meaning in the moving design

I know a lot of madly talented people. Seriously, I'm not talking about no "proud mom" syndrome, where every crappy thing that little Timmy makes in school is an automatic masterpiece, I mean that Im drawn to smart, creative, madly talented people (... as people who do not possess such mad talent are prone to be, I guess- oh dis!)

Which brings me to a certain pair of peeps back home. I met insideamind while putting together a gig for the worldwide short film fest in 2006. I'd seen these guys do scratch magic to a reel of old school kung fu films, and I invited them to do a live score for some films I put together. They killed it. Like they actually outdid any expectations I had, they were that good. I had an amazing line up that night, some really incredible musicians, and of all of them, Cheldon and Eric came the closest to delivering what I had wanted- musicians who would intereact with the images, play with them, confront them, defy them, all of that. These guys have a visual consciousness about the way they make music- not just beats n breaks, but images and moods... and for a filmy music geek like myself, well it just makes me as giddy as a seal in heat.

Ok, so having said that, I never thought much of insideamind outside the context of performance. I'd listened to bits of Fragmental and thought "yeah cool, but not entirely listenable, unless youre watching them play, or play to something". Well, I've changed my mind. They're new album, Scatterpopia (at least the bits Ive heard) is awesome. If i found Fragmental too bare bones, in Scatterpopia, the boys have put on the pounds the Atkins diet way or some shit. They've filled out, and it sounds complete to me for the first time. They're getting tighter and more melodic and... just better. Which makes me want to say "Chia you!!" (it means "add oil!" in chinese, and kinda has the connotation of "you go girl!") and so forth. Check it.

I'm writing all this as the remnants of Typhoon Fengshen spin across Taiwan, and the sound of the rain outside is drowning out my tunes. I'm feeling reflective (what else is new??) and I have to say, I miss the cool scene. Don't get me wrong- I was NEVER a scenester, and I do not in any way miss having to play nice with people I hate, or the shmoozing, I definitely don't miss the schmoozing... but, in t-dot, I knew a lot of cool bands; was exposed to good music, good films, cool things to do... I knew where to find the good shit- always. Taipei's got good films and some wickedly cool things to keep me busy, but I have yet to find the cool music. So for now, I'm still getting my fix virtually.

I'd waited two months for this.

My roommate was showing me some of his photos, and we came across his Spirits of Shallow Water Bay set. On the northern end of Taipei, there's a village of what looks like abandoned UFO saucers. Circular pods sit 2 stories high, in rows lining the coast amidst a backdrop of green. The pods are part of an old residential project, homes designed for a wealthy waterfront community. But the structure of the homes weren't stable, and after a few accidents, the community was abandoned to the elements.

I keep imagining that the pods were built with "The Family Unit" in mind. Like I can imagine a family, with like Gramps and Grams in the bottom pod, and your Auntie Yee in the upper left pod, cussing as she shimmys clothes down to your cousin, who's too lazy to go upstairs and get his laundry. Or somesuchness.

I waited two months. Joe and I had a pact- first sunny weekend in Taipei, we'd go see the UFOs. Two... months. But when the day came, it was perfect. Blue skies, perfect sunset and some really badass, weird looking UFOs. And it happened to be the solstice. I'm only sorry we forgot to bring a mini BBQ.
I'm gonna let my photos do the rest of the talking... although Joe's photos are much better.

Happy solstice!

In all my years of pretending to be a hippie, and of all the pseudo-hippie festivals I've been to, I've never been rained on. Not that I remember... although there was that one time my car got stuck in the mud at OM... ok. Well, I don't remember ever having to waddle through 3 inches of mud, or finding it hard to dance because my feet felt cemented to the floor. Until now!
I celebrated the solstice a week early, in the a beautifully mountainous area, amidst 300 dirty dirty hippies and about 5 wankers who were just there to be obnoxiously drunk. Within my first 5 minutes there, the bottom half of my pants felt like I had accidentally stepped into a cement mixer. Yes, it rained a bit, yes, I got filthy, and yes, I had a rockin good time.

My friends invited me to spin fire with them, which is a little intimidating because they're all very good, and I haven't done that for a long time. But what freaked me out even more was the circle of people around us... in what I felt like were dangerously close quarters. As i was getting my stick lit, someone actually brushed me a few times with his lit poi, so I'm like "fuck this" and I stepped out of the circle and just played out back... which was fun while it lasted, but the stick wouldn't light very well on account of the rain and mud...


After that, one of the bands went MIA, so the organizers just asked anyone to join in on a jam, so I had a massive drumming session, which was wicked fun (I'm sending my drum good vibes from across the pacific...)

After that, we danced. and danced and danced.

The next day I woke up and had a beer for breakfast because it was 3 cans for $3CDN.

Then I met a cute little family and a cute little girl named Anya. Anya is a very lucky girl, beacause thanks to me, she was introduced to a wonderful canadian invention called poutine (beign). The poutine on this particular morning was so fait-que-beign-wai delicious, and it made Anya so happy, she couldn't shovel it into her mouth fast enough. In between shovelin, Anya grooved to the music and politely applauded after every song.


I have to say, the mud aspect of the whole thing was pretty awesome, if only because it was novel. i'm sad that I dont have any photos of this, but we actually thunked up all these elaborate ways to clean our feet before getting into our tents. We tried hauling a bucketful of water, but then discovered that it smelled suspiciously like kerosene. We then wrapped plastic bags around our feet (by the time I got up the hill, mine were kind of shredded to bits), and countered with bags of water and a mini towel... and this after a lot of slightly-drunken discussion.

Oh, one last thing about the mud, probably my favourite thing- MUD FRISBEE!!! Every few throws, we had to use a finger to scoop the mud out of the inside ring, and give a few good flings. And guess what? Muddy frisbees WARBLE, which make them really awesome good fun. Sigh...

Well, I was going to put up a small stop motion video of little Anya enjoying her poutine, so that you could enjoy the sight in real time, but it doesn't appear to be working, so we will add that later. In the meantime, you can see more peacefest photos here. It's been a busy month and I'm behind on my blogging, so on with it!

this has been bothering me all week...

I was at work one day, innocently doing a grammar check through google, when I came across a youtube video, about a man who was trapped in an elevator for 41 hours. He,
as you probably think you can imagine, goes right nuts. This video totally traumatized me. I'm absolutely serious, I haven't been this traumatized since I read that Iceberg Slim novel a few years back, which (in very graphic detail) gave me all the gruesome details about ghetto life in Chicago, post-slavery. That book told me horror stories about forced abortions and abuse and prostitution and all sorts of nasty shit, and I'm telling you that this elevator video stands right on par with that.

It was so heartbreaking I couldn't even finish watching it. And someone was kind enough to set it to music, which made the whole thing all cinematic n shit, but still, so traumatizingly real. That's the absolute horror of it, of both the book and this video, is that they're so irreducibly real. I can't shake that out of my conscience.

The fucked up thing is, part of my mind wants to go back and see the rest. Not that I expect no fucking sunshine-lollipops-tickertape parade or no shit. Far from it. But there is this masochistic, voyeuristic instinct in me that... wants to know. If he does more crazy shit, how he looks when he's rescued, if he kills himself... sick eh?

So what's that all about? I don't feel good from watching him suffer, I feel bad, really really really bad. So why do I want to make myself feel bad? This is different from film. I can justify films making me feel bad because it's art, it's pretending a type of reality to manipulate my feelings; it's using something fake to produce something real in me, and that's awesome and interesting. Like, watching a good movie, I can step back from my tears or fear or anger or whatever, and give props to the director, like "ooh, that was a good one. that one got me good". But this... I don't know why I want to see a real man suffer. I don't. I wish the masochist in me would just shut the hell up.

Now let's all cheer ourselves up by watching slugs have sex:



Ahhh... that's better.