Forty years ago, my mother used to live in a house on jalan<\/i> Suryodiningratan, not far from the Akademi Musik Indonesia<\/i> (now Institut Seni Indonesia<\/i>‘s postgraduate department) where she did her study. We went through that street yesterday afternoon, trying to find the house. <\/p>\n
We didn’t find it. Instead, we found a warung<\/i> selling Burjo<\/i> and stopped there. My father was really happy because after all these years, he finally found such a Burjo<\/i> that tastes exactly like the Burjo<\/i> he used to have around the Senisono<\/i> building. Senisono<\/i>, he said, used to be a cinema theatre. Now it’s a gallery owned by the current Sultan – the Jogja Gallery.<\/p>\n
There were a lot of spots in Jogja, however, that doesn’t change too much. The Pakualaman<\/i>, for example, or so my parents said, stays the same. Jamu Ginggang<\/i>, just a few meters away from the Pakualaman<\/i> palace, also stays the same (exactly the same tables and chairs and storefront and everything). There’s even at least one old cinema theatre, Permata<\/i>, that’s still running – so the gossip that Jogja only has one cinema theatre which is the one that’s part of the 21<\/i> network is not really true. Permata<\/i> will soon be showing Joko Anwar’s Janji Joni<\/i>.<\/p>\n
The first day my parents arrived here, the becak<\/i> riders already started to recognize them – as part of the imagined community in memory. This started when my mother started asking Mas<\/i> Tono, the nightguard at Cemeti Gallery, whether he knew people who used to live around here. Mas<\/i> Tono was picking up several things from the Cemeti Studio and a becak<\/i> rider was helping him out. <\/p>\n
Because Mas<\/i> Tono came from the next suburb, he didn’t really know too many people (older ones especially) around here. The becak<\/i> rider, however, was an older man, and he knew all the people that my mother mentioned. When my mother mentioned her classmate Titi Djanan, for example, the becak<\/i> rider immediately answered “Ah, the Minangkabau<\/i>!”. Yes, Titi Djanan’s family came from Padang<\/i>, and thus she’s a Minangkabau<\/i>. My mother also mentioned several other people like Pak<\/i> Hasan, Pak<\/i> Anwar Soenaryo, Bu<\/i> Nana – and the becak<\/i> riders knew them all – and that Bu<\/i> Hasan passed away already, et cetera, et cetera. <\/p>\n
The next day, another becak<\/i> rider offered my mother a ride – she refused because she preferred to walk, but the becak<\/i> rider kept chatting with her and told her he knew she used to study here in the ’60s. When I went out of the studio to the hotel where my parents stayed, one becak<\/i> rider greeted me and said that my mother went the other way. Gosh, such network of gossip. The real facebook. Hehe. <\/p>\n
I recorded my parents conversation along the Suryodiningratan<\/i>, when they were trying to find the house. But it was a calmer road and so the motorbikes were noisier (because they went quicker) and that would just ruin the whole recording I think. I haven’t listened to my recording, but the whole process made me think of my earlier work Ketok<\/i>, starring my parents as well. This time they were trying to imagine a place that existed 40 years ago and now only exist in no other place than their minds.<\/p>\n
Let’s see what I’ll do with this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Forty years ago, my mother used to live in a house on jalan Suryodiningratan, not far from the Akademi Musik Indonesia (now Institut Seni Indonesia‘s postgraduate department) where she did her study. We went through that street yesterday afternoon, trying…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tintinwulia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tintinwulia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tintinwulia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tintinwulia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tintinwulia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tintinwulia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tintinwulia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tintinwulia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tintinwulia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}