Last days PNU.
Nolan on his early film. What betrays the budget. Importance of sound: voice over and controlled environment to conceal lousy audio. Freedom of film noir. Enjoy the film for what it is rather than a skipping stone for a better/larger one.
Video I worked for Busan Haps.
Music by Poko Lambro
Busan Haps promo video from Nichole Post on Vimeo.
SATURDAY JAN 14. 2012. This morning I ran up Jangsan Mt. where the Korean army had emplaced land mines to make things more exciting for trail running… see happy mined trials.
Back home, I started writing an essay on two movies I’ve been thinking about a lot. The essay compares “The Notebook” and “Blue Valentine”. Two movies that have a lot in common and seem to be in dialogue.
Then got on the first train out of Jangsan for Yangsan. Yansang’s the furthest point in the green line of the Busan subway. This is the first part of my plan to go to every end point in Busan’s subway system. It took me about 1.5 hrs to get to the station… I live at the other end of the green line in Jansang. I wrote part of my graduation play for the kids I teach on the train. On the train, I listened to the later works of Bob Dylan and read Atlas Shrugged on my iPhone.
Pretty soon all the cosmopolitan Koreans got off the train and the old Koreans got on. They were ajimas and their male counter parts. Yansang must have the ajima manufacturing plant and all ajimas must have been recalled for their weekly perm. The train went above ground and I saw the Nakdonggang river glistening in the afternoon sun. Across the water, strawberries fields spread away into the hilly horizons. White apartments buildings grew out of the green eastern hills.
Yansang was a little boring. Here is what I thought was most interesting.
Horizontal lines under a bridge
Pipes
Then I went to see “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” good movie but with a lot of sexual violence.
David Fincher is the shit. I hope Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross do an evil cover of Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep”.
The movie finished late… at 00:05… I ran across a darkened Lotte Department store to catch the last train out of Seomyeon. I failed. The train had left a long time ago… sad face… took my fail as a sign that I was going to find something interesting on the streets of Seomyeon… perhaps a mystery to solve…
I followed my intuition… found some friendly Korean soldiers out for a night of fun waiting outside of the Milk Boy club (which I first thought was a gay bar and then remembered I was in Korea and that there’s no “doble sentido” here). The line to get in was too long but the Koreans kept me entertained until they told me I was going to be waiting for an hour to get to “the best dancing hall this side of the street.” Took a picture of them. Koreans, like most other humans, love the immortality of a photograph.
Couldn’t wait an hour. Took a cab back to Jangsan.
At home, I listened to a Fresh Air episode on Rin Tin Tin, a Ted Talk on inspiration and a Moth podcast about the holocaust. Then I made my necessary FB check and saw a picture of Lionel Richie… decided that THAT was definitely a sign to listen to All Night Long.
Caramelo was our family’s gringo cat from Nantucket, MA. He died in December of 2008. We bury our cats with pomp if we feel creative. So my dad and I made this video (I had been morbidly wishing to make an Evita-style pet funeral since I saw the movie’s opening scene @6:25). Sadly, most of our cats have gone into unmarked grave around the white fig tree without an Ave Maria or nutcracker pall-bearers.
Caramelo’s death was mysterious. We thought he had contracted cat TB because mucus was constantly coming out of his nose and eyes. The vet had been called but before he could show up, Caramelo disappeared. The sick cat most likely crawled into a cubbyhole in the roof, closed his eyes and took his last little catnap with dignity. Because his body was never found, I always thought somebody, a cat hater, had disappeared him.
My first trip to India and Nepal with my friends. Shot in Super8. The intro is 8-bit animation. We meant to go for 6 months but dysentery, dengue, and black market, lucid-dream-inducing malaria medication took a toll on our friendship. Our group slowly disintegrated as we traveled deeper into India. We arrived in July 2005 while terrorist attacks hit England and the monsoon rains overran most Mumbai shantytowns. By October, we all had left except for one, the physicist, who stayed for the entire six months.
I hated and loved India. So much. India is a massive entity that extends from the greatness of its ancient, diverse cultures to its kind and amazing people to the microscopic parasites that lurk in the water. India doesn’t give up until it’s part of you. Forever. Physically and/or psychologically. Because India is so overwhelming, sometimes I think I will wake up as 22 year-old in a small Indian town after a long malaria fever lucid dream. And my friends will be there, as well as the local shaman who is a total Hanuman devotee. Sort of like Jacob’s Ladder, Jacob’s Ladder The Movie and Dante’s Divine Comedy. (btw, Hanuman is by far the coolest deity, like, ever… sometimes I wished Jesus was a monkey because, then, I would be, like, the most the pious of Christians).
In India, I was cursed by a snake-charming Sadhu. The fucker. I cursed him back by speaking tongues like a Pentecostal Evangelist. When I got back to Ithaca in America, his curse made me think I had an assortment of deceases and mental problems. But I’m glad I was cursed by a pro, because he was definitely good at making you feel you had been cursed with the full force of a +3,000 year old tradition. You could tell he was a pro and had cursed people before: he had this little wicker basket from which his trained cobra would emerge and dully complied to enchantment, and, of course, his Sadhu helper. His orange turban and kind eyes made me feel bad about cursing him back with some lame “your soul will burn in hell” tongue-speak.
I think I need to go back to India. I miss her like you would miss a one time lover that you lost in a crowd and who will never sign up on Facebook or leave cryptic notes on Craigslist‘s missed connections… but that you know that once you go back to the place where you met her, that bench in that Medellin park across from the liquor store… she will be there… waiting for you. Waiting for you with the same passion you have been waiting for her all these years.
I’m writing this as I play Mercedes Sosa as if it was heavy metal, and drink Chile in the form of cheap Gato Blanco wine from el Valle Central. The cheapest liquid Chile I could find in Korea.