A DeLorean and Bhutan

Today I went with a couple of friends to see a documentary film on Bhutan , “the dragon house” (check: http://www.baff-bcn.org/film.php?id_pelicula=92&lang=eng). It wasn’t a typical documentary and there was many more people there than we expected. And the movie was greater than I expected.

The documentary basically depicted life there and the way people felt about the changes taking place in the country. And there was the voice of some scholar, giving a different point of view. I guess the idea people normally have of Bhutan is related to distance, mysticism, mystery and other adjectives of this kind. In fact there’s something true in all those ideas, especially in a traditionally isolated country as Bhutan.

The idea of the Gross National Happiness instead of GNP was something I liked. It makes us wonder, as the westerner in the documentary said, how good the ideas of those westerners trying to export western models are, which aim to make poor countries richer. Some countries are already rich, in many cases richer than wealthy countries. People looked happy out there, happier than most people we meet everyday in most places in the west...and nobody has any right to break their peace, and set conflicts which lead to unhappiness. Why should things that work be changed?. The king wisely tried to preserve Bhutanese culture, with all its traditions, by isolating the land in a very characteristic way, carrying out some isolation from negative influences coming from the west. But in the late 90es internet and TV reached Bhutan. Who can fight against Tv and internet? One of the guys who starred the documentary was a DJ, the first DJ of Bhutan. He wanted to make some revolution in the country, by introducing different music styles, other than commercial pop. He tried to introduce house, techno and trance...aimlessly because at first people didn’t really like such music and preferred dancing to the music they heard on MTV and so on. Is it possible to carry on some selective “modernisation” (I know modernisation is not the word)? It’s like the most commercial side of it found its way easy toward the conquer of Bhutan....but when somebody like that guy tried to introduce something “modern”, “in” in the west, he failed to succeed. His idea seemed to be as strange as a DeLorean nowadays. DeLoreans taking you to the future, like the ideas of that guy, for whom we felt rather sorry. But nowadays DeLoreans also mean something from the past. Bhutan is somehow a bit like a DeLorean: the past and the future meeting. Those three discos in Thimphu: the HQ, the Dragon Club and the Xplode. Men and women dressed in a traditional way and young people wearing jeans. and dancing in the above mentioned discos. Japanese cars, Japanese TVs, blue jeans and soda drinks. I know it’s pretty odd to compare a mythical car (it’s so for me and so it is for many other people) and a beautiful and amazingly interesting country...but I’m prone to do this kind of comparisons. As with Bhutan, not so many people know about DeLoreans. Both have some different beauty and interest and both imply thinking both about past and future, what remains and what will fade away.

anant al BAFF

ai...per fi aquest any sí es donen en el meu cas les circumstàncies per anar a alguns passis de pel.lícules del BAFF (Barcelona Asian Film Festival)....després d'anys que bé els horaris, bé el fet d'haver d'anar sola em feien enrere. oh que bonic, el meu primer BAFF. Demà dissabte ja ens arrepleguem uns quants per anar a veure una mena de documental sobre el Bhutan, gran país, i un gran oblidat al màster, pobrissó. I la setmana vinent un film japonès però tractant sobre Corea del Nord. Digueu-nos frikis, però frikis positius i motivats, defensors dels oblidats. I això perque no hi ha films de Mongòlia, de països de l'Àsia Central (que se'n sap del cinema Kirguís, per posar un exemple???), de Corea del Nord, de Laos, de Brunei...No estaria malament crear una mena d'associació o agrupació estil amics dels països que normalment són oblidats, per promocionar-los. Potser l'anar a veure aquestes dues pel.lícules, i d'alguna altra, ens inspira definitivament.

and 20 years ago...

That was the last day of life. The last day many children played on the parks . That was the last day, because on 26th April 1986 —tomorrow it will be exactly 20 years ago— the time stopped around Chernobyl area. No more children playing, no more birds chirping. Many lives ended physically but also metaphorically. The places with their houses and everything inside them remained there. The toys and photographs were covered with dust and death and the layers kept growing till today. I’ve not see the scenery but through some pictures I can figure it out. However, my mind builds some darker scenery, inhabited by even more ghostly shapes...millions of ghostly shapes behind every single thing that stands up and under every single thing that went down and remained so for 2 decades. And what is worse, these images I build in my mind might not be worse than reality, since, although it might sound topic, reality is too often worse than we can imagine.

Time stopped and the only thing that seems to move are the quantities of radiations, varying from one place to another, and some lost animals. Also vegetation seems to keep growing, invading all kind of places, replacing people. And maybe, from time to time, some radiated fruits from some trees fall down. It feels strange to be conscious about the presence of gravity in such an area. It seems that it could have disappeared with the people that left the area, and the absence of life. Time stopped somewhere as history kept following its path, as communism approached its fall. I guess there are really many places that are somehow like this, in the sense that the time flows differently.

And lately we hear that nuclear power, together with less dangerous types of sources of energy, will definitely be important to keep our world working. What world? This world with many shades of modernity, boasting about its so-called progress. I write so-called because it’s a very partial progress that affects just some aspects of lives and affects/benefits only a proportion of the inhabitants of the Earth. A generalised use of nuclear power scares me, personally, and I guess I’m not the only one with such feelings. Now people remember the disaster in Chernobyl 20 years ago and at the same time talk about the role of nuclear power in the future, but also about nuclear weapons in several countries. I wonder why the powerful ones, and many of us, didn’t act and live in a more responsible way towards the environment all these 20 years to preserve our natural resources and sources of energy? Instead, on the run toward progress, we took a rather destructive path, a rather suicidal path because progress and self satisfaction and a pretended-to-be-happier world and benefits, of course, were more important. Consummerism, production, spend-spend-spend. And yet spend and then lose. If the world’s dynamic had been more responsible for these 20 years, just to say a period of time, we might not be talking of the urgency of the seek of alternative sources of energy. And we might see the catastrophe in Chernobyl as something really distant in time, unlike what happens. It’s 20 years ago and it doesn’t seem to be that long ago since many ghosts of nuclear power keep alive. I was just 4 years old in 1986, so I remember nothing, but I think of all people born that time, all those who were children at that time, that day. Some are still alive and the generation following theirs might suffer the consequences of radiation too. The time is still stopped. How many generations will be needed? How many centuries to get the clocks back into working there? How long do we have to wait until the presence of radiation begins to fade away? Maybe, by the time that takes place, we’ve already destroyed the world and other kinds of deadly radiations pollute our bodies and souls. With the kind of people in powerful positions we have, it’s wouldn’t be that strange to see that happening.

I recommend you a couple of websites by Elena Filatova, with pictures (don’t expect “yellow” pictures...for such contents there’s nowadays tv. Pictures here depict sceneries and measurements of radioactivity) Worth seeing and reading:

http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/journal/articles.html
http://www.elenafilatova.com/

Hey love crrrusaderr, i want to be yourrr space invaderrr!

Strange days and strange fixations on odd, kitsch but also dark things. Why do we like or feel like we can’t take our eyes off some kinds of things,? I’ve been wondering for years why do I keep thinking of some elements of a book by Oe Kenzaburo (Man'en gannen no futtoboru, 1967...i have no idea of the title in English. in spanish it's translated into something very different, as El grito silencioso) that inspired darkness and madness to me. I don’t drink alcohol because of several reasons (philosophical basically) and sometimes, seeing people drinking and certain attitudes towards drinking, besides thinking of the ideas that brought me to take such a decision, I think of some character in that novel by Oe. That character, morally a bit odd, repeated over and over, that one must face life being sober. Those words pop in my mind from time to time, normally together with images I mentally created when I read that book. I didn’t like that book but it’s present in my mind, and now I’m reading another novel by Oe Kenzaburo, (Memushiri kouchi, 1958, in Spanish: Arrancad las semillas, fusilad a los niños) which shares some points with the one I mentioned, but which I feel is less negative.

Another negative thing I keep in mind is the cover of some cd (Wrath of the Tyrant) by the black metal band Emperor . Dark cover (but not such much) with some element I don’t know which attracts my attention. Maybe the colours, the hair of the man/woman that a certain point becomes snake, the eyes. Who knows? I guess we all have some dark or, at least, hidden side that makes us pay attention to things we don’t really consider positive for us, thinks that our subconsciousness seems to like more than ourselves (I’m not talking about universal moral values nor crimes...i’m not talking about scatological things, nor wicked things...i leave them for the news on tv and the yellow press and so on, because reality is worse than the worse and most macabre black metal lyrics). Fortunately it’s just the cover of that cd that I think has something interesting somewhere, somehow (I’ve just listened to their song “curse you all the men” and I don’t agree with their “black” ideas...though they seem to be more moderated nowadays and they don’t burn any more churches, fortunately). But there are more so-called/considered normal people who listen to this sub-genre within metal...like a guy on a train wearing a t-shirt of Opeth, another metal band....peaceful face and attitude on his way back home. (curiously, his wearing that t-shirt and his kind expression made me feel safer on the train and I didn’t sit very far from him...i thought and felt that better close to that guy, which didn’t seem to be that strange---at least I knew his musical taste--- than close to some of those weird/wicked men in trains in the evening)

On the other side, there come kitsch things and people, like Zlad!, an Australian creation (Molvanîa doesn’t exist, of course!!!) singing things whose lyrics have verses like the one in the title of this post. There also something lying beneath such kitsch creatures wearing silver clothes and wacky hair styles...i guess i like people displaying freedom, colours. i guess i can't help liking surrealism. And those dark and kitsch fixations are like my spontaneous dreams.

But I and my brain remain on a middle path, a middle point. Somewhere where bright sides and darker or hidden sides keep balanced. And these days i'm focusing on the way i breath, pathing a rhythm and some depth, like that of feet on the shore of some imaginary beach.