A Heartfelt, Post Traumatic Thank You

About five months ago, this album called Post Traumatic was released. Three months ago, I went to Bangkok to watch Mike Shinoda perform. And I have some things to say about it.

Mike Shinoda. You beautiful, talented human being. 

Thank you.

Thank you for this album. You are so brave, putting your grief and your healing into song for all of us to hear. It has helped me so much; more than you can imagine. It helped so much with the loss of Chester, but also with other loss. Like the loss of people who one day just choose to walk out of our lives. The beauty of this album, its acceptance of mourning, its celebration of having had these people in our lives before we lost them, and its hope for the future, has just made something click into place inside me. 

And thank you for the Post Traumatic tour! I sadly didn't get into the meet and greet, which I confess I was really sad about. It's probably for the best though; I told my friends for weeks that if I got into the meet and greet I might have burst into tears at the sight of you LOL. 

I was a little thrown off at first that you weren't stopping in Malaysia. See, I've never actually left my home country before. Not for lack of trying of course, but numerous trips got postponed and cancelled and somehow, I reached the age of 28 never having seen a foreign country. But you know what? I saw the Bangkok dates and this girl right here decided to make her first international trip, which somehow became her first solo trip too. Yeah, that was definitely enough to terrify the crap out of me and excite me in equal measure (I'm sure my mom was hyperventilating til I got back. Sorry, ma!). 

But that concert? Man, was it worth it. 

The beautiful things you said about Chester almost made me cry. I didn't, because I felt super self conscious. But surrounded by strangers who love you like I do (every time someone in the crowd screamed that they loved you, I internally yelled "Me too!"), it felt like a wonderful, safe space. And I gotta say, I really love that about Linkin Park fans. I love that the music brings us together in a way that makes us part of the Linkin Park family.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you Mike. We've all looked to you to lead the way, and you have been so courageous, so kind, and so wonderful to not only share your journey with us, but to give us hope. 

And thank you for the push I needed to gather myself by the bootstraps and make this trip by and for myself. Thank you, for the courage I found in wanting to see you perform, and send you my love and support from the crowd.

Also, if anyone ever asks (AGAIN) why I love Linkin Park (I mean, they're just a band, Ellana) so much, now all I'll have to do is tell them this story. 

Much love and gratitude always,

Ellana

(Now an international traveler and no longer Linkin Park/Mike Shinoda concert virgin) 

A Saturday Morning's Game

Hello, lovely people.

I come to you from my home, listening to Honne on my Good Vibes Prepared-ness playlist on Spotify (yes, that's actually what the playlist is called) after a nice round of musical chairs with my parents and our cleaner who came in this morning (AT 7AM ON A SATURDAY 😩), where we were chased from the dining room to the kitchen and finally to the living room with all our feet up as the cleaner mopped the floor.

A great way to start off the weekend, really. Musical chairs with the visiting parents and a clean apartment. Who knew, right?

So I'll start off by saying that I GOT MIKE SHINODA TICKETS. He's coming to Bangkok in August and I decided that you know what? It's about time, at twenty seven, that I left the country for the first time. Yes, I have, for real, never left Malaysia's shores. Not even to Singapore, which isn't even that far away and can be reached by bus.

The only downer is that there's a very real chance that I might have to head out there alone. I mean, my first trip overseas. I'm not going to have a clue what I'm doing. But I shall persevere. And possibly ask my mother to come with me. Because I'm twenty seven and I still need my mother, thank you very much. Stop laughing at me.

There's also going to be an album listening party for Mike Shinoda's new album on the same day as my favourite colleague's farewell dinner. Great. Now I don't know if I want to win this listening party contest or just go for a nice farewell dinner where I mentally list out all the things I won't be doing once fav colleague is gone. Like stopping by his desk whenever he decides we need to talk or whenever the presence of free food at the pantry needs to be announced. Like laughing at his excel sheet to calculate how much we owe each other for lunches and/or Grab rides. Like discussing men and women and gender stereotypes that annoy me. Like walking at half speed while our other colleagues all race ahead because of his bad knee. Oh god, I'm not ready for this.

But as I mentioned to another colleague who was being even more dramatic than me about it, he's leaving the company, not dying. So I'll be fine. Mostly. Even if I don't get to see him every day and I won't have a work husband any more.

Fine, I admit it. I'm sobbing on the inside.

Tragic pretend divorce from my work husband aside, here's a little mini update from my Good Vibes preparation. Yes, that's right. There are preparations happening. Important preparations. Like listening to Lorde for the first time. And Honne. And basically all the acts besides The Neighbourhood.

But there are also serious preparations going on in the wardrobe slash makeup department. I've never paid so much attention to primers and beauty blenders and setting spray in my life. This thing is turning out to be a serious investment. Digression aside, my point was that all my orders from the various online shopping apps should start coming in soon. And my first order came in this week.

ISN'T IT PRETTY?

Obviously that's not my leg, I'm still Indian and I still look it. Just saying, this is the picture displayed on the site right? You know what arrived?

ONE leg chain instead of two, to begin with. Which promptly broke when I was trying it on, just because I was trying to take it off. It might have just broken on an exhale. It took almost a month to get here. FML. Order Dispute option, here I come.

Them other orders better arrive in pristine condition and not fall to pieces when I stand still and breathe. Seriously, it's in three.

Separate.

Pieces.

I wish I was kidding.

But you know what? It's hard to stay annoyed when I'm genuinely excited about watching Mike Shinoda live, even if I do have to go alone. I'm genuinely excited about Good Vibes, which I don't have to go to alone! Yes, even if I'm going to be wearing a broken leg chain while I'm there. Complaints for comedy aside, life is good people.

Have a very happy weekend y'all.

An Excitement

Happy Easter, everyone!

It's a fantastic day. I'm off til Tuesday so I'm spending time at Melaka with my parents and my siblings. My sister has just given me yet another nephew, by the way, and he's just the cutest thing. 

Look how precious!!

My first ever photo with the newest nephew. The first of many, of course.

So anyway my sister and her family are here too, so we're all having a nice time together. Right now everyone's watching Gods of Egypt, so I'm taking the chance to quickly write this. 

I've been watching lots of new and not so new shows. Netflix has changed my life, as I knew it would. It's almost like a project, one show after another. So I've just finished the first seasons of Queer Eye and The Punisher. I'd recommend both. 

Queer Eye really is entertaining. Also, Antoni is so pretty I want to cry a little bit whenever I see him. 

Okay this isn't a great picture to show off how pretty he is (the one in the middle), but he's incredibly cute, I promise. Also, I just assumed the show had half hour episodes because they seemed to just zip past. But I played one of the episodes and realised that (holy shit) they were about 45 minutes long each. Believe me, if makeover shows and entertaining people are your thing, you need to watch this show. Jonathan especially, is just the most entertaining queen ever. 

The Punisher is, of course, the complete opposite. 

The promo picture should give you an idea of how full of giggles the show is.

Not gonna lie, I was expecting Daredevil to maybe make an appearance. But I wasn't sure if it made sense with the timeline from The Defenders, maybe it didn't. It would have been pretty cool though. So all we get from Daredevil is Karen Page. And you know what, it really isn't the next best thing. I never really fell in love with her character. It's pretty annoying when people (like Karen and Foggy's characters) give someone so much shit for wanting to be a superhero. It gets old pretty fast, even if okay yes, it comes from a place of love and concern. But they become such bitches about it that it really does become super irritating. It would be nice to have a superhero show where everyone around said superhero was actually supportive and understanding. I suppose Arrow is something like that, but I stopped watching it a while ago. The writing was getting a little two dimensional for me. I think Netflix's writers have spoiled me. 

Regardless, give The Punisher a try if you were into him in Daredevil. Although, spoiler alert, I don't know if other people will figure out the "twist" as quickly as I did. I mean, just look:

This guy was supposed to be Frank Castle aka The Punisher's BFF when they were in the Marines. But I took one look at him and was like, please don't let him be the bad guy, he's too cute to be the bad guy please please please.

Yeah, he's the bad guy.

He was just too slick I guess. Too successful. Or maybe they were making it purposely obvious. Let me know if you figured it out.

Another thing I'm excited about: TWO MORE SONGS FROM MIKE SHINODA'S NEW SOLO ALBUM. 

It is absolutely coming from the most biased place when I say that I love both songs like I love chocolates and spicy food and red wine. The first three songs sent me into a severe spiral of grief for Chester Bennington, but only because I had been ignoring the fact that he was gone. And once I acknowledged it, it was actually the kind of grief I might have experienced had I lost like a favourite, super cool uncle. I did grow up listening to Linkin Park after all, although I have no idea why I was listening to such angry music when I was 11. What was I so angry about at that age? My brother CONSTANTLY FINISHING HIS CHEWING GUM THEN STEALING MINE??? Okay maybe I had good reason to be listening to angry music 😂

Anyway, give the songs a listen. Let me know how biased I am if you feel like it. 

Mike Shinoda - Crossing A Line

You know all those people watching him sing live? I actually saw his tweet calling whoever was available to meet him somewhere and I remember thinking WHY DON'T I LIVE IN LA NUUUUUUUUU. Why can't Malaysian artists be this fascinating and this wonderful? Sob sob.

Mike Shinoda - Nothing Makes Sense Anymore

I love Mike Shinoda so much, it scares me 😅

Anyway the new nephew is crying and Mom is cleaning around me for our Easter family dinner so I guess that's my cue. 

Do you out there, babes. Much love 💕

A Surprising Grief

This is going to sound weird. There's my disclaimer.

So the thing is, there has been quite a bit of upheaval in my life lately. And somehow, my mind has decided that the best thing to do about it is to take my grief about the matter, and focus it on something completely different. Something that has nothing to do with the matter at hand. Namely, I've finally started mourning the loss of Chester Bennington.

I say "finally" like I expected to be this upset about it. And I really was not expecting to be so sad, and to be reflecting on it for so long. I sure as hell didn't feel this way when Michael Jackson died. Or Whitney Houston or Amy Winehouse or Christopher Lee. Sure, Cory Monteith affected me a little, and I cried when I watched his tribute episode on Glee. I wrote a blog post about him too. But still, it didn't feel anything like this.

It was a Friday when the news broke on social media, given the time difference and everything. I hadn't been paying attention. I had been having a particularly shit day at work, and I was too tired and stressed out to deal with all the pictures of people going on vacation on Facebook. I met up with a friend that night at our usual mamak, moaning and groaning about it all. When he asked if I had "Seen on Facebook about Chester Bennington?", (I had given him an hour long lecture on why he should start listening to Linkin Park just weeks before, telling him that Chester had one of the most amazing voices that I had ever heard, especially when he was singing live) even though I had an inkling what it could have been about, I asked him in a horrified back-of-my-throat whisper, wide-eyed and a little panicked, "What about Chester Bennington?". He saw the look on my face and said that I had just had a terrible day, and that we could talk about it the next day.

So the next day, a Saturday, as I tapped on that Facebook app as I lay in bed, I breathed deeply, exaggeratedly, preparing myself. Sure enough, there it was.

I stopped listening to Linkin Park. Ignored the whole thing and pretended it hadn't happened. It was pretty easy. Malaysia is far, far away from LA after all. So I switched radio stations when their songs came on, read through everyone's status updates on Chester and then repressed it, didn't watch any of the videos of the countless artists' singing tributes to him, and all the reminders of what had happened faded away soon enough.

Well, their music kept playing on the radio. I kept switching stations.

Recently, post first instance of emotional upheaval that is, I came across Mike Shinoda's Post Traumatic EP on Spotify. Damn you Spotify for kickstarting all of...this. Holy shit I swear 'Watching As I Fall' just started playing on Spotify. Spotify scares me. Okay fine, don't damn you Spotify, just don't scare me like that.

Anyway, the first thing I heard was 'Over Again' and I was surprised it was so angry. I mean, I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised. Anger is part of grief, and (Great, now 'Place to Start' is playing, how is this even happening right after Watching As I Fall when Spotify is on shuffle I'm going to start tearing up in this cafe why did I decide to write this in public I can never come here again) Linkin Park have been together for two decades now. I've known people for 20 years, and I can't even begin to imagine the hole any of them would leave in my life if they passed away. Touch wood for superstitious purposes.

I have to admit, Spotify didn't start playing Over Again. That was me, because I'm just a glutton for punishment at this point.

It's just that Mike Shinoda (bless him, love Mike Shinoda so much, always have) always seemed so put together whenever I saw videos of him post-Chester. And yes, I suppose that makes sense too. His grief is private, not fodder for public spectacle. So when I heard all this sadness and anger in these three not very long but full of emotion songs, I was surprised. It finally got me thinking about Chester.

It's all been downhill since then, my poor battered heart-wise. I finally started listening to Linkin Park again. And if I had thought that was hard, it was only because I hadn't starting watching old interviews yet. He was so funny, so full of joy and love for the music his band was making. I still crack up every time I see that interview about him being on Jimmy Kimmel with Dead by Sunrise. Have you seen it? You absolutely have to, here:

Mike and that "You never told me this story" face and his laughing and snorting was not helping me stifle my laughing in public.

I mean, how do you not fall in love with Chester Bennington after donkey years of all of that? You can't, that's how. Good Lord, now it's raining outside, and there's thunder. Lots of thunder. I don't think I'm supposed to escape this post tear-free.

Anyway, even after reacquainting myself with Linkin Park music I didn't feel quite ready to watch their tribute show. Just couldn't. I don't know how they did it, and they have my undying respect for that, really. When I finally did get around to watching it one Saturday morning, it blew me away. Not only because it was a great show, but...

People were crying. And for once I wasn't that girl. The one who was like "Oh, please. You didn't even know him and you're crying like he was your best friend." Because for once I got it. For once, I was crying too. When the band played Numb, and they shone that spotlight on that empty mike stand, I just started bawling like a baby. And when the crowd (who obviously knew all the words because please, it's Numb) sang along and it was just them singing, my goodness. It was so beautiful and so tragically sad.

And you know what? Watching them on stage, I missed him. I missed Chester.

Let's not even talk about what happened when I watched the 'One More Light' music video. It destroyed me. The whole music video, the whole thing just triggered me at every microsecond. That first throwback to him and Mike Shinoda, which is like ten seconds in, and I already started tearing up. Goodness I am such a mess over this guys, it's not even funny.

I think I'll never be able to watch this music video without tearing up. Well, not anytime soon anyway.

I will say this though. I didn't like their song Heavy at first. I remember hearing it on the radio and of course recognising Chester's voice immediately and thinking "What the hell is this, Chester? Have you gone fully mellow now, what's going on?". Stupid question, in hindsight. In fact, it made me laugh how many people freaked out over the song being so electronic and so chill. Of course, it was only a dislike borne of love and adoration for them, if that makes any sense. It wasn't a 'I'm going to stop listening to them now' kind of dislike.

Now of course I love the song, have listened to it a million times and haven't gotten sick of it yet because shit. It was a dream of mine to watch Linkin Park live. They were in Malaysia in 2013 if I'm not mistaken. Sadly I was a student back then, and broke. So I couldn't go. And now I'll never get to hear Chester sing live. Breaks my heart.

But I'm thankful I get the next best thing, which is his voice, immortalised in song. Listening to the One More Light Live album made me so happy and so sad at the same time. They perform Crawling with just a piano, and I've never heard it like that before and it's incredible. Give it a listen, it's amazing:

One More Light Live - Album

Thinking about Chester and feeling so miserable about his death has really given me a newfound appreciation and curiosity about depression. I find myself talking about it more and more, and even though it's not a topic I can talk about confidently because I don't know all that much about it, I will find out more and continue to talk about it. So many people I've talked to still have a pretty old school train of thought about depression. I have a friend who recently told me that her parents think she wants to be depressed. Goodness. That made me sad. But mostly people ask me why people are depressed when they're rich and famous and have a wonderful family, and I try explaining that depression is not a choice, and it can't be overcome just because a person is successful.

As sad as the whole Chester Bennington situation has made me, I appreciate him and his music, and the part he played in my life, helping me deal with my anger when I couldn't find the outlet I needed. He screamed for me, when I couldn't scream. I appreciated the band so much for that. Meteora pretty much changed my life. I memorised the entire album, having listened to it every single Saturday with my siblings as we cleaned the house. It was the one album we convinced dad to buy for us (Non-pirated albums are expensive in Malaysia by the way, so it really was a momentous decision on dad's part. Any album, even by local artists, would have cost almost 50 bucks back then. Goodness knows how much they cost now.), and he ended up loving it too. Given Up was my go to song in uni when I was feeling particularly frustrated with assignments and tests and my friends and my parents and life. Linkin Park was always just around, playing in the background of my life.

A friend of mine asked me recently if I'd still listen to Linkin Park if they got a new frontman and continued to make music. I couldn't answer the question at the time, never having thought of Linkin Park as Linkin Park without Chester. But you know what? Of course I'd still listen and love their music. Chester left a hole that will never be filled, but whatever happens Linkin Park will always be one of the great musical loves of my life. May they continue to persevere even as they grieve, and may they continue to make great music that will make us all feel okay.

Rest in peace, Chester Charles Bennington. You know what? I really will remember you, always.

#MakeChesterProud