Archive for the ‘Videos’ Category
Presenting still life
“When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working – bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming – all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth-of-a-second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned- reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone – one mind less, one world less.” George Orwell’s A Hanging, 1931.
Now to know it in my memory
“Boss.”
I’m on the stairs up to Midlands (the mall, not the area in England). A guy wants me to pay for parking. Sometimes you have to pay for motorbikes, sometimes not. Depends where you are – and Maggie, my 2004 Suzuki, sits about four feet from the steps.
“How much?” I ask in Malay.
“One ringgit,” he answers in English.
I grew up in this mall. It used to be Komtar was the only shopping center on the island, and it took well over an hour to get there on a bus. So when Midlands opened just 15 minutes down the road, well, we were there every weekend, sometimes twice. Even if we had nothing to do.
(I’m starting to notice just how much lounging happens in Malaysia. People just sit around doing nothing, staring at the distance. I’m starting to join them. I unplug my computer and chuck my iPhone in a drawer and just exist for a while, let my brain slow down. It’s boring and soothing.)
BOS means bekas orang sinting (translation: a crazy person, as in someone who was institutionalized, not the edgy or zany kind) in bahasa. It’s difficult to tell the levity-to-spite ratio when locals call foreigners ‘boss.’ But this nation is populated with earnest, unironic folk, so I don’t take offense.
To the left as I enter the landing are a series of closed shops. One of them used to be a pretty decent kebab joint. One of my Japanese friends went there alone in 9th grade and the cashier asked if he wanted to see his dragon. The cashier lifted his shirt to reveal a tattoo of a red dragon which covered his torso. Then he pulled down his pants to show the rest: His dick was the head. From then on it became a running joke among my friends – “Do you want to see my dragon?” – and the shop closed shortly afterward.
Almost all of Midlands is closed now, its business sucked away by other malls. Entire floors are empty. The old McDonald’s where we ate nearly once a weekend is gone. No huge yellow M. No plastic Ronaldo McDonald lounging out front for me to pick his nose.
The back escalators I used to take are gated off, a makeshift purse shop blocking its mouth. The place where I used to buy basketball cards turned into a Jet Asia. Then that, too, closed. The bowling alley is gone. The Fun Zone, an arcade, moved down from the top floor, but somehow it feels neutered on carpet and with glass wall along one side. Half the reason we went was to hide in the din of blaring noise and darkness where we were guaranteed never to bump into any staff from school. The internet cafe where we’d play Starcraft and Counter-Strike (we would wear sweaters so that we could shed the cigarette smoke smell when we crept back home) has a sign for a bistro above it, but it’s boarded shut.
Popular – the Borders of Malaysia – is closed. That one is recent; it was open when I visited a year and a half ago.
I head away from the main block and up the back stairs. No air conditioning. I march all the way to the top. The railing, all chipped green paint, is coming loose from the tile, and I can shake it back and forth. Around and up I climb. The last floor has a hallway, and at the end is a gate. Along the wall the cement is painted like logs to give the place a lagoon feel; this used to be a water park. One side of the gate is padlocked, the other chained to the wall. I shake it. I heave into it. I yank as hard as I can. I scream and bang. Through the gate I see sunlight and the back entrance to the park. I can hear the low hum of the motor which powered the water rides. But I can’t get through. My hands are filthy from the gate and my breath quickened.
For a while I just concentrate on breathing, slowing my slight hyperventilation. My knees feel weak, my head light, and I think about how peaceful it would be to fall fall fall off the edge and drift through the wind to the bottom nine floors below.
Back in the main tower, on the seventh floor, is the shop where I used to buy my video games. I liked it because the games always worked and the guy who ran it was really kind. He was clean-cut, with a trim bowl-cut and pressed white shirts. The store is closed now, of course. The entire floor is closed, really. Out in front of the deserted gaming shop, one of the lights flickers like the twitch of a madman’s eye.
This is what has become of my childhood – a husk of a building, hollowed out except for the nostalgia, with the strobe of flickering light fixtures.
Just be a queen
I kind of hate this song. The clunky transitions, the obnoxious intro, the longer and even more obnoxious music video intro, the atonality of the chanted chorus, the preachiness, the pretentiousness – it’s all bullshit.
But there are two redeeming qualities. One is the adorable double stomp of the dancers in the music video. The second is that the jingoism, the triteness of the message, the sheer banality of it all is absolutely necessary.
For years homophobes have dominated that corner of the public discourse. There are plenty of articulate, compelling works in a variety of mediums about homosexuality and homosexuals’ particular brand of struggle (pick up Middlesex if you’ve got a free summer to flip the page 529 times or just happen to like really good fiction), but the reductive banners, the regurgitated cliches, and the mind-numbing arguments – that sphere belonged solely to the homophobic.
Until now. Lady Gaga is hitting back. Gays, too, can be entirely unoriginal and bland and gain huge amounts of public traction despite it. So suck it.
It’s the ’90s again, when singers appear in their own music videos, one costume is enough, old black guys have belting saxophone solos, everything is in earnest, boobs jiggle, and dancing to your own music is actually pretty cool. [Born this way.]
Sofija
Life’s never ending search for Lost In Translation‘s Official Soundtrack: Part Deux.
R.I.P. WOLF PARADE
A few hours ago, Wolf Parade played its last show, a gig in Vancouver with Frog Eyes opening, before going on indefinite hiatus. Apparently, the last song they played together was Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door.
By now all of the members have other projects going on and are scattered across Canada, and I found the later material a tad stale, so it makes sense. I get it. I mean, I understand. I don’t have to like it though.
I remember clearly when I first heard Wolf Parade. On a forum I troll, someone had posted a thread entitled: “Wolf Parade – I don’t get it.” Inside was a link to the Myspace page, which was featuring the video for I’ll Believe In Anything you see above. I clicked play, watched it, and thought, “I sure as hell get it.”
It feels too off-the-cuff to be that catchy. Spencer’s shirt is ripped at the armpit, Dan and Hadji both look like they’re going to spazz out and injure themselves, and no one seems to be paying enough attention to each other to possibly be in synch. But it’s tight, it’s tight as hell, man. Yeah, I got it.
As I listened through the song for the second time, I opened a tab to Amazon.com and bought Apologies To The Queen Mary and, because it was listed as similar, Modest Mouse’s The Lonesome Crowded West.
Those two bands immediately became huge influences on my listening and aesthetic choices. I’ve seen Wolf Parade and its various side projects in four different states across half a decade. When Spencer put out Random Spirit Lover as Sunset Rubdown, it came at one of those crucial junctures of my life when, looking back, I can see how willing and earnest I was at the time, and I opened up a slab of my heart and it slotted right in there. I still consider it my favorite album of all time.
Sunset Rubdown is gone now too. Cognitively, I know all the bands I enjoy will split up or turn shitty or go on indefinite hiatus and then never resume or have members die. Mentally, I understand that. But it still feels awful raw when one of the first bands I ever fell for does it. [R.I.P..]
Twinkle twinkle, little star
I like this song, but I can’t escape the urge to punch Darwin in the nose. I guess I’ll stick to headphones and stray away from screens, lest I break a couple of knuckles. [Fuckin’ hell.]