Ambient Parking Lot by Pamela Lu

Author:Pamela Lu
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-9846475-0-7
Publisher: Grimsey Records / Kenning Editions
Published: 2011-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Thus began my ill-starred journey to the interior. I slogged along the riverbank in a southwesterly direction until I came across a tributary where a great banyan tree had taken root. After admiring its many trunks, I turned left and followed the waterway as instructed until I reached the first of the villages. Hungry and weary from my travels, I stopped at the one guesthouse in town and enjoyed an excellent meal. However, after engaging a few memorable characters there in conversation, I discovered no trace of the conductor. Nor did I fare any better at the next village or the one after that. Expecting nothing more, I felt little disappointment. I was relishing the opportunity to collect authentic examples of the local music, even if I was unable to find the celebrity in question.

As I continued my journey to each of the villages circled on the map, I found myself looking out on terraced crops plowed by water oxen. My simple lunches of sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves took on a romantic flavor, as I pictured myself the wayward hero of a harrowing tale. Images of reality, however, soon intruded on my reverie. I began to notice the spread of Western pop culture and learned that recent infrastructural projects had included the installation of a satellite dish network in the region. This pernicious colonization manifested itself in the form of television sets, botched Hollywood lingo, and teenagers dressed in T-shirts printed with slogans of the toxic Me generation. But worst of all were the radio programs, broadcast over airwaves of international tastelessness, spewing the cheesiest and most square-sounding remixes of American Billboard hits onto the developing world.

One day, as I languished in the humidity of a small restaurant specializing in fried dumplings and home-brew, my ears were assaulted by a terrible noise sputtering out from the speakers above the entrance to the kitchen. I snatched up my knapsack, determined to escape the Muzak as soon as possible, but something about the tune sounded uncannily familiar and I dropped back in my seat, transfixed. I listened with growing comprehension and horror. There was no doubt about it; the flourishes and instrumentation were unmistakable. It was none other than my own easy-listening version of “Surf’s Up”—the last score I had been working on with my former arranging partner, Bryce Connolly. This unexpected collision with my past sent me into a tailspin. I flagged down the young waitress on duty and ordered a bottle of beer. And another and another. I could barely make sense of my hopelessness. Perhaps it was the tragedy of seeing a sensitive culture infiltrated by the crassness of global consumerism and witnessing my own role in this corruption. Perhaps it was the mere awfulness of the arrangement itself, the fact that I was largely to blame for its existence. Was this how I would be remembered: as a creator of meaningless kitsch, someone who had turned a pop masterpiece into an annoyance, an insufferable piece of

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