Elephant Talk

It is July 4, which is not only the birthday of the United States of America, it is also the one-year anniversary of this here blog. Let’s see, in that time there have been…

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Looking at blog stats feels wrong, but I do it anyway. I had a huge peak in January, when I was posting a lot about my Europe trip. I guess naming all those places got the search bots buzzing. Now it’s like a ghost town, probably because I don’t post very much. When life is most interesting, there’s less documentation of it: fewer photos snapped, less writing, less blogging. Interesting.

I’m celebrating America’s birthday tonight by playing my final gig with my band. The guitarist and keyboardist are moving on to other parts of the world. I’ve played with a lot of musicians in my life and been in a lot of bands, but this is probably the most talented collection of folks I’ve ever had the privilege of playing with. So it’s sad, but we’ll have fun.

It’s the end of an era. I feel a kind of fall hibernation coming on. But I’ve learned that nothing happens according to plan in Korea, so we’ll see how things go.

It’s been a strange past 20 or 30 days and now I feel a strong urge to get the hell out of here for a while. So finally, I’m actually looking forward to my trip. Not just wanting to go but needing to go. I’ve probably said this before, but this place shifts and turns in such strange ways for me. One week I feel like I have a sense of my reality and another I’m not sure. It’s not so much a matter of objective reality, but my perception of myself within it. Who the hell am I here? It’s different than who I am there, that’s for sure. So it’s time to go back, get some perspective, remember things I’ve forgotten, and try to forget some other things for a while.

I’ve got a rough plan, and I’m excited about all of it:

July 11: Arrive
July 12: Welcome home party/BBQ
July 13: San Francisco with mom & dad
July 15-19: Yosemite cabin
July 20: Busan reunion. Me and three friends who used to live in Busan are serendipitously meeting up in San Francisco. This should be a hoot.
July 21-31: Rent a car. Float. Enjoy. Eat burritos. Hang with friends in San Ho and SF. A Stern Grove festival? A trip to Santa Cruz, a trip to Sacramento… not quite sure.
Aug 1-4: Nevada desert. Road trip with college friends. I think the plan is to shoot guns and blow things up.
Aug 5-7: Come down. Gear up.
Aug 8: Back across the ocean to welcome the rest of my life.

We only get the major blockbuster US movies here in Busan, which means we get a lot of crap. But it also means we get all the big animated films, which are most definitely not crap. Kung-fu Panda, for example, was not only a laugh-out-loud riot, it was also beautifully made.

The new Pixar movie, Wall-E, sounds really interesting. In particular, I was intrigued by this little bit about the approach to dialogue:

Throughout the film, the lead characters, and most of the robots they encounter, utter not a single word of traditional dialogue. (There is ooooing, eeeping and beeping.) It’s yet another variation from previous Pixar films in which toys, rats, fish and bugs all have talked - and talked smart.

Still, Stanton says, “there’s dialogue from Frame One. It’s just unconventional dialogue.

“I knew this was a big bite to chew, and it had been a long, long time since someone tried to do a film with this unconventional dialogue in it. I kept saying, ‘It’s like I’m trying to do R2-D2 the Movie.’ I kept using that phrase so many times that one of my producers said, ‘Why don’t you just call Ben Burtt,’ ” the legendary audio and sound man who was the “voice” of R2-D2.

“So I called him and asked him if he could sign on early and help me with dialogue for these characters and grammar for each of the characters,” Stanton says.

“Now that I’m on the back end of working with him for two years, I realize that was the smartest move I ever made. I got 25 years of knowledge of how to do this stuff. He’s just the master of it, and I don’t think I could solved [sic] it without him.”

I’ve been waiting for something like this. Movies tend to “talk” very fast and too much, but I’m always fascinated by those that strip away the need to explain everything. A film like The New World, for example, is a great love story even though the main characters barely speak to each other. Another is Triplets of Belleville. What little language it has is unnecessary. This requires a filmmaker to be more creative in storytelling.

And of course, the other reason I like films without little or no dialogue is that I have more examples I can show in class.

Edit (June 24): Here’s the trailer… looks and sounds great!

If you look at it bleakly, all the recent protests signal — at least in part — a new wave of anti-Americanism, and the Marmot’s Hole has been posting about this reality. At the same time, there’s a certain charm to the whole thing. This article made me laugh about a half dozen times. I could see a lot of the “good Korea” in it, because I see smaller versions of this in daily life all the time.

I particularly liked this middle section:

Besides the lack of violence, what is surprising - even to South Koreans - is that there is no organizer for the already weeks-long demonstration. People took to the streets and formed ad hoc protest groups, usually around 6pm or 7pm each day. This has been bewildering to South Korean civil society, labor unions and opposition politicians - the usual players in such public protests. Tuesday’s rally was the first officially organized protest and had the biggest turnout - police estimate 105,000 demonstrators, while the organizers said the number was closer to 500,000.

Still, one might think it was some kind of mass picnic, until you spot the riot police standing stiff, waiting for a crackdown order. Some people are holding impromptu concerts complete with guitars and violins, singing and dancing. In some cases, entire families have arrived to literally “camp out” in the middle of traffic. Of course they brought tents with them.

Other “protesters” have brought hot coffee to serve anyone who needs it. And high school students have given out roses to riot police, a move that definitely brings down the tension level. Some are distributing water bottles to the aggressive “frontliners” who usually shout more and work up a justified thirst. There are even volunteer medics walking around, shouting “Does anybody need help?”

Young couples use the protest for a romantic outing. They march with hands held tight, and the other hand holding a candle. Local TV footage has shown a man celebrating his girlfriend’s birthday with a protest-candle cake. Other “demonstrators” have brought an outdoor movie projector and are showing the US documentary Sicko.

With the party atmosphere in full swing, the street vendors are enjoying a heyday of extra money and unusual business hours. It’s 2am, and here they are selling kimbob (Korean sushi) or bundaegi (roasted silkworm larvae) right in the middle of roads that have been declared “no-traffic zones” by protesters who’re occupying them.

This is South Korea’s street protests 2.0. Or, perhaps, South Korea’s “postmodern” demonstrations. With some Koreans mistrustful of mainstream media reports on the demonstration, they’ve taken matters into their own hands by broadcasting and reporting themselves. Using high-speed wireless Internet, some “embedded” citizens are using their own laptops and camcorders to broadcast real-time events. There are “citizen reporters” conducting interviews and taking pictures and posting them on their personal blogs and Internet forums. In fact, these news hounds have been so effective that some established newspapers have begun quoting them.

Classes are winding down and the semester’s coming to a close. I’ve been crazy busy lately, working on projects, helping students, grading assignments, playing gigs, and hanging out. I also have to finish my taxes before June 14. Then it’s fully into final grades, final dinners, final parties. I’ll emerge at some point at the end of next week, ready for the welcome abyss of no-plans-whatsoever.

This weekend was a full one. A gig on Thursday, which turned into a late night; a full 8 hours of animation sound design with some students on Friday; an aborted recording session Saturday and then another gig in Dalmaji that night.

I was looking forward to a mellow Sunday, but I got talked into going to my first baseball game in Busan. The team is the Lotte Giants, and their fans are rabid, to say the least. It was more like a European football match. They chanted songs, did the wave, did a double wave (quite impressive), and yelled a lot at the opposing pitcher.

Then, somewhere around the 8th inning, out came the orange bags. The purpose is to dump your trash into them, but while the game’s still going on, people blow them up with air and then tie them on their heads. So everyone’s got these bulbous orange growths on their heads and they bob up and down while doing silly chants and songs. Quite a sight. I wish I had pictures, but I can’t seem to find my camera.

Alas, Lotte lost 3-1, but it was exciting at the end. Afterward we had sam-gyup-sal because, well because that’s what we do.

I have to be careful with this post because I don’t want certain readers to get the wrong idea.

Much of the appeal of moving to Korea was getting a good 4 or 5 months a year off. I thought I’d use all that time to go back to America in the Summer and Winter. I thought at the time that I’d need to. More recently I thought I’d simply want to.

I’ve got my ticket. I’m going back to the States July 11 for just under a month. But I find that as the date gets closer, I’m less excited about going. In fact, I find a nagging, inexorable pull that I’m fighting. I can’t figure out why, but I just don’t really want to go.

I will say this: I want to see my family, and I want to see certain friends. These are things I am looking forward to. But American culture is not one of them. There’s nothing about it that I miss, nothing at all. ……… I’m kind of stuck staring at the computer monitor after that last sentence. I’m not sure how to tactfully put this. I guess that, in seeing things from a distance, there are certain aspects of America I find disgusting, and there are other aspects that I find boring. As a culture, it’s hardly living up to its original ideals. And I get the sense that no one there really cares. People will continue to ride out their personal ambitions and forms of entertainment and continue to live in a self-imposed ignorance about the rest of the world.

As for the boredom, it’s a simple thing. People will have their own lives, they will go to their jobs. I’ll have to find ways of amusing myself in a very predictable society where everything functions by stringent laws and overly polite gestures. All these discrete individuals will go around this way and that and I’ll have no one to really talk to, no one to share anything with. And then I’ll be stuck, tied down and waiting until I can come back.

To put a finer point on it, we should travel to discover something new. There’s nothing new for me about America. In fact it seems very, very old, and increasingly irrelevant. And yet it’s packaged in this arrogant attitude that it’s the best society in the world. Sorry, but I’m just not looking forward to that vibe at all.

I know… this sounds whiny and self-important. But the feeling is there. Maybe it’s that I’ve been away too long. I haven’t been back for a full year.

I’ll adjust. I’ll see the people I miss. I’ll explore the landscape, go to the desert, see the Sierras, have a steak, BBQ with friends. Maybe these are things to get excited about as the time approaches. Regardless, it’ll probably be good for me.

This is my favorite place in Korea — my balcony. Especially on late Sunday mornings.

My Sundays usually begin by boiling up some water for the French press, putting in a load of laundry, then sitting in my plush orange chair in my pajama bottoms. I’ll dial up some mellow tunes on the iPod, drink coffee, and noodle on my laptop or read a book.

I like watching the world move below me: cars race by, ajumas with Darth Vader visors push strollers, delivery men zip along sidewalks in high-pitched scooters, urban children bound around like forest deer.

It’s been a low-key weekend. I kind of blew all my energy Friday night. My band played a stellar show at the best club in Busan and we followed it up with a ritual sam-gyup-sal party. Saturday it rained all day, so I stayed inside and watched animated movies and started working on a guest lecture I’m giving at a university this coming Thursday. I got some text messages to go out, but I wasn’t up for it. After the electric events of the past week — a friend visited from the States — I’m enjoying the solitude.

We’re heading toward the end of the semester. Every semester is its own clearly distinct chapter. There is a beginning, a middle, and then, inevitably, a bittersweet end. It’s mostly a bitter thing because it means friends are leaving. In this case, two good friends and two bandmates. I said it before and I’ll probably say it every six months for as long as I’m here: Friends become good friends very quickly and then, too often, they’re gone just like that.

So while I’m sad at the change, and by the fact that the band as it is will end in a month, I know new adventures will begin when I come back from America in August.

I wasn’t going to weigh in on this mad cow issue between Korea and the US, mostly because I don’t know enough about it. But I had a conversation about it recently, and it made me think a little differently about, not just beef, but Korean-American relations.

A little background, as much as I understand it anyway: About a month ago South Korea relaxed its barriers on the importation of US beef. Around the same time, some Korean doctor or academic released a study that determined that Koreans are more susceptible to mad cow disease because of their “unique” genetic makeup. Well, people went apeshit. There were massive protests. It became the new reason for Koreans to be angry at Americans (as if they need one).

The United States government response, with media in tow, is falling back on United States logic and common sense. This mostly involves reassurances that the beef is safe, that mad cow is extremely rare, and that steps will be taken to ensure that there are no problems. Foreigners here cite the bird flu epidemic in Korea and therefore call the anger over safety issues hypocritical.

I met a really smart girl this weekend and I asked her about this issue. She put it to me this way: It has nothing to do with beef. What Americans don’t understand is that anytime something like this happens, it’s yet another example of how Koreans aren’t in control of their own destiny. They feel as if the United States is continually strong-arming them into doing something in the US interest and not in the interest of Koreans. US beef will not help their lives, it’s strictly an issue of economics. The politicians go along with it because they know that they’re under the protection of the US militarily and economically, at least in part.

So to her it feels like another manifestation of US colonization. Koreans want to live their own lives and make their own decisions. But the politicians always seem to fall back on US decisions. So people get angry. It’s not about beef, it’s about self-respect and self-determination.

Now… yes, Koreans are nationalistic and ethnocentric. But this argument made sense to me, and it helped explain a lot. The Unites States is always seeing things through its own often arrogant code of logic and common sense. It’s reflected in politics, in economics, in the media, and in public opinion. If a good argument is made, the action is justified. It’s Occam’s razor in action: disregard nuance and you can make tangible policy. You simply need to make the other side to see things more clearly.

This, incidentally, is also why the United States is failing to stifle terrorism. It’s a mistake to believe that if everyone could simply come around to our view of things, they would see the benefits. There are many places in the world that do not have the same worldview. And these people are not stupid.

Sorry, I’ve jumped into something I know very little about. But I had to get that out of my system, because it goes directly to the heart of a lot of the inter-cultural problems I experience here.

Yesterday was Buddha’s Birthday. There are certain events that I mark as personal anniversaries as I go through my second year here. This is one. A year ago today I was fairly well assimilated and beginning to feel quite at home in my new world. Last year, I went with a few friends to Beomosa, the great temple in the hills north of Busan. It rained late in the day, chasing us down the hill toward PNU, where we finally found refuge in Kebapistan, a nice Turkish restaurant.

One year later, I’ve become a little more adventurous. I went with five other friends on a four-hour bus ride to the southwestern tip of Korea, where we stayed two nights. We saw two areas of interest – Boseong, famous for its green tea plantations, and Yeosu, a great city on the coast.

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There are loudspeakers everywhere in Busan: In my office, at the beach, on mobile trucks — even in my apartment. Every couple of weeks or so, a message comes pumping through my apartment speaker. A droll voice will murmur something: “muh-muh-muh-muuuhhhh…. muh-muuuhh-mu-ma…” I never know what they’re saying, but half the time it eventually becomes clear to me. I’ll turn on the faucet and nothing will come out, or my shower won’t heat up, or someone starts drilling into the apartment building.

This morning I got two messages. I haven’t figured out what the deal is today. But it got me thinking: If North Korea attacks, I’ll be blissfully ignorant, munching on a stack of Pringles and watching Battlestar Galactica and then, boom, it’s all over. This also goes for zombie attacks. I should learn the Korean word for “zombie” just in case.