voice prejudice

I’ve realized that it doesn’t matter how good your voice is. As long as you know it’s yours, you don’t like it. Last night I was listening to some random song for a brief moment, and for a split second I thought it was me singing. I didn’t like it, sounded lame. Turns out it was jason mraz. The moment that realization occurred, I liked it. Weird

There’s a different rule, albeit related, considering the knowledge of whether or not the voice belongs to an Asian or not. For some reason, knowing it’s an Asian singing kills the quality. For example I used to think Amos Lee was asian (wouldn’t you?) I listened to a couple songs and didn’t like it, “Asian-voice,” I thought, “lame”. But then I looked him up, and turns out he’s black. Suddenly I think his voice is great.

Now I’m thinking, “what’s wrong with my brain?” ugh.

close as death

This morning I woke up to the sound of my alarm as usual. I took a shower, got dressed, checked my mail, and stepped out the door. I made a quick stop at the local Hi-life to grab a quick breakfast drink. I was late already when I got out. When I stepped onto campus, I saw a small ambulance car, a cop, and two paramedics bent over the form of a limp body, face turned down. I thought it was a drill at first, maybe they were doing EMR training. I stepped in closer, maybe 5 feet away from the scene, to find that it was not a drill. The body was real, and there was blood. I watched them turn the body over. It was an Asian girl, her face seemed peaceful enough, but there was only blood from the nose down. I looked up, she had jumped off of our mandarin center building, must have been the top floor. It was all very real, I mean of course. But this wasn’t the movies. The blood wasn’t thick, it was watery and there was a thin pool of it next to her, already trailing off through the cracks in the brick tiling. I didn’t stay too long, just enough to feel close to death. Afterwards I took the elevator up to my classroom floor. Before going to class I stepped out onto the balcony overlooking the scene. They had lifted her shirt and were doing CPR now. For some reason it felt strange for them to be doing that. I didn’t know people who jumped off buildings could be revived so easily. I stepped back and went into my classroom, it turned out that many of my classmates who had gotten there a little earlier than I had didn’t even know anything happened. I guess what that meant was, the girl leaped off the top floor only minutes before I got there. So close.

It is now the evening of, 12:22am. I just set my alarm and the thought occurred to me. As I ready myself for bed, a girl my age lies dead. Tomorrow I will probably wake up and go on with my life, barely noticing the loss. I was so close to death today, and in less than 24 hours, I have already forgotten the chill.

lesson learned

“A life perfect ain’t perfect if you don’t know what the struggle’s for,

Falling down ain’t falling down if you don’t cry when you hit the floor,

It’s called the past cause I’m getting past and I ain’t nothing like I was before,

you oughta see me now…

Yes I was burned, but I call it a lesson learned.”

DGM assesses Relativism

“The claim that there is no one standard for truth and falsehood that is valid for everyone is rooted most deeply in the desire of the fallen human mind to be free from all authority and to enjoy the exaltation of self. This is where relativism comes from. Relativism is not a coherent philosophical system. It is riddled with contradictions—both logical and experiential. Sophomores in college know that something is fishy when someone claims the statement to be true that all truths are relative. And every businessman knows that philosophical relativists park their relativism at the door when they go into the bank and read the language of the contract they are about to sign. People don’t embrace relativism because it is philosophically satisfying. They embrace it because it is physically and emotionally gratifying. It provides the cover that they need to do what they want.” – DGM