In Christ Alone

No power of hell, no scheme of man
Can ever pluck me from His hand

Dear Lord, what a lot has changed since I last wrote. I read these posts full of woe, full of insecurity, so full of my own pain but forgetting to look at my Healer. Though I am not yet fully healed, yet I know You have placed me on the road to Your eternal healing.

Grant that all those who stumble on this humble post may find their way to You, O Lord. :)

Though I Try To Hide It, It's Clear

She's alot better than me.

Alot, alot, ALOT better.

Maybe it's time to make a graceful exit.

Try to say goodbye and I choke

It Hurts :'(

How could you?

When I've been asking and hinting so many times...

How could you?

Am I simply not good enough? If so, why couldn't you just tell me?

I need to stop being selfish
I need to get out of this pit of self-pity
I need to start praying regularly for you.

I need God's help to stop thinking the unthinkable.

I need to go cry myself to sleep now.

These past few days...

...there has been no other way to describe this feeling than "heartsick".

Logically, I know I'm making too much of it. It will pass, for one or other of various reasons.

Yet somehow, I am peaceless.

I must remember to cling to God.

Wondering

Sometimes I wonder if you really know - if you really, really know - how much I treasure each minute spent with you.

Sometimes, I wonder...

Struggling to Accept

The loneliness is back, and it's not going away.

How much longer can I pretend that everything is okay?

Still fighting the fear that after all this, I will still lose you.

I keep having to remind myself that you love me - and you really do, but I still have to remind myself of it.

You said you don't want a break-up, and it doesn't look like a break-up, but it feels like a break-up and it hurts like a break-up.

I want to just surrender and be dead to pain... Or go into a deep sleep and wake up just in time for us to reconnect, or get back together, or whatever the opposite of "break" is.

I'm no longer your angel; angels don't have broken hearts.

I want to cry and sleep and sleep and cry and cry and sleep and sleep and cry...

Reminder to Self:

This is a time for you to spend more time with God, to put your life in order, to go back to exploring your talents and interests.

This is NOT a time for you to lose yourself in Facebook and junk food.

Jesus hold me close in Your embrace

Confused

How can I feel so lonely when you're right here beside me?

Am I being ungrateful, asking for the moon?

Maybe it's time I stopped having unrealistic expectations.

But what is a realistic expectation?

Is It Wrong?

Is it wrong to long for romance?
Is it wrong to want to dance?
Is it wrong to feel the magic?
Is it wrong to cry at something tragic?

Is it wrong to feel the tone
Of everyday, and ask for more
A little spice would be quite nice
A little hope, a little lore

A little spark to cheer the day
A little something for to hold
Deep in one's heart, and light a fire
That would keep away the cold...

Is it wrong to ask that you
Would love me just a little more
Or, if you love me lots already,
Show me like you did before?

Missing You Major

(But it's no use telling you.)

More Lyrics

Don't cry out loud
Just keep it inside
And learn how to hide your feelings

Lyric From Somewhere

When I need you
You're almost here
And I know that's not enough

Upcoming:

The most painful period of my life so far.

But valuable things are worth suffering for, and I know we can come through this if we continue to seek God faithfully.

All those years of training my heart must have prepared it well, right?

It's gonna take awhile.

Fortunately, I have a God who never sleeps.

He never sleeps, He never slumbers
He never tires of hearing our prayer
When we are weak, He becomes stronger
So rest in His love, and cast all of your cares
On Him

Maybe...

Maybe...
Maybe it's true, there really is a generation gap in our tastes, and I'm just too old-fashioned.

Maybe...
Maybe I've been too hard on them, expected them to grow up too fast, and not given them the room to grow, explore, have fun.

Maybe...
Maybe I was not close enough to God, and therefore was completely wrong in everything that I felt, said or did.

This is the first time I have ever felt such a wide rift between us... This is the first time I have ever felt like it could all end because of our differences.

This is not the first time I have felt that I am not contributing to anybody's growth.

Maybe...
Maybe the nay-sayers were right after all.

Father, please give all the parties involved a good rest tonight, and a peace in their hearts as they worship You tomorrow... Grant that we speak not from ourselves but from Your heart and Your words, Father. May we love each other as deeply as You love us. In Jesus' most precious and holy name, we pray, Amen.

Lord,

You catch me when I'm falling,
And You told me who I am
I am Yours

1st Nov 2007

Thank you for the beautiful flowers :)
Thank you for a lovely day :)
Most of all, thank you for a year of laughter, sorrow, joy and tears :):):)

Thank You, Father, for someone to love. :)

Sweet

Right outside my front door
Was a [blue] rose and a note crane that said
"Somebody loves you"
(adapted from Corrinne May's "Angel In Disguise")

So sweet. :')

I love you, dearest. :)

POWwow!

ok i know this is supposed to be in complete sentences but i'm a mite excited and not much time to edit so just bear with the ungrammaticalness for a bit please? :P will edit another time.

i have officially graduated!!! :D *wears square hat and refuses to throw it into the air*

and now the plug: please please PLEASE come to my Reel Revolution Powwow! or if you're not interested help me ask your friends! please?? *pleading eyes*

details!
Reel Revolution – Powwow and Immersion
14 July 2007 at 72-13 Mohamed Sultan Rd
2pm – Powwow and Prize Presentation
6pm – The Immersion Party
Free admission to Powwow and Party – shoot us an email at movingimages@substation.org!
Info at revolution.youth.sg, tel: 6337 7800
(in case i didn't explain what Reel Revolution is all about, it's basically a mentorship and competition programme that encourages youth to make films about social issues. fun and meaningful at the same time! :) http://revolution.youth.sg for more info)

cool video mini-trailers! (guess who made them! :P)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeCy1OBwDE0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c5GW6tYT9E

andand... it's FREE! all you have to do is email me (movingimages@substation.org) and you can come yayy!

so come! spam your friends! let's all go! it's really exciting! :D *really excited*

no, seriously. i'd really love to see you guys there and get the word out so more people can see these films :) they really are interesting and thought-provoking, i kid you not. but if you can't come no worries, i'd understand :)

The Case For "Free" Art! :P

Reading my title just makes me feel like yelling "Merdeka!" and "Unlock the gates, let Art go!" Okay okay, bad joke :P

The inspiration for this post came when Eugene (whom I was tremendously surprised to meet as part of the organising team for Reel Revolutions [http://revolution.youth.sg -- sorry, couldn't resist a little advertising :P]) and I were talking (arguing? :P) about the Price of Art. Our initial stand, much simplified, was:

Me -- Art should be free!
Eugene -- Art should be priced at its actual value!

Interrupted, we agreed to Take This Battle To The Blogs. :P Therefore, my task in this post is to lay out my argument clearly (and, we hope, succinctly -- which I was never that good at) so that Eugene can then reply on his blog and we can have a good ol' vigorous online discussion. Doesn't that warm the cockles of your YouTubed heart! :D (I wonder why cockles. I mean it just makes the heart sound like a muddy bay somewhere with fishermen digging up shellfish...)

Note: I am attempting this at close to 1am. Besides being possibly unfinished due to my Internet curfew, I may also be rather incoherent and insufficiently cognitive. I will probably make several changes to my stand before this discussion is done. :P

To begin with: I argue that Art should be free for audiences, so that it may permeate into the population with greater efficacy. Art is not generally considered a necessity, so the majority of the population will not willingly spend money on it. My argument is that if art were free and sufficiently distributed, more people would be interested to view it and participate in it, and subsequently art would have a greater impact on people's lives.

In addition, I ask that Art be free for the Artists, at least resource-wise. (I know, to loads of practical people out there I am asking for the sky/the impossible/the moon to fall on its face.) This is to encourage more people to take up the PRODUCING of art, and in the process unearth more artists where they might otherwise have been missed. How many stories have we heard of artists who nearly didn't get into a career in art but for a chance opportunity to experience art that they would otherwise not have? More art producers also means more people will see the relevance and value of art to everyday life. Of course, this is not to say that Art does not have a price. It demands the artist's time, attention, effort, patience, talent. Should it be allowed to demand a disproportionate amount of his or her resources as well?

Leaving the obvious argument of "where the resources would come from" for another time, I here concede that Art cannot be free all the time, because it would then have no value and artists would not be able to make a living from their work. Some art has to be priced, displayed, sold, possessed, in order that the value of GOOD art may be retained and given a social premium, in order that aspiring artists will aim for higher standards rather than putting a dot on a piece of paper and then being complacent about it.

This, however, leads to my counterargument, which is that Art which is sold is usually dead. Take a painting: a painter conceives an idea, he or she works it onto a piece of material using other shapeable materials, it is put up for auction, sold. If it is sold to a museum it is displayed for the public (entry for a fee), circulated, maybe resold. However it is in public display only for a few years -- museums have hundreds of art works and they cannot display them all at a given time. Sooner or later the piece is taken down, forgotten. Sooner or later it works its way to a private collection somewhere, where it adorns someone's private lounge, available to only a few select friends. A painting thus dead is unable to spark off an idea to a new creator, a new artist, unless he or she happens to see it during those few years in the public museums or the select few with access to the private collection.

Free art, however, moves much quicker amongst large groups of people, particularly in today's Internet-connected world. Say the painter decided to put a high-resolution photograph of the painting up for free display on a website. In the first place, millions more can access the painting than if it was displayed at a museum (even a museum that had free entry), even possibly across borders of space and barriers of language. Secondly, anyone who wishes to recommend the painting to a friend can do so easily, without having to encounter the gatekeepers of expense and space (by sending them the link). Think about all those mp3s that spread like wildfire on the Internet while CD sales and concert tickets could barely compete. Thirdly, although the painting may remain in the public imagination for a very limited period of time still (possibly shorter than if it were in a museum), it is still available on the Internet somewhere. Say 30 years down the road, a young student artist is looking for inspiration, and it so happens that stumbling upon this particular painting will spark off an idea that will lead him to create a masterpiece unsurpassed by anyone before him. In the museum and in the private collection, this meeting of inspiration and creator would be much less likely. In the realm of Free Art and the Internet, it could happen. When art is free, ideas circulate much faster, spawning new ideas at unbelievable rates and generating a much more active thinking community. (This also forms part of my argument that over-restrictive copyright laws strangle creativity rather than nurture it, but that's another argument for another day :P)

Oh bah, I didn't make my 1am deadline :S Reposting this at a more convenient time! :)

Brief

Goodness, it HAS been long since I last updated this blog :P To answer the question posed by my previous post: NO, the dreams have NOT stopped when my exams did, but at least they're less frequent, less disturbing and less convoluted now. :)

*Distracted by hair, which currently feels like hay -- or how I imagine hay to feel like*

I wonder what it would be like to live on my own? (Surprisingly, this thought was sparked off by an Archie comic! :P Okay, so they're not exactly the epitome of deep thought, but it's not as if they're entirely devoid of social relevance eh? :)