Outside 10 Gopeng Street

Walks happen early morning and after the sun goes down. [springtime marks the beginning of hotter weather.]

The main neighborhood, Tangong Pagar or "divided island", lies in southeast Chinatown bordering the Financial District.
Among other things, it is the center of the gay district populated by bars, clubs and bridal fashion shops on Neil Road. [who better than a stylish faggot to dress a hopeful Cinderella on the most important day of her life?]

Singaporeans are fast walkers in this humidheat. I've learned to slow my pace to minimize overheating & drenching. British Colonial structures predominate the oldest areas flanked by concrete-metal-glass superstructures. Construction is rampant in within a two block radius of the ICON.

Narrow alleys hidden behind lines of Colonial row houses reveal small, freestanding altar houses which contain offerings of fruit and burning incense.
I prefer these walkways to the street front sidewalks. On one recent jaunt I discovered an impromptu arrangement of Chinese deity figurines arranged on a makeshift altar top=A homemade art gallery installation of throwaway art on miniature scale.
The artist clearly has an affection for this religious garbage; the artwork is an act of rescue and adaptive reuse.
It's more satisfying than the more studied, self-conscious work in local galleries---unlike cultural venues in most cities, this "art" is never pretentious or apologetic.

Another sidewalk statement I see every now and then is a burnt offering bounded by a chalk circle. Dave Woo of Singapore says it's dark. Rough translation: bad Taoist voodoo to be avoided. That specifically means not stepping within the chalk boundary. That's a lot to ask of someone whose head is usually in the clouds but I manage to be vigilant.

Other areas of the city, Dhoby Ghat or Orchard Road, although more contemporary like the nearby financial district, lack the charm and character of Tanjong Pagar.

Inside 10 Gopeng Street

My apartment, housed in a new high-rise in Chinatown, is one of many 'upsides' to living here.
The tour begins in the kitchen and rotates through the livingroom, bedroom and bath.
I can see myself in the floor=I can also see all my silver head hairs littering the floor too!
Chinatown sits north outside the livingroom window.
The jungle you see on the 31st floor contains sitting/lounging areas, and stretches between both towers.
There is always an invigorating breeze up there.
Floor 7 is pool deck with areas for bbqing.
No complaints here.
Once again, I'm extending an invite to anyone who wants to visit.
I'm told I could be here through 2010.

Gong Xi Fa Cai

There hasn't been a post to this blog in a while because I've been having issues with Singapore. Delayed culture shock is one way of describing it, or, after you read this you might opt for xenophobia--the ultimate choice is yours. My reality has been harsh and sobering; it is also fraught with the fear of exposing some not-so-nice perspectives---after all, I DO want people to keep tuning in and not be turned off.
Before I continue, I'd like you to hold the image of lying on your back with your body & limbs held in light restraint while a persistent drip of cold water gently taps your upper forehead.

I've realized that I'm very American.
For starters, I can tell you what I'm not: I do not have a gigantic entitlement complex, something I've witnessed time and again both domestically and internationally from film industry people . I do not throw my weight around while grandstanding that what we have in the US is better or matters more--I've also seen how ineffective that behavior is. Besides, if I behaved that way, my mom [now deceased] would kick my ass. I'm not dismissive, exclusionary or rude.

I am honest, and sometimes unforgivingly so. Since relocating here, the restrictiveness of this city insults my sense of independence and my freedom as a free-thinker.
Now here's a day-to-day example that can be extended in all directions [drip: It's the smallest straws that finally break the camel's back]: I walk into my local bank with a sack of coins for deposit into my account. Teller says: "Sir, we only work with customer's coins on Tuesday and Thursday." I blink, fighting back laughter and disbelief [the automatic coin counter is sitting behind her on the back counter, plugged in blinking as well]. I take a big breath and assert, "Well, it's Monday morning and I'm here now so how do we solve this?" She repeats her statement with no change in inflection. Then I threaten, "I'm not coming back here with these coins." She blinks a few times, pauses, and quietly offers, "Please wait here."
She meets me on my side of the counter, escorts me to a far corner of the exterior of the bank and shows me how to use the ATM coin machine. I have no idea it exists but am happy to learn this new task.
This might seem like an extremely minor event, but I can assure you this is encountered every day, every step of the way. Drip...drip...drip....

Similar events are really pervasive in our Chinese owned corporate office which is run like a strict, catholic high school. Flinty, calvinist nuns have been replaced by men in business suits. For feminists reading this, there are no women in upper management.
The only example I'll give here is regarding photocopying: no artist on the LA design team can directly color print from her/his computer to the network computer. Instead, the inefficient, work-stopping solution to this issue is to walk over to a designated corporate employee with a memory stick, interrupt her/his workflow and wait an indeterminate length of time for the copies to materialize---that is, if they happen to be at their desk at that precise moment. At first, the request for color copies was resisted because of the 'expense' involved [the truth is: Americans are seen as wasteful and I support that], but my convincing argument was: handing someone a black&white copy of color artwork is just as informative as handing that person a blank sheet of paper. We are artists and we communicate most effectively in color. Drip...drip...drip...drip...drip.

SNAP.

The question I ask myself over and over is: "Am I really having this conversation? Again?"
Patience is not my virtue and I suppose that qualifies me as a typical American. Folks here seem okay with asking permission and waiting for everything. Though recently, one thing that no one here asked permission about was taking an extended leave for Chinese New Year--by extended, I mean 7-10 days to be with family. This annual event is a mass exodus over sometimes thousands of miles to renew familial ties in a big way. In American terms, this holiday is so huge in Asia, that it encompasses the essence of Thanksgiving, Christmas and the New Year's Celebration, but with gunpowder. Fireworks and loud, bashing noises go on for three weeks to drive away negative and evil spirits of the past year. While this cleansing happens, the focus is purely about Luck and Money for the newly unfolding spring and year ahead. What else is there, right?

For my money, I'd wish for individual thought and a more callow, enterprising spirit. Gong Xi Fa Cai = Happy New Year. Drip.

Durian

It's doubtful that any of my Manhattan friends reading this blog have smelled a skunk. In LA, your first experience of eau de skunk happens at night in a car in one of the many canyons connecting the main city to the Valley. Polecats have poor eyesight so their road kill version is what lingers in the car a while later---unless you roll the windows down immediately. The actual smell burns your nostrils=it's acrid and aggressive to the point of driving The Smeller to a sopping washcloth and a bar of soap.

My first experience with durian was different but somewhat familiar. I was walking through a Chinatown alley amidst a handful of green grocers. With Leica in left hand, I was determined to shoot whatever groceries I saw before buying. The thought was knocked right out of my head as my nostrils were assaulted by THE foulest smell EVER. I checked the bottom of my shoes--twice--then tentatively crinkled my nose for a small sniff. "Whoa!" was all I could manage. A broad-faced Malaysian woman with a toothy grin cackled and pointed. My eyes full of 'onion tears' scanned the area where her rough hands indicated. Nothing registered. She spritely bounded over to this small pile of large, spiny, oval, green landmines as I winced and finally made the connection. In broken Engrish she innocently asked, "Some taste? Want some taste?" I probably said something like, "Fuck no", because all I really wanted to do was stick my head into the silver mound of fish I seemed to be involuntarily diving into at that moment. Yes, durian described by afficionados in Indonesia and Malaysia as the 'King of Fruits', had introduced itself to me in a big way. [At this point, the camera somehow made its way back into my pocket---hence, no photo essay.]

Since then, I've tagged the general concept of the stench in my mind as "NYC August garbage strike" to make it more understandable. But I still wince when I catch a whiff of it. Its ivory-colored, eggroll sized nuggets of fleshy meat are not only eaten as raw delicacies, but it's also made into ice cream pops! Recently I bought a box of 6 pops: Mango, Corn and Durian after circling the frozen foods section three times. I couldn't tell you what they do to beat the skunk-ass foulness out of it, but the durian pops weren't too terribly bad. My rationale was tempered by my eventually liking the objectionable taste of Limburger cheese and also certain romantic operas/or any music by ABBA. So, I figured: if I'm gonna do this journey thing right, I'd better not shut down the sensors just yet. After all, this funky fruit has captured this culture enough to have influenced its architecture---when you consider it, that's quite a powerful legacy.

check out this link:

http://architecture-buildingconstruction.blogspot.com/2007/11/esplanade-by-night-singapore.html

Zhuhai

The images of the Calligrapher posted in my first entry were taken in Zhuhai, China.
I was there with a small work group to review scenery built by one of our contractors for my area of the themepark. This small industrial/resort city sits on the south coast along the balmy South China Sea, west of Hongkong, and north of Macau. The first of our two nights there, we chatted with a pilot at a local club about landing in Hongkong on the old airport runways.
Apparently, the old entry approach was literally through the city--tips of the plane wings barely touched the highrise buildings on either side. Imagine white-knuckling a commercial airliner down Park Avenue in Manhattan?! The great thing about the new airport are the direct connections to islands like Kowloon and Macau by high speed ferry
.
The images in this post were taken during a walk from our contractor's office to our hotel just before magic hour. I'll be returning to Zhuhai late February.

Feet First

"Life must be lived forward but can only be understood backwards."---Soren Kirkegaard

I ripped this quote off from one of the first few pages of a Rizzoli published book recently mailed to me by the Academy of Arts and Sciences [no less]. This is a perk voting Art Directors receive while pre-Academy Award clouds are gathering in the steely winter skies over greater Los Angeles. By the way, the book is "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"--- testament to the power of campaigning for a vote and the enormous hubris of Hollywood. I'll stop with that here.

This blog isn't about bashing the film industry, it's about sharing the next 12 to 18 months with friends.

Mark Quinlan, longtime friend and playwright, encouraged me to do this [write a blog] before I relocated to Swingapore in early December 2008. It's taken a month to quit pacing along the edge of a weakly imagined fear and take the plunge. So, here I am once again not able to touch bottom and in some perverse way loving it. My creativity is expressed through a driving restlessness. Lately, image-making or writing have acted as an effective tag-team for expression. Although I haven't quite found "my voice"--real or imagined--at 56 as an artist, my work in the world has always pointed me towards entertainment of one type or another. I guess this journal now exists to help me figure out why I'm really in Singapore. This statement isn't as muddleheaded as it sounds: I've noticed that many of the projects I've participated in have only been a backdrop for the more significant issues at hand. If you're willing to take this journey with me, we might see or understand something together while staring at a lot of photos.