Amphetamine

It’s raining outside. Each time it does, the air gets refreshed. Then suddenly like the flowers and plants in a desert, we come alive again!

The sung is piercing through the dark clouds. Sunset is near. I love this moment of the day.

I have a received an answer from Kota who said that he and his partner listened to the music and were ‘taken aback’ by the music, as he put it, and that they ‘were interested in another side of me’. I wonder what is this ‘another side’ he refers to. Surely I can understand how surprising it can be to hear me sing Pop! or Battle of Wits after hearing my stage work.

Maybe the best thing is to be patient and let things come when they come.

For now it’s about settling down in Taipei and completely severe my links to my Parisian flat. End of the lease is on the first days of September. Nicolas told me he felt I will find something nice in Taipei on the 4^th!

My Viking god friend Alo approached me last year for an art video project of his. The idea was to reinvent those beefcake shots from the 50’s and reinterpret them in an Estonian setting: hunky men doing their daily chores: milking a cow, fishing, hunting, harvesting… Many months passed by. I sent him a first draft last time I was in Taipei. The project changed direction.

I sent the music for the new edit he did recently and it seems that he and his partner in crime Jaanus liked it. However the relevance of their project have always somehow escaped me. The first day I met Jaanus, he scared him off with my questions and never heard of him nor saw him since.

I remember how one day, I took a scene from a porn film, turned it in black and white and put a Ryuichi Sakamoto’s piano piece on it, just for fun. It suddenly became elegiac, nearly Sturm & Drang, as if the lovers were desperately making love on their last day on earth. It’s all about the angle of view.

The music I created for Alo had the same effect. I’m glad Alo and Jaanus welcome my proposition. What will become of this project, I know not. That also escapes me.

Alo

Yesterday was Byron’s last day in Taipei before heading South for the promotion of  Amphetamine.

Since the film opened one day ago, they have to run from one movie theatre to the next for interviews and Q&A.

I saw him briefly, and as fans were lining up to get his autograph on books, posters or t-shirts, he told me that he was a bit upset to be paraded by the director like a circus animal. That’s part of the game of being in the spotlight.

“You see,” I told him, “the director doesn’t have your youth and your physique, so he enjoys it vicariously through his lens and his film

.”

Amphetamine could have been a better film, but unfortunately, the director indulged in the nudity of the male body, instead of building a strong story. Despite the excellent acting, some good ideas and the gorgeous photography, what could have been an arresting film like LanYu or Happy Together, has become a thinly disguised male erotica that says more about the director’s fantasy than his talent in filmmaking. (and oh, the soundtrack, what bad music!)

I really wanted to love the film because of Byron, but I had to be honest. He was good, but the film wasn’t.

Byron will come back to Taiwan and we’ll take a car and visit other places of the country. I feel like anything is possible with him.