Susi Johnston Bali Blog

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.

Ahem . . . that reminds me . . . when I was a kid in the 60s, and emergency broadcast tests (with piercing high tone sound) came on our TV (and they came with exactly the same screen image shown above, and please bear in mind that this was the time of the “Cold War” when our parents expected nukes from Russia arriving at a moment’s notice), my brother and I used to have a good laugh at my little sister’s expense by informing her that “PLEASE STAND BY” meant that she was expected to stand by the TV, meaning to get up, and position herself in a standing position beside that dusty, bulbous, hot black and green television set itself. She, of course, believed it, being several years younger than us, and would diligently get up and stand erect at attention in her flannel baby-sister suit (with rubber-bottomed feetsies), beside that old black and white television set, as if her life depended on it.

We laughed ourselves silly, thinking, “Ha! We sure fooled her!  PLEASE. STAND. BY. ! ! !  Har har har . . . stand . . . by . . . !”

What we didn’t realise at the time was has how devoted she became, as a result of this, to doing the right thing. What we did was only a test, and I must say she passed with flying colours, beside that black and white TV, time and time again. She stood . . . by . . . the TV set . . . because it was the Right Thing to do. It was the only thing one could do. And she has subsequetly been doing the Right Thing for more than four decades since. She is an emergency medicine doctor and veteran mountain patroller. She’s been on duty in the Congo, hung in Rwanda, stood by in Hisapniola, helped all comers in Idaho. And she continues doing the Right Thing. Standing by.

We unintentionally ingrained in her a sense of duty to all mankind, seen and unseen. Gosh. And we thought we were just getting a cheap laugh off a gullible three-year-old.

So . . . do the Right Thing . . . please stand by.

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…

It’s too splendid to miss. An exhibition of  300 artefacts from Sumatra opened last night at the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore. “Sumatra: Isle of Gold” runs from today through 7 November 2010, giving us all plenty of time to plan a Singapore stopover to see the show, which is the first international touring exhibition about Sumatran culture.

The dizzying array of objects exhibited includes a diamond-studded crown worn by the Sultan of Siak, silk and gold-threaded textiles, beadwork, sculpture, and a glorious trove of  jewelry and ornament. Many pieces are from the ACM’s permanent collection, while others are on loan from the Indonesian National Museum in Jakarta, the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden, and from private collections, making this an unsurpassed opportunity to appreciate the rich spectrum of this rich island’s culture from the bronze age to the present day.

Kevin Lim has already posted a set of photos of the exhibition opening party on flickr (below), and some of the pieces on show (magical inscriptions in an antique Batak book, above).

Personally, it is gratifying for me to see a major exhibition on the arts and artefacts of Sumatra, as I have been collecting Sumatran textiles, baskets and beadwork for the past two decades. My collections are, of course, available for purchase at ICON Asian Arts and Macan Tidur in Bali.

They call August the silly season in Bali. Well, I’ll drink to that. I did drink to that come to think of it, starting at the end of July. I toasted silliness in general on July 25th at the birthday beach party for Ian Macaulay of Elite Havens and a couple of his friends who are also Leos. Read more…