To my happy places:

Thank you for being the shape of a home, the car and the cave all at once.

Thanks for being that place when I should've had one of my own

To the owners of the happy places, my dreams, my friends: I'm sorry for the times I choked back words and said "It's okay, I' ll manage this time" instead of admitting I needed somewhere or something

I apologize for any resentment. The resentment coming from the fact I have to get away at all... That denial of losing my home a long time ago, because the house still stands.

Resentment that it's not something everyone understands. So thanks for trying to anyways.

I just wanted to say, I'm grateful for the happy places that still remain

BLOG Entry #2: Never Forget. | CGM

Never Forget.

I didn’t know why, I stood up from bed and decided to write these thoughts. I think I should and must express these before it disappear, or my “drive to write” disappear.

I was about to sleep and was listening to Da-iCE. “Kimi Iro” was playing. The room was silent and the only thing I could hear was the clear sound of my headphones. Every beat and the shifting of the sound from right ear to left were evidently loud and detailed. The voices of the vocalists, the instruments, and the electronic tunes/pattern were crystal as well. “Fantastic!” I said, mentally. “I really love this song.” (I must have said this a million times in my head to all Da-iCE songs – haha!) And then, that feeling came back. I remembered.

Never forget.

I could never forget that feeling when I started to like and appreciate Da-iCE songs.

December 2017.

The time I discovered Da-iCE was when I was looking for the translated meaning of MEN ON STYLE’s “Kimi Iro Paretto”, in which Fukushi Sota (one of my fave Japanese actors) “was” a member of. Right on Google search, instead of “Kimi Irio Paretto”, “Kimi Iro” of Da-iCE appeared. I was caught for a moment and clicked the music video for a while. After listening for about a minute, my initial reaction was, “This song is good.” But, because Da-iCE was dressed in colorful jackets then, I was not that fully impressed (though I really like those jackets now). I thought they were just another boy band displaying kawaii-ness (only).

And then, a month after, I was delved into J-pop, influenced by my classmate who likes Hey! Say! JUMP. I got curious and was desperate to search for good and great J-pop artists. I don’t know what had gotten into me that I searched for a “K-pop VS. J-pop” in YouTube, but maybe it had something to do with the fact that I’m a bit of a fan of K-pop too. Right there, for the second time, I encountered Da-iCE. I was literally like, remembering, “I know this group!”

“Tonikaku HEY!” was on the list then.

I am originally and generally oriented to acoustics and melodious pieces (that’s why I was late appreciating too much “pop-pop” – I found some pieces too noisy for my taste) but I was hooked. I fell in love. Plus, the visual and concept of the MV were undoubtedly great! (I am an Architecture student. I am really into aesthetics).  To make it short, Da-iCE caught the kind of pop I was looking for! We matched!

Right there, I searched for their songs and streamed through Youtube and Spotify, and realized that there’s not a single song of Da-iCE that I dislike. “Goodness! Their songs are getting better and better!”.

Then, I tried watching videos of their past interviews, that although I couldn’t understand a sentence, I still tried to.  I realized then, that I LOVE LOVE every member of Da-iCE, that much I couldn’t pick an ichiban from them. I thought my ichiban would be Yudai, but then, Sota laughed, Toru giggled, Taiki laughed out, Hayate giggled, and then back to Yudai. It was kind of confusing (until now) but it was a lot better for me. I don’t want to pick a favorite (maybe, just for now). I love Da-iCE, and Da-iCE is equally THE FIVE of THEM (plus the “a-i”s).

Never forget.

There was magic right there and then when I was riding a bus (going to Pampanga – a province in the Philippines) and everyone inside was deep asleep and it was midnight. The moon was bright (I promise it was), the sky was clear, and there was nothing on view but rice fields and the plain road. On my headphones was Da-iCE, playing.

Da-iCE’s rhythmic pattern combined with the natural ambiance of the silent night –

Magical.

Every beat was heard.

Every rise and fall of Sota’s and Yudai’s vocals was appreciated.

Even the supposedly faint voices of Taiki, Toru and Hayate as back-up singers were surfacing.

There was one conclusion: I LOVE Da-iCE SONGS and…

the day before i leave everything

there is no point in replying with a smart ass remark, there is no point in responding at all. it wont fix anything, i have stopped hoping for quite sometime now and all i see are actions, reactions but i dont wish to interact. 

i cant believe i was wild enough to believe i could bring you with me to the sunny state of beaches, of fashion, the restaurants, with beautiful hikes, beautiful people….

I simply remember my cousin telling me i was a fool if i ever brought more sand to a different beach… whatever that meant at the time i just wanted to have the girl that I was completely lost in, see the cites that that I fell in love with. 

the big introduction that no one has ever gotten by bringing you home to my west coast family, how easy you made it when you took me home to your parents how you would spend more time with me when you knew if your parents would find you down there with me, he would kill us but we didn’t care one bit. 

We were inseparable, every kiss was effortless, precious, perfect it felt like… it was all what i thought at least. How could eyes finally do me wrong, they say someones eyes will always tell you what that person cannot, and was i just that much of a fool to ignore the eyes of wanting to leave everything or did i think i could win a fight that was already won by someone who wasn’t in the picture for months. 

Did i not want to believe the girl that made me jump every hurdle, go through every obstacle to finally call her mine

i still sometimes find myself sitting by her fire place soaking wet but we could care less because we were lost in each others eyes saying things we would hear in romantic love movies that would later become famous love quotes and we thought it would be the same or feel the same when the words would leave our lips… little did we know we were just hitting a state of euphoria, 

i never saw it coming, not in a million miles, and what a fool i was to tell you to respond to him and keep contact with someone who caused so much damaged to such a special place in your body that i was only comforting and reminding how beautiful it was.

who would have known he was trying to reach out to you to come back, and who would believe me that i stuck around because seeing you happy was better than losing you as a lover, and a friend. 

i was so good, i couldn’t recognize myself in the mirror anymore. i was ignoring all the past mistakes i made and i tried fixing all my mistakes by loving her the best i have ever loved anyone and i still get reminded how good i loved you and that is why no one will want to fall in love with me 

my love was defined as being so good that they would be scared to do what you did, say you didn’t feel worthy enough, how it felt like you were always working to just show me love….. those words tasted so undercooked and thought out when i heard them in your newly organized room. 

i just want to be back in front of that fire place and have you admit to me that you did care about me but you still had someone else holding your heart. i wish you would have never gave me the jack and pepsi that night just to open me up like an open surgery and see everything you wanted to hear. 

you say that you tend to ruin everything, little did you know i use to ruin everything with anyone who took a chance at holding my hand and waking up next to me. i was so afraid to fall for someone so i kept leaving open arms and broken hearts unhealed. 

so what made you special? maybe the challenge of showing you that you still could love and i just got too attached and couldn’t walk away but who knows now. 

If you haven’t seen “Birdman,” this is going to spoil your movie watching party. 

You’ve been warned.

For too long I’ve been hearing people say that “Birdman,” which is written and directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, didn’t really make any sense; and, therefore, it is dismissed as an Oscar-winning fluke or some kind of signal of Illuminati corruption in Hollywood. Please stop with the conspiracies. The tricky thing about “Birdman” is that it is good, and, I’d even say, maybe it is too good. This flick’s complex, layered themes flew over the mass public’s head like a CIA drone in Pakistan, and this left the Academy Award audiences with a serious case of Whiplash.

I prefer to break this movie down into two layers. The first, which is the one that everyone seems to pick up, is the shallower theme: The one with a wider focus. Now when I use terms like wide and shallow synonymously, I really mean less subjective, more obvious, and less complex. From this angle, this movie is about Theater vs. Theatre, Hollywood vs. Broadway, Movies vs. Film, Entertainment vs. Art and so on. Non-subjective. That’s okay, those are good themes and they make sense.

 But, there are problems with this wider, and more obvious, viewpoint; and I think that this is the major source of the public frustration surrounding “Birdman.” I don’t know too many actors in the midst of an existential crisis that gain the unexplained ability to, oh I don’t know, fly around the streets of New York. Not to mention the unexplained moving of objects with his mind. Oh, and he can levitate too. Can’t forget about that. How does that fit in with Hollywood vs. Broadway?

 And what about that ending? Oh man, the ending. I’ve heard some of the most outlandish theories around this ending: everything from Riggan really dies on stage to the whole thing was a drug-withdrawal induced hallucination of his daughter. Come on. This movie won awards. The truth is that, from this wider view, none of that “extra” and super-natural stuff makes any sense. You know it, I know it, we all freaking know it. You can’t connect a Hollywood vs. theater themed movie to an ending like that without really stretching out those right-side neural pathways. It’s just not going to happen.

Alright, then what does it mean? Well, this is where it’s going to get really tricky. Digging deep into this movie’s other layer, the one where the fantastical stuff occurs for a reason, is difficult to explain, and I think that this is a large reason why few have really bothered to try. I do know that since “Birdman” is so complex and confusing, chances are pretty good that my explanation of this movie’s complex and confusing elements is probably going to be just as complex and confusing. See? I’m already not making any sense. But here goes nothing. I’m going to try to do this very slowly and carefully.

 To understand this flick you have to go way back, and I mean way back. Now please, before you click that X because you assume I’m over-reaching and a total nut, just hear me out. (Clears throat) You have to go all the way back to Greek Mythology, and, in particular, the story of King Minos’s Minotaur. I was seriously considering digging into this whole myth, but, after a couple runs through it, I figure it’s just going to take too long. But if you are interested in the details of this myth, which is one of the most important from literature to psychology, go here:

 http://www.greekmyths-greekmythology.com/myth-of-theseus-and-minotaur/

 To summarize what is important to “Birdman,” the myth contains a half-man, half-bull trapped in a near-inescapable maze called a Labyrinth. I realize that this sounds bizarre, so just to establish a little trust: in “Birdman,” do you remember when Edward Norton climbs out of the tanning bed reading a book? Well, the book that he is reading is Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges. Also, if that doesn’t convince you, a L.A. Times article (see link below) actually quotes Inarritu: “I wanted the audience to be navigating the labyrinth of what [Riggan] is going through” (Gettell Los Angeles Times). See? It’s really not that crazy after all.

 Good, I’m glad we made it through that together, but now this stuff is about to get a little more confusing, and we’re going to go from Greek Mythology to -who else but- Edgar Allan Poe.  Ol’ Ed was a master of the psychological thriller, and he skillfully symbolizes the depths of the human mind with the metaphor of the labyrinth, and, in case you’re not aware, Edgar Allan Poe was a genius, and this -human mind as a maze- trope is still present today. A lot. Think about “The Shining,” and Jacky boy being trapped in that Colorado maze. Yeah, you could say that Jack is a good and evil split-person (instead of a split-species beast), and Danny trapping him in that maze contains him (to the hotel forever), just like that poor old Minotaur of Greek Mythology. Think about the end of “True Detective,” when Rust is tracking that psycho through long maze-like corridors, or “Alien,” which involves escaping a demented acid-blooded creature thing through the tightly packed hallways of a spaceship. There are tons and tons of examples. Poe figured out that this is a good way to reach back into the deep recesses of our minds without us even being aware of it. Something about being trapped in a maze with a monster. Freaky.

When you really, really think about it, this metaphor actually kind of makes sense in a kind of, sort of empirical fashion. Think about the human mind; somewhere deep down in there is a force of instinctual desires. You know, sex, violence and food: all my favorite things. However, this stuff is contained and controlled by society, relationships, and other aspects of outside reality; and this keeps that monster-like force of our personalities contained. Yep, just like the Minotaur in his Labyrinth. So, Poe was just writing about Freud’s Tripartite Model of human psyche: The Minotaur is the “Id,” right? Well that’s a good way of looking at it, except for the fact that Poe died almost seven years before Freud was even born. Huh, Poeian Psycho-analytical Theory. It has a nice ring to it. Don’t you think?

Anyway, back to “Birdman.” For this layer, or deeper focus, you have to look at the whole movie in an entirely different light. You have to really tighten-up your focus. You have to go subjective. Hard. Think about the main character’s (Riggan played by Michael Keaton) life and personal-mental state during this movie. He’s writing, directing, and starring in a play in an attempt to prove his self-worth as he ungracefully ages: an obvious sign of his insecurities. Dude even wears a wig to look younger. He also has an actor that is younger, better, and more popular working next to him, questioning his authority, and also hooking up with his “always watching” and judging daughter that just happens to be in a state of insecurity with a looming drug-addiction. Also his girlfriend and co-star’s pregnant with his unwanted baby, his ex-wife pops in periodically to remind him of a better past, a brat of a critic is threatening to completely smash his play, and all of this occurs while his entire financial welfare is tumbling down the mole hill. Damn, just thinking about this guy’s problems makes me want to take a Xanax.

 This is where you’re going to have to take a leap into the metaphorical. All of these characters are not real, they are simply representations of an area of Riggan’s insecurities. The lawyer is finances, Mike is his age, the critic is his reputation, his daughter is his family. The whole thing -i.e. the characters, the set, the stage, the hallways- are all just an aspect of Riggan’s Labyrinth (inside of his mind). None of it is real and it is not meant to be taken literally. At all.

 Take note of the cinematography: the whole movie revolves around tightly packed hallways, with key events happening in the same locations. (i.e. the stage, the dressing room, the bar). Think about the time that Riggan leaves the Labyrinth, and gets stuck outside the theater in his tighty-whities. Everyone out there judges him, takes photos of him, and, if you listen carefully, you can even hear one woman say, “Ugh, you’re so old.” Riggan couldn’t leave the Labyrinth, because he hadn’t shed his insecurities. Get it?

So… Riggan is the Minotaur? Yeah, he sure is. Instead of being half-man, half-bull; he is half-man, half-Birdman. Birdman is the larger representation of all of Riggan’s insecurities combined into one nagging goofy-looking superhero that is attached to Riggan all the time. They are one or, if you will, “twone” (James Joyce Finnegans Wake). Riggan is never going to get out of the Labyrinth unless he is no longer a Minotaur. He has to shed Birdman, and thus shed all of his insecurities to escape.

 By now you’re either pissed that you just read all that, or you’re picking up what I’m laying down. Just for all the haters, here is a quote from Inarritu from an article by Steve Persall (link below) that provides evidence of what I’m talking about:

 “You catch what you're not aware of, how the ego works, how sometimes it misleads you … this dictator, tyrant, this subconscious voice that all of us have. … I thought it would be a good idea to have this struggle of a human being with that abstract thing in a film” (Persall Tampa Bay Times).

 This essay does not even come close to tackling all the possible questions of this movie. Why did he shoot himself? Flying? Love? Admiration? Farrah Fawcett? There is a rhyme and reason to all of that, and I have my own opinions, but, honestly, there is no way I’m going to dig into all of that. I’m not trying to write a dissertation over here. But of all the movies out there, “Birdman” is one of the few that you actually could write a dissertation about. That’s why it got Academy Awards, not because Inarritu was sacrificing goats to the Illuminati.

But, to sum up, what is the deal with that ending? Inarritu is probably never going to explain it, because I don’t think he wants to shelter his film to his audiences. Leaving it up to interpretation is going to spark more curiousity, attention, and, therefore, more long essays on Tumblr just like this one. Therefore, I’m not going to explain it either. But if you can’t figure out my take from what you just read, then maybe you’ll never get it, and this movie just isn’t for you. Give up on “Birdman” and go watch “The Revenant,” because, let me tell you, that movie is good, and, I’d even say, maybe a little too good.

   http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-alejandro-g-inarritu-birdman-20141031-story.html