Happy Memorial Day to everyone! Welcome to Schizopolis!
Well, it’s been a fun and eventful weekend for yours truly. First, on Friday, I took a northward-bound detour from my usual straight-back-to-Brooklyn route. Took the N/R up to Canal Street, decided to drop in on the VCD vendors on Bowery and Canal that ET told me about.
Inside you the time moves and she don’t fade
The ghost in you she don’t fade
If I break into song while writing this, it’s because I am simultaneously writing while listening to Counting Crowes do a cover of one of my favorite songs, The Psychedelic Furs’ “The Ghost in You.” My reasons for loving the tune have to do with Valentine’s Day 1997, a Chinese restaurant sitting under its own halo of light along the side of US1, and a porcelein-colored cashier girl with big, bright eyes. Ah, nostalgia…
But back to my other tale: So I went around the various stores, looking for cheap VCDs of various Hong Kong movies I always wanted to see. Unfortunately for me, I don’t speak a whole lot of good Chinese. I also can’t read a whole lot of good Chinese. Combine the two and you end up with me spending several evening hours rummaging through plastic-shelled discs one-by-one. But, at least I got out from the rain.
Found a DVD of Wong Kar-Wai’s first movie, As Tears Go By (1988.) I wasn’t ready to pay 11.99 for what has been consistently referred to as WKW’s “conventional film.” Asked an extremely annoyed and shrewish-looking clerk if they carried the film in VCD format. She walked over to another clerk, returned a few moments later and let me know that “No, they don’t carry it.”
Oh yeah, I eventually picked up on their system of classification. They bundle all VCDs/DVDs by the popular Hong Kong star of the films, not by title, alpha, or director. Figured this out when I saw a bunch of Chow Yun-Fat’s stuff—The Killer, Hard-Boiled, Prison on Fire, in the same bin.
Don’t you go it makes no sense
When all these talking supermen
Just take away the time and get in the way.
Walked out of the store, turned up to the big stone arch, looking lonely and old under the gray, cloudy sky. Saw no other stores. Turned back down the street, past the store I had just been in, found more stores in the other direction, as ET told me I would.
Wow, the VCD trade is popular in Chinatown! I was practically elbow-to-elbow with happy-go-lucky-looking teenie-boppers and unshaved college types.
A man in my shoes runs a light
All the papers lie tonight
But falling over you is the news of the day.
So I’m driving home from that little Chinese restaurant with the wood-slat roof, doesn’t fit in at all with the cubist storefronts around it. It’s past midnight now. I’ve walked Fiona to her car, said good-bye to her and her co-workers, who are leaving in separate cars. Fiona’s got my rose in a paper cup half-filled with water. I’m pretty sure I brought the rose over in that cup. Red rear brake-lights wink goodbye, then the car drifts off north down US1. I have to get back to my cozy little swampland university in Sweetwater, so I turn my van up to the intersection, then do a 180 turn heading south.
Eventually, everything goes south.
It’s late, so there are only a few other cars on the highway. I turn up the radio to the only Miami rock station, and I hear the Counting Crowes’ covering “The Ghost in You.” It must be so late the station manager won’t care that the DJ is wasting valuable airtime on a cover of an less-than-popular band by another less-popular band. My van hums down the stream of black asphalt gilded by rows of upside-down spoons pouring nourishing light into my soul. I am 18, a freshman in college, and in love for the first time. The driver’s side window is open, and I am aware, maybe for the first time, of how comforting the Miami air brushing across my face feels.
And love love love love
Is only heaven away
In the second Bowery Street store I enter, I am determined to find a copy of Wong Kar-Wai’s second flick, “Days of Being Wild. (1990) To fans of cinema, it is considered WKW's “Mean Streets,” a major artistic leap by the filmmaker, a hint at what he will accomplish in future features, a stylistic and visionary triumph. I want this movie. I need this movie. And, as I had been unable to find a video store where I could properly rent it, I am prepared to buy this movie. (To be fair, I saw a copy of it at Kim’s Underground, but they rent by the day, and with my rare and infrequent soujourns to Manhattan, I did not want to pay the seemingly exorbitant price to rent it an entire weekend. Kim’s is great for NYU students who check something out for a day. It is impractical for those, like me, who have to commute from other boroughs.)
There’s a copy of “Days…” on DVD, but no VCD copies in the bargain bins. But I am determined. I go to the back of the store, rummage in my necessary and meticulous way, previously mentioned, and ultimately, I find what I’m looking for behind a VCD of “The Chinese Feast” and in front of a disc of “The Storm Riders.” Unlike the other store, I don’t get the feeling that there is a particular system for the VCD’s here. For one thing, there are no little plastic-coated tags with Chinese letters. It’s just a random assortment. Secondly, while I don’t keep up with who’s hot in the Canto-pop scene of Hong Kong, I can tell if it’s the same actor in a group of disc-cover photos listed in a row. There is no versimilitude before me, not any I can tell.
But you can’t judge a movie by its cover. You’ve got to get behind the superficial appearance of a thing, get to know it better, before you can really know if it’s what you think it is.
For example, a young woman who you’ve just given a rose once told you she doesn’t have a boyfriend. You assume she told you the truth. Get to know her better first.
Canto-pop has been blaring from speakers in the store for quite a while, and I swear the hairs on the back of neck are standing on end. I pay for it, put the plastic shopping bag in my backpack, and I feel like going to the next store. The weather outside is still damp and unpleasant. But people are outside, and Chinatown is busy.
The race is on I’m on your side
But hearing you my engines die
I’m in the mood for you
Or running away.
I’ve got cash on me. Let’s find another thrill. I pop into the next store, go rummaging through bargain bins. My senior year in high school, I had this art teacher who recommended that we look through the bargain bins at bookstores and record stores whenever possible. Her advice was to buy something at random, something you’ve never heard of before. The goal was to have what she called an “authentic aesthetic experience.” Discover what you wouldn’t ordinarily have discovered, and who knows? You might attend a cocktail party someday and overhear a conversation about that very thing. Open new doors in your world. Or something. I went a Sam Goody at the Pembroke Pines mall, made a B-line to the bargain bins, found an album by a fey-looking band I never of. The Psychedelic Furs. The experience was okay.
The Hong Kong film industry is not a beast I want to experience regular “authentic aesthetic experiences” with. I’ve rented too many HK films based on box covers only, and believe me, there’s just too much crap to reckon with. I look for names I vaguely remember. “Full Alert.” Hey, that’s Ringo Lam. I buy it. Perhaps I was a more aesthetic guy once, but I’m not anymore.
The stars come down in you
And love love love
You can’t give it away.
I step around a lot of puddles, collected rain or worse. Back up Bowery to the train station. It all seems very exotic, this Chinatown, though it’s a short walk from NYU. It’s a totally different, incomprehensible language to me. I might as well be visiting a different country. I suppose I should be used to it now, as I’ve visited Chinatown so many times in the past. But I don’t think one ever gets used to it. And there’s no real resolution I can give to that evening, that little walk off the beaten path, because there’s no lesson I think I’ve learned. My backpack is a little heavier, but otherwise, I am no different than I was when I walked up the stairs of the Canal St. station a few hours ago. It should all seem really sad, I suppose, but that’s how life is. If I ever look back on this particular evening, I will remember the triumph of finding what I came for, but I will also remember the annoyed sales clerk and the awful weather. And I will look back on it at some point, I’m sure, because things stay with us. It cannot be helped.
