Indie Music, Change, The Apocalypse

Music
Oh yeah, sweet music. Seriously speaking, I never really had a favourite genre until last year. I found out that yeah I like alternative music. Not crappy noise that has no meaning but good music with a feel good factor. Listening to "All Time Low" by Jasey Rae right now as I write this paragraph if that's some indication of the type of artists I enjoy listening to for the past 1 year.

Preferences
Oh yeah I also love the setup "Love Psychedelico". Perhaps it the little japanese culture infused into me while I was still learning Judo. I kinda fell in love the way english and japanese fall over each other. Somehow the mixed chinese and english songs by mandy, coco lee or the other chinese singers never quite hit the fusion melody of japanese and english songs. It's sad and perhaps a little disturbing to me but I love fusion music. You think that it's kind of ironic? Well I don't think so, technically speaking mixed language music is not considered mainstream because of the speech barrier to many. Anyways I consider it alternative anyways.

How mixed is mixed?
Well, I consider a song with compositions of at least a quarter of ONE language and the rest of ONE other langauge, qualifies as a official mixed song. It's a little hard to gauge but here's a simple trick. Pick a song with 2 languages that you can speak, then listen to the song and listen for complete sentences or half sentences. A properly fusioned song will make proper sense to you. At least you'd be able to understand it and feel that the grammer in both languages are both fulfiled at the same time. For the japanese mixes I've been listening to, the language mixes very well and I can understand the lyrics along with the full feeling put behind the song. Chinese mixes face a heavy problem as intonation plays a heavy part on the feel and melody of the song and meaning of chinese, thus it never truly mixes into perfect fusion with english.

Exceptions, there always are!
But however, I've also heard chinese and japanese mixed songs. These are heavenly to listen to because both languages merges together so perfectly it's unbelievable. But then again that is also because the artist is very good in both . I love fusion, alternative and especially alternative fusions between 2 languages I understand. Songs mixed in English, Chinese, Cantonese, Japanese and it'd be fantastic if I can listen to more of such music in the near future.

Patience or Initiative?
Sometimes I feel that I should be patient and wait for the world to change around me. Then again sometimes I feel that sitting around waiting for people to get ready for change is a bloody waste of time. I am truly torn all the time. I know people need time to change and accept new facts, especially about life and the appreciation of it. But on the other hand, people use that as an excuse to stagnate. I push for change by changing myself as example, I change the way I do things, the way I think, my whole life is turned upside down. Scary but my spirit, attitude and desire to change stays the constant. What's the point of changing if after the change you become a rock and never change after that?

Flexibility?
I hate the fact that to be flexible means you have to be inflexible, the fact that I need to constantly push myself to stop routinizing things and do things using a different method. It's a routine in itself which is ironic, isn't it? So what does this make me??? A rock that's constantly changing shape on the outside but I'd forever be a rock on the inside. A person whose purpose in life is constantly enact change around him but sadly he's constantly changing everything else about himself except the fact that he has to be that bringer of change. How does one enact change in others? He's got to have passion, lead by example, benefit the people around him. But that's a FIXED way of changing others, so I've experimented different ways of achieving this goal.

Methods of an Anarchist
I've concocted a mixture of methods used by people to enact change. There's reverse psychology, standard psychology, shock treatment, awe treatment, forceful enactment. That's what I've been able to discover so far. To affect change around me however, there's one way that always works but it isn't very pleasant or good for my personal reputation. It's the shock treatment coupled with forceful enactment.

Efficiency
It's brutally effective and never fails, but it's also the method with the most negativity. Obviously not a good choice if you want to continue enacting change. But it is an extremely effective method to enact one GIANT act of change to the people you have influence over if your content with enacting ONE change and nothing else after that single change. Of course the person enacting this change must be in a position of certain power or social influence otherwise it wouldn't work.

Acts of Brutality
And one example famous in Chinese history of one such act would be the Emperor Qin's change of people's way of life by abolishing over a hundred different forms of writing and consolidating it into a single written language. It's a change that would NEVER happen if you left it to conventional diplomacy or psychology. It had to be done with FORCE and punishment of DEATH to successfully enact. Back then, nobody can even understand why would he do something so "fool-hardy" as to destroy hundreds or even more than a thousand years of written history. If you were there you would think he's mad, crazy, unreasonable and a downright criminal. But nearly two thousand years later, we see the benefits of what he's done. Because of him, the Chinese culture is connected and more united than let's say, Europe.

Evil to be Good
If let's say Europe had a ruler a thousand years ago who conquered every corner of Europe. And he decreed there'd only be French as the official written language. Then he destroys all written language written in every other language. Impossible you say? It was done in China thousands of years ago, even before the first monarchs were present in Europe. But imagine how different the world would be? The predominant language would be French instead of English. Infact English was a culmulation of the many different languages in Europe. Would it be good for Europe to have a common written language? I'm sure it would have facilitated things to no end and they would be a much stronger force to be reckoned with right now. Now they decided to come up with a common currency but that's nothing compared to a common language.

Powerhouses
It's safe to say that Europe would have been another China and it's potential would have been limitless. I'd say that economically it'd be stronger than America, infact we might not know if America would be discovered because of the major changes in history if their languages were unified. Infact I foresee a different past where the Europeans pushing back the Mongol hordes and Gengis Khan. With a common language, the Europeans might have had a horde that could rival Gengis himself. It'd be a bitter fight and not some one sided slaughter. The key would be communications. I say that an army consisting of men who all speak or write the same language is much more mobile and powerful than an army made of foreign alliances with language barrier and dependent on translators.

Back to the topic
Oh yeah on the topic about how to enact change, people need to understand a fact that the world changes even if they do not. If you slowly sink into a routine now, your going to be rudely awakened one day when your routine no longer fits like a glove into your life. Things like world politics may not seem important to you. But tell that to the poor souls in the World Trade Center when the terrorists decided that they can't take being ignored by the public anymore. God rest their souls. So please wake up and realize that politics affect us whether we like it or not. And it affects us so deeply that it can mess relations with your neighbors living next door, the cashier serving you your food, the terrorist trying to blow up your embassy, your future wife or even the job your working in right now.

For the Good of Mankind
What I strive to do is constantly bring wake up calls to the people who willfully put themselves into a numbing stupor that they call their "social circle". By shocking my lecturers out of a job, I jolt their perception of the power that students have over their lives. By defying orders and yet staying out of persecution from the "system" in NS, I've also woken up the people involved. I send the message, the world is changing and you better clean up your act or there's going to be more people like me who cause trouble and cannot be punished due to your flawed "system". There's no such thing as a "system" whose rules fit thru the ages and never needs to change. As time changes, culture changes, systems collapse and new systems are set up again, to be torn down. It's a natural cycle of the world, no immortality for anything.

Universe speaking to your soul
Can you not hear what the very fabric of the universe is trying to tell you? Each and everyone of us has a connection to each other and also the universe as a whole. The whole concept you might think I'm ripping out of "Star Wars" but I'm not. In the world, everyone is linked to one another. You cannot hurt another without hurting yourself. You cannot help another without helping yourself. Man has come up with so many explainations for this connection we have with one another. I do however believe there's a conciousness present in this bond we have with one another. Infact I believe this bond doesn't just encompass humans alone. But all things, earth, plants, water and animals.

Bonds we share
Thru the bonds I sense the constant desire to "settle down" into stagnation. In order for us to survive I know that we cannot afford to do that. Once we do, there's no turning back and the human race will be doomed into extinction faster than you know. With the amount of technology we have right now, we very well can end our existance right now if we do not continue to grow, adapt, evolve into better beings. We cannot afford to be complacent with our progress thus far and strive to greater things. God as we all know it, constantly strives to test us by allowing our stagnant nature to start wars. Wars in any language you imagine, is the work of God as we know it. He wills it to happen and it will. But it has come to a point where a war where using all our resources we have available is no longer an option. If we do, then armageddon will truly arrive right here, right now.

War
War is good for us, we all know that. Because of war, many technologies were further developed to gain an advantage over others. This has led to better automobiles, planes, ships, communications and other facilitators of our lives. Even with all these achievements, I'm sure God wants us to move bravely forward and develop other aspects of our technologies. But now with biological, nuclear, chemical weapons of mass destruction. God truly tests us on what aspects we need to concentrate on developing. Will it be transportation, artillery, ranged capabilities, communications, information gathering, tactics, spirit, protection equipment or perhaps something new. Wars have always brought out the best in mankind.

Action or Words
I've also realized that war has brought us the very tool that helps prevent it in the first place. Diplomacy and psychology. Mind games can be a powerful weapon in it's own right, anyone of you reading thus far should understand. What I do on an everyday basis would be meaningless to everyone of you, unless war comes. War can come in many forms, take example the Cold War. It's deadly enough but the casualties aren't always obvious. What do you think? I'm saying that a war is being fought right here, right now. And we're all just oblivious to it because we aren't taking notice of anything happening around me. We're fighting for our survial nonetheless, if you're rather uninformed.

Save the world
The war we're having right now, is the war of self-destruction. We're depleting our resources at a rate far faster than we're able to replace them. We're destroying morality, by lowering our standards on what's right and what's wrong. We're slowly bringing dictatorship like power to our leaders, which was the total opposite of what we fought to become. We're fighting a war of preserving our planet. Do we want to wake up one day and find out, there's no more clean water, air and land? Do we want to wake up and work mindlessly like zombies for our little lives while being oblivious to the plight of others? Do we want to wake up to an announcement that tomorrow would be the last day everyone will be alive, just because we couldn't be bothered to put an effort to change?

Change
For the last time, if you merely skipped to the end. The message is Change, wake up from that rigid stupor which is your life's routine. Take a look around you, observe the suffering of the others less fortunate. Learn to put yourselves into other people's shoes. Don't keep poisoning the planet like as if the planet owes you. Learn one new thing everyday, be it a single fact or a new name. You'd thank me one day. Trust in us, trust your fellow human. Alauz Out.

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow