American Dream, Chinese Hero

a new chapter: jasonchu.net

2011-09-06T15:37:00.002-04:00

hi, friends;

this blog has been useful, but has long since been replaced by my facebook artist page and other forms of social media.

as i prepare to launch my new project, THE UNCOOL, in Beijing and online worldwide, I've set up a new site to post music, videos, photos, and musings: www.jasonchu.net.

as i continue to grow as a servant, a brother, a son, a musician, a writer, and a friend, i hope you will also continue walking with me...

love

-jason

THE TIGER SONS Tape - Online Now!

2011-07-09T11:23:00.003-04:00

MODEL MINORITY is proud to present THE TIGER SONS Tape, following up on their previous release, THE MODEL MINORITY REPORT.

On THE TIGER SONS, emcees D-One, Grand Master Chu, and Inglish continue to speak about the lives of young, modern, Asian-Americans with their signature wordplay. Humorous, self-deprecating, and thoughtful, they address a range of subjects from growing up in Asian-American households (Battle Hymn of the Tiger Sons), online romance (Twitter Girl), historical struggles against racism (Vincent Chin.), and drop bilingual party tracks like Xian Kan Kan Wo (a Mandarin cover of Chris Brown’s “Look At Me Now”) and Ooh It’s Just Genetic, Girl.

The lead single from THE TIGER SONS, Invisible People (Where’d You Go?), and its accompanying music video, are dedicated to those people whose voices and stories have been lost or ignored. With a music video shot in San Francisco, directed by Angela Yu, the song sees the three rappers speaking out against injustice in the classroom, courtroom, and media.

THE TIGER SONS Tape is available for free download & streaming at http://grandmaster.bandcamp.com/album/the-tiger-sons

The INVISIBLE PEOPLE music video is online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tqpEF9-_lw

Contact links:

Model Minority - http://www.facebook.com/themodelminority

D-One (@DavidBFung) - http://www.youtube.com/davidbfung

Grand Master Chu (@JasonGLChu) - http://www.facebook.com/grandmasterchu

Inglish (@AndrewJFung) - http://www.youtube.com/andrewjfung

Vincent Chin. - memorial song

2011-06-22T02:48:00.000-04:00

In March, Model Minority recorded "Vincent Chin." for our upcoming mixtape THE TIGER SONS, in the hopes of continuing to use music to educate our listeners and friends about the struggles and victories of Asians in America.

With Thursday being the 29th anniversary of his death, we decided to release "Vincent Chin." early, before the rest of the project, as a sign of respect for those who have come before us, and in the hopes that the tragedy that ended his life would never be forgotten.

The video clips that play during the song are selections from Christine Choy and Renee Tajima-Peña's 1987 documentary Who Killed Vincent Chin? and the instrumental is from Fort Minor's Kenji.

-Model Minority

Grand Master Chu
D-One
Inglish

Re: UCW leadership

2011-04-29T02:56:00.000-04:00

Me: I'm so sad
that I didn't get to see you two in action together

Moh lei: no worries it wasn't that great

Me: HAHAHA

NEW STICKERS from the homey JP!!!

2011-04-21T12:58:00.005-04:00

Most people don't really know this, but my dad was born in Thailand... 100% Chinese though, ethnically, not to mention his father was a Chinese journalist who moved to Thailand RIGHT before the Cultural Revolution (thank God) + his stepfather was 100% Chinese... but anyways I had never been to Thailand before a short trip earlier this year...

Why do I say this?

My homeboy JP, aka the creator of the art for our Japanese Tsunami benefit song remix, has been in Thailand for work for a minute, and I just got this DOPE package today with a Thai return address!!!!

Inside: New stickers from their DOPE skateboarding company!!

Thanks, big dog! See u next time u come thru BJ! Say what up to Paul 4 me!

BONUS: You're Not Alone (Japan Tsunami relief song) REMIX ft. a lot of rappers & singers

One of the (Many) Reasons I Like Her

2011-04-19T13:01:00.003-04:00

Jessii: in my life i never got those
Jessii: 5 & 23
Jason: i like 5's
Jason: anything over 11 or 12 isn't interesting 2 me though... my favorites are III-V, VII, VIII and XI
Jessii: 23 is okay but my friend wear em and they want me to match
Jessii: most of the time i wear 4 & 5s
Jason: yea! I have some 4's i bought here, they're OK but a little big

any gf that will talk J's with me is someone to hold on to haaaa

NEW MIXTAPE release - FREE DOWNLOAD & STREAMING

2011-04-16T04:51:00.003-04:00

Grand Master Chu: The Yung Monk Mixtape.

19 songs + 3 bonus tracks, featuring tracks recorded recently in Beijing, China, and over a four-year period from 2006-2010 in New Haven, Connecticut and Newark, Delaware.

If you enjoy, please share with your friends on facebook, retweet, etc.

Two videos from the project are available on Youtube: the Bustout/60 video (filmed by D-One) and Bring Me Down. Full press release + other videos on the way...

Bustout/60

Bring Me Down

VISVIM x KAWS!!!!

2011-04-04T01:20:00.002-04:00

I was out on a late morning run today - a couple blocks from my house, before lunch, a whole gang of 老百姓 (older Chinese working-class folk) congregate on about a block and a half of street corner for a street market, selling old books, watches, magazines, used shoes, etc. etc.

Well usually it is nothing that I would even pay attention to! But today when I was running by a pair of shoes caught my eyes and I stopped dead in my tracks!!

These joints are super limited... super exclusive... who knows why they turned up secondhand on a street corner in Beijing! But the stitching + details look legit, plus the price was right! I didn't have any money on me but the 老头儿 (old head) who had em on the back of his wheelbarrow held them for me while i ran home, showered, and biked back for em.

Copped for 5 RMB = ~70 cents!!

If you know, you know!!! Feel free to hate!

things my gf says IX

2011-03-28T12:15:00.001-04:00

Jessii: everyone said sing an american version [of a Korean song]
Me: yea and u said?
Jessii: later
Jessii: when im free and not lazy
Me: HAHAHAHAHAHA
Me: i love you

#ModelMinority in the LA Times

2011-03-22T19:11:00.002-04:00

You're Not Alone (Japan Tsunami 2011 benefit song)

2011-03-13T14:55:00.002-04:00

We watched in horror as the news flooded in - texts, chat messages, TV reports - of the tragedy that struck our Japanese brothers & sisters on Friday.

As Asian-Americans, we couldn't help but see the parallels with the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan.

George Takei said on twitter - "Today, we are all Japanese".

It's easy to look at the news and have our emotions stirred, but not actually contribute in a productive fashion. Model Minority wants to use our music to encourage our friends, fans, and family to respond graciously and generously.

A remix featuring other artists (both Asian-American and non) is coming soon. If you are interested in contributing to the remix (singing, rapping, adding instrumentation, or providing a new beat), email thegrandmasterchu@gmail.com.

http://www.redcross.org/
https://www.mercycorps.org/donate/japan
http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/japan-earthquake-tsunami-relief/

Singing my frustrations... singing my prayers...

2011-02-26T13:32:00.003-05:00

Peace everyone;

For those of you who do not know... the last week has been really crazy up in here... pollution that was literally beyond hazardous (For 2/5 of the week it just read "Beyond Index"), pollution-induced illness, two-year-old bill payments being demanded, shady landlords, upcoming evictions, unpaying debtors...

I was riding the subway tonight and my emotions on the situation just started writing themselves into a verse...

The Devil tryin' to lie to me - friends try to get high with me
People asking favors then turning a blind eye to me...

So I came home tonight and recorded then mixed this song about the emotions I've been feeling over the last week. I wanted to be honest and put myself out there in front of man - but more importantly, in front of God. You could say that Peace of Mind is a prayer of sorts... when I was feeling frustrated and absolutely knew that I would only get thru this with strength beyond what I myself could provide.

Peace of Mind is streaming on my Youtube channel right now.

-jglc a/k/a Grand Master Chu

things my gf says VIII

2011-02-21T23:22:00.000-05:00

Jessii: i see u ..u see me... we are cool like spaghetti sauce

things my gf says VII

2011-02-08T01:59:00.000-05:00

Me: two thumbs up

Jessii: d(^_^)
Jessii: d(^_^)b

things my gf says VI

2011-02-05T00:25:00.000-05:00

Jessii: honey when we were chatting do u give me attention?

Me: always

Jessii: hmmm

Me: 'course right now i'm watchin TV too
Me: but you always got my attention

Jessii: oh i ask b/c i dont give u attention
Jessii: oop =X

Me: LOL

Why do music?

2011-02-04T12:45:00.005-05:00

This piece is merely a short summing-up of some musings I've been having over the past few months, as I've seen my investment - of time, finances, and identity - in music steadily increase. If you're involved in art too, please comment after you read and let me know what motivates you to do your art?

As far as I can tell, the common reasons people commit to a lifestyle in which music - or art of any kind, though music is the field about which I've been thinking the most, as it's also the most personally relevant - takes a high priority, comprise a short list:

1) money - $$$
2) sex - self-explanatory
3) fame - being easily or widely recognized or liked
4) power - becoming credible or well-known enough to be listened to (think Arnold Schwarzenegger - for him, art (acting... of a particular sort) => fame => power)
5) God - for reasons of religious calling or spiritual satisfaction
6) personal artistic satisfaction - you really love your art; you enjoying singing, or acting, etc.
7) being cool - similar to fame, but with more of an edge: being a figure to which others aspire or desire to be like in full or in part.

An 8th category could be "success" - but I'm guessing, when questioned as to the meaning of success, most would answer in some combination of the above 7 categories.

Of course a lot of these could reduce to one another - money leads to power, God leads to personal satisfaction, fame leads to money, being cool leads to sex, and so on. But they are still distinct.

Why think about these categories?

I've been thinking about these categories of motivation as I've been stepping up my own musical output, profile, and aspirations because the question of target is now coming into view: I've started talking to a few small labels, begun thinking about who I want to make music for, why I make music, where I want it to take me - and where I want to take it.

None of these questions can be answered without first knowing, or at least having some sort of handle, on the issue of goals: do I want to reach 5 people, 500, 10 thousand, 50 million? What do I do when I'm reaching them?

When artists catapult to fame without answering these questions, they have public meltdowns, imploding under their own weight: you get a Marilyn Monroe, a Kurt Cobain, a Lindsay Lohan. And so the Korean pop world has a well-covered-up but increasingly alarming pattern of celebrity suicides. People who rise to fame, all the while viewing fame as the ultimate goal, are consumed and spit out by the churning media machines.

But when those who rise to prominence have these questions of goal and drive answered from the start, you get artists like 50 Cent, Jay-Z, Beyonce, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and whom it seems like Lady Gaga is becoming: men and women who understood the place for fame and artistic success in a larger picture of personal well-being. They are the ones who managed to use the pop culture/media machine while not succumbing to its ravishes - they may have been used in the process, but it was at least an exchange of sorts, instead of an enslavement.

So, for me, the initial question is: will you pursue music?

It seems that I have answered this question: yes.

The next question: why? And what will you do if - when? - that music becomes something - you become someone - people care about?

Well, let's see:

My self-assessment

1) money - this category is alluring, but ultimately, not a motivating reason. Whether it would be right for me to have significant amounts of money or not is another question: long ago, when I first began making music, I told myself that I would never have music be my primary income stream: I recognized then, as I still do, I think, that relying on the money I make from music is a very quick way to stop enjoying my music. It would be, at least, for me. I think. Whether this is true or not may be up for question in the future: at the moment, however, money is distinctly not the primary motivation for my musical aspirations.

2) sex - nah.

3) fame - This is definitely a highly tempting aspect of musical success, more so than (1) but less than (7). To be well known is intensely appealing to me, for the same reasons, I suspect, that it is to many of people in my generation: popular media has told me, as long as I have been alive, that people who are widely known matter. And hence, I now believe, if I am widely known, I will matter! More well-known, more influential.
As I think about it, I do believe that fame is one of the reasons that I would pursue music. As my rap partner/strategic consultant D-One has often told me: if no one's listening to it, why are you recording it?
There are other motivating reasons - 5-7 being chief for me - for me to pursue music, but I will say this: I hope that my music can become famous among the right circles! They may not be large, and they may not be circles that are well-known, but I do hope that my music will have impact on the right people (finding who the right people are is a topic I want to reserve for a future post - suffice it to say that they don't always look like the people you would have chosen, but they are the people you need to grow to love!). And to do so, it must speak with authority (which I'll touch on next) into at least some group larger than myself.

4) cachet/authority/power - this is part of my hope for music. As I believe my life testifies to, there are deep truths and realities that I believe are important to talk about, bear witness to, experience, and share in community with others - the flip side of this is that there is an intimate privilege in being someone with whom people are willing to open themselves and show vulnerability. In music, especially if you're doing the kind of music that manages to resonate with people on an emotional level, you are given the immense honor of both speaking into people's lives as well as being someone with whom people want to share. This is important to me.

5) God - Is God directing me to do music? I think so. I find personal joy in it (more in 6, below), I find it natural, I believe the music I do is not only in line with my faith, but supplementary to it, and I believe that my music is fundamentally about Truth - which, coincidentally, is another name for God in my understanding. So, yes, 5 is a motivation for my music: To remain a venue for spiritual growth and expression of spiritual truths.

6) personal artistic satisfaction - This is also a high priority for my music. I want to make good music. However, I've realized that I am also fairly satisfied with making a plethora of styles of good music, from love songs to old-school lyrical hip-hop, to contemplative new-school joints, and in between. If I could make a VERY WELL produced Far East Movement/Black Eyed Peas kind of party/club joint, I would be happy with that as well! So, personal satisfaction is a high priority. But I'm also easily satisfied.

7) being cool - I do think that being cool is, well, cool. However, as I consider this category, I also realize that I'm more interested in (4) than in (7): if people will permit me to speak into their lives with some degree of trust, I don't care very much whether it's because I'm considered cool, or if it's because of some other reason. So, I would put down (7), but only as a means to (4), thereby indicating that (7) is not truly a motivation for music, but rather a step to the true motivation, which is (4).

So, it seems as though my answers are: I am pursuing music primarily for reasons of (A) fame (within certain accepted limitations), (B) cachet, (C) personal artistic satisfaction, and (D) I find in it a puzzle piece toward my spiritual calling.

The next question is: what if I could obtain (A), but at the cost of sacrificing (B) and (C)? What if I could obtain only 2 of the 3?

If you're a musician or any manner of artist - which of these categories motivates you? Why? What are your thoughts on this entire topic/issue?

things my gf says V

2011-02-04T04:47:00.002-05:00

Me: <3
Jessii: ur so gay

In her defense, I interrupted a conversation she was having. With a gay friend.

things my gf says IV

2011-01-28T03:24:00.001-05:00

jasonhschu: awww
jasonhschu: you want to be here with me, huh?

jessiixbabiixd: mmm no i want attention

Things my gf says III

2011-01-27T04:03:00.002-05:00

me: you know u oughta record instrumentals first

and then 2nd comes the vocal track

Jessii: i play the piano so i know already

i got thisss

she got this!

NEW MIXTAPE release - FREE DOWNLOAD & STREAMING

2011-01-24T09:57:00.002-05:00

Over the past few months, I've been documenting via this blog, as well as my Facebook artist page, how my ex-roommate (now living in Taiwan) MC D-One and I have been putting together an Asian-American rap crew along with his brother.

This past weekend, we were proud to release Model Minority's first mixtape, The Model Minority Report.

I'm proud of the songs we made, and feel that it embodies the voice of our generation of young modern Asian-Americans, filtered through a hip-hop lens.

The lead single for the project, A.F.R. (Asian Food Rap), has a music video on youtube:

Our hope is that Model Minority will be MORE than just three rappers, but a lifestyle movement among Asian-Americans... something we can represent with pride and feel ownership of. A voice to speak out about who we are, where we come from, and the shared experiences that make us Asian-American. If the music resonates with you at all, if you feel like it speaks about your life, you ARE part of the Model Minority Movement.

Model Minority is a rap group made up of D-One, Grand Master Chu, and Inglish, three veteran Asian-American emcees who banded together to create a group to represent the lifestyles of young modern Asian-Americans of the 80's, 90's, and 00's. Covering topics like academic pressure from parents and self (Overachiever) to Asian food (Asian Food Rap) to romance (What's Your Name), audiences are sure to find something they can relate to.

The first rap group formed specifically to tackle the issues of growing up Asian-American, each rapper brings unique experiences to the table: Grand Master Chu has a degree in Philosophy from Yale, D-One started his own clothing brand in college, and Inglish has a budding stand-up comedy career.

Following in the footsteps of pioneers like The Mountain Brothers, Jin Tha MC, and Far East Movement, the trio also draws from artists like Eminem, Mos Def, and Jadakiss. With their entertaining brand of hip-hop lyricism, they have drawn comparisons to the "Wong Fu Productions of rap".

Last sneak peek...

2011-01-20T15:21:00.003-05:00

Coming in 24 hours. Art direction courtesy of Chameleon Designs.

Coming very soon.

2011-01-18T06:22:00.002-05:00

1.22.2011......

;)

2011-01-08T15:25:00.001-05:00

coming in 2 weeks...

things my gf says II

2011-01-08T03:15:00.001-05:00

Jessii: yo we been sweet and fresh till now let's keep moving forward together u dig

things my gf says

2011-01-08T01:03:00.003-05:00

Jessii: my niece said i should have a beautiful daughter she could play with

me: hmmm

Jessii: i give her a cookie

Airplanes Remix (live Christmas Night footage)

2011-01-04T04:13:00.002-05:00

Hey everyone!!

Some of my crew and I had a DOPE Christmas Night show at Section 6, Beijing's legendary hip-hop party, and I just got around to getting the footage up on youtube...

The song below is my remix of Airplanes Pt. 2, by B.o.B. featuring Eminem and Hayley from Paramore. I got my friend, Korean singer DK Choi, to sing the chorus, and we reworked the lyrics + chorus, which are copied underneath..

We performed this song on our Christmas Night show, the other three songs are also available on my youtube channel if anyone is interested:

1) Asian Streets (Hard in Da Paint remix)
2) 黑色黄色 ft. MC D-One (Black + Yellow remix)
3) Faster ft. MC D-One

As always, if you enjoyed it, please follow my Facebook and youtube accounts! MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

LYRICS:

Chorus:
I've been flying on an airplane through the night sky
Like a shooting star
I just wish I was home right now,
home right now, home right now
x2

Breakdown:

I'm dreaming... dreaming
I'm falling... falling
x2

Verse 1:
How can I catch the ears of America?
Play a stereotype, or a character?
Maybe if I was more what you want
I would have a better chance of standing up in the front
But could I stand that? Well, can I stand this?
Ten years rapping, with no impact
At least I got mentioned on some blogs
Wish that I could tell the whole world to pause
Life's real, my homey's kid had a fever
He was screaming, MY BABY, like Justin Bieber
At the hospital all day, at the end, there was nothing left to say,
Baby passed away.
So I fly on an airplane, and I land somewhere out in LA
Standing in the runway, playing MJ
Watch the sun fall as it fades at the end of the day.

Breakdown

Verse 2:
Seeing three time zones in a single week,
Not even sure what language I oughta speak
And I'm not just talkin reckless
Yellin "Fire!" in a house with no fire exit
Check the seats for attendance
And pay attention to the flight attendants
Watch the windows as we take off,
then watch the clouds wash over the wings as we take off...
Caught between two different homes
I find rest as I silence my cell phone
Wake up like, did I ever even sleep?
Or was the whole long trip just another dream?
Out the window, I'm staring at night lights
As the in-flight movie plays on
Through the long night, am I on the wrong flight?
Should my life have gone left, or did I choose right?

Chorus

NEW Grand Master - my version of Lil Wayne's new single

2010-12-15T16:05:00.003-05:00

... for the last week, all the hip-hop blogs were saying that Lil Wayne and Cory Gunz (his artist... a REAL New York head spittin flames) were going to drop a monster single soon for his upcoming Carter IV LP, and it just came out yesterday... the beat is pretty fresh, so you know I just had to do my own take over it...

The song is also streaming at my facebook page. If you actually do enjoy it, you can download the MP3 here.

If you have any comments or feedback, let me know what you think in the comments!

-jglc

Verse 1:
Askin for the beat up like I'm rappin with a glass jaw
And I could turn the heat up even when I turn the gas off
If the flow is bad you know it comes from an imposter
I could try to act but I would never win an Oscar
Step up in the studio like settin up a battlezone
Indiana Jones, leave my whip up in the catacombs
You got Game, Boy, but you never will Advance while
I might catch a loss but I'll face down any man who stands...

(sample: 6 foot, 7 foot, 8 foot, 9 foot)

uh
uh

Verse 2:
Do it for the 16-year-old kid that I was back then
For global fans that speak with non-Americanized accents
Do it for the clubs - I'm just kidding, if you ever hear
my song up in a club, call me up and let a brother hear
I be chillin' late night in the apart-a-ment
Wishin that I had two houses like the Parliament
You'd get the joke if you knew the British government
These four bars explain why I'll never make a hit
I might never catch the ears of Clive Davis
But I'd be happy to just own a lightsaber
Fillin' reams of blank pages
With verses to last through the Ice Ages
I don't mean global warming
but them three cartoon movies that was just a little corny
Give a shout out to my shorty Jessii chillin up in Sac
While some dude up on the chorus sayin somethin in the back he go

(sample: "6 foot, 7 foot, 8 foot, 9 foot")

Verse 3:
Battleaxe assassin slashin syllables for fun
Failed to pass gym cuz my uzi weighs a ton
I mean I Chuck D's at the open mic for fun
But the Flavor is exquisite when I'm goin' for my ones
Half the cats hear but they do not really listen
so I been workin on flows get their ears to pay attention
Get they souls to spark a vision set the cancer in remission
The doctors workin overtime to make the first incision
I mean that I'm iller, but those bars was just a filler
While I'm plannin out a Friday set with homeboy from Manila
What up Abz? I be chillin' drinkin' milk with some vanilla
In my studio listening to the 5th track on Thriller
And I'm spillin' out the vowels like AEIOU
While my consonants are competent in combat wit your crew
Yall just messin with some snacks, I'm bringin em brain food
So I'm up in the lab while you're cleanin aisle two

The O

2010-12-03T11:26:00.001-05:00

"The Office, Season 7, Episode 10 – “China”
After reading an article about China growing as a global power, Michael decides China must be stopped before they take over the US. Everyone in the office complains about Dwight’s building standards and Pam threatens to move Dunder Mifflin to a new building."

I haven't watched it yet (queueing it up to stream right now, though...), but I'm already half-concerned, and half-hopeful, about the content of this week's Office episode about China.... [continued on my ethnic studies blog]

1st track from the NEW STUDIO!! Lyrics + MP3 download

2010-11-24T02:20:00.006-05:00

Last time I chronicled my journey around Beijing to find and purchase a dope mic and preamp...

well Monday afternoon after I finished everything else I had to do, I copped a mic stand and went IN!!!! Lyrics, samples, everything all done in one day and it turned out DOPE

co-starring Philip Lee and Sam Weatherford on the vocal samples...

and much respect to Just Blaze for the beat and Jay Electronica for SLAYING the original song...

download the MP3 at http://thesixtyone.com/grandmaster/

Tell Em

[Vocal Sample Intro]

I'm splitting atoms by spittin at em with written language
got the scriptures so vision vivid from different angles
catch the minds of imprisoned prisoners
movin roman senators even Trojan men at war
couldn't fathom the epic message that we bring to you
from the streets of new York to the sands of Malibu
got the gift of prophecy so my talent is the truth
it's biblical reality I'm spittin in the booth
and its nonfiction so I ain't fixed on fictions
no tales of cocaine or life in prison
...that ain't a diss to nobody's art
I just had a choice to make and i went smart
got knowledge in my head and my heart
and my hands and my feet on the path thru the dark
got my brothers all around me they sharp with the darts
we speak like lightning, thunder, sparks

(Tell em who you be) Grand Master in the house
Came in the game, ain't nobody throw me out
(Tell em where you go) I'm on the path
Did the math, it's my time now

[Phil sample]

No Sean John, no Sean Paul
when it comes to raps, I'm more John Paul
with the bars I'm apostle Paul
Gospel scrawled on high school walls
when hell freezes like bboy stance
I saw the Christ come down and give mad daps,
razing hell of the hellraisers
i'm like 8 mile meets wildstyle meets Brooke Fraser
[haha] now I'm wildin a bit
At the home studio got the mic in my crib
got the ESV on my hip plus the two-tone
black and white paint colors on the whip.
car twenty years old, it can almost drink,
ever since I seen the light I done start to think
...flashes comin faster now
My passion written in the sweat of my brow...

[Sam sample]
[Chorus]
[Phil sample - outro]

Studio shopping in Beijing.

2010-11-21T08:07:00.006-05:00

After my trip thru the states I hit Beijing hyped up to take grand master to the next level. But determination must inevitably face trials if it is to be refined... that's why we say, Hiphop and you don't stop! So it came as no surprise that my perseverance was tested soon after I returned to the Beijing hood...

Last Sunday afternoon, three days after I returned to China, my producer hit me with a text letting me know that he had a new job and needed the mic setup I'd been borrowing from him (BIG thanks bent!!)... So my home studio was disappearing :/

This setback could have slowed the movement down... But no, we kept it hopping! Monday night I chopped it up with my Model Minority brother D-One a/k/a David Fung and benefited from his research and thought, then spent a couple of hours on Google hitting up the audiophile and recording gear message boards! A lot of good options came out of the woodwork, but in the end I know that I wanted something (a) reliable (b) within my budget and (c) that I could find and get set up ASAP to continue making that good music (no kanye west [but sometimes i wish i were])!

After doin the groundwork online, I hollered at my church buddy JOSH ONG who majored in music and runs the music teams for one of the church locations in town, I knew that he would have the hookup! And he did, he had a place that he usually goes to cop gear... right near the church location, actually. And even going above and beyond, the man offered to come hang out with me Sunday afternoon and walk around to see what might be available.

When I linked with Josh at the Zhongguancun subway station, I knew exactly what I was looking for... throughout the week, I went back and forth on what I wanted to cop and how much loot I wanted to drop on it - my thoughts ranged from a super basic entry-level setup for around $100 total, to a super advanced setup that would run me around $600 (in the US where electronics are cheaper... even though they're all made in China anyways, smh).

I finally settled on a top-quality vocal mic, the Rode NT1A ($230 MSRP, only one level down from the $800 Rode NT2A adjustable mics I bought for my college studio at Yale) and a slightly cheaper preamp/audio control interface, the M-audio Mobilepre ($150 MSRP for an OK preamp but most importantly, an audio => USB interface).

Of course, knowing what I wanted and finding it could be two COMPLETELY different things. After all, in China, brand names are not only often misrepresented, but viewed as even interchangeable. Not to mention, the quality of equipment that I was looking for - in terms of reliability and brand recognition - was a cut above what you usually find in China, super local brands like ISK and Takstar. Not bad, but not something I would be wanting to use 10 years from now.... whereas, decades from now the Rode could still pull its weight.

Right around the ZGC subway station lie several large electronics markets... I'm talking multiple buildings, multiple floors, all crammed with tiny booths and slightly larger but equally transient retail layouts, 20 service workers all trying to pull you towards their shops as soon as you set foot on the floor, etc. You might have one modestly sized store selling Sennheiser headphones (super high quality, my favorite brand) right next to a tiny booth jam-packed with low-quality karaoke equipment and unbranded webcams, mouse pads, USB gadgets etc. I really wasn't looking to roll dolo through this environment so I was really happy Josh came through with me...

Anyways we linked up and walked in and asked one of the first market workers we saw where we could buy a 麦克风 (microphone), and she said 3rd floor so we walked up to the 3rd floor and saw nothing... i'm talking super simple joints, even the few microphones were the local ISK brand junk (OK for a podcast, something like that, but nothing even touching pro quality!) but that was just in the front of the floor. The more pro-level shops are in the back: with no impulse buys in stock, they don't need all that foot traffic and they can have a quieter and more professional atmosphere for buyers looking to drop more than a couple hundred RMB (~20 bucks) on simple gadgets.

Walking back, Josh and I were approached by another persistent worker, trying to draw us into his store... well we weren't going to have it but I just said "you guys got microphones?" to the worker and he said yeah, plus the store looked on the up-and-up and large enough to have good 关系 (connections) with suppliers large enough to stock good brand names. So we went in and he had me write out exactly the model numbers of what I was looking for, then went running around to various stockrooms pulling out exactly what I wanted.

Eventually they had everything I wanted out there... the Rode NT1A package with pop filter and shock mount, plus the Mobilepre preamp/Audio interface package. Haha, the salesman even asked me BOTH TIMES about the price like "are you sure you want this one? 这种有点儿贵" (This kind's a little expensive). But I told him I knew what I needed, and I was willing to pay for the quality.

But remember I said that things usually cost more in China?? Because of taxes and general shadiness on the part of foreign brands, etc. So they were asking 1850 RMB ($278) for a $230 mic package and 1380 RMB ($208) for a $100-150 preamp... ummm not cool. But with the equipment lying right in front of me, in good condition, I felt like making my move. After all, time was burning and the sooner I got my new studio setup done the better, right?? So I put my 8 semesters of Mandarin into play and bargained/cajoled the worker into hitting me with both for 3000 RMB total = 450 USD. NOT CHEAP but not expensive either, especially given how shipping the two from the US would have cost > $80 plus potentially taken weeks! AND having to go collect the package at some post office, plus the possibility of its breaking en route.

And you know the way I knew it was a decent price, the salesman wasn't happy with me after we sealed the deal! When we walked in talking about buying a high-level mic they were all getting us seats and bringing us hot water... but you know, if the staff is smiling at you and acting happy once you put the cash on the table, you did NOT hold up your end of the bargaining in this town!

We wrapped up the interface and mic in plastic bags, and i transported them back on the subway... soon you'll get a chance to hear how that new home studio sounds! By my estimates I'm thinking 10-20x the vocal audio quality.....

PEACE y'all!

BONUS FOOTAGE: I hung out with China's #1 hiphop DJ, 3x national DMC champion DJ Wordy this last week... kickin it in the studio, building on the musical level, and killing Nazi zombies in CoD! I got some footage of Wordy mashing-up, mixing, and scratching for me!

New video on the way!

2010-11-16T00:22:00.000-05:00

Thanks to my 妹妹 Kiki we have a shot of D-One and me during our recent MV shoot this past weekend in 五道口... this one goes out to every 留学生 who has passed thru BLCU, PKU, Tsinghua, or anywhere in Haidian!

Please believe me when I say that this video + single is going to be MAJOR and I hope that a lot of people enjoy seeing some familiar sights! We were out all afternoon in pretty much 0 degree Celsius weather but it was worth it!

New Video: talking with Dallas

2010-11-14T23:45:00.004-05:00

During my recent trip to NYC I had the privilege of linking up with the big homey DALLAS PENN of dallaspenn.com, XXLmag.com, and iNternetscelebrities.com fame. We've built in the past for various sneaker- and blog-related activities, not to mention exchanging kicks and the like, so when I was in town for about 20 hours last Tuesday, I knew I had to connect to the homey if at all possible!

We broke bread on 8th and Broadway at the famous Cozy Soup n' Burger, where we even got to spend some time talkin g with COZY'S SON, born and raised in the spot! With me moving forward in my rap career, I needed input and feedback and Dallas was quick to oblige. And you know we had to hit off the internets to say what up...

FREE mp3 download! D-One & Grand Master - 黑色黄色 (Black & Yellow)

2010-11-11T14:13:00.006-05:00

I arrived at Beijing's Capital International Airport at 4:30 this evening... grabbed my bag and took the airport rail line back home... hit church to link up with my Embassy fam, then went home...

And what did I do there???

Forget going to sleep, D-One was jumping on a track so you know we HAD TO GO IN!

Check it out... Black & yellow... for our people worldwide:

and download the MP3 at http://grandmaster.bandcamp.com/

Big ups to my KASY fam!

2010-11-09T02:36:00.002-05:00

Most of you probably know, I was living in New Haven for 6 years total... 4 as an undergrad at Yale and then 2 years on-campus working as staff for the same student congregation (UCW) that I attended during my undergrad years. During those 6 years, because of mad friendships and also my awesome UCW friends, I got super linked into the Yale Korean community especially the KASY (Korean-American Students at Yale) crowd... I'm talking about showing up to KASY events and knowing 80% of the people there, running into people randomly on W 34th in NYC, shopping in Soho, etc. etc.

One of the dope events that KASY puts on every year for the community is "Adopted Friends," they invite any local families that have adopted Korean children to come and have their kids (ALL their kids, not just the adopted children) come and learn about their home culture. Food, clothes, taekwondo, all that kind of thing. I remember MAD families used to come through - I even saw my advisor (i knew him all 4 years, philosophy professor, director of undergraduate studies, etc.) and his wife and two kids there one or two years in a row!

Well Asian media, especially Korean media, loves Yale! So this year my homegirl SARAH PARK was KASY social chair and so she put together Adopted Friends... and it was a huge success!! So big that they covered it in KOREA DAILY, based in Long Island... way to go Sparky!!

I see you! Miriam, Paul, EK, Eliot, Mindy, Esther, James, etc.! Hahahaha.

Quote

2010-11-08T22:52:00.001-05:00

I'm checking Facebook - like a boss.

-Lauren Morgan

On the Road 2: at Home

2010-11-08T12:51:00.004-05:00

Just woke up at my parents' house in Delaware... after a whirlwind trip through the northeast, hitting New York, New Haven, and a wedding in Pennsylvania (congratulations to Justin and Kelly!!).

It's been good to be on the road, getting some space from Beijing and the day-to-day rush there. I've been constantly busy while traveling; but in a different way than I am while I'm grinding in Beijing... I haven't really been able to rest, but I've been getting a chance to refocus and recharge. In a lot of ways, the places I've been visiting are the places where I got my passion to do what I do: writing, thinking, rapping, recording, and serving others.

All of these passions involved going out, moving forward, going to new places and sharing my life with new people. But in order to move forward, you have to know where you are.

They say you can't go home again, and it's definitely true. New Haven, as much as I feel confident and comfortable there, isn't home anymore; and neither is my parents' house, which I haven't really lived in since I was 18. But you can go back to places that once were home, and remember why and how you were sent out from them. Maybe that's just as good.

NEW video on Youtube - Bustout (Intro) + 60

2010-11-06T02:02:00.003-04:00

Yo internets fam!!

Another week and we still keep it rolling onwards!

Another video shot and edited in BEIJING by D-One! Two tracks off my upcoming mixtape re-release, Grand Master Vol. 1: American Dream, Chinese Hero (美国梦想，中国英雄). Watch it and you'll see: even when we're eating (饺子), we're still spitting like we're hungry!

Connect with my facebook artist page for the latest updates on music, videos, and shows.

More videos and mixtapes dropping throughout December and January!

Spitting on East Rock!

2010-11-01T12:41:00.002-04:00

Yesterday when I was hanging out in New Haven with my old roommate Ray, we decided to hit up East Rock for the sunset overlooking the city. Thinking back on my years here I thought I'd spit my first verse EVER recorded for yall! Peace!

NEW Music Video!! Model Minority - Faster

2010-11-01T02:51:00.004-04:00

Peace everyone!

First off, thanks to everyone who's always supported my music... even when I was super wack and just figuring out this emceeing thing!

And thanks also to the new fans. I won't ever call anyone out on sleeping on me, I'm happy that more people are in on the movement!

This is the first cut off D-One and my duo mixtape: Model Minority presents... The Model Minority Report.

I'd appreciate it if you Like my facebook artist page
and I've been twittering more and more, so hit that too.

More to come! Much more!

On the road 1 (New York City)

2010-10-30T03:19:00.004-04:00

New York City.

I love this town - after around 23 hours of travel i got to my reserved hotel room (gratis, courtesy of Steve Yu) at The W on 17th st. about an hour ago, and just took a little walk around Union Square.

Not gonna lie, I'm finding myself almost intimidated by the vibe here... I always give major props to the City, but 4+ months in Beijing have left me softer than i was when i left the States.

There's millions of people here, all going hard every day - and to be honest, whatever you're trying to do - especially hiphop - will have hundreds, thousands, and even tens of thousands of other dreamers in this city. Many of whom, if not most, will have more talent, resources, luck, or marketability than you. If I'm being honest, I don't think I could make it in New York.

Not yet.

You see, this revelation isn't discouraging - in fact, it's encouraging me as I think about it. I'm truly blessed to have the situation I do: to do the music I do in the place I am, with the people I know. So what if, right now, I couldn't rise to the top in New York. This isn't my city - for now, that's Beijing. And that's where the movement is going to start. Has started.

Bonus flick:

All that, and my brother Lucas got a sweet arm piece done. Respect!

Cookin' up

2010-10-13T23:11:00.001-04:00

somethin fresh up in the studio... aka my house... Lorentz, Jr. on the beat!!

Coming to America (no Eddie Murphy)

2010-08-24T02:42:00.003-04:00

Well, I just booked my tickets - due to a happy confluence of even happier events, I will be returning to the States earlier than expected (albeit for only about a week):

Tuesday, Nov. 2 - fly from Beijing => San Francisco => New York-JFK. Take the MTA transit line to New haven.
Nov. 3-6 - hang out at Yale
Nov. 7 - Justin's wedding in Allentown, PA.
Nov. 8 - Delaware, visiting my parents.
Nov. 9 - New York City - one more day in New Haven?
Nov. 10 - 7 AM flight out of JFK => San Francisco => Beijing.
Nov. 11 - 4 PM, arrive in Beijing.

Let's hang, people!

voices

2010-08-16T15:18:00.004-04:00

In my travels - particularly the legs of my journeys that have taken me through New Haven, New York, and Beijing - I've met men and women who feel, material possessions stripped away, as though the only thing they have left is their story.

I've also met many people, regardless of economic status, who feel that their stories are unimportant and unheeded. Some of these people remember their stories, but think that they're only useful as a means to an end. Hoping to monetize their background, they leverage their characteristics and very selves into concrete value. They don't think who they are matters so much as what they can accomplish.

How many people have been told, over and over again, that their stories don't matter?

How can these men and women find a voice - and how can we tell them that there is Someone out there to whom their lives matter, on an intimate level?

hours in a day

2010-08-09T04:32:00.005-04:00

Beginning Friday, August 6:

9:30 AM - Woke up. Dressed.
10 AM - Brunch in Dongzhimen with my buddy Israel.
12 PM - lunch at Xizhimen (across town) with my buddy Billy.
2 PM - Head to Dongsi. Hang with Chacey and her roommate in Dongsi, at the underground shopping market. Go to Bustout store, help the girls shop. Hang with Slim Paul.
6:30 PM - back at home. Kelley and Sylvia are waiting! Sorry, girls.
7 PM - go out to eat. 24 hour Xinjiang restaurant. Israel, Kelley, Sylvia, Chacey, Dui Dui, and I are all hanging.
8:30 PM - Chacey and Dui Dui had to bounce. Maggie, Jenna, Jenna's friend, and Ben join us. We ask the server to reheat our food.
11 PM - Maggie, Jenna, and her friend headed home; Ben, Israel, Kelley, Sylvia, and I are back home. Figuring out what to do.
1 AM - All hands in: pledging that we will make it to the sunrise flag-raising at Tiananmen Square.
1:30 AM - I remember that I have the Internet, and can stay awake forever with it, guaranteeing that I will be up to wake others up. The others go to sleep.
2 AM - I'm on the internet checking email, reading blogs, and talking to Jessii. Everyone else is napping. Jenna comes by and promptly falls asleep on my floor. There are 12 people in my house: 6 in beds, 4 on couches, 1 on the floor, and me on the internet.
4:30 AM - Everybody up! Out the door, hailing the few cabs we can find, headed to Tiananmen East.
5:15 AM - sunrise at Tiananmen Square, followed by Israel guiding us over to the national opera house ("The Egg"), lots of photos, and a subway back home.
7 AM - Back home. Time to sleep.
11 AM - Up and at 'em: lunch with Steve!

And so another day dawns...

a day in the life

2010-07-15T15:54:00.004-04:00

8 AM - wake up. dress.
8:10 AM - hop on the bus to work
8:35 AM - arrive at my internship
8:40 AM - 5:30 PM - work. sit in on meetings, do some reading, send emails, write letters.
5:45 PM - 7:15 PM - prepare for large group.
7:20 PM - 9:10 PM - large group meeting.
9:30 PM - 11:00 PM - late-night after large group with friends from church.
11:00 PM - 11:15 PM - hop a taxi home from the restaurant.
11:15 PM - 12:00 AM - catch up on emails at home. change clothes.
12:00 AM - 1 AM - head to the nearby bar/restaurant/shopping district. hang out with rap friends - the top emcee and radio DJ in the city. The #1 DJ in the country. Meet the top house music DJ in Taiwan and his new assistant.
1 AM - 3 AM - Wes and Marcus know a guy having his birthday party at another club. hit the club.
3:15 AM - back home. brush teeth, check emails. mess around online.
4:30 AM - sleep. prepare to wake up at 7 AM to pick someone up from the airport. tomorrow, I meet up with friends, go shopping, head to a recording studio, go out to a work dinner with my best friend, and maybe go to see Chozie DJ at a club.

12 hours in

2010-06-24T01:25:00.005-04:00

Hi, everyone!

How yall feelin tonight? (this was the second half of one of 108 Tongues' songs, Don't Start Somethin'. The chorus went:

How many tongues in the house? [108, 108]
How yall feelin tonight? [feelin good, feelin great])

Well, it's 1:30 PM in Beijing - a sunny, muggy, hazy day. I just ran around my block...

hold up, let me rewind.

"Yesterday" - that is to say, in that span of time before I last fell asleep and after I last woke - my parents, sister, and I left Delaware around 11 AM, bound for JFK international airport. I arrived in a fantastically, even excessively, prompt fashion: 1:30 PM for a 4:30 PM flight, that later wound up getting delayed until 5:15.

Boarding the plane, I was greeted with the horrific sight of no in-headrest entertainment. That's right: you buy budget, you fly budget.

Well thankfully, this revelation was immediately followed by another, more positive one: that in place of the now-commonplace headrest-mounted touchscreen lay a standard 3-prong electrical outlet. So, ten minutes into the 15-hour flight, I happily pulled out my laptop and spent the rest of the flight alternating between watching movies (The Squid and the Whale, The Departed, Pulling John - all dope flicks) and powering through over a season and a half of 30 Rock, abetted by the empty seats on my either side - at points, I was alternately nearly fully supine and prone.

After a full day of this, I was greeted by the lights of Shanghai Pudong Airport

where I passed a quick layover, including a short 15-minute panic after a delay was announced "due to communications equipment issues" (the worst phrase to hear when travelling: "your flight has been delayed. a new departure time will be announced shortly").

Post-boarding, I settled into my seat and finally succumbed to the dull but growing urge to sleep. Slipping on my headphones, I leaned back like Fat Joe and woke to the even hazier yellow glow of Beijing.

Gathering my two 50-pound suitcases (guh), I motivated myself, plus wheeled encumbrances, into a waiting cab and sped through the night towards dongcheng

Making my way to the address my new roommate Steve gave me, my cab driver and i only got a little (read: a lot) lost. I caught up briefly with Steve before he hit the hay, got online through my VPN and caught up with emails and various work, then fell asleep just as the blue of morning began to tint the east.

Waking up, I began my unpacking, ran various errands (got keys copied, bought a new SIM card) and had a quick run around my new neighborhood.

Tonight, I'm going to swing by an older couple's house to talk to the husband, meet some friends for dinner, and then tomorrow I have a lunch and dinner with friends - and hoping to meet up with some of the Light Fellowship students in the afternoon to hang around in wudaokou. Saturday, practically all day, is my buddy Billy's wedding! and we'll take it from there...

Time to roll!

this machine is super fly. The bit closer to the camera slides into the groove of the key, and moves synchronized with the drill in the background, which carves out an identical copy in the blank.

first morning

2010-06-23T21:33:00.001-04:00

this is home now

Still winning

2010-06-21T00:44:00.006-04:00

The homeboy Derek representing SBTG/Royalefam just friended me on facebook. I assumed that he friended me through my facebook connection to Mark "SBTG" Ong and thought, cool, good to network with a fellow Asian streetwear/lifestyle head - and maybe we can build, at some point after I move to China, connecting the bustout movement + Royalefam.

But it turns out that he had more of an immediate concern - in the last royalefam online mailer, they announced a simple enough giveaway: a silkscreened SBTG hoodie to a randomly selected respondent who could identify one of their AJ5 customs.

And so, a few minutes after Derek friended me, I'm tagged in this image:

(Bustout X SOS New Haven, representing in the studio! I miss those guys, thorough hip-hop heads and emcees to the fullest!)

"Derek says: Royalefam would like to thank all our die-hard fans for taking part in our hoodie giveaway contest! Out of the 300+ entries we have received, we have randomly picked Jason G.L. Chu as the winner! Congrats! Thank you all for participating, look out for our next giveaway contest!"

Internets - stay winning

The collection

2010-06-16T01:13:00.003-04:00

New photos of every shoe in my current collection, here

formspring

2010-05-12T14:03:00.000-04:00

ask me anything

flicks around town

2010-04-16T18:34:00.006-04:00

a night walk to the studio and a day around the new haven streets, freshly uploaded to flickr.

test shots

2010-04-15T16:29:00.006-04:00

mirror
Originally uploaded by grandmasterchu

cyclops
Originally uploaded by grandmasterchu

be@r
Originally uploaded by grandmasterchu

the camera's here

pressin coverage

2010-04-12T05:18:00.007-04:00

I'm going to buy a camera.

This weekend i was covering the trinity international hip-hop festival (big ups to magee & ben, kosha dillz, flex mathews, self-suffice, and a special shout out to jamnopeanut for the space to crash) and i realized two very important things:

(1) in some circles - of as-of-yet undiscerned radius - "I'm a blogger" serves as a credible shibboleth. this weekend marked the first point at which I realized that my stringing together a couple of words here and there on the internets actually means something to someone not related to me (hi mom). in this world of hyperattenuated attention spans, the blogs are the go-to media incarnation.

thus embodied, my digital voice translates into physical form, an even tangible perk. or so it felt as I fingered the press pass hanging around my neck, stretching out to push my voice recorder (read: cell phone) a foot away from KRS-One.

Chilling with the Blastmaster behind closed doors because it's 2010 and the blogs is watching.

(2) if you have a camera (particularly in conjunction with a press pass - see the first point), you can do some real wild things that would otherwise be thoroughly gauche. at one point, my cameraman/bboy was up to battle, and so he passed me the camera for an hour or two. within 15 minutes, i found myself kneeling, craning, and instinctively pushing to the front of crowds, knowing that the camera i held was enough to grant me respected access to the attendant goings-on.

Wielding that power authoritatively - confidently - allowed me to interface with people around me in new ways. Strangers who might otherwise give me the ice grill would hear - hey, can i get a picture for the website? - and subsequently pose, shuffle about, even contort themselves to allow my gaze to fall upon them. i felt like Buscape' in City of God - the ultimate observer-participant, caught up in the front lines but set apart, objective, even judgmental - granted the decision of selecting those sufficiently noteworthy to rate the camera's flash.

and that judgment could be used foolishly or with discernment: i discovered how easily i took to being invasive, inhuman as i "went for the shot". but then, the next moment, the camera might become a tool for unity - joy, even - collecting groups of mutual strangers and binding them together - eternally in that moment - with the honesty of the flash, the revealing, recording, light. discernment.

things looked different through the glass eye. midway through the bboy battle, when the camera's batteries finally ran down, i realized that i had been missing the flow of the dance almost in its entirety. obsessed with capturing a clever, well-framed, energetic glimpse, i had forgotten the movement - drama - action of the dance. the very geist i had been seeking to exemplify, i had missed. foolishness.

paparazzi.

Kosha Dillz remix contest winner

2010-03-29T18:42:00.003-04:00

The homeboy Kosha Dillz (a/k/a the flyest guy to the goyim), who I linked up with when I interviewed him for Nomadic Wax, had a contest co-sponsored by lifestyle heavyweight DQM and the Diamond Music Group to remix the last single from his album Beverly Dillz.

"Cellular Phone" has been getting some good buzz around indie circles, and now GMJ's remix won the Kosha X DQM X DMG remix contest. Big ups to the winner - I just listened to the track, and I gotta say that its pretty fly. As much as the original production fit smoothly into the aesthetic of the whole album, the remix is a great standalone track. Check it out.

And the Cellular Phone music vid:

Find more videos like this on ThisIs50.com

popularity

2010-03-04T12:57:00.005-05:00

There are two contrasting - though perhaps not mutually exclusive - arguments for the usefulness of popularity of X (X here can be anything - food, media, game, meme, etc. - consumed by an audience) as a metric of X's quality to which I subscribe:

I) In order for X to appeal to a sufficiently large population (arbitrarily, say n+1, where n is the size of the largest identifiable subcultural group), certain characteristics of X that would make it appealing to a certain subcultural group, but not to others, must be removed - it must be "watered down". Therefore, the more popular X is, the more watered-down it must be: the most popular rap music is going to be less edgy and authentic than more niche-targeted rap music, more popular movies are generally going to be more blandly generic than movies which were produced with no popular success in mind, etc. This is the broad appeal effect.

II) In order for X to achieve mass popularity, there must be some factor present within X that appeals to a broad population. The fact that it is so universally accepted means that the producers of X did something right - hit on some key factor, some deeply satisfying foundation of human experience - that allows it to have such broad-spectrum appeal. My friend Jason Latshaw argues as such in his blog, It's Show Business, Not Show Preference on Avatar's success amidst in-group disapproval. This is the universal factor argument.

In short: the broad appeal effect drives down the quality of any product X which is targeted to appeal to the largest audience possible, while the universal factor argument claims that any X which appeals to a sufficiently large audience has inherent in that appeal some factor of great value/quality.

I don't know how to resolve these - but I think they do go hand-in-hand in the wild. After all, while a case might be made for Soulja Boy as aesthetically transcendent auteur, those who can subscribe to such an argument without a wink and a nod are arrestingly few, as they ought to be. But at the same time, most of what captures the attention of so many must have some sort of genuine appeal; and one hopes that the universal skein threading together the thoughts of so many is not the superficial, but rather the deep, genuine, true.

Perhaps the two can be reconciled according to lines similar to these: authenticity must be paramount. That is to say: appealing broadly and seeking to appeal broadly are two separate beasts. To appeal broadly, one must strike an authentic chord with the audience - but authenticity, as with happiness and passion, is best sought by not setting out to seek it, but instead losing oneself in the pursuit of something noble. The broad appeal effect applies to media produced in a conscious effort to find broad appeal; but the universal factor argument obtains for media that finds that universal element - a key foundation of which is that it is produced genuinely, and not self-consciously ("self-conscious" here meaning created to serve a second-level aim ["to be popular"] rather than a first-level aim ["to be funny/amusing/moving/well-produced"]).

Visions of New Haven II

2010-02-18T02:27:00.002-05:00

[print/paint on cardboard, bus stop, Whalley Avenue.]

Photoblog making its reappearance soon.

All around the world...

2010-02-04T04:02:00.006-05:00

...same song

An index of recent work gathered from around the net.

Murders for Gold in El Salvador - protest leaders killed on behalf of an American mining company
Hip-hop Is Saving Asian-American People... - Asian-Americans find a voice through hip-hop (later reposted on Yale's AASA Blog)
Flex Mathews: Making Music, Having Fun. - profile of DC hip-hop artist Flex Mathews for NomadicWax.com
To the Rulers - a reflection on Psalm 58's prophecy of vengeance on the unjust
The Responsibility of Christians in Art. - transcript of a talk originally given in April 2009 on Christians called to art

Thoughts on a wintry night

2010-02-03T01:31:00.003-05:00

This city... I have great love for this city.

I remember one of the first thoughts that I had, upon arriving here. It was a stroke of uncharacteristic humility amidst the self-promoting, slyly arrogant chatter of Camp Yale: This is going to be home for the next four years.

I had, of course, no idea of how right I would be. For the next four years - and then another one and a half, and counting - this city has been my birthplace. Every year, every semester - even monthly, weekly - I've been renewed, reborn, found myself weaker and more capable than I'd dreamt (in nightmare or ecstatic reverie).

Now I'm taking steps - concrete steps - toward finally bidding farewell to New Haven.

That name, so fitting: a new haven. New - budding, bidding me forward. It's been a cold wind on my face as I bustle down the sidewalk, invigorating my strides. A warm breeze on my back - Oh, I'll see it at least once more! - lying out, out in the sun, conversing with people who are long since departed from here.

Haven - a place of rest and peace. I have fallen ill here, I have been healed. I have left it, but always only for a time, and then returned; and, far more tellingly, my heart has always returned with me (if, that is, it ever even left at all).

Of course, it is not now the time to leave - but it is drawing up. I found my haven, of course, or perhaps it found me. But the Spirit calls, and I think the Spirit calls me away.

I remember standing at the crest of East Rock last Fall, when the wind was biting but still an embrace, and looking out over its streets and valleys. From the summit, you can see the terrain: New Haven lies cupped in a shoreline valley, surrounded - by friendly hills beaming benevolent? Or towering giants glowering down? - and I could see all the paths of this city that I have walked, run, biked. Sometimes I walked hand-in-hand, or in comfortable chattiness; a few times, awkwardly, neurotically, all too self-aware.

This is, I guess, a salute

BACK IN THE STUDIO!

2010-01-28T13:14:00.005-05:00

Parental Advisory - PG13 vocabulary (i.e., I say bulls**t in the chorus... my bad. dont listen if this will cause you to stumble; or talk to me about it first thats good too)

BUT GRAND MASTER IS BACK IN THE STUDIO!
WRITING UP HOOKS!
AND VERSES!

WE BACK UP IN HERE MAN!!

dropping that hot, hot, fire (as opposed to the cold fire) that you have been missing.

but you already know that! you are the ones what done been missing it!

NEW INTERNETS SINGLE: HUSTLE & GRIND

Also streaming at the Grand Master - 108 Tongues/BUSTOUT - myspace page.

Original collabo version with Macken' available too....!

1

More brothers ballin it up

2010-01-27T17:29:00.005-05:00

Congratulations to the homies (and my ex-housemates) Yier and Nate for balling out on the electrical engineering circuit (pun always intended, you know that).

Yale is not a school to which honors often go, but I guess these guys were able to rise above the vapid sea of mediocrity surrounding them and overcome the odds... who knows, "that school in New Haven" just might become a credible academic institution (nah) with guys like this around.

A new beginning.

2010-01-27T15:00:00.003-05:00

"All Good Things..." -English Proverb. Or Star Trek: The Next Generation episode.

Even the humblest of things can spring from a humble beginning; but every humble beginning must come from the end of some other beginning (it's profound. [no it's not]), whether more or less humble.

And so, I must, with misty-eyed regret, contemplate the end of a thing; and the beginning of another.

It's one of the oldest voices in the book of tragically spurned love: "I'm sorry; there's another...". But here we go: while American Dream, Chinese Hero has served as a wonderful jumping-off point for my musings, personal and professional, I now find it more useful - if not necessary - to divide the two spheres of my identity.

But this is not an end! It is a beginning!

American Dream, Chinese Hero will continue on in more or less of its present (and traditional) form: a forum for me to post shakily-taken photographs from my camera(phone), eject musings of a highly unprofessional (and undesirable) nature, and post about the latest and greatest in the sneaker/mixtape/rap album world.

But there will be no more of the wittily incisive (yeah right) commentary on race, ethnicity, politics, philosophy, or theology that have preceded it. Instead, new things arise:

1) For vague (and unqualified) sociological discourse - both personal reflections and public musings - having to do with the field of Asian-American studies, hip-hop discource, political discussions (such as Affirmative Action and Just War theory), and other academic subjects, please head to Iason De Silentio.

The title - "Jason from the Silence" - comes from the pseudonym of Danish existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, Johannes de Silentio, referencing the Biblical John the Baptist: a voice out of the silence, speaking into silent world around him. This was literal and prophetic: John came into prophetic existence in the wilderness of 1st-century Judea, far from the urban centers of his time; and his voice came into the public sphere following four hundred years of prophetic silence. John's voice - strident, urgent - was the wake-up call preparing the people for a new revelation.

Kierkegaard found himself in similar circumstances. In his 19th-century Denmark, he faced an overbearing church hierarchy, a numb national congregation, and inadequate, distant theologies. Kierkegaard's voice awoke, aroused, and enlivened his people, Church, and philosophy forever, in his role as the Father of (Christian) Existentialism.

2) For formal and informal reflections on Evangelicalism, ministry, the global Church, Scripture, and faith, I am establishing a third space, seeking my name.

Names, in short, have power: when they are forced onto us (as by a schoolyard bully), they are repugnant, hateful, instruments of spite and derision. When snatched from the lips of a lover, they are glorious, shimmering, eternal things.

As a Christian, one of the things to which I cling dearly - desperately - is the thought that my name - given to me not only by my earthly parents, but my eternal Father - is written "in the Book of Life", a book within which no hand could ever dare raise the power to blot or inscribe a single character.

The Biblical conception of naming is an interesting thing: not only does a name describe who we are, a well-chosen name - a true name, as it were - prophecies (tells the truth) about who we will be. Names are not only references, but serve as stories - signifiers - prescriptions.

As a young, immature man seeking - seeking Christ, God, Grace, and Love - I think, ultimately, I and all others who are on a journey of faith are simply seeking our names. Our true, eternal, right names.

The long and short of it:
-3 blogs:

American Dream, Chinese Hero - an informal personal blog: photographs, personal updates, and my music.
Iason De Silentio - a formal ethnic studies blog, particularly touching on current events, Asian and Asian-American studies, hip-hop culture, and philosophy (primarily ethics) blog.
seeking my name - A reflective and contemplative faith and ministry blog, discussing Christian living, Evangelicalism, Scripture, and theology.

Complex.com - 50 Most Racist Movies

2010-01-27T03:18:00.006-05:00

Full disclosure: my homegirl sooey is on her hustle over at Complex mag's digital division, so I have a personal stake in this...

Still I am not gonna front like complex.com's commentary is anything but 50/50 (at best) in their track record... half of the time, they're profiling dope outfits, brands, personalities, etc.; and the other half of the time, it's puerile attempts at lowest-common-denominator frat boy comedy that blow up in their faces (sorry, "ironic" misogyny is still misogyny...).

And this time, it looks like they got one mostly right, calling out 50 flicks that (more or less) deserve to be called out for their B.S.: Complex.com's 50 Most Racist Movies.

I'm not all that crazy about some of their choices - Passion of the Christ, for one - but all in all, I'll shoot off some props (none) where they're deserved.

I Don't Want To Be Racist Against White People.

2010-01-22T14:49:00.009-05:00

All my White friends, here's one to you.

Am I Being Racist Against White People?

There is a twofold concern for me as I explore ethnicity and the systematic, generational sin of oppression and cultural violence: (1) Am I demonizing and objectifying Whiteness, Western tradition/authority, and European culture? And even if I am not, (2) am I being perceived as doing so?

This question concerns me for several reasons: (A) if I am, I am being hypocritical. Hypocrisy is not only bad in itself, but it (B) leads to me, and other similar critics of power, being discredited or invalidated. This all contributes to (C) a widening divide of miscommunication or silence between those who are set to inherit the reins of traditional structures of power and contemporary voices who seek to point out the outstanding flaws in those systems.

If you'll bear with me - I'll try to be humble - let's examine these points:

The Natural Response to Violence or Assault

(1) A natural response to injustice is to render the unjust oppressor as inhuman. No one wants to think that someone who is in any way like me could do something so horrific to another; no, there must be something about a criminal, about a rapist, about a murderer, that makes them fundamentally different from me. This mental distance works both ways: slave masters, in order to justify the status of their slaves as property, dehumanized them along racial and cultural lines. If an African exists in a lesser form of being - whether a vastly inferior species of humanity, or not even as human at all - then, in a literal sense, it is not inhuman to claim possession over an African man or woman. Psychologists and historians who worked with post-war Nazi soldiers have noted that one of the ways that the German people coped with the horrific actions of the Holocaust was through a willing dismissal of the shared humanity between German Jews and German citizens of Germanic descent. [1]

Similarly, if, say, a close friend were to be murdered, I know that my temptation would be to see his murderer as a horrific, bloodthirsty, psycho bastard with no humanity, and nothing shared in common with myself. I think it's a general rule: we don't like to admit that we could share anything, even the slightest trace of fundamental humanity, with someone who could do such a thing. It is a natural coping mechanism, tinged with a trace of moral self-righteousness: how could anyone do such a thing? combined with well certainly, I would never be capable of such horrors.

This Is Wrong - What's Going On?

The problem here is twofold, both a problem of reality and effectiveness: first, the reality is that no entity or individual is blameless, and responding to evil by mentally distancing oneself from it is just wrongminded. Brokenness and perversity, when glimpsed in others, should not elicit my recoiling from them as diseased and inhuman, but rather my embracing them, knowing and acknowledging that I too have had my times of ugliness, hatred, anger, and violence. The reality is, as much as White, western cultural imperialism has hurt many people and cultures, I too, even in my short 23 years, have insulted, demeaned, and objectified many. To pretend that I am not also a participant in brokenness is to lie.

Secondly, by creating distance between myself and my oppressor, I lessen the possibility for her to reconcile herself with me and make amends to me, even if she desires to do so. As the saying goes, two wrongs don't make a right, and responding to a slight by slighting another only draws both parties further from reconciliation and mutual growth. Even if I were perfect, and my enemy were an incredibly spiteful person, distancing myself from him - while perhaps a useful coping mechanism, and a helpful step towards healing from the injury - ultimately does nothing to prevent the recurrence of the exact same slight, whether towards me or another.

Of course, the burden should be on the oppressor to make amends to the oppressed; even if the oppressed does not ask for apology, it is common human courtesy that if one has created a problem, one ought to fix it. If I kicked down your fence, appropriate apology is not to return bearing a hammer, hand it to you, and let you fix it; it lies on me to return, hammer in hand, and repair the broken fence.

But the simple and sad truth is that many people - myself included - are blind to the wounds we create for others. So to those of us who can be gracious - who have received grace from One who has been wounded by us, and are thus in turn in position to go to those whom we have wounded - it makes sense to do so. Just because I didn't create the problem, doesn't mean I can't be part of the solution.

In the Eye of the Beholder

(2) Tragically, even if I am just telling the truth - or, at least, the truth insofar as I understand it based on fact, evidence, and reasonable inference - I can be perceived as demonizing others. This is difficult.

One thing that I have learned, through reading accounts like Tim Wise's incredible White Like Me, is the unforeseen degree to which people coming from different backgrounds actually possess vastly different experiences. I am not talking about simple social distinctions, like a family only being able to afford bus passes vs. a family being able to afford an SUV. I am talking about completely different perceptions of social order. For example, I grew up with the explicit understanding that police exist to protect me and my friends: I was constantly instructed, in school, at home, and at church, to go to a police officer if I was scared, on my own, in trouble, or lost.

How far is this from the experience of an undocumented immigrant child growing up in, say, downtown Los Angeles! Disregarding the legality of her immigration, an undocumented immigrant girl not only cannot trust the police, but will likely actively distrust them - after all, the legacy of the LAPD is rife with scandal, corruption, abuse, blatant brutality, and more.

Imagine if eight-year-old middle-class suburban Chinese-American me could talk to that Los Angelena. When told about her view of the police, I would have considered her ill-informed, crazy, making up stories, and worse. And while, perhaps, her view of the police would be no more true than mine, I hesitate, now, to say that it is less worthy of consideration.

This is something that often concerns me when I disseminate information into the aether, as it were. I have no way to tell whether my audience is receptive or dismissive; and, while the information that I have uncovered is damning and even sickening to see, it is most terrifying to think that my desire to share the truth could be easily read as simple reverse racism. You can't handle the truth!(?)

After all, it is easiest to respond to an unpleasant message by disengaging from it: writing it off as fallacious, exaggerated, or irrelevant. Whether because a voice is too uncomfortable, too hypocritical, or personally offensive, it is very easy to be discredited, especially in circles into which you are speaking as a critic.

Vision for Reconciliation

But this is distinctly not what I want to do. I do not think that it is the time - at least, in the arena of racial reconciliation - for voices to only be present in the wilderness, crying out to those few who are attracted to them and who are willing to put up with their personal quirks. In this age, I think that the call is to go before not just those who want to listen, or are willing to listen, but especially to those who do not want to listen, and to convince, persuade, or somehow beg them to lend an open ear.

If the persecuted speak only to the persecuted, they cannot proclaim on behalf of the hurt and those crying out for justice. Proclamation comes into a community, and prophetic [2] voices and communities do not retain or hold in prophecy, but share it and spread a message of truth. The difficult, sad, and exhilarating mission for those of us who want to speak truth in love is that communication requires speaking to others, not merely at them.

[1] This is usually how it goes in war crimes: the object of one's transgression is seen as not human and, therefore, not possessing value on par with the subject's humanity. An alternative occurs in the case of child soldiers in Africa: there, instead of being taught that the targets of their violence are subhuman, the humanity of victims is often acknowledged, but simply devalued. Child soldiers are forced to rape, kill, and maim friends and family members, resulting in a general devaluation of all human life, rather than a specifically targeted dehumanization.

[2] Here I use "prophecy" in the general and original sense of "a true proclamation or statement," rather than the more contemporarily common sense of "a true statement about the future".

Repurposed words: Context and Content

2010-01-21T17:01:00.002-05:00

[In the hopes of continued agility of thought, and to spite mental atrophy, a present hope is to dedicate myself to writing of a substantial character. Once a week, generally on Thursdays, I will be sitting down to hash out some brief comments of varying rigor. Your mileage may vary.]

Words are undoubtedly powerful. Biblically speaking, the Word - Hebrew Dabar (), or Greek Logos (λόγος) - is centrally located. One could reasonably say, in fact, that the very essence of Christianity (and the Judaism from which it springs) lies in a theology of words: divine words given to humans from God (Inspiration/Revelation), words used by men to represent to themselves those divine words (Scripture), and words used to systematize, explore, share, and find application for those divine words (philosophical theology, mystical texts, etc.).

Socially speaking, as well, words bear power. Creating terms for systems of oppression and dismissal can serve to reinforce and legitimize them through lexical acceptance, as labels guide identity both overtly (i.e., "Illegal" vs. "Undocumented" immigrants) and subtly (i.e., the normative-neutral "White" versus the marginal and umbrella term "Colored").

This latter point may be unfamiliar to some of my readers, and - though initially I was hoping to cover this in a footnote - it is interesting to explore. You see, beyond the obvious connotations in Western societies - snow, purity, cleanness, and light - White is a generic default, aesthetically a "blank canvas". By creating Whiteness and identifying it with people of Anglo-Saxon European descent as White (rather than, say, Pink, Tan, etc.), the connotative implication is that non-Anglo/non-European persons are less of a blank slate.

I would like stress here that this is not a uniquely White, American, European, or even Western pattern, either. The same is present in modern Chinese: Anglo people are White (白人, bai + ren = white + person) [1], people of African descent are Black (黑人, hei + ren = black + person), but Chinese are 中国人, people of the middle kingdom. And humility is far from a trait of dominant cultures (Consider also the other common term for the Chinese diaspora, 华人, hua + ren = magnificent/splendid + person).

Whether identifying ourselves at the center of all things, or as White (and hence pure/unsullied/adaptable), so long as we have the power to do so, we nearly always ascribe normativity to ourselves. This is a fair move to make internally; after all, processing external input would be highly confusing were it not for the normative presumption of our own internal processes. However, to ascribe normativity to our own points of view in a broader sense overwrites and overrides the experience and authentic reflections of others, creating dissonant systems for those who are not-Us but subscribe (willingly or through coercion) to that prescription. For a majority member [2], most such suppositions pass unquestioned; but, for a minority member, it raises significant existential - even ontological - questions that express themselves as internal anguish and confusion.

Of course, words can also be recontextualized, forcefully and defiantly if need be. The homosexual community (and, increasingly, other communities as well), in accepting, embracing, and finally repurposing the label "Queer", has demonstrated, it seems, a praiseworthy amount of perseverance and deliberate, systematic, activism. It is also one of the rare examples of a community embracing marginalization, for the very etymology of the identifier names its referent as on the fringe.

The N word (as if you're going to get me to spell it out for you... get outta here) is an example of a slur with a far more controversial present usage. While some advocates of the word claim that the same process of acceptance-embrace-repurposing has been undertaken successfully, it is hard to successfully argue that the word has been rehabilitated in the same fashion as the Q word (if you would). To nudge this intuition, let me point to two pieces of evidence: first, that I am myself hesitant to type out in full "the N word", while having no such qualms about "queer" [3]. Second, the ongoing dialect debate over "the N word with a -a" and "the N word with a -er" suggests that the process of linguistic evolution and drift away from offensiveness towards repurposing is far from complete [4].

What separates the two? Without entering into a rigorous discussion, the apparent answer seems to be that "Queer" is a word that preceded its use as a slur, while the N word - though possessing a historied and not entirely negative etymology - springs up in its proximal form as a slur. When those who self-identify as Queer (or queer-allied) do so, they are actually not re-defining the word, but instead actually maintain the definition of the word while re-defining the moral landscape within which it is situated, shifting from normativity to a non-normative field. Not being queer is therefore descriptive, rather than normative, and so queerness becomes as normal as non-queerness.

My (self-)allotted time is drawing to a close and is, indeed, even now nigh. Interestingly, all the above was initially only to be a brief footnote to a larger discussion; at this point, I will turn to a summary of my intended discussion, and pick up on it when next we speak.

So, why all the thought about Words? A natural response would be: the author's hubris leads to an egotistical confluence of form and content, wherein his verbosity is buoyed by the ostensible topic of exploring the power of words.

But no.

Actually, the choice of topic upon which to spend my meagre reserves is prompted by some reflections on the recent Malaysian religious scandal. In short, Malaysian courts recently ruled that it was within the civil rights of non-Muslim organizations (read: Christian churches) and individuals to freely use the Arabic term "Allah" to refer to God - God the concept and God the being. As far as I understand, certain elements within society - pre-radicalized, and definitely not all of Muslim Malaysia [5] - seized upon this ruling as a foothold from which to launch an extremist agenda, including vigilante attacks on various Christian churches and schools.

Malaysia is, of course, a country with a complex history of diversity along ethnic, economic, and religious lines. I am ill prepared to speak on it in such fields, and thus reticent.

While the proximally inciting incident of word usage seems to be more a case of finding excuses than of actual outrage, I am still interested in the idea that word usage can be made into an excuse for action; an excuse that is, at the very least, not horrendously implausible. And even if, in this case, the implausibility of gross offense through word usage is very high, there are definitely cases - slander, defamation, and libel - in which words alone are legally acknowledged to have the power to harm and damage.

To be continued.

[1] It is undeniable that other societies also associate people of Anglo descent with the color white. An interesting study would be a linguistic excavation of Whiteness in other cultures: for example, modern Chinese refer to Anglos as White People. Was this phrase introduced by cultural transmission along with the concept of Whiteness during the opening of Sino-American relations, or does it stem from a natural response to skin tone? Consider also the association of white with death in Chinese cultures (hence, red wedding dresses and white in funeral rituals): in this case, arguments for the nonpreferential nature of white-connotative language seem to obtain more readily.

[2] Majority here, of course, does not necessarily connotate numerical majority, but instead a majority of power. As examples, the racial politics of South Africa and the religious politics of Hussein-era Iraq come to mind.

[3] This does beg the question: ought I be so free with my diction? So far as I understand, queer-sensitive allies are allowed to use this word in such contexts. I may be wrong.

[4] Naturally, as a straight Asian-American male, I am an outsider to both these debates, and I may be reading social cues entirely wrong. This raises another question: do Asian-Americans have a repurposed label? I suspect not. Why not? Interesting.

[5] I hope not to evoke a sense of the Muslim Panic all too familiar in Western rhetoric.

An exercise

2010-01-20T00:41:00.003-05:00

"Jesus’ College is the only one in which God’s truth can be really learned; other schools may teach us what is to be believed, but Christ’s alone can show us how to believe it."
- Charles Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, Evening Jan. 19.

Recently, a friend lent me God in the Dock, a collected edition of C.S. Lewis' minor writings and shorter presentations. Among them is Meditation in a Toolshed, a brief piece in which Lewis speaks about the distinction between looking at and looking along. Reading tonight's Morning and Evening - a twice-daily devotional to which I have often turned in my quiet times of contemplation - I was struck by the parallel thrust of Spurgeon's rumination.

In Toolshed, Lewis distinguishes looking at from looking along along an experiential axis, similar to the research method distinction between, respectively, grounded theory and participant-observer strategies of data collection and interpretation. In short, the metaphor Lewis constructs is based on the familiar analogy of revelation as a source of light: envisioning a beam of light cast onto an object, looking at the ray grants information about the light itself, while looking along the light reveals knowledge about the source and target of the emission.

Lewis' privileging the latter over the former seems a priori, but I think that there are fair arguments to be made in support of looking along versus looking at. Both positions bear reasonable and seemingly non-trivial epistemic value. But what may grant us liberty to preference looking along over looking at is the existence of convincing order in the revelation.

That is to say, revelation, and specifically the Christian revelation, is itself ordered in an intuitively convincing manner: a beam of light hitting the blank wall of the toolshed may be dismissed as a random structural failure, while a beam of light illuminating a carving on the ground is not so easily dismissed. The question then is whether the information revealed by participating in the Christian process - looking along - is of the former or latter quality.

Adding to the difficulty of processing this information is the hypothesis that the results are biased through human intervention. After all, alternative beams of light exist, striking seemingly intentional points on the ground, and it seems a fairly foundational part of participating in looking along that looking along one source of revelation is mutually exclusive with others. So, one of the common claims of those looking along a particular light is that the other lights are false constructs, illuminating points (metaphysical/theological points, that is) that may seem appealing but are, in fact, only so because they are intended by human effort to be so rather than divine effort.

Spurgeon's quote is situated in similarly hairy territory. All the issues raised with Lewis' beliefs - and more - can apply here. It is interesting that both predicate "real learning" with participation: learning is distinguished from learning about. There is something about active, personal, engagement that is valuable to both authors - and it is very attractive to me, too. But it seems as though much post-Enlightenment/Rationalist thought has found itself striking an antagonistic position, claiming that personal investment in a situation has quite the opposite effect: rather than granting knowledge in a particularly valuable way, it taints what data is gathered. Is this an intractable disagreement? One wonders.

There are far more issues in this exploration than I can adequately here address. I like both the ideas expressed by Lewis and Spurgeon. In both cases, there is great intuitive appeal, but it is difficult to articulate the basis - defending the premises - of the appeal. Perhaps one either "feels it" or doesn't.

Merely an exercise in rigour.

When Your Heart Stops Beating

2010-01-19T11:59:00.003-05:00

[reposted from an email originally dated 1/7/10]

Hey, friends;

The title of this email comes from a song by (+44), a little-known (I guess?) band, better known as a side project started by two of Blink-182's members while the latter was on hiatus.

Now, I haven't actually listened to this song in a while; but as I reflected on what God's been working on in my life over last couple of days, (+44)'s lyrics just leapt up from my subconscious:

I'll be there when your heart stops beating
I'll be there when your last breath's taken away
In the dark when there's no one listening...

Take a look at what that chorus is saying - and then take a look at these verses:

"Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in one spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel
"without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you. This is a sign to them that they will be destroyed, but that you will be saved—and that by God." (Phil 1:27-28)

This isn't really a secret: in high school, I was a pretty emo kid. There may even be (there are) a few composition books back at my parents' house filled with scribbled, angsty poems and lyrics. OK, actually I was a super emo kid - pretty out of control. To the point where my emotional baggage actually got me rejected from MIT (ask if you want to hear the story some time).

Thankfully, God has since changed me radically, into a very different person - in my attitude, hopes, dreams, and thoughts. But, when it all comes down to it, I still find the same desires that fueled my pubescent angst comprising a large part of my motivations.

What are those desires? Pretty simple, really: I don't want to be alone. I don't want to be a failure. I want my life to have meaning, shape, direction.

I thought, when I began seeking God at the end of high school, that I'd put all that in the past: I truly listened to the Gospel for the first time, accepted Jesus as the Creator, Sustainer, and Savior of my life, and found Him to be The Answer:
Lonely? "I will never leave you, nor forsake you."
A failure? "By grace you have been saved, through faith; not coming from your own works, so you cannot boast about it."
Directionless? "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life."

So, Jesus is The Answer - right?

...

For the past few days, I have found myself repeatedly agonizing over some things that have been laying heavy on my mind. Last night, chatting with Steve Yu '07 for commiseration and advice, he encouraged me to place myself again in front of God, in His hands. OK, I thought to myself - haven't I been doing that? And still, the worrying, the anxiety, the background angst, continue.

Still, knowing that it was the right thing to do - and having thought it over til my brain whirled - I laid down, prayed, and picked up a daily devotional by Charles Spurgeon, which referenced Philippians 1. And so I read the verses above:

"Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.
Whatever happens?

"This is a sign ... that you will be saved—and that by God."
Hmm... I will be saved... by God.

And I had a moment of clarity. In which I realized:

God is my life.

Joy and hope in my life don't come from my job; my girlfriend; my health, finances, or any other measure of success.

Over the past few days, I had been inadvertently narrowing down my focus, closing my eyes against everything else except a few, specific, areas of my life.

But, last night, God forced my eyes open again, and reminded me where my future is actually centered. He is the one who redeems my life; He is, as I've heard - and even said - so many times, the Creator and Sustainer of my soul. So, whatever may happen - personally or professionally; physically, emotionally, or spiritually - it is to God that I will look for salvation.

It's funny: for the past few days, as I felt myself wrestled down by worry and anxiety, I tried everything (well, not everything) to comfort myself. And most of that just came down to me thinking around in repetitive circles, listening to my own internal counsel repeat endlessly. And not a single bit of that brought me any relief.

But as soon as God reminded me that my life is not, ultimately, about my self but rather about Him, all the anxiety, the concern, the worry came crashing down. And I could even laugh, knowing that, in the end, all of these concerns are truly miniscule compared to the very good, very beautiful, utterly satisfying and hope-fulfilling end of a life lived in the presence and glory of God.

I'm sad and glad, friends.
Sad that I have so easily let my vision narrow down into a tiny sliver of what vistas it could be perceiving.
Glad that I remembered the one thing of value that I have: the God who is always there.

I'll be there when your heart stops beating
I'll be there when your last breath's taken away
In the dark when there's no one listening...

Thank God.

truer words

2010-01-06T09:49:00.000-05:00

"Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about what happens to you."

I love these words.

on lies

2009-12-27T03:12:00.006-05:00

"the Men of the Mark do not lie, and therefore they are not easily deceived" - Eomer, The Two Towers (44).

Over the past few days, I've been re-stepping through Tolkien's epic, inspired by my weathered but ever-fond memories of youthful journeys through its pages. Having just finished the first volume, I picked up The Two Towers tonight, to begin thumbing through its pages before slumber.

In doing so, I came across the comment made here by Eomer, and thought it an interesting one. Specifically, it seems to reflect a belief about Honesty - or Deception - that opposes what I often see as the default assumption.

There is a tendency, I think, for us to think that ears too accustomed to true tales will quickly assume the truth of falsehoods - that is, that hearing only the truth will make us more gullible, and susceptible to being misled.

But I rather like the point of view that Tolkien presents here: to him (or, at least, to Eomer), hearing truth doesn't dull one's ears to lies, but rather sharpens them to the scent of what is true. The innocent, in this case, are not gullible; rather, their very innocence preserves an innate and disarmingly natural propensity towards the true and lovely over the false and sham.

That my own ears might be filled with the truth, so that the darkness of lies might recede into unfamiliarity.

Avatar thoughts: 2nd pass, post-viewing

2009-12-25T16:16:00.005-05:00

This morning, after a round of in-house (literally) family celebration, my sister, father, and I went to see Avatar.

As you may have gathered from my previous post, I had some serious reservations about the film's narrative arc.

To simplify a host of fairly irreducible ruminations is difficult; long story short, the film is problematic, but still quite a good film. I would say that most of my concerns were found to have reasonable warrant within the film: some of them aren't so bad, but some - one in particular - are still troubling.

Just a few of the thoughts that I was having while I watched the film, and in discussion afterwards [spoilers to follow]:

1) The film's casting directors acquitted themselves well in presenting often-marginalized faces & bodies.
-While much of the primary cast is Anglo, at the same time, the protagonist is disabled (paralyzed), which is the first time that I can recall, off-hand, a film which has a - the - lead character handicapped throughout the entire film. Big thumbs up to that.
-Non-Anglo characters were present throughout the background and foreground. In my previous post, I was concerned that, of all the primary cast human characters, only two were people of color. This is true; but both had substantive roles, and Michelle Rodriguez' fighter pilot actually had my favorite character arc. There were also several minority faces throughout the background, weakening any charges that Dileep Rao and Rodriguez were token casting choices.
-Female characters were, similarly, represented well in both primary roles of intelligence, strength, and authority, as well as throughout the background.
-In short: Cameron's casting director(s) did a very good job of presenting a wide gender and ethnic spectrum, didn't shy away from presenting a handicapped protagonist, and managed to do so in a way that seemed to bypass typecasting boundaries (except poor Michelle Rodriguez, who just cannot shake the tough-girl image she's born since The Fast & The Furious).

2) I'm still unhappy with the story of Jake Sully's rise to prominence within the native tribe.
-He gets the girl, lives to see the future, rides the bad-shut-yo-mouth flying reptile-bird, and so on.
-Maybe this is more just my general concern with how Hollywood films treat their protagonists: with the universe-on-film revolving around them, every action, person, and event, whether past, present , or future. conveniently happening with them in the center of the action. If this is true, which it seems like it is, then I can't specifically cite this as a shortcoming of either Cameron or Avatar.

3) I'm more displeased than I thought I would be by the conclusiveness of the film's ending.
-The film concludes, seemingly, on a high note: the outsiders are banished from the edenic world of Pandora (an incredibly silly name for a developmentally high-priority planet, by the way: who in the universe would want to "open up Pandora"?), and the tribes, united, stand behind Jake Sully.
-First off, internally, this ending doesn't make much sense. If "unobtainium" (another incredibly silly placeholderish name) is actually so valuable ($20M/kg... although, with inflation in 2154, who knows how valuable that actually is?), then history - economics - and sociology all seem to point towards this not being a permanent victory, but rather an incredibly fleeting respite. But this is neither here nor there; it's more of a technical concern than critical commentary.
-Second, more importantly, this ending is a happy one. This is my major concern remaining after a first viewing:

-The film ends on a happy note: in a literal deus ex machina (or, more properly, ex natura), Eywa, the Gaia-figure of the film, unites the power of the planet (Earth! Wind! Fire! Water! Heart!) to save the indigenous peoples and herself from the plundering, pillaging earth-humans with their murderous technology. Even if the future is indeterminate, at least, for the moment, the victory has conclusively been won.
-This simply is not the way that things have always turned out: for most native peoples, facing encroaching empire or exploitative harvesting, there is no end to the story, and certainly no end that has turned out well. For the Australian aboriginal peoples, the North American first nations, and African native tribes, the story still continues. In some cases, progress has been made; for other peoples, however, the story is simply one of unvarying neglect, social marginalization, economic oppression, and widespread apathy towards their plight.
-This is why Cameron's Avatar is still, for me, so strongly redolent of White Guilt. To tell a story about native peoples is one thing; to mirror the true story of native peoples, as awkward, uncomfortable, or embarrassing as it may be, is quite another.

-I can understand that this film is a fantasy. But I hope that it is a fantasy that stirs us to action, rather than a fantasy that provides all-too-easy catharsis: after three hours in the movie theater, we leave feeling sympathetic toward native peoples, guilty about our own exploitative/imperialistic ways, but satisfied knowing that the Na'vi got their measure of justice - even while native and aboriginal people the world over have yet to see their reparations in kind.

But still, on this day, I celebrate with family and friends, rejoicing in - remembering - and hoping for - the presence of one among us who did not just come to save, but to suffer.
And, having suffered to the point of death, and having died, and having been given life again, he was not content that only he might have life, but did not see his work as complete until all poor, heavy-burdened, and unvalued people could come to share in that life. This is true.

Avatar: James Cameron's colonial - racist - fantasy

2009-12-19T22:59:00.034-05:00

This is an important one.

If you read no other entry that I ever write, please read this.

Why?

I'm sure that some - many - of you are used to me talking about racism by this point. You may have wondered:

Why is race such an issue for Jason? Does he see racism in everything?

Well, no. Not everything. But almost everything.

Can't he just get over it?

Maybe I could; but I won't.

I want to share how I see racism manifest in places that others don't; and why I am not willing to "get over it". Regardless of whether or not you agree with me: please hear me out.

What Are You Talking About, And Why?

What prompts this? Well, over the past couple days, I've been reading various commentaries [warning: both links have spoilers] on the current 20th Century Fox blockbuster, James Cameron's Avatar, and I thought that it might serve as an excellent example of how racial - racist - beliefs are interwoven into our daily lives, and exactly why I think it's so important to call them out when we see them.

Disclaimer: I haven't seen Avatar yet. I was, for a while, eagerly anticipating it, especially as I saw advance reviews - from reputable sources like Roger Ebert - excitedly calling it the best new sci-fi property in decades. But in the course of reading through various blogs and reviews, I grew increasingly uncomfortable with the film's themes, and sought out more information, hoping to be proved wrong, or at least have doubts allayed. This did not happen.

Just what are these troubling themes? Well, let's take a quick look at the narrative arc: it doesn't ruin the story to say that the film is about a race of peace- and nature-loving alien natives, who come under attack from menacing, technologically-advanced humans wanting to plunder their world. But, just as all seems lost, salvation for the natives comes from the most unlikely quarter: a human soldier who switches sides because, get this, he realizes how awesome the natives are. [Slight spoiler:] He woos their princess, out-competes their best warrior - her fiance - and takes headship of their tribes to lead them in battle against the evil imperialistic humans.

This lone hero, savior of the colored (literally) folk, is, of course, a Caucasian, Anglo-Saxon man.

In fact, all the primary Human roles are cast White, except for Latina Michelle Rodriguez, typecast as a scrappy soldier, and a single Indian-American, Dileep Rao, cast as - shocker - a scientist. The primary speaking Na'vi roles, on the other hand - the native people - are all filled by people of color, including Black, African, and Cherokee actors.

I've Heard This Story Before...

Avatar's story is, at heart, familiar. From the innocuous (Superman) to the insidious (The White Man's Burden), this metanarrative underlies much of Western thought: a community's salvation coming in the personal form of an outsider savior. Nothing is wrong with this version of the story and, in fact, it can be argued that it is derived from the Christian story, a narrative I cherish with great regard [1]. But what happens to the concept of a savior-from-outside when we write ourselves into the role of the savior? This is the root of Colonialist thought: when we begin to see ourselves as that outsider-savior figure, and see native peoples as fundamentally noble but backwards. These good-hearted but incapable (whether technologically, morally, socially, etc.) natives need someone else to map out their progress, and we do so by setting them on the path of integration into Us-ness.

This is the Colonialist story: they advance if we force ourselves on them. The twisted logic echoes the rationalizations of the overbearing boss, the abusive spouse, and even serial rapists.

Hold on, though. What I'm describing doesn't quite match what Cameron plots out in Avatar, does it? In fact, he is writing precisely the opposite kind of story: in Avatar, the literal colonizers - humans toting Science, Technology, and magnificently-rendered spaceships - are the bad guys. How is it a colonialist narrative if the protagonist turns his back on the oppressive ways of mankind and leads the Na'vi natives to victory?

Re-read that last phrase: the protagonist (who is, we are reminded, Human just like us) becomes the salvation of the native peoples.

Here, the story's thrust becomes clear: Cameron's Na'vi natives may be an exotic and attractive people, but they are still ultimately incapable, doomed without the leadership and capability of the Human outsider. And this is precisely the colonialist narrative, advanced to its next logical step. These more sophisticated works acknowledge the overt shortcomings of forced cultural conversion. But, in such cases, the reassurance that "we did it to them for their own good" is instead replaced by the more subtle triumph of seeing a character that we know is supposed to be dominant - a White, Male figure - rising to his natural place of leadership. As these stories draw near the end of their arcs, we can breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that the guy who was supposed to be the good guy, is; even if he or his people were the ones who caused the ruckus, in the end, he fixed it, atoning for his own transgressions in the process.

This is the story of white guilt, and it is a story told with increasing volume and insistence as the Eurocentric world has been brought face-to-face with the terrible legacy of the "Age of Exploration": genocide, pestilence (more), forced relocation, massive-scale theft, and more. Unable to deny the horrors inflicted by their forebears, the descendants of colonizers had to convince themselves that they could be the exception to the ancestral rule: as their fathers had destroyed lives and cultures, they would save and value them.

But What's So Wrong With That?

The problem with this is that, regardless of what the theme or internal plot rationale may be, in the end, the movie presents a White Man romancing the exotic princess and proving himself superior to the best warrior in her tribe. If we are White Men, this makes us feel good about ourselves; and if we are not, we either put ourselves in his shoes, or are forced to cast ourselves as a romantic object or inferior competitor.

In the end, Avatar still places "me" - if I understand myself to be Anglo, and Male - at the center of the story. And, in it, the oppressed native is valuable not because he is, but because I tell him that he is. If the sins of my ancestors have harmed others, whatever the damage, I am the one who has the power to set it right. Parallel arcs are traced out in a few sets of identical films: Fern Gully & The Jungle Book, where the White Male saves an exotic, magical Nature from his society's aggressive industrialization. Freedom Writers, The Blind Side, Radio, and Hardball - among many others - where an experienced, open-hearted, caring White authority figure mentors a minority kid or kids to success [2] . Films like Australia, Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, and The Last of the Mohicans, that all share two aspects: a White Male protagonist, and a dying, endangered culture whose future depends on him [3].

Of course, in our media, there are many stories of a person or culture in need, and not all can be traced to White Guilt. Films like The Patriot, Gladiator, Dirty Dancing, and Braveheart all share key aspects with the films listed above: a community in need, and a man who rises to the occasion. But notice two things about them: while heroes arise from within those cultures, the communities being portrayed in these films and others like them are exclusively Eurocentric, Western communities. Apparently, when the culture being portrayed is White, a cultural insider serves as a satisfactory hero. But, when the culture is not White - and instead Urban, Aboriginal, Native, or Japanese - then an outsider is needed to step in as savior. A White outsider.

At this point, I can well imagine someone saying: you're talking about the media, and the media is simply in the business of providing what sells. Since most people in the country are White, it is profitable to provide protagonists to whom a White consumer base can relate [4] . It's not about actively being a racist, but simply good business.

This objection is wrong. Is it not about race? Then name me a single film where the opposite happens, where a non-White character assimilates into a clearly White society and winds up in a position of power or leadership.

I can't think of a single one * **.

So, then, apparently the interests of the White consumer demographic are so strong that they completely drown out the interests of consumers of color. This is a problem for two reasons: first, if it were to be true, it is a textbook case of tyranny of the majority, where the dominant group exercises such complete power that the interests and even well-being of the minority are completely disregarded. Second, it suggests that the media believes that White audiences are incapable of doing exactly what they demand of their minority audiences: to relate to a protagonist who is not like them.

This may be good business; but it is immoral, unethical, and dangerous. It is not racist to the level of a hate crime or muttered slur, but negative public perception nurtures bias, and bias leads, in its own inexorable way, to violence.

In the end, for whatever reason, the message being communicated is that a White person - usually a man - will be a hero, regardless of whether he finds himself in his own culture or outside it. But rarely a woman; and never a person of color.

You're Thinking Too Much.

"Come on, Jason. They're aliens, not minorities. Why can't you just watch it for what it is: fun, entertaining, light action?"

Online humor site Something Awful has an article (note: about halfway through, it gets silly. But I points 1-9 are suitably insightful) pointing out how obviously Cameron cribbed bits and pieces of native peoples for the "invented" Na'vi culture, from their "primitive" weapons to piercings, tattoos, and more. And the phonetic proximity of the two terms (Na'vi + "ti" = native) makes for either an odd coincidence, or a clever - and damning - subliminal. And if it weren't already clear enough, Cameron himself has repeatedly drawn explicit connections between Avatar and White cultural fantasies like Dances with Wolves. He obviously wants desperately to be an auteur, producing work read as political, social, and ethnic commentary.

And, you know what, it's almost worse if this narrative has come about unintentionally. If Cameron set out to simply make the freshest, most interesting, most entertaining work that he could, and the themes of White Guilt just happened to manifest themselves in that work, this is immense justification for the post-colonialist critic. Such a scenario signals that the co-opting of other cultures has gone so far that it has ingrained itself into the grand narrative of Western culture, deeply enough that even the production of a new mythos (and there is reason to believe that Cameron hopes for an extended universe) has the fingerprints of eurocentrism and White Guilt all over it.

In Closing,

Avatar is a problem. It seems like a great piece of entertainment: eye-popping special effects (or at least, so my sister and Roger Ebert both claim), a fun ride, the event movie of the season. But, at the same time, to buy into Avatar is to perpetuate a harmful, oppressive story that silences many in favor of further empowering those who already hold power. White Men bed the alien princesses, and defeat colored alien warriors related to her (how novel), while anyone who is not a White Man... doesn't do anything, really, unless it's pertinent to the actions and viewpoint of the White Man.

And make no mistake: 20th Century Fox, James Cameron, and many others have a vested interest in our literally buying into the film. With a release not more than a week ago, the film (with a shooting & promotional budget of over 500 million $USD, the most expensive in Fox's history) has already been used to sell video games, a toy line, apparel, cross-promotional schemes, novels, and a budding franchise.

[Please comment, discuss, and share as appropriate. I am actively interested in feedback & critique.]

[1] Even if the Christian story is the original source of this trend, it has not itself been immune to whitewashing, with a White (if tanned) Jesus saving the colored Jews from their ignorance. The most recent and aggressively popularized portrayals of Jesus - Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ and The Jesus Film - have seen the role of Jesus go to a Slovak-Irish American and Oxford-educated Englishman, not to mention the proliferation of decidedly Anglo, non-Semitic images of Christ. Such depictions raise few eyebrows, while portrayals of Christ as a colored man - usually Black - are still highly controversial in many Christian circles, despite African cultures and races being no more (and even perhaps less) distinct from early 1st-centruy Middle Eastern societies than European analogues.

I also feel compelled, as a Christian, to mention that Jesus, in utter contrast to the narrative of cultural subversion, became (a) an insider in order to (b) redeem culture, rather than removing a fetishized culture from its context as an outsider.

[2] In this genre, there have been a few films - Akeelah and the Bee and Stand and Deliver come come to mind - that provide hope, where mentors are cast with actors of color (Laurence Fishburne and Edward James Olmos, respectively). Still problematic is the proliferation of White women in this setting; initially, it may seem to be giving prominence to a female, but ultimately it winds up simply furthering another common Western trope, that of the nurturing, caring, emotional woman in opposition to the strong, aggressive, physical man.

[3] In all of these works, I notice a strong emphasis on the uniformly White outsider protagonist being termed the Last or the Best. This hints at a quasi-Hegelian progression, where a raw and basic culture (Native tribes, Samurai ways, Nature itself) gives birth to an advanced, more-evolved organism: the White man.

[4] This is, by the way, not a justifiable argument. Increasing amounts of data are available that may indicate (has this work been done?) that upper-class White consumers, while having more disposable income, actually spend less of their available leisure resources on purchasing entertainment than other demographics.

* I have thought of one: Prince Caspian, by C.S. Lewis. Take that for what you will.
**After Dallas kindly reposted this piece on his site, commenter 6 100 pointed out that Blade may stand in opposition to this trend - I think he's right, and Blade is actually, the more I think about it, a pretty great film in terms of racial statements.

Harvard-Yale / Korean Food in New York

2009-11-25T22:55:00.007-05:00

An eventful 7 days transpires in New Haven; old relationships begin anew, rivalries spill over throughout the city, and Korean food threatens to (deliciously) overwhelm a trip to New York. All on this week's episode of

American Dream, Chinese Hero.

...

Tuesday11.17.2009

After kicking it with Christian YV for a long minute, I ran into Living
Water, preparing for the Harvard-Yale jam with Harvard's Under
Construction.

Lookin, soundin like a million bucks.

Friday11.20.2009

After a 2 hour flight delay, Janice touched down into
New Haven safe & sound; To celebrate, we headed to
our old favorite spot for a familiar round of dishes.

Saturday11.21.2009

The morning of The Game dawned cool, bright, and
inspirational. Headed to the Living Water alumni
breakfast, I ran into a familiar and sorely-missed
face around campus.

The #1 JOSH I SKY!!!

What a great triad of alums.

Mel dropped by New Haven. Instead of going to The
Game (good call there...), she and I hung lazily around
my apartment, catching up on life the way we used
to during undergrad days.

Mel has been down with Bustout for a minute now.

After catching up, I walked her over to the Omni, one of New Haven's
hotels. Note that even the telephones are bougie.

!

After dinner, a group of the alums, led by my roommate,
congregated in our apartment to nurse full stomachs and, perhaps,
the traces of wounded pride (Harvard: 14; Yale: 10).

Karin, Yang, Wendo.

Amy, Ben, Victor, Josh.

Jwong and Ray!

Nancy Liang came through to reminisce with me and
give me the lowdown on her career moves... killing
em in the investment game.

Monday11.23.2009

On my way to work out in the Pierson-Davenport
gym, I passed a picture of the PC class of 2008,
including this dashing young fellow. Obviously
headed somewhere smart with his life.

That night, a small group of us congregated at
Enping's house for dinner + a movie.

Andrew and James, the very portrait of mutual
trust.

厨师 Ah Joo... gourmet dumplings.

Tuesday11.24.2009

On a sharp Tuesday morning, D.Chen and I headed into
the City to kick it with assorted NJ/NYC friends.

Hitting the city shortly before noon, we hopped on the
uptown 6 and met up with sgkim at the Met, where
we Saw Culture.

The expansive Egypt room. I was so impressed by the clear, crisp design cues,
which stood in bold contrast to the self-conscious and cluttered layout of the rest
of the museum.

What's that, Stephen?

Yes, adorable.

White = sitting on camel = Wise Man
Black = leading camel = Servant
Not cool, Culture. Mad ignorant.

Famous!

Luminous!

Artist painting art of art!

"Pertti Kekarainen
Finnish, born 1965
TILA (Passage I), 2006
Chromogenic print
...
One of the leading artists of the Helsinki school, a loosely
connected group of photographers associated with Finland's
Academy of Fine Arts, Kakarainen uses the camera to foreground
the process of perception itself. the photographs in his TILA series
are images of architectural spaces-rooms, staircases, doorways,
windows-to which he has added various optical occlusions: extra
shadows, floating spots of color, and larger veils or scrims that
sometimes nearly obscure the original image. These interruptions
in the visual field complicate the act of seeing and encourage a
heightened awareness of the tension between the flatness of the
photograph and the illusion of spatial depth. The Finnish word tila
means many things, from "space" or "place" to "circumstance"
or "state of mind." Kekarainen's gorgeously complex images
convincingly show that the photographic representation of space
is completed in the eye and mind of the viewer."

Detail of above.

Exiting the Met, we motivated our way crosstown via Central Park.

Satchel, corduroy blazer, knit wool tie - vintage
Cashmere scarf - Club Room
Glasses - Bust Out
Shirt - Uniqlo

Midtown Manhattan skyline over Central Park.

Revisiting old haunts.

Hitting 86th and Broadway, we jumped on the 1,
bound for Columbia, where Lucas was lecturing at
4 PM.

Clearly labeled. I appreciate that in a campus.

Waiting around, eating roasted nuts [||] before lecture.

Stephen departed to spend time with an old friend,
David and I sat in on Lucas' lecture, Yoonjoo arrived at
Columbia, and we all linked up for dinner in Ktown at
Kunjip.

SO EXCITED TO FOOD

Yo it is real hard to get D.chen to sit still for a photo.

Dookbaeki bulgolgi, the first time I've had it since the summer in Ilsan.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh yo

Redmango post-dinner. By this point, my stomach was real insistent.

After we walked Yoonjoo & David to the 34th st 1 train
stop, and made an emergency detour to a certain store,
we saw a large crowd gathering in front of Macy's,
where a large section of the street was cordoned off and,
as we discovered, the site of Thanksgiving Day parade
rehearsals.

Eunju, overcome by excitement and curiosity, hopped on
the barricade to peer inquisitively at the young performers.

After saying goodbye to Eunju & sgkim, I kicked it in
Ktown with Karmen for a little longer, then motivated
my way uptown to Columbia, again, where I hung with
my man Andrew and saw Ji Eun for the first time in 4
years, since we all finished studying in 北京 together.

Super on his grind... real talk, I got to Columbia
around 10 PM, and headed to Lucas' apartment
to spend the night around 2 AM... Andrew was
working on his pset the whole time and kept on
working for hours after I left! Homeboy is really on
track to being an academic baller.

Wednesday11.25.2009

Sleeping in, I woke up in time for lunch with
Andrew & Ji Eun at the only Korean place local to
Columbia, Mill.

I wasn't hungry, having eaten about 3 meals' worth
of bulgolgi and rice the night before, but Ji Eun and
Andrew were having none of it... so they loaded me
down with Bibimbap and a couple pieces of kimbap
from Ji Eun's friend Fei Fei. Thanks guys.

After lunch, I linked up with Lucas again to talk some words for a
brief minute, then we kicked it around campus at Columbia.

Hopping on the downtown 1 around 2:30, I hit Grand Central with
2 minutes to spare for the 2:57 to New Haven.

God's timing truly >>> my own.

An honest inquiry

2009-11-17T01:47:00.003-05:00

In short: why do so many people who say that we shouldn't force people to "do good", say we should punish people who "do bad"?

Some musings, hastily thrown together, on a subject that I've been wondering about since the summer, provoked largely by my readings on educational and income disparity. The following is neither exhaustive nor particularly cogent, and is barely logically coherent; it is not intended to be any of the above, but rather merely to verbalize musings, provoke thought, and request further input:

One of the more convincing arguments against positive social welfare policies* that I have been presented, is that the enactment of such policies equates, essentially, to the litigation of morality: making good action compulsory for a society - as a whole and, by extension, as individuals - removes the potential for individual moral action. The argument presumes that it is valuable, if not inherently necessary, to allow individuals room for real moral choice; take, for instance, the case of welfare**.

In such a case, I've heard it argued, the government should not act to provide for unemployed or unemployable individuals, because it should lie on the conscience of every moral actor within the state to do so. For the government to dictate that state funds should be used for the provision of aid to such persons is suboptimal, because, in such a case, the government is now overstepping its bounds: instead of providing its people with a stable framework within which to make ethical decisions, the state is now making those decisions on behalf of the people. Essentially, the argument seems to run, legislating morality reduces the ability of people to make moral choices.

OK, I can ride with that, at least to a certain degree.

My question arises from the fact that, as far as I can tell, there exists a sizable population of those who would use an argument similar to that presented above to argue against positive social welfare policies, but, when confronted with a negative social welfare policy***, seem to believe that thusly legislating morality is unproblematic. For example, I believe (with little evidence beyond the personally anecdotal) that there are many people for whom generous welfare policies are repellent because they compel agents into action without moral choice, who, at the same time, oppose gay marriage, precisely because it is morally wrong.

This seems contradictory to me.

Is it? Is there some fundamental difference between positive legislation of morality and negative legislation? Perhaps gay marriage - or strict gun control, the death penalty, harsh enforcement of Reagan-era drug laws, etc. - presents a threat to the very structure of the rule of law in a way that large numbers of unsupported, unemployed citizens (or, to touch on a hornet's nest: "illegal immigrants") do not; and, as such, should be legislated against in a distinct way, being that one of the necessary components for a stable state be a code of law that supports its own enforcement, rather than being self-undermining. In such a case, I would grudgingly agree that, while suboptimal, the necessity of such negative moral legislation is manifest.

But I don't see this argument for negative moral legislation obtaining, at least not in a way that is clearly distinguished from the argument for the necessity of positive moral legislation.

To sum up: There are people who say that certain aid policies (welfare, Affirmative Action, etc.) are wrong, as giving people support decreases the need for individual agents to take morally praiseworthy action. Of those people, however, many argue that morally proscriptive policies (anti-abortion, outlawing gay marriage, etc.) are necessary. This seems contradictory.

I'm sure that I have friends & readers who have put in thought, and have well-considered insight on this particular issue. Please, your thoughts?

*i.e., those policies that actively work to provide recompense for the unduly disadvantaged, rather than to eliminate the conditions which lead to social inequality (in broad terms: think affirmative action, as opposed to abolishing slavery).

**Note: this is not the only, or even the best, argument against welfare. My intent isn't to pronounce a stance on Welfare-in-concept or the current welfare system, simply to outline a single stance I have seen articulated.

***"Negative," in this case not meaning "bad", but meaning "preventative", as opposed to "positive" meaning "constructive"

YUAG/G-Fid's 21

2009-11-15T22:21:00.003-05:00

Join me, if you would, in the contemplation of a thoroughly busying and yet entirely refreshing week(end).

Wednesday11.11.2009

Ms. Lee Philosophises.

Saturday11.14.2009

My parents arrived in town at high noon; realizing that
they had never visited the Yale University Art Gallery,
I gave them a short tour while we waited for the homey
Capt. Joel Lee to arrive in from UMass.

小狗!

Wave 11; it's always amazing to me to see strength and motion
captured in a static medium. This piece embodies so much of what I
consider to be aesthetically pleasing.

三个小孩儿

Reminds me of an enemy from Chrono Trigger.

Sunday11.12.2009

After a sleepless night of sermon preparation and a long day of
fellowship at church, some of the UCW men and I went out to
celebrate Garrett's 21st by eating sushi until we couldn't talk.

Before starting to eat (you do not want to see after).

The ice cream goes down so smooth, it's not as though
it even occupies alimentary space.

In the words of the waitress, upon our fourth round of ice cream,
"So, basically... you want a whole bunch of ice cream."

Go to Sushi Palace on a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday; on these three
days, they have in-house green tea ice cream that is super fly.

Digging in.

Visions of New Haven

2009-11-13T00:20:00.006-05:00

It's almost exactly midnight, as I ascend the stairs from the chaplain's office, emerging from the stony corridors of the Bingham basement into the chill nip of a late night in late autumn.

Freshmen, bundled in their brought-from-home best estimation of cold-weather garb, march past me in twos and threes down the flagstones from Durfee to Vanderbilt Hall; I turn in the opposite direction, tracing a beeline toward the High Street gate.

My steps - steady, circumscribed - trudge through the crunchy grass. My sneakers sink into mounds of leaves, impeding my footswings; rebelling against their feather-light bondage, I kick up, watching my reverse footprints swirling through the air, past my knees. My steps shorten, grow taller, until I am goose-stepping awkwardly, kicking up phantom soccer balls, watching the remnants of foliage envelop me, a torrent of sensation: crunching, yielding, bits floating into my hair and eyes and between my teeth.

I push through the final mound of leaves on the dark green quad, and I'm laughing to myself, a child blissfully alone in my own head. To my left, a Yale security officer watches me, grinning; I throw up a hand towards him, inviting him in.

He: "I've been wanting to do that all night."

I: "I love the autumn here."

As I pound the red button beside the High Street gate - a button that was not here when I arrived in this city - and the magnetic gate clicks unlocked, I chance on the uncomfortable realization that this is my last autumn in this city. As I pass through the quietly chilled night, I consider briefly the fleeting thought that I could call my friends, other church members, invite them to Old Campus, to laugh with me and throw the brown and red snowflakes of autumn at one another in large, embracing armfuls.

It's about five minutes after midnight, though, on a late night in late autumn; I tell myself, it would be unkind to bestir those whose time is better or necessarily spent elsewhere. Not to mention, I've been away from home for exactly twenty four hours, and I'm looking forward to sitting on my futon, drinking some orange soda, and watching downloaded TV shows. I trudge home through the flat streets.

That said, I am very glad that I can be a child, truly a child as even perhaps I never was in my younger years, kicking up my heels, stomping through the leaves.

A thought

2009-11-07T08:57:00.008-05:00

Arrogance has been on my mind a lot, recently.

I've been perusing some of the writings of Canadian Skeptic James Randi, listening to recordings of the aggressive Atheist debate of Richard Dawkins, and reading through weblogs self-identified with the freethought and Brights movements, in addition to exploring conversation with quite radically anti-religious persons (dialogue being altogether too bilateral a label for what I've experienced).

The standard rhetorical aesthetic of such fora of discussion seem to be a self-righteous anti-religiosity; transcending the boundaries of cheerily areligious belief, the new wave in modern atheism seems to have a bitterly antagonistic bent towards religion, a condescending, sneering sort of spite directed towards the faithful. In such systems, characterizations of theist beliefs often involves words and phrases such as the following: "magic," "imaginary friend," "arbitrary," "unfounded," &c.

Such discussions, and their underpinnings, truly sadden me for two reasons: (I) First, and primarily, as one who believes - intimately, personally - in the being of a loving, wonderful, perfectly fulfilling God who has created and does sustain all of existence, it saddens me that there are people who would so decisively and boldly cut away the possibility of a relationship with that loving God. All rhetorical flourishes aside, the loss of an inexhaustible source of infinite care and grace, even if only metaphysically so, seems as though it ought to bring grief in some degree.

For this reason, I don't feel quite the same way for those atheists who renounce God, but do so with a sense of the loss of the sweetness of what could have been: I can empathize with the humanness of loudly pronouncing, God is not; but, whispering, if only he were. But the point of view that I have recently encountered - rare, I think, in my postmodern surroundings - and that which has been grieving me, is the outright arrogant proclamation: God is not, and it's damn finer than if he were!

If God is not truth, but tale, might we at least admit the beauty of the story‽

(II), such discussions do elicit a fair degree of nervousness in myself: how much of such militant and callous opposition to the very concept of God is social karma for the past wrongs of "Christianity" [the sum of Christians-in-name] (or Christianity [the sum of Christians-in-truth, putatively distinct])? Was there an era - or manifold periods? - in Christian history where theologians, being found bearing the greater weight of authority in their respective societies, were found so overbearing, cocky, swaggering in their clerical roles, that they thus disparaged those honest dissenters in their midst?

Do I? Regularly, I'm sure. How often, in my own unthinking stagger through life, have I hurt, damaged, even spited others, and all while proclaiming, in my best Christian guise, to be an earthly representative of the all-loving Heavenly Father? Of course, I've spoken faithful testimony of being a "broken human being," to being a "sinner in constant need of grace". But has my life born witness to these truths? Or has my life reflected a know-it-all, condescending, self-proselytizing wretch content and happy to sow self-glorifying pride?

A thought.

[edit: 3:35 PM] And, to make it explicitly clear: The arrogance to which I'm referring does not fall exclusively within the atheist camp. My attention has been drawn, increasingly, to my own personal arrogance, theological, intellectual, and otherwise in nature, the pervasive reality of which is pretty challenging and self-perception-shattering (or perhaps, better put, is spurring me on towards redrawing my self-perception).

Florida; stay laced.

2009-11-05T22:15:00.004-05:00

There is a long history, within most religious traditions, of voices speaking into (and out of) silence.

This photographic entry finds its position within said storied narrative.

There are others; there are many others, and their stories will be told. But their timeliness is, at the moment, of rather dubious value; as opposed to these pictures, who still find themselves unpickled, fresh.

Wednesday10.28.2009

For the past week (10.26-11.3), I found myself in Sandestin, FL, at
The Navigators' biennial National Collegiate Conference.

I haven't been on the beach since some point vaguely located
within my high school years.

Windswept is rarely an apropos descriptor for my life; here, it
served well.

Jason Macneille's award-winning (really) elephant.

Mammoth, even.

Thursday10.29.2009

Lisa & Leah.

Friday10.30.2009

Ser Landelot.

Mein Doppelgänger, Jason 朱.

Capt. Joelee.

Tuesday11.03.2009

Upon my return to the Northeast (a genuine city skyline? Sight for
sore eyes!), after a lengthy and eventful day of travel, I was
greeted by a plethora of packages awaiting me, desktop.

Among them was my first pair of Creative Recreation kicks, a
complete and utter surprise gift from Mr. John Shen, a true brother
in the faith and in the flyness. A muse, of sorts, in many ways.

Thanks - deep thanks - for the hookup, 哥们儿.

Thursday11.05.2009

My parents' Xmas present arrived early, fresh off the
DHL courier from Karachi, Pakistan. As it's a custom-
made piece, I gave it a quick try-on to ensure that
the measurements had been transmitted properly,
and that I wouldn't have to avail myself of the tailors'
generous - if time-limited - return policy.

No such concerns!

Then back into the closet it was, to mellow and
mature until the coming Christ mass.

Oh My

2009-10-10T02:04:00.007-04:00

For the duration of my senior year at Yale, I drank approximately 3 16-ounce cans of MONSTER Energy Blue (Lo-carb!) per week: two servings, three times a week. In the same way that some have a morning cup of coffee, I would wake up, snap open the top, down a serving, doze off, and then finish off the rest on my way to class. I did so with such regularity that an "energy drink" provided little more than a vague and passing morning flavor, and evoked barely any energetic response in myself.

Since graduating, I can't recall having imbibed a single time.

After a long church event tonight, I decided, upon looking at my timetable for preparing this Sunday's sermon, to buy a can or two, to last me through tonight and tomorrow's work.

Apparently, a year and a half is well more than enough time to completely lose one's tolerance for caffeine, L-Carnitine, Taurine, Ginseng, B Vitamins, and the other assorted ingredients of a Monster Energy Drink.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Edit (2:11 AM): I FEEL SO ALIVE.

Realization

2009-10-05T01:15:00.002-04:00

I've noticed over the past few days that I conclude a lot of conversations/meetings with people by saying "I love you". I don't think I used to do this; this isn't normal.

Is it good?

going down the only road i've ever known

2009-08-31T09:49:00.003-04:00

the last time I woke up, I was in Ilsan, South Korea, at a co-worker's apartment;
the time before that, I was in the south of Beijing, at Paco's apartment.

As this morning dawns, I arise at my parents' house in Delaware; and, tonight, I'll be laying my head to rest at my new apartment in New Haven.

After 77 days in South Korea - 55 days of work - and 7 days' vacation in China, it's time to go back to school.

what will this year be called?

Dénouement

2009-08-21T10:29:00.005-04:00

For the past work week, I've had a steady tension building, a bubbling froth in the pit of my stomach that sends my mind into a joyfully-wound knot. I'm a kid on Christmas Eve.

There's a saying among certain circles of society, memorialized in The Wire as such: "There are only two days you serve in prison: the day you go in, and the day you get out."

My bags are packed: one lies in a co-worker's apartment, awaiting my return to Seoul eight days hence, and another, half-empty, lies open next to my door. My passport, wallet, and ticket information sit, stacked neatly, on my desk. I've long since stripped my bed of its accoutrements, tucked away in the former piece of luggage, and I lie on the comforter provided, alongside the mattress, by my company.

Reflexive soul-searching will seize its own kairos; for now, I'm just chilling out.

I can't remember the last time I felt this roiling anticipation: probably last summer, preparing to leave for China. Of course, this time, there's an additional tool thrown into the machinery: the palpable, albeit slim, chance of China's vigilance in public health abruptly shutting down my hopes of a leisurely week.

And before that? The strongest association which I can provide is from my youth: the hour before arriving at a beloved summer camp, driving our way out of Delaware, stopping in Philadelphia for lunch, approaching on the winding Pennsylvania foothills. Me barbaric with a pent-up boil of preparation, banging on the ceiling of our old Volvo sedan, ecstatic. So.

In approximately 8.5 hours, I fly out to Beijing; God willing, I'll make it through customs with no hold-up and emerge on the other side of my 7 days off before returning to the States. I've heard that China has started blocking blogspot; if so, communication may be infrequent. So, for now

I lay me down to sleep

Visions of Seoul II

2009-08-17T21:02:00.005-04:00

Signs that the end is near:

During my work hours, I have begun to refer to myself - and request that my students follow suit - by an ever-lengthening series of esoteric pseudonyms, of increasing complexity.

At first, it started by requesting that my students refer to me as "J-dogg"; after which, it was followed by "the J-dizzle". Today, I called myself "Big Teacher J".

Extrapolating, by Friday, I will have assumed an entirely new alter ego.

Additionally, I have begun referring to myself in the third person. I.e. "You know the J-dogg don't play like that." "Yall now flying with the big J-dizzle, a/k/a Big Teacher J."

Edit (7:28 PM): I thought of another one this afternoon.

They can also call me "The J Train".

Edit (Friday, August 21): Plan succeeded admirably. Students have taken to calling me J-dogg. One student even wrote it in his essay.

BUSTOUT Summer 2009 Line 2

2009-08-16T17:30:00.001-04:00

my homeboys in 北京 stay cooking up the flyest gear I've ever seen. After the recent launch of BUSTOUT Girl, they are back at it with a full line of tees and some new rock-inspired corduroy pants.

On a personal note: these days, I've been seeing my personal taste in fashion mature a little bit: I'm more likely to head towards a nearby Uniqlo or wear something from Staple Design, A.P.C., or Band of Outsiders if I want to get fresh. But if I'm in the mood to wear something a little looser and more streetwise, more and more my staples - apart from the occasional piece of early-2000s BAPE - are all coming from the BUSTOUT collection.

God willing, I'll be kicking it in Beijing in about a week, and picking up every piece of the following... and more...

Summer 2009 drop 2: Tees

Summer 2009 drop 2: pants

Summer 2009 drop 2: caps

Modelled by part-time Jay Chou impersonator and full-
time store staff JACKAL.

BUSTOUT 2009 drop 2: BUSTOUT GIRL

for the ladies down with the movement.

BUSTOUT: Street We Are... international?

these happy golden days

2009-08-16T07:02:00.001-04:00

As I lazed about my Korean apartment, preparing for the final week of my summer employment, I realized, abruptly, that I yet have, stewing at the bottom of my to-do list, forgotten in the piles of half-written blog posts and abortively discursive discourse, the last few weeks' worth of pictures from the Spring semester.

Oops.

Tuesday05.19.2009

Wherein Emily Chen and I ramble around New Haven.

The sun glared down on us so reprovingly that neither
of us could muster the indecency to gaze back,
apparently.

Yale's famed Peabody Museum - home base and patron
institution of seminal paleontologist O.C. Marsh - is one
of the few major sights around New Haven to which I
had never previously addressed myself. Finding
ourselves nearby, Emily and I had a look in.

This one was for Ray.

Wednesday05.20.2009

SBTG Dunk SB Lows.

At lunch with a friend, he mentioned his work on
the Commencement Issue of the YDN; seeing that I
had effectively skipped half of my own
Commencement Week festivities, I never had the
chance to peruse the 2008 edition. The archives of
the YDN, however, are voluminous, and easily
called-upon when a YDN staffer is at hand.

Thanks D!

Congratulations Nancy (and Max)!

Thursday05.21.2009

K and Mo were hanging out, so, you know.

Like a kangaroo.

My Tiffany Dunk SB Lows matched K's... t-shirt
apron hybrid?

Forlorn, waiting for Ben, in a cape we scavenged.

The guys and gals (and me).

Ms. Bryan dropped by Esther's room for a minute.

Then we all played: tag and hide and go seek, on Old
Campus, in the dark, crashing into rows of neatly-
arranged chairs; ultimate frisbee on Cross Campus.

Friday05.22.2009

I was in Erin, Mieka, and Lillian's room
catching up with Erin and hanging out.

This insect was HUGE.

At the time, I described it as a dragon-moth,
or perhaps a raptor hybrid. I still stick to my
description.

Saturday05.23.2009

Steve was in town, and wanted to get a haircut; Ray and
I tagged along, and Ray followed suit.

Chinese barbers ftw.

Sunday05.24.2009

Dinner with a group of the charming men and women of
Living Water (and friend).

D.Tam looking fly

Ethiopian

Sunday05.25.2009

Graduation 2009!

As I waited for the ceremonies to start, I ran into not
one, but two of my former suitemates: Charlie and
Rhasaan had shown up to join the proceedings for the
day.

Sandi and I linked up for a large amount of the day's
proceedings.

EGO86 tag, Davenport courtyard, New Haven, CT.
I hadn't even remembered this was there...

Mr. Nicholas Pierson.

Mr. Wilbur Hu

Ms. Mieka Sanderson

Mr. Lucas Kwong.

Ms. Joshu I Sky

The family Sky.

For the past few years, after each of the individual
Residential College ceremonies wrap up, a group of
graduates, alumni, and friends gather together at the
Women's Table, on the Rose Walk, for a final send-off.

Ms. Anne Lucinda Lee.

Mr. Eric Klein and Mr. Kyle Gong.

Mr. Jaeyoung Yang and Mr. Joseph Oh.

Monday05.26.2009

The day after graduation, I headed into NYC to spend
the day variously catching up with friends, having my
Korean work visa interview, and so on.

A few of the guys from the Navigators ministry at
UMass-Amherst also needed to do a visa run for their
upcoming summer missions trip to the Philippines, so
they drove into town, parked at my apartment, and
we headed out in a large mass (transit).

Mr. Joel Lee.

The scene on the train.

Tags in Manhattan.

After a quick processing time through the Korean
consulate, Emily Chen - who was also in town,
awaiting her late afternoon flight out to the West
Coast - and I met up in midtown Manhattan.

Tom Sachs' Hello Kitty installation.

Proceeding to Grand Central, we met up with Lucas

Then headed over to Yup's place. man, Yup has some amazing
clothes, and one of the best wardrobe solutions I've ever seen: if you
lack closet space, just make your entire wall your closet.

I want his room some day.

Emily: "TELL ME EVERYTHING"
Lucas and me: "?"
Emily: "AGGGH"

The three of us then motivated our way back to Grand
Central, where Yup joined us to escort Emily onto the
airport shuttle bus.

Last time I'll be seeing this girl for a couple years.

After seeing Emily and Yup off to the airport, Luke and I found
ourselves in a not-uncommon state when we're together: hungry.

We called Steve up and found that he had just finished work; so, we
decided to all head over to Koreatown and grab a fresh Korean
meal, to celebrate my heading to Korea and eating plenty of Korean
food this summer.

My homeboys.

Bibimbap... yo they did it good there.

Best of all, Ms. Taryn Nakamura had just completed
the first day of her summer internship; calling her up,
we discovered that her job site (with the Asian-
American Writers' Workshop) was literally across the
street from the restaurant at which we were located.

Banchan, with the mad taste.

Afterward, pinkberry.

Lucas, despairing of ever having his name spelled correctly at a fast
food location.
(label reads: LUCS)

Parting ways, Lucas headed up to Columbia, Taryn to
her summer sublet, and Stephen and myself to his
place in the pj's.

After kicking it with Stephen for a while, I got a text
from the UMass boys that said they were with our
boy Landon (of the NYU navigators), and headed
uptown for the night. I made haste and hit the
subway system, meeting up with them on a shady
platform around midnight. By 12:30, we were safely
ensconced in Harlem House.

Look carefully.

Tuesday05.27.2009

I try.

Got the ill flavors (Soho, NYC)

Homeboy Dallas got me linked up via twitter with his girl sooey, a
fellow young, fly, trend-setting 2nd-Generation Asian-American
intellect. Knowing that we were both in the area, I hollered at
homegirl to connect, politic, ditto.

Note Sooey has the lime nail polish...

...matching her AM95 retro's in the OG colorway.

Sister got it made.

APC spring peacoat

2009-08-13T06:48:00.006-04:00

A.P.C. Fall/Winter 2008

Traditional double-breasted, railroad striped peacoat. Two front straight pockets, one interior.

-73% cotton / 27% linen.
-Fully lined: 100% cotton.

Personal reflections on Chinese America

2009-08-12T13:13:00.009-04:00

A request from a friend taking a summer Ethnic Studies course at school served as the excuse to finally get some thoughts down that I've been hoping to commit to paper ("paper") for a while, now.

Thoughts are scattered, quite randomly arranged, and topics range wildly about. Many thoughts are unsupported, at best, and citations are nonexistent. This is more to have this on record and for those who care to get a stronger sense of my background and current stance on certain issues.

Reading over my thoughts - or, properly speaking, even as I typed them out in more or less stream-of-consciousness flow - I worry that I am myopic. My image of Asian America is gilded and almost universally positive: at least, my first responses to Chinese-American culture is always to assume that the minority has been victimized, is guilt-free, and has taken at most a passive part in the lead-up to the current state of affairs. I acknowledge freely, I think, that Chinese immigrants have been complicit in their own sufferings: but I do not first jump to the domestic abuse epidemic rampant in our communities (and countries of origin).

I tend to lionize the underprivileged and vilify the dominant. This is not wrong, but it is not right: worst of all, it is not true. The causes of current circumstances are manifold, and to simplify it down to Western imperialism (cultural, political, economic, and military) is to discredit my own claims. I worry about this, in the long run: I will have to become far more balanced and willing to critique China, Chinese America, and the Asian milieu if I am to be a credible and caring commentator.

I also have large holes in my discussions of gender. I make assumptions about female roles, rights, responsibilities, and representations (3 cheers for that alliterative streak) that are founded entirely on my male understanding of the female experience and role in society. This is dangerous, and I apologize if I wrongly offend. It's on my list of things to work on.

That said, the text of my response is presented below (cleaned up & edited in brief, most portions of the original text/questions remain):

1. experiences:
a. family traditions/customs/holidays
b. experiencing racism
c. basically, how was it like growing up chinese american?

(attempting to answer the breadth of a-c in one long breath:)

Basically, when I was young, being Chinese-American (which is, I might note, a different term than "American Chinese" or "American of Chinese descent") wasn't something that I thought about at all. There are a few factors that contributed to this: my parents were second- (or greater) generation, already, being born in Southeast Asia to families that had previously immigrated from China, so I was at least two degrees separated, on both sides, from direct ties to Chinese culture and heritage. I knew, on a fairly abstract level, that there was something tying my past to "China" - but that word, "China", referenced an empty concept, for me. Apart from Geography Bee-level details - the Yellow River, the Yangtze, Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, etc. - I had no knowledge of China, and definitely no personal connection. The only glimpses of Chinese Culture that I received were in our shamefully irregular visits to my Nai nai/奶奶 (father's mother), who lives outside Washington, DC with her second husband (now deceased). There, I got my most transparent hints of the rich culture underlying our family's roots: conversations carried out in incomprehensible tongues; homecooked Chinese food utterly unlike my mother's Western cooking or greasy "Chinese" takeout; red envelopes of New Year money (that were, I realized much later, not months late, but simply operating according to a different calendar), watercolors of tumbling Chinese mountains, etc.

In short: our family traditions, customs, and holidays were as utterly middle-class, suburban American as one can get: dressing up for Easter Sunday, stockings on the mantle & gifts under the Christmas tree, ice cream cakes at birthday parties.

Which is why, I think, for me, racism was always a little bit of a surprise. After all, the far greater part of my upbringing was indistinguishable from your average American Dream: in the middle of the upper-middle-class, attending a Protestant church and Sunday School every weekend, straight-A report card, etc. But a few incidents stick out, in particular:

While growing ever-more-increasingly Westernized, my parents, throughout my youth, continued to frequent the local Asian Groceries (albeit more and more infrequently). One of the snacks they would occasionally purchase there - and which I found not so much tasty as intriguing - was made of this sort of cheeto-like material; except, instead of being coated in "cheese" and "cheese" flavoring, it tasted like shrimp. One time, during a kindergarden lunch, I made the mistake of bringing - or my mom made the mistake of packing, in the best of intentions? - a bag of them to school. The White girl with whom I usually traded sandwiches and snack foods turned up her nose at them, declaring them - I'm paraphrasing - "smelly" or "yucky". I must have been 5 or 6; that was, I believe, the first time I had ever been told that something which I considered normal - banal, even - might be Different.

Towards the end of my attendance of that Christian school (I realize, only at this moment, that the reason my parents probably entrusted me to them was that both my mother and father grew up going to Christian schools in Southeast Asia; and they were likely sending me to this school in hopes of my attaining the same education with which they had been bestowed), I recall that I came home one day and casually, after dinner, reading some book about geography or cultures or something of that nature, pulled my already asiatic eyes up into an exaggerated slant, telling my mom: "look. Chinese!" I can still remember her horrified response, the shock with which she realized that this so-called Christian education (I don't blame the church, of course; I do blame the ignorance and idiocy of young children, coupled with the race-blind/PC-disavowing/culturally underinformed nature of many well-intentioned evangelical communities) was actually driving a wedge between her son and her own background (I recently discovered that she had actually been planning, prior to the time she became pregnant with me, to go into law to help out asian-american and immigration issues). Shortly thereafter, for a host of reasons, my parents pulled me out of that school.

Something that's often echoed by various generations and varieties of Asian-Americans is the sentiment of being a "perpetual foreigner": a Japanese-American senator, whose family has been in this country for over 80 years, once remarked that he still continually receives compliments for speaking English "so fluently". As a youth, I too had these jarring encounters: trivial at the time, I brushed them off casually, dismissing them as isolated incidents of ignorance or misinformation. Of course, the fact remains, at 23, and with a far broader range of experiences in the intervening years, I can still remember, vividly, the repeated confusion of being asked by young White children, "So, where are you from?" and the frustration of having to, repeatedly, explain that I was from Illinois - or California - or Delaware. I knew who I was, and where I was from; so why couldn't these other kids? A dilemma emerged: either they were simply stupid and couldn't see the blatantly obvious (which seemed unlikely, given that my American-ness seemed to me overt), or the premises on which I had established my identity, with my internal concept of The Normal American Childhood derived from my own experience, were faulty.

2 & 3. as a chinese american, how do you identify yourself? what does being "chinese american" mean to you

Given the circumstances of my upbringing, and my parents' immigration, I think it wouldn't come as much of a surprise to hear that my view of myself, in my younger years, was basically that line about "diversity" that we were fed back in the day: "We want to be color-blind." I bought into the construal of Ethnicity that said the best way to accept everyone was to "just look at people as people, not as their skin color." So I applied this happily homogenizing view to myself, and those around me, and assumed that our points of view, personal experiences, and inculcated values more or less lined up. The emphasis in those days was definitely more on "American" than on "Chinese".

In recent years, I've been coming to hold a more subtle approach towards regarding my ethnic heritage: without running out the clock (because I definitely could), the basic outline of my thoughts go as such:

The term "Asian-American" is in itself dangerous, because it is an umbrella term for vastly disparate groups: in the same way that pitting inner-city Boston Irish youth with jailed parents against as Upper East Side, trust fund, private school kids is unfair in terms of social neediness, so is judging the children of Hmong, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Filipino refugees against the kids of Chinese, Japanese, and South Korean businessmen, professors, etc. Not to mention that thinking that every Chinese immigrant is privileged, well-educated, and well-behaved - the "Model Minority" myth - is itself damaging in many ways to Chinese-American communities, for a whole variety of deep-seated reasons.

For those of us who identify as "American of Chinese Heritage," there is a fine balance to be struck between that "American" and "...of Chinese Heritage". It's foolish to think that I am Chinese: in China, I might be allowed to call myself a "hua ren" (华人) that is, one of the Han Chinese, but I am not a "zhongguo ren" (中国人) that is, a Chinese person. Culturally, in terms of my fundamental assumptions about the world, I am a product of the West. It's important to point out that I don't harbor unnaturally Sinocentric political sympathies, and I'm not going to be a threat to peace in the American homeland or abroad (well, I oppose American hegemony - but that's for entirely different reasons): it's important to remind myself, and others, of this, because the reality is that many still fall into the mindset of Executive Order 9066 and "Yellow Peril", where any Asiatic face is viewed as a potential defector to the long-left-behind "Motherland." Of course returning to China - or heck, even Asia - gives me a warm feeling. But I have White friends who acquire the same sense of Homecoming upon their return to England, France, or Poland; and there is no forbidding sense of fraternizing with the enemy that lies upon their journeys.

One interesting thing that I have realized is that "Asian America" exists: even as I decry the use of the term, the fact is, whether for right or wrong (I would say more wrong than right), we are seen as a monolithic group. But that makes certain connections possible in the American "melting pot" that otherwise may never occur: a Chinese person in China may never deign to bridge the gap and initiate a friendship with a Japanese individual. But my relationships with my Japanese and Japanese-American friends - heck, even your own parentage, right? - demonstrate that "Asian America" can serve as something of its own melting pot; even if we remain, perhaps, to the side of the rest of the "melting pot" (whether cultural, genetic, or otherwise), at least Asian America has served, it seems, to bridge divides that may not have happened in our mother countries.

There are other thoughts, but these are the ones that first come to mind.

4. how do you think "chinese american" is being represented? by AA? by the public? How accurate are these portrayals?

I think that the public image of Chinese-Americans is problematic, with the blame being distributed all around (though perhaps not equally): Chinese-Americans are at fault for playing into the role of a "Model Minority", passively or actively unwilling to speak out against a dominant and domineering culture, choosing to succeed by means of intellect or behind-the-scenes work instead of through protest and resistence (to generalize largely). Of course, Chinese immigrants' approach to a hostile culture is not to blame: given particular cultural values held by Chinese-Americans, this was the natural, moral, course. And the White media and government is at fault: anti-miscegenation laws, portrayals of the threat of "China Rising," anti-Japanese WWII propaganda (but no propaganda supporting our allies, no pro-Chinese or pro-Korean messages to counteract the inevitable conflation of our three sister cultures), E.O. 9066, all these were designed to Otherize and tokenize Asian peoples, to aggrandize the panic of American businessmen and laborers concerned with increasing competition from across the Pacific. The inherited reminders of these shackles - whether in popular culture or governmental representation - is still evident.

When talking about public, popular, media images of Chinese-Americans, three concepts spring to mind: Kung Fu Master, Exotic Asian Beauty, and Smart Chinaman.

These portrayals are all highly damaging. Exoticism has been dealt with in a lot of gender/ethnic studies literature, but, in brief: to describe someone as "exotic" is to claim that they are attractive because they are not-me: they are the Other. Exotification is objectification and tokenization taken, in many ways, to its height: a person no longer represents a valued individual Self, but instead an alien, unrecognizable, unable-to-be-sympathized-with culture.

Media obsession with Exotic Asian Beauties is particularly disturbing given that much contact between Americans and Asian women was in the form of soldiers interacting with wartime prostitutes during the Korean and Vietnam wars. The stereotypes of the Shy Asian Girl and the Seductive Asian Woman (the "Dragon Lady") conflate into a figure that is deserving of both moral scorn and sexual depredation. This is, of course, a faulty stereotype: it is an incredibly transparent attempt to remove en masse the femininity and womanhood of Asian females, in the same way that Black women were degraded by simultaneously being sexualized and defeminized by becoming the unacknowledged mistresses of slave-owners.

Of course, one subtype of the Exotic Asian Beauty, that deserves particular mention, is the Madame Butterfly: caught up in the wiles and victimized by her brutal countrymen, this woman must be saved by the noble White hero. This stereotype is particularly notable because it implies that the Asians can't be trusted with taking care of their own: whether the next generation, the land, the businesses, the government, or the military, the natives need to be rescued by the strong white Savior. While it's true that Asian - and, yes, particularly Chinese culture - has been incredibly behind in terms of gender parity, and while I am by no means an anti-miscegenist, I do worry about the more or less pervasive idea that an Asian woman's dream is to escape the bonds of her culture and fly away to Western civilization and, apparently, cultural enlightenment.

The Kung Fu Master is, in its own way, a dangerous stereotype. On one hand, it is fairly empowering and masculinizing. The downside of it is that any Chinese-American who shows strength will be associated with the Kung Fu Master. A strong Black man is not automatically compared to Mohammad Ali: but strong Chinese (or even broadly Asian) men will almost inevitably be compared to Bruce Lee. Again, this stereotype - while not necessarily negative - strips the target of his or her individuality, and places them within a narrowly defined role with little room for expansion beyond.

And the Smart Chinaman is the very type of the Model Minority myth: the backhanded insult, the barbed compliment. It can be simultaneously dismissive of individual accomplishment - "Of course you did well on the math test, you asian" - and concealment for more subtle racism - "OK, so maybe Chinese-Americans have some problems, but you guys are doing so well! Look at your college acceptance rates! How can you complain about a couple of movie roles and some jokes on the radio and TV?"

he's a well respected man about town

2009-08-09T10:24:00.005-04:00

How we get down in the K; every weekend, all weekend.

Gabe & Czarina came out to Ilsan for a late afternoon of walking around
and touring Lake Park.

Alex and I met up in Gangnam late one Saturday afternoon for dinner,
coffee, and a discussion lasting long into the night.

Unwilling to be and uninterested in eating alone, I invited Gabe, Michelle,
and Sungwon along for Korean Chinese food (as opposed to Chinese
Chinese food); and they, natives of Ilsan, wound up seeing the Lake Park
fountain show for the first time (my nth, for arbitrarily high integer n).

After the last day of their summer SAT courses, we
took sticker photos.

I am mad ulzzang in this joint

And today, with Jean and Pauline, after church, on our way to lunch at a
local chicken place, before heading out to gyeongbokgung for some
sightseeing and a museum visit.

In hindsight comparison, I realize that the spot at which we took today's
photograph is identical the the spot at which Alex and I, weeks before,
took ours.

2 more weeks of summer work. In 13 days, I'll be asleep in 北京...

Let the countdown to journeys commence

Reflection on Mulan (pun intended)

2009-08-07T14:03:00.006-04:00

I don't remember much about the summer that Mulan, Disney's 36th animated feature film, was released to theaters. Wikipedia (the most accurate source of information in the world, and my go-to facts checker) indicates that it must have been the summer of 1998, when I was 12 years old.

I remember that my family - dad, sister, me, and perhaps my mother - went to watch the film together in a small cineplex, during a summer vacation spent in Orlando, Florida, one of a small handful of favorite family destinations (along with Williamsburg, VA and the Poconos). Emerging from our dark A/C-cooled haven 87 minutes (plus previews) later, I charged out energetic and hyper - not an uncommon state for the 12-year-old me - and, naturally, my 9-year-old sister found that energy infectious.

That my younger self left a Disney movie with an excess of high spirits was little surprise, and I can't recall ever since sparing a second thought in analyzing that response. However, in light of my recent reflections on portrayals of Asian-Americans in popular media, plus a spate of personally-mandated viewings of selected minority filmmakers' works, I decided to take Mulan for a second spin, possibly (if memory serves) my first full viewing since that humid Florida midafternoon.

Watching the film, I'm struck by an uncanny déjà vu, as were I communing with my 12-year-old self. Of course, I'm quite the sophisticate now: at the time, I knew virtually nothing about China/中国 (now 2 summers' experience and frequent return trips), could speak no words of Mandarin/普通话 (8 semesters' study), had never studied kungfu/功夫 (6 years). But there is still something of the chubby, bookish 12-year-old Chinese-American boy in me that watches this film and marvels at it.

At the time, I had no lexicon with which to articulate my experience of the film, and so I relegated it to the same continuum as all other pop culture phenomena with which I had sated my indiscriminate whims: located at a point, indistinct, between my parents' collection of early-80s TIME/LIFE magazines (low interest, high availability) and my budding STAR WARS/Tolkien fanboyism (high interest, low pre-Internet re-release/film adaptation availability). I had no experience within which to locate the film's effect on me, simply because it was, at the time, pioneering for me: apart from the occasional visit from relatives, or yearly Christmas visits to the grandparents' in DC, my parents, sister, and I were the extent of Chinese America to me. Apart from a single hardcover volume describing contemporary (1995!) life in China (well-worn out of interest, with a rough red fabric cover under the dust jacket), for all I knew, we were the extent of Chinese.

Now, flicking through the half-familiar, hazily-remembered scenes of the film, I'm amazed by it on so many more levels*: the colors redolent of the Chinese countryside (glimpsed in my sojourns to 西安, 河北, 广东, and the like); a character sighing with the distinctly Eastern "Ai! /哎！" phoneme instead of the Western "Oh! / 哦"; the food portrayed - rice porridge (粥), Chinese noodles (面), still staples of Chinese food/中菜. And, most of all, the distinct, plastic framework of the Disney Fairytale (as opposed to a Fairy-story) fleshed out with Chinese faces and Asian voices: the Handsome Prince, instead of a wavy-locked blondie with light eyes, an almond-eyed, black-haired "Captain Shang"; the Model Father cast in a model not entirely unresembling my own paternal figure (albeit a far more svelte and, perhaps, picturesque figure).

I can only imagine the twofold impact on the psyche of young Asian-American girls: the dual revelation that a woman could be both Asian and, without renouncing her culture, a Disney Princess (the latter being, admittedly, a dubious and debatable distinction among gender critiques); and that her handsome prince could be an Asian male (yes, I know this statement can be problematized; humor me).

I am not now who I was then; but still, tonight's viewing of Mulan has reaffirmed for me - and this time, in a primarily affective manner - the importance of strongly positive portrayals of Asian-Americans (and, in general, minorities) in popular culture and the media. Eleven years after my first viewing of Mulan, watching this film still causes emotions to stir: the sight of Real Characters - not background characters, not secondary characters, not 2-dimensional jump-kicking, med-school-graduating, lab-coat-wearing ciphers - that look like my family and me? Astounding!

And how can it be that, in the intervening years, I have still not seen anything so well-produced, well-promoted, and ethnically true to itself (with little-to-no yellowface!)? If even Disney could get it right in the late 90s, how is it that another similar production has yet to surface? When the day comes - God help us - when I have a young daughter, or son, to what will I turn for aid when teaching my child to be proud and grateful for her, or his, features, family, and culture**?

*not least of which is that several members of the cast are related to one another through the network of the highly respected East West Players, the seminal Asian-American theater ensemble.
**I am aware of, and incredibly grateful for, the Ni Hao, Kai-Lan (你好，凯兰) series currently airing on Nickelodeon, a Chinese-American version of the similarly bicultural Dora the Explorer. I saw its content briefly at a friend's house, and was astounded at the extent of the multiethnic programming now available to her daughter, which I could neither have imagined nor hoped for as a youngster.

Regarding Judaism and Israel

2009-08-04T10:51:00.004-04:00

A quick thought, prompted by an exchange with a college friend, following an earlier (if not the earliest) post on hyphenated-Americans, along with beginning to watch (a process that will likely take a substantial amount of time) Spielburg's modern classic Schindler's List:

Whenever discourse includes a discussion of the Jewish people, it is vital that we separate the Jewish people and the modern nation of Israel. It is perilously easy to conflate (a) disagreement with the actions of the Jewish state in the geopolitical landscape and (b) Anti-Semitism. This is a form of an ad hominem, but one which seems to be more insidiously prevalent.

That's how it seems to me, anyways. Am I wrong, and (a) reduces to (b)? I strongly don't think so, but am open to arguments in the positive.

The question; and a thought.

2009-08-03T14:34:00.004-04:00

The Question

After a respectable (or thereabouts) deal of reading and thought (particularly reflecting on Frank Chin's repeated critiques of Maxine Hong Kingston), this is the question that presents itself:

How to be American without being White? How to be "of Chinese descent" without slipping into reactionist sinocentrism?

Of course the cultural inheritance of The West isn't to be lightly discarded or vilified, nor is the East (or even the immigrant experience) to be mindlessly embraced and valued. The answers' typeface is far from black-and-white. But among shades of grey (not shades of greige), where does one alight?

(Hint: God is the answer. [No, this is not just a flip answer; Yes, this is still a Christian, and not only ethnic theory, blog, appearances to the contrary])

The Thought
That said, another thought occurs to me at the moment (A few minutes ago, I jokingly told a friend that tonight was my Asian-American Film Studies night): while I have previously been a proponent of the narrative-as-description(e.g., NWA's Straight Outta Compton can be justified as a descriptive, not prescriptive, outline - "not a glorification, but a presentation"), I am increasingly understanding of the need to present balanced-but-idealized portrayals in the media, serving the function of a corrective to unbalanced and two-dimensional portraits of Americans of Asian/Pacific Islander descent.

I had a fairly strong and disconcerting response to viewing, Monday night, Justin Lin's modern Asian-American crime drama Better Luck Tomorrow: there is a scene in the film, in a backyard party, where the core group of four Asian-American protagonists (portrayed as and by a varied group of Asian-American males) confront a group of White antagonists. After a brief fistfight, instigated by implicitly racial (but only indirectly racist) comments, one of the Asian-American gang pulls a gun on the lead antagonist. The subsequent beating of the White varsity athlete - leaving him bruised and bloodied, but not permanently physically harmed - both signals the core group's increasingly rapid descent into crime and materialistic excess, and foreshadows the nadir of the film, where a similar beating takes place: this time, against a spoiled Korean-American private-school kid; and this time, to the death (based on an actual incident in early-90s Southern California).

What disturbed me about my response was that, in both cases, Lim took care to portray the Asian-American protagonists as complex, well-rounded characters: morally speaking, they were on neither the high nor low ground. In both cases, there were senses of moral indignation and vindication ("getting back" at the White bullies; retaliating against the rich prep school kid who treats his girl like dirt), and also a sense of excess and transgressed boundaries.

However carefully-laid-out the mores of the film, my responses were affectively discrepant with my moral construals of the situations, and I have little choice but to admit that the distinction was likely simply because of the race of the tragic protagonists: whereas I would unhesitatingly condemn the actions in abstract, the fact that violence originating from Asian-American sources, especially against a Caucasian figure, is contradictory to my construal of the stereotype of expected Model Minority behavior (albeit a malformed and, in fact, highly inaccurate stereotype) seemed to serve as justification for my emotional consent towards the action.

This is, I willingly and mournfully agree, evidence of a shamefully akrasic mental process, the ramifications of which I'm concerned, especially regarding my vocation as a minister, a profession part of the call to which is love for the Other above the Self, love for all facets of God-created diversity, and striving on behalf of reconciliation, healing, and understanding (Gal. 3:26-29, among others). However, it is not, I would guess, a drastically atypical response to such media depicting violence from an oppressed (or, more often, nowadays, suppressed) minority directed towards the dominant majority.

One thing that I always wondered, watching the incredible HBO series The Wire, a bastion of verisimilitude and narrative-as-depiction-of-reality, was how so many Black voices (not only, or even particularly often, academic Black voices, but definitely a predominance of street voices, as seen anywhere from nahright.com to the Smoking Section) could willingly applaud explicitly villainous figures, or at least what seemed to me at the time to be: the drug lords (Marlo, Stringer, Avon), shooters (Snoop, Christ Partlow, etc.), and other Baltimore inner-city hood figures (the more complex morality of characters such as Omar Little, Bubbles, etc., is of course less cut-and-dry).

Of course, what I didn't understand at the time, on a subjective level (and am now only beginning to scratch the surface of, as I begin to analyze my personal response to depictions of violence by the oppressed), is that the characters are not usually being lauded for their actions: their actions are the signifiers of a larger motivation, that is, defying power and breaking stereotype. The problem is that reactive stereotypes - the clever, tactical, chess-piece-moving crime lord as a response to the dumb, happy, bumbling Sambo - are also a system of entrapment and limitation for minorities: we sketch out extremes, but fill in no grays, leaving room for the Huxtables and the Barksdales, but fewer and fewer Redd Foxxes in between [note: by "Redd Foxx," I meant, a sympathetically- and humanely-portrayed member of the honest lower class, i.e. in Sanford & Son. Not quite sure if this was too opaque a reference.].

So, another question: where do we locate the line between audience discernment and filmmaker's discretion? Certainly the filmmaker should feel at liberty to create Art: but, and this is a topic on which I've touched before (specifically, in my senior Philosophy thesis), what is the intersection between Morally Good Work and Good Art? In that previous work, I strongly advocated for the imposition of moral sanctions on a work of art (humor, in that case), due to both a priori and a posteriori factors that seem to fall in favor of morality being a determining factor for the quality of art.

But the question then becomes one of reasonable doubt, or burden of proof: does the filmmaker (or rapper, other musician, artist, etc.) presume an audience comprised of the Lowest Common (discerning) Denominator, and simply create art that is unabashedly moralizing? In such cases, films become preachy, and subtlety is specifized out of the equation.

But the alternative seems more and more distasteful: choices of presentation content and form are, implicitly, choices to condone audiences' viewing of particular material (for this reason, I recently started but could not finish both Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho [novel] and Jody Hill's Observe and Report [film]). Previously, I held to a reasonably extremely high view of individual volition: I acknowledged the real occurrence of akrasic mind states, but did not pragmatically concern myself over them. More and more, I regret this: both personally, discovering the truth of the saying that "once seen, you cannot un-see" certain materials; and pragmatically, in terms of furthering social progress and harmony, realizing (as I did when watching Better Luck...) that portrayals of immoral or unconscionable behavior, even when within the framework of a largely critical work, have the potential to grasp the imagination in a much stronger net than I had previously wanted to believe.

Of course, the potential remains: I may merely be particularly weak-minded, an outsider. I am familiar with the major arguments: kids know the difference between DOOM and the halls of their High School, and killing a few hundred digital representations in GTA IV won't lead anyone to the slaughterhouse. In fact, proponents of the gaming industry argue, such artificial violence, far from promoting violence, actually helps those in whom rage and anger have built up to let off some steam, destressing and potentially averting a future tragedy.

Previously, I was highly sympathetic to such claims; in fact, I agreed (as do I still now, though with greater qualification) that freedom of speech was a paramount right. But, as recent developments in the video gaming world have shown, freedom of speech, as with any other freedom, can be abused, not for the sake of art, but for the sake of commerce: in such a case, use of freedom does, I increasingly believe, actually constitute abuse or exploitation of speech, leading to negative social repercussions and, ultimately, indirect disenfranchisement of or disconnection from the Other (whether Otherization occurs by race, gender, or simple emotional distance). That such depictions constitute a legal problem, as statutes currently stand, is highly unlikely, I assume; still, my concern is not with the present legality, but rather the present ethics of the situation and, based on an increasing understanding of the ethical landscape, future policy decisions.

Several other areas remain to be addressed. Among them: a persistent question, so far as I understand, in Asian-American Film Studies is the pragmatic response to limited roles for Asian-American actors: marginalized as "wimpy businessmen... or villains with balls", several Asian-American actors have chosen to play the "villains with balls" (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, The Slanted Screen). It's difficult to blame them; but it's also easy to be troubled by this response, on both sides of the racial divide (Us and Other). The Mortal Kombat villain Shang Tsung is, while not emasculated, possessor of a twisted and villainous strength: it is easy to see in him the same archetype as a Stringer Bell or Avon Barksdale, wealthy, organized, manipulative boogeymen. The choice (and I pray it is a false dichotomy) presented to Asian-American actors seems to be marginalization or villainization: is it a wonder that many chose to be villainized?

And of course, one doesn't have to look far to see why an Asian-American presence was Othered and, subsequently, villainized: the widely-documented phenomenon of Yellow Peril was a racial agenda explicitly furthered by the spread of anti-miscegenation laws in direct response to (among other factors) a fear of competition by the Other.

As a friend commented on one of my several earlier posts, the point is not to find a scapegoat: White American dominance, Asian American complicity, and industry/industrial greed have definitely all played key roles in bringing the place of Asian-Americans in the media to their contemporary position. The point is, however, to find the roots of a pernicious construal of an entire section of American society, to see how it insinuated itself into wider American culture, and to find a healthy, healing, reconciliatory means of mutual affirmation and support.

History lesson II: History lessons in paradise

2009-07-29T13:50:00.001-04:00

"The cartoon was made during World War II, and reflects the United States' attitude towards one of its main enemies at the time, the Empire of Japan. In the cartoon, Bugs Bunny lands on an island in the Pacific and is pitted against a group of highly racially-stereotyped Japanese soldiers.

"Bugs shows no mercy against the Japanese soldiers, greeting them with several racial slurs such as "monkey face" and "slant eyes", making short work of a large sumo wrestler, and bombing most of the Japanese army using various explosives, including grenades hidden in ice cream bars. The cartoon's title is a play on the verb "nip" as in "bite" and "Nip", a then-widely used slur for Japanese people, based on the fact that the Japanese word for "Japan" is "Nippon." - Wikipedia: Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips. Original footage here.

One of The Censored Eleven.

More on Affirmative Action

2009-07-29T10:49:00.007-04:00

Perusing the Wikipedia (there go any pretensions of scholarly rigor) article for Ward Connerly, I came across the following quote from Connerly, founder of the American Civil Rights Institute and, famously, anti-Affirmative-Action activist and campaigner:

"Because we have developed this notion of women and minorities being so disadvantaged and we have to help them... we have, in many cases, twisted the thing so that it's no longer a case of equal opportunity. It's a case of putting a fist on the scale."

Perhaps, Mr. Connerly. But when there is already the accumulation of generations and centuries of elite male privilege tipping down the other side of the educational scale, leaning a fist on this side is the least one might do in presenting a sporting chance.

The more I read, the more I realize the question of preextant advantage and Privilege lies near, if not at, the nexus of racial and gender activism: we all agree that the scales have been historically unbalanced in favor of a certain demographic. But what ramifications does this bias carry into the modern era? Depending on the answer to this question, continued attempts to rectify the mistakes of the past may either be an anachronistic oversight or an absolute prerequisite for continued progress in racial reconciliation.

-For added fun (think of this as the DVD extra), Connerly on the effects of the lack of an Affirmative Action policy (Sept. 2003): "I don't care whether they are segregated or not… kids need to be learning, and I place more value on these kids getting educated than I do on whether we have some racial balancing or not. [Emphasis mine]"

"Racism isn't 'stupid'".

2009-07-28T05:14:00.010-04:00

Abstract: An overly broad construal of racist actions leads to the belief that stupidity plays no role in racist behavior. While I concur that some, if not most, racists are so simply by virtue of malicious hatred or immorality, there also exist some unwilling racists. For the latter group, education and knowledge actually serves as an efficacious (if not perfectly so) corrective.

Harry Allen (the original "Media Assassin" and affiliate of one of the greatest hip-hop crews of all time) recently made an intriguing point on his blog. In a recent post discussing President Obama's quasi-but-not-really-an-apologetic public statement regarding the recent Skip Gates incident in Cambridge (if you haven't already heard of it, which I'm sure most of you have by now, take a look first), Allen makes the statement,

"[this is] one of the most frequently stated falsehoods about race: That people who commit racist acts are stupid."

Allen makes the point - and it is a valid one - that discussions of racism are often couched in the language of ignorance, the specious implication being that racists are not bad people, they are merely mis- or uninformed.

Allen is right, but he is also wrong: it all depends on the specific definition of racism under which one is operating. In the same way that it is wrong to talk about oppressed or minority populations as monolithic, it is inaccurate to describe all racists as similarly motivated. Racism can - and often does - arise from blatant spite or dislike of the Other. However, to entirely rule out ignorance as a contributing factor is to oversimplify the discussion (which already bears the potential for further complication by simply pointing out that actions can stem from multiple motivations).

"Why would people believe that the race system... works through “ignorance”?"

Professor Jerry Kang, in his 1993 Harvard Law Review publication, Racial Violence against Asian Americans, makes the point that there are two kinds of construals of Others that result in racially-motivated violence against them: one is an instrumental conception, and one is a moral conception. Instrumentally speaking, violence against minorities works because minorities are less likely to have in their power the means to strike back against an oppressive majority (or, heck, as in the case of Apartheid South Africa, occupied China, modern-day North Korea, an oppressed majority against an oppressive minority).

In such cases, the reasons for racist actions are simple: oppressed people are easy to exploit. This is precisely the cases that Allen is presenting to his reader: cases in which, even despite the realization of the victim's humanity, it is simply easier to continue victimizing the subjugated. I fully acknowledge and promote the need for us to realize that these sorts of cases - where a willing, oppressive, majority turns a blind eye to the suffering of a fellow human - are unconscionable and deserve to be ferreted out, pointed out, and prosecuted with the greatest dispatch and vigor.

But there is the alternative case: in which a moral conception is the cause of racism. For example, in the late 1800s, Americans and Europeans would, despite living in China for years, never adopt native garb, the reason being that Asian culture was seen as a corrupting, insidious influence. In this case, the Othering of China by Westerners (or rather, the volitional acceptance of Outsider status by Whites in China) was not solely due to malicious intent (though, I admit, the cocktail of causes and effects is impossible to unmix). Rather, there was, I believe, a genuine misconception that Chinese culture was immoral and deleterious to the health of contemporary American "Protestant" faith-cum-state-values.

In such an environment of ignorance actually leading to distancing and Othering, increased knowledge - decreased ignorance and "stupidity" - can actually have a corrective, curative effect. In the example of China, I point to cases such as that of Hudson Taylor, the British Protestant missionary who, upon arriving in China, "was known for his sensitivity to Chinese culture... . He adopted wearing native Chinese clothing even though this was rare among missionaries of that time...." Not only did he adopt the external signifiers of decreased ignorance, but Taylor also adopted the best interests of Chinese people over the financial interests of his land of origin: "Primarily because of the CIM's campaign against the Opium trade, Taylor has been referred to as one of the most significant Europeans to visit China in the 19th Century." (source [yeah, I used Wikipedia as a source. Take away my diploma.])

Breakthroughs such as Taylor's revelation among British Protestant circles are rare, but effective in counteracting this latter form of racism: racism based not on actual racial dislike, but based on misconceptions of a race. In the same way that the televised dehumanization of the Civil Rights marchers of the 1960s drove the point of universal claims to equal humanity before a nation as never it had been before (and, perhaps, never has since, save for the Rodney King tapes and other such incidents), the insistence upon promoting knowledge as a curative for racism is not incorrect; it simply must be insisted-upon as part of a solution for racism, rather than part and parcel. It must also be realized that it is only a highly specific kind of knowledge that is efficacious in bringing about this revelation.

In Lee Mun Wah's The Color of Fear, a seminal early-90s film documenting a racial discourse among eight men of varying backgrounds, a breakthrough moment comes when a White man, who has been angrily defending the veracity of his point of view to his Black, Hispanic, and Asian counterparts, sits back in astonishment when he realizes the discrepancy between their shared humanity and the basic inequality of their treatment in society. In that moment, unwilling racism has begun to be dismantled (I emphasize: the process merely began at that step) by the revelation of a certain kind of knowledge: the knowledge of shared humanity.

It is this kind of knowledge that counters the second type of racism: Racism that says, as a fact, we are distinctly, morally, better than they. No, this knowledge will not conquer the first sort of racism, racism born of exploitative malice or willing ignorance and complicitousness. For such brands of perniciousness, no amount of human knowledge will do. But in the case of "unconscious racists," who view other races as subhuman simply because they have never been opened to the possibility of the world being otherwise, such knowledge can actually make a difference.

Allen claims: "No one says this about rude people. No one says, “Rude people are just stupid.” No one would believe such a thing as an explanation for the history of rudeness."
-This quote illustrates precisely Allen's monolithicizing of racist behavior: there is no extant "history of rudeness," for exactly the reason that rudeness is not so easily generalized. Some people are rude, yes, because they are simply ill-humored or apathetic towards the well-being of others.
-But some people are rude for the simple fact of being unaware or unknowledgeable: the White American who doesn't remove his shoes when he enters a Chinese-American house; the inexperienced busboy who accidentally rushes into the wrong side of the restaurant doors; the illiterate American who doesn't realize he is sitting on the Senior-Citizens-Only seat on the Korean subway (i.e., me). In such cases, yes. Rudeness is, in fact, caused by stupidity.

SAT essays...

2009-07-27T14:27:00.005-04:00

From students' essays (reprinted without citation, in order to prevent the possibility of obtaining blame for reasons of being reprinted without permission):

"[Talking about the dangers of pollution]... people will get a skin cancer called cutaneous cancer. Six out of ten scientists said that after 3000 years later, there are no white man or women because of cutaneous cancer."

"Defeated in the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln announced the Declaration of Independence and opened a path to freedom."

pretty much the situation as i hear it

2009-07-27T12:27:00.002-04:00

"''There's a strange kind of infatuation [in South Korea] with North Korea,'' Professor Cha said. ''[South Koreans] see it as, at worst, a decrepit regime, or a crazy uncle in the attic; either way, not very threatening. Many people would argue there is great naïveté in that view.''"

-Man's Bridge To North Korea Is Seen as Link To Espionage, NY Times. Originally published November 5, 2003, available online.

American Dream, Chinese Hero

a new chapter: jasonchu.net

THE TIGER SONS Tape - Online Now!

Vincent Chin. - memorial song

Re: UCW leadership

NEW STICKERS from the homey JP!!!

One of the (Many) Reasons I Like Her

NEW MIXTAPE release - FREE DOWNLOAD & STREAMING

19 songs + 3 bonus tracks, featuring tracks recorded recently in Beijing, China, and over a four-year period from 2006-2010 in New Haven, Connecticut and Newark, Delaware.If you enjoy, please share with your friends on facebook, retweet, etc.

VISVIM x KAWS!!!!

things my gf says IX

#ModelMinority in the LA Times

You're Not Alone (Japan Tsunami 2011 benefit song)

Singing my frustrations... singing my prayers...

things my gf says VIII

things my gf says VII

things my gf says VI

Why do music?

things my gf says V

things my gf says IV

Things my gf says III

NEW MIXTAPE release - FREE DOWNLOAD & STREAMING

Last sneak peek...

Coming very soon.

;)

things my gf says II

things my gf says

Airplanes Remix (live Christmas Night footage)

NEW Grand Master - my version of Lil Wayne's new single

The O

1st track from the NEW STUDIO!! Lyrics + MP3 download

Studio shopping in Beijing.

New video on the way!

New Video: talking with Dallas

FREE mp3 download! D-One & Grand Master - 黑色黄色 (Black & Yellow)

Big ups to my KASY fam!

Quote

On the Road 2: at Home

NEW video on Youtube - Bustout (Intro) + 60

Spitting on East Rock!

NEW Music Video!! Model Minority - Faster

On the road 1 (New York City)

Cookin' up

Coming to America (no Eddie Murphy)

voices

hours in a day

a day in the life

12 hours in

first morning

Still winning

The collection

formspring

flicks around town

test shots

pressin coverage

Kosha Dillz remix contest winner

popularity

Visions of New Haven II

All around the world...

Thoughts on a wintry night

BACK IN THE STUDIO!

More brothers ballin it up

A new beginning.

Complex.com - 50 Most Racist Movies

I Don't Want To Be Racist Against White People.

Repurposed words: Context and Content

An exercise

When Your Heart Stops Beating

truer words

on lies

Avatar thoughts: 2nd pass, post-viewing

Avatar: James Cameron's colonial - racist - fantasy

Harvard-Yale / Korean Food in New York

An honest inquiry

YUAG/G-Fid's 21

Visions of New Haven

A thought

Florida; stay laced.

Oh My

Realization

19 songs + 3 bonus tracks, featuring tracks recorded recently in Beijing, China, and over a four-year period from 2006-2010 in New Haven, Connecticut and Newark, Delaware.

If you enjoy, please share with your friends on facebook, retweet, etc.