School concert
The concert, such as it was, went ok, I guess. Managing to miss the downpours, I arrived at the school at around 4pm on Saturday so that I could video Chenbl’s flute group, which turned out to be larger than I’d anticipated. I was forced to set up the camera further back to get all 17 of them in, as they were spread across the “stage”. This, however, didn’t work out so well in the actual performance department, as nobody could hear anyone else, and the sound guy was a bit touchy whenever anyone point out any flaw in his microphone arrangement. “If you don’t like it, why are you playing here?” he asked.
Our trio was later, so we went to the basement to practice a bit, and Chenbl’s niece showed up to help video us later. They laughed at me sliding around the room in my socks while the others practiced. It was muggy and hot outside, and I was surprised so many people showed up. It seemed most of them were local elderly folks who lived nearby and had no choice but to witness the cacophony, and they figured they might as well do it right. Kudos for that, anyway.
I set up the camera in the area in front of the stage, and after watching Chenbl try to keep his sheet music from flying off his stand by using an elbow, I dashed in for the third song, “Summertime”. The people seemed to like it. Afterwards we had dinner at a nearby Japanese joint with Chenbl’s parents joining us. Chenbl’s mother grilled the waitress on her braces, while Chenbl asked me if he’s finally ready for the big time, by which he meant playing charity gigs, and I said, “not quite”. It’s impressive what he’s managed to learn in such a short time, but he still has a long way to go.
That was Saturday. On Sunday I spent most of the day at home putting some final touches on a couple of photo books I’ve been working on, so that I can get some samples printed for people both here and in Japan. Re-thinking the sequencing to conform to some concrete ideas and themes rather than going purely by feeling alone seemed to help. Also helpful was reading and looking at a book I borrowed from my friend Brian Webb:Â Tales of Tono by Daido Moriyama, the text of which seemed to have been written by a long-lost twin, especially the parts where Moriyama expresses his joy at setting out for the hinterlands after a long period of stewing in Tokyo. In the meantime, my book has five reviews on amazon.com now, mostly positive. I haven’t asked anyone to review it, or promised free copies or anything. I’m sure my lack of SEO awareness is not a good thing in this case, but perhaps things will be different when the print version comes out.
Dinner was at Evan’s Burger on Dunhua. I’d never been there, so I dragged Chenbl there to give it a try, for which he got revenge by telling me things like, “You can’t help but like the food you ate before you were 19. You will only like that food more and more as you get older. It’s biology.” This was his way of saying he doesn’t like hamburgers. He had fish and chips.
