Au revoir Paris, bonjour Taipei

It was dear ole Jan who offered to drive me to the airport. He had done so several other times when I was to leave for a few months. Nicolas tagged along as well.

We had a little breakfast at the Paul counter in the airport lounge. To my dismay, the prices had doubled compared to Paris. We sat at one of the few tables in a small space that had been arranged for customers. The metal bars around us made us feel like I was having a visit in a psychiatric hospital. Then the sight of two soldiers walking on either side of the space, carrying fire gun, made me feel I was in a military psychiatric hospital. Two waitresses dressed in white perfected the picture.

The flight lasted forever. I nearly felt sick with the nauseating smell of plane food and instant noodle soup combined with the constant shaking of the plane and the chilliness of my spot. Only the very friendly flight attendants made the journey bearable.

Twenty hours or so later, I was gladly walking out of the airport and grabbing a shuttle to Taipei City.

I was ‘home’. I left Taipei more than a year ago and it felt like I had just been away for a few weeks. I was glad to see these streets, the food stands, the people going on with their business, the ugliness of the city and the liveliness of its people.

A feeling that Kristina also shares. "What is it with this city…?" she asked as we spoke on the phone the night before I left. "It has nothing playing in its favour, but I just love it." she said.

 

Yes the people. Ugly as it is, Taipei becomes beautiful thanks to its people.

Léon de Vietnam

I have got everything: plane tickets, papers in order, Jason lets me stay in his flat in Taipei, I also have my multiple entry visa for Vietnam - just in case!. The Vietnamese government has issued a new law regarding the Viêt Kiêu, ie. Vietnamese who fled after or during the war as well as their family and relatives. All of them could benefit a four year long visa exemption for Vietnam. Those who had a full Vietnamese name would pay less.

I think of this family I met once at a cousin’s place. They had named their son Jeremy and snobbishly stated that they made a point in speaking only French with him because they wanted him to fully integrate the French society. That they had a very strong Vietnamese accent didn’t seem to matter.

"Good that I’m not called Robert Tôn Thât ", I joked with my mother.

"Just think if you had been named Leon…" she said smilingly.

  

 

I called Lucien and he gladly accepted to play the guitar parts for Butterfly Rider. I will come to his place on Monday. I’m sure the whole affair will be in the can in no time.

Even if I haven’t been able to sit down and work on my songs, they keep growing in my head. The way lyrics come to me is peculiar. A good line would pop up in my mind out of the blue, in the least convenient situation - when I'm having a conversation with mother nature in the loo, when I'm shopping groceries... 

Sometime, just one line a day. At random, for any song.

Like finding a new path in the wood. 

Lucien

Went with Bévinda to see Lucien Zerrad, her long time collaborator and composer, playing with his trio on stage at La Bellevilloise. The location wasn’t the best one - one has to earn the privilege to see it by cycling up a cruelly steep hill before reaching the venue. Paris is no mountain city, but that hill is certainly a good work out for leg muscles.

Poor Lucien had to play in the midst of a brouhaha of people talking, eating, laughing and drinking. Behind us, a man was sitting with his girlfriend and went on with the dullest conversation - or shall I say monologue, commenting on everything and everyone. Two beautiful blond little girls were playing and dancing right in front of the stage. One of them was particularly striking looking. More than beautiful, she had an adult expression in her eyes as if she had to grow older too quickly, something that reminded me of a young Jodie Foster. 

"When a child looks like an adult, it means that there’s something wrong at home" Bévinda remarked. 

I don’t know what it is to have a perfect childhood. There’s always something wrong. A little three-year old boy would join them occasionally and disturb the musicians by touching all the buttons, which caused Lucien to plead the parents to keep an eye on ’these beautiful children’.

"I touched the buttons!!!!" said the little boy proudly with a broad smile on his face as he walked past us.

I could barely hear anything. But I liked the music that managed to find its way to my ears. 

It was Lucien's first concert months after a nearly lethal traffic accident that left him motionless in bed with many fractured bones and legs. A reminder that I should be grateful to be in good health and able to use all my senses.

One thing leading to another, I realized that Lucien would be the perfect man for my song Butterfly Rider. There’s a whole section where I need an oriental guitar, to create this vision of a very broad deserted land.

I will call him tomorrow to ask him whether he’d accept to play for me. 

Lucien Zerrad

Strike a pose

Time is running out. I did a photo shoot with Mathieu today to have new material for the cover. I want a portrait to be the base on which the graphic designer would print an imaginary world. Now that nearly everyone goes for drawings for their CD artwork, I would like to approach it differently.

I haven’t stood in front of a camera for some time now. I was all stiffness and woodenness at the start. The same bloody no-expression expression I have. I didn’t know what else to do. Smile? No. Act? There was no scenario, no setting but the white background and a lamps beaming their warmth on my face. 

I felt like a one trick pony. The first two pictures were good but the following forty pictures were of this Asian man with hidden expressions - and how much make up did I apply to hide signs of tiredness and sleepless nights…

The result was satisfactory in spite of the inglorious start. Mathieu was not very convinced. It would help to have some props and different costumes so I can be ‘in character’. Change your heart, change your mind. It’s time to get out of my little world.

 

Photos by Mathieu Thoisy

Without word

Saw my parents today for the last time before my trip to Asia. Shortly before leaving, I asked my mother whether she had any idea of a Vietnamese poem for one of my songs. I had written this short piece for cello and piano that I entitled The life before my eyes during my recording sessions with Karen in Chicago.

I played it to Bévinda who she suggested I used a Vietnamese text to create a nice contrast between the music which sounds very European and the lyrics. Then the whole summer passed…

My mother went to her library and came down with a small book a poetry by Xuân Diêu, one of the most important poets of 20^th century Vietnam - he wrote around 450 poems… By my troth! When I think how laboriously I pen only one…

I immediately liked the one she chose: Tiên không loi, which, once translated could be understood as ‘a wordless sound‘. It’s so simple and most beautiful in its simplicity and goes with the music perfectly well. 

A family affair

My decision now? To resume my work on the second album I had been neglecting for too long now. I’m waking up to music again. It’s a good feeling. I look at myself in the mirror and the reflection shows a smiling face. 

My days of mourning my lost love are over. Self pity can go find another prey somewhere else. I’m back to light again!

All I have been doing the past weeks was to play host for these countless friends and relatives of mine on visit in Paris. I also wasted more time on Facebook, replying and writing messages. 

No mind to do anything else apart from going to the gym and do some occasional singing practice. It’s all my fault of course, I could have said no to them, or just met them for a short drink. If I have to be honest with myself, I know I was trying to project a good image of myselfas my self esteem is at its lowest.

Now all this is coming to an end. Thesaurus is now on my desk, along with a volume of the complete work by Emily Dickinson and some Pasolini’s poems. I have also printed out the texts Bibbe sent me a few months ago. Reading them always inspires me.

 

What to do when someone sends (bad) music in the hope (and self delusion) that their work might get promoted thanks to my (professional) help… ? 

This cousin of mine that I haven’t seen for decades suddenly resurfaced to ask me to help a friend of hers - probably her boyfriend, a pianist who wishes to find a place in as a film composer…

I was slightly annoyed when I read her letter. Ten years, if not more, and not a single 'how are you'. She went straight to the fact and told about her current life. 

Things may have been different if the music of her boyfriend's got me hooked. But it was only an endless clumsy piano ranting which didn't evoke anything to me but blandness and boredom.

I tossed it away. 

Family ties, friendship shouldn't be used in such a manner.

When my father was about to start composition for the score of Cyclo, I asked him whether he could ask the production whether I could come and watch the shooting on the film set. 

He managed to get me an appointment with one of the producers. At that time, I didn't know what direction to follow. I wanted to work in films, or so I thought, I was taking acting and dancing lessons. I had joined an agency which didn't find me anything but silly commercials. Being an Asian person in France didn't help in the art field. The Asian representation in cinema was non-existent. Daniel Wu had yet to found AliveNotDead!

The producer said he would try to find something for me, but added that I shouldn't expect to get things easily and be 'that little mouse on the film set' just thanks to my father. That came as a shock to me.

Everyone knows that it's al about connection in the business. Look at the music, theatre, film industry, it's always somebody's son, somebody's brother or relative... A big family affair. 

Those words upset me. And I swore to myself that I would never use my father's name again for anything, that whatever I would do, would come from me alone.

I eventually received a call from the film company for a position as assistant to the director for a project then entitled Droit de Cité which would later become La Haine. The director would be Mathieu Kassovitz, whom I had briefly met at a party to celebrate the success of Scent of Green Papaya. He was handing flyers for his new film Métisse to all the people present.

I was never to work on this film. The day I received the news, I also received a letter from the army commanding me to be ready to do my military service in Germany.

But that is another story.

Eastwood (the dog)

My brother introduced us to absolutely adorable fluffy thing of a puppy called Eastwood – I suggested Ed Wood would have been a funnier name.

The dog is won everybody’s affection. We never had a dog at home – or any pet. The only pets we had were two small turtles of the most boring kind when I was around seven – how could a turtle be of any interest to a child anyway… They were left by an uncle who left France for the United State. One turtle was eventually found dead while the other died because my father forgot to give water to it while we were on holiday. We found it completely dried up on its little rock. Even if I didn’t care much about the turtle, I felt sorry for it. It was no way to die!

So Eastwood is the new member of the Tôn Thât clan. For now he eats, sleeps and plays, and gnaws on everything he finds. I suppose he will be doing the same thing as an adult.

Speaking of Ed Wood, I have been doing some research about Tim Burton for the song cycle I want to write on some poems from The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy. Biographies, interviews…