me-an-der
roaming thoughts on roamingAll Quiet on the Western Front
Another hiatus. September was re-settling. Recovering street names, meditative walking, trying on a bike for size, drinks and bites galore. Bowling, planning, wine. Newly engaging, tired conversations. Attempts at outrunning my rhythm. Cheesecake. Marveling at taxidermy. Discovering in Tran Van Thuy’s Chuyen Tu Te, or Story of Decency, a relatable problem, an admirable pursuit. Translation difficulties. Forgetting how to write a paper. Stable commitments. Schizoid concentration. Richard Avedon at the ICP reminded me of what you can capture about a place. No, rather, imbue. I didn’t love Paris when I visited. But his affair with the city made me jealous. Had an idea that lost its luster. Finding inspiration in sharing, at a monthly art salon. The organizers’ latest project: a mag of food remedies. NYC friends came and went. I went home. Celebrated birthdays. Attended my first synagogue. Was honoring a bride. Florida is lame. Girltalk. Craving new music. Western Mass air is filled with pine and crispness this time of year. Dry leaves swirl in eddies under car wheels. Dance party, food coma. I forget to focus.
Fever Ray
In anticipation of impending nostalgia, as I’m about to leave VN in less than five days, I’m sending myself a musical post for future reminiscing. On many a humid Hue night I had this song on repeat to transport myself back to a more familiar state of mind (though how much more familiar haunting Swedish electronic music is is debatable). Now this boomerang of associations will carry me back to the place I’m leaving.
On Assignment
A relative of mine called me up with a proposal. Can you write a short article on your thoughts about your video project and impressions of Hue for a photography magazine? Um, sure… It was to be in English, was to include a brief meeting with a journalist who’d take a photo of me for the publication, etc. Now this relative is notorious for finding ways to make a lil spare change through various art-related activities. On this trip I’m trying to re-align my mentality with regard to issues of trust in Vietnamese social transactions, so I decided not to question it too much. So I spent a morning whipping up a piece, avoiding wordy or complicated prose, in order to save the journal’s translation department some headaches.
Now I’m sitting in the meeting with the guy (who’s actually from a commerce and industry mag, not photo journal) and he wants me to explain what anthropology is. And what my thesis work was about. My bumbling Vietnamese surely didn’t impress him. I tried to say that my project this summer wasn’t directly related to anthro but was instead about following artists and poets to talk to them about drawing inspiration from the Hue landscape. “Poets make me allergic.” Oh. Just a bit before, somehow five cans of 333 beer appeared on a tray on the coffee table. With the yeast loosening his tongue, he started on a diatribe about how it’s extremely hard to tap into what is “really Hue.” That was a reaction to my saying that I had been in touch with a few artists who were not originally from Hue but instead have called it their home and have now become “Hue people.” Sure, I wasn’t going to “know” Hue in the way that someone who’d been born and raised on the soil would, I wanted to retort. But social propriety kept me restrained. Next came a rant about how newspapers aren’t really following anything meaningful. People are too driven by material needs, the “dollar.” Maybe it’s your fault. Who knows if it’s all this influence from America and the West, driving people to just think about the bottom line. Then some pontification about what would make a good film, revealing the complexity of Vietnamese-ness. He cited Scent of Green Papaya. My previous attempt to explain my own project and the influence of Chris Marker (which included showing him a 4-min YouTube clip of Sans Soleil met with the response, “But what is the main point? Summarize for me the main point.” Hmm. Memory, time, Tokyo, letter were all the words I could find.
Sans Soleil
Like any good negotiator he took matters into his own hands and gave me my assignment. Just write for me about your impressions of Hue as a returned Viet Kieu (overseas Vietnamese). Ah ok, easy enough. End of transaction.
During the Hiatus
I took a break to get out of Hue and travel with MiML: met him in Sai Gon; 10-hr bus ride each way (on what’s supposed to be a 6-hr trip) to mountain resort town of Da Lat to walk in cold, drenching rain for bad overpriced food at a Westernized Vietnamese resto; back to Sai Gon for flight out to Ha Noi; scramble around HN to get tix and catch overnight train out to Sapa to trek around hilltribe minority villages; overnight train back to HN where we experienced 3 tense customer-service-related confrontations in less than 24 hrs (does nothing to improve negative stereotypes/impressions of the north); evening flight to Da Nang to be with fam and go to the beach; day trip to aunt’s burial grounds in rural village outside of Hue; day trip to Hoi An for souvenir shopping; back to Da Nang for fam time (which included watching UP, but unfortch not in 3D); back to Hue with a pit-stop in Phu Bai (Grandpa’s home village) to visit the Ngo house of worship. In in all, the main impression from my travels with a Westerner here is that people tend to stare, stalk you with offers for rides and services, or worse, openly discriminate against and/or try to swindle you. I am sorry to say that the mixed race/ethnicity thing here still rubs many people the wrong way.
Upon return, I shot at an old covered bridge where a couple of women recited folk poems they’d composed and at a forest preserve / temple grounds. I also visited the galleries of Le Ba Dang and Diem Phung Thi. The former’s art I’m drawn to:
by Le Ba Dang
Right before I left for vacation, I had a chat with a broadcast journalist who mentioned two topics of interest, both intriguing possibilities for future fieldwork. One centers around a controversy over tourism development plans for an islet (called Con Hen) on the Perfume River. The place is culturally significant in that it is the hub of production / distribution for two (of my favorite) gastronomic specialties of Hue: com hen and che bap (rice w/ clams & corn pudding?). In terms of regional identification, consider them the poor Vietnamese man’s escargot and crème brûlée. A while ago, the local gov’t had given the go-ahead to developers to evacuate people on the islet and to erect tourist lodgings. The city papers and various citizens protested and nothing’s moved forward since. Potentially rife with illuminating tensions in regional politics and brewing out of the classic discourse on tradition/modernity, the situation would make for an intimate, microcosmic study that reverberates with circumstances of development nationwide.
Another story that piqued my interest was an account of a Buddhist monk who’d gotten permission fr the gov’t to fix up and maintain a couple of forest preserves (he’s a collector and cultivator of orchids) in the nearby hills. The sticky part is that he decided to build a temple on these grounds, which was not within the bounds of the agreement w/ the gov’t. Now with increasing sensitivity on the part of Vietnamese officials towards religion (particularly with the recent Bat Nha Monastery case), this scenario indexes something more complex with regard to the ambivalent relationship of the state and religious institutions.
The thought of following these topics in Hue excites me for several reasons. The city holds a special position in nationalist rhetoric because of its former status as the royal capital, the center of intellectualism and culture. Complicating matters is the history that the last kings of the Nguyen dynasty in Hue were supposedly French puppets, betraying the cause of national independence (on which the current regime bases its autonomous pride). Since the toppling of the House of Nguyen, officials in Hue have scrambled to re-elevate their city’s status in the nationalist imagination. Their approach has been to promote Hue as the bedrock of traditional culture in Viet Nam (sustained by UNESCO designation as a World Heritage Site and by the tourist-attracting biennial Festival modeled after French celebrations of cultural preserve). This summer, for me, has been an exploration of an idea of Hue culture (through the perspective of working artists and poets) on video. I hope to extend this investigation by returning in the coming years. After all, it is the place in Viet Nam with which I most identify, through the backgrounds of my mother and grandfather. Among the major setbacks is that the topics I’ve mentioned are time-sensitive and have already come and gone in the public eye. In addition, discussing politics explicitly here is quite difficult. I’ve been told by one of the artists I’m following that people in Hue don’t pay attention much to, don’t like to get involved in politics. Well, well…
Politicking is pervasive. I became quite anxious and frustrated recently after a longtime American researcher in VN reminded me to be careful with my tapes and to make copies since the Foreign Affairs Offices that have to review materials before they’re approved for departure fr the country are notoriously nit-picky and have been known to reject a collection of recordings wholesale for one segment of “sensitive” material. After considering various methods for making copies and “smuggling” tapes out of the country I’ve decided to just forgo the FAO checkpoint and deal with authorities at the airport. Crossing fingers…
Sunset on the Perfume River by Amanda Howard
With one week to wrap up I am furiously hoping for major Eureka! moments.
Chasing Dragonflies
Since I can't include my own video footage of red dragonflies...
In the past week or so I have been working with a “tutor” to practice reading Vietnamese poetry. Although I couldn’t interview one of Hue’s most highly acclaimed (female) poets, she sent me a little edition of her love poems, which included a gem of an essay at the back. I’ve attempted to work it into English and hope to use parts of it for my video narrative. Feedback welcome!
Impressions on Poetry by Lâm Thị Mỹ Dạ, translation mine
Poetry is the new amidst the ordinary. Seeing it is difficult, but expressing it is even harder. One only achieves poetry as when an egg is incubated to the point that the life inside it must peck through, hatch open to the world — to vivacity, to physical reality. If one is rash and peels off the shell before its time, then one will never realize poetry but will only be left with dead phrases.
I remember when I was still young, before I attended school, there was a morning when I was chasing a red dragonfly and suddenly fell. When I sat up, my hand brushed against my chest. I was frightened to discover, in my body, there was curious beating. I rushed home, raising my hand to everyone’s chest, listening intently. After making sure that in everyone’s chest there existed the same beating, finally I was able to relax and breathe a sigh of relief… That was the first time in life I realized that I had a heart.
I have lived by that heart, a heart first discovered in a search for beauty — the red of a dragonfly in those naive days. And I could not anticipate that this very dragonfly would be the spiritual light that would lead me to the marvelous, extraordinary world of poetry.
For me, poetry is beauty — always.
One can’t take any particular poem as a paradigm for poetry. Each genuine poet has her own sparkle, none like another. One who has poetic pluck is one who can accept the challenge of time, nothing else. Indulging in poetry, being mesmerized by beauty, is half the achievement of one who writes poetry.
Finding Form
In the past few days I’ve shot at a mediocre gallery opening (curated by twin artists whom I might or might not follow), met a few young expats, shot at a king’s tomb currently abandoned to renovation, and been rejected by the female poet for recording an interview due to health problems (but she was really sweet on the phone).
I’m slowly coming to terms with the choice I began with to do an essayistic project (à la Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil) instead of an observational documentary. I’m worried about relate-ability / readability since I want to screen here in VN in the future though. Of course, I think I’ll narrate in both English and Vietnamese and subtitle accordingly, but the form is what most concerns me. Unless driven by a strong, empathetic narrative voice, the piece can be clichéd, flat, impenetrable, or worse, solipsistic. In any case, I am committed to this style now, and perhaps I’ll make my next project in the form of classic doc.
Meanwhile, I’ve gotten my hands on photos, finally. Here are a couple (courtesy of PiC) to illustrate my previous entry.
Photos by Amanda Howard
City Living
I’ve mostly been making appointments with artists and shooting footage around the city. And sending out the occasional plea for help to my classmates via SE Blog. Musings are plenty but energy is limited, so I’ve been slow in posting.
A typical day here starts with rolling out of bed around 7AM or 10AM, depending on whether or not I have appointments/shoots planned. With relatives around, I would make the effort for breakfast (3 meals a day, what a luxury!), but for PiC and me, we just make do with a quick gulp of iced coffee for her and soymilk for me and try to hold out til lunchtime. Eating and drinking (nothing more refreshing than a pressed sugar cane juice in this hot hot heat!) are such essential components of socializing though and I couldn’t be happier about that.
Banh Beo
After morning shooting or meeting, we do lunch. Then I, like many people here, nap. (It’s in my blood, yes it is!) Then more of the same morning stuff or errands or thinking about dinner. After dinner, I usually review footage and brainstorm/think about the next day’s meetings.
The person putting me in touch with the artists is my cousin’s cousin, X, a friend from my ‘04 trip to Da Nang in search of ao dai histories. X has been invaluable and more than generous with her time, driving me around town for meals and errands and putting me in touch with a particularly interesting and well-connected gallery owner. From there, I’ve met with three artists of three different generations with distinctive styles. They’re all male though. The gallery owner has also introduced me to a male journalist/poet here who’s friends (from childhood) with Hue’s arguably most famous contemporary female poet. She’s currently out of town but hopefully I will get to record her. Meanwhile, trying to capture more footage of artists and landscapes. (Here’s an example of a lacquer artist’s work I’ve followed.)
One of the aspects of the city that’s been most captivating is the prevalence of huge banyan trees on sidewalks in which shrines have been placed. Twisting knots of bark and trunk enclose cubes of holiness. Broken relics, amulets, and joss sticks vie with crawling ants for space in the sand and litter. Wish I had ready digicam access to give you a pic. The spaces are highly spiritual. X told me young unmarried girls try to avoid such places, especially at night, since the ghosts that haunt these grounds like such victims. Once captured, the women are prone to illness. My xe om driver (motorbike cabbie) took me around to a few sites to shoot. He said they’re places where lots of accidents have occurred, where families pay homage to the victims.
I’m becoming visually fascinated by uncanny marriages, fusions, juxtapositions of man-made and ‘natural’ elements. Such as these trees. Or a tropical bird tethered at its foot to a tree limb by metal chain. Keeping my eyes peeled for more for the video essay!
Noticing the bizarre (not just exotic) here is not so easy, since it seems like they’ve worked hard to cultivate a sense of a pristine historic tourist city, a cultural city, a beautiful city. Flaming flower trees on both sides of boulevards provide a cool awning that frames the streets. At night, colorful lights flash on the frames of the famous Truong Tien bridge, spanning the Huong River. It’s designed. Coupled with the meandering pace of life (slow…measured…), people idling on coffee shop stools, one easily falls into routine and surface-level experiencing. Still, there’s something to be said for getting the rhythm of this place, especially in traffic. I realized that you have to feel the pulse of drivers here to be able to maneuver in a safe way around the throngs of motorbikes and bicycles and cyclos and cars at intersections. (It’s not as bad as Ha Noi or Sai Gon, but all the same technique…) That means guessing their intentions, their likeliness to swerve this way or that.
For now, I enjoy my spot on the back of motorbikes. I’ve started meditating on them in one for two instances. Being able to close my eyes while on a moving bike, as the wind licks my cheeks, down a stretch of concrete is trust, is release. Not so easy for someone who often has the urge to plan, to anticipate, to look down the highway and round the bend.
Copy fr Sensory Ethnography Blog Post
I left NYC by midnight flight on Sunday 7th and landed in Sai Gon Tuesday morning, via Anchorage and Taipei. The next day I was on a plane to see a couple of friends in Singapore, as encapsulated in the **Singapore Live** entry from the Sensory Ethnography Summer Journal. There’s a whole lot to think about there, but that’s someone else’s project. After the Great S’pore Adventure I returned to Sai Gon to welcome my partner-in-crime (PiC), the ol’ college roomie. I roped her into being my sound gal for a month. A quick round of family introductions and then we were on a flight out to Da Nang on Sunday 14th.
With just about a day and a half in Da Nang I felt I, too, (according to a friend’s phrase) was chasing my childhood. Though I was born there, all that’s recognizable from the recesses of memory are yellow mandevilla clinging to gates that line the walk to the beach from my paternal grandfather’s house and the green-and-white checkered tile floor that remains despite the home’s renovation over the past few years. On a previous trip back to Da Nang I had noticed billboards advertising a new Korean development along the shore, complete with skyscraper condos, office spaces, and entertainment complexes. I didn’t realize it was still in the works. This time a relative of mine whizzed me on his motorbike past the construction site, where they’ve cordoned off the coast as a temporary parking lot for backhoes, dumping tons of sand into the ocean to create an extended beach. I have a distinct image of my father tossing me as a toddler into these very waters, and for that moment, I was terrified that he’d left me to the will o’ the waves. Now no one has access to Thanh Binh (which translates as “peaceful”) Beach. Right before this drive-by sighting I’d made a visit to my sick great-aunt (Grandpa’s sister), who’d just been discharged from the hospital for a cancer treatment. Needless to say, the ride gave me lots to contemplate.
Window Grating
More than anything, two themes follow me in my thoughts: paranoia and networks. My time in VN so far has been cushioned by the incredible support of my extended family and their networks. Simultaneously, everyone (family in both the States and VN) has warned me time and again about theft and the dangers of unknown evils. I haven’t fully unpacked the rationale behind these persistent exhortations to be careful yet but am slowly developing ideas. In these new urban spaces, where everyone is physically proximate and crammed!, the network of the extended family has a strong presence at the same time that a wall of mistrust is erected surrounding casual social interactions in the physical space of the city.
Gate to the Rented House
Ostensibly, Hue would offer me relief then. It’s considered a more quiet, gentle city than Ha Noi, Sai Gon or even Da Nang. I luckily found a lovely 3-BR house with gardens, tucked in a little alley, for rent for 2 months, at a rate comparable to hotel stay. It’s right next door to a big market, pictures of which I’ll post sometime. My uncle (Mom’s younger bro) and his wife have been extremely attentive and helpful in getting PiC and me settled. He helped us get a bicycle for everyday errands and then negotiated a motorbike hire service with two men to help us get around the city with our equipment and to “protect” us. Even here people seem to think a bodyguard is necessary.
I could protest. I could refuse the coddling. But I decided instead to accept the family’s gestures of concern. This way, the network continues to function. For example, I have had to rely on an aunt (Mom’s cousin) here whose recently-deceased husband was in the police force. Through their connections, I had a meeting with the Deputy Director of Hue’s Foreign Affairs Office to ask for his help in acquiring a work permit for filming. One of my first work-related encounters with bureaucracy, I quickly became (internally) irritated at the show of procedural sternness. He yapped on at first about how I had to be affiliated with an umbrella organization, then after some explaining on my uncle’s part that this project was not yet my dissertation work, he urged me to draw up a document explaining my exact itinerary and contacts and the thrust of the research and filming I was doing, including details about my place of residence, identification, etc. All this red tape is to be expected, but I was a bit unsettled and frustrated when he said the footage would have to be reviewed and the office would have to issue me a certificate of permit before I leave the country. I am just not used to this surveillance. Overall I think it was good practice to establish myself as a researcher here, and ultimately I don’t think there will be too much of a problem in terms of materials that would be liable to censorship. Still, just last weekend one of the most prominent pro-democracy lawyers here was just arrested in Sai Gon on charges of “colluding with foreign reactionaries to sabotage the Vietnamese State.” He has defended a number of dissidents and advocates for a multi-party gov’t. Reacting I may be, but a dissident I am not — yet.
So I haven’t started shooting yet. Settling in to the house and taking care of paperwork has taken a couple of days. PiC and I plan to walk around tomorrow and get our bearings. Grandma’s sister here is involved with the Hue Poets Society. Her deceased husband was Chairman of the Society at one point. She’ll dig through their old publications for me and put me in touch with some writers soon.
Placing Myself
Interestingly, because of the economic downturn, the Times has started a discussion section called “Happy Days,” to facilitate dialogue about “the search for contentment in its many forms.” The discourse (media and otherwise) on “back to basics” is noteworthy. IMHO such conversation should be part of regular, sustained personal and public quests, not just something to fall back on in dire straits. In any case, Pico Iyer’s recent Opinion piece, “The Joy of Less,” and the reader responses it generated were welcome demonstrations that people can and do care to talk about what drives them other than the bank account balance. Of course, I find a few problems with Iyer’s idealization of (material and relational) escape in a foreign land, a luxury that (as one reader pointed out) one can only afford if one has a certain level of financial security and little in terms of family obligations.
Still, I started to think about what it is about being in a relatively unfamiliar setting that inspires transformations in values, routines, etc. Something in it undergirds the allure of the twenty-something round-the-world-backpacker culture. (It’s on my mind as I’m currently surrounded by it at a computer station at a hostel in Singapore.) Length of stay matters. Familiarity with language matters. Reasons for engagement matter. But I think in any case people experience a sense of rejuvenation at one time or another. I certainly feel it, having spent a couple of days back in Viet Nam. This time, in addition, I am beginning to find comfort in my own new way of relating to being in the country. The parental warnings about theft and corruption, bordering on paranoia, I can now push aside to a practical distance in order to engage by my own terms, to apprehend the experiences at more of my own discretion. Many times before (and even now still, but less so), the family’s stories and warnings would color much of my view. I think I can start to be in Viet Nam now.
With that said, I am overwhelmed. I can imagine how people coming back from the field year experience writer’s block. I understood it conceptually before but now felt it as I rode along on the back of a motorbike, the throngs whizzing past me. I had just come from my cousin’s place, home to a thirty-something couple with lucrative jobs at multinational companies. They have a driver. And iPhones. Then out on the streets there are the newspaper peddlers with sun-dried, sorrowful complexions. I had just skimmed an Oxfam-generated report about the ongoing challenge of urban poverty. Income disparity and class differences will be ever more apparent. How to navigate among and within these worlds as an ethnographer?
Sai Gon Traffic
I had a thought that instead of emphasizing subjectivity of various (groups of) people, I might adopt an interesting angle by focusing on the things about a shared space that give rise to specific interactions. Vague and wholly un-novel. Yes, but a reinforcement of the alluring effect of landscapes/environments for my thinking.
Straight Rep’in
Ah, Sonia Sotomayor. My weekend trip to the alma mater got me thinking. Mind you, politics was not on the brain once, then (except for a casual lunch convo where someone mentioned Michelle Obama’s thesis). For Reunions was, and probably always will be, just about the affect (both pretense and sentiment) of community, the bizarre zealousness of crowd behavior, rampant debauchery, and of course, creative takes on the orange/black color combo. But looking back on the gorgeous Gothic grounds I tried to imagine a young Sonia or Michelle sauntering down McCosh Walk and could not really do so.
Photo by Tom Bremer
With their prominent status in media now, do the shared categories such as “female” and “minority” and “Tiger” make me relate to my college experience differently? (Old Nassau is a conveyor belt for the manufacture of famous personalities, so the topic isn’t just germane to the people I mention. They happen to be people I find noteworthy.) It’s loosely related to a question of the role model effect, which MiML is working on through his economics research. Their public personae transcend themselves so that who they are as people in the everyday does not really matter, an idea which skirts the edges of an ontological philosophy I won’t engage fully now. What I am interested in is the notion of representation. For academics, that last sentence might as well have read “blah blah blah.” But I’ll get to the point.
How does one account for the gap between Sonia Sotomayor, the person conceivably who walked down the same campus paths I did, and Sonia Sotomayor, the face of TIME’s June 8th cover? The question pertains not only to coverage of politicians. I am interested in contemplating the limits of conveyance through various art mediums and writing. This summer’s project will be a practical challenge regarding that concept. How to portray in a manner that highlights consciousness of limitations? Feminist artist Trinh Thi Minh Ha has grappled with the question in much of her work but I am not so moved, surprisingly, by some of her early prize-winning documentaries.
On a tangential note, I just heard about a new doc on Senegalese musician Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love. Very excited for it. If you haven’t heard, listen:
This find prompted me to think about the differences between docs that feature famous people v. ordin’ry folks. And the differences between biography and ethnography. Perhaps more musings on this topic later.
