the geylang park connector looked new to marathon man. the last time he was in dakota, he did not see it. anyway, the place was quiet, and the air was clean. though it was hot, it was pleasantly hot, not too humid. as he was heading towards tanjung katong, he saw a hawker centre in the junction of joo chiat road and dunman road. it was the dunman food centre, opened in 2003. 2 floors, small place. he ordered the char koay teow without black source and soya water with almond, thinking that they ground the soya with the almond. instead, they just mixed the clear almond water from the bottle to the soya water. anyway it had the medicinal taste of almond. not many people came to eat. just nice for marathon man to open his nonya pasta stall here.... no need very good business, no need to have a big crowd, as long as he could earn his living, he's happy.
then he met a colleague, ah huay, buying koay chap.
"hi, koay chap good or not?"
"good, very good, i always come hear to buy. i have got an extra ticket for rwinds concert tonite, you want to come?"
"where?"
"victoria hall, at 7.30pm."
"what concert?"
"rwinds, the rjc, ri and rgs alumni band."
"ok." though he's not into brass band music, he's much into getting closer to ah huay.
so tonite, the band played the pieces, but marathon man did not connect with the music, the classical music most of which plays on and on, sometimes quarter of an hour or more..... marathon man knows that there's a theme of the music some kind of a refrain...then some off-shoots from the theme, then some crescendo, then some mellow tunes....... some theme are very catchy which marathon man likes, some are total obscure, almost all band music so far i have gone to were dead-pan unfamiliar, obscure pieces, like tonite 'Yorkshire Overture','shirim' with a familiar tune of 'donna, donna' in one of sections, 'Wintersturme' with the lead-conductor as the soloist, 'Saga Maligna ', 'the incredibles', 'beauty and the beast' which really reflects what the band looks like when it turn a beautiful score into a blowing-fish bag-of-air(the beauty being the score, the beast is the band, who else?), and edned with persis... you have to imagine what the music is trying to convey, they said.
but some pieces, whether claissical or otherwise, just click to your mind, some love at first sight, some needs a bit of time to get familiar.... also modern music or pop music does have the same obscure, non-event kind of scores, infact there's as many as those in the classical arena.... it's not the composer's fault if the music doesn't click, or climbs to the pop-chart. he just thinks that he has done a good job, good enough to let the public to appreciate, but the tune just isn't there.
all this is very subjective, people like mozart's clarinet concerto in a major, symphony 21, beethoven's fur elise, symphony 5,bach's tocatta and fugue in d minor... because they have catchy tunes... but musicians, they like everything under the sun, seems they can understand even junks to lay-people.
what's a cathcy tune?
if classical music can be accompanied by motion picture like some animation, like some thing in the movie.... it would be of much help to lay people like marathon man, instead of trying hard to make sense of he hears, the picture tells the story...
in real life, there's no background music to lead the mood.... and in real music.... only imagination makes sense out of it. but not the ordinary imagination.... with pictures, with objects..... it doesn't even need imagination to appreciate music.... it needs the an extra sense on another dimension.
it seems music and real life don't go together. but why human makes music, consciously and subconsciously?
what's that music bring to life, or what can people get out of it?
- perhaps, you don't get anything out of it, but it opens the door and lets you into some place where all things originated
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