At Psychanaut (“a portmanteau of “psychonaut” [mind-explorer], “cha” [茶/tea], and “chan” [禪/zen buddhism]”), my friend Nick writes about the adventures he’s having after a recent move to Taipei. He drinks mango juice, studies Chinese, plays guitar at open mics, searches for tea houses, haunts jazz clubs, takes trips to Hong Kong and Seoul, eats turnip cakes, gets creeped out by sculptures, and absorbs the culture by osmosis.
Taipei fascinates me a bit, but most of what I know about the city comes straight from the films of Ming-liang Tsai. Nick tells me that, in his experience, people in Taipei don’t watch much Tsai, just as Germans don’t watch much Werner Herzog, or Americans don’t watch much Jim Jarmusch. Perhaps, though I almost consider film culture a city unto itself, and my explorations of film culture explorations of that virtual city in a grand attempt to find and befriend its most interesting residents.
But speaking of capturing cities in images, Nick provides a view of Taipei I haven’t gotten before with his post “Five views from my rooftop“. In response, I went upstairs on this uncharacteristically wet Los Angeles day and snapped four views from mine.
Rainy days in Southern California make me listen to Roy Ayers’ “Everybody Loves the Sunshine“, not out of wishful thinking or (heaven forbid) irony, but because the song feels so suitable, on a sonic-aesthetic level, for times when the clouds roll in.
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