Earlier this week I was feeling desperate to find some new music for listening. That all changed when my forever friend Jo introduced me to Cambodian rock n’ roll oldies; I’ve been hooked ever since. Jo has been living in Cambodia for the last a year and half. Today she kicks off a new column about life abroad as told, in this case, through music. Enjoy!
*
This week I left Phnom Penh for a long holiday weekend trip with friends to beach-y Sihanoukville. Right away we got a proper hang going on the beach with a bottle of wine, crabs and squid perfect in a Kampot pepper sauce (haggled over at the market!), and a gorgeous sunset over the Gulf of Thailand.
For the finishing touch to get our beach hang jammin’, my friend started playing a soundtrack of Cambodian rock n’ roll oldies that knocked my socks off. At first I thought I knew the music – at times, it sounds like surf rock, Motown or even psychedelic – it sounds so familiar to the rock n’ roll I grew up with and yet completely foreign. It also sounds much more original than the conservative and sappy Khmer pop music being made today.
I found out this mesmerizing music is from a creative burst during the 1960s & 70s between Cambodian independence from French colonial rule and the rise of the genocidal Khmer Rouge, in which there was a flourishing and unlikely Cambodian rock n’ roll scene. This music was influenced by the incredible rock music happening in the US and the UK filtered through a French lens, but decidedly Cambodian.
The music from this time was mostly lost due to persecution of the artists by the Khmer Rouge and has been widely forgotten. When I pressed my friend for the name of the bands he said nobody knows and just to google “Khmer Rock n’ Roll.” However, there have been some efforts to preserve and resurrect this musical moment, including a documentary released this year: “Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock and Roll.”
Living in Cambodia for the past year and a half has been a kaleidoscope of perspective-altering friendships and work, charming culture, remnants of a dark history, converging Asian and Western influences, and nearly constant sensory input. It often feels hard to make sense of it all and write home about how it has been to live here. So, to know about Cambodia and what I can’t articulate with words, please listen to this haunting and oh-so-cool music.
*Revisit Jo’s previous post on Sister Disco looking at portrayals of women in art through the unlikely combination of Karen O + Kandinsky
F: The heat wave has passed and I gotta tell you – California ain’t got nothing on an East Coast heat wave. Sure, it was hot. It was also totally fine. I will say that the people on the East side of Los Angles had it way worse.
L: What kind of things were on your mind when you woke up this morning?
F: I checked the waves at the beach as soon as I woke up this morning . All I wanted to do was surf.
L: Do you want to share the link to the post about you on the Clean blog?
F: Last week I was featured on the Clean Program’s blog. It was a fun thing to do and I would love to share it. Check it out!
L: What is the last song that you listened to?
F: I just got home from dinner with my friends, when I came home Al was blasting this song that he loves:
L: How’s your heart?
F: My heart is so full of love. I have been just filled to the top with love since Suz passed away. I hope it lasts for a very, very long time.
F: Have you had any meaningful conversations this week?
L: Definitely! I have been keeping myself pretty busy lately and have had evening plans with friends almost every day since I’ve been back in NYC. What I have found particularly meaningful are instances in which friends have acknowledged some of the loss I’ve experienced lately and are willing to listen to me talk about it. I feel pretty lucky to have as many people care about me as I do & it makes me want to be a better friend in return.
F: What is something that you have learned over the past couple of weeks?
L: When you have the opportunity to see someone you love on their deathbed, go.
F: Show me a picture out of your window.
L: Lots of activity down below!
F: What are you looking forward to?
L: My future! I have a lot of ideas for some creative pursuits and partnerships and I’m going to spend the next phase of life trying to materialize them. It feels exciting.
F: What is your desktop background and why?
L: I’ve been rocking this pretty lady for some time, ’cause I like her moves!
I have never known this level of grief before and it has been hard to cope with. The best I can describe it is as a strong gust of wind that comes out of nowhere, then passes just as fastly. Lately, I have been stuck on the idea that I will never get to have another conversation with Suz for the rest of my life. Even writing that breaks me heart.
A couple of my friends have also experienced some loss in their lives in the past weeks and we have been supporting each other as best as we can. My friend Kaya sent me this the other day, and I wanted to share it here. It is taken from from Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking.
“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect the shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe that their husband is about to return and need his shoes. In the version of grief we imagine, the model will be “healing.” A certain forward movement will prevail. The worst days will be the earliest days. We imagine that the moment to most severely test us will be the funeral, after which this hypothetical healing will take place. When we anticipate the funeral we wonder about failing to “get through it,” rise to the occasion, exhibit the “strength” that invariably gets mentioned as the correct response to death. We anticipate needing to steel ourselves the for the moment: will I be able to greet people, will I be able to leave the scene, will I be able even to get dressed that day? We have no way of knowing that this will not be the issue. We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the care of others and the gravity and meaning of the occasion. Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief as we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself.”
The past few weeks have been full of various forms of transition for me, so much so that life is feeling a little like it is happening somewhere outside the normal measure of time. Things are moving very fast, and very slow. Farrell once said to me, “No worry, no hurry.” It’s a silly and simple little phrase that has popped into my head so many times since I first heard it. It is a much faster way to say this, which re-finds me every time I need it.
*Above image: Helmut Newton for Vogue Paris, June/July 1973
This past weekend I had the opportunity to try Aqua Flight. For those of you who don’t know what this is, I will do my best my explain it. Aqua Flight, or fly boarding, is when you are flown up in the air by water pressure. It is basically like a hover board with water underneath you.
Although these videos are extremely cheesy, they show you all you can do with this new technology. It was one of the most fun things I have ever done!
sisterdisco.com 