Sad Songs

I've been listening to quite a number of sad songs lately, thanks to a friend who, well, likes these kind of songs. The thing about these songs are that they are in Cantonese, and that I am able to understand them and feel for them is weening my emotional threshold. Well, to my friend, all I can say that thank god you don't understand what you are listening to or I guess you'd have broken down into little bit pieces.

I like things nice, nicely put, nicely said, nicely done. Similarly, I go for songs that are nice, nice melody, nice lyrics, nice paintings, nice feelings, though I say nice feelings, I don't mean happy ones, instead I like nice sad feelings. Maybe it's just me that some other people will never be able to understand, sometimes, sad is nice, sometimes, sadness can make you grow. Sadness is also addictive. After feeling sad for long periods of time, you'd feel so pathetic that you want yourself to continue feeling sad, and you'd do all sorts of things, make the same mistakes just so that you can feel this kind of sadness.

I call this 犯贱.

I like this Chinese term, cos there is no similar term in English. For once, I'm so proud that my Chinese is good, and I'm able to understand Cantonese though I can't speak it well.

The songs started out with my friend asking me to translate a dialogue in the song. Then I started listening to the song, and it touched me. But as my friend spoke no Chinese, or Cantonese, I did not have the song title nor do I know who sang that song. At that time all I knew about that song was its contents and the English translation of the title. Love and Honesty.

Then I started asking around my friends who thankfully haven't lost much touch of the entertainment industry. And one my of friends identified the singer as Leo Ku, so I ran a boxup search on him and got the Chinese title of the song, which was really Love and Honesty translated in to Chinese. Then I ran a baidu search to get the lyrics. Reading it, feeling it, understanding it created more pain for me. Do I really want to feel such pain? Maybe...

The second song I'm listening to is Miriam Yueng's Big City, Small Matters. It sounds sadder than Love and Honesty. But really, as long as the melody is sad, the lyrics is sad, and the singer is good, anything can sound sad to Joan. Big City, Small Matters was written by Lin Xi, and I must say, he can really tug the strings inside my heart with his writings. Or maybe, said, I'm the one who is allowing people to tug the strings inside me.

I used to like listening to the radio. 6 years ago, when the pain was at its height. Listening to FM 93.3 could make my pain flow freely, especially when the night is clear, the winds are light, and I'm missing him. The 3 years later, I told myself that this sort of self-pitying and pathetism wasn't working well. I was reduced to an emotional wreck and missing out of all the colours in life. I stopped listening to the radio. Okay, it wasn't much of me, but more so cos of the change in focus of 93.3 which started to play more songs of new Taiwanese singers who couldn't sing and they weren't really that nice, so I gradually stopped listening to the radio.

Now, I still don't listen much to the radio. But my interest in the Canto-pop scene is increasing. Is it because I'm really craving to turn back into the emotional wreck I once was? Or am I looking for something in particular? I don't know...

I know I was to paint a colourful painting out of my life, if not I won't be indulging in so many activities and go all out for my German programmes, but in between all these successes, I do crave for something more intangible, something more irrational, something that I'm still looking out for.

I don't know where to start looking for it. A couple of times I thought I've finally found it, but those couple of times, I realised that I was withdrawing myself. I didn't really want myself to accept it for all that it was. I gave excuses, to myself, to my friends, to everybody but nobody in particular. I'm asking myself if I really want to find it. Part of me says no, definitely not, but another part of me is secretly craving for it. I can feel the vibes in me, giving me mixed signals of what to do when the time comes, but when the time is coming, I see myself blotching things up and the time does not come along.

Maybe, life is a cycle, I want what had happened to happen again, ableit on different circumstances. So is it his fault? It's convenient to blame everything on him. It's easy to start by saying that it was him who screwed up my life in those days, when I was young. Someone said, I'm still young, so I can afford to continue in thinking this way. but am I really that young as what people think? I don't think so. If for each pain you age a day, I can gladly announce that my age is probably in the mid-thirties. Really. If you want me to exaggerate, it'd be like 82 years, but I'm not gg to do so cos even though I've suffered much pain, it was also the happiness that kept me going at it. Okay, I won't say mid-thirties, maybe thirty, then I'd have aged a decade.

That day I had a mirage. I thought I saw him on the streets. I panicked. Then I realised that it was just me thinking too much. Well, a decade has gone by, and I've aged doubly over the past ten years, so I should be more matured in my thinking. I don't really suppose that I'm still thinking of him. Or am I?

Maybe I'm not really thinking of him. Maybe it's the feeling that I'm missing, not the person. The pathetism, the self-pitying, the self-destructing of myself. Ya... But it's not easy to do it now, due to my heavy commitments. Did I pick up these commitments sub-consciously so that I can stop all my wallowing in sadness? Maybe...

Wash your face, wake up, think of something else, let that guy disappear from your life forever.

I wish, but don't think it can ever happen. Life works in a different way.