My taste in music is broad and eclectic. I have very few prescriptive standards. But I’m not quite jaded. It doesn’t happen very often, but every now and then I hear something that totally confuses me. It’s usually the kind of stuff that sends other people screaming in the opposite direction (remember Ween’s “Push th’Little Daisies”?) but I like that WTF feeling.
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Fire-Toolz
The discovery that inspired this post, Field Whispers (Into the Crystal Palace) has way too much going on, and most of it is abrasive. So why is the overall effect so calm and meditative? I’d try to summarize what Fire-Toolz is up to, but it’s already been done better than I could by Bandcamp Daily.
an unholy combination of extreme metal, experimental noise, pop, and vaporwave…
combine New Age tranquility (complete with bird calls) with distorted spoken word, bombastic guitar solos ripped out of a racing game for the Sega Dreamcast, and paint-stripping shrieks. ..
The TV show Twin Peaks ran during the years I didn’t own a TV, so even though it seems like it would be right up my alley, I missed it. By all accounts, it was the kind of show to make you say, “WTF?”
So there’s a band in Portland (of course) inspired by the show. They are called Laura Palmer’s DEATH PARADE, which is apparently a reference to the show. And their music sounds like it belongs on the Twin Peaks soundtrack (which I have heard – that music was everywhere back in the day). I don’t really get it. But I like it.
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Lindsey Stirling
A dancing violinist is absurd for reasons that are obvious reasons if you’ve ever once drawn a bow across strings and tried to make it sound good. But the absurd captures attention. Dancer/violinist/cosplayer Lindsey Stirling has built a career on elaborate YouTube videos in which she dances and plays violin, usually at the same time. As a fan of both ballet and violin music, I remember when she first started to get attention.
Then, I did an article on Jennifer Thomas and discovered a whole world of classical YouTubers. But Stirling is the original.
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Fishslaughter
At first, Fishslaughter sounds like a typical heavy metal band name: animal + death word. But on closer inspection, they’re dead serious about the name, which references the impact of pollution and overfishing on the oceans. The bio “true aquatic black metal” is not a reference to Metalocalypse.
Ecological destruction is a fitting topic for a genre that deals in pain and rage. And environmental awareness is not enough to make you say, “WTF?” But add unusual instrumentation – in this case, an octave mandolin (what’s an octave mandolin?) – and you get some seriously weird shit.
Fishslaughter put their money where their mouth is. They have a newer album out, but all proceeds from their August, 2019 release Morfar go to Ocean Conservancy. In fact, if you provide evidence of a direct donation to the Conservancy, they’ll send you the album for free.
Frederick Ballentine (plays Charlie Parker). Photo by Philip Newton c/o Seattle Opera
It was a miracle I made it to see Charlie Parker’s Yardbird at Seattle Opera at all. First of all, black operas are rarely performed by major opera companies. I didn’t have advance tickets, and on opening weekend I was home sick with a flu-like virus. I got mixed up the next weekend and showed up on the day that there wasn’t a matinee (big oof). But I finally made it for the very last performance of the run – only a few days before all big arts performances were shut down due to the pandemic. So was it worth all that effort?
For the most part, I was impressed (or maybe overwhelmed is a better word) by how much money there was in Qingdao. Everything seemed shiny and clean and either new or delightfully vintage.
But on one charming little street I saw this nest of wires. It reminded me of the power poles in India. I don’t know if it’s still the case, but when I was there 20 years ago, it was common for entire villages to steal electricity by climbing the power poles and connecting wires unofficially.
I don’t know if that’s what’s happening here or if there’s another, less dangerous explanation. For the most part, I try to avoid the sort of value judgements inherent in phrases like “developed nations” and even “rich societies.” There’s enough wrong with my culture that I’m in no position to throw stones (or snide comments) at the way people do things elsewhere.
But I’m glad that scary-looking nests of wire are not part of my everyday life.
When we traveled to Qingdao, China in 2007 to meet our daughter, we stayed in the Crowne Plaza. I’m not really a hotel person – most of my travel has involved youth hostels – so I had never heard of the place before. It was comfortable and fancy but hardly registered at the time because we had big emotional stuff going on.
The only thing about it that really stuck in my mind was the tagline on all the stationery and swag:
Crowne Plaza – a place to meet
When I went back with my daughter in 2015 to visit and explore, I chose a much more quirky and historical hotel as our base of operations. But one day, as we wandered around the city, we stumbled on a family historical site – the Crowne Plaza Hotel we stayed in on the trip when we met our daughter.
I have never come closer to cancelling a trip than last November.
When I booked our tickets to Hong Kong, the protests hadn’t started yet. But in
the two weeks before we left, the protests resulted in a death and two
shootings. Visiting Hong Kong didn’t seem safe. Ultimately, we decided to go
because we knew we had a safe base in Discovery Bay.
Geography
First, a geography lesson. Hong Kong is an island. The
governmental entity called Hong Kong comprises that island, plus a bit of land sticking
out from mainland China called the New Territories, a peninsula on the tip of
that land called Kowloon, and 262 other islands. Most of these islands are
small and many are uninhabited. But some are more densely populated than Hong
Kong and one, Lantau, is larger than Hong Kong.
Lantau Island
With much more land than Hong Kong, Lantau has many fewer people.
It houses the international airport, Disneyland, the Po Lin monastery with its
giant bronze Buddha, lots of mountains with natural forest and hiking trails, a
few villages, and a couple urbanized areas, notably Tung Chung and Discovery
Bay.
Discovery Bay
Discovery Bay is exactly the sort of place I usually try to
avoid. A privately-owned residential development posing as a community, the
town is closed to all vehicles except public buses, a chartered taxi company,
and golf carts. It is essentially a gated community. There are two commercial
plazas and a ferry terminal connecting it to Hong Kong proper. There is only
one Chinese restaurant. The population of 20,000 residents represents 30
different countries and includes a lot of airline employees. It’s essentially
an island within an island. This is the stuff of my Truman Show nightmares.
But with such a large short-term and foreign population,
Discovery Bay has been completely unaffected by the protests that rock the rest
of the city-state. The expatriate enclave was also where my daughters’ teacher
lived when she studied in Hong Kong and would be the location of their training
while we were there. It was not my usual style, but it was a perfect base for
this particular trip.
Strangely Pleasant
Because of its proximity to numerous hiking trails, Discovery Bay is as attractive to pet owners as it is to foreign residents. So there are almost as many dogs as people in Discovery Bay. You would expect a place like Discovery Bay (DB to the locals) to be filled with elaborately groomed, pedigreed, rare breed dogs. But there is a very active animal rescue group on Lantau, and the dogs at the end of their well-heeled owners’ leashes in DB were as motley as any group of mutts you’ve seen. I saw more limping geriatrics and tripod dogs in a week in DB than I would see in a month of shelter visits at home. It went a long way towards endearing DB to me, even as I couldn’t help but repeatedly reference the old TV show, The Prisoner. “I’ll be seeing you.
I didn’t take pictures of people walking their dogs, but I did snap this cute community garden.
The Plaza (and its smaller neighbor to the north, helpfully named North Plaza) also contributed to the strangely pleasant feeling. During my years in the green building movement, everyone was struggling with how to recreate the town square where people would choose to park their cars and walk around instead of driving between errands. Despite the myriad golf carts, people mostly walked around in DB, and even on a Monday night (it may have helped that we arrived the day after happy election results) the Plaza was filled with families. Adults drank on pubs’ outdoor patios, children rode tricycles around, and people of all ages wandered in and out of the various shops and restaurants. It was a lovely place to relax in the evening and I can see how it might be exactly what a lot of people need after the overwhelm of a day in downtown Hong Kong.
A rare empty moment on the Plaza
The Greens
There is one big hotel in DB, and a couple more over by Disneyland,
but everyone in our group rented Air BnBs in the neighborhood. Many of us ended
up in the Greens – a series of identical skyscrapers with names like Greendale,
Greenland, Greenvale, etc.
Sunset view of the Greens from outside the Plaza
Finding lodging in Hong Kong, or almost anywhere, actually,
with room for 4 people – especially if it’s for more than a week and you really
want two separate, proper bedrooms – is really hard. But we found a perfect
2-bedroom apartment in The Greens at a really good price. Then, weeks after
booking and months before our trip, our host cancelled the reservation without
explanation, and we had to start the search over.
This time, there were only 7 search results for the
parameters I set, and two of them used the same pictures. We finally settled on
an apartment that was technically more than we needed – and nearly half again
as expensive as our original choice. But it turned out to be perfect for us.
Our Home Away From Home
Our apartment was a rare three-bedroom. The master bedroom, second bedroom, and the living room had views of the Bay, Hong Kong island, and Disneyland (which didn’t look like much during the day, but when the nightly fireworks shows are running, you can see them from our apartment). We even had a view down into the park where the girls practiced kung fu every day. We were too high up to see what they were doing, but we could tell when they took breaks and finished practice.
There were bunk beds in each of the secondary bedrooms. Our
girls chose to share the room with the view. That left a spare room for storing
suitcases, which helped us keep the living/dining room cleaner. My husband was frustrated
trying to cook in the tiny kitchen, but for anyone accustomed to Asian
apartments, it was actually spacious and well equipped.
Even though we got super lucky with the timing of our trip,
and we were able to go into Hong Kong several times, we spent a lot of time
relaxing in that apartment. With the glass doors to the balcony open, it was
cooler in the apartment than it was walking around outside, and the girls
needed lots of downtime after their training.
Travel Home
Maybe other people don’t do this, but wherever I travel, I imagine what it would be like to live there. When you stay in an apartment instead of hotel rooms, it’s so much easier to pretend you live there. I know it’s not the same thing as having a job and a commute and budgeting on local wages. But using the washing machine, navigating public transportation, and shopping at the grocery store give you some feeling of life in a place. I love the monuments and museums, too, but to me getting a sense of what a place feels like to people who live there is one of the best parts of being there. There’s no place like home, but home can be anywhere in the world.
I’m a freelance content and grant writer sharing my work and my thoughts about books, music, and travel on this blog. If you want to know how I can help you share the things you care about, read more about me.
