People Doing Things
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.