Different How?

Notes from the (momentarily) stationary life

I have long claimed that I “don’t get writer’s block.” As a lifelong journalist, that was simply unaffordable.

But there are other kinds of blockages. And the bottom line can be the same: A month without a post.

I don’t have a great explanation, and perhaps none is required. My best shot is not that I have nothing to say; more like I don’t really have a grip on the value of what I DO have to say.

It’s more a confidence shortfall than anything else. I announced recently that I intend to get more personal, less travelogue-y, even deeper. But it’s stopped me up tighter than a blister of Lomotil.

I was at a rooftop party the other night. The breeze was strong – it’s been more windy than rainy this year’s “rainy” season, but it’s also been cool, so no complaints – and asked me if I was OK.

“You seem different.”

“Different how?” I asked. But she couldn’t really say. “Just different.”

Not a lot to go on, but I’ve been getting that a bit since I returned to Saigon nearly three weeks ago. People commenting on my presence in different, vague ways. Another said, in a pause in the conversation, “You’re so quiet,” which is not something I hear very often.

And it’s true, I suppose: I feel different. My big, daunting birthday has passed, and I’m still me, still going. But in fact, these three weeks, like the weeks in France, have felt different to me as well.

Is it having taken a break from alcohol after a couple of months of enjoying the wonderful wines of Spain and France? That’s a pretty big thing, every time I do it. But it’s not the first time. I took six months off last year (with a few fun slips along the way), not to “get sober” but just to take a break. I’ve done it before, and my body responds well. I recommend it. Without the perpetual inflammation of that particular poison, I feel quite a bit younger –fewer aches and pains and stiffness – than I did at my birthday celebration, after that challenging Camino Mozarabe.

Maybe that’s it.

Maybe it’s not just me. Saigon has changed, too. The four months I was gone saw some changes in my social circles. The rooftop party was the farewell for a dear South African friend who’s moving for love – to Germany. Other friends are busy with baby-making or child-rearing, or creative projects, or are traveling themselves, and others have moved away. Others have announced departures or simply withdrawn a bit. My apartment complex, which I moved into nearly three years ago, now features me as the ONLY remaining friend living here. The other five have moved on to new digs over the last year.

On another level, the nightlife scene has died down a bit, or at least changed in its vibe. A string of high-profile police raids have seen dozens of foreigners (expats, tourists, and to be real, Vietnamese) drug-tested, imprisoned and, in some cases, eventually deported. No one I know personally, but several friends know some, and that has cast a pall, likely intentional, on the local nightlife. One friend’s little neighborhood cafe/bar, where I have played gigs, saw her place raided and people arrested. I have other friends who don’t even go out much any more, so worried they are of being deported for something as benign (to us) as a trace of cannabis in their system.

I understand the government’s position, to a point: The state – which is, in a one-party state, the first and last word on all matters – does not want Vietnam to become another Thailand, or Saigon to be another “sin city” along the lines of Bangkok. After all, Bangkok became what it is because it was encouraged to be that as an R&R spot for American GIs fighting in Vietnam in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

To that end, the police have cracked down, and not just on expats and tourists: This year’s Pride celebration was shut down, for reasons that were never really explained as far as I know, police have been going to people’s apartments to check there registration papers, and one friend told me that the police have literally been wading into the city’s big traffic jams and drug-and-alcohol testing random drivers. Those anti-drug posters that sit in many neighborhoods, including my own hem, were more of a warning than we might have thought.

None of this is draconian, and the police are just enforcing existing laws. Along with these things, sidewalks and better traffic lights and newly-paved roads are around every corner. Dogs now have to be muzzled in public, I’m told. Saigon is rapidly improving its infrastructure and generally tightening things up, in myriad ways. Some tales are rumors, others partial truths. And the country is definitely cracking down on drugs – but also on drunk driving, which is all to the good.

Vietnam is the fastest-growing economy in Asia, and the powers that be want that to be based on a real economy. The Vietnamese have a chance they’ve not had, ever, to become wealthy and successful on the world’s and their own terms, and they are not going to let a little thing like an expats freedom to party like it’s 1999 get in the way of that success. I get it.

Their country, their rules.

But it has cast a pall over things. A recent dinner with some expat friends underlined that change: Despite their love of Vietnam, the sense that one is living in a country where one has palpably fewer rights than one would in Europe or the US has put things in perspective. They are probably not to be among the long-term expats here. I get that, too.

None of this has changed things much for me, though. Sure, not drinking has constrained my social life, which has always been focused on music and bars.

But there is a change that’s a bit deeper: My social life is less important to me these days than it has been. Doing the work, whether creative, physical or emotional, is not a social project. It requires alone time, it requires quiet, it requires fewer distractions. And so my life is “different” in this way as well. I just don’t feel very compelled to go out to bars, for obvious reasons, though that is where the music tends to be. So I’ve not played out, and only gone to a couple of shows. I haven’t even seen most of my friends here. Yet.

I also don’t feel so compelled to write, or that the world – which is to say, my small band of readers – have much need, or even interest, in reading what I write. Perhaps this is wisdom I should have felt much earlier; perhaps it’s just insecurity. The not-knowing is part of the problem.

But it’s been a month, and so here I am. I’m by no means unhappy, I’ve been working every day on a couple of different long-term projects, and enjoying nearly ever match of the World Cup, entirely in the privacy and air con of my little apartment. (I am saving the results of the Argentina v. England match for after I write this.)

I can’t even get too excited about new music by some of my old favorites: the new McCartney and Stones albums got a quick listen, and I really tried with the new U2 EPs, but nothing is grabbing me. I was obsessed with other people’s music for most of my life, which often meant that my own wouldn’t come out. Now all I care about is my own music. I’ve consumed decades worth of music; now I want to create a bit more of my own.

Music is central to what I’m doing now. I’ve met a drummer, born in New Orleans, who is bringing some ZUNK to my more recent songs, which are far funkier already than my past, po-faced ballads of love lost and etcetera. We’ve been playing quite a bit, just at home, jammin’ them out, and it’s been great fun. I’ve got some plans regarding that, of course – more about that later.

I’ve also been focused on my fitness. The Camino was a challenge, but also a wake-up call. The pain and struggle was considerable, as I’ve detailed here, and I know the solution: More yoga, which is now an everyday thing, less alcohol as stated, and getting some things fixed: After a year of fighting it, I finally went to my dentist and had the molar that had colored TWO Caminos pulled. What a beast! More than an inch long after he pulled it, it was cracked all the way down to the root – no WONDER it was causing me trouble.

A week of soft food (yay, chao) and pain killers has sorted me out, and I felt instantly better once it was gone.

I also still get my walks in every day; Vietnamese I know are routinely floored by the distances I walk, which are not far by European standards. But it makes sense: Who would walk across town with the heat, the humidity, the traffic and the pollution, when a Grab bike or car costs only a buck or two?

Mad dogs and Californians, apparently. But that is only sustainable for me for a few months. Saigon is highly urban, extremely busy, and as one well-paid expat friend once told me, when explaining his high salary: “It’s hazard pay.” Word.

I’ve also been weaning myself off of YouTube, my last social media, and the one that takes up the most time. As I learned on previous Caminos, you stop watching the news, and when you come back to it a month or three later, it’s still the same news!! Trump Trump Trump, war war war, stock market/bond market/AI apocalypse…it’s just the same, over and over again. Useless. And I say this as a long-time journalist! Enough already!

So, aside from my daily walks, I’m staying home more. I love my little apartment, the air conditioning is essential, and although I’ve long suffered serious FOMO, and tended to go out a lot (especially in Saigon), I am finding that most of the things I need and want most to do – yoga, reading, writing, working on songs, practicing guitar, planning travel, watching the World Cup and writing this Substack – are all best done at home, in front of the computer, or on the yoga mat. There isn’t as much “out there” as there used to be, at least not for me, and not now.

I will certainly get “out there” again – I just booked a flight, so I won’t be stationary for long – but everything is pointing me inward right now, and I’m not going to fight it.

Being in and alone a lot more, I’ve been trying to dig a bit deeper, going back to…of all things…books! I’m finishing Bono’s marvelous autobiography, Surrender, which has reminded me better than U2’s recent output of why I admire him, even love him, so much. The depth of his revelations, the beauty of his lyrical prose – he is Irish, after all – and the epic sweep of a life that goes far beyond rock ‘n’ roll is inspiring as well as entertaining. The man is a giant. History will serve him well. F*@# the haters.

Now I’m reading his fellow Irishman Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, and American Jeanette Walls’ gripping The Glass Castle, two more memoirs of great depth and beauty.

I’m also examining my own (unwritten) “autobiography” for insight and material. One grows reflective with age, I suppose. The recent death of my dear friend Jeliseveta had an impact, as has the cancer struggle of a close family member, and the (non-fatal) heart attack of a dear, much younger friend. Such things concentrate the mind. For now, it’s making me dig a little deeper, and seek a larger perspective. It’s helping me see myself a bit more clearly, perhaps even a bit more forgivingly, and eventually, I hope, a little more usefully. Perhaps what I’ve learned can serve others as well. I still hope to make this Substack a bit deeper in that way. This is my latest attempt.

For right now, in other words, I’m just trying to get my shit together, to prepare for this new, crucial decade ahead of me. I have three months in Saigon (with that trip out for a couple of weeks from now, because let’s not go CRAZY with this settling down thing), and I’m using them as best I can for my aging body, my creative soul and my restless heart.

I appreciate everyone who is sticking with me during this transition, as invisible though it may be. I will keep at it until I can produce something of worth. I know I’ve got it in me.

Onward.