Vinh Hua

*nota bene* this was written on the night of the 26th.

soundtrack to this blogpost is the constant hum of a saint marks inn air conditioner, the murmuring of organizers going about their diabolical plotting and the incessant chatter of fingers on keyboards.

yes… i am once again in “the event room,” that magical space where staff folks get together to deal with all the last minute crises that inevitably arise with any major event. so even though i swore i wouldn’t be in “the event room” ever again… c’est le vie.

tomorrow i do my last performance before i get on the road. hay qua, the biggest gathering of young vietnamese american folks that new york city has probably ever seen. whoa doggy.

i find myself in the room ‘cuz i ceded my apartment to the vagaries of munchkins. jeebus.

yes, this sounds a little ridiculous, but that’s the mood i’m in.

if you’re not from the city, yall should know we had a crazy storm period today. literally, this one hour of super rain and sleet and wind. tempest and maelstrom, chaos and rapture.

i got caught out by the flash storm when i was walking to jits… wait, let me set the scene.

imagine dear reader, your resident mohawk headed poet boy flip flopping down the street with bright yellow glasses and a black pop-obama t-shirt. it’s rush hour in the middle of midtown, so there’s crowds, of tourists and haggard looking business folk, the homeless and teenagers looking for a bargain. all of a sudden, the heavens open up, as if god had decreed that there’d be maelstrom. and at that exact moment, ‘that auld triangle’ by the dropkick murphys comes on my ipod.

as folks ran off as quick as they could to get under cover, i was struck by some crazy out of body force and start belting out the lyrics as the beads of rain and soon the pellets of sleet started raining down, harder and harder. the storm moved and danced with the sound of my voice, crescendo’ing as i did.

in that moment, i believed in magic again. the wyld and the weird, the strange and the divine.

there’s something about just being totally lost in the storm, singing and laughing and belting out the perfect punk song that is so utterly amazing.

i don’t know. i guess…

there is a fae part of me. that wild part that too often does things that i regret. those moments that i lose all pretense of control. les face it. i can be a control freak sometimes, always worrying about what’s going to happen next and how much of an ability i have to organize and contain any issues.

but that part of me, that i both love and hate, it thrives on chaos. too often it gets me through the rough times by riding roughshod. but there isn’t joy in the use, the use it puts me to and that i put it to. there’s a mutually assured destruction there.

so to be perfectly in the moment and to be perfectly in synch with that part of myself was…

beyond words or comprehension or articulation. all i know is that i wish i could share it with all of you.

oh and the hay qua post coming. with comments on kollaboration and what turned out to be one of the shittiest and most amazing nights of my life. such are the vagaries of city living.

living is waking up and realizing you are glad to pay the price rather than regretting you never gambled at all.

soundtrack to this blogpost will be the decemberists. because they are dope. because colin meloy is a lyrical god. because legionnaire’s lament is pretty much one of my favoritest songs ever. and finally because any band that has the balls to put together a prog rock opera based on british folk tales is fucking gangster. and yes, i know this is an improper use of gangster… but goddamn.

boston. the bosom from which i arose large headed, wide eyed and drunkenly reeling. you can never go home… that’s the truth, ‘cuz as long as you leave for any significant amount of time, the world changes around, you change and nothing is quite as it was. but sometimes, you catch glimpses of what it once was, the moments where you are happily back in some childhood place, imagined or otherwise.

it is appropriate enough that i feel this way getting smashed playing flip-cup with a bunch of boston irishmen. oh alcohol. oh dorchester day, ridiculous holiday celebrating the day an independent municipality was taken over by boston. oh neighborhood pride, cause of so many problems, but so comforting nevertheless. there really is a great feeling of safety and simple appreciation when you see the strength of feeling that people have for a neighborhood. fuck the problematics that are inherent in that pride… let me enjoy the phenomenon.

so i’m here, boston for the next week or so. seeing my family, watching my sister grad, getting my shit together before my odd-yssey. the journey only ends when you are back where you started, or so it’s said… so i’ll start it here, the introspection, the appreciation of what makes america american. the art, the culture and most importantly the people.

which is why i saw shepherd fairey’s work at the ICA. i like it quite a lot. the degree of intricacy, the eye to the ironic, the contrasts, both of images and colors, but also of subtle next to bold. yes, his work eventually gets old with a quickness. yes, he does the same shit over and over again. but hey man, you can be a little unoriginal when you’re as big of a street artist as he is.

obey.

i will be posting more as time goes on. more on my journey, more on the art project i’m doing for it. i just wanted to post this so you know i’m alive, well, and getting drunk still.

life is a fight, and even the fuckups gotta a puncher’s chance long as they keep on swinging.