I Think We're Alone Now Tiffany
A Case Of YouJoni Mitchell
from Einstein on the BeachPhilip Glass
Piazza, New York CatcherBelle & Sebastian
The Dangling ConversationSimon & Garfunkel
Time After TimeCyndi Lauper
Eternal FlameThe Bangles
The Air That I BreatheThe Hollies
When Angels CryJanis Ian
Both Sides Now [90's Version]Joni Mitchell
These are some of my favourite songs on love.
I Think We're Alone Now was released around the same time that my sexual desire was in its nascency, which was about 1987. I was eight years old, and I was vaguely aware that there was something mildly artificial about my attraction to girls. Well, I remember being excited holding hands with Joy Catiis one morning in kindergarten while running around the basketball court during PE. Then there was the brief and somewhat titillating note-passing session in second grade with Satin Abad, during which I confessed the length of my cock. (Padding figures is a skill that I learned early in life.) Since it was a bilateral negotiation, I remember trying unsuccesfully to extract an analogous statistic from Satin. To this day, I'm not sure what I could have possibly asked her.
I first heard Tori Amos's cover of Joni Mitchell's
A Case of You before pinning down Joni Mitchell's 1971 recording. The quintissentially Tori Amos version of the piece is actually more poignant than the original, I think, although in terms of sheer nuance, Joni beats Tori. Delia Co first introduced me to Tori Amos, and I've been hooked ever since... a fact that I've tried not to mention too frequently around my Vancouver hipster friends. In fact, there were many topics that I never broached in the company of Vancouverite acquaintances who were regarded as cool by the cool, such as my disgust of the fixed percentage tip rule. It's downright illogical! If I order a $25 lamb meal, I tip $3.75. Okay, $2.50, since I'm poor and Asian. But if I order six glasses of pop at $3.00 each, I am not obliged to tip more than $1.80. Come on. Carrying and serving six glasses on a try requires FAR more skill and effort than handing me a single plate! At any rate, I would certainly never bring up the subject around my WASH ("Waiting and Server Hipster") acquaintances. Thankfully, servers and waiters in Manila are usually poor and undereducated migrants from the rural provinces who will be happy if you so much as leave a half a percent gratuity.
(Notice to Filipinos reading this: Um, the previous sentence was not meant to be read at face value. Please don't close your browser and leave with the impression that I am a total asshole. Forgive me. Along with MTV, irony is a Western invention and it's sort of an acquired taste, just like bagoong fish paste... only much less palatable.)
I dislike about half of Philip Glass' output. You can get away with ostinati only so many times before it gets tedious. The other half, however, is brilliant, and rhis piece is particularly lovely. I first came across it in a commercial for a British telecommunications company in the summer of 1993. It was my first time in London and, in fact, my first time outside the Philippines. Between binging on clotted cream, fish and chips, and steak and kidney pie, I gained thirty-five pounds in two and a half months. Classy.
Piazza, New York catcher is the most recent of all the songs in my list. I think my concept of what romantic love is or should be pretty died much after 2003, the year Dear Catastrophe Waitress was released. In fact, judging by how bitter my craigslist and OkCupid profiles have gotten, romance itself is probably pretty much dead in me. (I dare you to revive it.)
Delia introduced me to Mozart's Requiem the same time she opened my ears to Simon and Garfunkel, which was about 1994. I've mentioned that I don't tend to pay close attention to lyrics. I misconstrued all of
A Dangling Conversation as a commentary on the state of the Arts and on the failure of academic discourse to address real political problems, based on a couple of catchy lines from the song: "We speak of things that matter with words that must be said. 'Can analysis be worthwhile?' 'Is the theatre really dead?'" Of course, I completely missed the basic story of a couple who have drifted apart.
Time After Time is a classic. I love it, I love it, I love it, and that's all there is to say.
Eternal Flame came back into my life under
unusual circumstances.
When Angels Cry is heartbreaking, although the modulation towards the end is gratuitous. It pays to read
the lyrics while listening to the song. And I want Both Sides Now to be piped into either my coffin or the incinerating oven.
(Update, 2 July 2007: One of my friends works for an agency of the United Nations in Manila, and says that even members of the agency would never apply for a Schengen visa with the Italian embassy, even if their main destination was Italy! They simply go through another embassy and, presumably, lie about their main destination.)
