The painting “Youth” is by Lyndsey Lesh. Check out her website and this other super cool project, Off Thee Wall, she and Michelle (of the Rattling Wall) are working on.

My flash piece “Triptych to ‘Youth’” is of course inspired by the above work, but its concerns also relate to another project I am working on: the famed next big project “Black Fucking Neon” whose possible subtitles include, “13 months in Saigon,” “Friends, Frank’s Film and Fuck All Else,” etc.

Upon arriving in Vietnam I started looking for a “project.” Within the first week I found it sitting next to me at the CELTA welcome dinner in the form of actor, auteur, and soon-to-be-English teacher and buddy Frank Roberts. Like myself, Frank came to Vietnam for a change of pace and a lifestyle more compatible with the needs of the working artist. Yet his passion and determination to act on that newfound freedom in the interest of his art far outstrip mine. His enthusiasm though, is infectious, and has inspired me to come along for the ride, possibly scribbling some about his, and my, adventures along the way. Hence, “Black Fucking Neon,” a story, one hopes, about Frank’s successful completion of a feature film. Come to think, my appearance in the Rattling Wall #2 was a factor that added some legitimacy to my idea in Frank’s eyes – it was when I mentioned I was in a book with Henry Rollins (who also has a piece in the issue) – that Frank seemed to warm to my idea – he’s a big fan.

Frank’s warm-up project, “Freebooter,” is, in my affiliated opinion, an unqualified success and gives me hope the larger project will turn out just as well. Please check it out:

What does this have to do with my flash piece? Well, in thinking about Frank’s project, I pretty much automatically go to the great action movies of the 80s I loved as a kid. I think this aesthetic is clear in my response to “Youth” – the Power Station riff pretty well gives it away – and will be explored further in BFN. (Also in relation to the flash, it was sitting in the Novela Muine, listening to the Essence Band perform Careless Whisper, that I started to put together the idea for “Black Fucking Neon.”) Till then…

Arnie and Power Station:

Also available is a reading of the story by Lollie Fuzznuts, host of the hit television game show ‘Fiddlestix!’, some years back that I am lucky enough to have an audio recording of that I have migrated to youtube. The story was read making snacks in the kitchen of a truck stop in Namibia following a marathon session of canasta.

My blog post from the time.

On the highest spire (?) of Pre Rup – the sun is descending behind the clouds – no one is watching. I am not watching either but watching the no one watching and judging them. I am calculating the percentages and saying that 50% – 75% aren’t watching but I have not counted and I have no way of knowing and am probably incorrect in my grandiose assumptions about what percentage are watching. Nonetheless it seem like a high percentage (that are not watching). Instead they are taking pictures and talking to each other about the day or how hot it is/was or how many people there are on the highest spire of Pre Rup (not) watching the sunset. I imagine many, when not chattering mindlessly, are thinking – it crossed my mind – “How nice this picture will look on facebook! How my friends back home will be so impressed with my trip to Cambodia and the fact that I stood atop the highest spire of Pre Rup (not) watching the sunset over the Cambodian plains!”

It is stunning how much garbage cycles through the brain – the digital shutter’s klik, klik, klik – at this moment of beauty that so many travelled so far to see. Instead of actually watching the sunset, the sunset becomes a moment missed, a moment viewed through the filter of the tiny digital viewfinder when all it takes is to raise one’s head and actually watch. Instead of experiencing and enjoying the ephemeral sunset, the sunset is sacrificed to the future and is quickly relegated to the past. Without ever having seen it, the moment of the sunset becomes only a future moment told to a friend or acquaintance in the interest of making oneself feel different, special, or otherwise privileged: “Oh my God, then we (didn’t) watched the sunset from Pre Rup and it was a marvelous end to an amazing day!” (Subtext: You are a loser cause you haven’t/didn’t do the same.)

And it is no different for me; I who stand in judgment of these clickers and chatters, as I too set myself apart in the moment of sunset, by attempting to rest in mindfulness during the moment only to come now to rehash and rewrite and provide comment. My picture too will wind up on facebook – the story will be retold – I write this now. But the sunset is long over, there have been other sunsets since that I have missed or not cared to watch. Yet I will use this past moment; I will enter it into the calculated glory of my feed to magnify my difference, my otherness: I am an individual who watched the sunset over Pre Rup and I did it better than you.

[There was a moment however, towards the end, in the sunset’s last remaining seconds, that I cannot quite comprehend. I am not sure if it damns or saves the assembled throng (of every cultural background: Japanese, Chinese, French, American). Just as the sun dipped under the horizon, sending off stunning waves of myriad hues of the purple/red variety, a squadron of ducks/geese/herons/ibis(es)/something flew directly across the dipping sun in the V-formation such animals are wont to fly. As the birds approached the crowd hushed and as they passed it cheered. Nature, in its majesty and synchronicity, had enhanced their facebook feeds to an uncommon degree. It was not only “Sunset at Pre Rup” but “Sunset with birds at Pre Rup,” but not for me, who in a need for separation – a magnification of otherness – had put my camera back into my bag. They will forever have proof of the divine visitation, while for me, the birds remain only in a dead memory to be soon forgotten.]

Later I read this in Thich Nhat Hanh’s The Heart of the Buddha’s Teachings:

Do you want to fly halfway around the world so that later you can say you were with the Buddha? Many people want to do just that. They arrive at a place of pilgrimage, unable to be in the here and the now. After a few minutes of seeing the place, they rush to the next place. They take pictures to prove they were there, and they are eager to return home to show their friends. “I was there. I have proof. That is me standing beside the Buddha.” That would be the desire of many of the people who would go there. They are not able to walk with the Buddha. They are not able to be in the here and the now. They only want to say, “I was there, and this is me standing beside the Buddha.” But it is not true. They were not there. And that is not the Buddha. “Being there” is a concept, and the Buddha that you see is a mere appearance. You cannot photograph the real Buddha, even if you have a very expensive camera.

I think he says it nicer. 

“My Balkan Holiday: Sarajevo” is taken from the longer “My Balkan Holiday” piece that details my month or so travelling through Croatia, Bosnia and Montenegro a few years back. It was an intense, meaningful, and important trip for me and my time in Sarajevo in particular was profound. The gist of the essay being how to balance that personal profundity with the reality of the situation as experienced by Bosnians — that I was ultimately being invigorated by a tourism of despair. This is the only part of the larger piece to yet be published, but I hope to have it out as a complete work at some point.

The Rattling Wall has released a lovely video with some background about the editor putting the book together and snippets of the reading and release party in L.A. Check it out and order the book!