i don't know how to begin

weekends like this make it hard to believe i've been in taipei for less than a week.

a lot happened since friday and i can't well remember all of it, but the important stuff begs to be retold, the important stuff being saturday.

my mission for the day had been to find a leather belt and a pair of office-suitable shoes; i had also heard about a cheap show in a renowned punk bar in the university district by a couple local bands i had never heard of, and in the spirit of adventure and scholarly interest i decided to go. after a brief trip with my host parents to a too-pricey factory outlet (i resolved with joan to go to a famous flea market in an outlying area of the city densely populated by foreigners, which makes me more excited still) i took the whole day to wander around the night markets and look for some cheap office-wear, and also to visit the 101 area where i heard there was a giant bookstore where i could find english books. the day began in gongguan, a market area not far from where i lived last time i was here and that i know pretty well. i walked around a good deal without any luck and so decided to go to the city hall area.

having no idea where i was going and only knowing that the bookstore i was seeking was near the 101, i wandered toward the massive structure with no strong intentions to go inside (i figured i should save that milestone for when i have somebody to go with me). besides becoming fully aware of the imposing dimensions of the building, i found little of interested in the area besides some unearthly yo-yo-wielding street performers and a group of university students offering hugs to passersby on the street - they were charging 100NT for each hug (roughly $2.75 US) so i did not oblige them, though they were pretty precious.

eventually i was directed to the bookstore building, which was certainly bigger than any bookstore i had ever seen - six floors plus a basement level with a foodcourt, the place had a starbucks-like cafe on the ground floor and all kinds of perfume and watch and bag shops scattered among the floors. i was having a hard time finding where the books in english were; i had been told by several sources that they were there, but there was no indication of which floor they were on, and i traipsed about the floors for a good while without any sense of direction. eventually i came upon a tiny corner of the store that had a few boutique acoustic guitars for sale. in my boredom i decided to take a break and sat down to play one. i noodled around for maybe twenty minutes, seeing the confused looks on other customers walking by. i moved to put the guitar back and the two employees shyly asked me how the guitar felt, and made some complimentary remarks on my playing - eventually one of them asked if they could take a video of me performing a song that they could post on the facebook page for the store, which i agreed to do (although in the midst of the ensuing conversation we ended up forgetting to do it). eventually we struck up a conversation, and we talked about the kind of music we played, and did we play in bands, and all that - it culminated in a fellow named van finding me online and offering a standing invitation to join him in a park near where i work to, in his words, "drink a lot of black tea, play guitar and ignore the cops." pretty cool, right?

it gets better. for one thing, on my way out of the store i finally found the english literature section and walked out with a copy of the mayor of casterbridge in an absolutely beautiful edition (gilded pages!) for about $8 USD. for another, i ate a sumptuous meal in gongguan punctuated by a tasty milk drink with brown sugar pearls not found anywhere else in the area. and lastly, i saw one of the best shows i've seen all year.

like i said, the bar was a little place in the university district, called the underworld (地下社会). the time leading up to the show had been mostly spent trying not to collapse from heatstroke - i don't think i had ever been thankful to find a starbucks in my life. anyway, the bar itself is great, and reminds one of the way american dive bars were in the old days, or at least those older days when i was way too young to be hanging out in dive bars - dark but welcoming, cheap drinks, indoor smokers, faulty bar stools. it felt like home immediately.

then the first band takes the stage - they're called AAN 安, and they sound incredible. their sound is hard to pin down - they were slow and often pretty spacey or psychedelic, but the guitar and bass arrangements were very intricate and precise, the playing spot-on. their singer, jasper, described his influences as being california metal bands from the 90s like incubus, but i don't think the comparison does them justice - there were the fingerprints of bands like led zeppelin and pink floyd on them, and then also the voicings and melodies of the guitar made me think of the smiths or the sundays, though the gestalt of the music doesn't support such a comparison. they had the slow-burn intensity of early grunge but the impeccable melodic sense of indie pop... but here my pseudo-journalistic wanking is diluting how great an impact their set had on me. i'll say this: when jasper showed me a few famous local acts in the time since saturday night i noticed a distinct similarity, and since his own points of reference seemed inadequate to describe his style i feel as though i'm being led to an exciting (if premature) conclusion that there is a local element at work here, although i can't say what just yet.

anyway, i offered my appreciation to the members of the band, and wound up in a long conversation with jasper (who works as an english teacher at a cram school, which made communication much easier than it would have been if i had tried to have this conversation in chinese) about music in the city and music in general. we talked for a long time; i asked him about himself, how the band started, what their influences were, and more general questions about the history of local rock music in taipei, and while gathering a lot of information i developed a real rapport with the guy. besides being very talented and friendly, he also was very humble and insightful - approaching 30, he's been a part of the local scene for a long time, and yet declined to make any broad generalizations about the scene, in spite of my certainty that he was qualified. it would be too much to go into everything i learned here, but one of the most interesting things i came away with was that the first local rock music to become popular on the island was punk, and that it was at least in part fomented by expats. later on, jasper gave me a ton of links to songs and videos and whatnot related to several of the founding figures of taipei rock music and information on where/when to go to see more acts - as we speak, he's helping me figure out travel details to a massive free rock festival in a somewhat outlying village this weekend. this dude is one of the coolest i've met anywhere, and has show me a route into exactly what i came to taipei to do, and this after having been in town for four days. the feeling i had making my way home that night was indescribable, as is evident by the fact that i've lost any sense of the organization of this paragraph as i've written it, and now have no idea how to end it. i guess the point is, in one day i found an outlet, a home base, a friend and a guide; and for that matter, a pretty nice leather belt.

then of course on sunday between the two classes i had to teach (totally winging it, i might add, more on that at a later date) i started feeling feverish and very sore - i made it through two hours with a fresh group of young, awkward students with a very limited grasp of english to come home and more or less pass out until the next morning, when i still felt not quite well enough to go to work. happy fourth of july!