Journaling - Readings, Muay Thai, Concepts and Articulations

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Sylvie uses a wonderful term to describe the Westernization of Thailand's Muay Thai, through its Entertainment commodification. She says the West is terraforming Thai Muay Thai, and then taking glory for beating Thais in the new, terraformed world. It's a powerful analogy.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Beautiful by Cixous on Paris of her youth, could be the same on the simulcrum of social media.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

If...

you are not your thoughts

a fighter is not their strikes.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

like an orchard in a battlefield. 

 

cixous

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Watched Melville 's Second Breath the other night, on the big screen, was very moved. What is it that makes him so incomparable? The light, the classic masculine, the pace. A synthesis of structure and Life.

 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

 

Sometimes I muse that Muay Thai, Thailand's Muay Thai is like the elephant. One time integrated within the society, at the village shore at the forest for instance in Surin (a folding of the human & the elephant culture), and then become the tank of the military empire, then the diesel truck of the lumber and other industry, now almost entirely existing within the country for the tourist, a bend of fate I do not want for Muay Thai...but today, visiting this one who lives near our house, I feel the depression, the majestic depression of her. Today I feel her. A short film study I made.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Just to hold, when held down.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Caring for Arjan Gimyu

Sylvie did a very good deed today. Arjan Gimyu in his 80s, 2x Coach of the Year, kru of Kaensak and so many other champions, has been somewhat confined to his room because of the air quality and his asthma. He lives a very spar life on a government check, just really a room and a radio and a fan. He usually drives over to Rambaa's gym in the afternoons so he can be in a kaimuay, the real form of the sport where kids are developing, pads and bags popping everywhere, but he's had to stay home lately. Sylvie bought a good Hepa airfilter he can run at night to clean the rooms air, dropping it off, plugging it in and showing him how to use it. She texts with him regularly when he can't make it to the gym, talking about how fighters did and such, keeping in contact. Just knowing that someone cares just a little bit more than expected goes a very long way.

 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Arjan Gimyu in his CoTY days.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Watching yet another very skilled Japanese Muay Thai fighter on Phetyindee the other day, I remain convinced - very broadly - that though Japanese fighters definitely hold the Thais, in fact Thailand's Muay Thai, in allure, they principally train in the aesthetic of Anime. This is to say, they are guided by a visual aesthetic that almost entirely forgets the art of Time, which is where almost all the art of Muay Thai is. They honestly, at some very deep level, "doing" Anime, which isn't Muay Thai at all.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

People think its the padman's job (in Thailand) to make you tired. No...its your job to make your padman tired, especially if you are a dern fighter. But this does NOT mean go harder.

 

It may mean that, but it does not principally that.

Understand, you are learning when you do padwork, and if what you are learning is "This guy makes me tired", that is one of the last things you want to learn. Instead, use padwork to find the inner-patterns of rest, both physically and psychologically, the quiet ways experienced padmen work to recover, breathe, pace, control the tempo. And learn to take these, quietly, away. If you can do it to your experienced padman, you can do it to your opponent.