Tiki Sadness

Okay, maybe I am a freak, but a great deal of the tiki world is sad to me. I listen to the music and I just wish I was there then. It's all so sad to me. I don't see anything wrong with that, but that's a huge part of my feelings.

Maybe I am a lonely soul. But I hear Maururu A Vau and I am sad. I think of lost love of lost dreams of a sad place.

Maybe I am drinking too much alone in my bamboo shack, but still, it's there in the music. There is a sadness....

The Swank Pad Broadcast - If it's Swank...

[ Edited by: swanky on 2004-06-05 17:37 ]

I am totally into that part of Tiki culture, obviously. I tried to make that clear in the foreword to Tiki Road Trip, that one has to appreciate it's atmosphere of temps perdu, of Paradise Lost.

Another one of my favourite pop cultures are 60s Samurai movies (NOT the "Last Samurai"), and here is my favourite quote about the vanished culture of the Samurai, it contains all this kind of sadness about the lost grandeur of a people and the their futile attempts to endure:

"In the changing of the times, they were like autumn lightning, an empty promise of rain, falling unheeded on fields already bare."

How about that for sadness...sigh...great!

yes, i concur... but at the same time....

i believe in resurrection. by creating new tiki temples and new tiki experiences - have drinks with friends at the Tiki or the Mai Kai, et al, we are not only re-living the age - we are creating a powerful new age that people in the future will look back upon with longing.

so while I do absolutely share your sorrow for what we have lost, Swanky I will lift a rum infused drink to you and encourage you to do the same and you will see - ALL IS ONE AND ONE IS ALL - and it is all within your mind's eye to make the past and present and future of Tiki come to life when 2 or more (in body or virtual space) are gathered in HIS name...

AMEN

*On 2004-06-05 01:06, Swanky wrote:*Maybe I am drinking too much alone in my bamboo shack, SNIP There is a sadness....

come'on hanford - get us back the tiki shout!!!
:P

If by "sadness" you mean bittersweet - then yes. It's in the drinks - the music - the history of Polynesia and Polynesian Pop.

I enjoy that aspect of it and actually enjoy being alone in my lounge at night because it makes the times I get to see the TC Ohana that much sweeter.

Heck, Swanky - get down here for a few days and we'll go see Kern and get your medicine.

Bring me a "Gleek salat."

Hadn't pondered this before.

When it comes to collecting anything, it is backward looking by definition, so the wistful part you describe makes sense to me. I feel the same way about photos. My wife loves taking pics, but when I look at them, even recent ones seem like they were from some other guy's life and he's gone now. There's a certain surreal feeling to pics that depersonalizes my memories.

On the other hand, music seems to recreate a good feeling or event. Music doesn't make me wistful in that way, but pics make me think about how the past is dead. To each his own, eh?

Mood-wise, I always think of Tiki as fixed in time, and when I go to a certain place or return to some certain group, everything is as it was - like when I'm not at the Mai Kai, it's in suspended animation until I walk back in the door. I feel like it's always available to tap into, so I stay pretty happy that way.

When a Tiki place closes, I don't quite think it really happened. I feel like it's still someplace, but either it's in a new location and I can't find it, or I'm just not allowed in any more. When loved ones have died, I get the same feeling.
I think this is a result of my brain having too closely identified with the school calendar as a kid - each June, everything reset and started again in September. So, each June, I think, "Well, So-And-So should be done being dead now," or, "Maybe that Tiki place I liked is done being gone."

That's really dumb, maybe I live in cyclical denial.

I also avoid going back to places I've worked or lived in before 'cause part of me feels like when I go back through the door, things will still be the same. I even avoid places I've liked. That's contradictory to the Tiki suspended animation thing.

Well, now I just need to alter my conciousness and straighten this whole thing out.

Sorry to have rambled.

Yes ... it is sad.

Especially when the fur finally wears off the leopardskin upholstry on your barstools, you need a new cartridge for your phono (and are told that they stopped making that type in 1963), and you go to make your third Mai-Tai, and realize that you're out of limes.

Just drop in an MP3 that you made before your needle went south, and learn to appreciate the finer points of ReaLime ... If anyone else notices the lack of fur, you can always claim that the mange was a result of tropical parasites in the bamboo. Yeah. That just about covers it.

My hangovers suck too.
Drink some water.

On 2004-06-05 17:14, cybertiki wrote:
... If anyone else notices the lack of fur, you can always claim that the mange was a result of tropical parasites in the bamboo.

I tell 'em I got them waxed for summer.

Polynesian and Tiki related items have always made me very happy, taking me to another place and time...a fantasy, if you will.

Now, on the other hand, MIAMI VICE makes me very melencoly.

But, I can relate, none the less.

I hear ya on the Tiki Sadness..... I truly enjoy the escape that Tiki affords me. It is not just a tropical escape for me but a time warp as well.

I often listen to old hapa haole tunes, Roy Rogers, Gene Autrey, Cole Porter so on and so forth while I make my frames in the garage. This craft time gives me several hours at a single sitting to listen to the old music and ponder how things might have been in the 40's, 50's and 60's. Tiki is just one of my areas of interest that has a backward glance in time.

I try to imagine what life was like for my grandparents. I think I glamorize the simplicity in life back then. Cost of living was lower, entertainment was wholesome, etc....

I think about how wonderful it must have been and wish that I could have lived in a time where overconsuming, living beyond your means, and a cubicle job were not the norm. My perception is that quality of living was higher but I do not really know first hand if that was the case (being only 34 years old).

Then I try to put in all in perspective by realizing that most of my grandmothers aunts and uncles as well as her parents, died from things that would be easily fixed by modern medicine. Throwing trash out the window of your car was perfectly acceptable, racisim was rampant and horrible, smoking was expected instead of a bad habit. If you wanted to take your family out to eat in average suburbia, you had 3 choices of restaurants and if they were closed on Sunday, you were eating at home. Imagine driving home late a night, realizing you are out of gas, and finding out that all the gas stations are closed for the night.

It is easy to yearn for the simplicity of yesteryear but many of us would be fish out of water without the conveniences we have come to enjoy and expect. (such as the ability to use chat forums over the internet.)

Ramble Ramble Ramble

Wow, I thought I was the only one who suffered from nostalgia!

I especially could relate to the poster who said that looking at old photos was like looking at someone else's life...how true!

I get these touches of melancholia about once a month...maybe it's the male version of PMS?

I often look at old pictures and try to figure out what the people in it where thinking at that exact moment in time. Were they happy? sad? Preoccupied? Or were they also nostalgic and melancholy?

I like what the budhha said: Each moment contains the seeds of it's own change...

While I can't go back to the past, or forward to the future...I also have to realize that the present is just an illusion too, also unreachable. Once the moment passes, it's already gone forever!

Very sad and very frustrating...and it's probably why God invented mixed tropical themed drinks and colorful poly-pop shirts!

To enjoy life, however short and fleeting!

I think what's being described here is something along the lines of the Brazilian/Portuguese concept of "saudade" which is more or less a form of melancholy nostalgia... it's been described as "a feeling of nostalgic remembrance of people or things, absent or forever lost, accompanied by the desire to see or possess them once more."

Now that is about the best advice I've hear all day!

thanks,

Matt

On 2004-06-05 19:43, tikibars wrote:
My hangovers suck too.
Drink some water.

I think I'm going to kill myself, and maybe take someone else with me to talk to on my way down.

On 2004-06-07 12:00, Tiki_Bong wrote:
I think I'm going to kill myself, and maybe take someone else with me to talk to on my way down.

Promises, promises.... :)

I was wondering how long it would take you to find your way onto this thread! We were running low on Bong-ness!

Are you angling to be the Kurt Cobain of Tiki band music?

A dramatic leap into an erupting volcano would be a pretty spectacular way to go about it.

We'd have to come up with a "The Legend Of Tiki Undersore Bong" tune. I promise it won't be sung to The Beverly Hillbillies theme. Maybe Gilligan's Island or Stairway to Heaven... :lol:

(Just in case - this was meant solely in good humor.)

[ Edited by: Geeky Tiki on 2004-06-07 12:34 ]

On 2004-06-07 12:32, Geeky Tiki wrote:
A dramatic leap into an erupting volcano would be a pretty spectacular way to go about it.

Bong Beach Burn July 17th - Who's In?

Man, I never shoulda said Beverly Hillbillies....

I promise if ya take to volcano leap, I'll try to come up with a proper tune.

OK, ya better not jump, 'cause this is all I got....

Come n' listen to the legend of a man named Bong.

A cynical Tiki lover who was also good at Pong.

One day, on a thread, he said, "What do you all know!?!?"

Then he ran off and jumped into a volcano.

Mona Loa, that is, in Hawaii, that's a state.

Well, the next thing you know Shag's released a mug named "Bong."

Bong's ghost looked down and said, "You've got the carb all wrong!"

He says, "Up and back is where it oughtta be,

If ya wanna load it up, and have a smoke with me."

Contraband, that is, Maui wowie, cannabis sativa

Well now it's time to raise our mugs and make a toast to Bong.

If he were here, he'd grab a mug and sing a dirty song.

Then he'd say, "Go home and blow up your TV,

and have a heapin' helping of "**Actual **Reality."

Not virtual, that is, feed your head, take your shoes off.

Y'all fuck off now, hear?"

OK, that's enough of that.

[ Edited by: Geeky Tiki on 2004-06-07 14:17 ]

Swanky, if the thought of Bong in a marching band uniform don't make you happy...you are made of stone!

But seriously....I get moments of depression from time to time, some time with no reason!

Through it all, I always try to see the big picture..one I learned in the Army: "everyday you are not getting shot at is a good day"
This has stayed with me! I consider myself (and there have been many times where I was alone late at night with only a beer to keep me company) blessed to be able to sit in front of a computer and write, when others can't afford the computer. Blessed when I eat a hamburger, because someone tonight goes without anything! Blessed that I have this mai-tai to drink, because there are some people locked up in prison right now, dreaming of a day when they too can be normal again...

In short, I have been guilty of feeling sad far too often in my life!

I am sure there was a guy just like me, 40 years ago, surrounded by all the fun and games of the lounge and Tiki culture at it's highest, wondering and pining away for a different time...

I guess what I am trying to say is that it is all relative!!!

Nighttime seems to be the time for ruminating and wallowing in self-induced nostalgia..but just like those seasonal depression disorder people who live in Alaska, a good day will come! The sun will shine! And Tiki will be here forever..hallelujah!!!!