How do you sit on the dock of the bay?

Try It

So very blind in your beliefs
Idealizing American Dreams
Focused upon those golden seeds
so much that you just cannot see

Oh, sighing "hard work does not pay"
You blame yourself, "I'm so below the grade"
So you go back to the beginning
Rewriting all the lines for some better story

Try, it, oh, try, it
Try and visualize a different way of living
Try, it, hey, hey
Not all has to have the spouse, the kids, and a mansion.

You've got your Faith when you are down
And if you don't, you're stuck in doubt
But with best friends you'll come around
To understand that life is about
using the hand you're given
Not everyone must cross the same goal line
So when you feel luck has dried out
Remember having everything is not for everybody

Try, it, oh, try, it
Try and visualize a different way of thinking
Try, it, hey, hey
Not all has to want the spouse, the kids, the glory.

Perhaps now you just can't believe
That traditional scenes are not the only things
To have with your time on earth
Being famous, giving birth
Aren't for all human beings
So when you fail
At anything
And you're thinking that you
can't do any better
Hold on a second 'cause
You don't need to want like everyone else.

--yiqi Cinco de Mayo 2009 6:43 pm





The above quasi-parody (of this song) was inspired by a conversation I had with a good friend. In light of the economic state of the nation and other factors, a significant amount of chaos has filled her life in recent months. Not knowing where one will live, work, or call home is nothing new for a lot of people. For my friend, a nomad at heart, it has become as familiar as the creases in her favorite pair of jeans.

Her day job has required her to cross time-zones at the drop of a stencil, going from hemisphere to hemisphere more times in the last year than I have gone globe-trotting in my entire twenty-eight years of existence. The physical and mental fatigue that has been building as a result of this travel has left my friend on the lower end of life's highs and lows. Nevermind when your puppy gets hit by a car, when your favorite TV show gets canceled and will not be on DVD any time soon, or when your preferred postman takes a new route, physiological exhaustion pulls the spirit into depths of despair and despondency with greater efficacy than even that which hurts more.

Being on the move, having the stamina to move around geographically and intellectually has taken a toll on her. In conversations over the weeks, I threw out the images of an anchor, a captain, a lighthouse, and a boat. I emphasized the image of the "anchor," as something that she can always go back to...something or someone that will always be there. No matter how crazy life gets, the anchor will be there.

Today, she remarked, "somewhere along the line, I forgot I was an artist--I forgot to engage it. I think that's my anchor. It has to be, because I have to take the anchor with me wherever I go. I'm reading this book about Elizabethan pirates and their boats sank all the time. Stable boat = permanence, but maybe my "stability" lies in the anchor. You can anchor anywhere with any boat".

I expanded upon her comment.

Most people spend their lives getting the anchor, the boat, and learning how to be an adequate captain to a first mate. Even when they realize they can't have it all, they don't realize that the boat can be interchangeable. The boat is school, work, community activities, etc; it is assumed to be the most stable, the first priority, and should be the most long-lasting. First mates can come and go, captains can come and go, but a boat is forever.

But no--a boat is not forever, not necessarily and not for everyone.

The components of the American dream, the conventional aspirations, doesn't have to be for everyone.

My question has always been...well, why couldn't these people just realize it? But life wouldn't be as exciting, would it? if everyone walked around knowing the value, functionality or the quirks of the cards they are dealt?

American values, American traditions promote the desire to be someone great, to do something amazing, and even if you aren't rich, you can leave behind a legacy and change the world. Marrying, having children, traveling, and so on and so forth...you list enough items and you get the spectrum of needs to conventions to luxuries.

So the anchor is actually not whatever floats your boat, but rather whatever keeps you from capsizing. Having a good anchor and being a self-sufficient captain...is crucial. Yes, a first mate would help, a lighthouse would too, but if you can't have both, you could have one. If you have neither first mate nor lighthouse, you'd need a line up of destinations and a stable boat. If you have no particular destination in mind, your boat could be the foundation of your existence, or an implement, a tool.

Living and surviving are about not capsizing in the water or getting swept into sea if you're still on dry land. Society teaches us that we should want it all, and why not, right? But if we can't have it all, we would make do, right? We'd learn how to get on with what we do and do not have. Some people realize this before they're old enough to enjoy lower auto insurance rates. For others, though, it's a lifelong lesson.

The sooner you realize the following, the mission of not capsizing becomes less burdensome:

A. You can't necessarily have it all (nor must you want it all).
B. Whichever pieces you have is as much about where you are (in life) as it is what kind of captain you are.
C. Chance, fate, happenstance, etc. contribute
D. Identify your anchor and know what kind of captain you are.
E. You don't have to be a different kind of captain in order to sail the high seas. If you want to be and work at it, and find positive results, then great. If not, perhaps you need to find another boat (or distribute the weight across your boat in a more efficient manner), a better anchor, or a lighthouse.



I am my friend's lighthouse. She is my anchor. My other good friend is the beach. I hopscotch between water and land. I don't want to "go anywhere," so i don't need a "boat." Actually, I do have a boat, but it's on land. It's like a museum piece, an artifact of a past life.

I ask you, who or what is your anchor? Do you have a lighthouse? What kind of boat do you have?

Unseen forces, your dogs, your favorite sports teams, your grandparents....there is no right or wrong answer.

Bollocks to the Patriarchy but Romance can be unconventional

Twilight tulips iridescence.

I have not read the books nor seen the film yet (will do so on the morrow). I love Kristen Stewart, so I won't be in the cinematic experience for quality or life-shattering wisdoms. Speaking of which, I absolutely adore Pete Vonder Haar's review of the film.

I have to give a couple of excerpts some attention. Pete remarks:

With his yearning eyes and tortured past, Edward is the romantic ideal for most 13-year old girls (and some boys): he’s androgynously gorgeous, has a dope ride, and doesn’t want to do anything but talk about your feelings and snuggle. It would appear that in addition to robbing his brood of their need for blood, Carlisle also removed their balls.

Indeed. The Byronesque Brooder is the object of many an adolescent girl's lust and adoration.

This quaint fantasy of the boy putting the brakes on would never fly in a traditional romance, hence the “vampire” angle, and the first half of the movie is devoted almost exclusively to the pair’s budding courtship. Unfortunately, this translates into scene after scene of Bella and Edward gazing longingly at each other – in the forest, up a tree, beside the cold and lonely sea – before any real tension develops.

Not everyone wants a traditional romance. Aside from the debate surrounding the efficacy of the abstinence-only approach to sex and sexuality education, why must all hormonally driven youths become sexually active? Is there still nothing equally or more satisfying to do when two people really like each other?

Furthermore, only in films do sparks between two individuals lead to the expression of that attraction a montage or two after sparks are depicted (or by the end of the film if a romantic comedy is involved). In real life, some people only have eye contact, smiles, and silently acknowledged mutual attraction (intellectual, emotional, physical, all of the above, or some other combination) because neither person wants to make a move...out of fear or paranoia or, in the words of Andrew Marvell, a bond that is "the conjunction of the mind but the opposition of the stars".

They're taken already.

The message is clear: don’t inconvenience that handsome boy who was so gallant in resisting your base urges by also straying beyond the boundaries of domestic complacency.

In other words: a female can have a male who profoundly loves her and will not impose his pro-creative instincts on her but if, and only if, she effectively erases her own sense of self and exists only for his well-being.

Oui ou non.

Definitely, bollocks to the patriarchy.

The oft maligned elegant lady of post-jazz: Sade Adu

By most people's categorization standards, Sade Adu's music is "easy listening" or "lounge jazz" (a kinder way of saying "elevator music"). The lyrics, "coast to coast/LA to Chicago/west of Maine," from arguably her most well-known song "Smooth Operator" invokes an intercontinental tone can comes off as goofy to American listeners. Her music is oft maligned for being schmaltzy and vacuous. For all the nay-sayers, I advise they listen more closely.

Sade’s music has an excellent sense of rhythm, often makes use of Latin beats including bossa nova and African grooves, and is intelligent and sexy. Lyrically, she has a way of diving very deep into your soul with lines like:

"If you were mine, I wouldn't want to go to heaven" (“Cherish the Day”)
“I’d wash the sand off the shore. Give you the world if it was mine.” (“Paradise”)
"I'll give you my love, I'll give you everything I feel inside...surrender your love to me." (“Give it Up”)
“My love is wider than Victoria Lake. My love is taller than the Empire State.”
(“Is it a Crime”)

Who says the best “love poetry” is written by men? I listen to those lyrics and just sigh – would that I could feel that way about a man, is the thought that comes to mind. I often wish that more women be that direct and courageous about the intensity of desire. In that respect, on the lyrical front, I can compare her to Stevie Nicks.

In concert, she’s surprisingly dynamic. With her smooth complexion, high forehead, and eyes that stare right into you, her stage presence is charismatic. She is only 5’7; however she looks incredibly tall. People with long legs, long necks, and long arms get away with murder when it concerns height. She is no dancer, nor is her music really danceable, but she moves well with it, feels it as it is her own, and even barefoot, is amazingly elegant.

Sade’s sense of style is impeccable. It’s at once evocative of old screen legends such as Katharine Hepburn (for the more male elements), Audrey Hepburn (for the un-fussed simplicity in color and form), and Lauren Bacall (for the film noir-ish mise-en-scene), but at the same time deceptive. She wears black trousers and high-necked, long-sleeved turtlenecks with the back completely open or kimono-like dresses, but with slits high up the leg. I think it’s very reflective of the sense of mystery mixed with sex just below the surface. It’s very clever – it’s about covering it all up so that the skin you do show has that much more effect. And at 49, she looks beyond amazing.

Sade was in a genre of her own in the 1980s – next to Duran Duran, U2, and Madonna, no one compared. Indeed, Sade owes a lot to her predecessors – Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Stevie Wonder, and even Diana Ross and Astrud Gilberto just to name a few. I think however she deserves major credit for writing a form of jazz that is lyrically lovely, only marginally in tune with the 80s and 90s, and allusive of the 1940s. It’s completely anachronistic, yet totally irresistible.

An underrated little gem: Stevie Nicks' Street Angel

Don't judge an album by the artist's life at the time of its production.

Stevie Nicks' 1994 release Street Angel was dismissed by the majority of critics as being insipid and stale. I listened to it for the first time over 10 years ago on cassette, and perhaps I was over-influenced by the comments. I found myself at Cheapo Records in Central Square, Cambridge the other evening, looking for used CDs while waiting for my take-away dinner at the Indian restaurant next door. At $3.99, I had to buy a copy, as it's the only Stevie studio album I don't own.

Of course, quality of sound differs greatly on a CD opposed to cassettes (does anyone even own a tape recorder anymore?). The CD possesses high-quality production values that are superior in fact to Rock a Little (1983) and even to Wild Heart (1983) – though not superior to the songs.

Overall, these are beautifully written songs from the catchy pop sound of "Blue Denim" to the poignant "Greta" (alluding to the screen goddess) and the wistful "Maybe Love Will Change Your Mind." Even her cover of the Bob Dylan classic "Just Like a Woman" is well done. If ever there was a woman with the voice to cover a Dylan song, it is Stevie. The take-it or leave-it attitude and open-road feeling of "Kick It" is very satisfying. In fact the only sub-par song on the record is "Jane," her tribute to anthropologist Jane Goodall. Something about the line "the forgotten chimpanzee" makes me cringe, even if the song was well-intended (sorry, Stevie). Most surprisingly, the songs are contemporary for mid 90s popular music, along the lines of Natalie Merchant. Admittedly, her voice was *not* in the best of conditions, but I do love the gravely, lived-in sound, and where she is unable to hold the verse on her own, her long-time back-up singers Sharon Celani, Lori Nicks, and Sara Fleetwood, more than adequately support her vocals.

In retrospect, it almost appears that the reviewers dismissed Street Angel on account of the personal troubles in Stevie's life – she was at the time, overweight and fighting a drug addiction. Her voice was not in the best condition. They seemed to have thrown the record out with the woman, as it were. Street Angel showcases a calmer Stevie and a thoughtful songwriter with excellent rhythm (as always) and exceptional musicality.

A Barrel of Laughs as we Tip Our Team

Random stops along the information super driveway.




Numero Un:

Forget the right to die, try the right to refuse medication on for size.


Numero Deux:

A newfound respect for the suit.


Numero Trois:

Admit it. You would care if they were all gone. You would be sad.


Numero Quatre:

Does your baby count as a living creature?


Numero Cinque:

Brother, can you spare a ride?


Numero Six:

Preventive measures or 'I'll deal with it later'.


Numero Sept:

So much to do, so few ideas or time.

You're not fully clean unless...

I was reading Dr. Sanjay Gupta's blog post memorializing Michael DeBakey, a surgeon Dr. Gupta called a "medical legend." One of the comments from a medical student says that Dr. DeBakey said in a Q&A session many years ago that his biggest regret was wasting too much time. How anyone considered a pioneer in their field can think they have wasted too much time speaks of either tremendous arrogance or almost saintly humility. In Dr. DeBakey's case, who credits his mother's sewing instructions as the key to his success as a surgeon, I'm willing to bet it was the latter.

In my career, I doubt I'll be saving any lives, but I am highly likely to be wasting quite a bit of time. There's the 10 minutes I waste every day listening to Ann Curry gush uncontrollably every morning while I wait for my local news and weather; the hour I spend tooling around on the Interwebs every evening, looking for nothing in particular; and the untold weekend days where I can't seem to get up before 11, then lay in bed for two hours reading trashy books, only to finally get washed, quaffed, dressed and ready to meet the world by 4pm.

Did I do the laundry? Nope..but I still have some clean undergarments so I guess it can wait until next week. Did I go through the mail? Nope, but the stack on the kitchen table hasn't fallen over yet, so it can wait another few days. Did I exercise? Nope. Woke up too late and then ate too late, and who wants to go to the gym on a Saturday night??

Of course, the amount of wasted time in my life is nothing compared to the useless junk taking up space in my brain. There is a scene in Jim Henson's iconic film Labyrinth where Sarah is dreaming about searching for her brother and finds herself in a junkyard. An old woman tries to distract Sarah by offering the girl all of her favorite toys from childhood. Eventually, Sarah remembers what she has come for and yells something to the effect of "I want my baby brother!" (Sorry guys, no youtube luck, though I tried).

This scene haunted me as a child, and even still gives me the heebie jeebies as an adult. In a way, I wonder if my mind isn't a big junkyard, filled more with advertising slogans than literary passages, juicy celebrity gossip instead of complex philosophical concepts.

For example, the other day, I noticed a frozen food lunch my boss was eating. It was Thai peanut chicken or something, in a "zesty" sauce. I thought to myself, "Zesty--that's a word for green things like, cilantro, pesto.... and Zest soap."

I actually spent a few minutes wondering why "zest" the name for the soap means something like enjoying or relishing an experience; but the simple addition of a "y" to the end of the word evokes images of Latin food. Certainly "zesty" wasn't the right world for things with peanuts in it, and although the mango flavored Zest was a tremendous failure, I still stand by my belief that it would have worked if they had kept the soap green.

All this, and I could have been contemplating a solution to our country's current economic difficulties, or learning a new word like "piquant."


Maybe, I simply don't have the mental stamina for such intense intellectual musings. Or perhaps I can blame it all on Corporate America.

DeBakey didn't grow up with television and failblog. He didn't grow up in a world where every waking moment was a bombardment of marketing strategies aimed at convincing you consciously or subliminally to become another lemming.

I can't help it if I grab the Sunny D from the fridge and think to myself, "It's not OJ or the purple stuff." The jingle just eeks out of me, perhaps like a maestro finds himself humming the Moonlight Sonata when driving at night.

What I'm really arguing is that the consumerist culture that pushes Prada and iPhones on my generation and American Girl Bistros and Guitar Hero on the one after me is making us dumber. Certainly, others have wondered the same thing.

So, my brain, which has infinitely less capacity than the late Dr. DeBakey's has no chance against all the catchy slogans and sitcom theme songs that have been engineered, focus-grouped, and triple-tested to stick in the deep nether regions of my consciousness--and the equation for finding the area of a circle and the definition of a gerund are not. And that urban legend that we use only 10 percent of our brains during the day? Untrue. So much for the possibility of finding an alien technology that could help me remember my shopping list.

And this blog? Has it been a waste of intellectual energy and time? You tell me.

In between the dark and the light: memory before time

While listening to Pandora radio recently, a lovely Heart song called “There’s the Girl” came up. It’s not on the greatest hits compilation I own; however, I subsequently recalled hearing it occasionally on the radio as a little girl. All of this brought to mind something I’m calling musical memory. Not memory of playing a piano piece learned per se (I guess, which is muscle memory too), but more one’s unconscious memory of a song – or set of songs.

Almost always, I can trace back the time or era of my life in which I was first aware of a musical artist I like. I remember listening to Michael Jackson when I was 3 or 4 years old (this, the Challenger disaster, and the time I saw through my bedroom window, a flock of hundreds of birds carpeting our lawn in Yonkers, New York in a migratory pit stop, make up some of my very first, if not truly first memories).

I remember first paying attention to The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, and the Velvet Underground – all mostly off my radar until I was in my teens and going through my enjoyment of all classic rock. Those were the days when I wouldn’t turn off the radio when Led Zeppelin came on (sorry, I like them, I do- they just give me a headache a lot of the time.)

I never had this moment with the Eagles. It’s not that I especially love them. I don’t adore them unconditionally the way I do Fleetwood Mac, whose songs sometimes rip out of my heart, throw it on the floor, and then proceed to step on it. I don’t appreciate them the way I do the tunes of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers – romantic and gritty at the same time. Nothing to hold par with the brilliance of the “oh, my my/oh hell, yes” refrain in “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.” I don’t connect with their lyrics or orchestration the way I do with the raw, elemental power of Kate Bush which makes me want to spin and spin until I collapse. I even like hip Japanese pop artist Namie Amuro much more.

Yet, every time I listen to an Eagles song, it’s like coming home. There’s never a conscious “Oh, I heard this first when I was 5 years old” or “I started liking them when I was 10.” It’s like there was never a time when these songs weren’t in my memory. I always knew of them. No, no, I do not go into a trance like Elaine’s date does in Seinfeld when listening to “Desperado.” It’s just a simple, yes I know this song and have always known this song – there is no time I was not familiar with the ritualistic, drum intro of “Witchy Woman,” the waltz beat of the country-laden “Take it to the Limit,” or the depressed bass-line underpinning the bluesy “One of These Nights.” These songs need no explanation – they are just there, part of my unconscious.

For many years, I vaguely wondered about this effect and suffered my dad playing their Greatest Hits compilation all the time and attempting to sing. Until one day, my mother said very blithely in Tamil, “Oh, not this again. Your dad played this record all the time in the house when I first came to the country.” It is to be noted in 1980, when my mother moved to New York, the Eagles had already split up. And suddenly, it made sense to me.

Though I know that the fetus can listen to music while in the womb, I don’t know if it’s even possible to have a memory of something experienced before you were born – but if that is possible, then this it. Sartre would say that essence does not precede existence, but for whatever it is worth, this is my memory before time.