Susi Johnston Bali Blog

Exhibition on now at SFO of fine old Italian rides, called Moto Bellissima: Italian Motorcycles from the 1950s and 1960s. If you’re changing planes in San Fran, skip Starbuck’s and feast your eyes on these bikes instead. That’s a ’55 Moto Rumi “Raid” above, and a ’52 Motor Devil “Gobetto” below. (Gobetto means “hunchback” in Italian.) SFO really does contain a museum, btw. A real, good one.

A bike can be a thing of beauty, and nobody figured that out faster than the Italians did (surprise surprise). After WWII their motor industry was in ruins, people were short of money and raw materials, but mobility was a MUST! Enter, a generation of bike-making entrepreneurs and designers who sped in to fill the gap. Just five years after the war there were 220 (!!) Italian motorcycle makers showing their steeds of steel at the 1950-51 Milano Motorcycle Exhibition. Tons of taste, and innnovation were unleashed and the thrill lasted all the way through the 60s, and what a thrill. Still. These rides are art.

Synaptic Strap™ No. 1: HMT Bali. I hadn’t considered the virtues of vintage motors ’til I moved to Bali in 1995. While writing an article on the Bali Classic Motorcycle Club (Himpunan Motor Tua or HMT), I went on a two-day club ride encircling Bali, and fell hard for the sight and sound and indescribable magic of their classic bikes (from a 1926 Harley to “Frankenbikes” cobbled together with bits of Indians BSAs Nortons and plumbing equipment). Read more…

Big news. Donovan is being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and (Marketing) Museum on April 14th. This pixie troubador out of deepest Glasgow enchanted the world in the sixties with his psychedelic naif persona and almost childlike sing-along songs. He was seminal (if I dare use that word), in introducing the soft side of masculinity to a post-war world of cold, distant, “manly” men (e.g. Don Draper). Donovan’s elfen self and his approachable songs were prominent in the soundtrack of my childhood and adolescence and remain unforgettable.

So, all praise the pixie prophet! Celebrate cuteness on 14 April, and watch the live simulcast of the ceremony, concert and party as Donovan gets inducted while fairy cults the world over (Ubud being a centre of such shenanigans), dance in rings flinging flowers and off-gassing patchouli essences far and wide.

What’s this got to do with Bali? Easy answer. Bali as we know it, love it, and dream it runs on an operating system that’s a synthesis of archaic Hindu mythology and Tantric Buddhism, plus a handful of hairy hardcore folklore and superstition thrown into the mix.

Would Donvan be all over that? Of course. We’ve seen him with Mia Farrow, George Harrison, Paul McCartney and John Lennon, getting great satsang with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi the founder of Transcendental Meditation (above) in India. And we’ve got him covered by the repected British daily, The Independent, under the headline “Donovan: Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Buddha and Me“. Read it and find out how Donovan recalls that he “taught Lennon and McCartney a thing or two, prompted the Pop Art movement” and instigated the Summer of Love. Oh, and the Rolling Stone has validated the presence of Buddhist monks in flowing robes at his concerts, notably a recent one where Jimmy Page joined him onstage. (Don’t you love the way my dinosaur generation clings so faithfully to its fossils?)

Second reason Donovan is all about Bali: The Ubud Spirit Festival. It’s going on, like, right about now, ish. I’ve been in Bali approximately two decades, and was rooted in mildew-coated Ubud for seven years, but I’ve never attended one single moment of an Ubud Spirit Festival yet. Read more…

BRUNO PIAZZA: MASTERPIECE

My beloved husband Bruno Piazza died at home in Bali, at dawn on Friday the 28th of October, 2011 after a long and courageous battle with cancer.

Bruno lived an extraordinary and beautiful life, and (not surprisingly) he died a remarkably beautiful death. He was not an artist, he was Art. His life was his masterpiece. Now he has completed and signed that masterpiece, with a flourish, and it is beautiful indeed. It is perfect.

Please forgive me, and forgive Bruno, for our shortcomings, and for any oversights or mistakes we may have made in the past, and for anything we ever did or said that caused you or anyone else any pain or suffering. The evening I dispersed Bruno’s ashes in the Indian Ocean, I saw a new crescent moon. That  bright sliver of a smile in the sky was the sign of a clean, happy, new beginning for us all.

Hic et nunc was Bruno’s mantra. I am beginning to understand it better and better.

Do not be alarmed. Do not touch that dial. This is a test. This is only a test. This is a test of the emergency Sleeping Tiger broadcast system. The Sleeping Tiger has been granted amnesty for a lapse in blog-posting on the grounds of terminal illness in the immediate family. So this is a test of the emergency true friends broadcast system. True friends will stay tuned to this frequency.

Do not be alarmed. This is not yet an actual disaster. It is only a test. In the event of an actual disaster true friends of the Sleeping Tiger will be notified of where to go and how many major works of fiction, cupcakes and bottles of vodka to bring with them. Do not be alarmed. We will shortly resume our normal programming. Please stand by. Read more…

Here’s the weirdest, wildest and probably the best event of the Bali summer season: Empire of the Sun at Potato Head Bali Beach Club in Petitenget, 19 August.

Feeling a bit bored? Jaded? Nothing new to do? Under-awed by the faux-fabulousness of (yeah yeah) normal nightlife? Then pay attention. Read more…

Well, now we’ve gone and done it. HIV/AIDS thrives on ignorance and denial, and it’s thriving in Bali. A decade ago it was almost unheard of here; now it’s the stuff of headlines in the local Indonesian language newspaper almost every day. Today’s headline story, set off from the other news on page two of the Bali Post is “Condom Use Low in Bali”. Apparently this situation is the result of a “misunderstanding.” The story reads as follows. Read more…

Travel guides and glossy magazines call Bali paradise and wax poetic about the island’s glories, and how peaceful and spiritual a place it is. Of course, there is some truth amid all the hyperbole, but reading the local newspapers written in Indonesian gives a somewhat different impression. There is evidently some dissonance between the public image and the day-to-day realities of Bali, which is beginning to seem more like Paradox Island than Paradise Island. As a bellweather, let’s just take a look at today’s Bali Post, the local Indonesian-language daily, to see what’s up in this so-called paradise. Remember, this is just one day, and a day chosen completely at random. Yesterday was not dissimilar, and tomorrow probably will not be either.

Following are brief synopses of 13 news items prominent in today’s Bali Post (a broadsheet sized serious newspaper, with a total of 24 pages, four of them devoted to sport, two to classified advertising, and one to international top stories). Read more…

This year there are only five places to go Christmas shopping in Bali. Number One: Deus Ex Machina in Canggu, otherwise known as the Temple of Enthusiasm. I’m enthusiastic about shopping here, not only because there’s something for everyone (it’s a one stop shop), but also because you can eat. And listen to great music. And there’s no traffic jam to get there. And there’s no problem parking. And you can shop until 9:30 at night. Bring the whole gang, feed yourselves, get your shopping done, and don’t squander any precious playtime stuck in traffic or having aggro over where to get what for who. Read more…

Our gallery of ancestral arts, ornament, weapons and textiles in Seminyak has been open for more than a year. Better late than never, at long last we have our website up. At present, there are 66 pieces from our inventory shown in the “collections” area of the site. We’ll be adding more material, and improving the site on an ongoing basis, so do bookmark it, and come back often to see what’s new. Expect refinements to design, additional functionality and fresh content during the weeks and months ahead. www.iconasianarts.com.

Sandow Birk is one of the most interesting artists working (hard) in America. I began following his work at first because our friendship is a Bali bond. Then I  continued following because it’s impossible not to once you start. There’s a plethora of plots to follow in Sandow’s work, all of them with twists. He’s prolific, proficient, precocious, provocative, and still really young (meaning under 50). By way of introduction he’s done a critically acclaimed series of epic history paintings in the grand tradition entitled “The Great War of the Californias,” and a painted restaging of Dante’s Inferno set in LA today and worthy of a spectacularly staged full-on opera to the music of Lou Reed from his Metal Machine Music period. Sandow’s speciality is making deep irony look “fun”. Devilishly smart, in other words. Read more…