I spent half the journey sleeping (he wasn’t changing gears much, once we gained speed), the other half listening to audiobooks (the first few chapters of Prehistory by Colin Renfrew, which was full of interesting things I didn’t know, such as the Scandinavian origins of the terms “Stone Age”, “Bronze Age”, etc., and a little of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, a novel very well-suited to being heard as a spoken story because it is, like all of Ishiguro’s novels, far more concerned with the teller of the tale than with the tale itself) and occasionally glancing at the driver and the his dashboard (for time check, as I was cramped and thus mildly impatient, and for speed checks, as I’m always curious about how fast I’m travelling through space at any given moment). A good journey, overall, and the two hours flew by (or we flew through the two hours, depending on how you look at things).

I’m now in a cafe in Seoul, drinking coffee (a reasonably-priced Americano — had to point at the menu, gallingly), enjoying duty-free Gauloises (the reds, a rarity, for me: have only ever seen them in London, in a small corner shop in a Moscow suburb, and in airports) eating a sandwich (wanted a bagel, but the waitress waved her hands, so I had “white bread” instead), and listening to Korean breakfast radio (random South Korean pop, Taylor Swift, and, a few minutes ago, ‘Unchained Melody’). More on South Korea later; but in short, it feels the same as I remember, only weirder, and more alien (well, I feel very foreign, here, anyway: can’t say much beyond “hello” and “thanks”, and I can’t pronounce those very competently; and I feel self-consious as everyone here is so incredibly smart-looking, and I am, currently, the antithesis of “smart”).

Beijing Airport (Terminal 3), 2010.

When I was in secondary school I felt it was the greatest thing ever produced for American television; and later, when I was in Olympia, home of Matt Groenig’s alma mater, Evergreen College, I still felt that way; and watching it now, in 2010, a day off my 29th (damn) birthday, the feeling persists, potently. And I do hope The Simpsons continues to be funny and wise long into the future, as I have come to rely on it.

(Amusingly, as I was writing this, ‘Way Down in the Hole’ started playing, a track that connects to another truly great television series produced in the last twenty years; all of which reminds me I need to download some episodes of Homicide. On an unconnected note, the new season of 24 is very bad, in many ways, but some of the cast seem to be trying very hard, so I am perservering: foolish, I know.)

The Year of the Ox just ended, the Year of the Tiger just began; fireworks are still exploding (Explosions in the Sky, Friday Night Lights — good stuff), and will continue to explode for a few more days. Last year I listened to a lot of music, and I’ve been going through my Last.fm account, consolidating my memories. There was a lot of Regina Spektor (I can’t remember when I first heard her, but it was love on first listen), quite a bit of Laura Veirs (a fascination with Viers’ voice has been creeping up on me slowly), not enough Basia Bulat (I heard Bulat while walking to work in Mianyang one day, and proceeded to listen to the same track all morning), lately a considerable amount of Emily Haines (as with Spektor, love at first listen, and as with Spektor, I’m not sure when I first heard her voice, although it might have been while I was in South Korea, after Chris recommended Metric), a smidgin of Charlotte Gainsbourg (daughter of Serge Gainsbourg), and a dose, here and there, of Seu Jorge (thanks to Hugo for that one).

Here is what I wrote about Jorge a week or so ago:

I won’t ever tire of listening to Seu Jorge’s Portugese renditions of songs originally sung by David Bowie. What grabs me is in part the genius of the originals, in part of the beauty of the translated words, words I understand only tentatively, each clause or sentence calling on memories of the English, but remaining, always, a little mysterious.

These are some of the Portuguese lyrics to ‘Starman’:

Adeus amor
Não sabia que horas eram as luzes eram baixas oh como
Debrucei-me para trás em meu rádio oh oh
Alguns gato foi deitada abaixo um pouco de rock n roll lotta soul, disse ele
Então o som alto pareceu desvanece-se uma ade
Voltou como uma voz lenta em uma onda de Hase ha fase
Jive que DJ não werent que foi nebulosa cósmica

Há um Starman waiting in the sky
Hed gostaria de vir conhecer-nos
Mas ele acha que ele ia explodir nossas mentes
[…]

It’s a beautiful version, full of seductive sounds creating very vivid imagery. I like, in a way, that in these versions, for me, the meaning of the lyrics is at a remove from the music.

Also, recently, a lot of Beirut. Astonishingly beautiful music. The Flying Club Cup has been played almost every day for the last couple of weeks, either at work or at home. Beirut can be connected to Arcade Fire via Owen Pallett (formerly Final Fantasy), and then from Arcade Fire it is only a short leap to David Bowie (the version of ‘Life on Mars’ recorded at Fashion Rocks is spine-tinglingly good). I imagine this concert was memorable.

Broadcast & The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age was an unusual collaboration between one group I knew of, one I didn’t. I listened to it a lot, for a time, and need to revisit it. When I first got it, it was, like Amiina, something I listened to before sleeping; but I should listen to it while walking, to see what thoughts it inspires when released into the wild. (Walking, music, photography — I am happy to think about the first of these things, right now; the third is off-limits, thoughts of cameras and images currently creating a numbness.)

In my mind, that album is clustered together with albums by Elegi, Natural Snow Buildings, and Max Richter. Richter’s music is dense with meaning, but light on the ears; possessing density, but touching gently. I always feel that the compositions are like self-contained poems. I hope to be listening to Richter a lot more this year. Natural Snow Buildings have a darker hand, perhaps, but are no less beautiful for it. Their album Ghost Folks can be downloaded in its entirety from Last.fm.

Related to those three, to differing degrees, is Philip Glass. I listened to Koyaanisqatsi very frequently last year. The music is so effortlessly, tirelessly good, and the world does feel, “out of balance”, so the tracks became, at moments, concilitary: like old friends who nod in silent agreement at some mutually acknowledged problem. Other music by Glass that stood out this year: his score for Tod Browning’s 1931 Dracula, and also his score (from 2002) for The Hours (I had failed to make the connection with The Reader — has Stephen Daldry really only made two films in ten years?), a film about Virginia Woolf (I have been listening to a dramatisation of The Waves, and have also been wondering if I should read, again, To the Lighthouse).

On a completely different note, there was also a lot of Tegan and Sara and Belle & Sebastian, this year, according to Last.fm. I can remember the Tegan and Sara (it was something about Shanghai, and cleaning, and needing to feel upbeat — “I feel you in my heart…”); the Belle & Sebastian, however, is explicable (I have listened to them since before university — 1997, or thereabouts; and I always listen to them, periodically), but a bit strange (I don’t remember listening to them much over the last six months; I don’t remember my nostalgia, or cravings, pointing me in that direction). Also connected to this is a fairly recent burst of Pulp (‘Mile End’ still sounds so vividly alive). (From ‘Mile End’ my mind goes straight to my time in London, naturally, and to a completely different set of memories, but not memories that seem to have a distinctive musical signature.)

And so ends, a little abruptly, a little glance at the music of the last year. There is more, I am certain, but that is what comes to mind, right now. May the Year of the Tiger be equally intriguing.

There is something about this countryside that reminds me not to take it for granted. I can see countryside back home, but I will never see old women tending the fields.

What do we see, everyday, that we can’t see anywhere else?

Her diary of a cycling trip through China in 2007 is also full of interesting observations.

Exploring today: found some delicious speakers, but decided they were probably too expensive; also found some very cheap in-the-ear headphones, but decided they were probably too cheap; bought some apples and had a bizarre exchange with the apple-seller; was told by a lady in a DVD store that I was pretty, then told her that she was pretty too (there was blushing); tasted a nice syrupy cake; wandered around and thought about whether or not I needed a digital camera (pretty sure I don’t, but…); met some amusing, lively people at work, one of whom used to study in Xi’an (“I miss the food”, she said); chatted with a wise lady who remembered being given candy by US soldiers when they liberated Germany (and last night that same lady talked about how once, while living in Paris and missing home, she had listened to Gounoud’s Faust; her description of some of the closing scenes — the depiction of The Brocken? — has stuck in my mind). More exploring tomorrow.

The image below is two photographs, or perhaps two variations of the same photograph. On the left is a scan — a lab scan I tweaked, a little — of a frame from a roll of film exposed at the beginning of 2007; and on the right is another frame from that roll, but a frame I scanned myself (and tweaked, a little) a couple of weeks ago. I think I was going for a different look (steeper curve, deeper blacks), the first time I saw the image. I like both.

Xi’an, 2007.

If a camera is within prison walls we should always be asking; How did it get there? What are/were the motives? What are the responses? I consider the photograph as social document, therefore, what social and political powers are at play in a photograph’s manufacture? And, how is knowledge, related to those powers, constructed?

It’s implicit, I think, that these are questions we could — should, even — direct at all photography, not just the photography of “sites of incarceration”.

On the first day of this fresh new decade, I read something that lodged itself in my mind and promptly began gnawing:

[…] I think photographers are talking pretty much to each other with their photos these days. Does anyone else really even notice photography these days, much less whether it is good or bad? […]

I think other people do notice photography, and I think that some will notice the aesthetics, others, the content, and others still, an product of the two. But I do wonder if a large amount of contemporary photography (and likewise contemporary poetry, contemporary fine art, etc.) is created solely for appreciation within a quite insular, self-contained, elitist milieu.

I took this photograph late one morning, or maybe early one afternoon. I was with another foreign teacher at the time, and while we’d been eating we had both noticed that we were being watched by a group of waitresses and waiters in the restaurant opposite. It is quite common in China for Chinese people to watch foreigners, but this group of young people were notable for the intensity of their curiosity: they watched us the entire time we ate our noodles, from beginning to end, unflinching, indefatigable. So, immediately on leaving the noodle restaurant in which I’d been eating some very good beef noodles (it was a Muslim restaurant, I think), I dashed over the road and took a few photographs of our audience. This frame was the last one, and I’m happy that after the initial shock of me walking straight towards them, camera in hand, snapping photographs, they each quickly accepted their sudden metamorphosis from observer into observed, relaxed, and smiled.

Past installments of MCMP Redux can be found here.

Yinchuan, 2008.

In other news, I’ve finally updated scribeoflight.org, which feels like a good start to the year.

The song of the day has been ‘Changes’:

I watch the ripples change their size,
but never leave the stream
of warm impermanence and
so the days float through my eyes,
but still the days seem the same.
And these children that you spit on
as they try to change their worlds
are immune to your consultations:
they’re quite aware of what they’re going through.

I have a feeling it’s going to be an interesting year.