The thing about this subscription system is that I feel pressure to make each and every post somehow “worthy” of actually notifying someone about, rather than just blathering about on here and hey, if you happen to read it, great. You’d think that the quality of my posting on here would consequently get better. You’d also be wrong, because the actual result is just me thinking: Hey, I feel like writing about whatever random thought I had and just seeing where it goes, but then I’d remember that actual people have subscribed to this account, and what if they feel cheated, having not gotten anything worth their time? And I’d think: I’ll just wait until I have something worth writing about.

You can see how that’s going (not great). So the question is: Should I just abandon the subscription system and just continue to write half-assed ditherage on here? Or just let it continue with the followers I have and stop telling anyone about it? The obvious answer, some of you might be thinking, would be actually putting more effort into making better posts, but all I can tell you about that is HAHAHA…no.

I have slowly been making incremental improvements to my photography site, within the bounds of that Google Sites can provide of course. Google seems to be slowly adding capabilities to it, so I will be working on that as improvements to the design become available. It’s sufficient for now, in any case, and perfectly fine for a free service. I also spent much of January working on an actual assignment, which I’ll talk about when it’s actually published.

The Ramblers have also been busy; we’re now working on putting together our latest album, which is technically our fifth (I think). The band formed 20 years ago in 2003, though I joined the next year, in 2004 (you can read about that particular night here) around the time we began filming the Lady X movie. Last night we played on a huge stage at Taipei 101, a crowd a dancers swinging away to our music in the shadow of the former world’s tallest building, now adorned with Blade Runner-esque video ads, lasers shooting into the sky as the temperature dropped and wind threatened to topple the music stands. Chenbl came by and we went to see the PXMart exhibition on the other side of Xinyi Road, which was basically a huge maze of vivid displays. They also had snacks. I was more interested in photographing the people taking photos of the displays, but 1) they did not like me ruining their photos of the displays, and 2) we had to get back to the stage for the show.

Afterwards, after we’d all said our goodbyes and gone our separate ways, I walked back across the bridge, carrying the Bach Stradivarius trumpet that has been my constant companion for over 40 years, and thought: This is nice, this life. I have a good job, a nice Water Curtain Cave (that should be paid off soon-ish) to live in, someone who loves me and whom I love, good friends, and I live in a dynamic, democratic nation with decent affordable healthcare, generally liberal values, good public safety and infrastructure, and just a place in which I’m interested in playing a part. That part has varied greatly over the years, but they have all been meaningful, and that’s something for which I am extraordinarily grateful.

From Google Streetview I gleaned that the house where I spent most of my formative years, a two-story house built in 1960 in El Lago, Texas, has been extensively remodeled, most likely due to flooding damage as the area is pretty much at sea level and sinking. I realize I’ve written about it before, but I recently found a tour of the inside of the old house on a realty site, and hoo boy did they do a number on it.

Outside, the old cracked driveway where our 1969 Buick Electra and 1972 Pinto were parked is now newly laid white concrete. All the tudor-esque 1960’s windows have been replaced with more storm-resistant but rather boring frames. Most of the old trees in front are gone, and many of the backyard ones as well. A patch of bare grass is the only sign of the old shed and pear tree that used to stand there. The concrete semicircle that was once our vegetable garden is now full of trees; one of the photos is taken from where my old fort was located, a place where many delicious afternoons were spent reading and snacking on peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches after school. The house is now painted blue, as it has been since not long after we moved away in 1981; no doubt the new owners didn’t appreciate me writing things like “Please take care of Grey Kitty” on the sides of the house, nor the mustard yellow color we painted it (believe it not, that was an improvement on the original dark brown, complete with orange front door, resulting in a very Halloween-esque vibe). Grey Kitty was a local cat who made her home with us when we lived there, and I was quite fond of her. My parents decided she wouldn’t be coming with us to Florida, but the elderly couple who bought the house from us assured us they would take care of her, and as far as I know they did. But I was a sentimental child and wanted to make sure.

Inside, as is seemingly mandatory with houses these days, any potentially offensive colors have been removed, and a few walls have been knocked down for that “open” look that is currently all the rage. Flying in the face of fengshui, the front door is now visible from the back of the house through an opening where the coat closet used to be, and the stairs, which once turned 90 degrees into the kitchen where a coffee bar is now located, now lead right into the back door, which is bad news for anyone pummeling down the stairs in the morning. The dining room, with its romanesque murals and fancy silverware, where so many people looked up at me towards the end of Christmas dinner to exclaim, “Oh that’s right, today’s your birthday, isn’t it?” is gone, turned into a home office and laundry room, which is reasonable as we mostly ate by the kitchen in what is now the “dining area” anyway. The puke-green carpet of the living room is now wood floor, no doubt an improvement visibly but much worse to sit on when opening Christmas presents, and a door to the garage has been added, which makes sense as we always had to go outside to get to the garage. All that remains besides the basic floor plan is the brick fireplace in the corner of the family room, where I used to play with my Matchbox cars, and the place where our huge Zenith TV stood how boasts a large flat screen that takes up not only that space but the space where our desk full of old National Geographic magazines and board games stood.

Upstairs, my room (formerly my sister’s room before she left for college) looks basically the same, though it’s grey now instead of bright blue. I don’t recall if the doors were cut to fit the ceiling’s crop; I wasn’t tall enough to notice then. I suspect the back of my old closet still has a secret entrance to the space over the garage. I’m a bit surprised no one has put an extra room in there. My brother’s room is also largely the same, except of course grey. There is one photo taken from my room with the door open and looking down the hall to my brother’s room, and I recall that view and listening to whatever he was playing on his stereo, which could have been anything from classical music to the latest rock. When he was practicing the flute, or I was practicing the trumpet, however, the doors would of course be closed.

It was kind of a shock to see that most everything had been cleared from the house, no reminders of the place that it once was, but then again, if it remained in the 1970’s it would be more of a museum piece than a place anyone would want to live in the 2020’s. The world is so different today! I understand why the old round-ended kitchen bar with the ceramic cookie jar that was filled with treats is gone, why the fake brick linoleum has been removed, as well as the thick rope rug where I used lay watching the Muppet Show, MASH and WKRP in the evenings and cartoons on Saturday mornings. I know why the shed is gone, that little corner of shady horror full of rusting metal lawn instruments ready to inflict tetanus on any unsuspecting intruder. I can see why the mullioned bathroom window of my parent’s bathroom is now a featureless glass square. I understand all of this; it makes all the sense in the world. But I am a sentimental man and kind of wish it wasn’t all gone.

I had an interesting conversation with a construction site manager yesterday. At least it went better than some of the previous interactions I’ve had with them.

It was a nice, warm, sunny day, and I was wandering along Zhongxiao West Road after a pleasant lunch near Camera Street and then hanging around the North Gate watching a wedding photographer chase the retreating light around the square. “Pretend like you’re running!” he called to the prospective groom, while his bride fiddled with makeup in a tiny tent.

“Like this?” the groom lifted a leg up hesitantly. Clearly he hadn’t been expecting this, especially after putting on a fancy white-and-purple suit.

“No, you look like a dog peeing!” the photographer said, but in a nice way. “Run like a bus is about to hit you!”  This was helpful advice, as buses were indeed zooming by inches behind him.

I walked east and got yelled at by a crazy Chinese monk for taking a photo of the Mitsukoshi Building. “Don’t fuck with me! I am long exiled from Foshan!” he shouted.

I kept walking, ending up on the famous pedestrian bridge at the intersection of Zhongxiao and Zhongshan. A busy construction site where the old round City Council building used to be caught my eye, and I took a few shots from the bridge before heading down to see if the light was nicer from street level.

“You can’t take photographs here,” a site manager walked over to tell me.

“Why’s that?”

“Company rules.” I sighed. This again.

“I don’t work for your company. Your site in is public view from the public road I’m standing on, and I’m not violating any safety rules here.” The manager considered this.

“All true, but we could get in trouble if you post these photos and our boss sees them, especially if he sees our company logo.”

“Why would your boss be unhappy at that? It seems like a well-run site. This project has even been shown in the media before.”

“He might yell at us for allowing someone to take photos.”

It was a pleasant, cordial exchange, and while I did not envy this man’s conundrum, I had to tell him: “You might not have noticed, but your site is bathed in reflected light from all these glass buildings next door in the afternoon. That’s going to attract photographers. Also, you’re not only right by a pedestrian bridge that is a famous photography spot, you’re also near hotels, the Executive Yuan and the train station. That means curious tourists walking by. Photography is going to happen. If you make a big deal about hiding the site from them, there’s a chance some of them will be IG influencers, journalists or even members of foreign diplomatic groups.” Someone might even blog about it, I added mentally.

He seemed amenable to this point of view, but he was still in manager mode. “Ok, I’ll let you keep the photos you’ve already taken, including the ones from the pedestrian bridge, but please don’t take any more.”

“There’s nothing you can do about the photos I’ve already taken,” I reminded him, noting that they’d tracked me all the way from the bridge. “But I appreciate your point of view and thanks for being courteous about it.”

As I walked on, I couldn’t help but wonder why people automatically go to some imagined worst-case scenario when they see they are being photographed. Is everyone afraid that their nefarious behavior will get them in trouble? But that can’t be the case, as being recorded by the government and corporations 24/7 has become a matter of course; nobody ever even thinks about it. Then again, government and corporate surveillance is expressly put in place to catch wrongdoing, so is it that far a stretch to imagine that, as such recording becomes more ubiquitous and ever present, the general population just assumes that any kind of photography is accusatory and predatory in nature? People crave attention, but just the safe kind of attention, I suppose. Whatever that is.

To wit: I recently got back in touch with a street photographer I used to chat with back in the early days of Flickr, Joe Wigfall. He no longer even takes photos; he says it had become too much of a hassle, so he paints and writes instead. It’s a shame; he made some very good work when he was active. He noted that when he was out shooting, Black people would give him more shit for photographing them than people from other groups would, and he noticed the same for white and Asian photographers he’d go shooting with. We can give them a pass, but you’re one of us; you should know better seems to be the message they were sending.

I took the subway over to Taipei 101 and walked across Wuxing Street towards the mountains, noticing the imprints of old military villages amid the empty fields as well as the occasional illegal villas with partially demolished balconies. Brightly colored election trucks, cars, motorcycles and bicycles crisscrossed the streets with their various candidates promising various things from mounted loudspeakers. But the sun was setting, so I walked back over to the Tonghua Night Market to meet up with Chenbl for a delicious meal of noodles at a wood-paneled restaurant where the competent young staff played old and pseudo-old jazz. They knew about the Ramblers, and put on some of our music.

Chenbl had got his hands on some hotel coupons, so we decided to spend a couple of days in Tainan, along with his elderly parents. Chenbl’s father is from Tainan, so he enjoys the nostalgia of trips back there.

We took the bullet train, Chenbl’s parents enjoying the plush purple business class seats with complimentary coffee and champagne or whatever it is they serve there, while we watched the brilliant green of the rice fields flash by as we consumed our brown-bag breakfast in the still-spacious blue standard seats. Tainan’s high-speed rail station is rather out in the middle of nowhere, as several of the stations between Taipei and Kaohsiung seem to be, no doubt thanks to land speculation, but no matter: We were going to experiment with the i-Rent online car rental system to save Chenbl’s parents, who are in their 80s, a bit of walking. I used my phone to locate the car, took some photos to show it wasn’t damaged, and then we were off.

It’s been quite a few years since I drove a car, but it didn’t take long to get used to piloting the white Toyota Yaris down the rural roads. The trick, I’ve learned, is not to get emotional while driving. Other drivers will do stupid things all the time, but if you leave enough space and think ahead, things generally work out. Not being able to see the front edges of the car was annoying, however. Never had that problem with 80’s cars, he grumbled oldly.

Chenbl had constructed an intricate itinerary with Google Maps, noting all of our potential destinations, and he used the service to issue navigation orders from the passenger’s seat, occasionally telling his parents to be quiet when they started suggesting oblique routes from half a century ago that may or may not still exist. Our first stop was at a market in an old row of buildings; we parked behind a factory near what was either a motorcycle that had been nearly consumed by weeds or a motorcycle-shaped bush. Chenbl bought snacks while I explored the strange blue-tinted light of the nearby alleys, and when I returned he was talking with one of the shop owners, who gave us free samples of their sausages. Tasty.

Next was the huge, elaborate Buddhist Daitian Temple complex at Madou. The place was very “sensitive”, Chenbl explained, as he is attuned to these kinds of things. The gods were kept behind ornate iron gates to keep them from being damaged by the huge crowds that visit during religious holidays. Behind the main temple is a huge structure in the shape of a dragon, full of scenes of whatever the temple’s founder envisioned heaven looked like in 1979. Chenbl’s father was going to go take a look inside until he found that the entrance fee was NT$40. We went instead, and the experience was indeed probably not worth NT$40, being a series of “It’s a Small World”-esque motorized figures depicting various deities having tea parties on lawns. There was a Monkey statue, however, so of course I had to get a picture with The Poagao, whom I’m fairly sure didn’t pay NT$40 to get in and probably had some tea party paraphernalia in his pockets.

Next to the exit of the Heaven experience was a gate to the Hell experience, which was also NT$40 and probably didn’t include air conditioning. We declined the Hell experience and went back to the main temple. Chenbl pointed at a palanquin parked outside, surrounded with surly young men in temple garb. “Someone is visiting,” he said. We went back inside to see a couple of elderly mediums shaking and shouting and pounding the table, while other devotees standing by interpreted all of this. After this we went to another structure, a large round edifice with very nice statues of the four Directional Deities inside, each one a different color. I hadn’t known about the Directional Deities; Chenbl’s father was filling me in when Chenbl suggested we take our leave due to my photo-taking causing a few mutterings from the staff.

Our next destination was Laotanghu, an “art space” out in the middle of empty fields. Apparently some enterprising painter had gotten the land for cheap and assembled the place out of stuff he’d found in an old village. Large buses disgorged tourists into the complex, where you could have your picture taken dressed up in cartoonish “traditional” garb, and a musician played guitar by the banks of the “lake”, which was most likely an old rice field. We got on a small boat to go out to a peninsula on the other side of the water, manned by one of the staff. When we’d all gotten on, the young man called out to the tourists at the front of the boat, “Hey! Start pulling the rope! This boat won’t move itself!” It was a neat trick; Tom Sawyer would be proud.

On the other side we encountered a group of Real Photographers surrounding a model in one of the traditional costumes. They saw me with my camera and beckoned. “Now you try!”

“Thanks, I’m good,” I replied, as I’d already been taking pictures of the scene, and I didn’t want to get in their way. They laughed.

The sun was edging towards the horizon, so we headed out to the coast to see some piles of salt. This is apparently a huge photography spot, and the area was swarmed with people hauling some serious gear around getting shots of an array of small piles of salt as sunset approached. The actual sunset was rather disappointing, as a passing typhoon was making Tainan’s usually sunny skies overcast and grey. We walked out to the windbreak, where a young woman posed for selfies and an older man shot invisible birds with his slingshot by a small earth god temple.

We set out again for a Michelin-rated restaurant Chenbl had read about, the Dongxiang. It was also in the middle of nowhere. We arrived just in time, though, as almost immediately a large tour bus pulled up, flooding the place with dozens of Women of a Certain Age, all chatting loudly. When the food came, I could see why they were so highly rated. The oyster noodles in particular were so good that Chenbl ordered another after we’d finished the first plate.

Driving back to the hotel at night was smooth, though again it had been a long time since I’d driven at night, so I was especially cautious, leaving plenty of space for the inevitable scooters weaving in and out of my lane. We were staying at The Place, which had been connected to a mall pre-Covid, and the severed connections had yet to be re-established, so we took an elevator to the basement, walked a few feet to another elevator, and then went up to the mall. There we did mall things until we tired, and went to back to our room to sleep.

The Place has an expansive breakfast that we took full advantage of the next morning. Outside, unfortunately, pouring rain had thrown a monkey wrench into the day’s plans. We set out, me driving even more cautiously in the rain, and found a small temple that Chenbl’s father had known when he was a young man. The table top in front of the altar was scarred from generations of mediums’ pounding. Chenbl’s father said that the temple had barely changed over the last 60 years. Almost every place we stopped required me to dig out my old parallel parking skills from high school. Thank you, Coach Munson, for teaching me an actually useful skill.

As we drove on, Chenbl’s father would sometimes point out spots he remembered. “That’s the stream we forded when we were fleeing the Americans’ bombs during the war!” We stopped at another old neighborhood to find the first house he had purchased, the last one in a row of two-story structures. After walking a short distance, Chenbl’s mother knocked on a door in an alley. A middle-aged woman answered, and she turned out to be Chenbl’s cousin, and one of his father’s family members with whom Chenbl’s mother had gotten along with the best. She even remembered Chenbl, even though he left Tainan when he was a small child. The group had a nice long chat in the alley, asking about this relative and that.

We then stopped by the house they’d lived in next before moving up to Taipei, finding the old well they used back in the day. “That used to be a machine shop,” Chenbl’s mother pointed at an old Japanese-era wooden house nearby. “I had to borrow their telephone to call the hospital when the kids came down with fevers. We didn’t have one of our own.”

The original plan had been to drive out to walk around several seaside villages, but due to the rain we limited our choice to just one. Chenbl’s mother stayed in the car after we looked at the inevitable temple facing the harbor. A bunch of local people hung out at a shop next door, chatting and laughing, and a group of students practiced violin nearby. We wandered the adjacent alleys in the rain, finding old wells that apparently represented Dragon’s eyes according to the fengshui masters, and chatting with some of the people we met, me testing the limits of my Taiwanese language abilities. There weren’t many people around; the area seemed largely deserted, with the foundations of long-demolished houses here and there. At one house we passed a large black dog, its age showing in its grey muzzle, barked furiously at us from through the mail slot. Its owner, a middle-aged man, told me not to take photographs after I took a few shots of the dog. “I’ll bet he uses that dog to intimidate people,” Chenbl muttered as we walked back to the car.

We drove around a few other interesting villages, but the rain showed no signs of letting up, so we gave up and drove back to the high-speed rail station, returning the Yaris early and trading our original return train tickets for earlier ones. The whole i-Rent experience was smooth and reasonably priced, and I can see using it more in the future, especially if they further expand their network.

The trip back was spent dozing. I’ve always enjoyed driving, but spending all day keeping my attention on the road was tiring as I’m not used to it. We’ll have to go back in better weather to get a better look at some of those old villages, or even, dare I say, one of the larger piles of salt. One can hope.

When I began writing online journal entries in early 2001, I simply wanted to share stories from my daily life with whomever might be interested. Stories of my life as an ex-American Taiwanese, of playing in a jug band, making films and engaging in photography, etc. Things a few family and friends might enjoy, perhaps. The blog, as such accounts came to be known, grew to encompass several topics as blogs became popular, and then, with the advent of Facebook/IG/et al, waned in popularity, returning to the realm of people who just enjoyed writing rather than using them to garner attention (photography seems to be following a similar track). In any case, this is my experiment with TinyLetter, part of my attempt to escape the confines of the social media algorithm and regain a semblance of pre-Facebook sanity, and a return to the simple, rambling stories I’ve always produced.

Another part of my escape plan includes another piece of retrofitting, i.e. a personal website just for my photography. This has been somewhat of a saga, as I had originally concluded that Squarespace would be the best way to present my work more or less as I desired it to be seen, rather than the hit-and-miss, mysterious popularity machines. I tried out other trials such as Wix and Format, but the interfaces didn’t appeal to me. After subscribing to a Squarespace 7.1 template, however, I found that once you choose a template, you are basically stuck with it. I was told I would have to cancel my entire subscription if I wanted to choose a 7.0 template that I could change. I tried one I’d been recommended but it wasn’t doing everything I wanted to, so I wondered exactly why I was spending all this money again?

Some friends had been suggesting Google Sites, which is free and apparently nicer than it was after some upgrades, so I played around with that out of curiosity, and, well. I made a site. Here it is. I’m still working on it, and hopefully Google is working on further upgrades to the service, but it’s free and it sort of works, though it looks a lot better on desktop than on mobile, but I figure viewing photography on a phone is sub-optimal at best in any case, so this is what I’m going to use for now.

So the issue now is weaning myself away from the dopamine hits of Likes and Comments and Follows that social media has me addicted to, clawing my way back to some kind of real-world existence (oddly enough, VR experiences are more akin to IRL interactions than social media ones, but that’s another topic for another day).

So yeah, a newsletter.

I’ve been writing this journal for well over two decades, making it one of the longest-lasting blogs out there, But lately I’ve been tiring of the FB/IG algorithm, and I suspect I am not alone. I’m still working on all of this, but I hope to achieve some amount of autonomy, even though my mind has likely been rewired by so many years of dopamine hits in the form of little red dots signifying “engagement”. Congratulations! You’re part of the tribe! You matter! Now do it again! And again! Faster!

Except my time would be far better spent creating for myself and those I care about rather than some greedy algorithm that ultimately doesn’t produce anything of value. Recent inspirations have come from Craig Mod and Andy Adams of Flak photo, both of whom are way better at this sort of thing than I am. But they, Craig in particular, have beaten a path towards what I would rather be doing than posting on FB/IG (or, heaven help me, twitter), which is mainly writing, photographing, video, and editing the result of the whole thing.

So there is no set topic for this account. Those who have faithfully read my journals for the last 20-odd years know what to expect: random posts about wandering the alleys and byways of Taipei, musings on photography, writing, cinema and virtual reality, the odd music gig or photo excursion or exhibition, trips abroad…that kind of thing.

As with just about everything else I do, this is an experiment, a space to see what happens. And as always, you’re welcome to come along.

So the Ramblers played a show in Kaohsiung on Double Ten day, at the Weiwuying Arts Center, taking the bullet train down from Taipei at noon for an afternoon soundcheck. David had shown us photos, but nothing prepared me for the actual sight of the place we were to play. “That’s no stage…that’s a space station,” I couldn’t help but whisper as we were ushered into a giant atrium that looked like we were hovering underneath an upside-down starship. Hard, curved surfaces everywhere. Surely the acoustics were impossible? But somehow they made it work for the soundcheck. And they provided bento meals, which we took back to our hotel, which was about a half hour’s walk away. Once outside, I pulled down my mask for a moment to inhale the mix of small- and medium-sized industry fumes and scooter exhaust with just a hint of coal and thought, yes, this is Kaohsiung alright. Each city has its peculiar scent. Take out the coal and humidity, and then add a bit of incinerator smoke and you’ve got Taichung. All of these take me back to the days of my youth, inevitably.

I sampled the free hotel ice cream and took a nap as night fell, before heading back to the arts center for the actual show. I took a circuitous route through the park and around the large outdoor stage with its pop show and screaming fans. The show went well enough, but, possibly because some of us had consumed way too much caffeine, we played nearly ever song about 20% faster than usual, resulting in a rather frantic pace. Afterward some fans came up and told us what they thought of the show, and it was mostly nice things. Then back to the hotel, putting instruments away, plugging in whatever needed charging, relieved at wrapping up another gig. Some of our foreign fans had come to see the show, and everyone ended up in front of the nearest 7-Eleven, drinking, chatting and sampling questionable convenience-store versions of fancy cuisine. I didn’t stay; I was tired and not feeling talkative, so I went to bed, actually sleeping better than I do at the Water Curtain Cave.

Of course that might just be a function of traveling, of being in a different city with the prospects of the kind of discoveries that only aimless, solitary wandering can achieve. Even just a few hours of this can do wonders for my mood. Would it be so hard to just take a train south for the weekend, just to decompress and unwind, spending a night or two in a cheap business hotel? I used to do it; perhaps covid has thrown a wrench into such things, but I miss doing that kind of thing. Chenbl loves to plan everything Just So, with itineraries and restaurants and things to see all at certain times, but my ideal day is just open and unplanned. Perhaps this is why I have failed to accomplish so many things I otherwise might have, but I can’t help but brighten at the thought of what might happen if I just allow the space for it. But yes, that does usually involve some amount of planning.

The next day dawned bright and warm, and I went out for a walk around the area, crossing across parks and alleys in the areas and exploring the interesting Guandi Temple with, for some reason, statues of large-eyed Europeans in crusade drip at the foot of its stairs. Inside were huge, marvelous god statues, though. But I had to get back, have some hotel breakfast and a shower before we caught a mosquito-ridden cab back to the High-speed rail station at Zuoying where our train departed just before 11 a.m., speeding north through brilliant rice fields, towns and, eventually, mountains. An hour and a half later and several degrees colder we were parting ways in the grey, indefinite climate of Taipei Main Station, them to who knows where, and me back to the office. We’ve got lots of shows coming up; it seems that many of the gigs that were put off during covid are coming back now, and October is always a busy month regardless. At least I’m playing so much that practice is virtually guaranteed.

As per my last post, I did sign up for TinyLetter for a newsletter-type setup, but for some reason this has made me extremely hesitant to post. It all still feels pretentious to me; I feel that if people are waiting for me to write things, with Expectations and all that, they will most likely be disappointed in the random rambling accounts that have dominated this journal for the past two-plus decades. Then again, everyone has a Substack account these days, so is it really all that different from the original blog era? Perhaps, but in any case, screw it; I write what I write.

I’m seeing more people these days, particularly photographers and writers, eschewing the chaos of mainstream social media and returning to the quiet world of personal blogs and websites. Perhaps they feel, like many of us, that the algorithms pushing conflict, sensationalism and drama over meaning, empathy and subtlety have made their efforts inconsequential in the face of the “influencers” and “creatives” who crave and cultivate the former over the latter. It’s simply a battle that cannot be won, and not even worth engaging.

My theory is that with ever-growing access to social media as well as ever-growing dependence on it driven by recent events such as the pandemic and general paranoia, our online tribes have simply gotten too large; we’ve opened our doors to nearly everyone, and there’s a reason tribes topped out at a certain number; beyond that they just became mobs (This is one reason I feel that VR-based engagement, limited to more human-scale interaction, is inherently superior to the mass-text-based chaos that dominates FB and Twitter, but that’s another article). As it stands now, greed-fueled social media corporations are throwing these mobs at each other and calling it “engagement”, raking in the resulting profits. I can see the attraction of returning to the previous paradigm, disposing of the myth of instant, real-time internet fame and focusing only on one’s relatively small group of peers. It feels like a return to sanity.

However, years of those dopamine-fueled hits have left their mark, it would seem, as those artists who are seeking to lessen their dependence on the Likes of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok and Instagram are leaving a door open from one MO to the other in the form of newsletter mailing lists like Substack, Buttondown, Memberful and TinyLetter. The idea is to utilize the following one has cultivated on social media by posting links to one’s mailing list, gathering subscribers, and then going on from there. Readers will be informed of upcoming projects, articles, etc. via that antiquated form of communication we Gen-Xers call email, and then proceed to the website in question to peruse whatever it is. It’s all rather quaintly endearing, like letters arriving in the post.

I am, as usual, late to the game, only having recently followed a few interesting photographers/writers in this fashion lately, including Craig Mod, Sean Lotman and Andy Adams (Craig described his views on newsletters quite succinctly here in 2019(!).

So far I’ve only come across these newsletters on social media, so the reliance is still there, but I assume the goal of this trend is to lessen such dependence and time spent on social media where one is simply not in control of anything. The cost of this is, on the surface, less interaction with the authors in question, but that would seem to be a fallacy in that what little actual interaction occurs on social media tends to be toxic and ill-informed. In one striking example, I signed up for Heather Cox Richardson’s political analysis mailing list, and continue to enjoy her missives. But on her Facebook page, when I left a comment objecting to her use of “self-ruled island” to describe Taiwan, I was flamed and eventually banned from the page. The same (or worse) would most likely have happened on Twitter.

Not having cultivated a large group of followers in any particular space, I can only envy those gentle, enterprising souls who have managed to do so. It’s my own damn fault as I can often be rather blunt in expressing my opinions, and I am bad at hiding my feelings, so it’s kind of WYSIWYG. So, thanks to both of my readers who have stuck with me across the decades (and now that I think about it, “both” might be on the optimistic side).

Nonetheless, with the trend of photographers abandoning Flickr for Instagram and then realizing that Instagram isn’t for photography, I’ve been looking into making a website just for displaying my photography in a fashion I can somewhat control (which ironically is the very reason I made this site back in 2001, before this damn blog took it over). I could use WordPress to add a photography page to this site (right now it points to my IG), but the WP website interface is rather daunting, so I’ve been looking at paid services like Squarespace as well as free services such as Google Sites, both of which would seem to be capable of helping me make a simple photography site with varying degrees of classiness. Squarespace can serve up a suave site, but it’s pricey, and I’ve been experimenting with test sites both there and on Google Sites to see what I can make.

Would making an actual newsletter be pointless? Would anyone want to get actual email notifications from me about whatever I’m blathering on about lately? I doubt it. But I’ll at least be sure to let you know when I get my photography site up and running. Both of you, even.

So the student exhibition of work from the last semester is up and running at the Ren An Hospital Museum exhibition space on the second floor. I made a video about it, using just my iPhone and a little stabilizer unit which turned out to be surprisingly effective. It’s going until mid-September, so if you’re looking for some good street photography and are baffled at the confusing art pieces that crowd Taiwan’s photography galleries these days, go have a look.

One day before the one-year anniversary of getting my first covid vaccine, Chenbl and I went to a clinic on Sanmin Road to get our second booster shots. It was a rather casual experience, just a few people waiting around instead of the strictly organized lines and zones I’ve encountered elsewhere. When we were at the counter a woman came in with a form to show the nurse. “You don’t need to show me that,” the nurse said, rather brusquely. Chenbl gave me a look.

“What’s up?” I said. He glanced at the women, who was now heading upstairs.

“I think she’s a covid patient getting meds,” he muttered. “The nurse didn’t want anyone to see her diagnosis.”

“I’m just going to wait outside,” I said. He laughed.

We were getting the Novavax vaccine this time, though my first three were Moderna, and Chenbl got BNT. Just for a little variety, to keep covid guessing. And a little payback for it keeping us guessing, I guess. My shoulder was sore for a few minutes, and I felt a little drunk for the next couple of days.

This might have affected my views on the two plays we went to see on the following two days. The first was at the National Theater at CKS, a grand affair. We were sitting on the very side of the theater above the stage in a box with a single file of seats, oddly not facing the stage but forward, necessitating a certain amount of rubbernecking. The play, featuring the complicated life of a woman from the 70’s to the 90’s and featuring a great deal of jumping around in time, was by Wu Nian-jen and was entirely in Taiwanese, so I missed a good portion of it as my Taiwanese is rather basic. Still, it was quite moving. The second play was up at the big new traditional theater complex near Zhishan Station in Shilin, and featured the marriage-related travails of a family of women. It was also quite good, and it being in mostly Mandarin I didn’t have to guess at any of the meanings. Afterward Chenbl and I walked over to an old neighborhood for dinner, and then back to Shilin Station, where they have unfortunately cut down all the trees to widen the road. That’s a shame.

I’d thought I was done with the after-effects of the vaccine, but after a couple of days feeling drunk and posting ill-advised rants on DPreview, I started just feeling exhausted, like bone-tired on an existential level. This is the first non-mRNA shot I’ve had for covid, and it was not playing. Fortunately it only lasted a day or so, and I got by by watching the excellent new season of The Orville. The BA4 and 5 variants are making their way into the general population, and cases, which had been falling, seem to be on the rise again. More people are maskless outside, and I suppose I can understand why in this spectacular combination of heat and humidity that, if I hadn’t come up in Florida and south Texas, might be unbearable. I took a bike ride along the river the other day and took my mask off to do so, as that is now allowed when exercising outside, and it did feel good. I’m keeping my (color-coordinated) mask on in crowds, though.

In other news, I’m looking at making a photography page for this site…well, not poagao.org, but poagao.com. Squarespace is looking like the best option for a technically impaired person like myself. In a way it would be coming full circle; when I started this site in 2001 my aim was to just have a place online where I could put my photos, that being before the photo sites had started up. Then came this blog, and the photography kind of just did its own thing. But now people are abandoning flickr and sites like Instagram are focusing on becoming TikTok, so perhaps it’s time to make a page on here where I can showcase various projects and topics. Feel free to let me know which particular photograpic websites you like most; I’m looking to keep it simple, but I’m open to suggestions. In any case, I’ll let y’all know when I get something up.

Things are getting busy again, on several levels. Despite all the Twitter-based hullabaloo about Pelosi’s upcoming visit to Taiwan (most of which can’t even be called journalism and completely misses the point), life goes on as normal here as ever.

Last week the Ramblers played a three-day-long gig at the Lin Family Gardens in Banqiao, in a courtyard out in front of one of the old halls. My instrument cart no doubt scuffed several of the centuries-old stone door frames on my way in, but I’ve always liked the place so it was nice to play there despite the oppressive heat. The staff were nice, providing us with tasty bento dinners, souvenir photos of us playing in cute frames, and even umbrellas when a heavy downpour followed our second performance. Thumper and Red Man missed the first show, so Sylvain filled in. Our old friend Chalaw worked wonders at the soundboard to make us sound good, and despite not having played in a good while we managed to put out three solid shows in three days. In between the brutally hot soundchecks and the shows later in the evening I would walk around the neighborhood exploring the various alleys and bridges, the markets and temples. Police on scooters zoomed around checking people’s IDs. After the shows it was cool to be able to wander the complex at night, when it’s usually closed, imagining all the shenanigans and goings-on that happened there back in the days when it was an oasis of culture and taste amid empty fields and swamps. Now it’s an oasis of culture and taste amid apartment buildings and shops of every description.

On the morning after the last show, I met up with Chenbl  and his parents at the Taipei high-speed rail station; we had breakfast on the bullet train south, arriving in Taichung in short order. Chenbl’s parents were staying at The Lin Hotel, a ritzy place near the National Theater, whereas we were staying at a place called simply The Place in another part of town. The neighborhood is crammed full of  swank high-rises now, totally unlike when the Ramblers performed at Tiger City so many years ago, the bitterly cold wind blowing across empty lots as we played. We took a train to the impressive Nantian Temple, which features a giant statue on top, and then a bus to the Second Market, a hexagonal affair, where we had delicious noodles for lunch.

We then strolled through the city through the artsy West District. It’s been too long since I visited Taichung; I miss it. Chenbl’s father commented that Taichung seems to have more potential these days. While Taipei’s been content to rest on its laurels as the capital, Taichung these days seems more about exploration and experimentation. It’s also more physically spread out, which makes a second metro line a must  if the city’s going to continue developing.  Residents apparently don’t even have to pay for bus trips under 10 kilometers. We walked to the Place where Chenbl and I were staying, put some stuff away, and headed out again when what had seemed like imminent rain did not manifest.

As a lot of walking was going on, we all packed light, though Chenbl’s father insisted on carrying several heavy bottles of water in his backpack. I only brought one bag as it was just one night and all I needed to bring besides what I usually have on me was an extra shirt. After going through a series of cheap bags whose zippers would break almost immediately, not to mention a Domke that eventually disintegrated, and on the recommendation of some local photographer friends as well as the badge of approval of DPreviews’ Chris Nichols and Big Head Taco, I recently spent bag to get bag from Wotancraft, a local company, and so far I like it a lot. It looks heavy but is actually quite light and comfortable.

Sunset was seen from the odd and interesting roof of the National Theater, which reminded me of that of the Casa Mia apartment building in Barcelona. Chenbl’s parents were fine dining at The Lin’s popular restaurant, so Chenbl and I headed over to the food court at Tiger City for some excellent beef rice bowls.

On Monday morning we took a bus over to The Lin, and then walked to Taichung City Hall, a trim and efficient pair of buildings linked up in the middle. We browsed the exhibition and then took a bus at one of the failed BRT “stations” to another part of town to look at Literature Museum which features a huge old tree in the courtyard. As we were wondering how old said tree was, rain began pouring down. Chenbl’s mother was the only one of us with the sense to bring a real umbrella; she took refuge in a small pavilion while Chenbl’s father and I moved to a tin structure where we could feel the rain pounding on the roof reverberating throughout the entire structure. Chenbl had found a handy arcade. There we all waited for the rain to ease, and it did after about an hour. Chenbl’s father is always full of interesting stories and advice, so the time went by quickly. We then walked to the old martial arts hall, and then took a bus back to the train station, where we spent the rest of the afternoon having ice cream treats and dinner at the Miyahara Confectionery, previously an Optometrist’s office but now more like a rebranded Harry Potter exhibition with cookies. At one point Chenbl and I popped out to get some of the obligatory suncakes. Chenbl refused to be seen carrying the other store’s suncakes into the confectionery, as apparently there’s some rivalry going on there, so he made me carry them instead as I apparently DNGAF about such things.

Chenbl’s parents were itching to get back home, so we took an early train from the huge new station, dwarfing the stately old one next to it, back to the high speed rail station, and then back to Taipei and home. It was good to get out of town for a bit; we need to do it more often. Chenbl and I are scheduled to get our second booster next week, and case numbers are dropping steadily, though I still suspect that when the new variants might arrest that trend, but most people seem to still be wearing masks (despite all the white dudes on those sites howling in protest all day), so perhaps we can still get through all of this ok.

I was planning to meet Chenbl later yesterday at Jiantan, so instead of getting my usual salmon bento to take back to the Water Curtain Cave for consumption, I had a pleasant sandwich/coffee/carrot cake combo at the Metro Cafe on Chongqing South Road. As it does just about every day in summer, the weather went from bright sun to threatening skies during the course of my meal, so I went back to my office to get an umbrella, planning to take the subway up to Jiantan to have a look around before meeting up with Chenbl after he got off work.

The sound of singing that was entirely too awful to be a recording, however, drew me to the square in front of Zhongshan Hall, where a large group of mostly elderly people huddled under tents as rain began to pelt down. Most of them were wearing vests sporting various military-themed logos, and they seemed to all know each other. The songs being sung were old-timey patriotic/nationalist songs (plus the first part of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” with the phrase “the final curtain” replaced by “the final battle”(!), and even more disturbing: Engelbert Humperdinck’s “Please Release Me”); the KMT was in heavy presence, as were various police officers, obviously armed, with one sporting a clump of white zip ties on her belt. I didn’t know what they were expecting; there were no counter protesters and hardly any media around.

They held a ceremony consisting of people lining up to lay yellow flowers on the “Monument to the Victory of the Anti-Japanese War and the Restoration of Taiwan” plaque opposite the hall. Several speeches were made conveying the disturbing message that the “real enemy” was the DPP, not the CCP. A Buddhist monk spoke, as well as various KMT officials. I walked around the edges of the crowd, taking a few photos but not daring to get too close as entirely too many of the old people were maskless and sitting clumped together under the tents. A few of them gave me some strange looks but mostly I was left alone as they probably assumed I was just some random tourist. It all felt a little sad and desperate, the last gasps of a disappearing world. But it would be dangerous to discount this demographic; although they are diminishing in numbers, especially due to covid, they still wield substantial financial and political power.

“Are you a photographer?” an unmasked Asian American man who looked to be in his 40’s asked me. As always, I didn’t know how to answer that question, but he wasn’t concerned with my lack of a definitive answer. He was, he said, a YouTuber, and a quite well known one at that, focusing on political analysis of both the U.S. and Taiwan. I didn’t contribute much to the conversation, mostly listening and nodding at his rather, uh…unconventional views. He stressed, with no prompting, that he wasn’t a fan of Trump, though I hadn’t asked or even mentioned Trump. That always strikes me as odd. But when he was talking about the “mystery” of Republicans gaining ground in Florida, I couldn’t help but ask if perhaps DeSantis’ agenda had been having an effect. “Who?” he asked, puzzled.

“Ron DeSantis?”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“The governor of Florida,”

“Oh, I don’t know who any of those people are,” he said, dismissing such knowledge as unimportant. The real issue, he said, was the DPP stuffing ballot boxes. I asked if he had participated in the voting process here, but again, no, he wasn’t a citizen; his source was…and you might want to sit down for this…a mysterious friend with connections to U.S. intelligence. I only hope I haven’t said too much.

The sun had come out again at this point, and Chenbl said he was on his way, so I caught the subway up to Jiantan. While Chenbl got his hair cut, I walked over to the river and spotted a nice puddle that would surely, I judged from the top of the flood wall, reflect the sunset and skyline. As I approached, another man approached from the opposite direction, a large DSLR around his neck. Surely he will see that reflection, I thought, so I adjusted my path to let him approach it first, but he didn’t. When I crouched down to get my shot, however, I heard the clack of his shutter and looked up to see him photographing me. So if you see a photograph of me crouching by a puddle, 1) this is probably what I was doing, and 2) this is not a rare thing for me. My fellow BME member Don Hudson always points this out, and I am not ashamed of my inability to resist the attraction of a reflective surface. I’ve been doing this shit since the Mirror Project of yore and even before, and I don’t plan on stopping.