Book Whore, I am.

I used to blog and blab and brag about music. That's where this blog got the name for. Actually I also have another side of strong addiction, called literature. I fell in love with books and literatures naturally since I was a child. "Trio Detektif" was my first novel-read and Gulliver's Travel was my first English-novel-read.

Now I fell in love with classic literatures very much since I just wanna think much about world itself. I also love Indonesian classic literatures but since the literatures were developed in this country just around 1920's, there's not much variation in their way of expressing. Hence, several great literatures are enough for me to make an inference.

That is not the case with world classic literatures, of course, since they varied widely from ancient ages to modern time, and from the Persian Gulf to the Japanese tea garden. It's just a wide open ocean of knowledge, ideas, and expressions with the unknown depth. I am practically drawn to it.

I then started to collect books as my personal net worth increasing along the time. Here's the list of the book I intendedly or accidentally have now:

1. Arthur Golden's Memoir of a Geisha

2. Homer's Odyssey

3. Feng Menglong's Ming Dinasty's Stories to warn the world (4 books)

4. Puccini's Madame Butterfly; an Opera Guide

5. Miyamoto Musashi's sword philosophy

6. err... OK, that's too much maybe, let me just get into the things I am currently reading...

a. Homer's Odyssey

b. Musashi's

c. Feng Menglong's

d. Multatuli's Max Havelaar

e. trying to find and reading the rest volume of Cressida Cowell's How to Train Your Dragon

f. Maxim Gorki's

g. a bunch of economic literatures from Easterly's critiques to the conventional growth theory

to Romer's Macroeconomics textbooks and a SEVERAL other bunch of journals...

Okay, I am a food whore, and book is definitely my daily food in this case...and they are becoming crunchier than ever as my examination coming towards me. Good luck to me!

Make It Real

Tonight I have TONS of things to do...but I go stuck

My mind is stuck on those things again.

My eye can't stop lingering at one of my friends' online picture.

She's there trying to catch her dream.

It could be fame, it could be money, it could be respect, but among all other things, it must be him.

She went through it all for him. He is her dream.

Now I see her picture with him...a worth trying, buddy! (?)

She's not the first who do that. I have another female friend who has done it all before.

She was searching for that man with her heart...with all of her heart.

She was at point that she didn't longer care about what they say about them anyway.

She made it. A success story.

Me...well, me...me also have had several "him", whom none of them I took a dare of...

none of them I was willing to do such thing for

none of them I was trying to search for

...maybe none of them I give my heart to actually.

No, but my point is tonight.

I got him tonight to soothe me when I go crazy in mind,

when I feel pathetically exhausted, discouraged, yet overwhelmed by myself.

He's my way out tonight.

He made it real for me tonight.

Could he make it real again for any other night?

She's just My Age

Today I met my friend on the mall. It's an ordinary mall, another ordinary day in our long-lasting friendship. I've known her for almost the last 10 years and we have been friends ever since.

She came with her little sister. We went shopping together. She's the eldest child in her family with her three little siblings. Her mother had passed away. Her father's business was quite often having a disastrous difficulties and the fortune goddess seemed to put the star on her. Then she became the bread-winner in her family. She's very strong, I have to say.

I went shopping many times with my other friends and usually ended up in some upscale stores scanning the fancy apparels and other cute things, but shopping with her today was at least, slightly different. We went to the grocery store. She and her sister picked up the detergent, the cooking oil, and other leave-it-to-your-mother-stuffs.

I am still having my mother at home. She's the one who usually picks up those things and ensures that the stock will always be properly adequate. Well, me, too, more or less, a kind of bread-winner in my family now. I am adequately paid doing the jobs that I loved, the ones that I'm gratefully embracing in my life. I used to raid off the grocery store by myself thinking about the stocks in my house and starting to pick up the things like flour, jelly powder, chili sauce, noodles, milk, and slowly trying to back up my mother's role. I love cooking and love to set up my mind in a way that making me a-wife-and-mother-material-girl. I do it all along for "fun", at my own interest. I used to think that I'm the rare one, minority-kind, until today I saw the bigger responsibilities had been taken.

Finally, at cashier, a toddler in a stroller beside me stared at me. He's a boy. I smiled and rubbed his hair. Ah, kids...I will have them someday hopefully. I always want them.

and my friend continued her shopping time with her sister. They went to the restaurant. I went home and said hello to my home-made lasagna at the afternoon. (January 23, 2011)

Pinkerton Diaries: a Diary of an Ordinary Man

NB: Pinkerton is Weezer's second studio album released at 1996. However, this post is not an album review, it's a book review :)

I have reviewed this Weezer album before on this blog. However, somehow I want to write something about this one-of-the-greatest-rock-album-ever again. It's because lately, when I randomly surfed the web about that favorite band of mine, I found an article that Rivers Cuomo (Weezer's frontman, lead singer, lead songwriter, and lead guitarist), the one that act as a Pinkerton's narrator, will finally open the book of his personal diary from Pinkerton era, and I was just...wooww...just because that deeply personal album also remarked an unspoken deep meaning to me.

So, let me start reviewing the Pinkerton, again, from the perspective of mine. Pinkerton is a journal of a frustrated confused man craving the love of his life and his unattainable, unreachable girls. It tells me the story of how hard it could be to find a perfect fit of yours in this life. It started with the realization of what a human crave most from a relationship, that the relationship is way more than a physical need. Then the man tells the world that he want to shy away from a girl who captured his attention just because he's afraid of being hurt anymore. He justified his fear by keeping a thought that what he felt for the girl was nothing more than temporarily sexual attraction, but in the end of the song he felt like he was going crazy then he asked someone to knock him on the head just to make him sane. That's the story of "Why Bother?" (one of my most favorite track on this album).

The man is a kind of public figure that he received so many fan-letters. One of those letters was capturing his heart and he fell in love with the girl who sent the letters to him though he didn't even know her. It's the story of "Across the Sea" and the review could be found on my older post.

Then comes another adventure of love for that man. This time, he fell in love all over again to a girl. He then strongly felt that the girl also felt the same way like he did. However, this man didn't have enough courage to approach the girl and so did the girl. Then it was like a dead-end love story. (El Scorcho)

The man then turned and looked the other way where he find another girl that impressed him much. He even finally thought to marry this girl, but unfortunately, he found this girl to be lesbian. (Pink Triangle)

Finally, the man in the question have summoned the courage to speak to "El Scorcho" girl, and yes, he's right....that girl also fell in love with him for all of this time. However, this man somehow felt like he didn't deserve that girl. He spilled out his irrational fears of falling for her from the awkward feeling that he was a lot older than the girl and another fears...but yes he, again, started to think to settle down, this time with the "El Scorcho" girl. My favorite part of this chapter is when the man said (on his mind, maybe) to the girl that he wanted to "....get fat and old with you". That's really a sweet thought a man can have :) (Fall For You)

However, this album is closed by a song about a man who abandoned a girl that he loves so much just because he couldn't take it. It's not really clear what kind of situation that made him had to leave her, but he said sorry sincerely...over and over again. My favorite line in this ending part is when the man said "I guess you're as real as me. Maybe I can't live without, maybe I need fantasy, life of chasing butterfly. I 'm sorry for what I did..." ("Butterfly". I have once posted this line in my Facebook status sometime around the early part of this year and was shocked by the responses of it).

So, the conclusion is, the man (a.k.a the Pinkerton's narrator), in my opinion is a pathetic miserable frustrated far-from-fearless guy chasing around his true love...but it's just so humanistic. The Pinkerton's narrator is no one but Rivers Cuomo himself, so we can guess how personal and precious this album for him and how it felt like knowing that your personal art was very bad in the eye of people that you think would like it.

Now, more than a decade later since that album came out, many Weezer fans realized the deeply emotion of that album and considered it as one of the best album Weezer ever released. Rolling Stones Magazine even re-review that album and uprising its star to the maximum (3 star out of 5 in 1996 and become 5 star out of 5 in 2004). Rivers also had been through many changing seasons of his life along that time and thank God he is now happily married and having a 3 years-old cute daughter.

However, as he looked back on his pasts, Pinkerton remained a kind of darkly emotional session of Rivers' life that he could not remove, rather, he open those pages again this year with a brand new existing circumstances of his life (as a married man, as a father, and still as a frontman of one of the biggest rock band on this planet) through what he called as "The Pinkerton Diaries", the book containing about 200 pages that he wrote and will be launched this year. Sure I will be waiting for that book to be published and very looking forward to read that...or in other words, I HAVE to read that book! Not only the book, Rivers will also release his third solo album titled "Alone" (I have the first two "Alone" album by Rivers) this year, this time, it will be more about "Pinkerton" session. Weezer also will release their compilation of demos and other unreleased materials, again, from around "Pinkerton" era at November 2010. Their album will called "Death to False Metal" (and I HAVE to have this album also).

Why this Pinkerton things amaze and amuse me so much is what I don't know up to this time. I think I've never been through that kind of darkly emotional session in my life though I have passed several heartaches, and in my opinion, regarding its passiveness and lack of courage, Pinkerton was still written from the male perspective, and I am female, so I'm not that way to some extent. In addition, I think I haven't related with any man who have been through "Pinkerton" session on his life (maybe I have but I deceive, or I have but unrealized). Hence, I don't know how this Pinkerton things affected me so much, but somehow I feel like this is (gonna be) something to me, so I don't ignore my curiosity. For me, Pinkerton is all about an ordinary man that is craving love so desperately in his life, but he's nothing but desperate frustrated confused man with all his passiveness and lack of courage. He may considered himself as a man without an adequate appeal, jerk, insane, insecure, and didn't deserve to be with a good girl, though he wanted it so much.....but most of all, in my opinion, he's just an ordinary man. Yes, he is a geek, nerdy, weird, quirky, pathetic guy. Although he is far from perfect (who was perfect by the way?), but he was handing his heart to the girl that he loves. It's just nothing but a sweet white love, although he has a lot of trouble expressing it....but that kind of love will ask you nothing, will hide itself from the world, so that it will be just for you. Maybe it's all that I need. Maybe that's why I love Pinkerton's narrator so much.

Quest

Last year, I had a dream about something precious
Something that had never been mine
Something that I know from the start that it would leads to nothing

Then, I left it behind

no heart feeling whatsoever

This year, my life has taken me to the point that I've never imagine before

All of these things were never in my plan

Although these circumstances often hurt me bad, I know that I must go on

Although it seems that everything that I want is taken away from me, but who I got to blame?

nobody but me

Next year, of course I don't have any idea about where my life will go

But I'm sure He knows everything about my motives

He knows me, He knows my heart, my mind, my life quest, regardless what the world say about me

and I'm sure that He saves the best for me

so my only hope about next year's circumstances will be

nothing but no frontiers whatsoever :)

NB: Do you think that all of those blog posts in this blog explains MUCH about me? Sorry, but you're wrong, folks! Yes, they try to explain the corners of my mind, but I'm just like a diamond, this blog only reveals one side of me of much more, and I'm not sharing as much as you think I am. To know me is to confront me instead, slowly, gradually, extensively. No other way.

Someone I Need

so much craziness surrounding me

so much going on, it gets hard to breathe

when all my faith has gone, you bring it back to me

...you make it real for me

when I'm not sure of my priorities

when I've lost site of where I meant to be

...you make it real for me

and I'm running to you, baby

coz you are the only one who save me

that's why I've been missing you lately

coz you make it real for me

when my head is strong, but my heart is weak

I'm full of hurricanes and uncertainties

when I can't find the words, you teach my heart to speak

...you make it real for me

everybody's talking in words I don't understand

you got to be the only one who knows just who I am

you're shining in the distance, I hope I can make it through

coz the only place that I want to be...is right back home with you

I guess this so much more...I have to learn

but if you're here with me, I know which way to turn

you always give me somewhere...somewhere I can run

...you make it real for me

Music and Lyrics by James Morrison

... if only You give me the one who make it real for me, then I hope that I know that's the time when I will search no more.

Geek Rock

As this page suggested, me is the person who appreciates music very much...but lately, after carefully considering many trustworthy and reliable music sources...I found that part of my taste in music is categorized as "Geek Rock"...Heck!

Why are they categorized as "geek"? I mean, yes I like Weezer very much...and Rivers (the frontman of Weezer) is a lovable guy. You know, he's a very talented musician, he makes many great compositions (the Blue Album is indeed the strong evidence of it), and he's a Harvard graduate....with a straight-A-student reputation. Is he geek? I think he's a genius,hehe...

and I also like Ozma, the band from Pasadena, CA. Their songs are really meaningful and strong in lyrics, I think. I also like The Strokes, White Stripes, and other "geek" rockers.

But I don't get it why they are categorized as "geek".

Is it because their often-off-the-key notes on their songs? But, hey, it's not coincidence. That's just EXACTLY how they perform the keys.

Is it because their lyrics is not as "flirt" as it should be? But, hey, they don't need to blabbing the words of love all around...think about their lyrics for a while, then you'll be surprised how the simple truth could reveal such deep revelations.

or...is it simply because they are overly unconventionally smart so that it's hard for many people (me also, because sometimes it took me months to understand the meaning of their songs, musically and wordy) to just get them?

but....whatever....Geek Rock for life! Rock on! \m/