Goodbye to All That Jazz: February 2006

Rather unbelievable...

Here's something for super BBM fans. With a score as clear as the Western sky, and the beauty of natural landscape, the movie easily becomes one about love of introversion and purity. Just the right thing to strike the heartchords of Chinese little people.

Brokeback Mountain

In my usual morning daze, I heard my dad telling me of how a guy in his Mongolian days screwed a sheep (and got shot later on for the crime of what-is-that-word?). Thereby he expresses disbelief for the depiction of gay love. He said the mountain is not just a mountain. Mountains' lack of human inhabitation signifies emptiness in spirit. That gay sex happened in the mountains signifies the participants of the said activity did so out of hardship, confusion for their future, loneliness - a general void of meaning in their lives. Under such circumstances anything could happen; sheep could be screwed, let alone another man.

Adverse opinions early in the morning are too much to take, especially when I'm done with intellectual cynicism for a while (It leads to nowhere and tires me out.) - for it was intellectual cynicism, not an amazingly remote piece of moral value, that prompted my dad's review of the short story. I pointed out that "spiritual emptiness" seems to be a term that's more appropriately applied to the 19th century Western European bourgeoisie. "Spiritual emptiness" versus "material excess". The guys in Brokeback are far from being in material excess. Furthermore it's not like Brokeback is barren like the Iranian mountains. It's mid-West - cowboys and pastures. Dad brushed it aside. No, it's really because they've got nothing to do. Look at them - they aren't even sure if they're gay. I said Ennis isn't, but Jack might know that about himself from the very beginning. Dad quoted them saying they aren't queer. I realise then that we were arguing on very different grounds of sensitivities. I see the subject of homosexuality in terms of social behaviour and prejudice, and issues of denial and guilt - American psychology; he sees it in terms of depraved, depressed people who can't find meaning in and aren't in control of their own lives. Eg if SY ever turned gay because nothing else had mattered.

But mainly it's intellectual cynicism. Dad read the Chinese translation of the novella. In all it discarded or couldn't translate a lot of imageries in the Western dialect (it's hard), and therefore "softened down" the cowboys by quite a bit. On top of that Anne Proulx's succint and matter-of-fact narrative style was replaced with brimming sentimental expressions and even some invention (hmm, not so forgiveable) to express more of the "dumb, boundless sorrow", which is a sentiment in fashion in Chinese literature among young people. Therefore my dad's conclusion is that he doesn't like writers who xuan4 ran3 the subject matter (of gay love, in this case) - to pick specific elements and manipulate wordings to his/her convenience to mould a certain sentiment out of otherwise ordinary ambience, scenery, people and events, etc. He just can't stand people making a show out of anything. And therefore, I told him to reserve comments before he reads the original version, which I have printed for him as well. In the first place I meant the Chinese version to help understand some parts where the use of dialect made the meaning too opaque even for inference. I told him it's not in the plainest English possible. He said in that annoying drawl of his, nooo problem, it can't be easier. According to him a combination of some cleverness and being Shanghainese gives him the license to look down on a lot of things when he has the luxury to be out of those things.

How a day starts after a sleep-deficient night

1. At checkpoint, left pass on bus while juggling cellphone, mp3 player, little silicone earpiece fitting that dropped to the floor, and erhu. Bus left without me who's lining up among Indian and Chinese workers, changing IC for temp pass. Tried to call boss to look for pass on bus but he shame-facedly admitted that he was late and on the next bus. Later found that didn't drop pass on bus. Pass was in jeans pocket.

2. Found out that got appointed team leader on Sports Day with no familiar names in my team. Well there's the Taiwanese David who's programme manager of CSL but, man! How can I be his leader!

Book List

To be acquired:

1. Fresh Fruits by Shoichi Aoki
2. Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There by David Brooks
3. The Pillow Book by Sei Shonagon
4. Suicide's Girlfriend: A Novella and Other Stories by Elizabeth Evans
5. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

To be read:

1. 天黑以后 by 村上春树
2. 独白下的传统 by 李敖 (?)
3. Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
4. The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson

Finally Iran

Letter to a little friend:

"Iran has very friendly and hospitable people. I think middle-eastern people are by nature friendly and warm. At every meeting we were served with fruits, snacks and drinks. And I heard story of a Singaporean couple asking the way getting put onto a cab, whose driver was told of the destination and given money to get there by the friendly native.

"The place itself is rather sandy and rocky. 尘土飞扬的黄土原。All the major cities, such as Tehran and Isfahan, are situated within barren mountains since ancient times for better defense (Despite that Iran got an especially numerous number of invasions). Mountains trap pollution, especially when the weather is so dry. There's a greyish haze hanging low always, with the numerous and old cars on the road ejecting exhaust that's causing the pollution. From on the distant highway to the city, the mountains look as if they have a grey-blue skirt. The mountains themselves are really majestic. A brown expanse, sometimes with white streaks of snow on the side that's in the shadow of the sun, peaked against the clear blue sky (for the days when we were there were sunny and cloudless).

"One night I tried to go to the mountains. Some Islamic chanting was coming through the air. I have no clue where it came from. There might be a mosque near the university where we stayed the night (the university is at the foot of the mountains). The mountains answered back. It sounded like voices that dropped down from the sky. It's an indescribable feeling to look at the distant mountain peaks, unmoving as if in a picture, dark blue and mysterious in the rapidly falling night, with that kind of sound in your ears. The mountains have secrets to tell, but they are dangerous to know. You can completely go back to the spirit of nature-worshipping primitive societies. The stillness and grandness all in a foreign land made me uneasy. I took some very unsuccessful pictures. (In fact now I have serious doubts regarding my photographic skills and the capabilities of my Pentax Optio.) The next day I tried to go near one but it was actually much further away than it looked. And I was finally stopped by a wide trench in the ground that looked like a dried-up river channel."

View of mountains from the plane

Persian style guest house I stayed in Isfahan University of Technology

波斯猫 near the university guest house

Chinese words in Iran! Feel the tinge of 2 ancient civilisations merging. But behold - those words are inverted according to the guesthouse keeper's own sense of aesthetics. The Farsi above says: Ring this doorbell if you arrive after midnight.