Set me free

There’s anger in the wind today

Out there, the world is red with rage

And yet an icy numbness kills
Each remnant of my dying soul

‘cause where I live, there’s emptiness

Bricked up with walls of silences


Break this wall of silences

And let this anger fall on me

Twist my heart, break my soul

Let this anger set me free


Trees are lashing at the skies

The skies are crying angry tears

But not a teardrop in my eye

Reveals my aching soul within

‘cause where I live, there’s emptiness

Bricked up with walls of silences


Break this wall of silences

And let this sorrow rain on me

Burn my eyes with salty tears

Let this sorrow set me free

Rise...

Gonna rise up
Burning black holes in dark memories
Gonna rise up
Turning mistakes into gold...

Bird Thongchai - Bahn Kaung Row (Our Home)

Another beautiful song by Phi Bird, about home, about a mother's smile...."There's no smile as sweet and warm as a mother's smile..."

Bird Thongchai...my first crush...

Yesterday, I remembered my first crush. Me and my friend were having a conversation about good looking Irish men like Aidan Quinn and Cillian Murphy: men with beautiful watery blue eyes....Yes, much as we protest against racial stereotypes and commodification of women, we ourselves engage in the crime of commodifying men, our evaluations laden with thousands of racial considerations. But we can't help it. We are self-confessed connoisseurs of beauty in all forms. So we unabashedly went on to a discussion on how children of mixed parentage would look, you know, like children of Irish and Asian parentage; when an image and a voice--a twenty year old memory--floated into my mind: Thongchai 'Bird' McIntyre, 'Bird Thongchai', or simply, 'Phi Bird,' the Thai singer and actor with a sweet and powerful husky voice, a charismatic performer, capable of singeing a thousand hearts with his disarming smile and twinkling eyes. Born to a Thai mother and an Irish father, he did not have typically Irish features, but boy, he was definitely a heart-breaker!

This was something like twenty years ago, when my father had gone with us to Bangkok on deputation for three years. I was nine years old when I went there and almost thirteen when I came back. Those three odd years there were the most exciting in my life, as it always is, for a pre-teen, who is just beginning to open her eyes to the beauty all around her. And then there was Phi Bird, the craze of Thailand, who was in his early thirties, and had just tasted sweet success and fame. I think it was 1990, when he sang "Boomerang," a cheerful song that swept the nation. There was 'Bird' fever all around, and I was one of the afflicted ones. The song went: "I will always come back to you, because I am a boomerang!" Then there was the wonderful "Boomerang Man Concert" with the live-wire Bird on stage, and fans swooning all around him, and then, videos of the Boomerang concert playing in every store you entered. He was a phenomenon. Here is a clip of the music video:





Although I can speak very little Thai and have forgotten most of it by now, I still remember each and every word in that song, and I don't think I will ever forget, even if I try. I had fallen in love. I followed his every move. There was this serial he used to act in, called "Koo Kam," in which he acted as this intense Japanese soldier in the second World War, who was in love with a Thai girl. And even if there were no subtitles, and I could only understand the expressions on the faces of the actors, I used to sit and watch it every afternoon and weep salty tears because Phi Bird was so torn apart by the conflict between love and war!


I was so much in love with Phi Bird that I developed a crush in school, on a boy who looked a bit like him. As my crappy luck would have it, that boy broke my heart by not caring two hoots about me, but that was alright, because I still had my Phi Bird to fall back upon.


Then we moved back to India, and I shut out all memories of Thailand in my enthusiasm to adjust to life in a new school, in an attempt to make new friends with new people. I went through all the trouble and adventure a child goes through in a life that is full of unstable circumstances. Those three years in Thailand were the longest time we had ever spent in any city. Otherwise, our life was all about packing and moving to a new place almost every year. Not that I didn't love the variety in my life, but sometimes, the constant moving and adjusting got to me.


But no more of that whining about "I had a difficult childhood." I'm sure it was not all that bad. As time went by, I began to appreciate beauty back home with the same fervour that I had for Phi Bird, moving on to home-grown stars and then to classmates and friends who did not necessarily look like my star crushes. In other words, I grew up.


And then yesterday, I was suddenly flown back on a trip to the past. I searched the net for any remnants of old memories and found two clips of "Boomerang." One being the old music video I used to love, in which Phi Bird was thirty two years old, and a new one in which he is much older, but sexier. It took me some time to get used to the sexy avatar of the cute man I used to know, but I like him both ways now. My friend, of course, prefers the new, cooler video in which Phi Bird dances with his hands in his pockets and shoots smouldering looks at the camera:




In my enthusiasm to catch up with the past, I found out that Phi Bird became even more successful after we left Thailand and became the first Thai singer to get an MTV award. I also found a newer song of his that I really like, "Mee Tae Kid Teung," a sad song about lost love, which goes, "I keep thinking of you." I just love the emotions in his voice and his new maturity. I also love the beautiful blending of Thai cadences with western music. I think, for a Thai singer who uses western styles, this blending is inevitable because Thai is essentially a tonal language. This song is so typically Thai in tone, and yet so accessible:

Maybe I'm making too much of a silly little star crush. I don't know what it is about star crushes, why they sometimes seem more tangible than the reality around you. This one, at least, is significant because it is a sweet childhood memory, and I thank my friend for bringing it back to me.

I don't want to know

Is that Orion?
Smiling down at me

As I sit sighing

Into the dark night?

Or is it just me reading signs

Where none exist?
I don't want to know.

And the other day,

Did the sun really wink at me,

Peeping out of cottony clouds

As I smiled up at the sky?

Or was it just my impish mind

Pulling a prank on me?
I really don't want to know.

Just for once,

Leave me alone

With tales I have woven

Out of nothingness.

Just once, this once,

I don’t want to know.

Waiting.

Waiting.
I am waiting
For the sun to rise.

The world is asleep.
And here I am
Walking.
To and fro.
To and fro.

Waiting.
For the sun to rise.
For life to take over
And set me free.

Hallelujah - Leonard Cohen

The song I want to hear on my deathbed. Sums up life most beautifully.
"Listen love, love is not some kind of victory march,
No it's cold, and it's a very broken Hallelujah!"