Author Archives: nauvalyazid

there we were,
bidding goodbyes,
waving hands,
and be a faithful doer

of living differently
of loving each other completely
of liking some objects contrastly
under one unity

that when it begins to wear thin
no, it never fades away
instead it remains like it has always been
and gratefully does not even date by a single day

gone maybe those tacky lines
the past bears irreconcilable stupefying minds

and yet there’s always something to look forward to
within a month or two

or more than what regulars might think in their contrived thoughts

there we will be,
another bids,
another waves,
another miss-you glee,

another time.
again.

if home is a place where we can’t be honest to ourselves,

if a comfort zone is a place where we can’t escape the scrutiny of being pressurized,

if home is a place where to be bold means sacrificing our comfort,

if a comfort zone is a place where to be free has to miss our home,

if home is merely a state of mind,

if a comfort zone is merely man-made creation,

where do we stand then?

The United Kingdom’s prestigious The Royal Ballet Company presented everything that rings true in treating a timeless tale as legendary as Swan Lake: it needs to be royally grand in terms of staging, it needs to be emotionally engaging to keep audience seated for 165 minutes, and it needs to be magical to make audience keep humming Tchaikovsky’s delicately crafted tunes long after the show ends. Such impossible tasks were embarked effortlessly by the 90-strong troupe highly respected as one of the most sought-after ballet companies in the world. Staged as part of Singapore Arts Festival 2005, it was hardly any surprise to find most of tickets had been snapped up months earlier leading to the three-night only presentation.

On Friday night, 24 June 2005, the 2,000-seats of Esplanade Theatre, Singapore, became a witness of dazzling spectacle set in the late 19th-century Russia, where a prince by the name of Siegfried is having a coming-of-age party, and the eventful occasion turns to be a more delightful one when he encounters a flock of swans, and decidedly ends the festivities with a hunt on a deserted lakeside by ruins of a chapel. Little does he know that the lake is an enchanted place where the Swan Princess Odette lives together with her fellow victims of Von Rothbart, an evil magician who turns them into swans by day, yet they can return to the form of human beings by night. The lake itself is a lake of tears shed by Odette’s mother over the suffering of her daughter’s fated destiny. However, this cursed spell can be broken only when someone who has never loved before, will pledge and sacrifice his eternity to Odette.

Knowing that Siegfried will take more than anything to rescue and prove his love to Odette, Von Rothbart does a dirty trick by transforming his own daughter, Odile, into bearing a similar physical resemblance to Odette. The prince dances with Odile, whom he mistakenly assumes as Odette, at the kingdom’s ball, and captivated by her beauty, he proposes to her in front of the royal court. When the royal family accepts his initiative, Von Rothbart begins to reveal the truest layer of his plan, leaving Siegfried disappointed and hurrying down to the lake in search of Odette.

Hearing the heart-wrenching news, the real Odette decides to face death by perishing herself in the waves of the lake, so as to free herself from the evil power. Siegfried pursues Odette there, while Von Rothbart who insists him on marrying Odile threatens him. Not wanting to leave Odette being a swan forever if he marries Odile, Siegfried decides to be united with Odette in death. Von Rothbart and his power fall, the swan maidens are freed and the lake will linger in memory as a witness of star crossed lovers.

Under the guidance of conductor Valery Ovsyanikov with the strong support from Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, the audience was transported to the fantasy world divided in four equally elegant acts: Act I on the initial party celebrating Prince Siegfried’s coming of age, Act II lays the lake where the swans flock to the spotlight, Act III presents the dazzling colors of costume ball, and the final act IV revolves around the lake to resolute the lovers’ destiny. These acts are conceived and brought to the audience eloquently in enviable stage and costume designs meticulously conceptualized and gorgeously presented in Faberge inspired style by the designer Yolanda Sonnabend, as if to enhance the truest quality the ballet company has in store to bring the tale lively on a grand scale performance. The bare proscenium arch stage of Esplanade Theatre could not be more fitting to accommodate the extravaganza set which draws disbelief sighs often heard among audience in seeing how the stage is imbued within the ballerinas’ elastic movements that deserve numerous applause throughout the show. Whereas it may be impossible to place a certain divided notion among each and every dancer performed on the night, it is inevitable not to praise Roberta Marquez and Johan Kobborg, as Odette/Odile and Prince Siegfried respectively, in carrying their roles with graceful and irresistible presence.

For sure, the troupe has done a testament that will leave Marius Petipa, the initial choreographer, feeling proud of the work he had started more than nine decades ago.

The timeless beauty will remain eternally beauty as it is meant to be.

just be with me
when i run out of love
for i may need some time to flock the feeling all over again
then when i’m loaded with abundance of desire
i may rise again to embrace the beauty of giving.

just be with me
when i run out of words
for i may be drained from exhaustion
those stupefying deeds i do
they are needed for my survival.

just be with me
when i run out of energy
for i may have dimmed the bright lights on my own
then we shall see how and when they will spark again
but don’t you realize the excessive power supply is such a rarity?

just be with me
when i run out of excitement
for i may present you with boredom
that feels like seeing plain white wall is a better option
but then, we’ll miss out the whole point here.

that for just bearing with me, for a little longer
then we’ll soon find out
the light of this tunnel with undefined length.

(casting our minds back to 11 years ago, in 1994, when your pal here was at his prime of cuteness and innocence *run for your life! :P* while he still proudly wore the high-school uniform, on the first grade to be exact.

this song was on the top of playlists in many radios in indonesia, and i got smitten by it, so much so that i bought the cassette *CD was a luxury at that time*, and played it over and over again, not really giving a thought that it would only shorten the life of the cassette and until now, i’ve never seen the cassette again! 😀

but thanks to the advancement of technology, mp3s are widely, illegally available to download, i managed to find this lovely song again. you bet, it ranks as the most frequently played song on my iTunes now.

i wonder if any of you are familiar w/ the song, so for those who are not, this is called ‘when you look in my eyes’, written by this jazz great jay graydon, featured on his album ‘airplay for the planet’.

hey, if you ever came across this song before, and one of those people who often requested this song to be played in radios more than a decade ago, this song is for you all.
t, the lyric is about you.)

Though I was through with love
Thought it was over
Didn’t need what I needed before

The neverending story
Had an ending after all
And it hurts you when you fall

Guess I didn’t believe enough
Didn’t think it could happen
I gave up on myself long ago

Love had me believing
Then it turned and closed the door
I couldn’t trust it anymore

While I’m beginning to doubt my doubts
And I’m losing faith in my faithlessness
All the grey above is clearing
Becoming blue skies
When you look in my eyes

But here in reality
It gets so confusing
Why are old habits hard to break
My heart’s afraid of losing
So I haven’t played the game
It always seems to end the same

But I’m beginning to doubt my doubts
And I’m losing faith in my faithlessness
All the grey above is clearing
Becoming blue skies

I’m beginning to feel again
And I’m losing what’s left of my thoughtlessness
The sun has begun to come out
In my life
When you look in my eyes

You gave me something more
It’s like I never love before

But I’m beginning to doubt my doubts
And I’m losing faith in my faithlessness
All the grey above is clearing
Becoming blue skies

I’m beginning to feel again
And I’m losing what’s left of my thoughtlessness
The sun has begun to come out
In my life

When you look in my eyes

Hello there!

Now.Far., aren’t you?

It’s kinda weird to call you by that name, since I’ve never been used to it, until now.

I know you’re gonna react that way, bulging eyes and a big “O” forming from your lips, just before you scream out … “What?!”

I thought that all these time I’ve been leaving my marks on you would make me knowing you completely. Well, now I realize that not even a drop of water from the sky will fidget me to see that, I have not known you completely.

You see, well, come to think of it, I don’t even have to ask you for that since your stationary means you’ve been standing there still for me all the time, without me realizing that. Pinch me.

Let’s put it this way.

As we both know, I haven’t been myself lately. I’ve felt, you know, burned out from the life I’ve chosen to lead. Yes, the stupefying one that I haven’t been able to detach myself from.
I was stressed out, dear.
Then I felt worse because I’ve been neglecting you by just looking at you without even making a single gesture to touch you, let alone to hold you dearly like what I’ve used to do.

I thought by leaving you on your own, I would be able to “take a break” like what I always long for. But then I realize that I couldn’t leave you.

Because you are my shelter of rejuvenation, of consolation and of hope.

Because I realize that when I strike the keyboards to type the set of letters in you, I know that I can be myself at the utmost ease.

Because you exist as the result of my compassion.

Because you reflect my being.

It’s just this other part of life that puts me in imbecile. Painful as it is, hurtful at times, I should’ve run here to seek for comfort.

So, my blog, don’t get mad if I may be on hiatus for days.

Chicago said, “everybody needs a little time away … even lovers need a holiday”.

Where shall we go for our next trip, eh?!

Don’t get it wrong: there’s no love, and there’s no lust in Eros. They are reduced to merge into forming an existence of eroticism.

The sultry image of the film’s poster reveals a sillhoute of bright, electrified red stocking being pulled as if someone is about to wear it, and the color is seductively crashed to the black background, suggesting mystery awaits to be unlocked. An erotic mystery, perhaps?

Or it could be exotic, given the fact that three renowned directors handling this anthology could not be more different from one another. Wong Kar Wai can be considered as one of the last remaining auteurs in the world of modern cinema with a meticulous understanding on heydays of Hong Kong and China, Steven Soderbergh is an all-American director working and living as part of Hollywood industry who injects a certain edgy style in his commercial works, and Michelangelo Antonioni has contributed his outstanding works shown in his past as collection of art worth studying by film enthusiasts throughout the world.

Yet, the signatural mark among the three shorts can only be found in “The Hand“, Wong’s section that aptly opens the whole film. As previously used in his well-known In The Mood for Love and 2046, the world of cheongsam and ’60s Hong Kong as seen through the eyes of his long-time collaborator, Christoper Doyle, suits perfectly to the story which tells about an illicit affair done by a tailor (Chang Chen) and his muse (Gong Li). What starts off as a mere working relationship blossoms into an unrequited longing for self-fulfilling desire, for the tailor in his frequent silence keeps looking upon the woman, protecting her in unspeakable action, and proving himself to be a faithful companion towards her final days.

Whereas it offers nothing new to the collection of his auteurism, Wong understands the meaning of subtlety by letting the images speak more than unnecessary words as what he usually indulges in. The implicitness of eroticism turns to be explicitly loud by only showing the shaking walls with breathing and gasping sound in the background, while the camera extensively moving through the landscape of interior details. Not to mention that both cast is allowed to keep their clothes on all the time, allowing audiences to witness to explore their barenaked thoughts as reflected on their studious gestures. The way Chang stroke his hand passionately through the stack of clothes, thus the title is given, and the manner in which Gong presents herself as a lady with a sense of vanity remind us that being sexy in a big screen is about how much something is revealed by showing a little. An old school concept which still works after all.

In contrast, this is something we will not see on the following two films.

“Equilibrium” is supposedly a comedy of manners done through the surrealistic style where we actually need to figure out if what we see is actually a dream or a reality, thanks to the interchanging scenes in which Robert Downey Jr.’s character turns into Alan Arkin’s at the end of the film, and vice versa. A seemingly dreamlike film, if by now you are already familiar with the concept of Banyu Biru, although the latter may not be an effective example here.

However, the only thing that impresses me most from this part is the stark black-and-white cinematography, which brings to mind as a reminiscence of recent works like Schindler’s List or The Man Who Wasn’t There. It may be used merely to differentiate one scene from another, yet the effectiveness of using the dual-color actually heightens the otherwise lack of depth story here, which ironically is the most talkative section among all three.

At least, we have not come to the worst part.

By any respect of his great stature existence in the film history, I salute Michelangelo Antonioni for his past work like L’Avventura, L’Eclisse or La Notte. Regrettably, we are unable to trace his graceful style of filmmaking in his contribution here, “The Dangerous Thread of Things“. Such a poetic title might give inspiration to any porn-film producers, for Antonioni takes a dramatic turn in making his short film here as a semi-porn flick with nothing but parading flesh under the Tuscan sun, and lines directly taken off from Harlequin books. Adding salt to the wound, none of the actors seem to understand how to perform in front of camera.

From the magnificent beginning of old Hong Kong style through America in 1950s to the crashed ending of mind boggling ending in Italy, the film ends with a high anti-climaz note, leaving me in puzzledness over the latter choice.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s just some successful guy wanting to take a break being considered ‘serious’, and chooses to indulge himself in erotic journey above all.