SO IT’S BEEN A WHILE since my last post.This is because I have been traipsing around Hanoi teaching English. I find that it’s not too bad at all, that I can write lesson plans, raise my voice and controls a room full of children. My youngest class is around 4 years old and my oldest 8. The quality of English in the older students is amazing I can have almost full conversations with them before they stop me and admit, “sorry teacher I don’t understand”. I only work Friday, Saturday and Sundays and spend the rest of my time relaxing and, well at the moment, nothing at all (at all!). So life here is strange: I’m still traveling but I’m also working, I can have a beard but not a full one, I can wear what I like as long as it has a collar and no holes, and it is my responsibility to encourage selected children, as best I can, to love speaking English; I have obligations. I live above a pub/club, between two Karaoke bars, and the noise can be mighty. I live in a room with ants, cockroaches and rats (or mice?). I will be moving at the end of the month to another room in the same building as it’s by far the cheapest place around at $5 a night. My neighbour is an American guy called Matt. He is also working in Hanoi but not as a teacher. He is a fake doctor. In Vietnam rich Vietnamese people have trouble trusting that their own doctors know what they are talking about so many clinics hire a white face. Matt and his white face ‘consults’ with the real doctor in front of the patient, nods, says something in English (the patients rarely speak English), and walk away, bellowing white coat, clipboard and all. I’m meeting a lot of very interesting people. Tonight I agreed (stupidly) to preform in the bar downstairs. It was a disaster. The landlady asked me about five days ago if I was willing to perform to a small number of her invited friends, I ummed and arred and, more for the story than any really desire, I agreed. Tonight I walked down the 6 flights of stairs with my guitar only to find that although she had gotten her hands on a microphone she did not have a microphone stand. Her solution was to stand in front of me the entire two hours I was meant to play holding the mic. If I wasn’t self-conscious enough before then, I was now. It was a set of covers with some of my own stuff thrown in. There was no P.A so I had decided on songs I could strum loudly (I’m almost exclusively a finger picker and so almost none of my songs were suitable). After finishing ‘New Slang’ I went into ‘Something in the Air’, all the time with this little fool standing in front of me smiling with her drunk friends at how novel is all was. Her arm must have be getting tired because she asked one of her people to take over. At this I said, “no, this is stupid I’ll just sing without a mic”. She said that I didn’t sing loud enough (true) and that I wasn’t playing the guitar loud enough (not true). With that, only 20 minutes into my 2 hour set, I said, ‘this isn’t working so I’m going to bed’. I began to pack up my stuff and she said, “okay, why dont you go and practice the guitar some more”. My time in Hanoi is all ready something I will remember for the rest of my life. I move with a new kind of confidence now and know I can do anything that I desire to do, except… preform live. That is something I have never wanted to do and I will hopefully never need to do again. The same rage builds in me weather they are indifferent or watching intently. On stage I’m never in the moment, never at peace. I hate it. Yet when people find out I play a guitar I become a little monkey to them. I am a composer, I compose, once a song is released it’s gone. If you like one of my songs buy it. If you don’t fancy buying it then it didn’t hit you hard enough, thats not your fault or mine. It’s just music. Now, I must go to bed I have work in the morning.
Posted on: Sat, 19 Oct 2013 16:38:32 +0000
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