Free time. Doesn't seem to be a lot of that going around lately. We've all had our parts to do, of course Andy gets the worst of it, but we've all been feeling it. For the past few months, we've been working with our new partnership Wanian (Year of the Frog), a film company.
Our main attraction in the partnership is our special effects and technical abilities, but we do the whole bit from script to post. We dont' always get to do the script, and in those cases, things are usually confusing due to the communication errors (our partners speak next to no english at all, and a lot gets lost in translation), but we try to keep it as set up as possible. My art has come in more and more handy. To fix the translation errors, I just draw up a story board instead and then we see the nice big green light and get working.
I'm not sure why exactly, but since we all met, they've been bent on "making me a star" out here. There was never a point where they asked me if I wanted this, they just decided that everyone wants to be a star and that small nosed white American girl definitely wanted a piece of the famous action. They did ask me if I liked to sing. Yes. They asked me if I wanted to sell my art. Yes. They asked me if I want to act. Yes. This is all true. I like singing and acting and painting never stops for me, so of course I want to sell my art, but that doesn't mean I want to be famous. I know that many people who read that will shake their heads and disagree saying that I'm full of shit, trying to be deep or different, and I've heard it before: "Everyone wants to be famous." Not true. A few years ago when I was still needing the attention I might have been able to play with that, but even then I wasn't all that into that kind of life.
A few years ago I was a much more social person. That's changed. I don't like being in big groups of people and I've gotten tired of pretending to like people for "face's" sake. I used to get a thrill out of turning people my way, wowing people, arguing with people until they came to my side of whatever fence we're arguing over. I liked walking in a room and deciding to own it. Even when I was fat, I didn't have a problem with being impressive, but that doesn't do it for me anymore. The truth is that when I'm in a social environment, all I want to do is leave. All I can think about are the projects I could be working on or the cool personal time I could have just hanging out with Andy or some of my other favorite people. (The fact that most of my favorite people are on the other side of the planet really is the biggest negative about being in
I have a taste of being famous out here, not in the sense that I've accomplished something in the public eye, but I certainly have the attention. There are not that many foreigners in Zhongshan (possible 60 in the whole city), and of them, there are even fewer young people, and of the young people there are only two girls; myself and my Swedish friend Emelia.
I can't go anywhere and be inconspicuous. Everywhere I go people come up and want to talk to me, practicing their English or seeing if I can speak Chinese. I'm a spectacle. I can't buy a bag of rice without everyone watching what I'm doing and how I do it. They don't always clap and approve (though at times it is brinking on a standing ovation when they watch how well we use our chopsticks), like anywhere else, there are assholes out here, people who hover around you and wait for an excuse to make a jibe or what not. It's worse here because they assume I don't understand so they do it right in front of me, sometimes to my face, talking to me and thinking that I'm not getting it. I've even had an MC make these kind of jokes in one of my shows, but what am I supposed to do, break his neck for making fun of the American spectacle? That's why they paid for me to sing there. Positive or negative, it gets old. I don't like being the center of attention. I'd like to walk into a store, haggle over a pare of pants and get out without having groups of people follow me the whole time.
This fact remains unclear to our partners, but I don't know how to explain anyway. The values are different.
So I've been going with it.
I've been singing at clubs and events to bring in extra cash.
I say "to bring in extra cash" because there's nothing else to it. I'm not singing songs I like, I'm not doing it how or where I'd like to do it. Mostly I'm singing at clubs, which means singing music I don't like in a place I'd never go. If I look at it in the same realm as singing and what I care about, I couldn't bring myself to do it, because in that respect, it's complete bullshit. I originally was working with a band, but most of Zhanghe's connections are with clubs, and there's no room for a band, so it's easier to get me more gigs without the band (plus they don't want to pay for them). The best I can do with it is use it as a chance to get over my fear of singing and to improve my actual singing and breathing (I have to dance while I sing, so breathing has been a biggy), which I have. So there's two good points of it: money and confidence.My problem with the whole famous thing in this respect is that they're trying to sell me all wrong. If I'm going to sing, I want to do it with integrity and not push fake it the whole time. They want me to act like the rest of the singers act here, which removes the rarity of me and makes it so that my only difference is my nationality.
A few of the shows were pretty shady with stripper girls (like back in the day when you still couldn't show the two biggies, so they strip to stripper undies and tops) and a drug scene to boot.
The two worst: The second worst was not so bad accept that there was a serious drug scene about it, and that's not usually such a big problem here. In this show (stripper poles included) there was a table of people snorting lines out of a big sea shell and not being too coy about it.
The worst: I should have known in the dressing room that it'd be a bad night. One of the stripper girls was practically crawling through the room, her head lulling, and clearly strung out. My stage was pretty much in the crowd (unless I wanted to sing from panty seeing height) and on the dance floor, I had a chick who was clearly tweaking pawing and pulling me the whole show. Long story short: The club refused to pay me because I twisted her arm to get her off me while she was trying to rip off my clothes. The security guard wouldn't do anything about her and she was intent on seeing my show nude: what did they expect me to do, go with the flow and sing Venus in the buff? We worked it out in the end, and Zhanghe assured me that if ever in that situation, I do infact have punching rights and that he'd clean up the mess after. He said he'd be proud if I was protecting myself or anyone else in our group, saying that we are meant to be the best and respected in every arena. He got on my good side with all that. (Sorry no picture of that)
I've also been painting a lot. Their plan is to make me famous in
Click the picture to see my paintings in myspace.
Meanwhile, we are producing music videos and commercials around the clock. The moment one is finished, we're being pushed on deadlines for the next one. Andy just put together the new edit for Guo Yan's music video "Wo de ai hui bu lai" (my love will not come back), and is finishing up the end touches for a commercial for a water factory and a t-shirt factory. I tend to be the token Chinese speaking Westerner in these commercials. The last one, they had me say "Mai tixue, dang ran xuan zhuan jia zou de. Xia hu xi jia Tixue." Doc said "Hao" (good). The hard part was "xuan zhuan jia". It's pronounced shwan zhwan jia" It's a tongue twister for me...aaag, I took so many takes for that one.
And just as soon as we get the call, we're going to meet with a male singer to plan out his new music video.
So I don't want to be famous, I'm sure there's a way around that, but until then, I have people offering to pay me for my work and asking me to keep painting keep singing and keep acting...for a living. Pretty wacky. I'm not sure how the art shows are going to go, but I'm looking forward to it. Of course making movies is the main focus. We're making music videos and commercials until we get enough capital to make movies, but that's the goal.
Here's the first music video we really put together for them. This is my personal favorite, "Ai qing dong zhi". I planned and story boarded this one out, but the editing ended up changing some of the sequence of the shots I wanted. Love the ice and tear effect. (Andy rocks the kasbah). Doc handled the editing.
I appologize if this blog doesn't make any sense. I've had an hour and a half sleep so my brain's on the fritz.
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