Monday, January 30, 2006
The blockage of chi and "collective recollection"
Happy Lunar New Year to all.
Just went to see Neil Labute's play Fat Pig last night at the Studio Theatre. It was not a wholly satisfying experience, but that's also the trademark of Neil Labute. It's like going to see a Todd Solondz or Abel Ferrara flick, you know you're going to disturbed. But I've always been a fan of Neil Labute's biting and brutally honest dialogue ever since the film version of "In The Company of Men." My favorite was "Your Friends and Neighbors" starring Jason Patric and Amy Brenneman.
Anyway, the play was pretty good. It nails all the cliche issues of how the society views fat people. But it doesn't give any solutions. Just like the movie "Crash." Maybe there isn't one. Go check it out if you're a huge Labute fan or if you're into brutal verbal abuse.
The weekend also made me think of a phenomenon known as "collective recollection," or simply "collective memory." For people like me born in the late 70's in Hong Kong, our collective memory would be the golden 80's, watching "430 Spaceship" on TVB, or Stephen Chow and Lung Ping Kai in "Black and White Vampire" or EYT, etc. Songs by Alan Tam, Anita Mui, Leslie Cheung, and George Lam bring back memories of our childhood. That's what movies like "McDull: The Alumni" aim to do. How cool is that to go into a theatre and reminisce all times with people who grew up roughly in the same era as you?
You can't go back in time. However, you can find bits and pieces of your memory from photos, songs, film, and memorabilia from that era, like baseball cards, Panini cards, (thank god for) DVDs, old comic books, etc. That's why art is so important. Art is timeless and expresses timeless matters.
I think people connect more in coffee shops than nightclubs because you can hear them much better in the former and you're less likely to say "What? What?"
Van Morrison always talks of "The Healing Game." I believe that's genius! We need healing all the time because our chi is blocked. The most effective healing of all is the human touch. I'm still pensive but the healing has begun.
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Just went to see Neil Labute's play Fat Pig last night at the Studio Theatre. It was not a wholly satisfying experience, but that's also the trademark of Neil Labute. It's like going to see a Todd Solondz or Abel Ferrara flick, you know you're going to disturbed. But I've always been a fan of Neil Labute's biting and brutally honest dialogue ever since the film version of "In The Company of Men." My favorite was "Your Friends and Neighbors" starring Jason Patric and Amy Brenneman.
Anyway, the play was pretty good. It nails all the cliche issues of how the society views fat people. But it doesn't give any solutions. Just like the movie "Crash." Maybe there isn't one. Go check it out if you're a huge Labute fan or if you're into brutal verbal abuse.
The weekend also made me think of a phenomenon known as "collective recollection," or simply "collective memory." For people like me born in the late 70's in Hong Kong, our collective memory would be the golden 80's, watching "430 Spaceship" on TVB, or Stephen Chow and Lung Ping Kai in "Black and White Vampire" or EYT, etc. Songs by Alan Tam, Anita Mui, Leslie Cheung, and George Lam bring back memories of our childhood. That's what movies like "McDull: The Alumni" aim to do. How cool is that to go into a theatre and reminisce all times with people who grew up roughly in the same era as you?
You can't go back in time. However, you can find bits and pieces of your memory from photos, songs, film, and memorabilia from that era, like baseball cards, Panini cards, (thank god for) DVDs, old comic books, etc. That's why art is so important. Art is timeless and expresses timeless matters.
I think people connect more in coffee shops than nightclubs because you can hear them much better in the former and you're less likely to say "What? What?"
Van Morrison always talks of "The Healing Game." I believe that's genius! We need healing all the time because our chi is blocked. The most effective healing of all is the human touch. I'm still pensive but the healing has begun.
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