11-08-09 Jakarta Indonesia: 2010 hrs. I have been in Jakarta for the last few days. I have been spending my time walking through the maze-like neighborhoods near the hotel. I manage to sweat through my clothes in less than an hour. People are very friendly, they come out of their dwellings to say hello. Our conversations don’t go much further than that. Sometimes they look at my camera, point at themselves and say “photo!” but when I walk over to them, they often change their minds, get nervous and put their hands in front of their faces. I always smile and cross my hands over the camera and that cools them out. As soon as I leave the hotel, I don’t see any other white people besides me on these streets. The people in these neighborhoods are for the most part, very poor but not destitute like I have seen in parts of India and in African countries. I have shook many hands and said hello to many people and yet have I to encounter any hostility or aggression towards me. There is, of course, a first time for everything but so far, so good. I would like to think that it’s somewhat in how you carry yourself but I don’t know. It’s up to the people you’re walking by. I think most of them are more curious at the strange import item that walks by them. The kids tend to trip out the hardest.
I have been seeing some interesting t-shirts on people over the last several days. In Yogyakarta, there are Black Flag shirts, yesterday I saw a man with a Led Zeppelin shirt on, the design that Shepard Fairey did for the band’s last best-of. I said the guy, “Led Zeppelin, yeah!” and he just looked at me. I have seen one kid twice in the last two days with a Slayer shirt on.
The neighborhoods are very busy. People are cooking, cleaning, making things. It’s not a drag but overall, conditions are pretty rough by western standards. That’s the thing I have had to throw out when considering these places. If you judge them by what you know, then you only see it that way. It’s been difficult to disconnect myself from that but I have gotten better at it over the years.
In the evenings, there many bats outside my window, they are very small and very fast. It’s hard to hang around at night here, unless you want the attentions of every mosquito in the country. I don’t know if I am in a malarial belt of the world or not but wouldn’t want to find out the hard way.
Interesting to see that HR 3962 passed in the house of Representatives. I guess the next news cycle will be the likes of Michelle Bachmann and company screaming about tyranny from the rooftops. Boehner doesn’t help his cause much when at a recent gathering of the faithful, he misquotes the Pledge Of Allegiance and then pulls out what he says is a copy of The Constitution and reads from it, only to quote from the Preamble of the Declaration Of Independence. I’m sure no one at the event cared, they were perhaps too swept away with the moment to notice the small stuff. I am sure it will be a great week for the pundits, no doubt.
I got a few letters from a young man who is stationed at Fort Hood. Very heavy stuff. These conflicts are going sideways and what happened the other day is part of what you get with this kind of sustained madness.
On the tour front, more dates are getting booked and like I said, we will post when we get them. For the US dates, we will have a new talking CD set. It’s from the Virginia show the night before the last presidential election. It is the first in a series we are calling Spoken Word Guy. We have two others in the can and will release them over the next several months. Looks like South African dates are coming through, very happy about that. I will let you know when things are set.
Next week, on 11-14-09, Shepard Fairey will be guest hosting my radio show on KCRW. Should be a great one. On the 21st, we will hopefully have a really cool show for you as well. Stay tuned!
Thanks for reading this. Henry