Living with the Kombai

I stumbled across the Travel Channel last night which was airing back-to-back episodes of "Living with the Kombai" - the adventure of two white guys (a journalist and a non-fiction writer) living with the Kombai tribe of Papua New Guinea. This show has major echoes of Napoleon Chagnon and Bronislaw Malinowski. Part reality tv show, part travel diary, part half-assed ethnography and kinship study, I have to wonder how the anthropology community feels about this show. In last night's episode, a tribal woman needed medical intervention - her husband, the chief, claimed that she had "fallen on a stick" and hurt herself. In reality, he had shot her with a bow and arrow in the stomach during an argument. Sounds like the so-called "war-like" qualities of the Yanomamo. Witchcraft is also the subject of some discussion. The amateur ethnographers strip down for the ceremonial ritual, donning nothing but hollowed out yellow-orange squashes strategically placed over their penises...

La Petite Zine #21 is newly launched. Thanks to Rick for the InteReview.

Gleaners unite! Does anything like THIS exist in Seattle?

I leave for NY on Thursday. Reading on Thurs night at the 11th Street Bar with 1913 Press and then the Rubin event on Saturday night.

No time for writing or processing much these last few weeks, though the events of last weekend are still pretty fresh in my consciousness. At the urging of my therapist, I took a weekend workshop with her guru, the inventor of "core evolution." I only stayed for half of the weekend. Suffice it to say, that the one-size-fits-all approach really doesn't work for me. I got a Freudian analysis of my Confucian family dynamic, had my ethnicity as a 2nd-gen Taiwanese reduced to being the "same as being Japanese" as a sort of cultural shorthand, was told that I have "pride in a non-narcissistic sense", was compared to the buddha and to Chinese tenure-track scientists and sister-in-laws. My departing "challenge" from the guru was to "do something wild and dangerous." I understood in that moment my readings on Claude Levi-Strauss in anthro and the notion of linguistic structuralism. What felt perhaps most bothersome was that at the start of class, I noticed and clearly stated the absence of people of color in the workshop (mostly middle-aged white women with a few Caucasian couples and white guys) and expressed a concern about that dynamic. Studying with someone else's guru is tricky business, perhaps something to best avoided in the future.

I've been working on an application for NEA-Japan that involves the act of pilgrimage and also thinking a lot about Agnes Varda's work as a filmmaker - particularly her video essay "The Gleaners and I" which I recently picked up. In the piece, Varda participates in gleaning (heart-shaped potatoes abandoned in a field) and interviews gypsies, and subversives who continue to animate the tradition of gleaning that is burned into Western consciousness through the images of painters like Jean-Francois Millet. In VPC class a few weeks ago, I watched a Chris Marker film that I hadn't seen in 10 years, since SAIC, but had deeply affected me, even then. Trying to tease out the similarities and differences between Marker and Varda...

Went to shows this week at the Rendezvous, the Henry, and the Dearborn House in Fremont. The Rendezvous is an intimate jewel-box style venue with booth seating and a great stage, perfect for a small show. We saw Susie Phillipsen play with WT again. They are still ironing the kinks out on the duets, but added another song to their repertoire. Saw WT's drummer play at the Henry Gallery on Friday with his other project. Last night, went to see Susie Asado play at the Dearborn, a small gallery in a residential neighborhood that hosts an ongoing music series. I have been struck by the music scene here in Seattle in that "skill" and/or technical proficiency is not a barrier for musicians to perform on stage and have fun. The other thing I am noticing is a trend towards "nerdy chic" with a lot of the bands that we are seeing - a cultivated kind of geekiness that includes huge eyeglasses and unstyled hair. Audience participation is also very popular - getting audience members to sing the chorus, and/or having them do arm movements to certain refrains.

Susie, aka Josepha C., is doing amazing sets with ukulele and acoustic guitar, clearly informed by her studies with Anne W at Naropa. The musical act that went after, June Madrona, from Olympia, were total pros with some interesting politics and views on polygamy. June Madrona closed the set by turning out the lights and singing a song about the lead singer's college days getting up at the crack of dawn and working at a children's organization - feeling himself to be part of the capitalistic apparatus that creates a 24-hour culture in a city like New York where you can get Chinese food delivered at 3 a.m. Living against nature, vs. with nature.

The other night we went to see W play at the Sunset in Ballard. W opened with a solo set and finished out the show with three songs that had been re-arranged to accommodate female vocals for duet and back-up. The collab was in the spirit of good fun but it made me think of how a song that's written for single vocals gets effectively transposed into other variations - i.e. how should a second vocal line be brought into the mix and how might that vocal combine with the primary singer? The disparity that we were seeing and hearing from the floor was that W inflected more and sang with a great deal more expression (they are his songs and lyrics), while the female vocalists sang a much straighter vocal line. Also, because many of the songs have a masculine quality or male narrator, certain phrases sung by the female vocalists created a dissonance in meaning/effect. So the challenge might be in picking out more gender neutral/universal songs and playing with key phrases or words - i.e. the vocals don't have to be split 50-50 amidst everyone on stage. But I'm not still working out in my mind whether gender neutral is critical - think of a song like "One Man Guy" sung by Rufus Wainwright, backed by his sister Martha.

Far-off deer cry
a whistling October ideogram
not found in the sutras

a script for simple living
the balm that wakens the world

he gestures angrily
at Dakshina Kali
creek crescent moon creek

knotting the tsutsumi cloth
before arriving at her home

he follows the black
throated jay with sad eyes
vague clouds icy ravines

painting in the pupil of daruma
wish for a smooth migration

on the hill-god masks
spooky silver eyes --
we bathe them in June

the freshly washed corpse with
flowers braided in his beard

lit with a blue sheen
where two granite rocks narrow
the rough creek

ruptures of earth, the shift
of fault lines, cleaving of loam

I spent a large part of my weekend at a workshop on interdisciplinary project design taught by performances studies artist/scholar Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren. I have to say that many of the exercises in the class made me outright uncomfortable, but I learned a lot about my own disposition and way of thinking and from observing others in action. The principles she discussed in the context of creating an interdisciplinary project, course, or program in an academic context or easily transferrable to the idea of embarking upon an interdisciplinary collaboration - and while I've been collaborating for artists for years, it was useful to learn the language and planning stages to set up the framework for a successful collaboration. What has failed in certain collabs with artists in my own experience has been a number of factors - 1) readiness 2) space 3)resources/resourcefulness 4) common language. Kanta created a space in the middle of the room with a rope and had individuals, partners, and larger groups use the space as a metaphor for how they might approach a group project. I was completely amazed to see certain participants picked up the rope and literally moved the frame, decentralizing the person who staked their claim on middle. The idea that boundaries can and are renegotiated continually. That some collaborator's value control over connection. That someone who stands on the outside with wariness may be welcomed into the fold and over-accommodated, resulting in that individual's dominance, for the sake of inclusion. The idea of the enclosed space made me think of Twyla Tharp's approach to starting a project with her idea boxes which become full with source material, ideas, etc.

Lately, I am struggling with the intense discomfort of being in grad school again, learning a new field and vocabulary, starting from zero - the question is how do I honor my own learning process (largely observational and/or behind closed doors) when placed into situations where I am forced to go beyond my comfort zone? In writing workshops, there was always the option to not read or share. At Naropa, there was a foundation that was laid before the warrior exams began. This new education - it's all about small group work, discussion and student-based learning. But I believe deeply in master-student apprenticeships and the imparting of knowledge. As a writer, my habits are to work in isolation - small groups only work if there is something to be learned from individuals in a peer group. Who is supposed to lead? Or who will emerge as a leader? How do you lead when you don't yet have the tools?

Our heating system is getting fixed today - the problem: when we moved in we were told by our landlord to ask the upstairs neighbor which utility companies to set up services with. Our lease also did not specify in clear terms which services we were responsible for- this is the problem with boilerplate contracts. Upstairs neighbors informed us everything is electric. So we contracted with Seattle City Lights and have what we thought were unusually low bills. A few weeks ago, a doorknob hanger from Puget Sound Energy showed up on our back door. Not addressed to Bergman/Pai specifically as residents, and with a different street address than our actual house (6324 and NOT 6321). We ran around the block looking for who that poor soul might be who was about to have their gas service turned off and their meter locked. Guess what? It was us. I received a thorough tonguelashing from our landlord's right-wrong Cantonese-by-way-of-HK/Canadian-mother yesterday morning for not paying my gas bill and a few questions led to a clear picture of the problem. The upstairs neighbor has electric heat. The downstairs floor has gas.That encounter pushed so many of my buttons. Chinese mothers. GRRRRR. The one thing that I should be grateful for is that the goddamn heating system didn't crap out when my father was here visiting last month. That would have been a total cultural debacle and breakdown beyond repair.

New novel by SAIC grad Eileen Favorite looks terrific.

chirp of birds
squeak of heat pipes

My friend Josepha Conrad, aka Susie Asado is playing a show in Seattle on January 26. More info here.

This semester's classes:

Political Theory and Anthopology
Japan Society
Museum and Social Issues
Visual Praxis Collective

B-r-r-r-r-r

Our heating system is broken.

Current temperature outside: 46 degrees
Current temperature inside: 48 degrees

AWP just informed me that the bookfair is still open to the public on Saturday (and free.)

Poetry in Seattle

I have been making the rounds, getting to know what sort of innovative literary programs are taking place around here. Met over break with Frank Video, assistant for Nick Licata of the City Council. Nick's office is looking for a curator who can make a 6-month to a year-long commitment to curate poets who read for 3 minutes preceding all city council meetings. The poem is a sort of invocation or setting of the tone for an audience less acquainted with poetry. I like this concept but don't have the time in my schedule to attend monthly meetings. If the program interests you, check it out here. I also met with the Frye Museum of Art yesterday to learn about the project that they are doing in collaboration with UW Press which will release a book of commissioned writings inspired by objects from the Frye's permanent and temporary collections in 2009. That project's pretty much wrapped and planned for the long-term, but exciting to know that such programs exist here.

So AWP has sold out (7,000?! people registered )- though I'm not sure what this means for the bookfair which has traditionally been open to the public on the weekend. How many "professional" poets are there out there anyway?

This solves my love-hate problem with AWP and my procrastination with registering this year. I will be in New York for the 11th Street Bar reading and the Rubin Museum of Art program anyways and can spend my Friday at galleries and museums, the way that it was always meant to be...

Glocalism

My new research interest may be pop culture and globalization. I read three different works over break that dealt with issues of globalization in different cultures - a study of Taiwanese bridal photography, a book on Pokemon's transformation from East to West, and a long article on thug realism in Tanzanian barbershops by an anthropologist named Brad Weiss who is visiting UW on Monday to give a series of talks. The book on Taiwanese bridal photography by Bonnie Adrian was the best-written piece of anthropological writing that I've read since moving to Seattle - original, accessible and in depth - the book traces the history of wedding rituals in Taiwan - how red bridal gowns became white wedding dresses with the occupation of KMT. Bridal photographs as important cultural documents of a woman's lost youth and beauty (even if fictive/fantasy) before she goes "yellow-face" or "lets herself go." Over the years, I've seen many a cousin or family friend's wedding portrait and marveled at the transformation of these women from plain-faced, makeup-free practical working stiffs to fantasy models. It all totally makes sense now. The significance of this documented performance as an assertion of an identity outside of the family structure which both bride and groom enter upon the wedding.

I heard Lee read from her memoir last October when we did an event together at Reed College in Portland. From the passage that she read, as well as the way in which the book is marketed, I had anticipated that the book would be about her childhood and family dynamics growing up in a New England family. The memoir is primarily about her relationship with her father who was dying of terminal cancer during the two-year period that is covered in the book, with flashbacks into the past. What becomes interesting then is that a glamor shot of the author's mother is published on the book cover. According to the book's end matter, in earlier drafts of the book, there were few/no passages on the mother - certain sections were added at the request of agents and editors to make the book more marketable. In the current book, the mother floats in and out of the background in an alcoholic haze. It is her lack of engagement that generally characterizes her participation in the family dynamic, and of course, this would impact the other dynamics and bonds within the family, but it seemed discordant to me to market the book to an audience that might expect a mother-daughter tale, which this was definitely not.

Winter break and I've been staying away from heavy intellectual reading - just finished Ondaatje's Coming Through Slaughter and really see this book, which was marketed as fiction in its day, as a frontrunner to poetic projects like Bellocq's Ophelia or documentary-style poetry like what A Van Jordan did with M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A. Ondaatje traces the life of New Orleans jazz player Buddy Bolden - his lovers, his music, his barber shop, his life in the House of D. On now to Nell Freudenberger's short story collection Lucky Girls. Nell came to town last September when Ben Fountain read at Elliott Bay. It was a smart move on the part of their publisher to pair them together, as both authors write eloquently of Americans abroad.

Wrapping up an interview for HOW2 that will launch in 08. I was asked about whether or not a male poet/mentor can ever truly know what a woman poet goes through. I think the background of the question was related to theories of the Gurlesque and perhaps something to do with the Chicago Review article about women in poetry/publishing (which I did not read, do not care to). The question didn't resonate for me at all, because I do not identify as a feminist - I identify as a humanist - and it was also this attitude that got be a "B" in Barbara Gottlieb's Women's Studies class at BU. While I am thinking about grades, since I just finished first quarter - they are really *so* arbitrary and should just be eliminated. They are not really a true motivator but a mechanism for classroom management and artificial measures of the acquisition of knowledge. That said, I was very happy to rock a 3.9. Back in high school, however, under my parents' watch, 3.9 would have been sub-par and grounds for more studying.

I just finished a book on snobbery by Joseph Epstein that made me think deeply about the ways in which I and others express snobbism and pedigree - namedropping, affiliations, capacity for creativity, schooling, fashion, food, affectation towards celebrity. When I came back from reading at RISD, a classmate enthusiastically regaled me with the personal detail that her graduate school mentor had taught at RISD - and so by extension and affiliation that *must* make her "in." The best part of RISD was seeing my friend Rick and sharing my work with highly gifted creative-thinking Asian and Asian-American students - that has been a rarity for me in academia. That is was RISD was icing on the cake. Am I a downward-looking snob or an upward-looking snob? Epstein's book is brilliantly blurbed as part of the design concept by the long-deceased Oscar Wilde, one of my all-time favorite snobs. It makes me rethink the blog as a purveyor of snobbism - not the real me or real life but a *performance* for others.

Which leads me to think about a conversation with my friend the poet Carol Levin yesterday about my father's recent visit and his propensity for story-telling. I've encouraged my father for many years to write his story, to record his story on a digital recorder, to document his life - all things he has professed to desire for himself - but Carol pointed out that the writing practice is at heart a solitary effort. And my father's need to tell stories is about connecting with others, having an audience, so a more appropriate venue for that might be if he moved to town to have a house-salon series where in a structured format he could tell his stories and cultivate a community over a sustained period of time amongst a safe audience of friends where a genuine exchange of energy could contribute to healing and transformation.