DJ Trava

Archive for the ‘Culture’ Category

This is a story I want to try to tell without using brand names, and it should be pretty easy, at least the way that I’ve been thinking it in my head.  This is a story about shoes, and generations, and how material things sometimes do make a difference.  The differences they make, however, are usually radically different than the value one originally puts on them, perhaps.  When I was a kid, I loved red shoes.  I suspect it has its origins not somewhere in hiphop culture or punk culture at all, but in Bugs Bunny.

This character, Gossamer, was the one who had the red hair all over its body, and big tennis shoes.  It was a monster, too, and was involved in some kind of plot to make the rabbit into dinner, ultimately settling for sending him, sleeping, down the moat and back home.  I loved that monster, and I wanted to be that monster, but I was turning into a very tall and skinny kid.  If I’d known about the Ramones then, maybe that would have been an outlet, but for now, this was it.  I always wore a lot of white clothes, because my mom had some interesting beliefs that included white clothes, so in my mind I pictured that with my white clothes and big red tennis shoes, I’d be like the monster in a reverse color kind of situation.  It wasn’t as successful as my 7th grade dreams promised, and I wasn’t the cool guy, but it worked out all right.

I had forgotten about that until one night, thinking about a trip to New York.  The top hotels look interesting.  I showed a site with a picture of a room to my daughter, who was ten, and all she could say was, “When can I have red high tops?”  I guess my wife was showing her my childhood photos, and she saw the big shoes on my big feet, which was easy when contrasted to my skinny body in white cloth.  That’s all that she talks about these days, so I’m not going to try to make New York important to her.  Maybe we’ll pick up some new shoes at the airport.

Fort Wayne holds a special place in the hearts of those who’ve spent any time here.  This is one of those rare midwestern cities that’s had to live under the shadow of the Norman Rockwell image of what a town was supposed to be like.  The difficult part for most of these towns, is that they are a lot like the stereotype, or at least have elements that match the image.  Whether or not life below the surface is as calm and wholesome as the images suggest is a whole other issue, and one that can’t be answered definitively.  But it’s worth exploring, and for those who’ve been here, worth coming back.

With hotels like this, that cater to the desires for a homey getaway, along with some real cosmopolitan flair, there is a lot for the visitor here.  It’s possible to tour the city and enter into any number of interesting realities and pockets of culture, but it’s also possible to stay safely nestled in the arms of an ideal.  It doesn’t even matter that no one actually believes in that ideal, because we all know it’s still extremely potent, and sometimes even delightfully cozy.  On the other hand, it’s also a great place to go to get in touch with a thriving underground art scene.

John Commorato, Jr., co-owner of the Brass Rail, seems to have been somewhere near the center of things at certain times.  If these things can be said to have a center.  In smaller towns or unlikely cities where experimental, underground art starts to flourish, it’s usually due to the efforts of a few like-minded individuals, people who get deeply involved and then try to distance themselves so that others might step up and begin to push.  The hard and heartbreaking thing is that the push usually requires massive community efforts that are way beyond the resources of the individuals.  But it does point out a fascinating movement that’s always here, just beneath the surface, and if we look close enough, we might discover that it was always here, even when Norman Rockwell was painting it.

Singapore is a land of great innovations.  This unique island city state is one of the most fascinating places to visit, and bears repeated visits.   The lively urban culture is very sophisticated and always changing, so that there are always new things to see, experience, and enjoy here.  It’s one of the remarkable facts of travel that one can never enter the same metaphorical river twice, so that any city once seen will never be the same again.  This is even more true here, where the speed of change and innovation is very fast.  This is due in large part to the eclectic cultural milieu here that simply can’t exist anywhere else.  It’s history as a major world port, as well as its geographical location, means that it is made up of many cultures.

Chinese, Indian, and Malay cultures play a large part in the life of the city, not only in its population, but in the influences in food and culture.  This makes it particularly easy to find a good restaurant in Singapore, and there are many that pass good and move right into excellent.  The traditional chefs have access to an amazing variety of ingredients, so that dishes can be prepared with extreme precision, according to very old recipes, and there is also plenty of room for a wide variety of innovations.  The spirit of innovation is everywhere here, as exemplified by one of the National University of Singapore undergrads, Donovan Lee.

He graduated with superb grades, and his SAT scores were also very high, but he didn’t get into the ivy league schools he was hoping for.  In one of those rare occasions where desperation meets an equal amount of determination, he decided to start making 10-minute videos of himself solving complicated math problems on a white board in a room at his parent’s house.  The remarkable ability of Lee was noted by some top math scholars from around the world, and his video went viral.  He is reapplying again, after having achieved no small degree of fame and success from his decision to match technology with talent to prove his abilities to the world.