Download audio file (World-Thats-Not-Real-re-record.mp3)
[Gloria Ann Taylor "World That's Not Real"]

or heroes, actually.  in fact, fuck heroes.  perhaps i’m freaking out right now.

i’m in a mental space right now, and i doubt it will benefit any facet of my being to reveal it, but lately i’ve been realizing (thanks to you devoted readers) that when i can’t seem to find the words to express my frustration to the earthlings around me, writing it down is the ultimate vessel of ultimateness.  a.k.a. I’M BROOOOOOOOOOOOKEEE!!!

okay, that’s irresponsible of me to say.  i’m only broke in digital terms.  a.k.a., the number that shows up on the internet that represents my bank account is slightly smaller in value than the number that shows up on the internet that represents my credit card statement.  join that with the fact that these numbers are muddled with grocery bills that my roommates/bandmates owe me, as well as some checks for design projects that i’m waiting for, plus a hefty sum of money that i owe to the ill-lit account (which we affectionately refer to as “ebony”), and i pretty much have no idea as to whether december will result in me being a bum or a baller.  most likely the former.  and like i said, it’s all netflix’s fault.

the was a time when i wrote a lot.  this blog was once rich with my musical discoveries, muses on touring, and random rants.  but i was always tired.  my eyes burned, and my entire mental state was thwarted with obsession over the ideals of fame.  in between my blog posts, i sat like a zombie reloading myspace pages, lamenting over the booking requests that i was managing, and all the while kicking myself for spending much more time publicizing my art rather than creating it.  and then the music began.

yes, everything is a trade. looking back at the last couple of years since opening this blog in ‘06, i can conclude with much irony that my deepest period of writing occurred in the beginning when i was working a fulltime job and coming home to write about how much i wish i had time to write more.  this was my “writer’s block” period.  i scroll through my 2009 blog posts with a bit of repulsion…i wish i wrote as beautifully as i did in the past few years.  but this past year i’ve been focusing on the ill-lit songs – these four tracks that we’ve mused over infinitely, and that you might or might not even like at the end of the day.  but just like “schizophrenic love,” there’s not much more that i can give you but an honest attempt.  simply moments in time captured in a bedroom microphone.

in the end, i hope it’s worth it.  because i really like this blog…or at least i like what it once was.  i never wanted this to become a wasteland of viral videos and reposts.  and i definitely never wanted it to become the meta-hampster ball that it’s become, constantly rotating onto itself…a blog about itself.  but what the fux?  the security blanket in my writing process…the point that i always come back to…is writing about my frustrations of being a writer.

i feel an ache in the back of my mouth.  i just got rid of my sore throat like 3 days ago.  it better not be coming back.

so anyway, back to relevance.  yesterday me and the rest of ill-lit were at a meeting with our PR folks, and amidst me tripping out at the fact that we actually work with PR folks, the subject of myspace came up.  now, to understand my relationship with myspace, one has to revisit 2007 when that wretched website seemed to be the end-all-be-all of musicians.  people were printing their URLs on business cards, music summits were conducting dozens of workshops around marketing solely around your myspace profile, and the number of hits you got per day was the coveted popularity contest that meant everything and nothing at the same time.  i was completely engulfed.  i’d check how many friends we had.  then how many plays.  then how many plays blu had.  then how many plays charles hamilton had.  then how many plays bambu had.  then how many plays tila tequila had.  then how many plays we had again. then i’d justify to myself our number compared to everyone else, all the while completely aware that none of it really mattered because none of the music on our page consisted of tracks that we took seriously anyway.  but they were numbers, and despite my lack of skills in math, my asianness directed me to obsess over numbers regardless.

in ‘09 i decided to unplug…kind of.  i decided to stop signing onto myspace altogether, and instead allowed myself to dedicate my moments in front of my giant LCD screen to sorting out horrible rom-coms on Netflix instant play.  it has been liberating, in a sense.  i recognized that i had been committing myself to a cyber-community that was fictitious in its core.  whatever your social networking obsession is, the numbers that signify your popularity ultimately don’t necessarily lead to a better quality of life.

at the same time, i find myself herenow.  it’s the PR’s job to point out why it’s important to revive a social networking persona, but at the same time every cell within me despises returning to the trivial game of counting avatars.  at the same time, we have a music project to promote.  and dammit, i just want to write songs, record them, and perform them.  maybe design some album covers.  and hopefully return to venting my qualms to you good people.  but definitely not checking sitecounters and approving friend requests.

so where does that leave us now?  basically at 2:30am, and several paragraphs deep into a blog post that i’m tempted to just delete and forget about as i try to go to sleep. i hate complaining, but i’m in love with venting  so much of my life is stunted by self-imposed insecurity and censorship.  i hope to make less commitments and to replace that void of follow-through with more sporadic moments.  most of that will depend on me clicking the “publish” button before rereading the whole entry and realizing that everything that i’ve written might either be pointless or incoherent.

…this man will tell his grandchildren of the day he met President Barack Obama, dressed as a giant chicken.

heyyyyy people!!!!!  thanks so much for your comments on my last piece of emodom.  it’s been awhile since i let myself release like that and it was a good reminder as to why i like to write, especially since moving to nyc and no longer having someone specific to air out my woes to (a.k.a. the drizzletron needs a girlfriend!!).  in the meantime though, i have you, oh sweet wordpress.

so i was in kansas yesterday for an asian american youth conference.  lawrence, ks, to be specific, and i feel about 37% horrible that the whole time leading up to my excursion i thought i was going to be in kansas city, mo.  given that my only experience with kansas city was watching jesus camp, i was quite terrified.

so i was  pleasantly surprised to discover that, although much of kansas and missouri are in fact very conservative, lawrence is the college town that is home to the university of kansas, and is quite the hippie oasis.

i was told that massachusetts street is the place to be.  AND IT IS!!  my first stop was the love garden, which does not in any way explain its logo of a giant squid rubbing up against saturn.  but then again, perhaps saturn represents music, and the squid represents me, getting stimulated in more ways than one at its massive vintage record collection.

my discovery of the day: the raincoats

i left the love garden expecting to return to cop some vinyl.  and then i got sucked into this giant two-story antique shop and spent up all the money i don’t have.

jackets!  jackets! jackets!  i did my winter shopping in the boooooondocks.

is this not the dopest video game store display EVER!?!?!?!?!!?

and to top the whole thing off, when i got to the end of the block i walked in on julian and stephen marley doing a soundcheck.   i would’ve copped a ticket, but alas, my life was spent on antiques.

apparently in kansas there’s a law that you can carry a gun wherever you go.  the logic is that crime will happen less because no one will fuck with anyone else if there’s a chance that they might get their ass capped.  but then there are these buildings that can choose to disallow firearms.  i wonder if there’s a gun cubby at the door.

hah.

the next morning i was brought to KU for the conference.  here’s the historic lineage of the jayhawk, a fictitious crossbreed between a blue jay and a hawk.  BTW, did you know that LIGERS ARE REAL???

so ill-lit does a lot of asian conferences.  it’s just a way of life.  and oftentimes at the banquets dahlak will comment (aka mildly complain) that they never just serve corn and mash potatoes.  will dahlak, BOOYAH!

hereeeee are the kiddiesssss!!!!!!  me love them nom nom nom.

ta daaaaaa!  an un-wack kansas!  quite terrific, in fact.  thankso to everyone who i met, i had a blast.  until next time.  i’ll just tap my ruby shoes.  bing!

i appreciate that you join me in this language.  you often wallow in frustration wishing that you could make your points in chinese.  i can only imagine how even these words would pale in comparison to the poeticism that you would speak, had i kept the tongue that you raised me with.  i’m sorry for not reaching you halfway here.

i don’t ever want you to think that i don’t appreciate you.  i know i take on frustrated tones, that in our conversations i reach a pitch that i have no right to with you.  the fact that we can be engaged in an argument about god and have it turn into one about us shows how holy our union is.  i’ve inherited your fingers and i point them at you far too often.  i’m sorry.

the older i get, the more i realize that you’re learning this along the way too.  please understand that i’m also figuring out how to be a son.  i have no experience but this.

there are things that we may never understand about each other.  like why i choose to air my dirty laundry to the public.  i tell you it is because the only way i can turn my turmoil into triumph is to confess it to the world in hopes that my errors prevent another from slipping.  you say it’s too personal.  at times i upset you for pulling you into my writing.  i say you’re in every word i write.

once again, i crossed the line tonight.  in my attempts to serve constructive criticism, unveil my reactions to your tactics for raising me, i made you feel less than fantastic.  i find myself tangled in generations, conflicting sentence structures, and the over all fact that i can be the jerk you warned me about being since i was 7.  how do i explain to you that regardless of what spurs of arrogance and pretentiousness i might spill onto you,  you will always be the center of my flame?

tonight i sleep, pillow wet with your tears.  tomorrow, will the original, unsettled subject of conversation even matter anymore? for few things will, besides what’s left between us.

*my bad i wrote this 4 days ago and thought i published it from my phone but i didn’t.  i’m feeling better now.  and more sober.  but it’s real, so herenow.

If I can be honest with you, dear blog readers, the reason I haven’t been writing so much here is strictly superficial. Completely google-analytics based. Since this move to NYC the number of hits to this site has dwindled while ill-lit’s has tripled. To be honest, I crave visibility. And within that struggle I balance between a longing for voice between Asian Americans, or artists, or simply my vanity. Among, that is.

The economy affects me in places where I once claimed invincibility. Gigs, music downloads, and fame in general seem so much more crucial now that epic decisions are made between $5 and $7 meals. Where my focus was once on creative energy is now an endless void of concern that each piece of writing and each song will determine whether or not I will eat next month.

I hesitate writing about this because I don’t want to come off like one of those other artists… Those who complain about struggle while signed to major labels and enjoying endorsements by Warner Bros. (not that i’m signed to a major label or endoresed by warner bros). I must confess that I splurged $30 on a meal last night at an Indian fusion restaurant, which contradicts at least 3 aspects of me. I’m scared that come November I’ll be flying back to California with my remaining $100 to spend the next decade in the suburbs with my parents. That 2008 will forever be archived as the height of my career and that this move to NYC was my last hurrah before settling as a permanent employee at Panda Express.

I’m at a trainstop at Chambers. Like 5 stops from home but somehow convinced by the MTA staff that taking a train the opposite way will lead me to Brooklyn. For the past month this sort of blind faith has led me to an uncounted number of beautiful and magical experiences, as well as around $1,000 of traffic tickets. What’s more important? My freedom as an earthwalker or the circumstances that dictate whether or not I can afford groceries next week? If ever there were a time that I could shed the role as the leader of ill-lit, it would be now. During the most crucial point. When everything is on the line and a single booking can determine whether or not we survive into the spring. At times like this, I long for selfishness. I slightly wish i didn’t love Dahlak and Nico so much. Or myself for that matter. That I could relinquish all self-worth and responsibility and be content with a perfectly respectable career as a graphic designer. Perhaps it’ll be a graphic designer who changes the world, after all. It’ll be the one mural that brings evil to tears and repentance, and that initiates world peace. Meanwhile I wonder if I will be part of that movement, or locked obliviously in the studio trying to create the next “Thriller.” In the end, what makes the biggest difference? And how significant is a “big difference” anyway?

These are all recession questions. Mental turmoils I took for granted back in 06 when I had a steady job and my biggest struggle was not having enough time to write. How do I count my blessings while keeping an eye on the survival of myself and my comrades?

Now the train’s stopping at Wall St.. Everything that I came to NYC to chase and avoid all at once. Certainly, the Bay is where you can simultaneously starve and ball. In New York, I’m forced to choose between one or the other. The decision isn’t as simple as it sounds.

So here I am. As everything I despise and aspire for, all at once. All I want is to eat good while making people dance. Why do I feel so guilty?

told you so.

this morning i was procrastinating all day to drop ill-lit’s new single, “the herenow.” as much time as i spend creating my work, when it comes down to the very end where i need to promote it, it’s like pulling teeth to me.  i battle my self-consciousness of appearing like a narcissist, but at the same time my ego tells me to front like i don’t need to be joining the thousands in that “please retweet this!” cycle.  the one bitter part about making a song that i love so much is that i can’t help feeling like a cyber-car salesman when trying to get people to hear it.

it was for all these reason that, amidst the myriad of blog jumping i allowed myself to be completely consumed by an email from my dad about the breaking news that a 6-year-old had broken into his parents’ homemade flying saucer and was gliding 6,000 ft. above colorado with the world watching.

the way he introduced it was, “remember when matthew (my little brother) accidentally got

it was such a spectacle of mixed emotions.  i didn’t know whether to be worried about the kid or fascinated in the fact that there was a homemade flying saucer in the first place.  being me, i become a bit consumed by jealousy because i wanted to be in a hot air balloon.  there was something so peaceful about the idea of riding in a silvery cooler-looking-than-a-hot-air-balloon with CNN trying to decide whether to call it a balloon, aircraft, or saucer.  if this kid makes it, i thought, no one can tell him shit. how are you going to be named Falcon, fly your first saucer at the age of 6, and not be considered the coolest kid ever?

however, in the back of my mind, there was the acknowledgment that we live in crazy times where fascination melts into tragedy at the click of a reload button.

when they couldn’t find falcon in the balloon, my heart sunk.  and then deeper when i learned that he was a little hapa kid (not that i wouldn’t have cared if it was a non-asian kid but come on). you could see all the twitterers and facebookers swallowing their tongues and wondering if all their jokes about the kid in the saucer were going to be forever logged in cyberspace as heartless jokes about the dead child.  but where else could he be????  his older brother had said he climbed into the balloon, but didn’t lock it, and then it took off!  as quickly as i was drawn to the story, i turned away from it to avoid thoughts of the worst.  it would’ve been so poetic.  the boy named Falcon, who was adamantly told by his parents that he couldn’t enter the cool futuristic-looking spaceship.  it was the ultimate battle between discipline and adventure.  they’d make a movie out of it.  it would be about how he always wanted to be a pilot, and the opening scene would be of him doing something eerily prophetic, like making propeller noises while playing with plastic toy planes, or watching the scene in e.t. where elliott is biking across the moon.  he’d be played by a white actor.

and then, after some time, after the nation has healed, after the “Fly On, Falcon” candlelight vigils and CBS specials featuring chris brown’s triumphant and heroic comeback, from the ashes would rise a new stereotype that asians just looooooooooove to fly away in hot air balloons.

“why don’t you glide back to where you came from!!!”

i decided to wait even more on dropping the song.  how insensitive would it be, amidst the country mourning for the lost child who wanted to fly, to drop in like “NEW SINGLE, BABY!!!!!” so out of respect, i waited the full hour it takes for our society to wipe the latest news event from its memory, and then while still feeling like an asshole for doing so, i dropped the damn song.

Download audio file (ill_theherenow.mp3)

fortunately, it ends up that the parents weren’t that irresponsible, because falcon was not in the balloon, and not lying in a cornfield somewhere, but instead in a box in the attic.

and there you have it, folks.  you can record the dopest song ever, record the most interesting youtube video, collect the most twitter followers, interrupt the most award ceremonies, spend your thousands and thousands of dollars on PR and marketing and ad space and population research, but nothing beats promoting your hot air metal flying saucer invention better than being a set a parents who have appeared on an episode of WifeSwap who has convinced the world that you let your kid fly away in it.

apparently, unless you’re anne frank.

(???????)

with nico.

clap for the pixies, gotta bring em back to life
we grew so tall that we all forgot how to fly
now everyone’s asleep on dreamin
the childlike empress is weepin weepin
so clap for the pixies, gotta bring em back to life

the tribute post i made for my late friend gina hotta unexpectedly became a memorial point for a lot of her friends and family, so out of love and respect i wanted to keep her at the top for a few days.

but YO.  the time is now.  i don’t want to speak too much yet about this, but if you’ve been following me and ill-lit for the past half decade, you’ll have a sense of how monumental this is for us!

i present to you ill-literacy’s “gentleman’s kool-aid.” i dedicate this to g, who never failed to ask how this project was doing every time i saw her.  see you at heaven’s gate, sis!

Download audio file (ill_gentlemanskoolaid.mp3)

DOWNLOAD.

a brief synopsis of the song at ill-literacy.com.  and as always, your support means the universe to me.