Last weekend we played three shows in three regions in three days, a mini tour of our fair island.

I lugged my instruments, baritone, trumpet and stick, to work on Friday, for we were boarding a VW van down to Taichung in the early afternoon. Our usual driver, Mr. Gao, had delegated the job to the most capable Ms. Chen, who took us on a long drive involving interesting corners of Ye Olde Taipei County. The band was joined this time by an accomplished the Japanese clarinet player Teppei Kondo, who came admirably dressed for the part. I always like visiting Taichung, a reminder of the college days of my youth.

The venue for the show was a traditional Taiwanese banquet featuring dozens of large round tables, held at the Yide Mansion, the former home of a trader who worked with the Japanese rulers at the time and was subsequently hounded out of Taiwan after the Nationalists came and renamed the place very Nationally before squatting there and then letting it fall into decay until the city government renovated it in the late 2000’s (how’s that for a metaphor). Unpleasant history aside, the complex has a comfy, laid-back atmosphere, in a nice part of town surrounded by high-rises full of people with excellent hearing judging by the noise complaints that began pouring in as soon as the festivities began. The stage’s backdrop was a clear digital screen showing old photographs from back in the day, including quite a few I recognized. The show, moved up a little due to said noise complaints, went pretty well, and the audience, sated with banquet food and drink, were amenable to hearing us blather on about this and that after the show. Some of the kids in attendance were fascinated by us; many questions and photo requests were forthcoming. We also had our own table and food, which was a nice touch as many organizers tend to shove the band in a back room with cold bento boxes.

The next day we were to play at Weiwuying in Kaohsiung. Did we just go right down to Kaohsiung from Taichung since we were already almost halfway there? We did not; instead Ms. Chen drove us all the way back up to Taipei, where we all slept in our respective beds (I assume). We then got up Saturday morning to meet up again at the high speed rail station. Kaohsiung’s only an hour and half by bullet train, so it made sense as we are not a terribly rich band.

Photo by David Chen

In contrast to the cool, rainy weather up north, sunny skies and residual summer heat greeted us as we got out our taxis and schlepped our gear across the fields to our little stage. I say little because, despite it being generous in size and more than enough for our needs, it was dwarfed by the massive stages elsewhere in the area, as well as a giant inflatable pumpkin leering down at everyone. The grounds had a festive Halloween feel in the afternoon before our show; I walked around taking photos of various people picnicking and playing in the park in the slanting sunlight, and some of our Kaohsiung friends came by to say hello and see us play.

As night descended, however, throngs of people poured into the park. By the time we were done with our show, getting over to the road to find taxis became a challenge. I was hauling my gear and fell behind, though I knew where everyone was headed. When I got there, however, nobody else was around. David messaged asking where I was, as they were elsewhere, so he just told everyone to get taxis as best they could. After some confusion, we all managed to make it back to the high speed rail station in time to catch our late-night train back north.

Sunday was the Calling Music Festival, held on the flood plain that forms Sanchong’s southwest border, the very site where, over two decades ago, we filmed the car chase scene for Clay Soldiers. And look, I know that our band is called the Muddy Basin Ramblers and all, but this was, in my opinion, too much mud. It had been raining in and around Taipei for over a week, and the state of the ground was such that one really needed to pick out a path least likely to entrap one in a soil-based morass. Once again, we were on a huge stage that was the least of three massive stages. Yi-hong, our usual sound guy, was at the controls, so we managed to get through sound check despite the other sound people clearly not knowing how to mic a jug band. Some people appeared in the distance carrying what looked like a huge condom, which turned out to be a tarp to lay down in front of the stage so that our audience didn’t sink into the mud. Despite the conditions, the show went quite well. In fact all of our audiences had been great over all three shows. I’ve been singing in Taiwanese more lately, and I think I’m getting somewhat used to it, I’m still working on going from just singing to sanging, if you know what I mean.

After the show we hung around waiting for dinner in the craft & services tent, which, though tasty, had to be consumed while wearing earplugs at the volume of the other two stages was obviously designed for young people who laugh at the prospect of hearing loss. I’d thought of hanging out and chatting a bit more, but chatting was rather a chore with all the noise, so I decided in favor of returning to the relative dryness of my Water Curtain Cave. This week is mid-terms, I have homework, and I just got my thesis subject approved, so now all that remains is, well, actually doing it.

Back to work, as the people sang.

The late-summer weather’s been brilliant recently, so Thursday after work I decided to take the train out to Keelung, which I haven’t done in a while. We’re currently arranging our photo walk locations for the fall semester, and I wanted to check out what’s new there so we can tell students when we go. It’s about 45 minutes by train, not an unpleasant journey, though I was reminded how uncomfortable the seats on the commuter trains are. They look nice, have high backs and tasteful upholstery, but in practice they feel like furry 80’s school bus seats. The low-backed seats on the older trains are actually more comfortable IMHO.

Hoping against hope that the new waterfront area between the front of the harbor and the cruise ship terminal might have actually been finished, I was greet by yet more construction when I exited the new station. They’ve been working on that thing for ages, and while some progress has been made, it’s still far from complete. Another example of this waterfront city’s great potential going to waste. And it’s been going on so long that it’s become ingrained in the very identity of the city.

Keelung harbor

First things first, though: Sustenance. After a tasty brunch at the (rather expensive) Acorn Cafe, which was full of busy young people working on their notebooks, I walked over to look at the construction project by the maritime plaza. A pedestrian bridge/platform is slowly, glacially taking shape over the roadways, and I spent some time photographing the silhouettes of workers wrangling structures from cranes against the deep blue sky. It should be something when it’s done, but bog knows when that will be, nor if any thought has been given to maintenance after it’s done.

But the narrow streets and alleys that constitute the core of Keelung beckoned, the close, dark grid between the harbor and the highway and train paths; the grittiness, the raw DNGAF character of the town is truly impressive. It might seem intimidating to those unfamiliar with it, but the gatherings of elderly uncles in the arcades outside cheap coffee shops, the stone gateways that date from the Qing Dynasty, the street cats lounging around in between 1970’s tailor shops and craft house techno bars operated by kids barely out of their teens, overlooked by incense-shrouded temples that aren’t listed on any maps, endow it with an earnest nature different from that of Taipei. Keelung not only feels forgotten, it feels low-key cool with that.

Beyond the pedestrian overpass that has been the subject of many an Instagram post, I visited what I call the polka-dot stairs, where the afternoon sun shining through a 1960’s-era trellis adorns the stairwell and anyone walking by with a lattice of dots. I’ve seen other photographers lingering around there waiting for subjects to walk by, and I’ve even taken a couple of shots there myself. Beyond, however, is an interesting duel corridor of closed shopfronts, the metal doors hiding tiny two-floor spaces. One of them was apparently a bar once upon a time, though it’s hard to imagine how such a small space could have accommodated  such an establishment. Perhaps a Golden-Gai-type setup. This time, however, a heavily tattooed workman was busy trying to make one of the spaces habitable, and he graciously let me take a look. There was one small window in a space big enough for maybe one bed, and tiny bathroom with just enough room for a toilet. A ladder led up to an even smaller loft above, with its own tiny window. “The people who own it want to make it habitable,” he told me, wiping sweat from his brow despite the large electric fan that was blowing nearby. “It’s a job, though. The place leaks like a sieve, the waterlines are screwy, the power is iffy, and all the electricity boxes are in the basement, which by the way is spooky as hell…in fact this whole place gives me the creeps, especially at night.” He stopped and looked at me. “Are you interested in renting?”

“Tempting, but no,” I replied, recalling my time at the Chungking Mansions Taipei, which dates from a similar time with similar issues. “Who owns this building? Is it connected to the railway?”

“It’s supposed to be partly owned by the Keelung City Government, or was once upon a time, and partly owned by…uh…I’m not sure exactly; I don’t think anyone can say for sure. You know how it is.”

It’s true; a great deal of real estate in Taiwan is actually tied up in these unfathomable black holes of age-old ownership issues. I wished him luck in his efforts, and he turned his heavy metal music back on as I walked downstairs and over to the nearby fetid canal by the train tracks to watch a bird, seemingly holding its beak, pecking at whatever was able to live in that odiferous sludge.

The view down the street of the sunlit harbor, the Cosco Star that we took to Xiamen years ago berthed in the afternoon sunlight across the water, buoyed my spirits, so I headed back down in time to see the blue-and-white ferry from Matsu being escorted to its dock by a tugboat. The new ship isn’t the same as the old orange-and-white one that Prince Roy and I took many years ago. Back in the Japanese era, ships were always coming and going from the harbor, going all sorts of places all the time. As I watched the passengers disembark the Matsu ferry, I tapped down the urge to board a ship and go somewhere; it’s been far too long. I actually wouldn’t mind spending some serious time documenting Keelung, as my friend Cheng Kai-hsiang did recently through some kind of subsidy program. The idea of this city being such a historical “gateway to Taiwan” that is simultaneously so neglected is a fascinatingly complex conundrum to explore (but probably also depressing if one digs deep enough).

In any case, school is starting up again; I have a master’s degree to finish, a thesis to propose, research, write and defend…my day job, gigs to play, and a photography course to teach; I have neither the time nor money for other things at the moment. Still, it was nice to catch a glimpse of that realm as the sun set behind the hills that wrap around the city. I had dinner at the harbor-side Mos Burger that almost completely fails to capitalize on the view, and then caught a train, uncomfortable seats and all, back to Taipei and home.

I brought my pocket trumpet and the washtub stick with me to work last Friday, as half of the Ramblers, i.e. David, Andrew and myself, were traveling alll the way down to Hengchun, a cool township at the very southern tip of Taiwan with a fascinating history and surprisingly intact Qing-era city wall and gates, to film some promo videos for the folk music festival where we’ll be playing in October. The schedule had been in flux due to an apparent line of typhoons waiting to pass through the area, but the organizers figured there’d be a small window of Not Typhoon on Saturday when we could film. I needed a break in any case, though, a change of pace and place, even if just for a short while.

After taking the metro to Taipei Main Station, I had a lovely sandwich, salad and ice coffee at one of my favorite spots, the Ueshima Cafe tucked in the space between the escalators from the platform and those leading outside. We were leaving at 1:33, so I had plenty of time to enjoy the smooth jazz, re-read some Murderbot (The Murderbot Diaries are my Sanctuary Moon), and watch the passengers walk by outside.

We had a brief moment of uncertainty on the platform when David hadn’t shown up, but it turned out that he’d gotten just gotten the car number wrong. The trip to Kaohsiung took an hour and half; the trip down to Hengchun, a fraction of the distance, would take over two hours, thanks to a long history of not extending the railway and/or highway that far south due to political chicanery and other shenanigans.

But when we arrived at the pickup area at Zuoying Station, we found it oddly deserted. On the other side by the entrance, a couple of smashed cars were being lifted up onto trucks; apparently some idiot tried to either exit the entrance at high speed or vice-versa, and the entry route had been blocked by the wreckage or the resulting collision. Fortunately they cleared it up in time for our driver, Mr. Chen, to pick us up.

Mr. Chen, it turned out, was an expert tour guide, and filled us in on all the goings-on on the Hengchun Peninsula over the past several decades. As we drove south the weather worsened, heavy rain forcing us to slow down. We stopped at a run-down rest stop, watched the roiling ocean and listened to the rocks being tossed about by the frothy brown waves. I recalled the first time I’d been down there, when I was a production assistant for a Japanese movie production filming there in the early 1990s, running around with a mohawk and tank top, climbing up the sides of abandoned freighters beached on the rocky coastline and racing old VW vans around ferrying actors and crew here and there (and probably scaring the shit out of them in the process). During a patch of bad weather we spent two days in a hostel playing mahjong. No internet, no social media. Just mahjong, punctuated by soggy bentos and snoring crew.

At Hengchun we checked into our hostel and walked over to the West Gate square where the filming was taking place in front of the Guangning Temple, among traditional banquet tables under tents to keep us mostly out of the rain. The film crew was professional and creative, but filmmaking is a long, exhaustive process, and they were trying to get the elder musicians’ stuff done first so they could go home at a decent hour. Some of the other musicians really loved trying out the washtub bass, and at one point we started up an impromptu show with the other musicians, which went on until the film crew shut us down as we were interfering with their process. As it turned out, we didn’t need most of the instruments we’d brought, but I suppose the production team wanted to have their options open.

Finally, late at night, we finished up and were treated to delicious banquet food, so much we couldn’t finish it. Rocky, a man who was playing a chef in the video, invited us to his nearby music bar for a jam, but we were knackered, wet and tired, and decided to call it a night.

I love staying in hotels, and really appreciated the nice big shower, balcony, air conditioning, and fresh towels and linens. Though I’d planned to sleep in, I woke up at 6 a.m. and was surprised to see nice weather outside, so I got dressed and went for a walk. Almost immediately it began to storm again, so I circled the block from the old street to the city government and went back to the hostel to get some more sleep. Later, I found that the others had had the same idea, with much the same results.

We had some breakfast at a nearby shop and then found a cool coffee house resembling a log cabin, complete with a DJ on a turntable. Talking with the other patrons and the owner, it would seem that Hengchun has seen a bit of an influx of entrepreneurs from other parts of Taiwan in the years since covid. I get it; the vibe of Hengchun, in part a result of it being so isolated and just being so far south, is more that of a small island than other parts of Taiwan, akin to the feeling of Okinawa vs. mainland Japan. I may enjoy city life, but I always enjoy visiting Hengchun, and I look forward to going back with the whole band for the festival in October, when the place will be hopping. We played there first in 2010, and again in 2022 (both Years of the Tiger as it happens), so this will be our third time. Alas, as I’ll be back at work on my master’s program then as well as teaching the community college course, the scheduling will be tight once again, and I won’t have sufficient time to properly explore the town as much as I’d like.

Mr. Chen’s son picked us up at the hostel and drove us back to Kaohsiung, where we caught an earlier train back to Taipei that allowed me to meet up with Chenbl for dinner at a place overlooking the river at Bitan, before finally making my way back to the Water Curtain Cave.

My video production class’s final assignment this year was to make a video about our personal connection with our art, be it music or otherwise. The professor suggested many ways of doing this, including using the latest AI tools to convey things not previously possible with traditional video production techniques.

Now, anyone who knows me realizes that I have been rather stridently anti-AI from jump, having seen way too many bad-faith attempts to pass off AI-generated imagery as actual photography, and while I still have many reservations (and I still don’t consider AI-generated images to be actual photography), I realized that I didn’t have to actually use AI to fabricate images out of thin air for this assignment; rather, I could use it as a tool to animate actual photographs either of me or that I had actually taken, bringing the images closer rather than further away from a  more comprehensive atmosphere of the scenes I was describing in the video. I used apps like Kling and Vidu, though others probably would have worked just as well, and Suno to produce the music, to lyrics that I wrote myself. The AI artifacts are of course noticeable, though I feel that those will most likely be smoothed over in subsequent iterations of the tech.

The result is here: On the Other Side

Any readers out there who knew me during the times depicted in the video might be able to recognize the scenes displayed in some of these clips. That house was my actual house in Maitland, Florida. I really did wear that riotously colorful band uniform at Maitland Junior High School. That tan Datsun 810 was my actual first car. I did participate in the Wild Lily student protest, etc. All of them are real scenes, and though they may not have actually looked like they do in the video (which would be not just unlikely but downright uncanny), I was surprised at my visceral reaction to seeing them “come to life” as it were, many of them corresponding to my memories of how things actually went down. It felt like the AI was digging out buried memories, even though I knew that it was simply recreating them based on my prompts, which were in turn based on what I remember of those days, all the way from standing in my driveway in my scout uniform ready to go camping in the early 80’s, all the way up to walking the red carpet at the Golden Melody Awards a few weeks ago.

Am I biased because these are all personal memories that are significant to me and likely nobody else? Of course I am. It’s likely that to others, this is just a jumbled collection of incoherent scenes that don’t mean anything in particular, even though I tried my best to match the lyrics and footage to convey something greater than either. But as with any attempts at expressing oneself, I feel it’s better to keep trying, to keep making things, even if they just disappear into the algorithmic void time after time, in the slim hope that some small part of the signal can make a difference to someone out there, on the other side.

I was walking across the suspension bridge near my place last weekend when I heard someone singing English pop songs on the opposite bank. Buskers are common at Bitan, but they’re usually singing traditional Taiwanese tunes or playing Nakashi music on saxophones under the highway bridge, which amplifies the music, bouncing off the concrete pillars. Curious, I walked over the square that is usually occupied by dancing women and/or tai-chi practitioners, to find a young Taiwanese man wielding a purple digital guitar attached to a battery-powered amp, singing to a completely empty square. Occasionally people would walk by, but nobody seemed to notice him, and he would say “Thank you” to the empty square after each song.

I sat listening for a bit; he had a good voice, intonation and range, and his English pronunciation was near perfect. When he took a break, I talked with him a bit, and discovered that his name is Howard Lee, and it was his first day busking, though he’s been playing with bands for years. He seemed a little down, and I couldn’t blame him. He had rented the amp and paid to park at a nearby garage, and it seemed that he wouldn’t even break even from the little money he’d made.

“I play a little trumpet,” I said. “Would you mind if I played along for a song or two?” He said ok, so I went back and got my horn, and sat in with him for a few songs that I’d never heard before (I really should acquaint myself better with what the kids are listening to these days), but I could figure them out, and I’ve always enjoyed the challenge of playing along to new songs. A few people noticed and dropped a bit of money into the guy’s hat before his amp ran out of battery and his time slot was up. I thanked him for letting me play along, and we went our separate ways.

Yesterday a few of the Ramblers held a little farewell dinner for our departing violinist, Moses, who is going back to the States to finish his studies in the Bay area. I got to the beef noodle place early to get a good place in line, soon to be joined by Andrew, David and Moses. Our last gig, at Craft House, was the only one with both new and old members playing together; Andrew will be holding it down with us going forward. The noodles weren’t bad, though not as good as the old restaurant in the now-demolished Golden China Hotel, alas. Full of noodles and other noodle-related foodstuffs, we walked through the alleys, over have some tea in the park where I’d been so vexed by early-morning dancing women when I was living in the Sogo Locker, the last place I lived before moving down to Xindian 20-odd years ago. “Didn’t you use to live around here?” David asked at one point, which shows how long I’ve known him.

“I lived in like four places around here at various times,” I replied, which is true, and never fails to feel strange when I walk by the scenes of shit that went down decades ago. Earlier in the day I’d had lunch at Patty Addy, a smash burger joint across from where I lived in the mid 90’s (obviously it wasn’t there then; the now heavily tattooed owner was an infant at the time). The burgers were good, and I was surprised at the size and heft of the chicken strips I’d gotten as a side; they were more of a meal than the burger, especially such hot weather. I should have suggested waffles to go with them instead. The place feels like an old diner, cramped, with an open kitchen that was conspiring with the summer heat to defeat the air conditioning.

After lunch I walked over to Moom to browse some photobooks, exchanging the hot fumes from vendors’ stalls for that refreshing aroma exclusive to bookstores. I’ve been so busy with my studies that I haven’t been in a hot minute, so I was curious to see what was new. For some reason, I was just tired of looking at black-and-white photos. I was in the mood for the colors of the world I see. I respect black-and-white imagery, but it doesn’t feel like the real world to me, and that’s one of the main reasons I photograph. To each their own, of course. I’ve photographed that way in the past, and will probably still do so in the future, but I’ve always wondered how we would view such images if color had been widely accessible from the jump.

I looked through a few issues of Aperture magazine, but I’ve never really enjoyed photography magazines. I’d rather look at a body of work put together into a kind of emotional narrative than scattered bits of this and that in magazines, and the print quality also varies quite a bit. I looked at the huge tome The Pearl River, by Swiss photographer Christian Lutz, and I cannot fathom why this thing is so. damn. big. The images, which aren’t bad, are just not well served by being spread, full bleed, across gutters so that oftentimes the subjects are marred or lost in the crease.

One book I really enjoyed was Mike Brodie’s A Period of Juvenile Prosperity. Well printed, nicely ordered, with a sense of intimacy seldom felt elsewhere. Interestingly, while all the photos are horizontal, the book itself is vertical, so that there are wide swaths of empty space above and below all the photographs. This was one damn expensive book to make, it seems, but it’s worth it. He was a teenager when he made the photos; he’s 40 now. I hope he made bank from it.

It feels more meaningful to be known for a book or books than “that one image from years ago that everyone knows and is trotted out each and every time someone’s mentioned” as so often seems the case in social media these days. A recently retired columnist whose blog I’ve read for years described it as “Being on the shelf,” i.e. being listed among the people generally known for that thing. Not that I’m known for anything in particular (or at all), but in that surreality where I was known, I feel I’d rather be known for a body of work than just this thing or that. It’s a moot point in any case, as the greatest satisfaction I’ve found from doing these things comes from actually doing them more than from what happens afterward.

So I recently concluded the first year of my master’s program at Chungyuan U. I’ve learned quite a bit, and it’s been a fascinating change of pace in general, but I’m not gonna lie; it’s also been a bit of a slog, not only rushing to catch trains back and forth from Zhongli several days a week, but at the same time teaching the community college photography course as well as the university photography course, working my day job and other gigs, and also Rambler gigs, all at the same time. I really need to cut down on all of this somewhere if I’m going to keep up this pace. However, I do now have, including the required courses for the second year, more than enough credits to graduate (with, if I may say so myself, a pretty damn high GPA), so next I just need to get working on my thesis, album, and performance, all of which are going to be difficult enough without having to worry about other classes.

The community college course concluded last week, after I had some great online discussions with my friends and excellent photographers Blake Andrews and Nikita Teryoshin about my students’ work this semester. Well, besides the meeting with students to discuss their photobooks yesterday. And online meetings with other students that should happen this week. Then it will have concluded (I think).

Our latest album, Jug Band Millionaire, having been nominated and not winning a Grammy, was also nominated for a Golden Melody award, thanks to the inspiring work of our friends at Onion Design. Stuff I’ve worked on has been nominated a few times over the years, and the first time the Ramblers were nominated, for Medicine Show, I thought it would be fun to do the whole red carpet thing. And it was, but it was a little awkward as we didn’t really know anyone, the chairs were uncomfortable, and we didn’t win. So the next time we were nominated for Tiger, I thought: Meh, maybe skip it. And then we actually won. So we all went again this time, and things weren’t nearly as awkward as before, possibly because over the intervening years we’ve met and know more people in those circles, and also just one of the few perks of getting older: Just not giving a fuck.

We met up in the hot sun outside the Taipei Arena, feeling odd to be dressed up with no instruments, and then went down into the backstage area where police were leading sniffer dogs through the long crowded hallway that leads to the stage. Presenters were getting makeup done, and various groups

milling around in various regalia. The chairs in front of the stage were much more comfortable than last time, nice and padded. They put us in a luxury van to drive us around the block so we could get out and wait to walk the red carpet. As we set out, I was just about to say something snarky like, “And now cue the awkward silence as people try to figure out who the hell we are,” when actual applause and cheers came from the crowd, surprising me. In addition to my ever-present Leica, I was also modeling my equally well-worn Taiwanese Wotancraft messenger bag, not out of any sense of fashion, but rather simply a lack of space anywhere backstage to put stuff. At the interview spot I couldn’t help but take a photo of the wall of photographers opposite, many of whom made the de rigueur peace sign in response.

Inside the arena, the sound and light shows were much more intense than I recall from last time, and I had to don sunglasses and air pods to make it through the show without being overwhelmed. As it turns out, we didn’t win, but the show was fun, there was witty repartee in some of the speeches, and it was nice to see some old friends.

Our next show was last Saturday night on the tiny stage at Craft House,  a tight fit as we were joined not only by violinist Moses, who is leaving for the States soon, but also Andrew, who is our incoming saxophonist. The show was raucous as only a Ramblers-With-New-Members-Figuring-Shit-Out can be, but also a lot of fun. Amazing to think we’ve been doing this for 20-very-odd years.

So, as classes and things are wrapping up, I am, to be honest, kind of burnt out. My mind resists thinking about things I have to do next; I haven’t even looked at the photos I’ve taken since February FFS. I need a break, some time and place to rest and recharge before everything starts up again in the fall. In the past I would have loved to just take a solitary trip to Japan and just space out there for a week or so, to regain my mental footing, but circumstances are different now; I’m going to have to be creative in making this happen somehow. There’s supposed to be a ferry from Keelung to Ishigaki starting in September, but that’s not soon enough (I am still interested in that, though). I do miss riding the crazy bike along the riverside paths as I did back in the day; I need to dig it out of the depths of the garage and take it for a spin. Not immediately, as the first typhoon of the season, Danas, has us in its rear view mirror at the moment, having taken an unusual path up the Taiwan Strait, and providing us with hopefully enough water to make it though at least part of the summer without a drought. But the trails might be a bit of a mess right now and need some time to recover. I can relate.

During our photography class last Friday, Chenbl made the unusual move of slipping out of the classroom, leaving me to navigate his computer while we were looking at students’ photos. He had hinted to the students about a “special secret guest” coming to the Rambler gig I had the next day, and I’d wondered if it might possibly one of Chenbl’s mysterious alter-egos, a la Captain Chaos but Actually Fabulous, but when he came back I was surprised to see he’d brought our old friend Junku Nishimura with him. Junku was our gracious host when we visited Yamaguchi in 2017. I greeted him with a friendly WTF? and introduced him to the students, some of whom knew him from the BME workshop we’d done in Taipei several years ago.

After class we met up in Ximen and went to a stir-fry place to catch up while enjoying plates upon plates of various meats and other fried things before I had to catch the last train back to Xindian.

Saturday was the first time the Ramblers have played in a while, and to be honest things haven’t been the same since our beloved Paradises left our fair island for the dubious wilds of the Floridian panhandle. Our latest album, Jug Band Millionaire, having failed to win the Grammy it was nominated for, is now up for a Golden Melody award, and we plan to be at the ceremony. It will be my second time walking that red carpet, and should be fun.

On Saturday, however, we were playing for a graduation celebration of the Art Department of Fu Jen University. Soundcheck was supposed to be at noon, but as Ramblers will Ramble, we only got started at around 12:40, after a bit of hand-wringing by the staff. Chenbl and Junku showed up, Junku armed with (he claimed) the required traditional bottle of Shaoxing wine necessary for such events. It was a traditional show, and I sang Four Seasons of Red (四季紅) with, according to Chenbl, a bit more stridence than the song merits. “It’s like you’re worried that people won’t understand your Taiwanese pronunciation,” he told me afterward.

“But I am,” I said.

“Your pronunciation’s fine; don’t let that get in the way of actually singing the words!” Now, as Chenbl can SANG sang, this is no doubt good advice and something I need to work on.

I won’t be able to make the next show due to having class out in Zhongli that day, so I left the washtub bass stick for David, and headed out into the Plum Rain-soaked avenues with Chenbl, Junku and several students. We took the metro to the Songyan Cultural Park, where Junku bought a film cannister-adorned belt-hook, and then out to Xinzhuang, because Junku wanted to see some place with “old streets”. He was staying at that one old guest house in Wanhua because Of course he was.

It was raining even harder in Xinzhuang, but we braved the wetness and walked down the old street, lined with traditional shops, exploring alleys and temples and stopping for snacks along the way. I’d been pulling all-nighters trying to get homework done so I was rather tired, but some coffee jelly did the trick. Night fell, and the students bade us farewell, after which Chenbl followed his nose into an alley where we found an old-style restaurant, its walls yellow and cracking from decades of cooking smoke, adorned with signs forbidding the consumption of alcohol on the premises due to “that one time”. Nonplussed, Junku pulled out a green bottle of “medicinal” spirits he’d purchased. I could smell it from across the table (“Minty, not mediciny!”).

But it was getting late, I was tired, and the rain relentless. We parted ways back at Ximen Station, where Junku and I performed the traditional farewell ceremony of Photographing Each Other from Opposite Subway Trains.

Today, it’s back to the pleasantly forested campus of Chungyuan amid the last of the rainy season, before Dragonboat Festival and the arrival of spectacular summer heat. Classes are ramping up as we approach the end of my second semester; my digital music production class is even requiring me to reacquaint myself with my old nemesis, the bass clef (odd thing for a bass player to say, I know, but in my defense, I never use sheet music for Rambler bass lines). Also, my video production class is delving into the uncanny valleys of AI, and my other classes have so much homework that I’m no longer able to audit the second-year classes I’d been enjoying up to now. Last weekend my recording class took a field trip out to Yuchen Studio, where we recorded Millionaire; it was good to see Andy and learn a bit more about the place’s functions and history. Apart from the photography class, however, my own photos have just been piling up on my hard drive for the last few months, and will likely continue to do so until the end of the semester.

But, you know…so far so good, actually. It’s fun being a student again, interacting with interesting new people, including both my professors and follow students, and I have yet to tire of taking the train to and from Zhongli, though regretfully I have not yet been able to explore that fascinating mess of a municipality as much as I’d like to. Perhaps I’ll have more time during this summer break, though I really need to figure out what I’m going to do for my master’s thesis projects. You’d think I’d have plenty of time to plan that during the hours I spend on the train; in all honesty, I just like to sit and look out the window while munching on a hurriedly-purchased station bento lunch and sipping enough coffee to get me through my afternoon classes. It’s become a kind of necessary meditation amid all of the hustle and bustle of my life these days.

To wit: One day on the train, the rhythm of the sunlight, bouncing as it was off the passengers lost in their dopamine delivery devices, gathered up the previously distinct concepts of imagery and music in my mind, coalescing them into the idea that time is a far more profound aspect of our reality than we recognize. That is to say, photography and music are really both just variants in the expression of time, and the effect they both have on our consciousness and subconscious takes us to very similar places. Perhaps that might explain why music and photography coexist in the lives of so many artists.

Making that into a thesis, though…might need a few more trips.

Back in the day I used to indulge in verbal sparring with spammers who would call me on occasion, usually involving strange women claiming they’d met me in some random drinking establishment where I’d apparently left my card or some other BS, but they’ve left me alone for the last several years. I thought surely they’d learned their lesson and moved on to more fruitful pursuits such as life coaches or just Not Being a Jerk. Alas, as I get older I might be once again in their sights, because I got a call this morning on my way to work from an unlisted number. Usually I ignore these, but hey, I was enjoying a moment of calm in which I wasn’t scrambling to get homework done before it was due, so I answered.

“Pardon me, is this TC Lin?”

“That depends, who’s asking?” I answered, daring to hope some 2015-era Hamilton-esque shenanigans might ensue.

“This is the pharmacy at Taitung Veteran’s Hospital,” they said, dashing my (admittedly unlikely) bar-related hopes. “Someone came here with your ID card looking to pick up some medicine, so we decided to check by calling.”

Now, I am seldom in Taitung (alas), and I’ve never been to that hospital, so this was already fairly unlikely. But I decided to play along with the bit. “What meds, exactly?”

“Anti-depressants, that kind of thing.”

Ya know, I could use some of those, I thought of saying, but…no. “What did this person look like?” I asked instead.

“Middle-aged, a little thick, short hair.” So far, so good.

“Was he, uh, ethnically Chinese?” (“Huaren” 華人, which doesn’t really translate in English, it just denotes the ethnicity of most Taiwanese people rather than political designations.)

A pause. They probably don’t get this question a lot. “Well…yeah?” he said.

“Couldn’t have been me, then. I’m not ethnically Chinese.”

“So are you saying that it wasn’t your ARC?” I had to admire how quickly the scammer adapted to the new circumstances, my ID card was now an Alien Resident Certificate simply because I said I wasn’t ethnically Chinese.

“I don’t even have an ARC,” I said. Checkmate! I thought. But no, they kept going even as we went further off script.

“Ah ha! So you’re an illegal alien then?” I couldn’t help but laugh at this sudden accusation, and the caller became indignant, his tone harsh.

“How can you laugh at a time like this! Why don’t you answer? What are you playing at?” I could ask you the same thing, I thought, but this was getting boring, so I hung up. Looking back, I probably shouldn’t have spent even the little time I did on the line with the scammers, and hopefully they will put my number on their Do Not Bother With This Dude’s Ish list, but these times are full of change and woe and sometimes I just need a laugh.

The new semester has begun in earnest. Although all of my courses are in Chinese, I’m taking two courses that are more language-intensive than the others, one on lyrics and another on educational theory, that require quite a bit more involved levels of the language than the other courses. So while last semester I was either at the top or near the top of all my courses, this semester I’ll just be glad to get a passing grade in all of them. I’ve been so busy that I haven’t even had time to properly explore Zhongli, as I recently lamented to Josh, whom I’d run into near campus when I was having dinner between courses.

It’s also becoming even clearer just how much I don’t know about music production (spoiler: a lot). Our production professor, who is tele-teaching from Beijing, is assigning actual song production this semester whereas last semester we were just going over the basics of the software (Cubase, which I find difficult to use, but oh well, that’s what we’re using). I took the professor’s melody (which he came up with seemingly on the spot using the number-based scoring that is popular in Asia) and composed what I thought were some pretty cool chord progressions, but when I heard what the other students had come up with, it was obvious that I need to up my game. I’m also realizing how much I have hitherto neglected the art of percussion in music, something that I really need to brush up on, and listening to the drum parts of many of my favorite pieces has been a revelation. My reluctance in this respect probably comes from years of sitting right in front of the drum section in band; it’s hard to enjoy drums that are constantly banging away inches behind one’s head, and I suppose I just learned to tune it out.

Things will get even busier next week when not only are the Ramblers getting ready for some springtime gigs, our photography course is also starting up. Being so busy with the master’s program coursework, I’ve pretty much been letting my photos pile up on my hard drive. And in any case posting photos online these days feels frivolous in light of the United States’ ongoing self-inflicted implosion into a well-armed tinpot oligarchy, the other world powers jockeying over who will take the place it has abandoned. But art is needed even more in such times, so I will keep making it as best as I can.

At least this long, cold winter shows signs of abating. I’m so very glad that I finally installed heat in the Water Curtain Cave, as this winter has been brutal. The cold just seeps into the bones of these concrete structures and lasts well into spring. But this weekend has been lovely. Yesterday I went with Chenbl and his parents to the Fo-An Temple, located in an alley off of Minzu West Road, where they were celebrating the birthdays of both Ji Gong and the local land god (Ji Gong was apparently ok with moving his birthday to that of the land god because Ji Gong is just cool like that), and the group of devotees there were nice enough to give us some of the bao they’d prepared for the celebration. Afterward we had some tasty pig’s feet for dinner at a place across Minzu Road, as other temple celebrations, including stage dancers and a vast feast, had been set up along the roadside. Occasionally a jet would fly overhead before landing at the nearby Songshan Airport.

This morning I went to tai-chi practice at the park for the first time in a while. I’ve been rather lax about going in recent months due to other obligations, weather, and, to keep it a buck, just wanting to sleep in on Sunday mornings. But I nearly always feel better after tai-chi practice, and it was nice to go through the empty-handed form as well as the sword form a couple of times. As it happened, a bunch of tai-chi elders were having a get-together lunch nearby, so quite a few of them came by to say hi to Little Qin, who is now the leader of our group. They ranged in age from 70 on up to over 100. “I was practicing here in the park ages ago,” one of them told me. “When did you start? I’ve seen you around here for at least 20 years.”

“I first came to watch tai-chi here in the summer of 1989,” I said. He just laughed and called me a newbie, which…fair, as he was here in the 1940’s. One of old guys wanted to practice push-hands with me, which I did with some hesitation, not just because I hadn’t practiced in a while, but also because damn this guy was old. He probably could have sent me flying, but still.

After practice and our usually discussions about politics, history and culture, I bade Little Qin and the others adieu and walked towards the North Gate to see if Kyomachi No. 8, a nifty jazz cafe with the nice music and tasty quiche to be enjoyed with the view to historic buildings on both sides, was open as Google Maps intimated. Alas, it was not, so I had brunch nearby before returning home.

Now it’s time to knuckle down on this homework.

So, after gathering up all the funds I’ve accumulated over the years from online gift certificates, etc., I recently managed to snag an Osmo Pocket 3 as a Christmas/Birthday present to myself. I’ve been looking at instruction materials and making test videos, bringing it along in my bag when I’m out in case I happen across anything to film. The Pocket 3 is a tiny 1-inch sensor cleverly integrated into a portable gimbal  with a handle, resulting (in the right hands) in butter-smooth video but not taking up much space. One of the many criticisms leveled against my previous videos is how choppy and vertigo-inducing my camera movements can be as I waved whatever Canon Powershot I happened to be using like a slingshot. The Pocket’s camera is basically stuck at f2 and can only zoom in 2X, but the image quality isn’t half bad, better than what my phone can do anyway. I’ve gone back and forth on what frame rate to use: Both 30P and 24P are nice, but 24P (at 1/50) feels nicer. I might even manage to finally upload a 4K video one of these days, and y’all will finally see that yeah, honey, it’s the years and the mileage.

I took the Pocket out to Keelung one sunny afternoon last week, just walking around and making whatever vapid remark that came to mind for the camera, testing how did in various lighting situations, angles, etc. I hadn’t been out to my favorite dysfunctional port town for a minute so it was nice to walk those gritty streets again. I also had a chance to enjoy some tasty dessert and coffee amid the comfy jazz-infused atmosphere at Eddie’s Cafe, something I’ve been wanting to do for a while now. Eddie grew up with the son of the late Keelung photographer Cheng Sang-hsi, so he knows all about the scene there. The cafe is 15 years old now, which is impressive, especially in that relatively out-of-the-way spot in the old market across the train tracks.

A couple of days ago I took the train out to Shanjia, a little station between Shulin and Yingge, that has always piqued my interest, even back when I was taking the train back and forth to our army base in Miaoli. A former mining community, Shanjia doesn’t seem like much of a going concern these days; I walked around the old houses lining the midge-infested canal that runs beneath the station, crisscrossed by small bridges that lead to an old mine that is now a laundry spot/tourist attraction. Further up the hill is a large modern apartment complex that feels glaringly out of place amid the older mine buildings featuring old slogans like “Unify China” on them. I continued past the modern public library and walked up the road into the mountains a bit, but it was cold, cloudy and not a little spooky, so when a local orange cat suggested that I head back down the mountain, I listened.

Yesterday, amid once-again brilliant weather, I ventured up to Dihua Street, which is of course jam-packed with tourists and revelers as we approach the Lunar New Year holiday. I lasted about 10 minutes in the crush before bailing to the other side of the Yongle Market where I often enjoy stretching my Taiwanese capabilities with the elderly owner of the bitter tea stall there, chatting as I sipped my tea and watched the people walking by. I then escaped further to the riverside, paying my respects to the temple where I once took a photograph that ended being cover art for a Picador Press book, and just sitting in the afternoon sun and looking across the wide waters over at the jumbo jets wafting in over the towers of Sanchong.

After putting the Pocket through its paces for a time, I’ve come to the conclusion that, while it works fine when needed (and when I know how to operate it, which is an ongoing project), I can’t just be having it on me all the time like that. My video and photography mindsets are so different that it feels like I’m switching my brain out for another completely different one. Or perhaps that is how my brain “works”, as switching languages often feels the same way; I don’t find it easy to go back and forth. So when I have the Pocket out when I’m walking around, it interferes with my usual photographic inclinations in a most unpleasant fashion.

The best way to use it, I’m realizing, is like I would use a telephoto lens, i.e. only bring it out when I have a prepared idea of what I’m going to use it for. Otherwise it just becomes a hindrance to seeing rather than a tool.

I might edit some of the test videos into little pieces to upload to my YouTube at some point, or possibly one longer one…we’ll see. My ten-year-old iMac, specced out though it was at the time, can’t run anything but iMovie these days, but that should be enough to start. Eventually I’ll probably have to upgrade to Davinci Resolve or something if I get a newer computer for school, which starts back up in mid February. In the meantime I’m going to catch up on some much-needed rest, go through the photos I’ve taken over the last couple of months, and hopefully get a leg up on next semester’s subject matter.

Next week is the Lunar New Year break. Entering the Year of the Snake feels entirely apropos considering what’s going on the U.S. these days, alas.