Plaque on the Long Bien bridge, Hanoi Vietnam

We never know how the choices we make will shape the future. I wouldn’t have ever imagined my dislike of French language classes would eventually lead me to work in Morocco, Vietnam and Cambodia with projects that required fluency in the language.

I completed a Fine Arts program within a well-regarded public American university; we were expected to have a thorough education along with our arts focus. This included competency in a foreign language to graduate. Most fellow students complained, or just buckled down and sweated through it – which didn’t appeal to me because I’d barely passed French classes in high school. Wealthy students enrolled in expensive study-abroad programs. This wasn’t an option: I paid for my own schooling and couldn’t afford the expensive tuition. Instead I created my own program [and worked 40-60 hours a week at retail and hotel jobs to build up my savings].

In 1998 I studied the language at a university in France, and sent drawings and paintings home to my painting instructors. This enabled me to complete painting coursework while living there and on the road in Belgium, London, and Eastern Europe during school holidays. I was able to see firsthand many of the artworks by northern European artists that had inspired me in the past. While the language courses were helpful, I really learned French by spending time in clubs and bars and flirting in cafes with friends who were native French speakers.

After graduation I was a full-time artist with both studio and apartment rents to pay: lots of freedom but not a lot of cash staying in my pocket. So when designer friends told me they were looking for a translator for the antique markets at Avignon and Paris, I jumped at the chance. We spent two weeks on trains, in vans and junk shops and collectors’ gardens, rooting out good deals and negotiating terms and prices. Many of the dealers spoke some English, but were much more relaxed dealing with a French-speaking americaine than with deux americains.

Several years later I was offered a trip in Morocco as a translator with the large tour company Grand Circle Travel, and accompanied a local guide from Marrakesh to Fez to the Sahara. The highlight of our trip was a dinner of a dozen elderly americans with a local family in Fez. We ate tagine and flatbread with our right hands. Afterwards we sipped sweet mint tea and I translated both sides of an intensive Q&A about aspects of American/Moroccan culture, from US gangs to majoun, a delectable [so I hear] cannabis nougat.

Eventually, my curiosity about manifestations of French culture – among many other interests – led me to Cambodia, where after starting my own program, I eventually worked with the Angkor Photo Festival, teaching photography to street children. It is a French-run festival, and while my experience with teaching photography was the reason I was approached, my facility in the language helped make everything happen.

Most recently I was drawn to Vietnam and photographed this Frenchman’s folly-turned-success, for another French-run project: the Long Bien bridge festival. One of my prints of the bridge sold this week at auction for US$350, well above my estimate of $200-300 [based on my current print prices].

You never know where this road will take you. But first: you’ve got to get started on it.

Those would by my legs standing on a local Redcoat in west Sydney

Growing up in the States, I slept through my American history classes. American civilization had no patina like European or world history. Teachers eulogized the heroics of double-chinned white guys who once lived somewhere a thousand miles east of our flat midwestern city. Paul Revere’s “The Redcoats are coming!” was the refrain of too many pithy poems mimeographed in smudged purple by teachers’ assistants, then passed around class.

Redcoats were bad, Redcoats were greedy. Redcoats were the British, who wanted to take America away from those to whom it rightfully belonged — the colonists, our forefathers [never mind that the continent didn't really belong to any Europeans at all, or that all my ancestors were still miserable in the old country rather than in the US where they'd flee a century later].

Australia had the Redcoats too, and they had them at the same time that we did. They built buildings here in the same Edwardian/Georgian styles I’ve seen in Boston, in Liverpool, even on Shamian Dao, that strange little European island smack in the middle of Guangzhou.

I step across these Redcoat murals as I walk to the train station, as I walk to buy fresh groceries from this fertile country. It’s an upside down deja-vu every time. Melds childhood stories from the north into history here at the bottom of the world. I get a kick out of walking over the flattened bodies of these British soldiers, brothers of those we kicked out of my country centuries ago.

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I’ve spent most of the past 15 years on the road, constantly adjusting to a new city, country, or culture. While this unusual path of mine is often invigorating, it is never easy. I have to frequently adjust to new temperatures, currencies, and languages. The cultural assumptions are the most challenging, and the most pervasive. There are days when I’d rather stick my head in the ground than look at another stranger.

After years of passing through many places and staying awhile in others, I can feel a chronic disconnect from my surroundings. My favorite antidote to this is by listening to music by artists who remind me that being a brassy American broad is a gift, not a flaw.

Johnette Napolitano’s always near the top of my list [Note:some might consider her landing page NSFW]. Whether she’s writing about barflies on the seedier side of Los Angeles or ghosts in Texas, no one creates lyrics with such a mix of passion and eccentricity. Last week she played a small club in Sydney. It was the ideal venue to showcase her style: more of a pub than a club, the wooden floors and small stage provided the kind of intimacy that would’ve been impossible at the height of her notoriety as lead singer for the band Concrete Blonde.

We stand through a painfully twee pair of opening female singers. The club fills. Johnette jumps onto the stage in a pair of gleaming silver bedroom heels, carrying an acoustic guitar and a glass of wine. She sets down the glass, and strides to the mic. Though of average height, her presence is huge, and she stands solidly in her five-inch shoes. Her thick boot-black hair covers her face.

“Hi!” she says with a quick smile, and launches into the first song. Ghosts, parking lots, and murders. Her voice starts as a smoky low tenor then rises to a clear alto. At the low end, her voice has the tired vibrato of Johnny Cash, and her face twists into those distortions possible only with relaxed older flesh.

She’s just turned 52.

Her sparkly neckline has those distinctive knotted buttons – yep, she’s wearing a vintage Qipao. It’s likely from the 60s or 70s, and would’ve been hand-tailored for a tall, substantial Chinese woman, or possibly sold off-the-rack in the West. The loose fit is perfect for a musician on the move.

There’s no way anyone could bend like that in your typical Shanghainese qipao, which is tailored to squeeze every curve and ensure you don’t want to have dinner, let alone breakfast. But, like me, she wouldn’t completely buy into the Shanghai look, because she’s American. She’s lusty and loud, and wants it all: her sensuality is brazen and comfortable.

America was at best an ambiguous home, and so is everywhere else I’ve lived. The closest thing I have to a home is a home base or two. But when I listen to Napolitano’s lyrics, I’m grounded again, wherever I happen to be. I’m reminded of those American traits I can never shake: my straightforward dry humor; the opinions I share with all and sundry, however inappropriate; and how I ignore the abyss and fill it with distracting stuff. Then I down another glass of cheap red wine.

Here’s a Napolitano video from 1993. Check out that poet shirt. Ignore the cheesy special effects, and have a listen to that voice.

Every weekend, I hand-scrawl my schedule for the following week. This one ranges from gallery details to stages of my book’s progress to blog and mailing-list updates, to yoga classes & online Chinese study. I estimate how long each task will take, which helps me prioritize tasks for the day over morning coffee.

I keep this notebook at my side all day long, and cross off items as I get through them. It’s low-tech, and keeps me focused on the task at present. Because my current main project is my travel-book about my quest for Southeast Asian paper, I complete many of these tasks on my laptop. Scrawling through a completed task is much more satisfying than simply closing a desktop window.

There are no lines in my notebook. Ever. Why? They get in my way.