September 2006 - Page 2 of 3

Consulate Lecture, Qing Cheng Shan

Last Wednesday I gave an hour-long lecture at the American consulate on DJ’ing in China. After six months or so of hesitation I decided to commit myself to it, I suppose to broaden my horizons and try something different. I saw a list of the topics that the previous lectors selected and was fairly put off by the entire idea when I found that people are lectured there on topics like classic French literature, 20th century American colonialism, and China’s economic growth. Boring. So, the primary objective was to make it fun an interesting. I didn’t think this would be too difficult considering the countless bizarre situations I’ve found myself in over the last year, so I decided to focus primarily on identifying the largest disparities between the two club cultures and the talking about the observations I’ve made as a first-hand witness of how China’s nightclubs operate. I thought it went very well and flowed much more like an open dialogue than I expected it to, which was a welcome surprise. I was also surprised to find that many of the people who showed up to hear me speak barely knew what a DJ was, while others were themselves DJ’s. Overall a good experience which yielded almost all that I hoped it could. Maybe at some point in the future I’ll give another lecture on another topic that isn’t so boring – I’ve already been thinking of doing one on creationism or scientology, which I don’t think many Chinese people are even familiar with. We’ll see.

Today I took a tour of Chengdu along with Sascha, who was able to obtain a big car and driver for the day, courtesy of the Chinese government, since he’s authoring a book on Chengdu. I tagged along and took photos as they dropped us off at all of the major tourist sites in the city, granted us entry into special ordinarily-restricted areas, and took us out to lunch. Most of the sites both of us had been to, but we checked out a few temples that I hadn’t been to before, in addition to a giant museum that’s set to open next year. The museum is actually an airplane-hanger-type facility built around a location filled with excavated fossil remains and 1,000-year old petrified trees. We were also taken to a storage facility guarded by three men which held a collection of ancient artifacts. 3,000 seemed to be the magic number dating all the articles, including a number of stone figures and small jade sculptures and scriptures. The day as a whole was largely impressive – after splitting with Sascha I met with Jade, who I went to Tibet with (she worked for Chivas at the time) last March. It’d been a long time since we’d seen eachother and it was a welcome opportunity to practice not speaking any english for the evening. New vocabulary include breakdancing (jie wu), cross the street (guo ma lu), and gua wa zi (crazy person) in Chongqing-hua (haar!). Pretty fantastic times.

Tomorrow I’ll set out and try to find a decent electronic piano to set in the studio. It’s been ten years now, but I’m committing myself to learning again!

September 11th Five Year Anniversary

As you’re probably already aware, today is the fifth anniversary of the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington DC. It being a nice round number, half a century, grants it a little more significance in our hearts, so I’ll write about my own experience on 9/11 and what I remember of what it.

My story isn’t the most dramatic, but took place in Tysons Corner, VA. That Tuesday morning I awoke before the first plane struck the North tower at the same time as my friend Zach, who was coming to work with me. I had gotten him a job at my office and he stayed at my house the previous night so we could go to the office together for his first day. Listening to the CD in the car and not bothering to turn on the TV or radio, we remained blissfully unaware of what was happening until walking past my boss David’s office where he was seated intently in front of a 9″ television. Generally the television was reserved as a late-night still-working comfort and not a morning distraction, so I walked inside to see what was going on. He relayed the news that a plane had hit the World Trade Center as I saw on the TV what looked like a smoke stack. The significance of what had happened was evident in David’s voice.

And then, while standing there, the second plane was flown into the South tower. I could hear gasps from other offices as I stepped out of the corner office and walked down the halls witnessing a handful of employees experiencing varying levels of denial. Some continued to work and didn’t want to hear or talk about what was happening, while others were becoming hysterical. One employee fearing for her safety, Jamie, a recently married marketer in her early 30’s, called her husband and quickly formulated an escape plan to rural Maryland. Another employee, the ex-Marine Manny, showed a tender, vulnerable side after years of being the defacto ex-military office brute.

Eventually, all of us who stayed watched TV and read reports on the internet of what was happening while trying to render conclusions from the buzzing rumors. The Capitol had been bombed. The Sears tower had been evacuated. LAX had been attacked. Not five minutes would pass without another indication of the mounting threat, until the Pentagon was struck. Only 15 miles from where we were, this seemed to hit us the closest. Shortly afterwards, a fire alarm went off in the building. I felt a rush through my body as I felt a threat not from fire, but from hysterical people in this building.

Zach and I stepped out into the 11th floor lobby to see fifty Merryl Lynch employees milling around amidst the loud fire alarm as one woman loudly screams “There’s a bomb in the building” with a quivering lip. Knowing that uncontrollable fear had captured so many peoples minds, this no longer seemed like such a safe place. Moments later the building was evacuated, with the fire alarm still going off. The elevators were crowded to capacity as Zach and I took the fire escape down 10 flights of stairs to the ground floor. The echo of the fire alarm and of our hasty steps down the stairs filled my ears and mind until we arrived at the ground floor to find the door locked. With the insanity fully enveloping us, Zach and I looked at each other and shared a laugh as we pounded on the door hoping someone would hear us and open the door from the outside.

After two minutes of pounding the door is opened, we’re released, and we take our final steps out of the building with the fire alarm still buzzing behind us.

I found this video last night. It’s a 30-minute unedited capture of the attacks in New York, filmed by local residents. It captures the surreal nature of the unexpected attacks perfectly.