Howard Zinn + Cyclown + Marjinal

There was a screening on Friday about Howard Zinn called Howard Zinn: You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train (78 minutes). He was a writer, activist and historian who passed away a couple of weeks ago. The screening was held at Annexxe, Central Market. Hana and I came early at about 6.30 p.m because we wanted to drop by the Ricecooker Shop to meet Mat Nor and check out the new space. The shop is not at all hard to find. It’s a corner shop at the lower ground floor in a building next to Mydin at Jalan Silang. You will notice a restaurant called Shukran and A&W outside of the building. It was our first time being there since it opened. Mat Nor said the rent was cheap. It’s a very cozy place and while you’re there, you can trim your hair at the next door barber shop. Hana did.

When we arrived at the shop, Mat Nor wasn’t there so we phoned him and found out his whereabouts. He was having his evening tea break with a friend from Jogja! We were so surprised that Maya was in town. We knew her as one of the members of Cyclown when they toured in Malaysia back in 2007/8.

A bit of a story here about Cyclown. Cyclown was formed as circus clowns who travel by bicycles and performed from one country to another. They’ve travelled to so many countries, performed endless circus acts and recorded a few songs. They stayed in Lost Generation Space in Seputeh and joined Not That Balai event when they were in Malaysia. They even performed at Food Not Bombs serving place to entertain the homefree people. They are really nice people with loads of sense of humor (hence being clowns). A few times I was awoken by the sound of their trumpets in the morning. They practiced really hard. I really admire them for their spirits to travel by bicycles and make friends from all over.

They were striking wherever they go as it was not easy to miss them with their tall bikes and dashing colorful outfits. I’ve never rode a tall bike before, for them, it must’ve been a whole different view of the traffic and scenery. Once I heard one of them (Raphael) said that the pollution was unbearable whenever they visit any cities and that included Kuala Lumpur. This was and still is true for the streets are never lungs and bicycle friendly.

I remember hearing stories about their amazing stories from their travels although I’ve only had brief encounter with them during their visit here. One of it was that they had travelled through the SAHARA DESSERT BY BICYCLE AND STILL LIVES! Imagine that! They were tough young lads I tell you.

If I’m not mistaken, there were 5 or 6 of them (mostly from the States) when they were here but many others had been cyclowns. You see, Cyclown was an open “collective”. Anyone can join them. They’ve got a few new members whenever they travel in each place. They had always without fail to invite us to join them. Let see if I can remember some of their names.. Raphael, Bob, Christine, Maya, errr.. I forgot most of them. There was always something interesting to learn from visiting friends. I know that they DIYed mostly everything, from their bikes, bags, food, clothes etc. I learned from them to substitute chain oil with cooking oil but later found out that there is some downside to this – ants love the sweet cooking oil – but I’m sure that was not of a big issue compared to holes in their pockets. Travelling does make you learn survival skill and force you to rethink about living with less money and more brains. Being vegan/vegetarians also another skill that needed to be learned while travelling to other meat eating countries. Cooking is always the best part. You would know what they eat and substitute – sugar to honey to maple syrup. Whichever with less contribution to the world pollution and animal cruelty. Ethics.

Here’s their website with more details and photos http://www.cyclown.org/. If you ever get your hands on their CDs, check out the KUCING (cat) song. COMEL (cute) and AWESOME!

Back to the day’s story, I know Maya studied culture and arts in Jogja after the Cyclown’s tour there. Maya’s from the U.S. In Indonesia there’s this program (with sponsorship I think) for foreigners to study Indonesian culture and arts. If it’s not with sponsorship, then it might be cheap because a few friends from abroad did try it out. She said she was renewing her visa and had to work for survival because she was broke. She’ll be in KL for the next two weeks working with the Annexxe gallery. So many things to talk about! She was still as friendly and cute as ever. (I’ll get her picture!) She said she had dropped out from her study because she didn’t find what she had hoped for with the course she took.

Mat Nor was so nice to entertain us with some music from Deepset, gave free zines, and stickers. Wahh ni shopkeeper yang baik ni. He gave Hana a copy of Morgan Muffel's zine and had promised to give me one too, This time Isi collaborate with another cartoonist. Looks really interesting... Much like Mat Nor zine. Scenery is Free. He said he's going to compile them and make it into a book. He doesn't have enough money to get it publish just yet. Money seems to revolve around everything... I'm glad Mat Nor went through his surgery well. I asked him to show me his scar, it's a very long scar across his chest. Now his heart is doing well and he's still on meds. Cheers bro.

I’ve been to Maya's house in Jogja in 2008! It was a very nice house with a garden at the center of the house (like most typical houses in Jogja/Indonesia). For ventilation I think. I remember that the house had countless rooms (compartmentalized buildings) that surrounded the garden. It has got a neat common living area where you can chill. Maya said her room was the only one that is on the first floor. Yep I’ve been inside her room. Not many furniture only a thick mattress with “kelambu” and one cupboard. Minimal. Not minding that, she had the view of the village instead. It’s awesome…

She said her house was considered expensive in Jogja. The rent was RM1200+ a year! That’s about RM100 monthly! They had to pay annually though. For the longest time I envy who ever lives in Jogja.. The rent for houses are extremely cheap, the food is very tasty and not to mention - cheap, the warm inviting locals, and most of all, the feast for the eyes – street ART!

In Jogja, it’s still a lay back part of Indonesia. Some areas are still very much kampong and anak punks or weird looking artists/youngsters blended well with the locals. The popular art movement “bloomed” as I heard the term used by art magazines and artist friends’ chit chats since the fall of Suharto’s dictatorship in 1998, moving along side with the activism/resistance movement back in those days. Jogjakarta is considered the center of art and culture for Indonesia.

I went there when I joined the Jatiwangi Art Festival (JAF) in 2008 with Ili, Bebe and their two kids. An artist friend from Malaysia, Aswad also tagged along with us. Ili had a special mission while she was there. That is to document how art event was organized and artists and peoples’ involvement with it. Bebe and Aswad did their share of performance of interaction with locals. Okay this is going to be a whole other story all together and it will be a long one. So, I promise I will write about it in specific details in my next entry.

Aside from that, I thought I would want to add in a little bit about something interesting in Jakarta instead. I’m thinking about another documentary which will somehow relate to the Howard Zinn’s documentary. It was a documentary made by Mash (a punk girlfriend from Germany) on punk band – Marjinal. The band had assimilated themselves with the locals in the kampong (village) where they live. It was rather amazing to see “boys” with dreads/Mohawks, tattoos, pierced who clung on black shirts as their everyday theme helping out the villagers with their gotong royong (_) fixing the road and gutters, cooking, and teaching kids to silkscreen t-shirts and sing. Yes, kids from all ages worshiped them! Their songs are catchy and easy to sing along. Rakyat songs (People’s songs). One of their songs, Hukum Rimba had been covered by The Pips in their new album.

In the documentary, the band members explained how they had open up their space for people to learn about punk DIY resistance culture. In return showing that they are as human as anyone could be because what was important to them is communal living and community. They had been well accepted by the people in the village. I think part of it was because of the warmness and friendliness of the band members with the villagers. They were not at all as fierce as they looked. In fact, they were very polite and respectful. That’s the true (or should be) nature of punks in community I think.

I’m impressed that old folks there are easy to accept the band without being judgmental of their appearance and lifestyle. (At least that is what we hoped for) I think being in the same village does make them neighbors and part of the community where they had to work together to help build the community regardless of religion, ideology or culture. Indonesia and their culture…. I’m not good with history but I do know a few things about Indonesian culture revolution by Suharto where he had made the Bahasa Indonesia as the national language and it has been successfully implemented as all the races speak in Bahasa Indonesia as their first language. Although this has its downside where people lost part of their language/cultural identity i.e Chinese can’t speak Chinese. But I think the unity of language had brought forward the downfall of the dictator himself via his own vision where people would be united through their words and these words were understood thus had educated, mobilized, and empowered people to bring him down. Other than the economic factor and IMF. Read more here.

Talking about history, mobilization and people’s power, I shall continue with the daily journal about the screening about Howard Zinn. See I told you it would somehow relate. Overall like all documentaries I’ve watched, it was fairly good. One comment from a young emerging film maker, Fahmi Reza commented that it was a bit dragging and could’ve been shorten at some part. It was not those documentaries where you’d watch before going to demonstrations to fire up your spirits. It’s more of a memoir of his struggle during his teaching and writing years. He was a modest and decent man with his inspiring words. He wrote several books, to name a few which was mentioned in the documentary, Emma, Karl Marx, and the most famous The People’s History of the United States. He had led many protests against racism and the war while he was teaching at Boston University. One of the intense parts of the documentary was when he told about how he used to be a bombardier during the World War II. Like many uninformed soldiers who were convinced (brainwashed) that they were fighting for their countries, he had explained how on several occasions that they dropped home made napalm bombs on places where German soldiers were awaited for the war to end. Many were near civilians. A shocking statement by the deputy minister of America during that time quoted of saying that they bombed the headquarters of the enemies, which “happened” to be surrounded by civilians. WTH? This was to justify and blind the masses of their bloody war. Howard Zinn said being up on the sky dropping bombs, they were clueless of the impact on the ground until they saw what had happened in Hiroshima. Noam Chomsky was one of the people interviewed. A quote from Howard Zinn – if you don’t know your history, it is as if you were born yesterday. He was kind of like Hishammudin Rais of Malaysia with a little less fashion sense.Ye ke? HAHA.

Oklah.. that was some of the things I could capture in that documentary. We met Pik-Svoon and Fahmi as well as a few others old friends at the screening event - Poodien, Thilaga, Yew Hun, Sis Mas and Kak Yati from SIS, the Brown couple (musicians) and other 50 people or.. After the session was over, we went to downstairs to the mamak restaurant and bummed into the cyclist friends whom just finished their Massa Kritikal ride every Friday. Alind brought a kite given to him by Rat who was there as well. Rat got the kite from his ever-so-resourceful workplace as an installation artist. Others were El Pheng, Sidh, Nana, Nobeat and friends from Sky Bunker, Setapak which I don’t really know/ forgot their names.

After realizing that the mamak restaurant was closing, we headed to a stall at an alley near Kotaraya and Petaling Street. Talked about plans, catching up, movies, gossips, jokes, critics, eat, drink etc. Hana and I didn’t realize that we’d almost missed our bus to Shah Alam. Luckily the last bus was at 11.30p.m. So nice of Pixie and Fahmi to walked us to the bus stand Klang. We felt safe. Thanks mommy and daddy. :P

The day was going to end with something sweet to remember it by. We spotted a boy who looked just like a younger version of Poodien. Memang saling tak tumpah. Serious. The hair, the eyes, the short pants, the bag, the notebook and sharpie! They could’ve been brothers or twins! He even got on the same bus as we did. We decided to give him a card/note which reads “You look like our friend. Wish you’ll have a good day. And at the back, “ Life is so isolated and alienating that all we have to do is reach out to each other”. I managed to secretly snap a photo of him using my hp by pretending to take Hana’s picture. Stalker! Hehe. He just smiled and kept the note. He did not look at us after that. I think he was shy being “harassed” by two crazy girls on the bus.

That was that. After we got off the bus, we had a long walk and talked about how we would feel about getting a note from strangers. For me, it’s fine if a boy gave me a note on the bus or somewhere. Sure I would be shy but I would like it. Indeed, we pass each other every where we go and crossed paths but yet no interactions. These small practices are little sparks of happiness we encounter in our lives.

Maybe that’s also how I feel about street art. They are sweet and cute little “nuisance” that some may not understand. They appear at some corners of these blocks of concrete “life” that shouts Hey! Here are some cute things we did to make you think or just to express. They are not as intimidating as the billboards, which are forced onto us. You’d know which giant corporation that demands your attention and loyalty by repeatedly flashing their ads. I missed those old days where movie signs, shop signs etc were painted by hands. More personalize and “REAL”.

That night we had to pretend that we were crazy because we too had been harassed by passing vehicles as we walked. Maybe we theorized that it would chase them away hence adding a bit of the “illusion” of safety. So imagine two girls walking and laughing while swinging an umbrella given free by an insurance company the one that resembles like a cane in the middle of crazy Friday night trying to make it home safely. All this while still trying to have a good time chatting and enjoying the sky with clear stars. Not yet the full moon…

And I quote “Any woman will ovulate with the full moon if she’s exposed to enough moonlight” – Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver (a book that I’m reading)

p/s: Sorry if my words get a bit long and confusing. It’s just how I like to write them. Don’t really like “fullstops”