These Are My Friends

I’ve been meaning to write about music for so long, but my listening has been too scattered and unfocused for the writing of reviews per se. Still, it’s been making me very happy.

I got Sonic Nurse and Aw Cmon/No You Cmon a couple of weeks ago. After spending three years on Django Music’s notify list for President Yo La Tengo/New Wave Hot Dogs, I finally got my bite at the cherry, and the album arrived today, hooray! Of course, I never only buy one album from Django at a time, so Black Heart Procession’s 2, Low’s Long Division and The Frames’ For The Birds are on their way too.

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Sometimes music on record store sound systems can grip me with an unexpected intensity. I think it’s because my experience of music most of the time is so utterly solitary that hearing something in a setting that isn’t my bedroom feels strangely special, like a sudden realization that yes, this music is real, it exists for other people too, it’s not just some beautiful dream of mine that will fade into oblivion even as I struggle to remember everything.

The last time I was in London, I hit Berwick Street like a commando, determined to get through my favourite shops within the short amount of time I had. As I riffled steely-eyed through huge handfuls of CD sleeves, Will Oldham’s Viva Last Blues on the Reckless Records speakers steadily seeped through every chink in my fierce concentration it could find. Finally, I couldn’t continue with my browsing until I’d found out what it was and how much it would cost me. (A little too much, it turns out. But it’s on my Django notify list now, and as usual my patience will probably be rewarded in time.)

On the second floor of HMV the other day, they were playing Adem’s Homesongs (finally available in Singapore! But, as always, at a price I can’t afford). At some point I decided I’d finished looking at what they had on the floor, and wanted to head to the third level to look in the dance section, but then These Are Your Friends started, and I just couldn’t leave. I was slowly going mad with joy and trying my best to keep looking normal, walking around aimlessly, pawing a CD every now and then but I wasn’t seeing or registering anything. All I knew was that cracked, earnest voice, that querulous guitar, the way everything in the song has fragility and conviction at the same time like the tensile strength of spiders’ silk, and as the song’s mantra “Everybody needs some help sometimes” built and built I felt like bursting into a wild run down the aisles like a kid pretending to be an aeroplane.

House Of Flying Daggers/The Return

In the past two weeks I’ve seen one excellent film, one fairly good film, and one godawful film, and as usual, it’s the godawful film which inspires a blog entry.

Once you accept that House Of Flying Daggers is ridiculous, badly scripted, and incredibly self-indulgent, it’s actually a lot of fun. Perhaps if I’d taken this approach to Crouching Tiger (equally godawful) I’d have gotten more enjoyment from it.

Takeshi Kaneshiro’s character is basically Legolas, except for the black hair and lack of pointy ears. Zhang Zhiyi is Zhang Zhiyi, ’nuff said. Andy Lau is annoying and ugly, but that predates the movie.

Of course, the cinematography’s pretty enough. Lots of panoramic sweeps of landscape to the soundtrack of a gently weeping erhu. People flying, daggers which dodge and swoop like smart missiles, bamboo groves getting hacked to bits – all the usual wuxia suspects. What’s not to like?

Everyone kept bursting into laughter at bits of the movie which were meant to be dramatic, which was a nice change from when I was the only one cringing at Crouching Tiger in the Curzon Soho. An especially hilarious snippet of dialogue was at the climactic showdown between the two male protagonists:

**SPOILER WARNING**
Leo (Andy Lau): It is not I that have killed her! YOU have killed her!
Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro), looking incredulously at Zhang Zhiyi lying in the snow with the dagger in her chest which was thrown by Leo: Me??!!
Leo: YES! Because she has betrayed me for you, you have FORCED me to kill her! You must die! (Gimlet glare)
Jin: No. Because YOU have killed her, YOU must die! (Gimlet glare)
Both men, simultaneously, while rushing towards each other with swords brandished: AAAAAAAAAAAAARHHHHHH!!!

In contrast, The Return had no screen idols, no famous director (it was Andrei Zvyagintsev’s first film, to which I can only say HOLY SHIT he’s masterful), and no big budget, but it was one of the most exquisite movie experiences I’ve had lately.

In the same way that every scene in The Girl With The Pearl Earring was like a painting, every scene in this movie was like a photograph. I lost count of the number of scenes I wished I could have stills for, the number of times soundtrack and scene combined to stunning effect.

The actors (adult and children alike) took a screenplay that had already breathed depth and subtlety into their characters, and gave it wings. Not understanding Russian, I obviously couldn’t spot dumb dialogue here the way I could for House Of Flying Daggers, but I have a hunch there were no similar transgressions.

No one could call it a fast-moving film, but I was putty in its hands. As the movie progressed, I was alternately intrigued, tense, and ultimately very sad, but I was always riveted. I know next to nothing about Russian cinema, but I’m keeping my eye on this director from now on, and I’ll go to considerable lengths to watch anything he makes in future. You should too.

[I’ve talked about the “godawful” film and the “excellent” film, but I won’t bother with the “fairly good” film because that was Fahrenheit 9/11 and I’m feeling too lazy to bother with the rigour that its subject-matter would deserve in a review.]

Excerpt: Living To Tell The Tale (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

“I had just dropped out of the faculty of law after six semesters devoted almost entirely to reading whatever I could get my hands on, and reciting from memory the unrepeatable poetry of the Spanish Golden Age. I already had read, in translation, and in borrowed editions, all the books I would have needed to learn the novelist’s craft, and had published six stories in newspaper supplements, winning the enthusiasm of my friends and the attention of a few critics. The following month I would turn twenty-three, I had passed the age of military service and was a veteran of two bouts of gonorrhea, and every day I smoked, with no foreboding, sixty cigarettes made from the most barbaric tobacco. I divided my leisure between Barranquilla and Cartagena de Indias, on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, living like a king on what I was paid for my daily commentaries in the newspaper El Heraldo, which amounted to almost less than nothing, and sleeping in the best company possible wherever I happened to be at night. As if the uncertainty of my aspirations and the chaos of my life were not enough, a group of inseparable friends and I were preparing to publish without funds a bold magazine that Alfonso Fuenmayor had been planning for the past three years. What more could anyone desire?”

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Gabriel Garcia Marquez rOxOrS so much. This already feels like an autobiography and a half, and I’m only 20 pages into one book of an intended trilogy.

Private Parts (Esplanade Theatre, Singapore)

On Sunday I paid $45 to experience Michael Chiang’s flaccid Private Parts. I can safely say I have never felt so violated by transsexuals in my life.

The play’s biggest problem for me was that it was dreadfully paced. Starting the play with a drag/strip routine, good. Following this with a talk show scene where a housewife makes the same point about protecting the morality of society what feels like ten million times, each time as boring as the last, not good. Later on, when Mirabella was having her big long EMOTE! moment on the talk show, I sensed that this was the point where I was meant to be deeply moved by the loneliness and isolation of many transsexuals, suddenly realizing that this emotional hardship comes not just from without, but also from within. Unfortunately, I was more concerned with my own emotional hardship from being within the Esplanade Theatre watching this play when I was longing to be without.

Except for the actor who played Lavinia, the acting was mostly reminiscent of mediocre school plays. To call Jamie Yeo’s character one-dimensional would be crediting her with too much depth. The rest were insipid at best (Warren), and downright annoying at worst (Edward, Nurse Azman, the editor of the talk show).

When all else fails in a play involving sexuality, at least you can sometimes still glean some entertainment from the knob gags. Unfortunately not here. I like knob gags as much as the next Philistine, but not when I can see the joke coming 5 minutes beforehand.

I sat there twiddling my thumbs and stifling my sighs, and remembered a magical evening in London at an original practices production of Richard II, where a man in funny clothes (Richard) kissed another man in funny clothes (his Queen) and I was nearly moved to tears by the pathos of their goodbye.

On the Esplanade stage, I vaguely sensed important things were happening, and the play was probably near its end. Warren the talk-show host was being outed by his friends, the transsexuals, as having had to reconstruct his penis after a bizarre golf club accident. Mirabella was revealing her love for him and asking if he could ever love her back. I suppressed the urge to scream “Of course not, you whiny old bint!”, lay back, and thought of England.

Three Poems For Edmund, Who I Do Not Know

He asked, and just to prove poetry and Prince don’t jostle on the same territory, at least where this blog is concerned, here are three. (Excerpts, with links to full versions.) I hope you like them, Edmund, but even if you don’t, thanks for reminding me. :)

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My bad cello! I love it
too much, my note to almost note,
my almost Bach, my almost Haydn, two who
heard things falling off a shelf

Kick The Old School Joint For The True Funk Soldiers

I’ve been neglecting my MTV lately, which is why I only saw Prince’s Musicology video last Friday, by chance. I’d been wondering if the reason I loved it so much was purely due to the atmosphere at the time – cool night, big screen, good friends, apricot hookah – but I just watched it again today and it’s just as great even when viewed by a sweaty tired me on a laptop screen.

It isn’t actually all that profound or groundbreaking as music videos go, but it just takes me to such happy places. Kid with afro dancing in his bedroom using vacuum cleaner as mike stand. Funky-ass gig with everyone in natty retro threads. Men in waistcoats and fedoras tap-dancing. It’s like what Michael Jackson would be making these days if he had a clue left.

Baybeats 2004, Esplanade Riverside, Singapore

The Observatory, complete with great view
The Observatory, complete with great view

The BayBeats festival was a fairly endearing example of the classic Singaporean maxim: If it’s free, they will come. The samfu-clad grandma seemed to have enjoyed The Observatory, but the 50something couple in one of the first few rows left at some point during Force Vomit.

Fleeting thoughts on the bands I saw/heard:

  • Telebury: Quite pleasant. Like the child of The Shins and Coldplay if The Shins were British and Coldplay weren’t shit.
  • The Observatory: This band has an odd tendency to be present at my rare “Actually, Singapore isn’t so bad!” moments, one of which was the first time I saw them, and the second of which was the sun setting on the bay as they sang their very pretty new song Sea Of Doubts. A class act.
  • Surreal: The same And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead song for half an hour.
  • Furniture: The same Mogwai song for half an hour, frequently employing the same chord progressions as in Aereogramme’s The Black Path.
  • Force Vomit: Not really my thing. I like my punk less catchy and more abrasive. Less smiling guys with indie hair and black plastic specs, more bald sweaty guys in huge singlets bawling out rants against corporate oppression. You get my drift. (Please come to Singapore, Fugazi!) But I can still see why this band has such a loyal following here, and why Paul Zach and Chris Ho have championed them so much. They were pretty fun. I’d see them again.
  • Whence He Came: The same bad emo song for half an hour.

[In the not-so-impossible likelihood that a Googling band member comes across these words and feels slighted, these are the (very brief, and admittedly flippant) impressions I formed while listening to half-hour-long sets. I realize your albums may be quite different. If you feel I’ve misrepresented your musical vision, feel free to disagree. For what it’s worth, I actually love Trail Of Dead and Mogwai, although I can’t say I’m much of an emo fan. Also, if I ever give any gigs you will be fully entitled to write “The same complete silence for half an hour” in your review, because I’d chicken out before even going on stage. All power to you, and I hope you had a good time at Baybeats.]

Graham Greene Books (Thoughts)

In the middle of my third Graham Greene book (he’s my current binge), I’m not entirely convinced by the way all his characters inevitably contemplate faith and God and Roman Catholicism at some point in the story.

Graham Greene characters are ordinary people, essentially good but often weak or wilful; their ruminations on faith are convoluted, not always logical and sometimes theologically dodgy. But they are almost consistently more engaged with the idea of faith as a palpable presence in their lives (whether welcome or not), and what this means for the choices they make, than most people (including me) are.

Which is why I get something from Graham Greene that I haven’t really found before in other writers. I like the time I spend in his world where faith matters, it torments Scobie in The Heart Of The Matter, it separates Sarah and Bendrix in The End Of The Affair, it’s even a chink in Pinkie’s armour of ruthlessness in Brighton Rock. They don’t all deal with its dictates sensibly, but they find themselves incapable of indifference towards it.

This idea – that try as one might, one cannot be indifferent to God – is precisely what draws me to Graham Greene novels, but also precisely why I sometimes fear his books are getting more and more fictional as the years go by.

The Buddha Of Suburbia (Hanif Kureishi): Extracts

Shadwell didn’t require much encouragement. It was easy to see that he was clever and well read, but he was also boring. Like many spectacular bores, his thoughts were catalogued and indexed. When I asked him a question he’d say, “The answer to that is – in fact the several answers to that are…A.” And you’d get point A followed by points B and C, and on the one hand F, and on the other foot G, until you could see the whole alphabet stretching ahead, each letter a Sahara in itself to be crawled across.

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“Concentrate on the way you think your position in society has been fixed,” said Pyke.

Being sceptical and suspicious, the English sort to be embarrassed by such a Californian display of self, I found the life-stories – accounts of contradiction and wretchedness, confusion and intermittent happiness – oddly affecting. I giggled all through Lawrence’s account of working in a San Francisco massage parlour (when she was stranded there), where the women were not allowed to proposition men directly in case they were cops. They had to say, “Is there any other muscle you’d like relaxed, sir?” This was where Lawrence discovered socialism, for here, in a forest of pricks and pond of semen, “I soon realized that nothing human was alien to me,” as she put it.

Richard talked about wanting to fuck only black men, and the clubs he cruised constantly in order to acquire them. And to Pyke’s delight and my surprise Eleanor told of how she’d worked with a woman performance artist who persuaded her to extract the texts of poems – “Cows’ teeth like snowdrops bite the garlic grass” – from her vagina before reading them. The performance artist herself meanwhile had a microphone up her vagina and relayed the gurglings of her cunt to the audience. This was enough for me. I was hot on Eleanor’s trail. For the time being I gave up on Terry.

When Brain Dead, Seek Pretty Pretty Pictures

My friend Tony takes pictures I like.

  • I saw the Waterstone’s building on Gower Street every day for four years, and until the day I left I never stopped noticing new light conditions and angles from which its beauty could surprise me. Tony’s photograph captures another of these surprises.
  • I also really like this one of the detergent aisle in Safeway – talk about finding magic in the mundane.
  • Finally, this abandoned deckchair on an empty Rhodes beach is just utterly gorgeous.

Every day at wordphoto.org, a new word is picked and people submit photos which that word inspired them to take. Recent words I’ve rather enjoyed have been bend, invasive and point.

And finally, I just want to say that I can’t imagine what I’d do with a digital Rolleiflex, especially since its current technical specifications aren’t very high, but good God it’s beautiful.