Thai Hotel

A long funeral: March 29 - April 2
Like all the best dramas, let’s start by reviewing what has happened. My ex, Neung, has called me to let me know her mom is dying. Little do I realise that I am about to be exposed to Thai culture in ways I could never have imagined. When I closed the last chapter, the mother had died and I was heading off to the funeral.

I arrive at the temple in Saphan Kwai. It is an interesting place, very much a temple for the ordinary man, but beautiful nonetheless. Christian churches are often magnificent architectures but they always seem remote, perhaps forbidding, places for silence and contemplation. Buddhist temples, by contrast, are colorful, vibrant, so very much alive. A collection of monks in their orange robes, street sellers hawking everything imaginable, children playing, dogs barking, car horns tooting. It is a constantly moving stream of human traffic and it is fascinating to see and experience.

Neung had told me to get off at exit 4 of the SkyTrain, which I do. 30 minutes later I figure it is exit 3. No big deal. There are quite a lot of people and, as with many things Thai, it is kind of chaotic. I mean this in a nice way. I genuinely like the Thai way! So I don’t really understand what is happening. There is the coffin, a lot of flowers, a lot of Thai people, and me, the only farang.

4 monks arrive and the chanting starts. This goes on about 20 minutes and then we all break for food. It is rice soup and aroi maak (meaning very tasty). Back to chanting for another 20 minutes or so. I don’t get it but I am guessing they are preparing the soul for moving on. The monks collect their presents - soap powder, sugar cubes and so on. Yes I know it seems weird but it’s very normal. The monks own nothing and rely on the community to support them. It ends so I go up to Neung and ask what now.

Well, no one told me that Thai funerals take up to 5 days to complete. So I end up coming back the next 4 nights. Basically it is the same drill every time. the same drill. The more chanting you have the easier it becomes for the spirit to move on

Night 4 is a Saturday and it’s carnival time. No kidding. We are holding a funeral service in the middle of a funfair. The crematorium is beside the Thai Mobile bouncy castle. We are sited behind a big wheel. There seems to be some kind of bingo contest going on via loudspeaker, and the monks are chanting away amidst screams and loudspeakers and smells and god knows what. The word “surreal” comes to mind again.

This is sure as hell not England! There we would be somber, polite, wearing black, being brave, hushed, solemn, and probably raising our black umbrellas to protect from the inevitable rain. Here, well here anything goes. People arrive, people leave, phone calls are made and received. Dogs fight. Cat’s wander. People eat and drink and laugh and cry and wander and roam. We even have the funeral photos. This really is bizarre. All the family collect together in front of the coffin for the photos to be taken. I am kind of expecting someone to tell me I am at a wedding! You know, I kind of like it. It is all very informal, a bit messy, but it works. I’m thinking to myself that when I am dead I could find this quite a good way to go.

Each night there have been long discussions about money - who has given what, is it enough and so on. Saturday, Neung’s stepdad finally hands over his envelope and I am praying he has done the right thing. Well good for him, he has given 5,000 baht which is a hell of a lot for a taxi driver, and he has not been able to work at all the last week. Stepdad has turned out to be one of the heroes of the week. He has showed he cared, he has done most of the right things and he and I have started to get on pretty well.

Sunday is cremation day. I arrive a little late and find the coffin plus procession going round and round the crematorium about four or five times. So I join in and it is unbelievably hot. Everyone is suffering and sweat is pouring off me. My clothes are soaked in minutes. Eventually the coffin goes up to the crematorium (and yes, the bouncy castle is still there). I am expecting another service but no, the box is simply laid in the oven and then everyone steps up to wai Neung’s mom one last time. We place some paper flowers into the oven and then it is done. Each guest is given a small gift…looks like a posy of some kind, but then I find it is actually nail clippers! Another Thai characteristic.

Now it is all over and Neung is getting upset, which is normal enough. I talk to her a while and then it’s time to go. I go home, pack, go to the airport and fly home to Switzerland.

So what are my thoughts? Well it was an experience, and I am the better for it. I feel that I have seen parts of and things about Thailand that I would not otherwise have experienced. In many ways I feel that the Thais do things so much better than we from the west. Death is not the worst example. I remember the hospital, and the man looking after his grandmother. I remember the young boy looking at me with his wide eyes, saying “falang”. I remember the shock of finding Neung’s mom inside the coffin. I remember the girls from the shop trying to chat me up. I remember the dignity I have seen. I remember the chaos and the sadness. I will ALWAYS remember the funfair at the funeral. Who could not? No one likes death but this was not a bad death.

Someone asked me what was the point of this journal. Good question but there really is no point. It is a record rather than a point. A record of a week in everyone’s lives. A record of a week in my life…an unusual but rewarding week. An affirmation of life as well as death.

Part 4 follows. The original article is available at http://www.blog.artthailand.net/?p=16

Originally from England, Adam Bryan-Brown has lived in Bangkok for one year having spent many years working in businesses in the United Sates and Switzerland. After graduating from Oxford University, Adam spent 20 years working in public relations.

At the beginning of 2005 Adam set up his first independent company, 2nd AB Associates, a virtual public relations agency. artThailand was created in January 2006 and is his second independent venture. The company is committed to promoting Thai contemporary art across the world.

He is also a published writer and is currently working on a book about his life in Thailand. His main interests are contemporary art and writing.

You can find selections of his recent writing at www.blog.artthailand.net and www.artthailand.net

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On September 14, a new exhibition of work by Amorn Pinpimai was opened at artThailand’s Livin’ Gallery in Bangkok. Twenty new paintings, mostly oil on canvas, are featured. The exhibition will be open for viewing until October 14. Vivid and bold in the use of color, shape and form this new work of Amorn is, in our opinion, his best to date. Early indications suggest that the media, art buyers and the Thai art community agree.

Why not take a look at the full collection at blog.artthailand.net/gallery/index.php?level=collection&id=3

You will also find some fun pictures from the exhibition opening at the same address. I did edit out the more outrageous ones but I will be adding the after-party pictures soon and those I know are outrageous!

Born in 1968 in the north of Thailand, Amorn Pinpimai is now based in Bangkok working as a lecturer in the Department of Arts at Valaya Alongkorn Rajabhat University (and no, I can’t pronounce the name of the university either!).

Jovial, shy, yet at the same time larger than life, Amorn comes across as one of life’s nice people. He lacks ego, he is charmingly polite, you sense he is more comfortable in the calm and peace of Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai than the hustle of Bangkok, and yet he paints with passion, vigor and verve.

He paints not just what he sees but what his imagination and emotion allow.

I can tell three rather amusing stories that kind of sum up Amorn’s attitude to life. First, I mentioned that he is really quite a shy man. Well, though I searched hard, out of 171 photographs taken at the exhibition opening yesterday, I failed to find a single one of him. Quite how he managed to keep himself away from the camera I don’t know. I am notoriously camera shy myself and yet found myself in over 20 pictures.

Second, if you look at the picture here on the right you can just about tell that it is painted on two canvases. I was intrigued so I asked him why. He said something like: “Oh Khun Adam, I woke up one morning and I had the idea for this painting. I knew I had to start it then or I would lose the thought. I searched all over my studio but I couldn’t find a canvas the right size. So I decided to use two canvases.” I love it! It is so classically and wonderfully Thai.

Interestingly, however, this picture seems to be the most generally admired of the whole collection even though it is not the artist’s personal favorite.

Third, you may notice that almost all of Amorn’s work features the female form. Convinced that there must be some dark, symbolic reason for this I once again asked him, why? The reply was fast, to the point and unemotional. “I prefer women to men.” Ok, well that’s clear. Guess I need to start looking for my symbolism somewhere else!

So let’s talk a little about his work and what he is trying to say to us. Most of Amorn’s earlier work has been using acrylic on canvas. This is his first major collection of oil paintings. Having started his career using blends of white, black and gray, he has gradually evolved to a much wider range of color, and I feel that oil has allowed him the freedom to be much bolder in his use of color. For me color is on of the most important parts of any painting. I love color blends and Amorn’s are some of the best I have seen in a while.

The title of the collection is “In the Dream”. It’s a theme that he has been exploring for a long time. On the one hand he tries to answer the question of what dreams say to us? On the other hand he believes that the interpretation of a dreams is less important than the sensation of the dreams themselves and the emotional response they induce in us.

As Amorn says himself: “What if we just listen the sounds that echo silently after the moment of a dream? What if we use our dreams as an invitation to enter a mysterious universe where answers and explanations are less important than the sensations themselves.“

Amorn does not look for answers or solutions. He compares his working process to a state of meditation in which his imagination and creation are aroused by quietly listening to the breath from his lungs and the beat of his heart.

Ok, but does this mean anything or is it nothing more or less than pseudo-babble? Well actually yes, it does mean something and something that is quite important.

What Amorn is trying to say is that it doesn’t matter what was in his mind when he created a work because each of us will interpret a piece of art according to our own interests, prejudices, desires, emotional state and so on. In this noisy society where art often suffers from too much meaning and analysis, we often forget that art, above all, creates space for reflection, contemplation and silence, almost as if we are observing a dream.

Some of you may know that I am very passionate about the work of Antoni Gaudi. I can’t really explain why except to say that his work heightens my senses, allows me to forget everything else around me and that it “speaks” to me. Does it matter that I can’t explain?

I say no and Amorn agrees. His point, again, is that the interpretation of a dream is less important than the sensation of that dream.

There is one technique he uses that explains the point very well. You will notice that he uses a number of very common figures and symbols, including the moon, snakes and birds. So I asked what do these symbols mean? His reply was interesting because he said, “I can’t tell you.” Well that didn’t help me much so I pressed the point. “Ok, Khun Adam, here is why I can’t tell you. You are English. You are Christian. For you the snake probably has association with the Garden of Eden, with original sin, with betrayal, deceit and mistrust. I am Thai. I am Buddhist. The snake has a very different meaning for me. The same is true of all the symbols. Our response to them depends on so many things….socio-economic circumstances, experience, attitude, culture. I could go on forever.“

So, unlikely though it may seem, here we have an artist brave enough to admit that what his work says depends on what you think it says, which further implies that whether you like it is up to you and not up to the art establishment to determine.

I like it! It’s a refreshing attitude. Too often I feel that we are told what we should like and treated like imbeciles if “we don’t get it”. I like the attitude but I also like the work. It’s rich in color. It makes me feel warm and comfortable. It’s a little mysterious. It’s soothing and calm.

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