| 29 may 2001 i'm back. sigh. it was a pretty good weekend, despite the fact that i had previously decided that i wanted to hang out more with people of my age rather than the taiko kids... yet... i spent pretty much most of the three days with stanford taiko. alas... but it was still good. basically saturday, i helped with the barbecue for all 60+ college taiko people, from UCLA, UCI, UC riverside, washington university in st. louis, and of course, stanford taiko. there was also a professional group from japan called hinokiya, who, as i later found out in the concert, are fucking AMAZING. and they weren't dressed in traditional taiko garb... they came on stage with bandanas, keds, funky vests and t-shirts... rad! jammin' taiko ragamuffins! anyways, i helped man the veggie burger stand, and you know, the thing about grilling veggie patties is that you can never tell when they're done. they look the same when they're raw as when they're cooked, so it was just a big experiment. it was sad, because we weren't churning out food fast enough, so people were "settling" for my veggie burgers instead of their previously desired beef and chicken stuff. it felt good to help out. so the first interesting moment of the weekend was when i noticed this one girl wearing a superman baby-t. we made eye contact for a bit (maybe because she thought i was CUTE! ha ha), and she wanted to know something about the food we were cooking. i told her i was making veggie stuff, and she said she wanted a beef thing, so she went back in the beef line. i thought she was kinda cute, and of course, anybody who wears a superman t-shirt (i have one, too!) is cool. after i had to leave to pick up my friend kara from the airport (who i almost forgot because i was so focused on my cooking duties), i thought about that supergirl off and on. i don't know exactly why, but i guess i found her attractive enough to remember. later that night, barden, kara, and i were standing outside the coffee house talking, and i took a walk around tresidder union for a smoke. i remember thinking about the mysterious supergirl at some moment, and then, i noticed that same girl (in that unmistakable shirt) wandering around looking confused. i asked her if she was looking someone, and she came over and said that she got totally lost trying to navigate the campus. we talked for a bit, and finally introduced ourselves. her name was ruth. a good name. i walked her back to the place where the taiko discussion was being held, and we said goodbye. i so wanted to give her a "stranger" kiss, but... duh. i didn't want to get slapped. heh. so. it was a quaint microcosm of karma and coincidence, i thought. a cute interaction of total strangers. i saw her a few times in the following days, but it was never more than me telling her she did a good job in her performance, and her saying thanks. hee hee. i should have walked her farther. like steered her all the way around the quad, so i could get more conversation in that night. man. there's something about the superman t-shirt that's really sexy on girls. it's like a badge of confidence, which i find utterly intoxicating and alluring. so. i was actually pretty social that night during the taiko party. i found out that one of my frosh dormmates was in another group, so we talked for a bit. my friend gina and i were bored sitting out in the a3c couchroom, so we had a smoke, and i swear, smoking is a great social tool sometimes. it bonds you with the smokers! we went back in and chatted and stuff. i tried smirnoff ice. it's not bad, for a wine cooler-ish starter drink; light on the alcohol, decent on the taste. ----- sunday, i got up at the ungodly hour of 9:15 (way too early for me) and watched the entire dress rehearsal. it was brutal. and then i sat through the 3-hour concert itself. so basically i watched 6 hours of taiko, and i was all taiko-ed out. i mean, i didn't want to even hear it any more. for the first time, i got sick of it, and that kind of scared me. i mean, if i want to do this for my profession, i BETTER not get sick of it so easily! the usual stanford taikl alum contingency was there, and we had our congenial "what's been going on with you?" stuff. but then i made a decision that i found uncharacteristic... i chose to hang out with the alums rather than the group itself. yup. i even chose pizza over a fantastic meal at gombei. damn. but the pizza was really good (um... the al bundy pizza... garlic and feta cheese!), and i got to hang out with kenny endo, who's this fabulous amazing taiko god of north america. oh. here's a sad thing. i watched kenny endo play, and he reminds me so much of luis, my best friend in stanford taiko. luis passed away the summer after i graduated. i know this is a touchy subject, but he committed suicide. and even worse, i feel like i had a part in his death, so the guilt factor is huge. that's all i'm going to say about what happened the summer of '97, but it's enough information to tell you that i miss luis and i am so sorry for what transpired. but anyways, watching kenny play, the way he grooved to the melody, the way he's just a fountain of knowledge on funky world rhythms. just like luis. i swear, sometimes i listened to the way kenny laughed or what he said, and i got startled because it was like it was talking to luis. sadness. maybe i'll tell you the story if you ask me, but it's really personal, and i don't want to put it up right now. :( it's amazing how some people remind you of others. and it's quite poignant when that person that you're reminded of is no longer here. anyways, the concert itself was pretty good. of course, the professional groups and players showed exactly why they're "professional." and that made me really think about whether i have it in me to become one of them. i mean, they songs are like ART. and i seriously doubt whether i have the creative inspiration to come up with something like that. i mean, i'm all about pop culture! i don't think i have a single esoteric art bone in my body. and what's more, kenny was describing a cuban rhythm one night, and he played it out on both of his hands. i couldn't, for the life of me, follow along. so i got really scared that i don't have the skill, either, to handle all the demands of drumming and stuff. so i suffered a minor meltdown, which i vented to emi, about whether i really belong in the professional taiko scene. i mean, i know i can built back up my skills, and maybe i do have some creative energy for some cool compositions, but i was just in a self-doubting phase. and i'm not out of it right now, either. i'm just avoiding the issue, i guess. sigh. i think i'm the poster boy for mediocrity. i am. i also realized that the taiko family is HUGE. i mean, the links and the history and the "who played with what group and knows this guy who started this group" kind of stuff... it's daunting! and i feel so out of the loop on stuff. there were times when people were talking about stuff, and i just felt like nobody. and then there were the times when i find myself lacking words when talking to even my OWN taiko alums! i just didn't have anything to say! i kind of felt this panic, because i just thought, "do i really know nothing about all these people who i spent years with? was i really that antisocial? how do i make up for that now?" and i wouldn't have any answers for myself. ah. yuck. ----- monday i watched _shrek_ with my friend will. i liked it. then we hit valley fair mall for a bit. basically, all of monday, i ate a cinnabon, a large lime lemonade, and two slices of pizza. i really should be more careful about eating enough. i find myself skipping meals just because i'm too damn lazy to get my own food. and then, later that night, i went over to steve and linda's house for the last taiko gathering of the weekend. we watched the spring concert tape, which was surprisingly good quality. it was kind of weird, because i was wavering really strongly about going or not, and i decided i didn't want to go and seem like a taiko groupie. but then, i justified myself in going because 1) i wanted some of that al bundy pizza 2) i wanted to talk to a specific member of hinokiya. odd, how the mind can convince into or out of doing stuff, eh? but i _am_ glad i went. the other interesting moment was when i walked into the living room, and i noticed this dude sitting next to jo-ann. (remember that i was madly in love with jo-ann for over a year.) and i recognized him... i was like, "oh shit! i've seen you before..." he turned out to be fung, jo-ann's ex-boyfriend. (yeah, it was kind of strange, because ricky was there, too... so there were like three people in the same room who loved jo-ann at some point or another.) but anyways, the neat thing was that fung asked me if i had a cigarette, and i said, of course, and we went to my car, and i busted out my "special occasion" cigs... nat sherman black & gold's! yeah. they're beautiful smokes. and then we talked about stuff, like both of us being EE, fung's impending work in the singaporean air force, etc. it was really cool, because i had resented fung so much in the past, because jo-ann just couldn't get over him, and i thought that was the reason why she couldn't go out with me and stuff. so for a while, fung was like the enemy or something. but i really enjoyed the brief conversation we had over a smoke, and i can genuinely say that he's a good dude. it's amazing how perceptions can change. i mean, as recently as early this year, i was resentful of fung's influence on jo-ann's life, and here we are, having a friendly conversation! how neat is that? and the thing is, i will never see this man again. nor will i ever see ruth again. and that's one of the coolest things that i enjoy about life... interacting with random people, our spheres briefly intersecting in a miniscule section of time/space, and then parting ways. yeah, it's kind of sad that we can't keep all our acquaintances around us forever, but i think there's something really poetic and beautiful and tragic and the temporal limits of our interactions. (thank you for making to the end of this entry! here's a little treat... my picture on the ricebowl journals is finally up!) |