Everyone has a reason to be. As soon as one looses a reason to be, there’s really no point left in staying in this world is there? Are you not curious for what awaits you in the after life? That is to assume, there is a life after death? Don’t worry, as easy as this post can turn into a religious debate, it won’t. I’m just simply throwing some ideas in the air and if you so happen to catch one of them, tell me how it goes.

We all work. Even if you were fortunate enough not to have to for the next few generations you would still manage to find something to do… something of interest. So lets assume that we’re all in our mid-20’s, young professionals spearheading our lives into the unknown, where everyday survived is a day closer to death. Now before death approaches, what is it that you plan to achieve? We’re all pretty much quarter way there so ask yourself, is my goal attainable? Can I achieve it in the given time frame? Well that’s where the variable lies… we do not know the exact time or date nor location of our demise.

You could look at this lack of information as life’s sole challenge. Seriously… The Only challenge in life could be to achieve all that is you wanted within “X” amount of years, and following this primary challenge are sub-challenges and mini-missions to complete. Yeah, you may think you’re purpose in life is to become the Chief Accountant of some Blue-Chip company, but if I were in charge of your life’s game-rules I’d end it right now just for a laugh. This idea however, leaves little hope for the unfortunate babies who don’t make it out alive? Just follow me out of context for a second but what sort of fucked up shit is that? The little dude didn’t even get a chance to breathe! Its as if our time-cards were pulled out of hat. But then again, when did life ever become fair?

Coming back to the Headline now… What’s your Caper?

Thinking about the rules of the game a little bit more tends to make you re-evaluate your reasons now doesn’t it? What is it that you want to do, that is so fucking important that it has to race your time of death, because what ever it is, it better be a damn brilliant idea. Is it to die for? Imagine dying knowing that you’ve been sitting around on your arse all day procrastinating about getting up for another beer? For fuck sake man, there’s just no time for that sort of thinking… because there’s just no time at all.

And that’s the answer to number two, kids, No Time. You may think you have fifteen minutes to catch the bus, but in actuality you may not even catch the bus at all? What on this physical earth of ours makes you think that you’re going to catch that 8.00 A.M. bus everyday of the week, without fail? Hope… Faith? Try again loser, nothing. Nothing on this earth can guarantee any movement. And if you think you’re in total control then flick over to the news and get a load of who died today, just be thankful it’s not your arse on the 6 o’clock tonight.

Before you call me a cynical son-of-a-bitch, just remember that you probably know who I am and if not, you will soon. You’ve heard it before but I’ll say it again. Life is fucking short, man. It’s short. Just the other day I was trying to remember what it felt like to wave an action-figure about and still feel impressed with my imagination. But it didn’t work. Who the fuck stole my imagination or rather, tarnished it. We go through phases in our lives that make it difficult for us to remember the past. The reason why we cant remember our childhood as clearly is because we are a totally different person from the kid we used to be. You hear about zany shrinks telling us to “find our inner-child” but despite popular belief of the cliche it does make a lot of sense.

As a child, you were as innocent as a white piece of paper and naive as the colour it was. Over time, the white piece of paper starts to fill with information, drawings and colours. From time to time it will get torn from the corners. Most of us, will have had our paper crumpled up and tossed away… we all know how that feels don’t we? Now if we were to try and erase some of those sketches, we could almost see some white patches. Of course, it’s not pure white as it was before but you’ll start to remember exactly who you were and believe it or not, even at that age you held your own set of beliefs and moral discipline. For you see, all the shit we do today and all the riff-raff we claim defies us, are just doodles and tears on a perfectly good piece of paper. We were the ones who implemented the persona, we were the ones who chose a certain path. This leads to responsibility.

You could blame your environment, social status or abuse for the person you’ve become today. But the fact of the matter is, you’re the one steering the ship and as we mentioned earlier, life is not fair. To deal with this fact is not an easy thing to do but if you manage to come to terms with it, you’re on your way to finding out what the fuck to do with your life.

I’ll speak for myself as I close this. The initial question was “What’s your Caper?” and my answer for that is, “To be able to live with myself until the day I die.” People are dealt different hands, some are similar to others but one thing’s for sure, like a game of poker, you don’t get to choose your cards but you sure as hell will make the best of what you’ve got. It may be easy to say this coming from a guy who gets paid to write, but if I were not a writer, I sure as hell wouldn’t wallow in my misery about what could have been. Success wont maintain happiness, take it from me, all I’ve seen money do was create all sorts of new problems a poor man wouldn’t want in the first place. And don’t get me wrong either I’m not talking about being content because I believe that contentment leads you to comfortability and being comfortable does not allow you to progress. When I said “To be able to live with myself until the day I die,” it means to express that taking responsibility for your actions, and accepting the outcomes will contribute to a healthier view of oneself. You have to agree that things will not always go your way, so why dawn on such desperate variables?…

…Move on and continue smiling because life is exactly that, a sequence of unpredictable shit.

I know what you’re thinking… “its a big fucking subject”. But for those of you who are about to capture the gist of it, allow me to elaborate.

The majors are pissed. Hell, even John Butler is screaming like Moses. As the heat dies down on “illegal” downloads and networking sites such as Myspace and FB continue to grow, downloading your favourite track the instant you hear it streaming is back. It never left, but don’t ya just love it when Sony BMG et al. chucks a hissi-fit, again?

Now don’t get it twisted. There are pros and cons about the democratisation of music. On one hand, you have talented unsigned artists empowered by various network utilities, and on the other you have a ridiculous amount of bedroom producers and garage bands flooding cyberspace with their experimental bullshit… with no governing body to screen the millions of pipe dreamers. Well you see, that was the job of Major recording labels. Now that the power has been breeched by the people, Majors are finding it harder to shut-down shop… like the saying goes, “You cant kill all of us!”

But what if a few million of you should perish for the good of the industry? The reason why we have Majors is so actual talented artists can have a chance at the sky with massive touring and marketing budgets. But thats exactly where the Majors so blatantly fucked up. Unlike the singer/songwriters age, the 90’s saw Majors releasing an onslaught of unbearable POP music and Boy Bands. Invariably the people lost respect for the Majors. While the trend started to shift, so did the behavioral patterns of the average consumer – thanks to the internet of course.

The internet has given the masses a break from TV hits and Radio stars. If you don’t want to hear it, easy, just close the damn window. And with the widespread availability of broadband, downloads have increased at an exponential rate. The truth is, only idiots listen to popular music and that is an actual fact. The only people impervious to my heinous statement would be teenie-boppers… C’mon guys, you cant blame the little shits, they know nothing but their fenced institutions and the dramas that go along with it.

So what is a multi-national corporation to do with such a bleak outlook? Easy… fire all your A&R’s and try to remember what the fuck Music was supposed to be about in the first place. Good music will eventually lead to an impressive “bottom-line”. Fuck what you know about manufactured sex-icons and overproduced albums; the people can see through it. If Majors continue to feed us this shit, all they’ll be left with is a stack of retro-jiggling soccer moms and a replenishing generation of teenie-boppers. While the rest of us are stuck with 2 billion experimentalists who know little to nothing about side-chaining and compression. Nobody wins.

But if the Majors were to take it back and consolidate their budgets to a manageable roster of artists, then… wait a fucking minute… why the fuck would I leak my ideas out in the open like this…

Fuck democratisation. Get your own ideas you vultures, this one is mine

If you haven’t figured by now, I am of Indonesian descent, but does that alone entitle me to label myself as such?

Indonesia is a very patriotic country fueled by the blood of the native Javanese – considered the warrior race responsible for uniting the kingdoms and winning the country’s independence. Half my blood runs rampant with this Javanese genetic. But having been raised in Australia, exposed to a very multicultural setting, the little Javanese warrior inside me was forced to wash the face paint off and look for alternate ways to maim and dominate… So I chose writing as a means to do so… metaphorically speaking of course.

Now, it has come to my attention that while I grew up with unlimited recourses and access to higher education, I thought I would have the 1-up over my resident Indo-brothers, but it seems as though I am highly disadvantaged when it comes to the culture of being a young Indonesian urbanite. For you see, through years of training an involuntary acumen for apathy, this attribute should have been automatically included with the blood provided at birth. Indonesians, more specifically Javanese, don’t give a shit about anything except their own accord, yet they do so with a great degree of style.

There are only a handful of social aspects that a young Indonesian should hold dearly, and those are: Family-tight friends. If you’re close friends with an Indonesian person, chances are they have accepted you as part of their family. Indonesians are not social butterflies and will tend to reserve themselves. Not out of shyness, but out of energy, which takes us to the next point – Energy. Indonesians have just as much energy as any other human, but they don’t like using it if they don’t have to. This explains why many Indonesians appear lazy or lead sedentary lifestyles. Remember, that Indonesians wont put up with anything that they don’t have to – so don’t play games. Cigarettes – Indonesians always need to have their ciggies within reach. Constantly lighting up while engaged in conversation, smoking is imperative to an Indonesian’s persona. And last but not least, Music. Almost every Indonesian house-hold plays an instrument. The best thing about it is, they don’t play to fit an image, they play to themselves, they play to get lost in their own deep jam session.

The aforementioned attributes are the core essentials of a young Indonesian professional. While I do meet the prerequisites, as mentioned earlier, I lack the cultural benefits of a full-pledged citizen.

The next generation of Indonesians however, are proving to be an obscure area of interest. They may allure the image of attractive new-age, east-asian urbanites, but like me, they lack the true meaning behind their being. Through my years as a professional writer, I’ve noticed that my career cannot define me, nor can it replace the void left with me as soon as I left the tropical island at the tender age of one. As more of us young Indonesians scatter around the world, gaining success in our respective industries, we also must not forget the core essentials of being an Indonesian. You can ignore the pretentious smoking aspect if you want, that was just included for illustrative purposes, but you cannot ignore the blood that flows through your veins.

Each year that passes, I am finding more and more like-minded young Indonesians in the fields of Media, Design, Photography, Fashion and Music. As “westernised” Indonesians like me, have the advantage of breaking the cultural barrier, we should combine both our knowledge of modern society and the core personality traits that make up a strong patriotic Indonesian.

Lets get right up-in-it shall we?

You’re reading this because 1. you know me 2. you’re a random passerby 3. you google’d me 4. you have a stage-3 ‘high-school’ crush on me and follow my every internet move, as soon as a Facebook update about me appears in your notifications, you’re all up in my profile reading shit you’ve already read two-dozen times 5. you almost forgot what number we were up to if it not for my efficient numbering system 6. you’re either thinking, “hehe, this is getting interesting” or “fuckin’ Barry, you narcissistic motherfucker!” 7. Motherfucker in its entirety is a real word 8. People have been writing their blogs since dial-up was first made available, what the fuck were you doing then? 9. you want to start your own one now don’t you, you bandwagon jumping son-of-a-bitch 10. respect to you if you already have one 11. double kudos if you update it on a regular 12. I’m making this shit up as I number them 13. back when I was at University, we all had to create blogs for our Cyber Communications Major 14. I used Live Journal 15. Live Journal sucks 16. and no, I am not afraid of Slander, Defamation or any other anti-ethical bible-belting clause you can throw at me 17. I didn’t really mean that… only partially meant that 18. can I get some suggestions for a picture to go along with the first post?… 19. yes, you over there with the Monkey-Magic cloud, what do you suggest I attach? 20. a picture of Toshiyuki Nishida next to a picture of what Toshiyuki Nishida would look like if he was Caucasian? 21. done.