This little light of mine

I am excited about today which must be why I sprung up to see it start. & I love it so that I'll be here when it ends. & I love it so much that I'll scribble lines on top of one another until they stack up to form a landscape of bricks, a fort made of Times font & 12 point type, a shelter to memories in an emergency exit row on this flight of the mind.

Yesterday, a sequel to the series Lizzie McGuire was announced to be in pre-production.

It was revealed at the Disney D23 Expo by none other than Hilary Duff herself, who played the titular character, Elizabeth McGuire, in the hugely successful teenage television series which ran from 2001-2004, in which time spawned a movie which I’m not afraid to admit to watching a million times back in the day, & shaped me into the man I am today.

This is what dreams are made of.

We’ve talked about this before, the market these days is catered to the people of my age & Disney is taking full advantage of the power of nostalgia. It’s one hell of a drug. & the wealthy are above morality. But just this once, I’m okay with that.

Earlier today, I scoured the Internet for clips from the show.
One video I found myself repeating over & over & over was a clip from an episode that aired in 2002. I remembered that scene clearly. That moment is forever preserved in this short video clip. The Hilary in the clip was perpetually stuck in the video, always spouting the same words, wearing the same clothes, believing in the banter over & over again. How odd is that? That kid in the clip is now thirty two & a mother of two. The feelings that I felt when I paused to think about it, & the realization kicking in, are indescribable.

I’m thirty now. Just yesterday, I was 13, in school & watching Lizzie McGuire in my room alone. Where the hell did time go?
Don’t be in a hurry to grow up. Enjoy your years when you are young. Back when I was young, I wished I was older. I mostly just wanted to look older. One time, I even got my friend to draw a moustache & beard on my face with an eyebrow pencil. & we stayed at a McDonald’s for 3 whole hours just to see how people would react upon seeing my face. I was a messed up kid.

I remember spending an inordinate amount of time back then searching the Internet for live performance videos of her but was almost always left disappointed. Almost because I did manage to find a couple of awesome fan sites which had live audio clips of her songs from concerts & such. There were never videos uploaded due to bandwidth limitations & horrendous broadband speeds.
What did you expect, it was 2005.

Back then the Internet wasn’t what it is now, & YouTube was just launching, so I had to wake up early in the morning just to catch Hilary Duff’s live performances at award shows. I didn’t mind the fact that she lip synced at most of them & how she became anorexic at one point.

I distinctly remember her performance at the 2005 American music awards where she did not lip sync but put on a show which God & man alike were appalled by. It wasn’t her fault, though. Beat of my Heart is a song I still listen to & will never get tired of, but it just doesn’t work live. She received flak back then for choosing it as a single instead of Break my Heart. I don’t blame her. The latter is a much tougher song to perform live. Duff was like the Tom Clancy novel of singers; good, but not great. She was average at best. If she didn’t have fame to begin with, she wouldn’t have made it in the music industry. Be that as it may, there was an unreasoning fondness. This is the very explanation of being enamored by something.

I think it was her voice. Her sweet, raspy & melodic voice was often the remedy to sleepless nights, & I knew it wouldn’t matter if I didn’t wake up the following day because sweet dreams would be triggered. Her voice was so soothing I didn’t think twice about overlooking the negatives.

What’s crazy is that the interwebs experts’ prediction, that the internet will be more deeply integrated in our physical environments, came true. It was a preposterous prognosis to make back then especially considering we didn’t have high speed connections, but it was a bold one for sure, & it indeed materialized.
What’s even crazier, though, is that till today, I still receive a happy birthday email annually from one of the sites called hilaryfan. I’m not sure if the web domain is still running, but i did receive the email a few months ago therefore my guess is yes. This is something worth looking into.

Also that year, Hilary was a guest on late night with David Letterman. I recall being aware of her appearance, but I wasn’t exactly sure what day she was going to be on, so I stayed up late the whole week. School didn’t matter. I’m still wondering how a Malaysian channel actually aired Letterman. I’m not sure if they had CBS’ approval to air the show every night, but I’m thankful for it. I wouldn’t be what i am if it wasn’t for David Letterman. Pure inspiration.

Here’s a fun thing you can try. If you start listening to Beat of my heart exactly at the moment the song gets to “Letting it out,” the song will sound like an entirely different song. This discovery was the product of having numerous live clips of the song on my MP3 player. I always listened to it when I sleep & I tend to get roused by nothing & for no reason be awakened, so one time I woke up while the song was playing & it was right on the 2nd verse. In my sleep deprived state, I couldn’t figure out what song it was, but I knew I loved it. I never listened to it the same way from that day on.

Get this! One time, I decided to mix her whole album at once using an audio mixer for my own personal amusement. I named the track WAAO, which stands for ‘whole album at once’. WAAO was also the noise I made upon listening to the track. This was a 4 minute track of all the seventeen songs on her self titled album being played simultaneously.

It sounded like an orchestra tuning up. If you could get your ear trained, you could try to hone in on just one of the seventeen songs, but even I had trouble. It was pure madness, but you’d love it. This song would be perfect for people who are in a rush, think fast or just want to listen to the entire album 15 times an hour.

If a murderer is ever chasing you, just start singing What Dreams Are Made of & you will get 5 extra seconds to get away as the murderer stops to sing too.