I left the house very happy, wielding my camera attached to a tree branch. I filled the elevator door opening and closing and began to notice ordinary things that I had never paid any attention to. As I recall what I saw, I can't believe that I actually saw the beauty in a piece of dog turd on the sidewalk, it spiralled up to a perfect point! Maybe I should carry this camera around at all times, I thought to myself, if it means I get more enjoyment out of my daily life.
As I was waiting for the bus to take me to Daming lake to do some filming, I found myself thinking, I have never seen such interesting looking people before. It was bizarre that standing at this bus stop I would see to Chinese 'thugs' (you never see macho Chinese men but these looked like they'd just dropped out of the streets of Naples) and a Chinese hippy with long hair and colorful pants. I kicked myself for not filming them but I was a little scared of the thuggish-looking ones.
But something I noticed is that I'm not embarrassed to film people when I have a branch attached to my camera. The practical use of this branch, if there was one, is to give me something to hold onto besides the camera. I had intended it to be like an extended arm so that I could walk around with the camera and it wouldn't be too jumpy, but for that to work I need a counterweight, which I don't have. But I feel that although I don't look professional with my tree-branch-camera, I don't look like a creepy person filming people for creepy reasons. At least that's how I've worked it out in my head, so it's all good.
Waiting for the bus, my enthusiasm dropped, I noticed that I was peckish. Behind me was a dried fruit and nut store. I knew what I wanted to eat. They sell these irresistible corn chip things. To me they taste like the superior cousin of pop corn.
So I buy a small amount of these and usually finish them before I get home (the walk home takes 10-minutes). But now, they've started selling only huge bags of the stuff, new store-wide protocol or something, but I've surprisingly managed to keep this bag for a number of hours. I'll eat them later when I watch 'The Mask'.
So, I buy the pop corn and I take large handfuls and throw them into my mouth. I don't like people watching me eat, in fact I'd usually rather people never looked at me, but today things were different. I think it was because I had the tree-branch-camera in my hand and the fact that I realised how ridiculous I looked, that I stopped caring for a while whether people stared at me or not. I was filming them after all so they should be fully entitled to stare at me if they wished.
On the bus I continued to shovel the pop corn into my mouth. The trouble with them is they are so irresistible, but once you hit a certain point of popcorn-consumption, your mouth begins to taste horrible and you want to eat anything else. Happily, I had not yet reached this popcorn-ceiling, but a thought did occur to me. Why was no one else eating on the bus? And why had I never seen anyone shovel food into their mouths in China? Was I obliviously committing a serious cultural faux-pas? Would they become so infuriated with my ugly eating method that they would all unite and wrestle me to the floor until I gave up the offending action? My thoughts went off into serious tangents when the man in front of me did one thing that abruptly stopped my worrying. He spat a nice big spit right by his foot, on the bus. I had seen people spitting everywhere in the streets, there were even spit-boxes in the swimming pool, but on the bus? This was new. This, in my books was a new level of gross.
So, if this man can sit on the bus, I can shovel food down my gob. And shovel I did.
As I was waiting for the bus to take me to Daming lake to do some filming, I found myself thinking, I have never seen such interesting looking people before. It was bizarre that standing at this bus stop I would see to Chinese 'thugs' (you never see macho Chinese men but these looked like they'd just dropped out of the streets of Naples) and a Chinese hippy with long hair and colorful pants. I kicked myself for not filming them but I was a little scared of the thuggish-looking ones.
But something I noticed is that I'm not embarrassed to film people when I have a branch attached to my camera. The practical use of this branch, if there was one, is to give me something to hold onto besides the camera. I had intended it to be like an extended arm so that I could walk around with the camera and it wouldn't be too jumpy, but for that to work I need a counterweight, which I don't have. But I feel that although I don't look professional with my tree-branch-camera, I don't look like a creepy person filming people for creepy reasons. At least that's how I've worked it out in my head, so it's all good.
 |
| My tree-branch-camera |
So I buy a small amount of these and usually finish them before I get home (the walk home takes 10-minutes). But now, they've started selling only huge bags of the stuff, new store-wide protocol or something, but I've surprisingly managed to keep this bag for a number of hours. I'll eat them later when I watch 'The Mask'.
So, I buy the pop corn and I take large handfuls and throw them into my mouth. I don't like people watching me eat, in fact I'd usually rather people never looked at me, but today things were different. I think it was because I had the tree-branch-camera in my hand and the fact that I realised how ridiculous I looked, that I stopped caring for a while whether people stared at me or not. I was filming them after all so they should be fully entitled to stare at me if they wished.
On the bus I continued to shovel the pop corn into my mouth. The trouble with them is they are so irresistible, but once you hit a certain point of popcorn-consumption, your mouth begins to taste horrible and you want to eat anything else. Happily, I had not yet reached this popcorn-ceiling, but a thought did occur to me. Why was no one else eating on the bus? And why had I never seen anyone shovel food into their mouths in China? Was I obliviously committing a serious cultural faux-pas? Would they become so infuriated with my ugly eating method that they would all unite and wrestle me to the floor until I gave up the offending action? My thoughts went off into serious tangents when the man in front of me did one thing that abruptly stopped my worrying. He spat a nice big spit right by his foot, on the bus. I had seen people spitting everywhere in the streets, there were even spit-boxes in the swimming pool, but on the bus? This was new. This, in my books was a new level of gross.
So, if this man can sit on the bus, I can shovel food down my gob. And shovel I did.
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