View from the top

Not quite hibernating yet, so apropos the earlier post on Mittel Europa,

Enjoying the view from the top.

Climb the mountain that is in front of you...

Winter Hibernation

Time to reflect on the year 2016, a year of great surprises and transformations.  But a bear's way of doing that is to disengage, rest, and reprocess. So NJ Kpopper will be in hibernation until the new year.

Алые паруса - Pali Road

Pali Road is a thought-provoking and well-executed film that tells an undistracted story of love, identity, and the ever-present (for NJ Kpopper) theme of dreams meshing with reality, structured with mystery and thriller overtones.

One of the highlight lines is shown in the trailer above ---  "Is this life so awful that you had to go and make up some fairy tale world?"  An essential question entwined with many decisions.

Pali Road is a kind of obverse face of the pure idealism and lyricism of Алые паруса  (aka Scarlet Sails).  Алые паруса portrays the pure power of love and dreams in such a beautiful way that it deserves to be an eternal classic.  But there is a kind of darkness present in all such dreams, because it is the contrasts between darkness and light that gives the dream stories their sometimes blinding intensity. Whereas the ordinary world lacks that reductive contrast unless someone refracts it through their own personal lens.  That is why black and white photography can deliver more power than color in the right hands. It is just that kind of juxtaposition teetering on the edge of darkness that this bear is chasing after, hoping to capture.

Buddhist Republic, Chess City

A brief follow up to the Lost Cosmonaut post.  The idea of a "Chess Republic" is imaginatively explored in Lost Cosmonaut and factually explored in this documentary from 1998.

Kalmykia as a whole seems to exist in that flickering liminal zone, insufficiently centered on the main flows of the modern world, yet still connected enough to be buffeted by waves in its wake.  A place where ideals can be superimposed on reality, with some success it seems, viz. Город Шахмат.

Lost Cosmonaut

Daniel Kalder's Lost Cosmonaut: Observations of an Anti-Tourist is about as good a book that can be found, if you are looking for a single volume that discusses experiences in Kalmykia, Udmurtia, Mari-El, and Tatarstan.

Of course, most people will not be seeking experiences in any of those places, let alone having them all in one volume.  When this bear first encountered the book around the time of its publication, he was still too respectful and observant of proprieties to fully engage with its brashness.  However, after some marinating that included spending time in some of the locations Kalder describes, the book's apparent irreverence is revealed as a manifestation of the author's own unique and sincere quest for a personal truth.  And if there is anything NJ Kpopper is crazy about, it is a unique and sincere quest for a personal truth.  Just love that.

One quote, about one of the cultures under the lens:

"Certainly they'd cooked up a religion and some folktales, and they had a separate language, but that doesn't take much effort. Every culture that has ever existed has done it. Humans do it by default.  You can hardly praise them for it."

A bit pointed, but it does contain truth.  Kalder is powerful when conjuring up the landscapes of dreamy unreality that are conjured by our imaginations and the uncomfortable disjunctions that result when these landscapes are overfit onto a crumbling reality.  

But that process can run in reverse, where a crumbling reality is restored by the imagination into an ideal dream.  It is the merger of the two that lends credence to our longing.

At least that is what this bear is aiming to create from his personal landscapes.

Mortality

Each individual has their own lens through which they view life, but the fact that Janna Friske is already dead and gone is a permanent reminder for me that very little time remains for a person to live the life that they themselves want to live.  I hope I will get there and complete my goals on this unhappy planet.

Где же ты, где

Twenty years have gone fleeting by since Blestyashie ruled the "airwaves", as they used to be called.
Epitomizing post-Soviet decadence and the rise of the sponsored songs of the oligarchs, Blestyashie paved the way with their groundbreaking hits such as "Au, Au, Au," with its morbid murder-sex mutilation theme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wdidNqQF6E

What a fabulous era it was, when it was possible to reinvent life within the span of a few weeks, and live out that dream on the installment plan for an indefinite term forever after.  Some with sparkling motel-stay experiences may choose to disagree, but this bear is forever enamored of the early ought's for their sense of possibility and renewal of a life that did not deserve such chances. Just this.

Lone wolf (Ганцаардсан чоно)

The Facebook generation seems to have generated a world of people with friendly and cheery social connections. But some may remember an older, darker world that celebrated angst and anomie as expressions of individual authenticity.  This bear certainly understands and identifiers that loner's world more easily.

But even the lone wolf sometimes has to let out a howl.  

Make Mongolia Great Again

So this is making the rounds...perhaps inspired by another authoritarian attaining power.

https://mobile.twitter.com/asiapundits/status/723781256148836352

It is just fascinating that although the Mongol empire was the largest ever, there are today only a population of just over 3 million in Mongolia.  They do punch above their weight in terms of impact.  Yes, the greater Mongolsphere is somewhat larger, but not in orders of magnitude.  It is hard to grapple with the actual population density, but it is possible. Just for comparison, here are the 30 states or territories of the US that are larger than Mongolia in population.

• Iowa = 1 Mongolia
• Connecticut > 1 Mongolia
• Oklahoma > 1 Mongolia
• Oregon > 1 Mongolia
• Kentucky > 1 Mongolia
• Louisiana > 1 Mongolia
• Alabama > 1 Mongolia
• South Carolina > 1 Mongolia
• Colorado > 1 Mongolia
• Minnesota > 1 Mongolia
• Wisconsin > 1 Mongolia
• Maryland = 2 Mongolias
• Missouri > 2 Mongolias
• Tennessee > 2 Mongolias
• Indiana > 2 Mongolias
• Massachusetts > 2 Mongolias
• Arizona > 2 Mongolias
• Washington > 2 Mongolias
• Virginia > 2 Mongolias
• New Jersey = 3 Mongolias (almost)
• Michigan > 3 Mongolias
• North Carolina > 3 Mongolias
• Georgia > 3 Mongolias
• Ohio > 3 Mongolias
• Pennsylvania > 4 Mongolias
• Illinois > 4 Mongolias
• New York > 6 Mongolias
• Florida > 6 Mongolias
• Texas > 9 Mongolias
• California = 13 Mongolias

And let's go ahead and do a selected international comparison while we're at it.  Uruguay is just slighter larger and Armenia just slightly smaller than Mongolia in population, and it is possible that some people have at least heard of those countries.  Bigger than Mongolia are:

• New Zealand > 1 Mongolia
• Ireland > 1 Mongolia
• Norway > 1 Mongolia
• Finland = 2 Mongolias (well, close)
• Singapore = 2 Mongolias (also close)
• Kyrgyzstan = 2 Mongolias
• Hong Kong > 2 Mongolias
• Switzerland > 2 Mongolias
• Austria = 3 Mongolias (almost)
• Netherlands > 5 Mongolias
• Kazakhstan = 6 Mongolias (almost)
• Australia = 6 Mongolias
• Uzbekistan = 10 Mongolias
• Canada = 12 Mongolias
• South Korea = 17 Mongolias
• Italy = 20 Mongolias
• France = 22 Mongolias
• Turkey = 26 Mongolias
• Japan = 42 Mongolias
• Russia = 48 Mongolias
• Indonesia = 86 Mongolias
• United States = 108 Mongolias

Let's not even compute the numbers for India and China - too scary.  Still it is intriguing that Mongolia has a reputation far beyond its population size, especially compared to a country like Uzbekistan, that few have ever heard of.  A good argument for reducing population density.

Research

Old enough to know better, but it is still just a matter of manipulating the symbols. That creates the illusion of life.

Just because...

Talk of the Town

It is away from the usual trend of thoughts on this blog, but it seems like an appropriate moment to discuss pioneering female guitarists.  Actually, going to discuss just one, Chrissie Hynde, this bear's second favorite female guitarist according to the latest published rankings.

[As an aside, this bear almost always favors the Telecaster among electric guitars.  A crisp, biting, even harsh sound is preferable to a fat, thick, smooth one.]

The slick and practiced world of Kpop can create innumerable seductive and addictive sounds, but true individual creativity can triumph over even such a mighty machine.  Hynde and the Pretenders rode the wave of opportunity to new kinds of music and sounds with the arrival of punk.  Punk itself opened up rock music to women without requiring them to behave themselves. 

Many interesting female artists [male too], from Patti Smith on down, found their audience at the time.  Not to belittle them, but Hynde was always operating on a higher dimension of crushing sound, musicality, and lyricism, and therefore she outlasted all of the others that were tied to brief musical fads.

Hynde had to fight hard to win acceptance as the front-woman of a pure rock and roll band.  After many false starts, she formed her band the Pretenders when she was 27. Wikipedia has most of the relevant background material.

Three exemplar tracks:

• Message of Love - No other song creates as much rhythmic intensity out of the silences between notes.  Nice lyrics too.  "We are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars" fits so well in this song that this bear took 30 years to learn that this is quote from Oscar Wilde.
• Kid There had been so many great hard-rocking Pretenders tracks that this "soft" sound was a surprise. But Hynde cared more about making great music than fitting any mold.  What a fantastic result!
• Talk of the Town  Gorgeously fluid buildup and drive to the unforgettable chorus.  The lyrics were always incomprehensible to me until the internet was available to explain them, but they are actually great too.

As an inexperienced kid, you tend to think that such music is very good, but just a bit better than the other music that is floating around.  But as the years pass, you gain a better appreciation that unique talents are just that, and don't come around again in better versions.  So the fans just have to hope that they are composing, playing, and recording as much as possible for posterity.

Unlike Mick Jones in the Library, Chrissie remains glamorous and hard-rocking to this day.

Hynde in 2016, age 65

Update, just to circle this back around to Mongolia...

Just because...

"Just because you like my stuff doesn't mean I owe you anything" ---Bob Dylan

So Mr. Dylan is in the news for being rude again by not showing up at the Nobel Awards ceremony after first refusing to acknowledge the award for a couple of weeks.  The outright refusal of the award by the likes of Sartre

by Thierry Ehrmann

seems like a classier move in many ways.  But it still raises the issue in the Dylan quote above.  The artist creates.  Many artists create in a symbiotic relationship with their audiences, seeking to please and being fed and sustained by the approval of those audiences. Other artists recognize on some level the necessity or practicality of catering to public opinion in some form.  But, providing the artist can ignore or withstand the reaction of the commentariat, it is perfectly within their rights to adopt a Dylanesque pose --- pose seems the right word in Dylan's case --- towards the artist's public.  It just is what it is.  And sometimes the artist just needs to get busy doing what they have to do to create and stuff the rest.

For an intriguing collection of photos, see Surzhana Radnaeva's www.surzhana.com.

Stormy Weather Ahead

[without commentary]

Автор: Kikuchi Yoosai / (of the reproduction) Tokyo National Museum - Dschingis Khan und seine Erben (exhibition catalogue), München 2005, p. 331, Общественное достояние, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4201190

A Flawless Woman

art by narare

"I have finally realized how rarely you will find a flawless woman, one who is simply perfect. No doubt there are many who seem quite promising, write a flowing hand, give you back a perfectly acceptable poem, and all in all do credit enough to the rank they have to uphold, but you know, if you insist on any particular quality, you seldom find one who will do. Each one is all too pleased with her own accomplishments, runs others down, and so on. While a girl is under the eye of her adoring parents and living a sheltered life is bright with future promise, it seems men have only to hear of some little talent of hers to be attracted. As long as she is pretty and innocent, and young enough to have nothing else on her mind, she may well put her heart into learning a pastime that she has seen others enjoy, and in fact she may become quite good at it. And when those who know her disguise her weaknesses and advertise whatever passable qualities she may have so as to present them in the best light, how could anyone think ill of her, having no reason to suspect her of being other than she seems? But when you look further to see whether it is all true, I am sure you can only end up disappointed."

Murasaki Shikubu, The Tale of Genji, Royall Tyler translation

Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia

In honor of Chingghis Khan's birthday, this post will revisit a modern Mongol-watcher's favorite, Johanna D'Arc of Mongolia.  Amazingly, this film from 1989 successfully and mostly respectfully records the tropes of traditional nomadic culture that recur over and over again in subsequent Western filmic representations of Mongolia.

The added layer of the escapist desires of the female protagonists, and the pressures of modernizing civilization from all sides delivers plenty of food for thought. The production values are odd but authentic, and with patience, the viewer is carried along on a marvelous journey.  And there are memorable images along the way, like the one above.

The same dilemmas that were present in 1989 persist today.  Is the Mongolia of the imagination an archetype with relevance for creatures implanted in modern civilization?  Is the archetype a Western construct that prevents a more nuanced view of modern Mongolian from taking hold?  The nearly three hour running length of the film will give the viewer plenty of time to reflect and come to a deeper understanding of these issues. 

Doppelgänger

It would be tedious and beyond a bear's expertise to discuss the doppelgänger as a literary trope.  But the fact remains that such creatures can be found in the everyday world.

[image by pholweis]

In my experience, these doubles emerge at critical moments in a person's life.  My own doppelgänger drifted close to me during tumultuous career change, then drifted away again.  And one encounters the doppelgänger's of others only at specific moments.  Are they signs of alternate realities popping into being at inflection points?  Or the effect of a divine double exposure?  Whatever they are, they are fascinating to observe.

Tsundere ツンデレ

Thanks to KDrama, NJ Kpopper just learned about "Tsundere" for the first time.

According to this process, a person can gradually transform from

цунцун to дэрэдэрэ. Certainly we all hope that when transformations occur, they will be in a good direction, and not painful.  But no one can certify that for us.

The reality of the image

This bear has recently been taking care of a backlog of unfinished tasks, and having caught up a bit on the past, is now able to plan for the future a bit at the same time.

This post is some rambling about the past and future as reflected in photography.  For a long time, NJ Kpopper was a manual photography purist, having inherited some gene for this trait somehow.  In film, I learned my apertures, shutter, focus, and ISO settings, and had bursts of activity where I tried to be more or less artistic with my images.  But I would end up with results like this.

Actually sometimes the results were more meaningful.  The discipline of watching and waiting for the shot, and the restriction, especially on a trip, of being able to take (and afford to develop and print) only 5 or 6 rolls of 36 images each led to a more careful selection of images.  And the resulting images from those years carry a lot of weight in my memory, since each image has a greater burden of representing what is not recorded.  There are some very significant friends for whom I have only 4 or 5 images recorded (or less), but my imagination can build off of that skeleton to create a rich structure.

Later, I bit the bullet and invested in a Nikon kit that included a fully manual camera and several prime lenses.  I started to shoot in black and white only and developed and printed everything myself.  This was several years after rational people stopped doing such things, but even thinking about it now sets off waves of pleasure because that period was entwined with some of the more significant moments of a bear's life.  It also took a lot of TIME, mostly locked up in a dark bathroom with chemicals.  That too was fun, but just couldn't be sustained for long after my life got more complicated.

So I began to go digital, first with a Nikon DSLR.  But the DSLR was slow and not as nimble as my little manual, and frankly I never got good at handling its complicated controls.  I took more pictures, but enjoyed the taking less, and gradually stopped using that camera.  Then I tried a little Nikon point and shoot that had some manual controls, hoping its portability would translate into spontaneity, but it too was very unsatisfying. If I relied on the camera to take the picture with automatic settings, I either found it too boring and pointless to bother with, or I confounded the focus and exposure due to my oddball framing habits developed with film.  I stopped using it and tucked it away in a drawer somewhere.  I became one of the legions who rely on their smartphone.  But that is no fun either, with a tiny distorting lens and weird distorting filters on the images, even if the image resolution is high.

The intervening years show an increasing accumulation of images on my hard drives, but I look back at them less and less.  The thoughtless ease of their capture has devalued them in my mind, and other reality-construction tools (notably words) have started to fill their place.  The image has to be carefully selected if it is going to become a permanent overlay on reality.

Getting to the point, what is the future part of this post?  That I am not giving up on images yet entirely.  With adventures ahead to record, I am going to make another attempt at digital photography with a slightly different approach.  This does involves the dramatic, even traumatic, step of abandoning Nikon, which I had never done before, except for a brief dalliance with a twin-lens Chinese Seagull medium format camera.  That was more for the experience of something different rather than dissatisfaction with Nikon though.  To avoid turning this into a product placement, I won't say who I am leaving Nikon for...

But I am still hoping to create the requisite imagery to build a beautiful mental landscape for this bear's future.

First Impressions

Earlier posts on First Love and Crush v. Love explored some related aspects of this theme.  4minute's First remains a singular expression of this phenomenon, especially important as one of NJ Kpoppers "first" adventures in K-pop fandom.

There is something magical about the first exposure to any phenomenon, where all impressions are absorbed with a sense of childlike wonder and total acceptance.  Hence those impressions are deeply imprinted on the consciousness and take on an ineffaceable significance.  This bear has had the good fortune to experience many such moments when encountering new things, triggering an extremely sensitive and malleable state of mind -- new people, new places, new music, new literature, and new languages. Sometimes all of those things get rolled up together into a highly intoxicating blend!

Temujin, Timur, and other potentates

With the passing of Islam Karimov, the term of power of one Uzbek ruler has come to a close after 26 years.  Chinggis ruled for only 21 years, albeit over a much larger empire of his own creation.  Timur, on the other hand, maintained control for 35 years.

Timur had Christopher Marlowe as a publicist, but in spite of that early coup, today remains the lesser known of the world conquerors.  Perhaps that is because Temujin has better modern marketing.

Or perhaps it was his originality, practically inventing the role of world conqueror out of the thin blue sky.

Of two minds

The internet being what it is, NJ Kpopper stumbled across this page of schizophrenic art.

This art, created by actual schizophrenics, illustrates the mind being torn apart in a more than symbolic fashion. Makes you wonder if art  is more than just a simulacrum of reality... can the art become the reality in itself (en soi). I do think at least that our perception of reality is created and can be shaped by the lens we use to apprehend it.

This bear will be working with new lenses starting right now. Literary doubles have appeared and demand attention. Even if they are not completely corporeal, they are imaginatively satisfying and can be "fleshed" out.

Vive La République!

Since my entire blog audience these days is coming from France, it only seems appropriate to reflect a bit on the French influence on NJ Kpopper.  Like many bears, this one was trained in the French language in school, and that experience was the gateway to many other languages to be learned later in life.  In this post, we can only review a few brief touchstones that may be returned to for a more full discussion later on.

Seeking intellectual bonafides, NJK continued to read in French: Camus, Racine, Rostand, Balzac, and especially Racine have left traces in this bear's consciousness.  Also developed a fondess for the compact and elegant Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, which epitomizes luxury, completism, and minimalism, all in the same formal package.

Next, there is the entire universe of French film, which is worthy of 1,001 blogs (that already exist out there).  We will speak of Delphine Seyrig in an upcoming post, but in summary we will just refer to the already existing blog Adjani Films Ranked that discusses the merits of NJ Kpopper's still favorite actress, Isabelle Adjani, across the entire range of her oeuvre.

There will also be occasion to discuss Adjani's blue dress from Possession, which has taken on a life of its own in literature through an ongoing process of transmigration.

Sorry if this post is all hints, but it is impossible to truly discuss these matters without writing long essays beyond the blog format.

Chinggis Reimagined

Someone who has gone far, literally and figuratively, in nomadic searches, is Tim Cope. His book and documentary, "In Search of Genghis Khan", is about as complete of an exploration of the nomadic essence by the settled, Western mindset as it is possible to find.  This bear found that some of the most subtle observations were made deep into the video, and it helped greatly in understanding the extent and behavior of the grassland/horse/man connection among nomadic peoples, something often written about, but hard to get a handle on in the abstract.

Cope rode solo from Mongolia to Hungary through the the steppe, discovering connections between all the various nomadic peoples along the way, as well as how things changed when he arrived in Europe.  If this bear had been a freer spirit twenty years ago, he might have dreamed of such a journey himself.  But all credit goes to Cope for actually living and achieving a difficult and arduous goal. 

Now, Cope's experience is a useful waypoint in orienting the bear toward the future.  Finding a true, authentic, historical nomadic essence of the past is an admirable, but chimerical goal.  And Cope has done the work, so that we don't have to, in some sense.  Instead, we can work on developing a Mongolia of the mind (also discussed in an earlier post) where liberation is possible in a more than material sense, and the Secret Mongols of History can have their say as well. 

Время, вперёд!

Secret Mongols of History

Well, the Secret History of the Mongols gets most of the press, along with some other variant Secret Histories,

but NJ Kpopper would like more attention to be paid to the Secret Mongols of History. Because, just as with any people, there are many Mongols obscured from general acclaim who are nevertheless making their mark and shaking the foundations of the world as much as any butterfly flapping its wings could.

There are also many Mongols out there who are "passing" as something else in society. Most people would probably never notice that, but it pays to take more time to listen.  If people did, they would find Mongols, Tatars, Tuvans, even Naimans and Merkits, all nomadic souls seeking freedom under the constraints of a sedentary society . The reader is probably shaking her head, saying "He only wanted us to listen to him rave!"  But, "Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?"

Golia "junket"

One of the upsides of talking about Mongolia all of the time is that your true friends will get the hint and start bringing you Mongolian stuff.  So NJ Kpopper recently had the pleasure of sampling Golia vodka, a very smooth, premium drink, tasting as good as its marketing description telling of sextuple filtration and water from pristine mountain lakes. [Note this is not a PP - product placement!]

A bit of Googling goes a loooong way for the curious, so it was soon revealed that the presence of this vodka in the US was the product of a plutocratic romance.  According to an interview with the owner/distributor...

"It starts like this — my good friend was working in Hong Kong as a

trader, and he decided to take a junket to Mongolia. He went up on a

tour and fell in love with his tour guide, who happened to be the

Mongolian government administrator’s daughter. They got married, and

like 12 years and two kids later, he ends up owning half the country."

http://www.thedailymeal.com/goats-grains-interview-golia-vodkas-david-solomon

So, is this a cute story, or by consuming this vodka am I contributing to the wealth of a second Gulnara Karimova (Googoosha)?  The tale is a bit ominous, I am afraid.  So perhaps commenters will enlighten us and inform us if this tasty drink should be set aside for ethical reasons.  If falling in love leads to business success, is that an automatic indictment for insincerity?  Can't always be so, can it?

Idols

What does it mean to want to wear someone else's face, image, or brand on your shirt?

*

The very word "idol" has been stripped of its historical connotations of idolatry, but if one does believe that there is no higher purpose to be distracted from, as most bears do, is there still a problem with this kind of image appropriation?  What does it even signify?  And what are the limits of the permissible in an age of instant internet reproduction of images?  Is this just algae floating on the surface of consciousness, or does it have deeper roots?  Certainly it reflects some kind of urge.

*60% of NJ Kpoppers' idols pictured.

Japan production

Japanese quality control has produced an extraordinarily high percentage of the world's most reliable products - cars, cameras, cups, nail clippers....  Buy Japanese often equates to buy troublefree.  Certainly buying a Japanese product after the breakage of a Chinese copy is considered wise.  But if one's own Toyota breaks down, does that all change?  Is it time to start looking for signs of Japan's decline, and the next big thing.  Or is it some kind of cosmic anomaly?

Vienna, Nomad-Proof?

It is well known that Vienna was the last bastion of the "West" against the Ottoman Empire, and that a crescent-shaped pastry was developed there to celebrate the repulsion of the Turk.  That pastry, brought to Paris by the Austrian Marie Antoinette, became the croissant, propping up the bottom lines of cafes across the globe.

Recent reading reminded me of a not forgotten, but perhaps less celebrated fact, that Vienna also represented the western limit of the original conquests of the Mongols, who had easily taken control of Hungary under Batu Khan with a mixed Mongol and Tatar army.  But the death of Ögedei Khan [Өгэдэй хаан] led the Mongols to suddenly pack up and return home in anticipation of a fight for succession to the throne.  And so Vienna was never invaded.

Does that make it immune to any future nomadic invasions?  More likely, this kind of luck comes with an expiration date.

Crush v. First Love

It is said that a crush will typically fade out after about 4 months, in the absence of any "extenuating circumstances" that would either fan the flames or interrupt the process.  That seems about right, in the case of an ordinary crush. 

But the previous post was about first loves that never fade away, remaining forever luminous.  Some of these loves must seem to be crushes when they start.  When is a crush not a crush?

Like anything else, we can say that "time will tell" or follow the ancient Greeks in reserving judgement on anyone's fate until we see if they "die well".  But that doesn't help the poor souls trying to decide these things "on the fly".

What is a neverending crush like?  When is it something else?  Not sure that there are any infallible criteria to test this other than a gut feeling .  But somewhere it was recently published that the gut has more nerve endings than the brain, so a "gut feeling" may have some scientific basis.

NJ Kpopper is going to file this away under topics for reflection and report back if any "infallible criteria" are found.

First Love

First Love...Turgenev wrote a decent but not definitive piece about it...but it still seems like a difficult thing to write about.  This article, from the Daily Mail of all places, claims that most people never experience the intensity of their first love ever again.  That doesn't seem quite right.

The article describes later loves as diluted versions of the first.  And that seems all wrong.  Rather some things are more intense, and some things are less intense with each go round. But to capture that with precision in writing would be tricky.  Nothing wise or mild about love in NJ Kpopper's experience.  And to go back to an ex just sounds depressing to a bear that somehow hopes for more from the future than the familiarity of the past.

Music of the Soul

What does NJ Kpopper mean by music of the soul? There is music that is influential, music that is great, music that is fun, music that is memorable. All great categories of music. Some of the world's finest musicians fall into these categories. But I think that each person will have their own music of the soul, something that is very particular to them. There is music that influences a person, penetrates and changes them, but can retain its effect without requiring any relistening, or even remaining as an actual favorite. Music of the soul is something that you respond to EVERY time in a deep and visceral way. That music is somehow just right for evoking a sympathetic vibration in the heart of the listener. For NJ Kpopper, the few musicians that fall in that category are surprisingly different, but all exhibit Sincerity (as described in a previous post), искренность, as a paramount virtue. There can be no fakery or preening display in music of the soul. But there is something even beyond that which I am still struggling to put words to. One can only evoke it, in a poem or something, which would have to appear later in a place other than this blog.

Fox tale found

A previously unknown medieval manuscript was recently discovered during an inventory of the archives of a Buddhist monastery in Nagoya, Japan. How this manuscript found its way to Nagoya is unknown, but its origins appear to be from Inner Asia. It was written in Chagatai, the classical Turkish of Central Asia, although internal clues, such as particular Buddhist invocations and geographic references, suggest a strong Mongol element. This manuscript appears to date from the 1500s, although there are no precise clues, and is the earliest known reference to the legend of the fox spirit among Inner Asian nomads.

Took care of my problem!

Kumiko

NJ Kpopper had been aware of the film Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter for a while, mostly because of the attractive cover art and intriguing trailer.  But a random act of radio listening at a fortuitous moment triggered some deeper knowledge of this particular cultural case.

image by Astrid Caballeros

A very quick recap, since Google and Wikipedia can provide all the details. In the early 2000s, a minor news sensation was created when a Japanese girl was found dead on her way to Fargo, North Dakota.  Her interactions with the locals in Minnesota led police to believe that she was looking for the treasure buried in the movie, Fargo, through some kind of delusion believing it to be real.  This formed the basis for the story in the movie.  The movie is stylish in a minor key.

There is a wonderful small documentary, This is a True Story, and a wonderful small radio version of the documentary story on the delightful show Snap Judgment, that tell the TRUE story of what happened here.  The woman in question, Takako Konishi, had an American boyfriend, who she attempted to find again after her life in Japan fell apart.  Whether she was suicidal or carelessly froze to death in the Minnesota winter is still unknown, but the documentary version tells the subtle story of how perception of the foreign mixed with the imaginary elements in the locals' minds to create the myth of the woman looking for the treasure of Fargo. Watching the movie after learning this true story was certainly more interesting, but the true story is sadder and more tragic than the film version.  Watching/listening to all three of these things together makes for a very rich artistic experience.

What is the personal aspect of this case for NJ Kpopper?  This bear is very, very interested in capturing some of the kinds of subtle and bizarre twinkling recombinations of culture that can happen when "cultures collide".  But I am thinking not about car crashes, but the strange gravitational attractions that occur when the stars in two separate galaxies merge and recombine into something entirely unexpected.  Yes, that. Just that.

Say farewell to your fair weather friends

And not a second too soon...

As Spring ends, time to clean house and focus on what is most important for bears - taking care of all summer tasks required to prepare for winter.  "Fake, fake, empty-hearted fakes" are a relief to leave behind whenever possible.

Genghis Blues, Mongolian Bling

Genghis Blues was one of the original movies that pointed NJ Kpopper in the direction of Mongolia many years ago.  One sentence summary: blind blues musician Paul Pena learned throat singing and traveled to Tuva to compete in the national competition there, with the help of friend Kongar-ol Ondar.

Mongolian Bling is a newer take on the Ulaanbaatar rap scene, giving some insight into the life of rappers Gennie, Gee and others.

NJ Kpopper is not here to recap and review, but to reflect on more personal thoughts. Genghis Blues stood out for me from the beginning as a magnificent and moving example of a personal quest, something highly individualistic blossoming in one person's mind that could then become externalized into the world through determined action.  I have thought about that movie often over the years, to the point that I had to acquire the decidedly non-HD DVD to watch it again.  

Tuva, of course, is somewhat removed from Mongolia or even Buryatia, but the call of the raw landscapes of Inner Asia have always acted upon me in a mysterious way.  So now the bear is going to stop resisting and give in to that call.

Mongolian Bling presents an antidote to any romantic idealizing of ancient nomadic lifestyles (so typical in Mongolian documentaries) by getting up close to urban life in the ger districts of Ulaanbaatar.  But the theme of dreaming still permeates this film, as some kind of underlying substrate to the human struggle and striving depicted.  We should all seek to exceed in dreaming in our own way.

Perhaps one day NJ Kpopper will produce a memoir called "My Mongolia" that is more about the imagined landscape of the mind and the moods that my version of Mongolia produces than about the actual lived experience there.  But it will require some on the ground research to merge reality and imagination into something bigger and larger, or at least longer lasting, than life.

Dostoevsky on Meth

As a bear grows older, it tends to revisit old haunts and reinterpret them in the light of new experiences.  This bear has recently done that with the works of Knut Hamsun (Hunger, Mysteries, Pan, Victoria, etc.).  When Hamsun was first encountered in the wild, his energetic and elevated descriptions of emotional states were just what a young bear would like, especially a bear without a great store of literary archetypes or well-formed aesthetic ideals.

But now Hamsun seems to have worn out his welcome.  Dostoevsky is also an emotionally overwrought writer, but his emotion comes from some deeply authentic place in the psyche, and suggests that his way is the truth, even if "you can't handle the truth".  Dostoevsky's stories are too rich and significant to cast aside in any case.

Hamsun, on the other hand, veers from overwrought to insanity. The antics of his characters now seem immature and misguided, and the Hamsunesque hero is always trying to contort himself into a position that allows him to appear to himself as selfless, heroic, and authentic, all while admiring himself in the looking glass.  But viewed from the outside, these actions are drunken, insane, and threatening.  His writing likewise is neither raw enough to be fully opened up, like a Kerouac or Dostoevsky, nor is it polished to highlight its unique qualities (e.g., Alexander Grin).  Dostoevsky seemed to handle the emotional swings of white nights and dark winters better, it seems.

Among his works, Victoria is the one with the least histrionics, and it benefits from some effort to bound itself by its focus on the nature of love, albeit with a particuliarly Hamsunian flavor of unreal self-sacrifice.

Asked what love is, some reply: It is only a wind whispering among the roses and dying away. But often it is an inviolable seal that endures for life, endures till death.  God has fashioned it of many kinds and seen it endure or perish. [from Victoria]

Ultimately, the Norwegian village setting provides a limited canvas for the characters to play on, with much action constrained by poverty, hunger, and rigid class roles.  Hamsun is rightly celebrated for smashing away at those constraints, and he certainly is unique and worthwhile as an artist, but this bear is now seeking guidance from other sources than an unstable and addled Scandinavian who, if not hopped up on meth, was certainly on something that took him to places that an older, more reflective bear is not seeking to go.

Cultural Sweet Spot

As a global culture vulture, NJ Kpopper has some thoughts on the development of "national cultures" to the extent that such things are possible.  Of course, the individual artist can always emerge anywhere and anytime to construct their own unique vision by fusing their imagination with their surroundings.  At least NJ Kpopper hopes this is true, for his own sake :)

But it is undeniable that there are certain periods, often quite brief, during which cultural expression flourishes in distinctive ways.  What makes this possible?  The bear is advancing a half-baked theory, that Change, Sincerity, and Freedom are the necessary ingredients.

Change, because the reproduction of static forms, no matter how perfect, does not result in new art or new combinations.  This is why all art eventually congeals (becomes Jell-O really).  Look at classical, jazz, or rock music, all essentially gone today as vital genres where one might expect to find new discoveries.

Freedom, because, well, you have to be able to get those new thoughts out.  Often this freedom is delayed, especially with writers writing "for the drawer", putting down their most intimate thoughts that could not pass through the censors or find acceptance in their own times.  Bulgakov, Babel, Kafka, Platonov, the list is quite long... But the artist must create with freedom.  The Soviet works deformed by censorship were much less interesting that those written "for the drawer".

Sincerity, which is perhaps the most interesting ingredient.  This does not mean that the artist must be upbeat, positive, or even truthful.  But they must create with a true belief in the meaning of their art to express, make change, or even just entertain.  This is related to the process of decadence in art.  The commercial imperative can often destroy sincerity, since it introduces another layer into artistic decisions other than passion and belief.  When a genre is new and growing, the commercial imperative can often be satisfied without constraining sincerity, but that usually does not last.

Ok, end of theory. What about some examples?

Why has American/British pop/rock music gradually faded away to irrelevance after peaking in the late 60s?  Because Change/Freedom/Sincerity in popular music  were also all at their peak in the 60s.  And by repeating the same forms, newcomers cannot hope to exceed the early exemplars whose elan evoked such excitement.  Hendrix > Hynde > Hives.

Why did Russian Popsa/Estrada music undergo a similar, if much briefer flourishing? Freedom came late, but many took the opportunity and the music burst forth as if under pressure, with Kino (Кино) leading the way.  Under this environment, even blockbusters can express sincerity [think Brother (Брат) with Nautilus Pompilius (Наутилус Помпилиус)].  Then a gradual descent, through some still entertaining sounds, because they still had sincerity.  Nearly last in this line is something like Koshki Mishki by Cuba (Кошки-мышки/ КУБА).  [Another aside, apparently the lead singer of Cuba has resurfaced, singing a cover of a better original by Gorod 312/Город 312]

And in the end, creativity wanes and a cynical shock value emerges, "celebrating", if that is the word, the most banal elements of life.  Exhibit A for this is the horrendous Стиль собачки by Потап и Настя (and Бьянка), which I will not dignify with a link or a translation.  Or Anaconda, or any Miley Cyrus exhibition.  It doesn't really matter what talent is brought to bear at this point, if the end is just making money by attracting eyeballs.

I am afraid K-pop will reach this point at some point as well, and I will have to jump off, leaving only bright memories.  Right now, there is a virtuous circle of growing interest, growing experimentation, and waves of talent with the requisite "sincerity" (some are more sincere than others).  To use "freedom" in the context of K-pop is not quite right, and perhaps the lack of freedom results in a lack of deep meaning in K-pop, but K-pop is at least in a free phase of its evolution.  But one can see the vast commercial machinery surrounding the industry ready to clamp down and push towards tawdry sensationalism.  At least this is not the dominant trend there yet.

Perhaps NJ Kpopper will revisit this topic in the future with more film and literature examples.

Mick Jones in the Library

So apparently all the music that you've ever listened to still lies in your head waiting to be retrieved or reawakened by some future touchstone. That in itself is an awesome feat of brain processing power.  But it can be dangerous, if the wrong live wire ends touch, then some fearsome energy can be released.

While the tunes remain the same, the meaning of the artistry can certainly change.  Sometimes the passage of time reveals certain truths.

For example, this lame "Train in Vain?" proves that the energy source of the Clash was Joe Strummer.

Bad suit.  Muffs the lines.  Guitar sound is flat, undistorted.  Geriatric lounge energy level.  Of course, Mick could never really sing, so can't complain about that. But it is the sad fact that a punk anthem (albeit at the later pop punk end phase) has descended into utter mildness.

Just as McCartney needed the harder edged Lennon to de-treacle his pop syrup, Strummer was the jagged thumping heart that was the source of the Clash's true energy. Sadly, a heart that blew out too soon.

But the comments reveal that the viewers' judgement is clouded by their own misty memories, which could happen to us all, I guess.  Their reaction shows that they are recreating an intensity in their own minds that could never exist if this were the first time they were hearing the song in this version.

NJ Kpopper fears ending up like that, but is seeking a better path by digging deeper for fresh bitter truths.

Fortunately, some geezers do not succumb to the same kind of softening as Mick, as in:

• Personal Jesus
• Redemption Song

Those covers, however, prove the next point ... that is extremely hard for a cover to improve on the original, even when the cover is great... so kudos to those that can pull that difficult trick off!

Extruded Electronic Mind

Well, it appears that a Google Image search on NJKpopper is like a window into the bear's subconscious mind.  Might as well surrender and accept that the Internet already knows more about your thoughts than you do, and try to find a way to make use of that.  That's part of what this blog is about, coming to terms with the electronic extrusion of your mental processes and the knowledge that someone out there knows about it.  So better try to present it sensibly and at least partially on your own terms.  Since it is not possible to hide (during spring at least, during winter one hibernates), it is necessary to stop trying to hide.

Hot Springs Geisha

Well, NJ Kpopper continued researching the Snow Country in Japan (as mentioned in an earlier post), and "way led to way", as they say.  And so, awareness of the "Autobiography of a Geisha" [芸者,苦闘の半生涯] written by Sayo Masuda [ますだ • さよ ] came to this bear.

Kawabata's Snow Country describes the life of a "hot springs geisha" ['onsen geisha' will still return rather adult-oriented google results] from the outside gaze of a rather self-absorbed man [something NJ Kpopper can identify with], but that perspective is obviously incomplete.  Masuda's work takes us inside that world, with a completely unvarnished look at the brutal conditions of human servitude and poverty that led Masuda into a life where being a geisha was her only way of surviving.  This is apparently the only autobiography describing the world of a non-elite geisha, who have only a few social protocols to distinguish themselves from street prostitutes.

Suicide and death hang heavily over Masuda, but ultimately it is her own unique voice and hard-won appreciation for life that come through.  The lengthy Wikipedia entry or any other summary like this post will make it seem as though this book has value only for its documentary qualities.  It is both a moving "triumph over adversity" story, like the Diving Bell and the Butterfly [Le Scaphandre et le Papillon], and a great page turning read. In fact, Masuda's writing is amazingly observant and vital.  It is just a beautiful book.  Just two special quotes to give an idea here:

"In every human heart is a place where you put your broken dreams. When something doesn't work out, no matter what it may be, you just have to give it up and stuff it in with your broken dreams. And make sure you keep the lid on tight."

"Motoyama-san taught me that 'loving someone has nothing to do with your physical self; it's a spiritual longing, it's trusting each other, it's wanting the other person to be happy, it's getting outside yourself; that's what true love is.' "

It just gets better from there. The English translation by Rowley is great, but certainly someone who can read Japanese would get even more out of it, since by all accounts her use of language was very fresh and direct in Japanese as well. Masuda overcame illiteracy only as an adult.

What ultimately led her out of the geisha life was her desire to give something back to children who had nothing, like she was when she was a child.  That resulted in her beginning to write children's books.  The Autobiography includes one such children's story, about an orphaned hawk named Piiko, which contains a surprising moral lesson with many metaphorical overtones, applicable to cross-cultural outsiders and others.  It's the kind of story that it would be possible to imagine every child reading through a project like Let's Read: Mongolia, alongside the Adventure of Jingenuur [Жингэнүүрийн аялал].

Let me end this post with the closing of Piiko's story:

"At all times and in all things, we humans tend to judge the worth of something by its outward appearance only. But even a bad person may have a good heart. We should look carefully into one another's hearts and do what we can to help one another."