Tag: Beatles

Forgetfulness is necessary

In clinical terms: selective memory.

Speak ill not of the dead, for instance.

Auto-biography is another version of selective memory (before actual amnesia).

For me, to see Dow Chemical opens a polymer and acrylic factory in Vietnam, roughly 40 years after Agent Orange got sprayed over the same landscape, is a great example of collective amnesia. Vietnam must be a very forgetful country, or a forgiving and pragmatic one.

Intel, Samsung, Canon all set up shop there. These names are not attached to any controversy we know of.

IBM and Coke got their own black eyes in the past.

But one must move on, travel the globe to seek bed partners never thought possible 40 years ago (I may have repeated what Secretary of State Clinton said in her recent remarks about Vietnam).

The President is in India. I thought I saw in passing his test-driving a nano car.

(In an ironic twist, he is a de facto CEO of GM, checking out a foreign competitor, in this case, Tata).

After India, whose stroke of luck continues after Y2K, the President will take a walk on memory lane: Indonesia, home of volcano and the largest Muslim population on Earth.

One cannot schedule a better get-away from gridlock than this. While things seem to jam up over here, everything explodes over there.

I alluded yesterday about how long it took Detroit to build smaller cars (began with Pinto) . And now, Harley Davidson has made-in-USA parts assembled in India (that way, the nouveaux riche in India and China can join in the chorus of “Born to be wild”. It’s expensive to be wild!

The pendulum finally swings to the opposite : “Small is beautiful” is adopted here in Detroit, and Harley in Mumbai.

“I want to hold your hand”, the Beatles sing. They went to India 40 years ago for R&R. Now the seeds finally took hold here in the West. This time, albeit not reversing “the British invasion“, off shoring to a former British colony via broadband links and Harley parts (tattoo stickers not included).

I wish I can be forgetful on demand. The time calls for it: a healthy dose of amnesia. No context, no frame of reference. Just do it. Do not think too hard and too much. Go with the flow (of information and money).

 

The bookmark of time

Recently I ran into a childhood friend, member of the band.  Almost 40 years in between.

It were as if I found a cartoon book, with a bookmark which landed me right where we had left off.

We could have been like two kids again, with passion for music and all things jr high.

He recently had cancer and miraculously, escaped death until then. An accomplished professional pianist, he  said he would come back to play in Saigon again.

All of a sudden, those tunes and those faces resurfaced. It’s like buying a ticket to a movie house which shows “Back to the future“.

No wonder movies could say more than any other medium: it got sound, image and mood.

The industry often uses yellowish lighting or black-and-white to denote flashback.

If it were a film, my friend and I certainly were in white and blue uniform, band-rehearsing our piece (3 electric guitars and a drum set).

My years in high school were rush rush. We were witnesses to political upheavals, fast social mores and intense clashes between modernity versus migration.

I remember our shirt collar styles. They kept changing during those years, from being pointy, to being round then Beatles‘ no collar.

The neighborhood tailor’s was doing brisk business.

Music was in Hit Parade, and fashion from Paris Match.

Boys and girls wore shirts so tight that they could be body glove. And those white shirts glowed when the disco lighting flashed on them.

My friend wore a wig when played key board for a Rock and Roll band.

He went pro.

(Ironically, he now needs a wig again with cancer and all).

We have so many unfinished “books” and they all are bookmarked.

The day the 7th fleet marines left a bin at the feet of the gangplank for refugees to drop their weapons before boarding, I also left many bookmarked relationships behind as well.

We call it legacy now. Just a flashback now and then. But one has to move on.

Each day is a new day. New “social network” relationship and connection to be established.

New way of collaboration.

But those memories stay there like books left on the shelves.

With bookmarks, for easy search.

My friend and I opened it right where we left off.

And in my mind, I could still see him with hair, 40 years younger, and a smile that was indelible.

Cancer or no cancer, our camaraderie sticks. Members of the band. Collaboration. Same beat, same tempo.

Many but one. Music dictates. In our case, it was Apache, by the Shadows. Got to go….to Youtube. Try it, you’ll like it.

Maybe it will land you where your own bookmarks were. Even first love, which melts away a hardened heart.

As of this edit, he passed away without another chance to play they Hyatt’s piano in Saigon. But memory of that brief encounter did bring closure to our chapter. Albeit short book.