"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
From The United States Declaration of Independence
"It was right then that I started thinking about Thomas Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence and the part about our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I remember thinking how did he know to put the pursuit part in there? That maybe happiness is something that we can only pursue and maybe we can actually never have it. No matter what. How did he know that? "
From the movie "The pursuit of happYness"
So, how do we define the pursuit of happiness? From wiki, we have...
"Among these inalienable rights, as proclaimed in that great document, is the right of men to pursue their happiness, by which is meant the right to pursue any lawful business or vocation, in any manner not inconsistent with the equal rights of others, which may increase their prosperity or develop their faculties, so as to give to them their highest enjoyment. "
I dunno about you. But for me, there's a sense of disappointment after reading that definition given. There's got to be something more, my gut insisted. And so what more was I/ were we looking for? After pondering a while, I can't come up with a specific answer and then I realised perhaps that's the reason for the particularly ambigious phrasing. That it was meant to inspire inspiration. The phrase "pursuit of happiness" struck me with a sense of idealism and hope which i think the person who wrote it intended. Note that happiness by itself is not a right and only the pursuit of it is.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Thursday, September 18, 2008
I'm amazed by soundtracks. Unlike a normal pop or classical song, they dun have the time and space to express whatever emotions the composer intend. Instead, they are constrained by the visuals of the movie, needing to match them to bring out the mood and theme appropriately. So the end result is often very intense music that can stir your hearts in a moment and melt them in the next. The background music now is from love actually's soundtrack, where you can hear how intensity is created by the running notes the strings are playing against the brass and how it is sustained by adding and removing layers (flutes, bass, timps, etc). Aye... if you are impressed by that, then you should check out Glasgow love theme and Portuguese love theme by Craig Armstrong as well...
This is a snippet of Beijing Olympics victory ceremony music - 茉莉花(adapted and rearranged by Tan Dun and Wang Hesheng) similarly, the intensity is amazing here... and yes, i do hope they release the scores one day so we might actually get to play it.
And yes, with youtube, even amateur musicians like you and me get immortalised...
Tht's zj at his very best on the timps with GECO. He gets a lot of screen time.. haha.. but it's well deserved, not an easy part to play.. can check with mingjie if you dun believe... lol...
I was... thankful? when i found the next video on youtube.
hmm... the timps sound grossly out of balance. I din remember doing a sound check, tht could be the reason or that the mic is not a good one... haha.. the former more likely since the other parts sound okay... But in any case, that was the only time I felt that I was playing the music for myself as much as it is for the audience. Cos normally it is 奏来打动观众的心, but that time, it was a matter of having a way to show gratitude. So thank you chen wei, for immortalising that special moment, via both your composition of 心贤 and the posting of the video recording on youtube...
This is a snippet of Beijing Olympics victory ceremony music - 茉莉花(adapted and rearranged by Tan Dun and Wang Hesheng) similarly, the intensity is amazing here... and yes, i do hope they release the scores one day so we might actually get to play it.
And yes, with youtube, even amateur musicians like you and me get immortalised...
Tht's zj at his very best on the timps with GECO. He gets a lot of screen time.. haha.. but it's well deserved, not an easy part to play.. can check with mingjie if you dun believe... lol...
I was... thankful? when i found the next video on youtube.
hmm... the timps sound grossly out of balance. I din remember doing a sound check, tht could be the reason or that the mic is not a good one... haha.. the former more likely since the other parts sound okay... But in any case, that was the only time I felt that I was playing the music for myself as much as it is for the audience. Cos normally it is 奏来打动观众的心, but that time, it was a matter of having a way to show gratitude. So thank you chen wei, for immortalising that special moment, via both your composition of 心贤 and the posting of the video recording on youtube...
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Woke up on wed with both my eyes burning and sore, went to see the MO who warded me in sick bay for 1 entire day intead of giving me Att C (hmph..) Didn't turn out too bad in the end, cos i managed to finish a library book that i wanted to finish reading b4 returning. The book was Timothy Keller's "The Reason for God". Pls refrain from giving me tht look yet, I'm not converting, I just though it would be good to see both sides of the argument after reading Richard Dawkin's "The God Delusion" and Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot". I must say after reading all three books, I am exposed to a little bit more of the vast expense of knowledge, issues that we need to grapple with, before we can actually decide on our faith, religion and philosophy. From such a vantage point, one would wonder how so many people in the world can live with knowing so little, yet holding on so much to their beliefs (i mean any kind of belief here) . I'll leave you with quotes from Timothy Keller's and Carl Sagan's books. (no richard dawkin's one cos i returned his book alr.. lol)
From Timothy Keller, quoting C.S. Lewis:
You can't, except in the lowest animal sense, be in love with a girl if you know (and keep on remembering) that all the beauties both of her person and of her character are a momentary and accidental pattern produced by the collision of atoms, and that your own response to them is only a sort of psychic phosphorescene arising from the behavior of your genes. You can't go on getting very serious pleasure from music if you know and remember that its air of signaficance is a pure illusion, that you like it only because your nervous system is irrationally conditioned to like it.
From Carl Sagan, ( I think this came out in Jen Han's blog b4, but yes, reading it in the book again myself, it is so intense that i think it's worth another publish)
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
Some insights from me (at least what i managed to convince myself of in the slew of arguments and counter-arguements i've read) - That what is desirable and injected with a high likelihood is not necessary true. If we are indeed a cosmic accident, a mere product of random chances and statistics, we should not despair and act with no moral considerations. Instead, we should have the courage to stand for ourselves and believe in ourselves that we can (if not we will debate, argue and try our very best to) make valid moral judgements....
From Timothy Keller, quoting C.S. Lewis:
You can't, except in the lowest animal sense, be in love with a girl if you know (and keep on remembering) that all the beauties both of her person and of her character are a momentary and accidental pattern produced by the collision of atoms, and that your own response to them is only a sort of psychic phosphorescene arising from the behavior of your genes. You can't go on getting very serious pleasure from music if you know and remember that its air of signaficance is a pure illusion, that you like it only because your nervous system is irrationally conditioned to like it.
From Carl Sagan, ( I think this came out in Jen Han's blog b4, but yes, reading it in the book again myself, it is so intense that i think it's worth another publish)
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
Some insights from me (at least what i managed to convince myself of in the slew of arguments and counter-arguements i've read) - That what is desirable and injected with a high likelihood is not necessary true. If we are indeed a cosmic accident, a mere product of random chances and statistics, we should not despair and act with no moral considerations. Instead, we should have the courage to stand for ourselves and believe in ourselves that we can (if not we will debate, argue and try our very best to) make valid moral judgements....
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