Elephant Talk

I’ve been listening to a lot of Wilco lately. Four months ago or so I didn’t have a single album. But so many of my friends praised them up and down that I had to give them another shot.

I tried once before, somewhere around 2002. That’s when everyone was talking about them. Their Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album was the cause de celebré for the independent minded youth of the digital age. It was a triumph of art over commerce. They were the band that stuck it to The MAN. Of course, that was all I heard about. Nobody seemed to mention the music. I hate that kind of media-generated buzz, so I had no interest in getting to know them.

But one day I was driving around Palo Alto with my girlfriend at the time. She was more curious than I was so she bought the album. OK, sure, let’s give it a shot. So she put the CD in the car stereo. Thirty seconds into it, I knew I hated it. Once I heard that sad-sack voice I thought “God no, not another self-emasculaed, indie whiner please.” Two minutes into it I couldn’t take it anymore. I begged her to turn it the hell off. My preconceptions were confirmed: Of course the critics loved them, I thought. These guys hate themselves. They fit perfectly into that drab, post-punk attitude where you have to sound like you don’t care. Critics love that shit. I can’t fucking stand it.

Fast-forward some five or six years into the future, to March 2008. I went with a group of friends to the Korean countryside for some fresh air and to climb a mountain. It had been raining the whole drive up and that night. When we woke up the next morning I opened the curtains and looked outside. The trees were dripping with last night’s rain, the hotel pavement was soaked. But it looked like the weather was going to break and we could climb that mountain.

And then someone put on some music. I heard this really nice, mellow guitar, and then the singer sang the first lines: “Maybe the sun will shine today. The clouds will blow away. Maybe I won’t feel so afraid…” Wait a minute, who’s this? Wilco. First song off their most recent album, Sky Blue Sky. I loved it. It was pretty, it was mellow, the singer was really singing, the mix was beautiful, and it was a great song. In short, it was everything my first experience was not.

And that’s Wilco. There’s a reason every website’s favorite adjective for them is “interesting.” As evidence of this, everyone I know who is a fan has a different preferred phase, a different favorite album. My friend in Pittsburgh thought nothing was ever quite the same after A.M. The bass player in my band prefers Being There. One of the guitarists in my band likes Summerteeth best. The other guitarist swears by A Ghost Is Born. His girlfriend digs Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. I, to this day, still prefer Sky Blue Sky by a mile.

Before I dig into my praise of them, and of that album in particular, I gotta get something off my chest.
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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.

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.

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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I’ve been listening to a lot of Led Zeppelin lately. I’m not sure why, maybe because a friend recently mentioned “When The Levee Breaks” and that sent me down all those great old neural pathways.

I mention this now because I’m listening to probably my favorite Zep tune: “The Rain Song.” The seasons are indeed changing, it’s getting warmer, some interesting events and emotions are stirring around, all good stuff. Spring is by far my favorite season.

I went to the beach on Monday. It was a holiday, Children’s Day, so everyone had the day off. I ran into a friend there and we wandered down the beach so she could find a good place to paint a picture of Dalmaji Hill. Then another friend showed up. Then another. Then another. All random. It’s a small town of foreigners here in Busan. I went in the water, took some pictures, drank some rum. Then a few of us went to eat near the university and we met more friends there.

I’m hoping to go away this weekend. It’s another three-day break; Monday is Buddha’s Birthday. Someone mentioned something about the green tea fields west of here.

“The Rain Song” is ending. Time to end this post and go eat. Galbi awaits.

I survived Membership Training. If anything I got off too easy. A ride became available around 12:30 am and I took it… just about the time I was starting to enjoy myself.

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Fifteen miles out of Seomyeon, someone said it: “Hey, this is my first Korean road trip.” Oh right, we’re on a road trip! Cool.

We were too late in getting our shit together to take a bus, so we piled into a friend’s car with a road atlas and headed out into the mountains. It took us just over two hours to get to a tiny town outside of Gayasan National Park. Mountain towns in Korea are not unlike those in America, except for the signage and the people. There was one nuribang (a requirement for any town), some convenience stores, and a few small, uninhabited restaurants, all lining a single street. It took us some time to find a place to sleep, but we eventually got a nice deal on a “yeogwon” I think it’s called – 40,000 won for four people.
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For some reason, the concrete, glass, and urban throng of 4 million people have felt a little more oppressive than usual. It may have something to do with the glorious weather we’ve had lately. Mix the two together and it’s time for an escape to fresh air and trees.

So I put out the emails and the text messages and got a small contingent together to join me. It’s always funny throwing out ideas like that. A dozen people may say hell yeah, but when it gets down to it about half chicken out. I don’t know if it’s laziness or the inertial glue of daily life that keeps people from following through.

Anyway, we leave this evening for 해 인 사 (hae-in-sa), described thusly:

Haeinsa Temple was originally built in AD 802 by two monks, Sunung and Ijong, during King Aejang of the Silla Kingdom’s reign. Despite many fires and subsequent reconstructions, the temple remains one of the most beautiful in Korea set in an idyllic location deep in Gayasan National Park. It eventually reached its present-day size during the mid-10th century. The temple is famous for housing the Tripitaka Koreana - 80,000 wooden printing blocks carved during the Goryo Dynasty (AD 918-1392), which, together, make up the oldest and best-preserved collection of Buddhist scriptures in the world. The temple also houses a great number of artifacts that have been designated national treasures including the Seated Stone Buddha, found at Cheongyangsa Temple, and the Stone Pagoda at Wolgwang Temple.

I’ll be sure to post an update upon my return.

I realized that I promised some Gyeongju photos a while back and didn’t post them. Here are a few from my recent trip there, plus a few more random ones from the past couple weeks. Friends who know me may have seen these on facebook, but for those who haven’t…

Gyeongju

My favorite tree in Gyeongju.

Don’t call it the sea of that other country over there.

After a long day of hiking, we ate sam-gyup-sal. There was a girl next to us cutting up some garlic for the next day.

Leffe exists in Busan… but I’m not telling where.

While hiking around Busan with a friend, we came across a temple, right as a funeral was happening. I probably shouldn’t have taken this picture.

Ajumas.

…and throw little things off, like car parts, bottles and cutlery, or whatever I find lying around.

Lovely Haeundae Beach and Dalmaji hill.

Sheet music from band practice.

The long holiday weekend is over. I spent most of it playing music, and did a wee bit of travel as well. A friend called me Tuesday, bored, and asked me to join him for an open mic in PNU. The place was jam packed. Since private schools and unis were closing down for the holiday starting Wednesday, it was the equivalent of a massive Friday night, where everyone has the next day off. That’s a rare thing here. The music was fun — a bit of Radiohead, Blue October, Pearl Jam.

Wednesday was my regular visit to Ol’55. More jammage and a nice rotation of songs. Thursday, I went back to PNU with a Korean friend, thinking there was a new open mic there. But the club owner was asleep(!). So instead we went back to Gwangali. His friend owns a tiny, hole-in-the-wall jazz club and invited us over to play. I called some friends, they called some friends, and it turned out to be a cool evening of foreigners and Koreans jamming away on Beatles tunes, mostly. It was a very living-room atmosphere and kind of reminded me of that scene from Once, where the family all jams together, but not so serious.

The next morning I got up early to meet some folks at the train station to go to Gyongju. I’ve been there twice before, and I can’t say I was overly excited about yet another trip there. But I wanted to get out and do some hiking. Turned out to be a great day. I’ll post photos of that soon.

Presently, I’m dealing with my work contract and visa extension. The contract is done (yay!) and the visa is in progress with the proper authorities, so that’s good.

This coming weekend I get to experience something weird. Bjork is coming to Seoul, and it’s sort of been the talk of the town. I haven’t been to a major concert yet in Korea. I can’t imagine what that will be like, but I’m psyched to see it — not just Bjork but the whole scene. Reportage to follow, I’m sure.