When I finally found them they were sitting slumped in their seats – as if somebody had zapped their souls. None of them had picked up when I tried to phone them so I had to walk all the way to their seats in the front of the Singapore Indoor Stadium, wave and yell before one of them looked up and saw me.
“Are you okay?” I said.
“He was awesome,” breathed one of my four friends. Translation: They were okay – they were suffering from exposure to a superstar of Jay Chou’s magnitude but okay, more or less.
As for me, I might need therapy.
Coming to Jay’s concert, I had been as sceptical as anyone could humanly be who was in a cowboy hat in keeping with the subject of Jay’s single Cowboy on the Run. I knew he wouldn’t be as exhilarating a live performer as Wu Bai or as exceptional a live singer as Jacky Cheung – and he wasn’t. His cold was bad, his voice scratchy and his high notes, on several of his own trickier compositions, shaky. But it worked even when it didn’t work. Because this wasn’t a concert I was attending – this was a microcosm of a real relationship with my Jay.
He would surprise me (he had more showmanship than I had expected), stress me out (he sounded sick and the more he had to catch his breath, the more I had to hold mine) and move me (he sounded sad rasping out Rosemary). I would be on, off and on tenterhooks. I took pride in his R & B improvisations. I took pride in his piano, drum and zither playing. I loved how he was adorably unaware of how adorable he was. I was proud when he wasn’t awkward and was talking to the audience. I was pleased when he was awkward with the female dancers feeling him up. I wished he would go back to the hotel and get better. I wished he would never ever go. I was happy, unhappy, contented, discontented, in heaven, in hell and finally, dead beat.
Two and a half hours: longer than a music video, as long as most movies, shorter than an idol drama, enough for a fool like me to feel I know him better and find myself saying girlfriend things like, “He doesn’t do humble, you know. He doesn’t say sorry, he has a cold. But he suffers and I suffer…”
Over-exposure to Jay does odd things to your head.
2 comments:
writing about ancient cantonese recipes really sucks soul, so thanks for the break from boredom. had to wrestle myself away from your entries.
i wait with bated breath for your entry on your contribution towards the dodo-fication of the number two hit on china's list of endangered species.
p.s. it'd be inappropriate to say i smell the bak kwa from your jay entry, but yes, definitely the chou-pong pheromones that filled the stadium. :)
heh. thanks. i was watching coffee prince the whole day!
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