#one of my irresponsible recent splurges but NO REGRETS

[sidewalk-scrawls]

I'm enjoying a lot of the components of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom -- The mechanics are very different from traditional Zelda games, so that's been a fun change of pace, and it's very nice to get to play as Zelda.

However, I *loathe* the meta-narrative implications of some of the decisions Nintendo made regarding mechanics -- Zelda does not have her own sword, and fighting creatures is essentially an exercise in avoidance because you have no way to directly attack them or to reliably defend yourself. The main avenue for killing creatures is to use Zelda's wand to spawn copies of other creatures to attack those enemies. *Occasionally* you can fight with a sword, but you do that by channeling Link.

So yeah, it's impossible to play this game without thinking, damn, it would be cool to be able to fight directly. Link gets to fight! But Zelda has to be dainty about it for some reason.

Like. It's 2024. Weirdly sexist, Nintendo!

[saymoretv]

TW - Suicide

- I’m not sure how I stumbled across Burnt Tapes but I assume it was trawling for some new pop-punk / melodic punk bands on Bandcamp. I do remember  being surprised at a) how good their songs sounded (there’s often a pretty low strike rate searching for pop-punk in particular) b) they were based in London and c) still an active band. Their album, ‘Never Better’, stayed on my wishlist for about a year before I finally got round to buying it on a recent Bandcamp Friday splurge, and I’m very glad I got round to splurging. 

- I tend to find it challenging to write anything coherent and concise when it comes to reflecting on albums, that’s why this thing is about music videos, so I won’t digress into a full-blown, wafflely review of Never Better, however, I will say that I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the songwriting throughout. There’s no slack across the record with each song as powerful as a standalone and different enough presentation of their melancholic, gruff-lite, melodic punk sound without ever sounding overly repetitive, samey or too long. And despite being an album chock full of good tunes, Yuzi still manages to stand a head taller than the rest (although I’d argue Dirt Champ ‘16, is only a shade less good).

- What I think I like about Yuzi is that it seems like a perfect 2.32 minute distillation of the album and, in general, the band’s ‘Regretcore’ (their terminology) sound. The chorus although not classically anthemic in structure runs thick with the regret-punk(?) passion. It’s real ‘arms outstretched, eyes shut and head to sky / pub ceiling’ singalong stuff. 

- The video feels very slick, like they’ve got someone in who knows a bit or two about lens’, colour grading and narrative structure; the latter part being particularly important given they’ve done a good job of essentially filming a short film about a father re-tracing his sons last, seemingly very depressed, last steps in just over 2 and half minutes (whilst interspersed with the shots of the band).

- Whilst superficially I feel like the video is well a constructed short, cinematic story, I’m not sure I love the association of the pain of a break-up / end of a relationship with suicide, which is where I think the video takes the lyrical illusion to. I’m not so priggish as to say we shouldn’t talk or show suicide for fear that it could encourage it in others, but I think the conceit of the pain of a break up feeling so painful as to warrant the ending one’s life is somewhat immature and outdated. This is the sort of narrative content that mainstream emo bands were pumping out in the 2000′s which even then felt a bit hyperbolic and hokey. But now in a time of greater mental health awareness and advocacy it feels almost a bit irresponsible to be playing back these same simplistic narratives around depression and suicide, especially for younger people.

-  Maybe this is me speaking from the vantage point of near middle age and a perhaps a point of greater emotionally stable and maturity, picking holes in an otherwise great song and video. I’m just a bit more sensitive to this stuff in my old age. Listen to Burnt Tapes and talk to your friends (or me) if you’re having a hard time. You are not alone.

[mypulpfiction]

Identity

Let’s talk about identity. A story I read recently in Haruki Murakami’s book “Men Without Women” called “An Independent Organ” did strike a very heavy chord with me about this topic. A man in his fifty, who has everything in life, and more importantly is happy living that life, suddenly came upon the notion of identity via a book he read about a Jewish man surviving Nazis concentration camp and suddenly became obsessed with the question “Who in the world am I?” and soon starved himself to death leaving the reader not sure why he did so (of course you can make hypothesis, the author did give some context but it’s all inconclusive as with most Murakami stories) and whether he found an answer to that question or not ultimately.

I found myself thinking that is indeed a powerful question that I myself asked many times in my more than 30 years of life. Beyond the philosophical aspects, let’s just take mundane daily things for example. The way I dress. Who am I? I’m a huge fan of fashion since I was 19. I bought too much clothes and shoes and bags for my own good. Looking at all the fashionistas who know exactly what their style are, black only, monochrome, t-shirt and jeans, structured and simple, floating and flowy, hipster, ultra-feminine, tomboy, you name it. I am often jealous of those people who are so sure of how to dress and stick to it despite the trends. They wake up knowing what they will wear and feel 100% comfortable and happy in the outfits. I myself am quite different. Most of the time I am drawn to clean, simple basics, but I am also crazy about femininity and colors and prints. I also get bored with fashion very quickly, sometimes even within an hour of wearing something I already want to change into something else. As a result I don’t who I am when it comes to dressing, what my go-to look is, or if someone asks me what my signature look is, what I can say. It’s a struggle because now that I am older and wiser, I don’t like to buy clothes and shoes that I only wear once and toss later. I want to buy a few good things and keep them in my closet for long. This will also fit with my chosen minimal lifestyle that I very much want to adopt in my 30s.

The more I think about it, every aspect of my life has a variety to it. The music I listen to, it can range from slow jazz of Norah Jones to teenage pop of Charlie Puth to Vietnamese bolero and then switch to indie pop of Passenger. Or what genre of book I read. Or what kind of TV shows and movies I watch. They are all a reflection of me, of who I am. I like to explore, experiment, discover new things and while this brings me joy, it also makes me confused about what kind of person I am and what I identify with. These things are just recreations. I can live my life happily with one instead of the other. The variety is what’s important, not so much the specifics. But bigger things, like what I want to do with my life, how I see myself in 10 years, are plagued by the same tendency and variety may not be that easy or safe. It can be dangerous. It can lead me to places I regret and I will not be able to turn back. That’s why I choose to stick with a corporate career even though I hate it and know it’s not for me and I never see myself aspiring to the top like others. But it’s safe. And I can get to travel, to splurge on beautiful material goods and have a bogus sense of intellectual and financial superiority of being in the 5 percentile group of the population. But deep down I long for the life of not knowing, of freedom, of no expectation and of variety. A life that is definitely full of risk, of doubts, of ridicule (by family for sure and maybe some friends) and of poverty maybe. Is it irresponsible to do that?

Vaguely I know that in this life I don’t want to serve corporate interest where you are a pawn to make gullible consumers choose you over any equally good competitor to earn more profit for a few rich white men at the top. I don’t want to be part of the western corporations coming to my country setting up business, making money from us and taking them all back home. I don’t want to read or watch too much of western propaganda in books and movies that insinuate superiority of the west in intellect, politics, way of life, culture, fashion, arts, music (this one is hard, I have tried significantly to stop watching and reading some when I had this epiphany but it will take a while because the “insertions” are usually subtle so to stop means you have to give up the whole show/book which can be a shame sometimes). I don’t want to look at models who are white and skinny in magazines, films, advertisements (it’s hard given how much I love fashion). I don’t want to go to places that are influenced by culture outside of their own and are proud of it. I don’t want to be friends with people who are racist, have superiority complex over others, calculative, dishonest and fake. I don’t want to be in a crowd that I don’t know, feeling out of place and lonely and have to put up a front being someone I am not. One to one interaction is so much more comfortable for me than in a group. So that leaves me with very few options for what I can do with my life. I don’t have the answer. But I am glad I have slowly come to terms with who I am. It’s still very grey now. Definitely in the same zone with the man in the story. But unlike him, I still want to make a change and live my life the way I have always wanted. Not starve to death.