Excellence
One with the joystick, instead of presenting a never-ending stream of bullets, he exchanges volleys with the enemy. The dense clouds of flaming shrapnel flower out in increasingly complex and confusing structures. Is there space for the hero to survive? Moments of instant deliberation pass, he maneuvers with the skill of the Red Baron, tumbles and dodges, baits and hustles and weaves with an unnerving calm. His own missiles would blind himself, clutter his vision; wisely he values his own skin more. He downs massive roving fortresses, armored cargo planes, frenetic oversized helicopters, moving from stage to stage losing neither life nor limb.
Finally, in a moment of weakness, his fragile ship catches a bullet. I am shocked when the new plane provided him dives to its doom just seconds after its blinking invincibility wears off. This is the pilot’s pride, the style of the serious shooter. I have only one life, he must be thinking as he drives his third and final ship headlong into a stream of enemy fire. Kamikaze without batting an eye. Let’s not pretend this is a game. He scoffs at the Continue screen. You think you get more chances in real life? He enters his initials, third among the high score rankings, plunks down another coin, and selects a new plane. This one different from the last, a new sliver of hope to send down the hellish corridors of battle. Flanked by rows of grim Enders slicing through enemy squadrons, attendant girlfriends frozen in aweful fascination.
People are playing a mean game of Tetris nearby. Pairs of bubbly white terminals are set up back to back near the dance floor. This is the arena of gladiators, the beastly battlers bulging under the doppelganged skins of unblinking unflinching diplomats, duelists in disguise. The blocks rain down nine point eight meters a second squared, clearing flurries of double, triple, tetris lines, smashing missiles into the opponent’s creations, forcing quick placement of oversized block combinations, rendering the opponent’s joystick and buttons useless and leaving him at the mercy of rapidly descending pieces above and explosive growth of rows below. In their dreams the pieces cavort, whirl, and merge into compact forms; the rows vanish like counted sheep on the way to a fitful sleep.
Outside the arcade are other romances with excellence. I walk into the music store and inquire about violin strings. A young fellow named Wang Jun hears that I have “studied” music for some years. “Show me,” he says heading towards the instrument cabinet, and proceeds to ignore my excuses about not having played for the past year during travel, about my never having studied performance pieces, about “studying” meaning self-study more than intensive instruction. A violin appears in my hands. He flips open some tome of a violin anthology and throws it on the stand. I should play it. But it is too hard for me by far. I get a glimpse of the cover which reads “å级“, Level 10. Seeing my struggle with the hint of smugness, Wang Jun flips to another piece earlier in the book. “Ah, you should be able to play this,” he says not without condescension. Of course it is still too hard for me to sightread, and I tell him I have never played this piece. “Well, certainly you must have learned some of these pieces, they are standard in any regimen of instruction,” he says starting to flip again. I stop him.
“So, what are your favorite violin pieces then?” he continues to quiz. It seems the knowledge barrage will never end. “Certainly you must know much more about the Western classical music than we Chinese, but can you play our music with the right feeling? Surely you know some of our traditional songs.” He has already imagines himself my teacher, makes no indication of ending his litany of Chinese song names even when it is clear I recognize none of them, not one. “So,” he prepares for the crowning blow, “how old are you?” A fatal miscalculation enters into the charade: every carefully laid comment with the intent to impress or depress, the string of clever pills is rooted by insinuation in the undeniable truth of superiority, relentless attacks based on the certainty that I am the younger, the inexperienced, the one to be blessed with inspired instruction. Not so, and he hides his disappointment with great difficulty, even so unsuccessfully. At the very least, I am older. “So, just what instrument do you play?” I ask, biding my reprisal.
“Sax.”
Hello Kenny G. You prophet, you nothing.
I am a poor man, but I have a big heart.
Alisher, Jaipur
Sometimes it just hits me in the gut, the punch of brutal reality, sympathy. Walking the streets of Changsha. Haunting echoes of erhu envelope the dim-tiled underpass. I appreciate this musician’s modesty and stop to offer a yuan. My wallet is bereft of those happy green Maos, though, and I am left considering a fiver. Remembering the Tibetan way, I drop the five into the man’s alms tray, his instrument case, and pick up two or three ones from it in one hurried motion. At this moment the man stops playing and smiles at me. “Thank you very much. Are you a student here?” No no, I am no student. “Oh,” he says thoughfully. “There seem to be many more students these days…” Please play another song. Does he mean that he sees more students on the streets? Or that he sees more generosity from students than from older people? Buddhism has been smashed in progress-obsessed China more soundly than in Laos, a deathblow delivered to the giving tradition. Did it even exist here to begin with? Most people avoid beggars as if they were lepers. I’ve seen a row of elbow locked-student friends scatter in the face of an alms bowl, with the magnetic repulsion only similar poles exhibit. Musicians have always been nothing more than beggars, for they have never had more to sell than their love for the art. The alchemy of love to money has always been unreliable. More so in societies where compassion is imprisoned by principle, and infinitely more so in societies where people have no concept of beauty.
The mangled teeth of street sweeper’s rake, reaching into the window of open earth in the concrete to glean a single dusty leaf. Cigarette butts, soiled napkins, ice cream wrappers and chewed betel nut are in the bin. She works while we eat, she works while we sleep, and her art keeps the illusion of our civil world alive. There’s no glory in it though. Her neon vest is high-tech gear, urban camo, rendering her invisible to the naked or sheathed eyes of city dwellers. Blinded we are by city eyes.
The cute Thai waitress working the Chinese seafood joint sultry Bangkok nights tells me she worked in Taiwan before, and learned a little Chinese doing so. My heart a brick when I hear she gets one day off per fifteen worked, each from 4pm to 6am (14 hours), and makes about 1000 baht in a month. Granted, the work’s not too difficult, and they feed her. It’s the same smile everywhere, so gentle, so humble, and she says, “I’m just working my way up, step by step. Life improves slowly but steadily. It’s okay.” But all I can think of is the captivity, the time lost and wasted, the piteous allowance doled out by the thriving boss almost criminal. She can’t go anywhere, and the days just roll on by. Think me a romantic fool for being smitten in that sad moment of news broken and heart breaking, for the moment. Gut punched near to tears.
1000 baht = 200 yuan = 25 dollars / 400 work hours
I meet people in small places. On the streets of Changsha we molecules bounce and ricochet off one another, yet curiously chemical reactions never take place. Are we all atoms of noble gas, He Ne Ar Kr Xe Rn inert to our uninteresting surroundings? I long thought I might meet my complements, my friends and companions, on the streets of cities and neighborhoods, walking, waving, saying hello, stopping for a while to get to know me. It is easy to be disappointed with an idea such as this, for life bears out that in all but the smallest of places, the small villages of Nepal or Laos, wind-worn cottages of Tibet, people are scared of one another, and because they are forced to be around many strangers every day and wish only to hide from them, they employ various pretenses of mutual dismissal. These devices make most attempts to meet people on the street a losing game of roulette, a simple and demoralizing game of chance. Add to the odds against us the cruel construction of our modern cities, public meeting spaces replaced by expensive cafès and pubs, nary a bench for quiet contemplation to be found on copycat avenues otherwise pumped with a raucous pitch and frenzied movement. Google, I’m not feeling lucky. The cause is lost; better to find another.
Because our spaces have disappeared, we must create new ones. It is not possible to build up positive energy in the decorated deficient. Publicly, not passively, we must invite and encourage others to join us in pursuing our loves. We blow a bubble just big enough for everyone who comes to comfortably fit into. This is our sphere of leadership and influence, this is where we can meet others with open hearts, this is safety and lightness. In the mastering the art of creating spaces, we conquer the false hopes offered by the morose main streets.