Tag Archives: Centum City

memoria

read my mind

I look up and see them.

Window workers in Centum City

I think the same thing other people think about people hanging from buildings.

I’ve been listening to one song over and over. “Read my Mind” by The Killers. I don’t like the music video and the song is not something I would normally enjoy. The video is weird in a lazy way. But there are some manjar-covered parts within the song that feel nice and sweet to me… like Brandon Flowers, the vocalist, unexpectedly changing his voice to sing “Oh Well”… or his appearance… his western mustache and tie. When I watch the video I see myself in the future. I’m in the future listening to this song and reminiscing about the past (now, the present)… my nights here in Korea. And in that past, I’m wearing a western mustache and tie, and I’m on a hipster bike cruising down Korean alleyways after a light rain. The wet streets shine under neon signs.

So even if the video and song feel lame, the combination has an emotional effect on me… and about 13,000,000 other viewers. That effect is total star-quality.

For your consideration

memoria

Stolen camera, glaciers, cowboy plays for Korean boys and girls.

January 16, 2012. Woke up before dawn to finish my wild west script for the kids I teach. Skyped with my dad about Patagonia glaciers, sailboat adventures across the Pacific, train rides through Russia, bike touring across Asia…

Learned that my mom’s Nikon D70 camera got stolen in Valparaiso. Doesn’t surprise me. I tell a lot of the people I meet not to visit Chile because of lo mala clase que alguna gente es. According to my mom, who tends to pepper a lot of her narratives with Latin American magical realism, she was dragged up some stairs in the struggle. It was probably true. She’s mostly sad about the pictures in her camera. Any photographer would be.

Then I laid to sleep while half watching Fincher’s Se7en.

Catters McCatters. Centum City, Busan, ROK.