fartzy.com, blog of Kohn Liu

May 28, 2009

The Ghost

Filed under: Writings — Kohn @ 12:06 am

He lived inside the quiet corridors of the most remote terminals. Like a lost wanderer in deserted tunnels, he was, the ghost of all airports. Always fashioned in a suit, with a black leather briefcase in his right hand, and a cup of locally brewed Joe in his left, he would take small, slow sips from the paper cup while walking down passageways, silently identifying places and faces of people he acquainted years ago.

But no one knew him. At least no one knew who he was. All these years he remained elusive like any other anonymous businessman that had disappeared one after another behind every security checkpoint. If life was a collage of constant coming and going, then his very own would be the motion pictures of all the coming and going in the world, sped up a hundredfold. Everyone came quickly, and left shortly after. No one stayed like he did, perhaps because an airport really served no further purpose other than being a simple point of departure, a midpoint of passing arrivals. But he lived there, his life grounded under each and every empty seat of every waiting room, his time spent waiting along with passengers to leave this place only he’d call home.

Sometimes he would leave too, but only to fly to another city, country, or continent nearby. And when the plane landed, his journey also ended there and then. It was therefore, no surpise that he would, from time to time, lose the track of time and space, unaware of exactly where he was.

    * * * * *

When he opened his eyes this morning, his watch had read 02:29am. He was at the end of a narrow terminal, facing an immense open water of what seemed to be a large lake, backdropped with a cascade of mountains that were half covered in snow. He looked around and had then determined that he was in a small regional airport somewhere in Northern Europe. But perhaps he could still be in Chile, Brazil, or Argentina. He remembered being in South America just a few hours ago.

His watch was wrong, though, the day was breaking very slowly, and he could see a light purple hue diffusing right above the emerald water. And the sight was breathtaking. So breathtaking he was drawn to it away from his seat thoughtlessly, like a nightwalker first awakened by a dark spell.

He approached the scene. With hands holding onto the railing, he leaned forward, his head bumped slightly against the window. Never had he seen anything like this before. And he almost had the urge to break through the glass wall that’d denied his any contact with this spectacular phenomenon, which was now being adulterated by the rising sun. To say that his reality was limited within the confines of airports all over the world was an understatement. But with such existence he also had the privilege to observe the world through the eyes of a stationary traveler. Indeed, he had been everywhere, and seen everything, alone, perhaps. But his home was anywhere an airplane could fly to. Yet nothing he had seen until this moment could compare to what was dawning before him.

The ambience was changing capriciously. He knew it wasn’t going to last any longer. He pressed forward a little more, hoping to savor the remaining marvel.

    “This is for you.”
    A female hand emerged with a fresh Polaroid picture that had just started showing a vague image.
    “I took two, this one is for you.”

He looked up. A woman his age had taken a photograph of him as he stood alone in the empty terminal. In the picture was a black silhouette of a tall, skinny man with a briefcase, standing before a peculiar gradient of dark green and purple. He took the photograph in silence.

    “It’s unbelievable, isn’t it. So beautiful. I come here all the time just to see this.”
    She continued, as though talking to herself.
    “And it’s nowhere else in the world, at least for me. Only this airport, this terminal, this angle, this hour of this season…”

He turned toward her. She had made complete sense. And he wasn’t able to utter another word in response, or in elaboration. It was his thought exactly.

    “Well, I am Amy.”
    “I hope you like the picture.”
    The woman turned and left.

Down the corridor he saw a man waiting, his hand extended towards the stranger woman, Amy. She jogged towards him, and extended her own. They joined hands and walked away together.

    “I am John,” he said.

The terminal was very well lit now. The lake glowed in a vibrant green under the sun, with small waves glittered in gold. He backed away from the window and followed their trail. As he walked down the corridor, the day’s first flight was about to embark.

“Final boarding call for passengers on flight 724 to Bueno Aires, please proceed to gate 5 immediately…”

He couldn’t make out the rest. He was already running.


To be continued, maybe.

April 17, 2009

2nd Mix - Krushed Interludes

Filed under: Media — Kohn @ 7:26 pm


Krushed Interludes from Kohn Liu on Vimeo.

I present to you my second mix, titled Krushed Interludes. After this particular set I have depleted all the usable CD’s I own, I think, so it’s about time for me to increase my music library by tenfolds. Back to the mix. I like it a lot, there are some not so smooth transitions, mainly because of the fact that these breakbeat songs are difficult to mix discreetly, I definitely need a scratchable turntable to do it smoothly, with my currently knowledge. Still though, I like the way the music develops. It’s not the typical electronic stuff you hear anyway, and I love breaks, so I’ll stand behind this one for sure.

April 7, 2009

Jazz Allnighter from Sunaga t Experience

Filed under: Media — Kohn @ 10:40 pm

With a new set of speakers, I found myself listening to music again. Going through records to let the Rainmakers recreate a different sound experience.

Just a little feedback, though, the Rainmakers did reveal the weakness in my set up. I am in no way an audiophile, and I do not ever intend to become one of those snobbish geeks who complains on the slightest “coloration,” or “distortion” of their favorite music due to some mismatch in their 5K cables and their 30K solid state amp. All the junk in talks, bah! But in any case, I think my Onkyo receiver is too bright, and the brightness which I thought was initially a Rainmakers’ problem, actually comes from the source. I had to decrease the treble value by -3, something I normally wouldn’t do. I am in no position to upgrade, so changing the EQ will have to do for now.

allnighter Sunaga t Experience (Tatsuo Sunaga) is one of my all time favorite Japanese DJ/Remixer/Musician. He’s got a great command on all type of music, from electronica, all the way down to bossa nova, and Jazz. I bought one of his Jazz Allnighter from Japan last summer and it had opened up some new doors in the world of Jazz. Excellent picks and truly great addition to my feeble collection. Pop one of those CD’s on a long night and you will appreciate much more about Jazz.

This is what I love about Japan, they take things to the next level sometimes. Who knew, a Japanese DJ can compile a series of excellent Jazz picks. This doesn’t even happen so much here in the states - where Jazz lovers sometimes remain a nerdy bunch and the heritage never gets to be passed down across the generation gap. Get into Sunaga’s world, it’ll spin you around in all forms and genres.

April 2, 2009

The Last of the 20’s

Filed under: Randoms, Thoughts — Kohn @ 11:24 pm

In the wake of my last birthday in my 20’s, I have fully realized the effects of a gradual, eventual, less expectation on everything.

I say this because since my 10th birthday, which totally rocked, birthday celebration has become a year after year of eating, drinking, and forgetting. I am such a downer indeed, but it was true. Because my 10th birthday party was so great, nothing could have topped it, ever. If I may go a little back into my childhood memory and document this tonight - I still remember sitting with my mom by our cold, granite dinning table folding birthday hats. There were plates of my favorite treats, not a whole lot, but enought to make me happy knowing that my best friends will soon come and enjoy them with me! I turned 10 that day, and the whole house turned into a party for me, for me, and only for me! We played video games, jumped on beds and had a big pillow fight. My mom let me do it all, and that was better than anything in the whole wide world - those little things, laughters that come not because of some sarcastic humor, for knowing too much or too little of things that don’t matter, but because of just being, just being a kid.

I wonder what happiness is, was, then. Is life itself just a deterioration, a contant fall from heaven. And now, writing things that make me feel down actually somehow makes me feel a little happier, knowing that I’ve had it all, right there and then.

March 30, 2009

Rainmaker, would you please catch my dreams?

Filed under: Thoughts — Kohn @ 8:22 pm

totemrain1

And so I am, finally, on my sofa again, with music.

It’s been a long time.

The Denon speakers which I imported from Japan right out of college have now retired, and replaced by a set of Totem Rainmakers in cherry. Took the plunge as a birthday present for myself and went to the Stereo Exchange down in Soho with DJ. This is probably the first pair of more serious audiophile grade equipment ever acquired. Obviously, though, without a truly decent source and interconnects, just the speakers isn’t enough, but I’ll wait.

Now here’s a little audio review. The Denon Presta speakers have always sounded too bright for me. The highs were edgy, but not clear. My real problem was with the midrange and bass - while the mids seem to be OK with vocals, the lower ends were sloppy and unrefined. I knew it was nothing to do with my source, because I’ve had a fairly decent entry-level tube amp the Cayin TA-30.

The Rainmaker sounds a bit laidback at the store, almost like playing behind a nice silky vail. The highs and low ends aren’t that pronounced, but seem to be able to balance with each other, which was something that my Denon lacked. So I went with the Rainmakers, after comparing to Vienna Acoustic’s and a pair of Era (which had a nice all wood cabinet).

Right of the box the Rainmaker was already miles ahead of my old speakers (which costed about $500-600 a pair). Everything’s much tighter, clearer. But the sound is not as laidback as first heard at the shop - it’s a little bit harsh overall. I am hoping that with a good breaking-in period, the harshness will go away. Already though, music start to sound like instruments playing harmonically, instead of just “tunes” and “melodies.”

I’d like to experience that kind of quiet heart pumping when a song is played back poetically, like in a live concert, or perhaps, better.

Rainmaker, please calm down and make my day.

March 22, 2009

Infrastructure - First DJed Mix

Filed under: Media — Kohn @ 9:04 pm


Infrastructure - DJ KohnMan from Kohn Liu on Vimeo.

Infrastructure

PLAYLIST
Propellerheads - On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
DJ Hyper - Electro lude
The Chemical Brothers - Believe
Junkie XL - 1967 Poem
The Crystal Method - The Winner
Shur-I-Kan - Sizzle
Test Two - Someday / Extended Spirit Remix
Future Sound of Jazz - Fairlight Sunrise
Jamiroquai - Destitute Illusion

So after 3 months of practicing, here’s the first mixset using a Pioneer DJM-400 and 2 CDJ-200. There’s one very obvious beat mismatch, but was later corrected. Other than that, check it out. Hopefully more to come and much more polished later on.

March 19, 2009

Restart

Filed under: Uncategorized — Kohn @ 10:40 pm

I retrace my journey, back to the days when I wrote like a teen.  Like someone who had all the heart to speak … with unpolished candidness, daring, but naive.  And now, I speak a little better, but the flames have been blown off one after another.  It is indeed now a little dimmer, but a new beginning yet still.

I marked this day on my virtual calendar.  As I steered away from FaceBook.  For some time, I used that outlet to express, obviously, with the intrinsic desire to be read and understood.  But I suppose with age, the desire to be read and understood wanes and while I still want to be read and understood, let those who actually stumble upon here get a little taste then.

I am translating my mother’s painting teacher’s autobiography from Chinese to English, and I wish that one day, someone actually cares about what I truly had to say, what I have said.

November 16, 2008

Rooftop Swing - Tokyo Train Home

Filed under: Uncategorized — Kohn @ 5:46 pm

When Yoshimi went up, she could see the Tokyo skyline in the far distance. And when she came down, she saw her bare feet dangling in air, above the cement floor. She usually stayed on the swing for about twenty minutes before taking a short cigarette break by the tree. The tree was in fact more like a tall, dead tree trunk than an actual living organism. Someone had cut off all of its branches, and with its roots buried deep in cement, it had nothing left except a few leaves still attached. Surprisingly though, they seemed green and healthy, so in her eyes the tree was still alive.

The tree was the swing’s only companion, and they both situated on the far side of the rooftop, behind a medium-sized water tower. And she was probably their only visitor in the entire building. There weren’t that many households in this old, run-down apartment to begin with - two old couples who seemed to have lived here all their lives and four low-income families. She never really spoke to any one of them, after all, she’d been here for less than a month.

Yoshimi stayed in a budget hotel called Toyoko-Inn in the Chiba prefecture for about two weeks after leaving Peter before finally stumbled upon a for-rent flier on a light post one day. The handwritten flier had read, “Clean studio for rent, 50,000 Yen per month, utilities included. With kitchen, shower, and a rooftop swing.” A swing on the rooftop… she murmured there and then, lost for a moment in her imagination. The prospect of relaxing on a swing on top of a building, or any elevated structure, had intrigued her and the advertised rent was even more attractive. Three days later she’d become a tenant at will with the flier and keys in one hand, and her belongings in the other. Although she was now almost two hours away from downtown Tokyo, she soon adapted to her quiet new life away from everything she knew. Peter was in another world from which she had abruptly detached and her family would probably have to truly abandon the idea of ever finding her. She needed time alone and she was actually doing better on her own. In the few weeks that she’d left, her career turned for the better. Her editor had appointed her to write small English articles on New York City’s street fashion, and she was landing supporting roles in small independent film productions. Yoshimi was now busier with life and had less time to think about what really happened in those past two years, and what had changed Peter.

It was only when she sat on the swing every now and then, gently pushing against the floor with her feet, rising high and low, could she sometimes let her mind run free and concentrate on him. She loved him. But she didn’t want to be reminded of such emotion anymore. The night when she stood by the door waiting for him to say something, hoping that he would stand up from the sofa and grab her by the arms, she was instead confronted with a distant, somewhat confused look. He seemed to not know what he had done wrong. Worse, he did not apologize nor even utter a word of explanation. He sat there staring back lethargically, as if the battle was already won and he didn’t even enjoy its victory. It was as though the hard fact was something she had to swallow in its entirety, without doubts, without questions, without even a comment. His almost coarse, apathetic inaction revealed a latent, heartbreaking indifference that one must run away from. There was no room for negotiation, only an absolute acceptance of her defeat was allowed, with a repercussion she had yet to fully comprehend.

She could never understand how a person could become so cold in an instant. The man she had lived with for the past two years was more cruel than any stranger she had ever met. Days leading up to that fateful night were completely ordinary, at least for her. They went about their daily routines, cooked together at night, conversed about their day, made love like normal young couples. Everything seemed ordinary, just like how she had enjoyed. But perhaps Peter was indeed an outstanding liar, concealing his emotions and the secrets of his affair without a trace. By then he had supposedly met the girl numerous times during the day, perhaps sometimes on the nights when her model shoots ran late. She could not begin to imagine what they had done together. It was simply impossible for a man like Peter to just “walk around the city” with another stranger girl for hours on end. Moreover, his unwillingness to even elaborate had already proven him guilty, and he was OK with the charge.

So that was why she left him. The door was already opened and he made no attempt to stop her. It was a matter of closing it behind her, leaving behind perhaps her most precious time of her life. The move was bold and selfless. She let the man she loved to pursue what he wanted. She didn’t know what it was, but she’d chosen not to make it her business. And suprisingly she had not regretted since. She was comfortable and content, for the time being. But whenever she went up towards the sky above Tokyo, she was reminded of him. There were no happy thoughts, or tears falling from her cheeks, just the mere idea of “him” - that he existed, somewhere just two hours west, below that sky they still shared. As her mind rocked back and forth along with the swing, perhaps, she was becoming a little more indifferent, too.

October 29, 2008

Chopin’s Jell-O

Filed under: Uncategorized — Kohn @ 5:07 pm

Music was his soul. And his soul was his food. He slouched now more than ever on his sofa listening to nothing but music. Everything around him would have been turned off. The lights, his fridge, his cellphone, anything that could remotely produce an intrusive hum, a careless beep, was shut down, unplugged - except for that vacuum tube amp he had built a long time ago, and an Accuphase CD transport that’d always spinned his lonely collections on repeat. In pitch darkness he sat there with a symphony of meshed audio frequencies and himself. It took hours, sometimes even days, before he ever noticed the passing of time, and actually realized he was alive and breathing. Music was truly his soul on which, interestingly enough, he survived. He consumed music, but not through his ears. It actually involved his mouth slowly inhaling a faint, white mist that had layered all over his body, until this substance was absorbed to fill his lungs and stomach. To him this was also a process of how he consumed himself, devouring his very own essence, his “soul.” And it tasted (that is, if he ever had to identify such peculiar sensory quality - the taste of soul) somewhat like sugar-free orange Jell-O. Upon entering his body, this gelatin fluid usually began to dissolve in his throat and release, thereafter, a kind of sweetening, calming effect that gradually dissipated over time. The feeling was warm and kind. It sedated him. Sometimes it could alleviate his troubled mind, taking him away from his head and away from the memories embedded within. Most of the time, though, he would fall asleep unknowingly on the sofa, only to open his eyes at the wake of the morning hour, and find himself, cried. Regardless, however, listening to his music had kept him mentally sane and physically alive.

He had sold his beloved Steinway after his wife left him. That day on, he was never to produce music, and for that reason, he had lost the ability to revive and redeem himself. But that beautiful piano paid for 10 months of mortgage and added 24 artists into his music library. The stock market was booming, but his portfolio was crashing. He could no longer focus and was therefore making the wrong bets, and had to sell his expensive personal belongings just to feed his empty stomach. Indeed, ever since the love of his life had abandoned him, working to earn a living became pointless. He gave up and resorted to enrich his being, or what was left of it, with nothing, but music.

He was an amateur pianist, having played classical and jazz piano for over 35 years. And throughout the years, he had acquired musical works from more than 80,000 artists. There were perhaps around two hundred thousand pieces of vintage vinyl, tapes, and CD’s scattered throughout his apartment. He used to keep a precise, alphabetized list of his collection, but had lost track somewhere around hundred fifty thousand. The number was increasing at an arbitrary rate, and in this super music archive, the addition of each new work became so trivial, it didn’t even matter anymore. And he became so obsessed after his wife left, he was buying all kinds of media but only to leave them lying around unopened, untouched.

He wasn’t sure what happened, of how his hobby became a full-time obsession. He never investigated, nor took a single moment to stop his shaky hands from taking his overcharged credit card out from the wallet to buy something that had become a complete useless necessity. Something had to occupy his mind and perhaps that was a solution he subconsciously devised. Looking back, two years five months and twenty-three days ago, his love, his need to express, the passion to embrace, were altogether striped from his body, packed into her suitcases, and left in the dark inside that cab’s trunk, forever. Who was he to love again. Years of living together with her had left him empty. They did not have kids, nor pets, and anything that represented meaning or substance was now only retrievable from his music collection. They both loved Chopin, particularly the Nocturnes - charming short piano studies that were emotional, with a slight trace of melancholy, tastefully tactical but never superfluous or overpowering. The raining days were the time when they would sit on the sofa, where he would put his hands around her shoulder, listening to their favorite piece - Nocturne Opus 9 No 2 in F Major. Then they would take turns to play on his Steinway, attempting to reenact the impossible. It was love, he’d always thought.

So money and things lost their value because all he wanted was to be again. But he knew he couldn’t. Like those clean, fleeting piano notes that echoed and disappeared from years ago in his apartment, the reality of who he was had vanished too. If music, or indeed, their music, was truly something he could taste, like his soul, he would have recorded it. He would have somehow materialized the experience into some kind of physical form, into words, and kept it. But she left. So he sold his piano. Gone were the memories of Chopin’s Nocturnes that they loved and shared. But there was hope, and he continued to buy, to collect something that could perhaps one day somehow replicate what they had.

Out of all the music he’d ever acquired, though, he probably only listened to one thousandth of them now. Tonight he inserted Chopin’s Etudes into the CD player. It would be a night of literal, disciplined piano mastery, filled with passion but without the compassion he was looking for. It would be a study, a emotionless chew and regurgitation of what was left of him. It would satisfy him, though, he didn’t need much anymore. Like a small dose of morphine injected, a slight puff of opium inhaled, it would keep him alive through the night; until the wake of dawn when he found himself half awake, and soaked with Chopin’s tears. That’s when a new day would begin.

October 4, 2008

再, 一次

Filed under: Uncategorized — Kohn @ 5:06 pm

五光十色下的惶恐
又,一次

一個傾城
半個步伐
兩個殘缺
無數的夢

像昨夜日記裡的某個章節
我的故事
在你無心遺落的篇幅中

耳邊回蕩的風
你的言語

沉落

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