To my ignorant ear, it was NY art rock blown out into loud prog synthpop, with a Japanese-American lady making ecstatic convulsions behind a keyboard and warbling banal lyrics in English and Japanese at center stage. The tall, white bass player would often turn his back to us and run his hand up and down the long neck of his bass guitar. Multi-colored, spinning squiggles were projected on the wall. There were some very horny white guys around us, holding up camera phones and staring open-mouthed. At the end of the show the lady ran around to the drum set to play a loud, flailing solo, and I thought: oh, right. A "little Asian girl" playing big drums is weird and sexy in America, whereas in Japan it's the elementary school talent show.
Yeah, I felt superior. Though I can't say I would mind being in her place. I guess everybody wants to be a seksu symbol.
3 comments:
Isn't seksu sex in Japanese? (Sorry, I should have studied Japanese!) Do you mean something that can trigger desire by "seksu symbol?"
I went to a Yoyo Ma concert here in Cambridge, where the event turned out be a touristy because of the ppl standing up and videotyping the figure of fame. I first thought that that wouldn't happen at Yale, but then I decided that wherever there is a concert that is famous and free, this would happen.
Probably so. This summer Josh from Yale Japanese had to leave his Tarim Basin research because of the Ürümqi uprising, so we were hanging out in Beijing, and he's a zoo guy, so we went to the zoo.
Like most zoos, the most interesting animal was the humans—moreso since most others were either dead or missing. Humans jostled each other with casual savagery to get a better view of the empty cages, pelted sleeping lions with water bottles, and jumped in to take pictures of themselves astride the baby antelope.
We also saw two different kinds of panda, of which no kinds of panda were not luxuriantly masturbating in front of everyone. The signage boasts how the government is spending millions to get that panda laid, showing him panda porn and titillating him with panda sex toys, but there he is, splayed out in the crotch of a tree, turning a blissful grin down on us his subjects as he takes his pleasure.
It was a sign, and I fell into a revelation: this is what Mao meant when he said, "Revolution is not a dinner party." In fact, true revolution is so bound to deconstruction that it precludes dinner parties and much more. I, committed as I am to progressive renewal, realized how deeply bound I am to such arbitrary tyrannies as "please" and "thank you".
This is hilarious and dark! Sometimes I entertain the idea of imagining China (or the world) as a big zoo, in which animals of all sorts compete each other for food and sex in various straight or subtle forms. Even after the revolution it's not a dinner party, "You've got to fight, for your rice!"
Post a Comment