02/08/11- This evening I had off. So I grabbed the guitar and headed
to the lake. Little did I know that walking around the streets of Hanoi holding
a guitar case would make me a quasi celebrity. I hadn’t even played a full
song, when a young Vietnamese man came over and sat with me. ‘I am going to sit
and listen to you,’ he said. Okay, suit yourself, I thought, as an older man
walks by, points at me and the guitar, and smiles. I play another partial song
and then my comrade starts to talk to me. Where are you from?
America.
How
long are you in Vietnam?
You know, the usual questions. Then I turn the
tables, because it’s never fun being the only one answering questions. I asked
him what he does for a living and he said he works in Korean comedy. Korean
comedy? Yes, Korean comedy. I asked him if he was the front man or did he do
the business side of things? I get a deer in the headlights look. Umm… do you
do stand up comedy? Crickets chirp. Uh, do you tell jokes? Bueller, Bueller. I
am trying to picture him doing stand up performing, which isn’t too hard to
believe as he is very animated and obviously outgoing by talking so fervently
to a random stranger- when it dawns on me that he hasn’t been saying Korean
comedy, he’s been saying a Korean Company. No wonder he’s looking at me like I
am a moron.
Conversation did nothing but get better from that point on.
He lives with his older brother, desires to make lots of money, is the same age
as me, and is lucky because he has seen turtles in the lake before and to prove
it he shows me the picture on his cell phone. His name is Tin. I inform him
that I only know two songs by heart on the guitar. He doesn’t really believe
me, I can tell. As he has already heard my partial song #1, I went to my next
trick, one of my favorite songs to play recently ‘Beauty Arise.’ It’s about
God’s heart towards us and how he sees beauty where we see ashes. The next bench over is crowded by about 8 soviet officers, and I had a mental
flash of them taking me in for questioning or something and I realized that
currently I have no passport, no phone, and no friends. He liked the song very
much and we went on talking for another 15 minutes, only interrupted by a
street vendor child who sat in between us for a moment and then asked me my
name.
Then another young man walks by and literally pries himself
out of his girlfriend’s arms to stand in front of me, expectant for a song.
Then, one of the soviet guards walks over to me as well. He has a look of
kindness on his face. His name is three words, and they look like words- not
like a name. I shake his hand. I can tell he speaks no English, but I want to
make his acquaintance anyhow. Then I give in to my requestors and try to play a
green day song that I had been fiddling with lately. I can only
remember some of the words, and Tin interrupts me to say ‘you can play that
song from before.’ Really? Beauty Arise? You want me to play that prophetic worship song for this beautiful soldier? Yep. So I
did, and I meant every word of it. I desire the vision of God to infiltrate
this land. I desire this land to know love in a way it never has before. I
desire this man in front of me, whatever his story, to be given beauty for
ashes.
At the end of the song, my soldier looked grateful and I
motioned that I was done playing for now. The guy who ditched his girlfriend
said thank you and walked off.
It was just Tin and me again. He told me I was very friendly
and funny. Thanks Tin, friendly and funny I can do. We talked about ways for
him to get better at English, which he has to learn for his job. We talked
about Vietnam, some of the culture. How there is a limit to the number of
children you can have, 2, but there wasn’t when he was born, thus he has 5
brothers and sisters.
By this time our third and final character comes into view.
He’s wearing a red and white Hawaiian shirt, a plaid scarf, and a crazy hat.
Besides going to the Carrie Campbell school of mismatched patterns, he looks
like he speaks English, and he reminds me of Aaron Heinly. So, I call him over. What’s up, man?
He’s entertained. So, you going to play a song?
Of course. Somehow being in this public of a place holding
an instrument obligates me to play it for people.
I look at Tin excitedly and tell him that I just remembered
a third song. (A third song!!!) So I play ‘Light the Fire’ for Hawaiian shirt
man and Tin. This song is probably a little easier to figure out is a cry out to
God and I think he understood what it was, but he also took the song literally,
as he lit up a cigarette as he was listening.
At the end of the song he asked for another. He rebuked me
when I told him that was my whole repertoire. ‘You carry that guitar with you
around the world, and you only play three songs,’ he asked disbelievingly.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But tomorrow, I will know four.’ That made him laugh and I said
goodbye and he walked away.
A few minutes later my soldier who had been watching and
waiting still at the next bench over walked by and smiled and waved. I said
‘goodnight’ but felt more like it was a ‘see you tomorrow good friend.’
