Left of the Dial by Ensminger David

Author:Ensminger, David
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PM Press
Published: 2013-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

There’s a museum of Chinese American culture in the West.

Yeah, in Sacramento. They came over and sweated building the railroad but couldn’t even live here because of the Yellow Laws.

The Oriental Exclusions Act.

They couldn’t even have children here. It was all just a bunch of shit. So, this guy is just a simple man working. He wipes his hand of the whole mess. He doesn’t like the way these guys are doing their jobs. He gets one of the Chinese guys, Po-han [Mako], and teaches him. What the others do is called “Monkey See, Monkey Do,” where they just copy because the white guys don’t want them to really know knowledge. He teaches him by using metaphors to talk about things like how steam is used and stuff. A working man wrote it. It’s his own book. He wanted to be a writer, so he went and read Hemingway. He retired from the Navy in Chapel Hill, while my dad lived in Fresno, which is nowhere near the ocean, which tells you about the Navy. But the book’s all about the military fear, and how it runs. When they lose it, it all falls apart. I recommend it to anybody. It’s not complicated. In a way, it talks about getting cured. Of course, in the movie, they simplified it. It was a war movie, but the book is more than that. So there were all these things coming together. Now, I’ve written things down and call it The Secondman’s Middle Stand because I’m definitely not at the beginning, but I hope I am not at the end. Did you think about being in your forties as a kid? But this is where I am, and time is a train.

Are you the same age as your dad was when you started putting out records?

Hmm, I was twenty-two. So, was my dad in his forties? Yeah, he was. He died when he was fifty-two. He never understood my vision of the band. Thought it was a just a limited thing. As it got towards the end, I was sending him postcards from all the towns, which is also in the opera Contemplating the Engine Room. I think a part of being a piece of the consciousness in the world is the ability to learn. In one way, you could say being humble, remaining engaged and not a shill or a pawn. One guy did this interview with John Coltrane and said, John Coltrane, what are you trying to do here? What are you trying to do with this music?

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