Zine: seven sounds of Sumatra
I made this zine a few weeks ago but it feels like longer, because I haven't heard many of the sounds since I left Sumatra.
So when I unfolded it and put it beside me on a chair where I am writing this in Kuala Lumpur (in Malaysia), I smiled big without trying. Because I was delighted at the effect of seeing it, how I was transported so thoroughly back there. To the continuous road that Bell and I cycled along for six weeks making our way slowly up the west coast of Sumatra.
I'm sharing this zine because I want to share my little creations. But also because, well, if you want to know what cycling in Sumatra was like, it was a lot of riding in the humidity under a hot sun, being porous to the daily life that takes place along the road, experiencing a lot of stimulation, a lot of it sound, a lot of it these sounds in particular.
MX (motocross) bikes
Came to mind first because of things like negativity bias and how this loud aggressive sound was a contrast to the chill atmosphere otherwise. Speculation: vehicle of choice for life and work out in the steep hills with dirt paths through plantations where oil palms, coffee bushes, cassava plants, rubber trees, and cacao trees grow. Bell explained to me what the deal is with the lack of mufflers on these bikes (more power). Daily constant, and sometimes my eardrums hurt. How can people ride them, do they get ear damage, do they wear earplugs? But also, I no longer brace with fear when seeing a wiry man on an agro mx bike with a buff around his face, only eyes exposed. This is just how it is. And you can see a smile in someone's eyes anyways.
swiftlets (real calls, recorded calls)
People construct concrete enclosures on top of their homes or other buildings that are windowless but have lots of ventilation tubes, and a loudspeaker that plays swiftlet calls on repeat. Swiftlets are birds, I think I knew them as swifts previously? The swiftlet calls are intended to attract real swiftlets to a particular building, which poses as a dark cave. Buildings are in competition with each other, so you hear different loudspeakers making swiftlet calls, and then of course there are the swiftlets themselves making all their sharp sounds. All this is to entice the swiftlets to build these saliva nests in a concrete cave so that it can be harvested and sold for birds nest soup.
"bule"
I gather this means foreigner. This is probably the word we heard more than any other. Keep in mind my ears would only be tuned to certain words in Bahasa Indonesia. Despite the frequency, it felt friendly and relaxed. And intergenerational as in toddlers, children, teenagers, adults, and grannies all calling us bule.
gentle pop music
like, Bryan Adams in the Grab (like Uber). Elevator music everywhere, not just the elevator. Come to think of it this is not so typical of the bike travel itself, it's more like what you hear when you're stopped somewhere, in a hotel, restaurant, taxi, mall, that sort of thing.
the local masjid
my favourite memory of this is at the 6 pm call to prayer in a small town, I could see the man (mullah) standing inside the open-air masjid, singing into the microphone that led to the loudspeaker on the roof broadcasting along the only road. Except that the whole system wasn't working properly and so you could hear loud and abrasive feedback periodically from the loudspeaker. I found it endearing that he just kept going rather than trying to stop and fix the problem. Like, let's just keep going imperfections and all.
a strangely pleasant, nearly constant misgendering:
There is a cluster of greetings, bule among them, but hello mister being the most common gendered one. Hello miss or hello sis is also common, just not as common as hello mister. I love this example of how the impact feels different when you understand the intention. There was a point we decided that the reason this was happening was just that people are making a snap decision and default to the greeting that's reflexible. Maybe, also, the knee jerk response to seeing someone on a bicycle is to assume it's a man? You see, with Bell being a trans woman, the idea in the abstract of going to a place where you already stand out as a bule and then to be constantly yelled at from the roadside as hello mister, it might deter you from visiting a place. But in this context it was just funny. Made easier, definitely, by me also being called mister alongside Bell.
nongkrong
This word means to gather and chill without a particular plan. I associate it with the sounds of people chatting and laughing and commenting on what they see from their vantage point along the road. Which at a certain moment, for a fleeting instant, would be us. I also associate nongkrong with the experience of stepping into a little cafe or restaurant as strangers and experiencing this phenomenal Indonesian hospitality, very chatty too, and then feeling like you're leaving a friend only thirty minutes later.
parting zine thoughts
I am realizing that the art I want to make has a common thread of being participatory. I am imagining a world where this zine finds its way to someone and i have filled out the to / from / when / why. And then they (or someone else who has printed off the zine) can make a complementary version for themselves on the same paper, because a piece of paper has two sides and i numbered the pages on the opposite side.
But how do you actually get a paper zine into a digital form so that others can print it anyways? Maybe you photocopy it. I want to do that.
I don't remember the exact chain of events that led to this zine, which I made on a whim in Painan, a town on the Indian Ocean in Sumatra. This is the first zine I've ever finished. Around this time, I'd read Kening Zhu's interview with Carolyn Yoo, and on Carolyn's site you find zines. (Her 1-page zine guide is the one I used!)
Bell and I had also had a chat about sounds and stimulation. It had occurred to me, too, that I'd used to send little audio recordings sometimes to my friend Andrea. And in general I'd been thinking about things Bell and I can do on our dates together that would be playful and creative and connective. Thinking of ways to pay attention differently, to each other, to what's around us. ![Uploading IMG_1086.jpeg...]