LoFi Life

Sebagai penikmat music ambience, saya suka sekali dengan berbagai musik dari soundtrack film ataupun jajaran lagu-lagu Hip-Hop, RnB, Lo-Fi dan electronic.

Akhir-akhir ini karena sering merasa dikejar Deadline (hello journalist here), saya jadi suka melarikan diri dalam playlist-playlist gawean Youtube yang membuat hati tenang.

Life That Ends with Thankfulness

I consider myself as a cat person, thus when I chance upon cat movies, watching “If Cats Disappear from the World” became natural. Hear me out, it was amazing.

“If you could cheat death by trading the things you cherish, what will happen to you?” is the premise of this Japanese movie, notice the bold cum italic and you’ll wonder maybe this one will be different from other kick the bucket movies. Yes, it is about death, specifically facing death. Yes, there will be a Faustus character, but he won’t offer world domination through magic book. Yes, it’s about regret, friendship, gratefulness and a couple of cats named after vegetables.

I love how I could recognized most of the Kanji (source)

The Asianwiki summary of this Japanese movie was,

“A postman learns that he doesn’t have much time left to live due to a terminal illness. A devil then appears in front of him and offers to extend his life if he picks something in the world that will disappear. The man thinks about his relationships with ex-friends, ex-lovers, relatives and colleagues who will be sincerely sad when he dies.”

At first, it sounded confusing and seemed as if it’s going to pull us into weird Japanese proses, but a glance at the mute poster, you’d see subdued pastel colors, soft camera filter and Takeru Satoh’s blank gaze. I thought it won’t disappoint me much since these kind of cinematography are my favorite and at least I could enjoy the pretty pictures.

Before you continue with the post, I hope you can take some time to check the soundtrack for they are very soothing and classic. I can’t seem to find the right code to embed only the music, damn Youtube TOS, and I can’t seem to find any soundcloud uploads, so please take your time to press play on the video above.

Facing Fear Itself

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
色彩を持たない多崎つくると、彼の巡礼の年
by Haruki Murakami

So many symbolism. At one point reading the book, you will do this. Spread your palm in the cover and –realizes-.

The main reason why I bought this book stemmed from three point of reason,

1. It was considerably cheaper than other Murakami’s book in the store at that time
2. The title strongly reminded me of Kuroko no Basuke’s Phantom 6^th Player [*]
3. Gdmmt its Haruki Murakami’s work, what more reason do you need?

So yeah, I bought it, finished it in two days, and the story still haunts me till now. It cut near the heart, especially to people who are familiar with being alienated [**]

Growing up, you must have a group of very close friends that might give Mighty Morphin Power Rangers a run of their money. Friends you hang around together, so often you gave each other assigned name, rank or even color. Somebody is red for leader, blue for being strong and brash, green for their calmness and yellow/pink/white for the ladies. But like every epic TV series, things went south. Friendship shattered and trust gone, such thing happens everywhere and it also happened in Nagoya city to Tsukuru Tazaki and his precious friends.

[TLDR] This post will be part book review, part analysis and part life reflection.

Warranted Queen

        -it looks like the tide is calling

Momen dalam hidup itu seperti naik roller coaster. 

Ada saat dimana kita harus menunggu dan bersabar layaknya mengantri giliran naik wahana.

Ada saat-saat dimana kita takut, gugup, nervous luar biasa dalam menghadapi sesuatu namun tetap saja kita lakukan seperti tetap keukeh ingin naik roller coaster walau takut.

Preview on new pics for CardToPost

Nih lagu cover keren banget, sukses membuat saya terbuai dengan alunan gitarnya yang begitu mellow.

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Beberapa gambar yang saya rencanakan untuk di blow up ke versi kartu pos 🙂

Seperti yang bisa dilihat, tiga diantaranya merupakan hasil cat warna. Masih harus banyak latihan nih…

catcher in the rye

“Nervous breakdown”
is a term that the public uses to characterize a range of mental illnesses,
but generally it describes the experience
of
“snapping”
under immense pressure,
mental collapse
or
mental and physical
exhaustion.

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So it took me 22 months to finish J.D Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye book. Not because I’m a slow reader, I actually finished three-fourth of it at the first week. But because at one point, I hurled that book to the wall and stopped my self from reading it.

The book hits to close to home.

Only now when I’m feeling a lot mature and didn’t have anything else to read did I picked up where I stopped and finished that book in one sitting. A few hours after I finish that book, I banged two different motorcycle. Few days later, my car died in the middle of the street and I lost focus and felt utterly depressed because I.Can’t.Stop.Thinking.About.The.Book

It hit waaaaaay to close to home.

Go figure that out.

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It’s scary how a book can affect you in such a holistic way that it halted you from thinking. I guess that’s exactly what makes the book such a quality read. It made you hurl, stomp and weigh your mind so very much.

Few days ago I had a comment thread chat via AO3 with an author, we discussed things around Panic Attack, emotional breakdown and what makes people snapped. At some point I paraphrase this thing from a postmodernism book I read, that whatever movies, books, literature and entertainment offer is a form of simulation for us to deal with IRL problem.

For me, Catcher in The Rye is a scary book because it explains things that I did not understand about a certain somebody. At some point I did got depressed, but I don’t think I’ll ever regret reading it.

Just need to sit down and sort my mind before it eloped with my sanity to the rabbit hole.

I’d recommend you that book, only if you can promise not to compromise your emotional state. It’s a classic book, with a plot that became ever so real and general in real life.

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Music Hunt

warning, lots of links and tags aheaaaaaad

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Sekalinya seorang teman sedang melihat-lihat isi iTunes ku, niatnya ingin ‘merazia’ music list yang aku miliki dan bila ada yang sesuai dengan seleranya, yaaah main copy paste.

Beberapa menit kemudian dia mengeluh, “kok musiknya ngga ada yang aku kenal ya?”

Well, aku cuma bisa nyengir saja 🙂

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Alright, biasanya musik-musik yang kudengar bawaannya mellow, acoustic, sedih, bikin mood jadi galau. Namun ada juga beberapa yang aku sukai karena bisa membuat jingkrak-jingkrak dan makin bersemangat menyelesaikan LPJ acara Peluncuran Buku dalam Rangka Memenuhi Tugas Kuliah EPB.

Dimana aku pertama kali mendegarnya?

Kebanyakan dari soundtrack film ataupun tv series, ada juga yang kebetulan mendengarnya di radio. Tapi kebanyakan sebenarnya karena terbawa arus masyarakat Tumblr yang serba enthusiast dengan semua hal yang berbau hip, popular and now.

Bener deh, kalau mau lihat seperti apa taste musik remaja Amerika yang tidak begitu menyukai musik pop komersil (baca: Justin Bieber, Rihanna, Marron 5 dll),  coba saja cek hashtag #music-recs di tumblr dan lihat mana yang paling banyak notesnya.

Dan bila kita memiliki ketertarikan terhadap fictional character ataupun fandom tertentu, bisa juga cek fanmix.tumblr dan tagsnya ataupun hashtag dari account tumblr yang lainnya. Diantaranya yang ada di playlist atas kudapatkan dari sini. Lagu itu berasal dari sebuah fanmix yang disusun untuk mengikuti mood dari pairing Stiles x Cora dari serial tv Teen Wolf. I highly recommended ‘It’s Time’ by Imagine Dragon, It’s very cool.

Tertarik dengan band indie yang tidak dikenal? Cek situs ini, Bandcamp, sebenarnya duluuu banget aku pernah merekomendasikan artis Mara Hruby di  post ini. Lagunya yang berjudul Character sangat menenangkan dan memiliki momen-momen syahdu (cieee bahasanya :D) Asyiknya lagi dari situs Bandcamp adalah, kita bisa pilih mau cari dari kategori sesuka kita. Bisa dari genre maupun asal para artis, jadi bila kita ingin spesifik mencari lagu-lagu dari artis Bulgaria juga bisa saja..

Suka blogwalking? Cek deh situs my dear cousin over here, Coklat dan Hujan‘s. Aku percaya berat sama pilihan lagunya, selera kami kira-kira sama. Saking samanya bahkan kami pernah karaokean lagu-lagu jadul seperti lagunya 98 Degrees (ada yang masih ingat?) dan lagu Regina Spektor (ada yang kenal??) di malam hari hingga sekitar jam 10an..

Selain blogwalking, bisa juga cek di situs Soundcloud. Paling klop karena kita bisa eksplorasi berbagai jenis cover song sebuah lagu.

Sebagian dari fanmixes yang ada di tumblr bisa di download, namun ada juga yang cuma bisa numpang dengar selama kita online internet. Begitu juga dengan di Bandcamp, ada yang menyediakan free download ada juga yang harus bayar.

Ngotot pengen tetap download lagunya? Yaaah  harus pintar-pintar cari situs seperti soundcloud downloader, atau coba cari di mp3ye.eu. Tapi cari lagu dan download di situs mp3ye.eu rada ribet, namun kualitas dan persentase kita dapat working link bisa lebih dipercaya daripada MP3skull.com.

Terakhir! Sering lihat fanmade video dan MAD? Telusuri saja lagu-lagu yang digunakan untuk fanmade video ini, dari situlah aku mendapatkan lagu Fat Guy dan Who Are You Really oleh Mikki Ekko. Video Fat Guy berasal dari fanmade Video untuk fandom Hetalia, sedangkan Who Are You Really sebenarnya adalah video crossover mengenai Loki dari Thor, Lucifer dari Supernatural dan Moriarty dari Sherlock BBC (yeeeep, I can be extremely random sometimes.)

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So, begitulah caraku memburu lagu baru.

Unconventional much, huh?