to the edge of the sandbox, where a row of medium-sized shacks stood. To my surprise, he trod on them and brought the entire line down.
The obvious question died in my mouth, and I watched Jadon head back to the front of his castle and seat himself down, his back to me once more.
“There are more and more of your kind – “he said, and suddenly the act of destruction was vilified “- but the things that matter do not follow; they never do. And your clashes – inevitable.”
Up on the balustrade the two soldiers were suddenly engaged in a fight, the fey white woman standing beside them. Arms locked around each other, the men began wrestling each other to the ground. Voices were raised, silently rising in a crescendo. Hands began to crawl up to necks, squeezing…squeezing…plastic eyes rolled upwards in their reddened sockets…
“And it’s always about the same things.” Jadon’s hand slipped into his pocket and withdrew a plastic coin, raising it as one would a gavel. He placed it between the two screaming men and withdrew the hand. The fight wore on, the red tearing at the blue; blue lashing away at the red. The woman in white cried and sobbed, vainly trying to end it all; I could see the terror on her face as the two grappled. Muskets were drawn.
Gunshots. Sound. Fury.
Signifying things which are worse to have than nothing.
The red soldier fell from headfirst from the balustrade. Jadon appeared to catch him as he fell.
The trooper was set gently down on the ground. “That’s what you get when you fall for the wrong things, my rich boy,” sniggered Jadon. The hint of dark humour did not help my attempt to remove the imaginary female screams in my head.
Jadon turned and looked at me. Or rather – as I realized a split second later – in my direction. I whirled around to follow his gaze.
The Mayak factory was behind me, a huge black shadow against the curtains of a reddish evening sun. It was the end of another work day, and a deep rumbling grew beneath the zig-zagging spines of the churning machine. A horn blared somewhere, and the four smoke vents began churning petrochemical smog and vapoury residue into the air.
I turned to look at Jadon. A look of deep comprehension was on his face. He lowered his head, and his curls drooped perpendicular to the earth. Again I turned to look at the Mayak factory. The thick black smoke coming from its vents slowly crawled into the atmosphere, hundred of feet up in the air. Gradually it dissipated into the sky and was soon gone completely.
I sensed that Jadon’s eyes were on the back of my head.
Down the road, I saw a dozen figures slowly walking past the wooden fence that bordered the Ditch. Even in the fading light the blue coveralls for workers on weekends were unmistakable; I saw Dad’s figure hunched among the weary walkers.
I turned to face the boy behind me. His face betrayed no emotion. I could only wish that mine was managing as much.
“I’ll see you around,” I told him. Turning on my heel, I left him standing in the sandbox and walked into the relative ignorance of my home.
EXCERPT ENDS HERE.
PS-And oh yeah, there is a certain literary allusion that ALL of you above the age of 13 should have spotted…we all learnt (and at times were made to memorize) the original source lol! Got it? Now tie it into what you have read and you’ll see why it’s there=)
I just had my first Geology lab, and it was AWESOME!!! The official name of the course is “Introduction to Earth Materials”, and the second class is already a lab-how neat is that lol! The lab was a walk around campus, and it was meant to show the students interrelation between their course and the real world, and also to generate overall interest in the course-it sure did for me!!
The walk took us to four sites around the University of Ottawa grounds, taking occasional stops along the way to highlight certain Earth materials important to the course. The teaching assistant I had for my lab was this very nice lady named Anastasia Vandermost; she was brilliant in demonstrating her knowledge of Earth substances and transmitting the data to us hapless students=D
We looked at certain building structures, listened to briefings on certain substances like quartz and feldspar, and handily tied in all this knowledge with actual circumstances in the modern world. It was the first time I had actually felt the texture of a rock and tried to guess what it was made of-and it was a blast for me! Seriously, I am looking forward to doing my lab report and my write-up *jumps in glee*
And bloody hell, I never knew there were fossils in the university buildings @.@ Part of the U of O is made out of limestone, rocks glued together by natural cement left by decaying organisms-you can actually see them if you look hard enough!=D God I was and still am so over-awed. So over-awed that I felt every single wall on the way back to my residence….thinking back I must have looked stupid to the hundreds of students milling around campus >.<
And this experience came at the perfect time, just when I was wondering if I could actually pull through a course that I didn’t believe myself to have sufficient interest in, just as I was wistfully thinking of my English 4U sessions, wishing, hoping, just dreaming….
Then in came Anastacia Vandermost and Professor Simone Dumas for Geology 1115.
I AM A GEOLOGIST!!!!=D
Alright, at long last and several delays, here we are; I present to you the University of Ottawa, through the lens of my camera.
The university, located in the capital of Canada, was established in 1848 by one Bishop Joseph-Eugene Guigues, and was then named the College of Bytown. University status came in 1866, and interestingly in 1889, was declared a pontifical university by none other than Pope Leo XIII himself.
The university is one of the oldest in Canada, and also was the first instiution of higher learning in the country to adopt a bilingual nature of education – the other medium of instruction being French. The “Université d’Ottawa – University of Ottawa” (Wikipedia font) was created by an act of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Ontario in 1965. This efectively allowed the University a dual mandate of “furthering bilingualism and biculturalism”, also a prime position to help in “preserving and developing the French culture in Ontario and in Canada” via the new provincial charter. To the best of my knowledge, it is the only bilingual university in the country, but I stand liable to be corrected.
According to Wikipedia, the university has been conferring Bachelor’s degrees since 1872, Masters since 1875, and Doctorates since 1888 (all a hundred years before I was born wth!!). The university is also ranked 5th in research intensity in the country, and holds a slot in the top 203-300 bracket in a university ranking released by Shanghai Jiao Tong University last year.
The university currently has 34,000 + students (undergrad and postgrad both).
The institution’s motto is, Deus Scientiarum Dominus Est, which roughly translates to “God is the Lord of Knowledge”.
The university is also part of the Group of 13 – a united group of Canadian universities which together, have a veto vote in the UN Security Council. This agreement was established in the UN Charter as of late 2006, and if you believe it, then you are one cute rodent=p The G13 is a group of research-intensive universities in Canada folks=D
Random facts-the university has its own power plant, capable of powering the campus in times of power failure “to ensure that exams go forward” (nooooo!!!!!! LOL); if you think that’s cool, another Canadian university – McMaster – has its own nuclear reactor @.@
The university was also the champion of the World Universities Debating Championship 2005, which were hosted by MMU Malaysia.
Notable alumni include:
Paul Martin, former Prime Minister of Canada; Dalton McGuinty, current Ontario Premier; William J.S. Elliott, current commisioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; Carold Shields, Pulitzer Prize winning writer; Paul Okalik, the first Premier of the northern Nunavut; and Louise Arbour, UN High Commisioner for Human Rights and former Supreme Court Justice.And now I end this hopefully informative post with pictures of the university campus.
The university is a heritage site.
I almost wet my pants upon seeing this signboard for the first time=)
There are about a million red lamp posts on campus…and they all have this emblem near the base.
Someone should blow it up lol.
Down with power plants!!!
Tabaret Hall, the main admin building, and in terms of architecture, my favourite building on campus=)
Here’s why-
And inside-
=D
Brooks Residence, one of the many university residences for students (PS-Mine’s the one with the small lighted window=D)
Voilà!
In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition! The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it’s my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.
=D
Yes people, you read it right!!! And it’s called This Delicate Thing We’ve Made!!! And I’m listening to it right now wooohooo!!!! Adib shut up and stop sniggering….and you too Atif =.=
Anyway, for those of you who didn’t know, Darren Hayes used to be the vocalist of the now-defunct Savage Garden band. He has since gone solo and this is his third release.
It’s a double disc album,and there are 25 songs on it; this is the tracklist:
DISC 1 A Fear of Falling Under Who Would Have Thought Waking the Monster-I likey this one! How to Build a Time Machine-a current favourite! Casey Step into the Light Sing to Me A Conversation with GodThe Sun Is Always Blinding Me Listen All You People The Only One Bombs Up in My Face-WOW=D The Great Big Disconnnect-besh besh!!! DISC 2 The Future Holds a Lion’s Heart-also a favorite now!!! On the Verge of Something Wonderful Neverland Walk Away Maybe Me, Myself and (I) I Just Want You to Love Me Setting Sun A Hundred Challenging Things a Boy Can Do Words-another current favourite!! The Tuning of Violins
I am so sorely tempted to do a review on the album lol! For now I will withhold my actual comments and will save it all for the real review….which uh, will be done after I have toured Ottawa and done a piece on it, researched and wrote about my new campus’s history, reviewed Mark Haddon’s A Spot of Bother, finished Like Toy Soldiers, finished all my assignments and scheduled studying and…wawawawa the list goes on.
You might as well go get it first =.=”
PS-Don’t you just LOVE the titles of the songs? I think they’re neat-especially “The Tuning of Violins”, “The Future Holds a Lion’s Heart” and “The Great Big Disconnnect”….*sighs*=)
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