“My Lonely Planet” is the ninth music album composed by Chet
Lam Yuet Fung, in which discussed about how he, as a traveler, thinks of the
issue of going back home, Hong Kong. This album is divided into two parts, “Outward
bound” and “Homeward bound”. There are 11 songs in each part. In the first part, he raised a question that
where his home is and should he keep travelling to find a perfect place to
stay. In the second part, he answered his own questions by discovering that
Hong Kong is his home. No matter where he had been, he would be back Hong Kong
finally.
The reason why I choose this music album is that there are a
lot of voice in the society about migrating to other countries in order to
escape from Hong Kong as they think that Hong Kong is not a good place
to stay. However, this album told us that wherever you have been to, you will
still miss Hong Kong. In the following, I will pick some songs and analyze the
lyrics.
In Outward bound, the first song “Victoria” describes Hong
Kong as a shelter for her citizens. She will never ask for anything from her
people, but she will always wait for her people at a place call “home”. Chet
used Victoria to represent Hong Kong and praised Hong Kong as a giver which
brought out the theme of this album that Hong Kong will always be with you and
wait for your back.
However, traveler would not be satisfied if he never travels
to other countries, so, start from second songs, traveler begins his long
journey as he wants to find what he is really longing for. He hopes to find a
place like home. Unfortunately, he found that the world would not be his home. When
he arrived a city, he tried to taste it, stay for a long time and adapt in it. No
matter how hard he tried, he still could not find a place as cozy and familiar
as Hong Kong. In the last song, “Visa. time different. air mileage”, he said
visa keep reminding him that the world is not his home. He felt anxious about
his next stop so he found his way home.
Chet used “Homesick” as the first song in Homeward Bound to
express he missed his Hong Kong even though he knew that Hong Kong had changed
a lot during his journey. Although he had been to many places, what he could
remember was very little. The deepest memory in his heart is in Hong Kong. He
said that nostalgia did not belong to him when he left a foreign country and
headed to another one. The only nostalgia happened when he missed Hong Kong. In
“Next Stop: Hong Kong”, he expressed that he could never travel all of the
places in the world but the best thing of a journey is to know he was going to
home soon.
In this album, Chet talked a lot about home. He thought that
Hong Kong people should remember where their home is because their home is a
place with memory and love that is why nostalgia is created. He used words from
an American scholar, John ed Pearce, as the ending of his album, “home is a
place you grow up wanting to leave and grow old wanting to get back to.”
Wong Chi Wan, Katie (10488387)
No comments:
Post a Comment