Storytellers takes a glimpse into an artist’s inner psyche through a story of their choice.
In this edition, Dan Goldberg, who performs as The Spookfish, sends us an excerpt from an email exchange with FMLY‘s Noah Klein about his travels in Asia and filling in the gap between assumptions and reality while in unfamiliar territory.
As you know, after the past year and a half in New York, I was growing sick of the crowds, the filth, the bedbugs that were slowly conquering my apartment building, and the pollution. I wanted to move somewhere where I could easily access some nature and have space to eat healthy, keep a clean apartment, and exercise regularly. A friend of mine had just returned from teaching in Korea and told me about the lack of crime, the affordable cost of living, and the endless little mountains that make up the country. Two months later, I was there.
I had this idea that I would go to bed really early every night, wake up before dawn, cook a big, healthy breakfast, watch the sunrise, exercise, head to school and work hard, and spend every weekend on hiking trails.
While the whole “getting up before dawn” thing only lasted about three weeks, and soon I was getting up just before I had to leave for work and grabbing a red bean pastry from the local Friend Mart on the way, I succeeded in living a generally a healthy life, hiking every weekend, and feeling the most mentally and physically strong I ever felt in my life. Also, I had no idea how different other cultures could be, and the shift in everyday thoughts and concerns totally blew my mind. I got an unexpected sense of pride and satisfaction from exploring the nature there and learning about its cultural and spiritual significance to the people of Korea. I savored any light anyone could shed on these things and the bonds these conversations would create.
After hiking the entire ridge of the biggest mountain in mainland South Korea, I was feeling pretty strong and excited for new experiences. When a friend showed me cheap flights from Moscow to the U.S. and suggested taking a ferry to China and catching the Trans-Siberian Railway to explore Mongolia and Russia instead of just flying straight home from Korea, I was pumped to do it.
When I went to the post office in Korea to mail my stuff home, they told me that they couldn’t insure the delivery of my computer. I decided it would be safer (or at least as safe) to take it along with me on the train. I thought that, since I had a 5+ day ride from Ulan Bator, Mongolia to Moscow, I could bring nothing else and spend that time composing music.
Well…
It was March, which is a hard time for people living in that region of the world. It’s also bitterly cold, so there aren’t too many tourists. My good friend and travel companion, David Moore, and I both assumed that we would be the only people in our four-bed compartment. After we got on the train, we left our stuff all over the berth. About 15 minutes before the train was to depart, two Mongolian men came into our compartment. Naturally, we assumed that they would be riding with us. Since our Mongolian consisted of “hello,” “thank you,” and “goodbye,” we felt bad for not leaving any room for our berth-mates. We scrambled to get our stuff out of their way and throw it to one side of the space.
They left the compartment and we assumed that they were getting their luggage. It was in this time I realized that my little laptop bag was gone.
At first I assumed that I misplaced it, but soon realized it was nowhere to be found. The two men never returned. I ran around the parking lot like a maniac for a few minutes looking for them, but eventually had to get back on the train. Initially, I thought about how amazing of a challenge it would be to sit in that small space for five days, looking out the window at a frozen Siberia, especially since I was already quite afraid about the difficulties I might face traveling in Russia. When positive feelings hit, I felt liberated from my reliance on my computer, which was really the only thing I owned that I was afraid to lose. I was excited to start making music with real instruments instead of with a midi keyboard and all the midi sounds I relied on. When the negative ones hit (often really hard), I thought about how I had just finally decided that my music was worth sharing with the world and was just setting out to do so, and now all of the files, as well as the tools I had grown comfortable with, were gone forever.
A few minutes before our train departed, our actual compartment-mate showed up. He was also an older Mongolian man. He smiled and shook our hands and gave us a “Nice to meet you!” in English. It was obvious that this was all of the English he knew, and I think he didn’t even understand when I tried to say “thank you” in Mongolian. He was pretty cheery—he seemed excited and amused to be sharing his berth with Americans, and he certainly had no idea how upset I was.
Later in the night, another man came into our berth. I was pretty suspicious of everyone at this point, and assumed that he was just some guy who thought he could take advantage of us clueless Americans. He spoke English though, and we talked for a while. His name was Phillip; he was half-Bulgarian and half-Mongolian. He was born in Bulgaria and now split his between living in Bulgaria, traveling around Europe, and living in Mongolia, deep in nature, close to the border of Russia. He told us the amazing story of his life and his philosophies about being a good and strong person. According to him, he had been on Survivor: Bulgaria, worked with a few rappers, and was in the French Foreign Legion. As we got to know each other, I felt like my luck had changed.
When I told him of my stolen laptop, he instantly expressed his sympathy. He revealed that he was a writer and understood how horrible it would be to lose his art. He was also a voracious reader, and showed me his backpack, which was filled with 150 pounds of books. Along the ride, he even had me write a few pages about my experiences in Asia.
The next morning, I was learning Cyrillic letters and sharing a beer with our Mongolian compartment-mate, who was teasing me for not knowing the alphabet better. Philip came in and our compartment-mate greeted him with “As-Salaam alaikum,” an Arabic greeting, which indicated that he assumed Philip came from the Middle East rather than Mongolia or Russia. Philip responded in Mongolian and sat down. They talked for a while, probably having a similar conversation to the one we had the night before. At some point in their conversation, Philip told our compartment-mate of my stolen laptop, and his expression completely changed. It turned out that our compartment-mate had actually once trained as a Soviet detective, and really wanted to help in any way he could. He too exclaimed how horrible it would be for someone to lose all of their art. He made many calls, and although nothing came of it, I was so grateful for his help. Plus, with Philip able to translate between us, David & I were finally able to communicate with our compartment-mate. Over the course of the ride, the four of us were able to become friends and share many things about ourselves, and eventually I felt some bond with almost everyone riding in the train car.
* Recently, I found out that the book that Philip was working on while on the train has been published. It is possible he translated the pages I wrote and included them in that book. Here is an article about it written in Bulgarian (it is certainly worth running through Google Translate). The title translates to, “The Soul of a Man.”