Poagao's Journal

Absolutely Not Your Monkey

Jan 20 2015

Taichung show

We took a bus to Taichung on Saturday. Well, most of us did. Sandman got lost and couldn’t find the station in time, so he caught the next bus. But David, Slim, Eddie, Conor and I managed to board at the new Taipei Bus Station, hidden in the lofty heights of the Q-Square building, in time to get down to Taichung by mid-afternoon. Every time I travel to Taichung I wonder what it would be like to live there, and note how much it has changed since I went to college there. And every time I conclude that without a metro system I would probably find it quite inconvenient. Hopefully the first new mayor the city has had in well over a decade will do something about this situation. We’ll see.

We were playing at an underground live house, the Sound Garden, where the performance space seemed to be hidden behind a door in the “regular” performance space. I had to ask where the fire exits were, as the place seemed ready-made for disaster with one long tunnel to the exit. After our sound check I noticed that nobody was around, but when I went outside I found a long line of people waiting to get in.

The show was great, even though we were without Thumper, our percussionist. Mojo, who had been waiting for us there, was helping us keep time with some small cymbals, but I had to concentrate rather harder than usual on keeping the bass-line steady, as I could feel everyone leaning a bit more heavily on it than they would have if Thumper were there. The audience reaction was ecstatic throughout the show and encores. The mood was great, and we sat around signing CDs for a long time after the show. This was followed by a sumptuous dinner at a restaurant across the street, which ran long because we were all still high from the show and full of bright talk. It was after 1 a.m. before we caught a bus back to Taipei, and after 4 when I tumbled into the Water Curtain Cave, grateful for my bed.

Our post-gig dinner

Our post-gig dinner

 

On Sunday I practiced violin. You didn’t know I played the violin? That’s because I don’t, really. I signed up for community college classes that start in March, but I haven’t studied since I was a five-year-old Suzuki student with a quarter-sized instrument in Maitland, Florida. But Chenbl convinced me to give it a shot, and now I feel really sorry for my neighbors. Sure, I play trumpet at home at reasonable hours, but I know how to play the trumpet. A beginner violin student really should be exiled to a soundproof room for several months at least. But the violin is borrowed and the classes are cheap, so if it doesn’t take…well, no harm, no foul.

I saw “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” recently. I kind of had to, as every single friend of mine had asked me if I’d seen it, and, as a photographer, if the movie really resonated with me. It was a strange film, with great camera work, but it didn’t really resonate with me, probably because I was wondering throughout whether it should. Another reason was the way photography was portrayed in the film, and the nerd in me got in the way when I saw Sean Penn trying to act like a photographer. “I just want to be here, seeing it for myself,” Penn says at one point in the film.

“No, you’re not seeing it for yourself, that’s a frickin’ 400mm lens!” I say to the TV and any neighbors who are listening in. “And Ben Stiller just screwed up your focus anyway!”

 

 

posted by Poagao at 10:13 am  

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