The Story of Time

This was a poem I wrote for homework in English class, we were asked to write about something that bugs us:

Time is a man’s worst enemy,

Yet his most valuable commodity,

Days fly by one after the other,

While he watches the clock eat away his sanity.

He becomes a speck of dust within a sea of bewilderment,

Wishing to escape the devouring darkness.

Mourning over yesterday,

And looking at tomorrow full of regrets and self-hatred

His mind lingers in the past where memories of lost ones lay untouched,

And looks up to stars,

When hope seems too farfetched.

Time has wilted and lost its color,

Exploited, degraded in the hands of others,

If only time would freeze for a moment,

So its value once again is returned to its former glory.

But time does not wait, it is impatient

It gushes forward leaving the ones behind picking up the tatters of their story,

The story of their time,

The story that ended,

The story that set them free.

Reborn

Life is full of pain and misery, cruel times and harsh endings. The nights go on without an end, and are broken with the fiery burning of the early sun, reborn into the morning sky, making us awaken into another day. It never ends, it's an ongoing cycle, but then if you look up, you'll see the light.

Don't let the harsh times veil you from the real beauties of life. Those simple things that bring a smile on one's face. I don't believe in wishes on stars, but I believe they were only an excuse to get people to look up, to hold onto hope, to know that there will always be something there to pull them out of the devouring darkness.

So, live life to the fullest and let the light seep through into your bones, absorb it and rebuild. Hold onto memories, those happy times, the ones that keep you going through the days. Do something worthwhile, make your time here as valuable as it should be, live up to your full potential.

Days Flying By

They say everyday is a new day, but I think everyday is what you make it. Sometimes it feels like we’re always living the same day over and over again. Everyday seems to pass exactly like the next. Always walking that same hallway, going into the same elevator, entering the same room, hearing the same things. Predicting each step of the way becomes an enduring habit. Living becomes a burden carried on our backs, becomes a rock on our chests.

Other days, it seems like we go into survival mode. Just hoping to get through the day. We do this when something different happens in our lives, we realize something has changed and then it hits us, we should do something about it. We’re awake through the never ending night staring at that same ceiling, but with different eyes.

You begin to realize those wasted days, those endlessly consumed hours, those minutes that lost their value. Time is the humans’ most valuable commodity,so don’t waste it. Change what you do with your days, and you will rise like a Phoenix and fly into the night sky with burning light.

Assumption

People are creatures that are given a brain and wit. With this, we have the power to think ahead, to assume things. Assumptions though can lead to hatred, and to insecurity. When something happens, there are always multiple sides to the story, always something different said by different people. Therefore, before jumping to conclusions and assuming something, listen, listen to everything.

Listening is a skill that is difficult to acquire let alone use it with everyone. Listening is the key to moving forward, to understanding, and without it, where would we be? Probably in a dark pit isolated with our own self centered selves.

Assumption is the product of lack of listening, and hence there is only a personal opinion without regards to others. Let the light shine in and give way to the listeners, the ones who care, those who make little assumptions. One of my pet peeves is people who assume. For example, and action that is done with good intentions, people can assume that it is with bad intentions. How are they to know someones intentions? Some people are so ignorant yet they still deny it and admit nonexistent knowledge.

I'm sorry

"As life goes on I’m starting to learn more and more about responsibilityAnd I realize everything I do is affecting the people around meSo I want to take this time out to apologize for things that I've doneAnd things that haven't occurred yetAnd things that they don’t want to take responsibility for"-Akon

Perfect- Pink (Cover)

this time the piano was played by me, recorded and then added to the video, i think this is much better than the previous one, so hopefully it will get even better :P

Watercolor Family Portraits (Body of Works)

Watercolor Family Portraits (Body of Works)

Superman-Five For Fighting (Cover)

This is me singing a cover of the song Superman. I really liked it after listening to the cover by Boyce Avenue and thought I should try it out. Not really satisfied with it, but its what I could come up with for now. Hope you enjoy!

Self Portrait Sketch

Collage About Me

Tipping Point (unfinished)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rR94NDIfGmA&feature=fvsr

Reality

Its a pretty funny thing, reality. Many people struggle to find who they are and what they enjoy or what they value the most. But those who do, rarely let it out. Its interesting seeing how each and every person is, how every person is living in another world, and entirely different universe than the one of others. As Shakespeare stated : "Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind." this shows that each and every other person has a different reality whether or not it has to do with love and that our views are so rich and diverse that almost never do they intersect. Look around you, at each person, separately, examine their expressions, their surroundings, and truly see the world from their angle, put yourself into their thoughts and feel the world the way they do. Its a funny feeling, those emotions of hate turn into sympathy, emotions of respect turn into anger, love into question, as if looking through a piece of glass that makes everything around clearer.

My Still Unnamed Composition (Rough Draft Recording)

Where am I?

Sometimes people struggle in times where thinking hurts, and understanding seems too far away to reach. I find myself asking, why am I here? Where is here? Why is everyone around me so closed minded? Sometimes, this confusion turns into fear, like walking on a rope, one small mistake, a misunderstanding turns into devastation. Beginning to realize that people are not who they are and they wear happiness like a mask also adds to the fear of misunderstanding and confusion. Am I being used? Are they telling the truth? Who is telling the lies? Who is biased? Who listens? Who cares? These questions constantly replaying endlessly in my head. My experience in life is probably as little as a 5 year old's experience, but it is what I learn from other's experiences and books that I now understand that there is more to everyone than just smiles and laughs. Everyone has their unexposed identity, their true unexplored selves. They hide it, pretending like they have no care in the world, but if you begin to dig deeper, and question their happiness, you being to find their hidden selves. I do not mean that everyone has a deep dark secret and everything they do is a cover up, but that it is sometimes reflected and hinted in the slightest ways that someone is hiding something, vs. someone who tells you everything. Belonging is a big word, it's meaning is so rich that it often keeps me thinking for days. What is home? Where is home? Who are the people around me? How am I different from them? When you begin to realize that your belonging is merely an illusion, a big fat lie that you have been telling yourself for years, you begin to break away, you begin to open up. You find people who you never talk to, have more in common with who you found yourself to be after breaking the wall of ignorance, the way you view people begins to change. Whoever invented the concept of having a balanced life is simply a fool who lied to himself and managed to convince himself that life can be balanced between family, religion, social life, academic life/ job. It is almost completely impossible to have a balanced life, unless you are lying to yourself. But no matter how unbalanced your life is and not matter what problems you face, only be thankful, look to the people around you, listen to their stories. Your life will in some cases feel meaningless compared to what other people face and you get that boost of motivation to try and underestand them and help them, to have an impact on their lives, no matter how small.

Do You Listen? Can You Hear Me?

Ever feel like no one around you listens? That no one really understands you or even takes the time to? That you can't trust your friends? Like everyone seems to be walking backwards? I think we all go through times where this is truly how we feel. We feel isolated on an island that people think doesn't exist. People make their own judgements and presumptions without thinking. But then you begin to think that people are not listening to you, so you try to listen to them, and try to dissect their layers like layers of an onion. But sometimes you're left pealing the wrong parts of the onion and you basically get nowhere. You think that hey maybe if I hear what others have to say I might see something in myself, or realize something that I never did before. Then There comes other times where you really feel the urge to be heard and you begin to seek the attention of perfect strangers and throw all your problems at them in hopes that they will be better listeners than your closest friends. I guess life doesn't always work according to the "give and take" saying.

"We see the world from our own eyes and refuse to w-i-d-e-n our perspectives and wear someone else’s shoes."

- http://wordypenguin.wordpress.com/

When Your World Comes Tumbling Down

In life we have our priorities, our loves, our family, our friends, and our responsibilities. People of different ages have different priorities and therefore, different problems. Not to complain, I am fully aware that people suffer even worse situations and have to go through extremely difficult lives, but I have come up with a conclusion based on my own experiences these past few years. Firstly, life is like a house of sticks. You spend weeks and months trying to gather up all the materials waiting patiently until all the essential tools are gathered. Then you start building it up, carefully placing one stick on top of the other, each one acting as a support for the next. It is a fragile structure constantly being manipulated and constantly evolving and becoming more stable. When you finally think you have the perfect house, and you think you have reached your highest success and you think you have it all, that is when something happens. The structure, after reaching its climax, as the saying goes, "what goes up, must come down." One mild wind, one stick removed can send the entire structure plummeting to the ground. That is a perfect example of how my life feels right now. I think that over the past few years I managed to convince myself that I had friends and that I was satisfied with what I had. I never actually looked beyond our shallow 2 hour talks on the phone or the happiness that we naively displayed. Though little things, little fights little arguments began to form that deep hallow dark pitch of distrust between the two sides. That impatience, judgment, betrayal, and feeling of isolation and misconception and misunderstanding is what caused that violent storm hoist up the fragile house of sticks and give it that final shove onto the cold harsh ground. We all think its over exaggeration when they say that a book can actually change someone's life, but due to recent events, I would now laugh at those shallow people who think that not true.

That one book from English class, yes who's cover page is not very creative and yes not very inviting, yes, that was the one book I read that actually hit me straight in the head and made me think "WAIT. hold the phone, something is defiantly not right." Just thinking about the author alone and his brilliance is beyond fascinating, the way he was able to paint such vivid pictures and descriptions of the modern world without even living through it. Burning books. I actually wouldn't be surprised if the governments today began to burn books and stop knowledge. Everything in the book that was not actually there during the time the author lived is happening. Impeding our thinking process with ads, commercials, meaningless information. Televisions that are improving to where they are becoming like the Parlor Walls, and where people are picked on for being bright, or smart. Though going beyond those things, this book's main character goes on a journey of finding himself after he made the devastating discovery that he was not happy. In the end he literally lost everything he owned, but he was now happier on the inside, and he was doing what he thought was right, he was being reborn from the ashes.

A Beautiful Mistake

It started in 2010, the piano lessons and the budding talent. Youtube was an essential tool helping me discover the world of music and art. A world precieved from many different perspecyives with uncountable results when searching for "what is music?". The first piece I officially learned, not perfected, was Fur Elise, the original version not the modified version. But while taking lessons, i got side tracked and began taking on my own route. Taking this route helped me see how impatient of a person I am and how this ended up actually helping me. I began looking for Youtube tutorials for different songs and in the end chose "My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion. i learned the first part but then I ended up loosing my patience again, and while I was playing it, i guess I made an unintentional mistake hitting a wrong key. When I heard it though, I was like "hey, I actually really like the way that sounds." and I ended up taking it to a whole new level. When I played it, every time I added a little piece and as the year progressed, the piece began blossoming and blooming, expanding and improving. Every time I experimented with the keys and tried hitting different notes and making mistakes that I liked the sound of, I recorded it, hoping that one day I would go back and rediscover it and add it into the piece. Hey I'm not going to lie but most of those recorded bits and pieces I never heard of again, I guess they got lost in the sea of recordings and ideas I had flowing out of my head while I played. I like to think of this piece as just a huge mistake, a misunderstanding and misconception of music. I feel like I've taken the route of composing music backwards. I compose music without understanding chords and how they work, without fluently sight reading piano sheet music, and without studying the history or structure or the different types and movements of music. When I first began composing the piece, I was just composing it for me, I was just sitting at the piano making music, nothing more to it. Each day I would add a part that had a completely different feeling and emotion than the last. I guess it really depended on my mood. I was even told that it did sound like a whole bunch of little compositions were put together without very fluent transitions, and the funny thing is, is that was really the case. But even though this piece is not based on understanding and research and knowledge and structure, I think that it was really a good way to reflect my emotions, and I think it really allowed me to understand the piano in my own way. Then I saw the opportunity. The opportunity to take my independent project one step further. I could use it for my personal project. I thought that because composing music was more than just sitting down at a piano and making music, I should fill the gap of my understanding of classical music.