Tetherd Cow Ahead

Nurse Myra has us staying at the wonderful Xinh Moi Hotel* in the newly decreed ‘city’ (it was until recently a town) Quang Ngai. The Xinh Moi is a kind of grand palatial kind of building, painted a very fetching shade of hyper-peppermint green (I’m not being sarcastic – I do think it’s a lovely colour). In the manner of many Vietnamese buildings it has a haphazard shabbiness that makes it very appealing. It is also quite weird – the entire centre of the hotel is a three-storey big empty room. Cars and bikes get parked on the ground floor, but aside from that, it has to be said that the Xinh Moi, as a piece of architecture, is mostly empty space.

We have our suspicions about some of the activities going on in the Xinh Moi. More about that in a bit.

One of the great features of the Xinh Moi, along with the air-conditioning and the very polite staff, is the list of guest rules.

Here are a couple (verbatim):

5. Don’t bring foods such as dry squids, octopus little fishes, dry fishes into the room. If the guests have them. Please send them in the kitchen of the hotel.

6. Don’t bring the flamable materials and the things easily explode (burst) into the room.

This causes me to wonder if in the past there has been some very unfortunate kind of fish-based explosive incident in one of the rooms, the aftermath of which can only be imagined. It would, perhaps, also explain the industrial quantities of mothballs and napthalene-fumed cleaning solutions that the housekeeping staff seem to like to douse our room with each day.

Another favourite is:

12. Everybody much obey the struction number 05 of the Government about the guests houses and hotels never taking the possitude oneselt girl into the room.

Now, we’ve been sitting in the cocktail bar across the road these past few evenings, and our considered opinion is that there is something of a business of extra-hotel activities in operation at the back of the Xinh Moi. Certainly, a couple of nights back, the room next door was breaking rule:

7. Don’t make very noisly and loudly sound that are able to affect badly to next rooms

…what with the exuberant male voices and the flirtatious female giggling…

Nurse Myra and I looked at each other.

“Possitude oneselt girls”, we agreed.

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*Not its real name. I’d hate to get these poor people in trouble with the government, which is a very real possibility in this country.

Being in Ho Chi Minh City for a day has led me to realise that the rules by which my life is led are very rigid indeed, and from now on I will be adapting some Vietnamese (or perhaps I should say Saigonese) concepts to my life back home.

New Rule #1 – Red traffic lights: A red light will henceforth mean something like “Marvel at our careless abandon as we burn electricity for no apparent purpose. If you see this light, admire its vivid crimson effect, but by all means continue to drive your vehicle forward, even if many hundreds of other vehicles are driving across your path. Have a nice day!”

New Rule #2 – Green traffic lights: A green light will mean “Look upon this glowing emerald illuminance and know that the electric system is still functioning”. It will have no significance in the mediation of traffic.

New Rule #3 – Amber traffic lights: Will be superfluous. These would just confuse people.

New Rule #4 – RRP: If you are selling something and have agreed on a price of, say, two dollars, this is now merely a suggestion. On delivery of the goods and/or services, the real price should most likely be at least double that, but you should at first feel free to multiply it twentyfold. If nothing else, this provides hilarious expressions of outrage from the customer. To help justify this exorbitant increase from the initial price discussed, make sure you explain that you are raising sixteen children, looking after two elderly parents who were in the war and that your wife had her legs blown off with a land mine.* Failing that complain about the heat and how hard it is to work on the streets† When paid, even if you receive ten times the agreed fee, look at the money as if the customer has spat in your hand and is perhaps the most despicable human you’ve ever had the misfortune to meet.

New Rule #5 – Time: ‘Half an hour’ actually means ‘Three hours’ unless there is shouting involved.

New Rule #6 – Logic: ‘No’ actually means ‘Yes’ and vice versa. As in:

“You want to go to the American Market?”

“No” (with head shake)

“American Market, yes?”

“No” (with head shake and hand motions)

“OK, American Market!!”

I don’t want to sound churlish here; most of the people in this town are lovely and seem scrupulously honest. I bought some incense from a woman at a Chinese temple, and she was fastidious about giving me exact change from only $15,000 dong (about one US dollar). And, quite honestly, I can’t blame all the impoverished cyclo and motorbike drivers from trying it on. But all things considered, I’d just prefer that they told you it was gonna cost you ten bucks to go to the War Museum, and that was that. Or at the very least, haggled up front and then stuck to the agreement. In time, they will be their own worst enemies; tourists will become suspicious of them, not trust anything they say, and give their business to the high-end company-run services. Friends say that it’s getting worse in Ho Chi Minh City. That’s a shame.

Tomorrow… further afield.

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*Lest this sound sarcastic even for me, I just want to say that I was most saddened to hear it the first time, slightly suspicious the second time, and after the fourth and fifth times, kinda over it. These people have crap lives I have no doubt, but duplicity, on any level, just breeds mistrust, and after you’ve been burned a few times you end up trusting absolutely no-one. That just makes me feel sad.

†A cyclo driver (who I paid very generously I later discovered, although he made me feel like dirt at the time) cycled me around all morning without even the merest hint of exertion, so much so, that I marvelled at how he could do it. Then, quite uncannily, when it came to payment time, he broke into a copius sweat. It was astonishing.

Saigon… shit; I’m still only in Saigon…

Hotel Majestic in the main part of town. It’s hot. The noise of tooting horns is perpetual. It’s an interesting phenomenon really; although there’s a lot of tooting going on, there’s very little aggression. The weaving flowing chaos reminds me of nothing so much as an industrious and purposeful trails of ants, with the constant horn beepings therefore like an audible pheromone system.

I like this city already. It took me about ten minutes to figure it out; there is absolutely and utterly no pretension.

Addendum: Although the unceasing opportunism does grate after a day or so…

Well, stalwart companions, this time tomorrow I will be in another country. Yes, The Cow and I are going on an adventure. I will be attempting to bring you news and even pictures from this foreign and exotic clime, but that will depend heavily on internet availability. It is, in theory, possible, though I expect it to be a little tricky.

If things go quiet, I apologize in advance, but rest assured, I will be accumulating Signs of the Times from another land for when I return in about two weeks.

Guesses to where I’ll be are now open (those who know just keep yer yaps shut).

Hint: I’m on a plane for about 11 hours.

[Waves goodbye, hoists little checkerd bundle and strides off down the road]

OK, so I was watching the DVD of the Jacques Perrin/Jacques Cluzaud documentary Travelling Birds (Le Peuple Migrateur) last night, and what should I see at about 8 minutes in, but the following sequence:

~Migratory ducks arrive in snowy landscape.

~Ducks settle down to weather out the cold and blustery night.

~Ducks awake in the morning. The blizzard has subsided.

~Ducks make many and sundry quacking noises.

~An avalanche begins and ducks fly away.

There you have it: a filmic record of a duck’s quack starting an avalanche! (Sure, the film-makers try and make it look like the avalanche startles the ducks and causes them to take flight, but I believe the footage speaks for itself. Go rent the DVD. Tell me I’m wrong.)

In further news, this site reveals that scientists at Sanford University have carried out a comprehensive Duck Quack and Echo experiment, so those nitpickers who scoffed at my own exposé (no names except to say Universal Head) can now go view a (sniff) proper experiment.

A Long Story Involving Music, Death, Snow and Coincidence

One Saturday morning in late 1991 I was woken from a deep sleep by the most ethereal of sounds. It was a perfect pure human voice singing Rachmaninoff’s ‘Vocalise’… no wait a minute, it’s wasn’t a voice, it was… a violin… and yet…

I came into full consciousness too late to catch anything much of the back-announce, except for the name of the artist: Clara Rockmore. It was enough to chase down the recording. It turned out that the sound I heard wasn’t a voice, or a violin, but that most enigmatic and fascinating of electronic instruments, the theremin.

As a teenager I had a fleeting interest in theremins, and even tried to build one out of an old electronics kit I hacked for the purpose. It wasn’t too successful, and I really didn’t have the chops to do it properly. Besides, I had bigger fish to fry; I had become obsessed with the gadget that had newly arrived in the local music shop – a music ‘synthesizer’ called a MiniMoog.

Long story short: MiniMoog → rock & roll band → sound & music for school plays → film school → my own film company → lying in bed listening to Clara Rockmore effortlessly play the theremin, perhaps one of the most difficult-to-master instruments of all time.

I tracked down that recording of ‘Vocalise’ and discovered to my mild surprise that it had been produced by Robert Moog, inventor of that MiniMoog that had set me on my career path, and a man considered by many to be The Father of Electronic Music. As it turned out, Bob’s own career was directly related to his interest in, and manufacture of theremins as a teenager.

The comprehensive liner notes with the CD outlined the amazing story of Lev Sergeyevich Termen (Leon Theremin) and the invention of his extraordinary electronic musical instrument. That’s a different long story, and way too fascinating for brevity, but you should read it on Wikipedia sometime. What was most astonishing to me was that, at the time, Leon Theremin was still alive, at the grand old age of 95. And, as far as I knew, there was no filmic document of this important man and his contribution to music and technology.

I was very well placed to set up such a documentary, and I immediately started collecting information. I got in contact with a number of people and soon enough with a chap at Berkeley who told me in an email “I think someone’s already making a movie – you should speak to Bob Moog”

And I did. Yes, said Bob, a fellow called Steven Martin had almost completed his film Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey, after a difficult three year process. In keeping with my inept abilities as a surfer I had sensed the wave coming too late, and Steven Martin was already riding it to shore. Tarnation.

I had a number of very nice conversations with Bob though, so I didn’t feel too bad about losing the doco, him being a hero of mine and all. I also discovered that through his company Big Briar (now Moog Music), Bob was making theremins again. It was too good an opportunity to miss and I browsed their catalogue and arranged for Big Briar to make for me one of their beautiful cherry wood Model 91Cs.

As fate would have it, the proposed completion date for my theremin would see me in North Carolina where I was to meet up with my business partner at the time, Alex, on the set of the new film he was directing, the soon-to-become ill-fated The Crow.

Big Briar/Moog Music is located in Leicester in NC, and it was a simple matter to arrange a slight detour at the end of my trip to collect my theremin in person. More importantly of course it would allow me the exciting opportunity to meet and shake hands with the man whose name was synonymous with electronic music.

It was never to happen. 1993 saw one of the worst storms to ever hit the east coast of the US, with North Carolina copping one of the biggest snowfalls in its history. The day before, I arrived with my travelling companions in Asheville NC, about a twenty minute trip to Leicester. The fairy-tale sprinkling of snow that started on that night was a big novelty for us Australians. “How very Winter Wonderland!” we cried, as we grappled with the concept of driving in treacherously icy conditions and on the wrong side of the road. It became something less of a novelty the next day when we had to dig down through several feet of snow to our rental cars. That was just to get our luggage. Those cars weren’t going nowhere. Neither was anything else in Asheville.

We stuck it out in Asheville for three days but things weren’t getting better in a hurry. Leicester was completely cut off from the world, and any possibility of getting there and back in time to meet our flight back to Oz was remote. We had no choice but to grab the first local flight out of Asheville (after a terrifying drive-cum-slalom in a taxi to the airport) and head back to a country where there isn’t ever much snow. Certainly not enough to bury cars.

My theremin was shipped to me not long after, and Bob phoned several times to chat, and make sure everything had arrived in good condition.

Steven Martin’s documentary was completed in 1993. It was an insightful and moving account of the story of the theremin. Lev Sergeyevich Termen died not long after the film’s release at the age of 97. Bob Moog sent me an email on that day. It said:

I thought you would like to know that Lev Termen died today, at the age of 97. Lately, he has been working on a device to reverse the aging process. Sadly for all of us, he was not able to finish that work.

I was very saddened to hear that Bob Moog himself died last Sunday. The enormous grief in the electronic music community can be felt on the Moog Music site, and on the Caring Bridge site, where thousands of people have left their condolences and sympathies, as well as thoughts and reminiscences about Dr Moog.

Unlike Leon Theremin, Bob Moog runs little risk of being forgotten. His legacy to the musical world is imprinted so strongly that the word ‘moog’ is almost a generic term for an analog synthesizer. And now, his instruments have been created virtually, as software emulations, for a whole new generation of sound-makers to discover.

So, at the end of this lengthy post, I would like to bid a personal farewell to Dr Robert Moog, the great man who I almost met. So long Bob. I feel I knew you well enough to call you a friend. Forgive me if that’s presumptuous. I’m not so presumptuous as to speculate on whether there is a heaven or not, but in my mind’s eye I cannot help but see you ascending a glittering stairway to some such place, dressed in a magnificent white tux, and accompanied, in a manner befitting your stature, by a chorus of a thousand angels playing perfect theremin.