February 5th: mustard quest

Day 142

Woke at a mind-boggling 7:30 am, started writing. Got a couple entries pounded out, then went and sneaked into the arts building to play piano for a couple hours. Made some minor adjustments to a few songs I had thought of on the train and started writing a new song before I figured out it was half an "Arcade Fire" song and half my song "Tea and Bisquits." Oops.

Wanting to sample my salami and cheese, I set out on a quest for mustard. It doesn't exist in this town. The supermarkets were flooded with Chinese New Year crowds, obtaining snacks and whatever supplies they need to properly celebrate the imminent loud day off. Outside NGS, the outdoor bazaar from block behind had moved onto the sidewalk blocking any useful attempt to get by.

I then rode out to the internet cafe, but I didn't linger long. Some guy was playing a first-person shoot-em-up game in the back at the maximum treble-heavy level his computer speakers would allow. It sounded like a rice krispies drum corps. I couldn't concentrate so I left.

I hung out with Mike and Rhys, ate some fries, watched a bit of a Doors DVD Mike had picked up in Chengdu. It was weird to watch Jim Morrison, iconic ghost perfectly preserved in a vintage 60's vapor, onstage with very little presence, looking more like a costumed hooligan, an understudy for the real vocalist who took too many sips of surrogate backbone, paralyzed behind the microphone stand and hoping a stream-of-consciousness word garland would act as a parachute. It was refreshingly human. Not a poster, not a statue of a god, but a poet with fears and frailties that he tried to hide from the world with libidinous overcompensation.

I also became aware of a changing perception. Since Morrison (and a host of others) died at 27, you grow up having a fixated "this person is older than I am" awareness, a concept of their heads being a complete mystery, but that you'll understand one day. Then your 27th birthday comes and you still haven't figured it out, but it seems that these rock stars had tapped into something else, some wellspring of enlightenment/inspiration and it fucks with your head that they are now metaphysical peers from an age standpoint. Now my 30th birthday is looming on the horizon, and the 27 stigma is behind, the "peers" are going to change into "little siblings" eventually. Growing up, there was a skewed perception, then 27 hit and if I was going to understand them the most it would have been that time, and now it's past and I can almost hear the construct change with a Doppler echo: rising, flat, falling, the sound of driving by a statue of a hero on life's highway. Yet, age does not give wisdom, life does. One who is very impatient or frustrated from lack of "the big answers" is almost certainly not ready to know them yet. Mike and I toasted to it one time: There are no regrets, no guilt, only lessons.

We went to the hotel for pizza, came back and watched "House of Flying Daggers" (absolutely stunning) I got into my cups a little heavier than I had expected and ended up sleeping in Rhys and Jeni's spare bed.