Watch my short film!

And please leave a comment on YouTube. I’m sad it’s not getting more views. 😦

Coast is Queer reviews? Anyone?

Having trouble trying to find anyone’s reactions/reviews to the wonderful short films at the Vancouver Queer Film Festival’s Coast is Queer last week. I’m super interested in hearing what people had to say about my film, June  (does that make me self-centered?)

Please comment, someoneeeeeeeeee…………..

Cure(d) — gay short film

The second film I wrote and directed is now up on youtube. Have a watch, leave a comment, and share it!

“The Last Act of Romance”

The second poem I read at thrilLITERATE. I know it’s long (it’s about 5 pages), but I never write any poems that long, so I figured it would make this one all the more special.  It was also my first time slamming a poem in public, and having watched it a few times, I see where I could improve (ie. stopping less, keeping the flow going, more confident).  Either way, I’m pretty happy with the poem because I worked on it quite a bit and I feel like I really put in all my thoughts and feelings I had about this situation into poetry, which sometimes can be hard for me to do, especially when I feel like I MUST make it all poetic and stuff.

Enjoy!

Half-life

Here’s one of the three new poems I read at last night’s thrilLITERATE reading.  The video of my reading it is at the bottom.

Half-life

When they say a heart breaks,
they speak as if it breaks once:

a glass,

floating in slow motion,

pulled down by the fingers of gravity.

Shards scatter,

run away on little feet, like repellent magnets.
And as the last screams die,
so begins the gluing back of parts.

But my heart is a half-life heart:

decaying and dividing again, and again.
It folds onto itself, like a supernova.

At every corner, lurks a ghost or demon,
snickering to themselves,
ready with daggers to slit the rubble upon glance.

Every time Shakira’s voice sounds out like a siren’s,
it easily undoes the sutures until I’m a leaky roof.
O cada vez oigo la lengua, pierdo la mia
y las palabras solia hablar, amargo en mi boca.

Walking in hallways becomes an inkblot test:

How many faces look like his?
Why must you turn and walk to a corner, gasping for oxygen at the sight of a stranger?

When I see a red sweater in the crowd,
or an imposter with the same wig,
the effect is the same:

following the earthquake, it’s all aftershocks–
from the epicentre of my chest, trembling me,
knocking me down time and time again when I’ve barely risen to my flesh-ripped knees.

I can never see the aquarium the same way without drowning a little.
Looking at a husky rewards me with enduring another paper-cut.

Can you blame me for always drinking from the half-empty cup?

You would rather be with someone halfway around the world,
giving you filtered, sour placebos by the teaspoons,
than I, fully here,
I, pouring out the purest of me in gallons,
I, whose tears dot the page like bullet holes,
I, who has pored over the pages of our histories,
devising stratagems and formulae from words,
mixing compounds and chemicals, needs and wants.
I, who have been a scientist,
not just searching for the cure to my half-life heart,
but to earn yours back.
I, losing the bold experiment to cold fact,
that you no longer desire dusty, expired goods,
while my heart continues to tick away.

I wish I could take back half the times I said, “I love you”,
so the other half shone brighter in your eyes and ears.

When they say a heart breaks,
they speak as if it breaks once.

Remember when I joked that you had no heart?

Well, the joke’s on me.

When Love’s Gone Away (Scott’s Theme)

I realized I actually haven’t posted any of my instrumental pieces on my blog, probably because they don’t involve any sort of words, but I could still talk about them.  Which I will!  Starting with this one.

This was written many years ago.  I had just broken up with my first “boyfriend”– I say “boyfriend” because we never physically met, but had been exchanging messages and IM’ing online for quite some time.  After about 2 and a half weeks or something, I had a feeling of insecurity, wondered if he really was who he was.  Instead of showing me who he was, he broke things off, citing that if I wasn’t comfortable with us being together then we shouldn’t be together.  Of course, I was sad and distraught, since I all I wanted was for him to prove to me he still liked me.  I ended up writing this instrumental piece for him, originally called “For a Friend”, then re-titled it because I didn’t feel like it was quite right.  At the same time, Vanessa Carlton just started performing her song “Fools Like Me” live (long before the studio version was ever released), and a lyric in the song, it’s all in the little ways one reveals their love’s gone away/love’s gone away really made me sad.

I’m still constantly reminded that love can go away, that even if I’m in love, it doesn’t mean the other person feels the same.  Everything comes and goes.

It’s been a while since I’ve played this one, but I think I should learn it again.

A very uneventful unboxing

Thanks to all those who somehow found my blog from my last post.  I’m not used to having strangers commenting and liking my posts.  So weird.

I managed to take some pictures of the books and some with my name in it, since I’m vain like that.  I actually thought of doing one of those pointless unboxing youtube videos that are somehow popular, and I’m sure this would’ve actually been personal and cool (unlike, say, unboxing the Mac you’ve always wanted because… it’s shiny and white and ridculously expensive).  But no.  I figured I wouldn’t make it very exciting.  Instead, I’d say, with a monotone, the following:

Me: Oh look.  What ever could this be?  A box full of books with a story that I’ve written?  Yaaaaaaaaay.  Oh, I mean, YAAAAAAAAYYYYYYY!

Or something.

Picture time!

Look at my webpage!

Since I was disgustingly sick over this past weekend, I had time to finally work on my personal website a bit.  It’s still quite rough, and there are things about the layout that I want to change but don’t really know how but I’ll figure something out.

www.theaaronchan.com

I’m officially a published author!

Behold! (look in the Table of Contents)

“A Million Times (All On You)” — Aaron Chan

I’m again at a loss for what to post so here’s a song I co-wrote and performed for the first time last weekend where I screwed up.  Enjoy!