Doji Sings the Tibetan Blues

Horse Trekking with the Khampa people of Western Sichuan

"Man-shaped thing…Doji?" asked my partner's wordless hand motions to the ancient Khampa woman.

"Come into my stone fortress for some yak-butter potion!" the woman (probably) said to us in her language. She stood at what seemed like nine feet tall, and had a dark face like a mountainside hiding two soft glowing gemstones for eyes. She took us in her massive hands and led us through a gauntlet of gazes to her front door.

"Oh, sorry, um, do you know a guy named Doji?" I asked verbally with appropriate pantomimed man-shapes. "We're supposed to find him around here, he's our guide." I did a little horseless galloping dance, "horse trekking?"

My hopping and arm swooping to a soundtrack of gobbledygook was met with broad smiles and further gestured inviting. We panicked and decided to run, as politely as possible, back to the muddy track from whence we came. This family didn't know it, but over the past hour of frantic guide hunting, we'd had similar invites from all the neighbours.

Each family in that small blustery village kept a pair of guard dogs chained up, and they tore violently at the air separating us. These dogs had criminal records, despised the earth we walked on and worst of all, they hadn't heard of a man-shaped thing named Doji either.

***


The urge grew in us like a fever as we neared China. That single word that has obsessed thousands of bold adventurers throughout the ages rung long in our ears: "Tibet." Even as we explored neighbouring countries on a recent pan-Asian backpacking tour my girlfriend and travel partner, Sandi MacPherson, and I kept returning to one question: "How can we get to Tibet?"

When we arrived in China we spent several days in several cities talking to travel agents, airlines, tour operators and fellow travelers about independent travel in the Tibet Autonomous Region. It's become a popular thing to do for tourists: 130 000 foreigners and 1.67 million Chinese visited the region in 2005, up from 800 000 total in 2004. The official rules on traveling independently in the TAR have tightened and loosened seemingly with the wind over the years, but due to the April 25th protest by (and subsequent detaining of) four members of the organization Students for a Free Tibet at the Mount Everest base camp, the Chinese government re-sealed the borders to independents. This left the legal traveler with one option - an option that happens to be a favorite with the Chinese travel authorities: the group tour to Lhasa.

Tibet is a word and a nation that stirs a great amount of emotion in people. It's the kind of place that regardless of how many Brad Pitt movies are set there it will always be exotic and mysterious. Mystery - the unknown – causing a disorienting but pleasurable sort of panic when approached. Trying to savor this dizzy joy as a member of a gaggle of camera jockeys in the overrun and overwhelmingly Chinese city of Lhasa seemed to us to be the last possible choice. A young Italian traveler we met in Kunming described the scene he saw in Tibet's capital as "tragic", and lamented seeing only a handful of Tibetans in the wash of Chinese tourists and business owners.

The other time-honoured and much more exciting approach to visiting Tibet is to simply run the border. Sneak in the back door, as they say. Henrich Herrer, the author of Seven Years in Tibet did it, as have any number of bold travelers whose stories you can read in exploration periodicals. This route involves real danger, cops, corruption, and a tough go at finding transportation or accommodation. While all of this sounded a lot better to us than the packaged Potala tour there was one glaring problem when considering the itch to "just go." The problem was: we're not bold adventurers, not even a little bit. Cold, grime, bellyaches and hardship I'm all for – it's the arrest part that gets me.

So where was our Tibet?

This quandary is what led us, by great fortune, to discover a secret. It seems that the Tibet that has always been is quite different from the TAR that exists today. Traditional Tibet is made up of three provinces: Ü-Tsang, Amdo and Kham, and, as we came to know a desperate few moments before giving up on our dream of visiting the most mysterious place in the world, that latter province, since the most recent redrawing of the borders in 1955, actually lays well outside the TAR. Tibet's eastern Kham province is today one and the same with China's northern Yunnan, southern Qinghai and western Sichuan provinces. The mountainous region in the far west of Sichuan, especially, enjoys a much higher Tibetan demographic than much of the TAR itself. We asked some other travelers in Chengdu about the area, saw one photo of a town called Tagong and set out the next day on a public bus.


***


The tiny township of Tagong surrounds a famous monastery of the same name nestled in a sharp valley cut into the grasslands a beautiful 600 km west of Chengdu. The journey there takes you from 500 m all the way up to 3700 m (higher than the city of Lhasa) over two days with a stopover in the underrated mountain town of Kangding. The town is seen as a pill to tourists, unpleasant but necessary, but to the Tibetans and Chinese that live nearby Kangding stands as a border town between two worlds.


We left Kangding on the morning of May 10, 2007 and spent the day on a minibus watching a high definition nature show outside the windows. As the sun came up great ranges of craggy snow-capped giants revealed themselves generously, backs blazing red, through distances of undulating hilly plateau. The switchback hills were green with dollops of snow on top and everywhere there were scattered boulders and nomad's tents tossed over the land like dice. The earth was a thrum of moving light cast dramatically through the raging stratus overhead. Small pools of mirrored water dotted the ground like holes revealing a sky beneath. We stopped a few times; bundled nomads stepped out of tents to assist us, kindly sharing their stream-piped water our overheated radiator. Eventually the foothills gave way to great valleys: light-tricked beauties holding only a handful of trees and the odd, distinctively Kham, stone house: wide at the base, planted firmly into the earth, windowsills thick and as trapezoidal as the buildings themselves, extolled with Buddhist greens, reds and whites.



Tagong came to us six hours later and immediately revealed itself to be not of this Earth, or at least not of the Earth we had known previously. The town exists as a single 250-meter street lined with ornately façaded shops and colourful homes that lead up to the Tagong monastery. The town is flanked by bulging hills covered in various arrays of prayer flags, thousands of them. One great band of them stretches on cables a long 600 meters across the valley and over the monastery, casting the inscribed prayers to the heavens.

I climbed a hill overlooking the town; the altitude putting me on my knees halfway up. I sat on that hill an hour, Sandi having retired, huffing. My eyes were wide and they drank greedily from the light. All around hundreds of prayer flags flew on the wind; bees, crows and yaks tended to their work of feeding. Behind me lay a vista of snowy mountains, including the Yala, one of Tibet's sacred mountains. The combination of the animals, people, land and buildings formed a magical substance that I savored gingerly; I tried not to blink, worried it would disappear. A dull panic nestled in my chest like the sort you feel when a small bird settles next to you, closer than usual, before it sees you and flies away. I whispered to myself: "this is the most amazing place I have ever been."



Below me the streets were windblown and wild, full of rough dogs, blanketed and beribboned motorcycles, and a busy populous of monks and non-monks. When we first laid eyes on the residents we were silenced by their imposing presence: tall, colourful, and just a little bit frightening.



The people of Kham are called Khampas. They have an inimitable appearance: the women wear their hair in tight braids woven with red yarn on the tops of their heads, their clothing made of simple black wraps and beautifully woven scarves; the men have great squalls of black hair hidden under brimmed hats, they wear rings and other jewelry in silver and turquoise, a dagger hangs from each of their belts just visible under thick wraps of fur and khaki.

The Khampas also have a legendary reputation: their very name rides all over the Tibetan Plateau today, striking fear and awe in the hearts of all who catch it on the wind. They have been described as cowboys (naturally, they wear the hats!), and, more accurately, as warriors. In their geographic position as Tibet's sentinels of the east, the Khampas have traditionally been those charged with warding off the Han hordes – usually successfully. Seen as savages by today's Chinese, and as sharply stubborn independents by Lhasa, they are also known as bandits, and according to the admonitions we received in Tagong from the Khampas themselves, the reputation is well warranted.

"You must hire two horses for yourselves, two guides, and horses for the guides," declared the fattest Khampa in the world. He was dressed in Western clothes, and leaned forward while his slick hair leaned back. We met him, "the boss," at the Khampa Cultural Center in Tagong on a tip that he could help us arrange some horse trekking – the only way for a pair of altitude-sick Canadians to properly explore the surrounding grasslands.

"How much will that cost?" I asked. A calculator appeared. The man clacked away and furrowed his brow.

"Six hundred renminbi each per day." I borrowed the calculator.

"Eighty-four dollars? Why do we need two guides anyway?"

"For protection. Not everyone is friendly here. They will steal the horses."

We decided to check with Sally, owner of Sally's Café, to see if she could arrange something cheaper. Sally's is the place to go in the region for decent travel information, and probably the only place that you may see other travelers. We stayed in the guesthouse called Snowlands above the café for 40RMB ($5.50) per night. The electric blankets were mint.

Sally was between trekking contacts in April, but in a few days she managed to find us a guide with horses for 200RMB ($28) per day. We were to walk one hour past the new golden lamasery at the edge of town until we came to some stone houses. "Ask for Doji," she said.

***

Defeated by language, cold and dogs we gave up the search for our guide and began the long walk back to Tagong. Then we saw him. He was corralling horses at the edge of the village using only sharp hissing sounds. He stood at over six feet tall, black hair exploded from his flopping cap. He had turquoise earrings and a broad weathered face, though when we saw his eyes we knew he was young. When we called out his name he flashed a golden-toothed grin. This grin would soon be our only familiar guidepost in this fantastic landscape.

Doji led us to his family's home. Like the few other homes clinging to the wild grasslands it was a stone homestead for yak herding, and the yaks slept like black lumps in the front yard. The dogs rushed us, but quickly turned away yelping when Doji picked up a large rock. Wading through the yak-lumps we came to the front door and were greeted by new friends: Doji's wife, her mother, and his baby daughter. They seemed completely alien, and completely beautiful. Standing there, 2800 kilometers and worlds away from Beijing, yet on Beijing time, the high sun belied the fact that it was dinnertime and that we should go inside.

The main room was dark, the ceiling low. Black smoke from the central wood stove painted and perfumed every object in view. We smiled wide, and they smiled back, and we all gathered around a low table. "Mdshe sdndjk ddnh hhxjjoww," the grandmother offered.

"Yes," said we.

"Hieuw hoisjjs iiaadsjkoka?" she asked back.

"Yes," we replied, blushing. To say it was awkward would be a large understatement, but we did our best and quickly found common ground in playing with the baby. The rosy-cheeked infant was bewildered and enraptured by us: we must have looked like what cartoons look like to us: bright in our synthetic clothing, animated with big eyes. We made funny noises at her and I gave her the only object I had with me: a shiny carabiner with the word Canada written on it. She sucked on it gratefully.

Doji pulled a few canisters off a shelf nearby. Soft and hard yak cheese, yak butter, barley flour and sugar, all ingredients in the staple Tibetan food called tsampa. We tried the cheese: the hard version looked and tasted like hard rice grains; the soft cheese was a stringy mound sitting in a puddle of whey, and with enough sugar it tasted pretty good. We were poured bowls of tea, and then melted yak-butter into it. We lifted the bowls and winced before the oily liquid hit our lips, expecting it to be rancid. We were surprised when it wasn't, and that we liked it. It tasted like pure nourishment ought to taste. Next we were instructed to mix large amounts of barley flour with a bit of sugar into the yak-butter tea. This formed the thick tsampa, and though it was bland, it felt good in our stomachs. Doji smiled gold at our appreciative gestures.

Doji's wife showed us baskets of potatoes, noodles and rice, and we nodded - Chinese food - this family had had guests before. We all went outside into the falling dusk. Doji bounced the baby and the women milked the black yaks from hidden udders. We observed, trying to avoid eye contact with the huge and horned animals. Sandi asked the grandmother where the washroom was (using a little squatting action), and was led though a wooden door into a large pasture.

"Here?" Sandi asked.

"Here," I said as the grandmother demonstrated.

We went back inside and sat down to a steaming meal of plain rice, potatoes and noodles. The baby laughed, and so did we.

***

The next morning we suited up a pair of ragged ponies and set out with Doji over the vast expanse of land. We walked for hours through light precipitation over passes, through valleys and across broad steppes. Yaks and horses grazed everywhere with the odd group of colourful herders hissing sharp. We said almost nothing, content sitting in our saddles or walking along absorbing this strange place. Doji sang, his songs always beautiful and always sad, and we wondered aloud what they were about. His voice carried out of his tall body and seemed to hang in the valleys, a haunting wave keeping us afloat.

For two days we wandered the grasslands, stopping to chat with the passers by: a pair of young women who spoke to Doji but looked at us; an older herder whom Doji clearly admired: he carried himself like an important man, and often glanced at the horizon.

On the first afternoon we came to a nomad's tent, or not a tent exactly, it was half stone and half tarp. The inside was a cozy rest stop to a rotating cast of passers-by, including Doji and his pair of colourful travelers. We drank yak-butter tea and ate barley bread left over from breakfast. We shared peanuts and oranges that we had brought with us. I wondered how much vitamin C could be in yak butter and barley flour. "These people look pretty healthy," I thought, "maybe that whole vitamin C thing is a lie."

The room was warm from a wood stove, and the back wall was completely covered in Buddhist iconography, including one inconspicuous photo of the Dalai Lama. This object is illegal in this part of the world, and seeing it made me feel like we were part of a special club. Indeed we were.


***



On our final afternoon on the grasslands Doji marched us over the soft undulating terrain toward some distant beflagged hills. He sang and walked in a mesmerizing rhythm. The wind blew in our ears, fading Doji's song in and out. Eventually we found ourselves in a village that was primarily religious in purpose. Nuns in burgundy robes scuttled about everywhere, each spinning a small prayer wheel in her hands. The village looked ancient, slabs of engraved slate used for roof pieces laid about between the small homes. A huge slate lamasery occupied the center of the village, surrounded by large brass prayer wheels being turned by a rotating stream of nuns. Doji walked around, sending his prayers to the heavens with each spin, and invited us to do the same.

A small crimson-cheeked boy followed us everywhere. He wore ragged woolen clothes; his hair was as short as the nuns'. His face was small and round and it looked like an old man's does, wary and exhausted, except for his smooth skin and shining eyes. He made me feel uneasy and I was glad when he finally left us, though now, as I write this, I can't shake those eyes. He never said a word to us.

After some time Doji pointed to a large hill at the edge of the village. It was completely covered in flapping prayer flags, faded and frayed. He motioned to us to climb the hill, horses by the tethers. We climbed, curious. Our hearts pumped hard trying to deliver the tiny amounts of oxygen it had to give to our muscles. We stopped several times for breath and then, passing a monk's hut, we arrived on a small plateau.

A group of large brown goats sat on hill rising beyond us. There were small bits of bone strewn everywhere, some recognizable as ribs of varying sizes. Doji pointed to a concrete platform with rebar loops protruding. He made a motion: thumb across neck, flying into the sky.

He had taken us to the local sky burial site. Sky burial is the most common funerary ritual performed in Tibet. A person dies, their body is held for some days until the spirit ascends to the afterlife, and then the vessel is disposed of.

One of the goats hopped and spread its wings. Sandi shouted: "vultures!" After the body is laid on a concrete platform, a group of mourners will watch a local monk scalp and then dissect it. Vultures appear and consume that most physical aspect of the group's former loved one. The left over bones are then smashed and placed into balls of tsampa to be taken away. The Chinese call it barbaric, but in a place where the ground is usually frozen and fuel is scarce, sky burial makes logical (and environmental) sense. To the Tibetans this offering to the vultures is an act of kindness, a most Buddhist expression of love and respect to the holy birds. I wondered, looking over at the animals, "Do they just wait there? Do they eat often?"

Doji instructed us to not touch the bones.

Sandi asked, "When you," she pointed, "die," her thumb across her neck, "you, sky burial?" She pointed at the platform.

"Yes, yes, of course!" Doji seemed to say with his spirited nodding. Next to the platform was a large pile of scalps, like wigs, held there with a stone. Some of them still had braids tied with ribbon, and I noticed that very few of them were grey.

I felt a strong affinity with the world Doji was kindly sharing with us. It seemed like the most natural thing to say: "Me too," and I indicated my wishes to Doji. His face grew very stern and serious, and I caught a glimpse of the fearsome Khampa inside him. Finally his face softened into that goofy golden smile and he gave approving thumbs up. It was probably a stupid thing to say but at the time it seemed to me a perfectly harmonious way to go. It still does.

On our way out of the village we ran into a New Zealander couple we had met days earlier at Sally's. They had visited this village earlier in the day and they cut us off as we began to tell them about the sky burial site: "We walked in on it," said the woman. They had been wandering and saw a group of people on top of the hill. They climbed up to see what was going on and were ushered away quickly, but not before they caught a glimpse of "a pair of scissors or something" cutting into the face and head of a recently deceased child. I expressed pity for their trauma, but couldn't help feeling a cautious sort of envy.

Walking back toward Doji's village I thought about his lifestyle, tending horses, eating tsampa, raising his daughter. I thought about his eventual demise, and wondered if his hair will ever have the opportunity to be grey, leaving a patch of hair, wise and ripe, lying next to a concrete gate to heaven. He started to sing, and his song carried us all the way across the steppe. We felt happy for Doji.

LIFE archived on Google's GIS

http://images.google.com/hosted/life

Some that I found particularly interesting:


Cree Indian folk-singer Buffy Sainte-Marie, while in New York.
Location: New York, NY, US
Date taken: 1965
Photographer: Arthur Schatz


Nova Scotia fishermen at sea off Grand Banks.
Location: Newfoundland, Canada
Date taken: November 1952
Photographer: Peter Stackpole


Members of first Japanese mission to US bearing swords & clad in traditional clothing.
Date taken: 1860



Trio of women in provincial clothes posing with dishes for picnic for Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini during Hitler's state visit.
Location: Santa Martinella, Italy
Date taken: May 1938
Photographer: Hugo Jaeger



Korean traffic cop using balletic hand gestures & footwork while directing traffic fr. his platform perch in center of intersection of the city.
Location: Seoul, Korea (South)
Date taken: June 1947
Photographer: John Florea


A multitude of Gibson Girls entitled "Design from wallpaper suitable for a bachelor apartment," from EIGHTY DRAWINGS INCLUDING THE WEAKER SEX: THE STORY OF A SUSCEPTIBLE BACHELOR by Charles Dana Gibson.
Location: US
Date taken: 1903
Photographer: Charles Dana Gibson


Two nuns questioning a little Chinese girl at the American Mission school for Chinese children.
Location: San Francisco, CA, US
Date taken: 1936
Photographer: Alfred Eisenstaedt



Portrait of Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (future Queen Mother) at time of her engagement to Albert, Duke of York
Location: London, United Kingdom
Date taken: 1923


Artist Pablo Picasso wearing a cow's head mask (backwards, with a face drawn on) on beach at Golfe Juan near Vallauris.
Location: Vallauris, France
Date taken: 1949
Photographer: Gjon Mili

Letters From Jenny #1

Comedy? Perhaps.
A poetic window into a complicated young woman's soul? Absolutely.

This is a new video series I'm working on. They are readings of letters I received during my tenure as ESL teacher abroad. Jenny, wherever you are, I hope you're still fighting the good fight.

Big Bright Might Night Tonight

I'm DJing for the first time in my new adopted home of Toronto tonight. It's at kind of an open-decks sort of deal, but it's pretty popular and my set is REEEEDIC. 17 tracks in 20 minutes, on a mash-up/baltimore club tip, and I've been rehearsing all week.

This is the set, exactly (complete with screw-ups as they will happen live):

01) Gang Gang Dance - Desert Storm
02) Esau Mwamwaya feat. Radioclit - Funa Funa
03) DJ Tameil - Handz Up Inst.
04) Lykke Li - Breaking it Up (then back to Tameil)
05) DJ Rob 3 - The Chase
06) L-Vis 1990 - Change the Game
07) Radiohead - Reckoner (LoveTongueAttack Bmore remix)
08) MIA - Bamboo Banga
09) Queen - Flash Gordon (Jamie Fantastic bootleg)
10) Wonder Girls - Tell Me
11) Cajmere - Percolator
12) Nirvana - Lithium
13) DJ King Tutt - Still Rolling
14) Boy 8 Bit - The things that freeks are made of
15) James Nasty - You So Hawt
16) Le Le - Breakfast (DJ SEGA remix)
17) Slayer - Angel of Death (DJ Ayres remix)

Download: DJ CPR, 20 minutes, Nov 8th 2008 (sharebee)

If you can make it, I go on at 10:20 at Disgraceland, which is at the corner of Bloor and Ossington in Toronto.

///

Then, post-me, we fly down to Wrongbar for the infamous (and will-have-been-just-recently-rinsed-uptown-by-myself) DJ SEGA. This guy's style is amazing, a huge influence on me, and not to be missed.

Check out some DJ SEGA footage:

Docu-style


party boyeee

Oh the Thinks You Can Think!

1)














photo from cafeconlesley.blogspot.com

from Christopher Reynolds
to gavin@streetcarnage.com
date Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 11:52 PM
subject the injustice of my sbtvc ban
mailed-by gmail.com
hide details 11:52 PM

Reply

Dearest funny man:

I'm a huge fan and I read your stupid/awesome website pretty much every day. Yesterday I was apparently banned, and now I get this message: "You were told repeatedly to stop promoting your awful blog." when I try to access the site. I have three problems with this statement: 1) I haven't promoted my blog.. or, rather, I did enter its URL into the message box twice, but that was weeks ago, and I stopped of my own accord because I realized the classinessless-ism of it all. A spammer I am not. 2) Nobody told me, especially not repeatedly, to stop. I just stopped anyway, because I'm cool like that. and 3) The adjective 'awful' is inadequate to describe my blog ("masturbatory", "immature", "scatterbrained", "narcissistic", "vaguely amusing-in-the-way-that-secretly-spying-on-the-mentally-ill-is-amusing" would have convinced me) so you must have mistaken my IP for someone lamer.

Please un-ban me, I can't live without you and your weird-assed moustache.

Love,
Christopher Reynolds
septeberpolice.blogspot.com


2)



Hey you know when you're at a show and the singer kind of looks at you... but then keeps looking at you, and then you have a staring contest? Well, sometimes that staring contest can get weird, or sometimes it can feel meaningful, like you're gonna get married or something, or at the very least engage in some neon sex-magick directly after the show. I had this happen to me the other night at a Vivian Girls show (but to be fair, their songs are so short that the staring contest couldn't have been that long), but the best was in 2005 when I saw the Fiery Furnaces. They were playing the song Chris Michaels (y'know, the 7+minute jam that starts "Later at lunch with the taco lettuce crunch"). Eleanor Friedberger and I engaged in an mystical eye-intertwining eternal that lasted what seemed like most of the song. I was lifted on high by her sleepy eyes and weird-assed song, I felt a real, human connection, and everyone else disappeared around us, a sparkly space-scene in its place, "oh oh dream weaver, I believe you can get me through the nii-iiiiight." Or maybe she was looking at someone else, whatever.


3)

I have been living frugally for the first time in a good couple of years... and cooking at home for the first time in one year. I'm talking Patak's curry paste, peanut-butter, salad and nachos. I ate out every day for a year, and then, the past couple of months, not so much. But then, yesterday, I went to dinner with my father and the infamous Cindy Lewis (who is 8 mo/1 we pregnoid). Pastis, bone marrow out of a huge roasted bone, wine, steak tartare, and some 10-word desserts. Oh, and some complimentary gay eye-humping from the gentleman across from me who ordered the exact same thing.


4)

It's 19 degrees for the third day in a row in Toronto. What gives?


5)

First nations culture in Canada is super interesting. It suddenly seems insane to me that we completely ignore what our country was all about for millennia. This place was populated by a distinct and fascinating series of indigenous societies waaaay before we were here, so why not care about that? Oh and I made out with this awesome Ojibwe girl the other day.


6)

Halloween was fun. My friend Esten went as Amy Winehouse, Sandi went as a lesbian I think, and I went as an unemployed writer wannabe. Sandi and I left Esten's house party and went to two sold-out shows: a Cobrasnake / Pase Rock show at Wrongbar, and then on to the Drake to see our pal Skratch Bastid. Both shows were pretty hype, but made all the more hype by the fact that we actually got into them at such a late hour (yeah, we drew fake stamps on ourselves with a pen).


7)

I'm DJing my Toronto debut show this Saturday at Disgraceland at Bloor and Ossington. The show is appropriately titled "Everyone's a DJ" and my set is only 20 minutes. But, I'm going to play 16 songs in that 20 minutes, including Gang Gang Dance, DJ Sega, Dj Tameil, Esau Mwamwaya, Nirvana, Lykke Li, Slayer and some guy called L-Vis 1990. I'll record it and you can download it this weekend.


8)

So Hot Right Now; three girls I am way into:

(a)

Ugly Betty

(b)

Tamina from So You Think You Can Dance Canada

(c)

Jenny from Shot By Kern


9)

The next Animal Collective album is out soon. It's going to be amazing. I posted a song from it on this blog months ago, called Brother Sport. It's probably the best song in the world. Anyway, the album is called Merriweather Post Pavilion. Check out the super-psychedelic optical illusion cover:




10)

UPDATE!:::

Gavin McInnes
to ...
...
Christopher Reynolds
date Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 12:41 AM
subject bans lifted
mailed-by streetcarnage.com
hide details 12:41 AM

Reply

OK you guys should be fine. Just so you know. The only things that get you banned completely is sabotage like SPAMming or a huge sea of bullshit comments again and again.

As far as individual comments go we delete:
-mindless stupid racism
-any "I'd rape her" shit

Also, if you're making comments in the Boners please don't bother telling us if you'd fuck her or not. Nobody cares. And we don't need to hear that her knees are too lumpy or she's fat or you don't like her neck. It's not a biology site.

If this doesn't apply to you please disregard,
Love,
Gavin


11)

Update 2.0:

My email was just posted to the Street Carnage blog, including a link to this post which has resulted in a flood of new hits to this blog and consequently a flood of self high-fives.

Back to the Future

So I left Korea for goodish, and the memories have begun to distill themselves and the experience is fading into the distance, as is evidenced by my dwindling Korean toothpaste tube:



My new life is made up of a few simple elements:

1) My next career: copywriting.



I've been reading this book non-stop. It's by this guy named Joe Sugarman who is a legend in the field of advertising, copywriting ("copy", if you didn't know, is any text written for commercial purposes) and specifically in direct marketing. He was the don of slinging calculators mail-order style in the 70s as the owner and operator of JS&A, a leading proprietor of "space-age" products. He's old, and the text is written in droolingly, forehead-slappingly simple prose. One passage reads: "Good copy should be like a woman's skirt, long enough to cover the important parts but short enough to maintain interest." Of course! Thanks, Joe! It's a retarded book but it's extremely insightful.

The plan:

Work on a copywriting portfolio for the next few weeks, whore myself to some big agencies in Toronto, get a job, and then find a trophy wife, buy a Jag, and develop a bad coke habit. Wish me luck!

2) The new place.

I live in downtown Toronto, just west of Bathurst St. on College St. It's the center of the traditional Little Italy. It's slick as hell. My room has wood floors and a big picture window overlooking College St. Here's a shot, leaning out my window, looking east:



Many of the residents here are Italian, and many don't speaky de English so very well*. Socially the neighbourhood couldn't be better: tons of everything required, but not so noisy as to be annoying. It's also relatively beautiful, which is a bonus.

[*Hilarious: at the polls today, there were several Old-Italian-Guy VS. T-shirt-With-Blazer-20-Something-Poll-Volunteer confrontations. One of them like so:

Old Italian Guy: Heresa my paper.
T-shirt&Blazer: Great, sir! Can I see your identification?
OIG: [displaying a yellowed and dusty card] Here, it'sa me.
T&B: Oooookidoki, sir, do you have anything that has your address on it?
OIG: ... ...
T&B: Maybe a health card, or some piece of ID with your address on it?
OIG: I live 134 Grace Street!
T&B: Oooookay sir, but do you have any documenta-
OIG: It'sa me! I'm Canadian citizen! Since-a 19-
T&B: Oh, well then-
OIG: I'M ME!! I'M ME!!!! I'M ME!! ]


Oh yeah, I have roommates. They are two 20-year-old female Ryerson students, Meg and Briar. Ummm... yeah it should be alright.


3) Shows.



Toronto is a big tour destination. I could go to a good show every night if I wanted to (/was rich). This is good! Seeing as how I don't have a job yet I'm trying to be frugal... but I can't help spending money on live music, seeing as how I've been so deprived the past couple of years in Korea (Bjork, Ennio Morricone, sure... but:). Since I've been here I've seen Hollywood Holt/Million $ Mano, Kid Cudi, Santogold, A-Trak, and, as you can see above, Howlin Rain, which is the frontman-from-Comets On Fire's new band. That was last night and it was a-MA-zing. On my bulletin board next to this desk are three pairs of tickets: Diplo/Boy 8 Bit, Of Montreal/Gang Gang Dance and Keith Fullerton Whitman. All in the next couple of weeks. BO BO BO!

4) Cooking and eating.

Up until 3 days ago I hadn't cooked a meal for more than 10 months. We're talking restaurants breakfast/lunch/dinner for almost a year straight. Woah! So it's all lentils, chickpeas, brown rice and tons and tons of vegetables for the next few months. It's fun though, I missed cooking and I'm pretty good at it. I miss doing things I'm good at. Like complaining. I should complain more. *knuckle crack* Hmm... how about: White people irritate my eyes with their non-sexiness. Ohhh yeah, there we go, that felt good!

Published in print, BAD IDEA #4: SEX 2.0

My first print-published piece appeared one year ago in a British young-lit journal called BAD IDEA. I really love the magazine - it's smart, funny, and the graphics are great. Today I finally got to see a copy, and though it's totally awesome to see my face printed in a magazine that is distributed all across the English-speaking world, it was not so pleasant to see how they'd mangled my words. The version that appears in print is devoid of flow, has been robbed of style, and there's a grammatical error to boot! Isn't it an editor's responsibility to check with a writer before they print something that's been altered drastically? No, I suppose not. Ah well, water/bridge whatevs.

Here's the cover:




Here's the piece:



(click for larger)


And here are my words, the words that the editor had agreed to print:

When I was 23 I was hired as a "daily" assistant director on an American network-TV movie starring Lucy Lawless, otherwise known as Xena: Warrior Princess. I was assigned to Lucy and ferried her from hair to make-up, blocking, touch-ups, and to set, all with perfect timing.
Actors have a tough job - to perform on demand - and many will cultivate neurotic rituals to help. A mustachioed 1970s star I worked with needed a moment before each shot to growl; an Oscar-winning actress required a painfully specific 17-word Starbucks coffee – scalding hot, constant refills. It was part of my job to facilitate this sort of thing.
Everything went smoothly on that first morning with Lucy Lawless. No rituals.
Late in the day we were in a dark tunnel running underneath a mental hospital shooting a scene where Lucy's character was escaping a swarm of mutant vampire bats. It was hot as hell; everyone was dripping. The star buzzed about, getting touch-ups, waiting for a last lighting adjustment. I hung close, listening for instructions on my walkie-talkie. She brushed past and I thought I heard her whisper, "I'm sooooo hot." Everyone was sweating, but this wasn't that kind of "hot."
"No way," I thought to myself, and I quickly reported this to a friend in the camera department. He was well impressed, but I was dumbfounded.
The lighting issue almost resolved I stood by ready to ask Lucy to set. Suddenly she approached, pressed herself against me, and purred in my ear the absolute filthiest, hottest smut I had ever heard. Each word that passed into me from her wet mouth shocked my nervous system, hijacking it, rendering me powerless. My blood boiled, my face flushed, and I almost lost my balance.

Women supposedly reach their sexual peak later than men. I could barely cope – was I past mine? At almost 40 Lucy Lawless seemed suddenly and definitely in her sexual prime, and it scared the shit out of me. She was Xena: Sex Warrior, and I was any man, standing in her way, about to be devoured in her deadly loins.
A few minutes later the rush in my ears quieted and the walkie-talkie finally became audible again.
"Jesus Christ Chris, get Lucy to set! Are you listening to me?" I couldn't see her anywhere.
"Oh, never mind, here she is. Thanks Chris, doing a great job, man."


Funny that the illustrator had obviously created the image based on my original text (wherin I noted her age), and so now one of the main features of the image is just hanging there, making no sense whatsoever. Yyyyep, overall a good introduction to the world of print I think. Giddyup!

MOTHERSWIMMER

I had a dream last year about an island. The island was populated by a remote and primitive people who did well there on their own except that there were no men on the island, only women. Once every 10 years or so, a tall ship carrying a group of silent colonial-looking men would arrive on the island, and there would be a ritual. In this ritual, the young women would line-up on a pier out over a bay. The men would swim under water, one for each woman, submerging themselves a few feet below the shimmering surface. The young women, having trained for this ritual their whole lives, would then dive into the water toward the men, and as they arced and swam upward to meet them, the men would swallow the beautiful young women whole.

There were some other characters and details in the dream, including a mother who was training her daughter for the ritual, a "motherswimmer" as she was known on the island. The daughter had no idea that the ritual would end in her being eaten, so the mother, laden with the guilt of her secret, switched places with her daughter last minute. As the daughter realized what her mother had done for her she realized that she was destined to be a motherswimmer too.

I think the main theme of this dream, and I'll write it out properly one of these days, is that men are inherently evil in every way, and that if we really had any respect for the miracle of nature that is women, we would spare them our sullied and unworthy company. Of course I'm projecting my own man-guilt, hewn of my recent hyper-active dating schedule, but there you have it. Themes.

Anyway, I wrote a song about the dream the very next day, but didn't finish it until today.

It's on an ethereal tip.


Motherswimmer
swim for your daughters
keep them
hold them
lie to them
for tomorrow

a white march
toward black depths
of kelp
into the throats
of men
the black hearts
of men



Phew, a little heavy, sorry!


Take a listen to the song via You Tube. I made a music video of sorts for it, walking around my neighbourhood today.

MOTHERSWIMMER

party tonight! + last day at work in Seoul

Hey! There's a party tonight! Underland Vol. 4, featuring Bobby and I, Christopher, tag-team DJing from 12 - 3 am.

We're going to play everything from Lil' Wayne to the Ronettes, built on a bed of electro and house.

It's also kind of my humble farewell event, so COME COME COME.

The party is in Hongdae at Myoungwallgwan. Click HERE for a map to the club.

///

Here're some pictures from my last day of work:



Tae-hyung, Dong-gun, Eun-mi, Heather, Christopher, Jade Level 3 Semi 4 life!




Heather




Michelle, my Movie Club devotee



Capitalism is EXCITING!!!



Bobby sorts out 21-down.



Darryn feat. Charles (who taught me the famous re-fill the soda can magic trick yesterday)




Mo Mo, Michelle, Christopher, Tim, Brent




Grant: The Mystery and the Majesty




Kelly



Daisy




Lucy




Torres and Mischa




Me 'n' Lewis ("Come on everybody, G...")



Nadia, Mischa, Torres




An old guy



Dong-gun

바람둥이 patrol in effect: Le Le "Breakfast"

Music by Le Le. Art by Piet Parra.

Yes.

Alexander Wang designs things to honour yours |||+||| Touche Pas Mon Sexe

Imagine for a moment that I saw these jeans in real life.

At a party, on the street. On a short girl, with big, messy hair, dark skin and a goofy attitude.

Then imagine that you were there with me and tasked with containing the storm.

It'd be like this: you know in war when one green-helmeted bloke notices the grenade land in the bunker and then he jumps on top of it and later receives a posthumous purple heart or lavender cross or whatever? It'd be like that except you'd be jumping on that shit at Hiroshima.








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There's a record store/record lable in Paris called BORN BAD (check their myspace) who are dealing with some fun and fashionable music at the moment. They are also responsible for a recent heads-up-world-don't-forget-this-shit compilation called "BIPPP: French Synth Wave 1979-85". Of course it's awesome.

The best track is called Touche Pas Mon Sexe by a Virgin-signed band called Comix. It's from 1982, the year of my birth, and it's hilarious and funky and fun.

I heard about it from DJ Eugene Blake (whose bluejeans ache), so cheers to him.

DOWNLOAD--> Comix - Touche Pas Mon Sexe (zshare)

This Summer is Deadly 2