Sin:Ned - Epilogue

I am not sure how it all started.

But this is one of my childhood memories, which I still remember vividly. As if it was just yesterday.

It happened in my 1st grade in primary school. During the very beginning of the year, for some reasons I was being punished not to leave after school (which is very common in those days). However, neither my parents nor the school bus driver were informed about this. Instead of staying behind, I was left behind.

When I was finally released, everyone had gone. Being a small kid who had just stepped out of kindergarten not long ago, I had no money and I doubt if I even know how to go home by bus by that time. And I decided to go home by myself. I don't know how I come to this decision, but the idea of seeking help from others never come to my mind.

And I walked all my way home. Alone, by myself.

Even now as an adult, I would consider that too long a distance to walk. After all these years, I am still amazed by how I did it that time.

But as a kindergarten graduate, that was what I had chosen to do.

I guess that was the beginning of the whole story.

It was not until high-school when I found myself badly in love with music.

Japan, Bauhaus, Christian Death, Last Man In Europe, Novela, Jun Togawa, Plastic......and a lot of other less well-known names that had long been forgotten by most people.

At some point, somehow, I started writing about music. And I continued to do so under the unbelievably strange name daRReaux. And the magazine is Rock Bi-Weekly.

This activity gave me the support I needed to carry on my life until I went to Toronto to study.

Some time after I went to Toronto, for some strange reasons I come to believe that I had recovered from the sickness of life and do not need music any more. Not only did I stop writing, but also stopped listening to music intensively like I used to. My interest in music simply faded into the background.

It was at this time when my interest shifted to Fine Arts, Psychology and Philosophy.

Originally, I wanted to study Fine Arts, but due to my lack of talent, I guess, I ended up studying Psychology.

During my years in university, I become deeply influenced by the writing of C.G. Jung, and later, that of James Hillman. I was also into subjects such as Expressive Art Therapy, Shamanism, Philosophy, Alchemy and Quantum Mechanics. Besides books by Psychologists such as C.G. Jung, James Hillman and Carl Rogers, I was reading "The Tao Of Physics", "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" and "Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance", and found myself deeply attracted by their ideas. Somehow I sensed that there are underlying links between Psychology, Philosophy, Arts and Science. Everything seems to be inter-linked. They all seems to come together. I kind of believed that they are simply different manifestations of something more fundamental. We have more than one "God" and more than one "truth". That was what I believed in.

At the same time, my experience in Expressive Arts Therapy reawaken the ghost within.

And it started all over again.

Not long after I returned to Hong Kong, I started drowning myself in music again.

And again, I started writing about sounds made by others.

This time, I was writing under the name Sin:Ned. The name was chosen partly by chance when I sent my first article to MCB (Music Colony Bi-Weekly, the only alternative music magazine in Hong Kong after the legendary Music Week and Rock Bi-Weekly ceased their operation). The name Sin:Ned was originally meant to be a mask through which confession can be made, but I later found that it might be more than just that. The construction of the name itself reflects both my split-personality and my love to do things in the wrong ways.

I have never been a good speaker. I guess that is the reason why I choose to listen. Also the reason why I need a mask in order to speak. This might also be the reason why I felt the need to write about sounds made by others. Everyone deserved to be listened to. Even the most incompetent speaker.

During this period, MCB is the main outlet of my writing, while some of my articles also appeared in publications such as City Magazine, Ming Po, Movie Bi-Weekly and Amoeba.

However, I know very well that I am no "music critics".

Moreover, I am tired of learning that everyone wants to be heard so desperately, while not willing to listen to others.

So I started making my own sounds, and be my own audience. A system of "organismic" feedback looping.

I did try to learn playing guitar when I was in high school in Hong Kong, but the whole concept of playing an instrument properly just could not fit into my mentality, and I simply gave up.

With my first computer, I realized for the first time that, instead of playing music properly with a real instrument in the traditional sense, what I actually like is simply to make sounds.

Computer becomes my sole tool of sounds making, and Sin:Ned continues to be the mask through which I make my confession.

And this is how it all started, I believe...　