For as long as I can remember I’ve always jotted down the things that popped into my head that I felt needed saving for later. Anything from a possible invention to a street scene I found emotionally moving. It went into my idea notepad during the early days and then into the notes section of my phone since about 2012. Some, I can remember very clearly, maybe even the time and place, while others I have fun trying to decipher as to why I would write it down. I thought it might be interesting to sift through the 424 notes on my phone and the rest of my idea notepad in order to relive those times and ideas. Not only to make sense of what I wrote but also to come away with something that will benefit me moving forward. Since I don’t have my idea notepad with me in Ireland let’s start with the very first note in my phone dated 5/26/12.

Exactly like ‘Mondo Cane’ but how human adaptions mimic animal adaptions. Within touristy areas.

This is definitely a weird one to start with but at the same time, get fucking used to it! My life revolves around weirdness. If you haven’t seen ‘Mondo Cane,’ please find it on the internet, watch it, and come back to this post. My friend Billy introduced me to this documentary most likely in 2007 or 2008. He was introduced to it by his father who had first come about the film around its advent in 1963. Our dads were very similar in many ways and I think they have had a hand in both of our creative life endeavours. But, I digress. Mondo cane literally translates into English as ‘doggish world’ which is a fitting title for a documentary that portrays ritual scenes from across the globe which seem bizarre to Western standards but then at the same time shows Western rituals that probably seem bizarre to the rest of the world. This film shocked its viewers at the time it came out in the ‘60s and still blew the minds of two 15-year-old kids who were introduced to it in the early 2000s. It’s not to say I hadn’t seen anything like it before but it really made me think. Enough so that I am writing about it still to this day.

I think it was back in May of 2012 when I went to visit my friend Rich in Beijing where he was studying for his final year of college. I remember getting off of the plane in Beijing Airport after almost 22 hours of travel and then waiting in an hour-long taxi rank to eventually arrive on campus at Rich’s dorm defeated but ready for anything. Rich’s first words as I ran into him in the stairwell were, “Where the fuck have you been, are you ready to go out?” Which I dutifully replied, “Yes.” When I came to from a brownout hours later I was nice and drunk with a tinge of jet-lag queueing to see Mao Zedong’s body in Tiananmen Square at 5 am. Through some misinterpretation on Rich’s end we eventually found out that it might take the full day to get to see the venerable Chairman Mao. So, being hungry and tired, we left our place in line and headed home. I finally got my much-needed rest before the mayhem continued the next day.

Sometime over the next 14 days was when I wrote the note. I believe I was observing foreigners in the Sanlitun area of Beijing sniffing, poking, and prodding as they walked past clubs, food stalls, and elderly beggars that often times lined the streets. They were timid yet curious and used their senses to justify this new world around them. I thought this seemingly reminiscent of zoo animals being brought into a new enclosure for the first time unsure as to how to cope with the new feelings that came with a new setting. I remember thinking how funny it was to see people naturally revert back to their primal instincts when presented with the unknown. That was the moment when I thought back to ‘Mondo Cane’ and the way they portrayed the human race holding these seemingly obscure traditions dear to themselves sometimes for the only sake of it being, well, a tradition. We are all just intelligent animals going through life using our inherited survival skills to live while at the same time pondering why we are intelligent enough to be able to think so deeply about the meaning of everything.

Before I start to babble I want to focus on the connections made from that note. I remember it well sitting in the front room of Billy’s parent’s house in Roger’s Park popping that DVD into the player no doubt stoned as teenagers often were. Then probably 8 years later I found myself in China watching street scenes with a similar thought in my mind. Now to present day where I’m sitting in front of my laptop in Ireland creating something because of those sequence of events. Creativity for me stems from connecting those dots and then branching into something new. Hopefully, these notes bring back amazing once-forgotten memories that allow me to create something out of what most people consider nothing and lead you, the reader, down an endless entertaining rabbit hole.