Before the typepad URL existed. Glutter had another home on Salon.
I finally decided to shut that site down, and move it permanently over here.
This is the overview of everything that happenned at the other place.
If you’re interested the links are articles I wrote related to the subject.
For the whole index of those four months: Glutter Index
This is Glutter July 1st to November 1st 2003
In the last four months. Everything changed. How odd to decide to move this blog elsewhere on the first, the same day I decided to start it. Nothing was planned.
And now I think about it, that turn of the clock at midnight from June to July this year coincided with an all new reality to my life, self and home.
On that very night at 4am I came home to write about the day’s filming. The idea of starting this site was to keep a log of the progress of the film and my other projects.
What I didn’t know, that night was to be the very last bit of car racing related footage I acquired before putting the camera down. Precipitating a rethink of the whole experience, deciding to document in words how the project changed and what I saw.
That afternoon, I joined a protest against a free speech crushing legislation called Article 23. What we didn’t know until at 4 in the afternoon, was that half a million people, seven percent of our population also decided to do the same.
The turn out astounded the government, the Hong Kong people, China, and even those of us who participated. Coverage was found in all parts of the world (although not Salon who choose to talk about Turtles instead).
We managed to delay the bill. The first time in history, our own people have had a say over a decision the government made for us. It ushered a whole new perspective on political debate in this city.
The first two weeks of Glutter was a record of both the personal and political changes that happened here. I started to demand self autonomy and universal suffrage for this city. The impossible, idealistic dream was out, and so many of us found each other and realized we were far from alone.
Then I kept writing about Hong Kong, and my feelings of it. Recently I started a search for my identity, my relationship with China, even though I carry such anger against the communist government. Something I always hoped one day I could talk about, but found too hard.
Tomorrow I am going to help the Democratic Network create their new website. In the next few weeks I hope we can start editing the footage we have of the day. It’s been delayed because both Prangal and I took advantage of the cheap tickets postSARs (New Ways to Die of SARS) to visit the US.
It was also here that I very publicly –on a whim– decided to go to Burning Man, and found myself traveling across the US for a month. I got to experience the New York Black Out five hours into arriving. Then crossed country on a series of plane rides, to different destinations making my way back to LA my other home town. The first time in seven years, I saw most of my friends. I got to visit my grandmother’s grave for the first time.
I came back to Hong Kong and found that I did not do what I planned on this trip at all. Which is to say a proper “goodbye” to the people I loved, because when I packed my bags last time, I didn’t realize I wasn’t to go back for as long as I did.
But instead of telling them I decided to stay in Hong Kong, and it is where I am to spend my life. I realized how much I missed the US, the lifestyle, my friends and family and am now thinking of returning for a while.
Part of the reason I been thinking about this, is I had to admit coming back was a major factor in falling back into depression. Some sort of trigger effect of realizing that the California I remembered is not that far off the rose colored glasses I put on through nostalgia. As I said over and over again while I was there, “So, this is not a dream, this place really exists huh?” To much amusement of those around me.
I found it survived the onslaught of the Bush Administration, and it might even thrive or can strike a balance under Arnie. Make no mistake, things had changed, but the personal I appreciated hadn’t.
And through even through hard personal spell, I managed to write. Not always well, but still captured those blurry two, three weeks for me to look back at. This little piece of the web kept me company.
After coming out of it, I realized my life as a whole was fantastic, and in order to keep myself out of thinking I had not achieved anything coming up to my 30th year. I started documenting my travels, starting from five years ago, and plan to slowly post the diaries, photos and letters home on the new blog.
Something I planned to do, from the moment I put on my first backpack. As nothing I ever did, starting from my teens was just for fun. It was always some fact finding mission of what I would eventually like to write about.
And I suppose this Glutter thing is the first step in sitting down and recording it all in a searchable note form. And the first glimpse of it in public. It won’t be the last, and but it will be the most personal raw account of those things, before I reinvent it into something else.
This wasn’t only an interesting time for me, it was for others too.
Ryan Snow, the illustrator I work on the graphic novel with, moved back to Canada. He started the process of settling into his old home after spending a few years in this city.
This is the reason for the delay of the graphics for both Glutter and Straight Line Phobia but he needs his own time to do this. And no doubt when he is ready, the comics will spring back to life.
Otherwise I spent some time here plugging some of my old college friends who got their big break: one was beamed into your home on MTV, another featured in the biggest Asian American Movie in a decade, and last week another got an EP out.
I am so psyched for them -you would think it was me who did. But there is nothing like seeing people you know achieve their dreams, because you know the work, the hardships and crisis they endured before the public ever knew they existed.
While privately, some friends got pregnant, others had babies, some got divorced, and others got married. Some lost their jobs, some changed careers, others made life decisions to either move towards making their own art, or give that up and move towards the commercial sector. All the while we spent hours discussing the merits and downfalls of both.
Now I look back on this. No wonder I had so much to say. I manage to pack a lot into the last 122 days.
I have 140 days until I turn thirty. So lets see what happens next.
For that, you have to goto: http://glutter.typepad.com
Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 