Painting With John

I live on a tiny island.

It's beautiful here.

I ended up here by accident.

I was boxed in.

But it ended up being

one of the best things that ever happened to me.

And before I lived...

where I live now, I lived up on this hill...

where the baby pigs live.

And on the property was this man, Rudolph...

who took care of...

a little herd of goats

in the garden.

And they gave him a room,

but he never stayed in the room.

He used to sleep in the mango trees.

So I had an extra room,

and I gave it to Rudolph.

And he would stop by as the sun was going down,

and turn on the TV.

And I would paint while he watched TV.

And if he put on something really horrible,

I would make him change the channel.

But he was always fine with that.

And we would be in this room together for eight hours,

and not speak a word.

I loved that.

Then Rudolph would say, "John...

I have to take a five."

And he would go to sleep...

and get up really early the next morning...

and go and take care of his goats.

After I moved, Rudolph disappeared.

And he had been talking about this property

he had up somewhere that he had inherited,

and he was gonna build a house there.

But you didn't really believe that he was gonna do that.

But that's what we assumed he had done.

And we couldn't reach him. He didn't have a phone.

There was no way to find him.

Now, it's been years since I've seen him.

And then one day, Leroy said, "I saw Rudolph.

I think I know where he lives."

So we're gonna go and look for him.

There's Nesrin looking all cute.

Wow, it's nice here.

It's bottomless. You want to dive?

No, no, no.

The last guy that tried to clean the lake in the '80s or '70s...

Yeah? One remained.

Oh, why?

Well, maybe they drink their rum, having a good time.

And so-- and drowned? And drowned.

And did they get the dead body out?

We still drinking it.

We still drinking him, yeah.

It's that deep here, huh?

Yeah, bottomless, you know.

This was a volcano, so I imagine it's--

Duh. Of course. Yeah.

Yes, yes, yes. Did this ever erupt?

No. Is this active?

It-- No, it's old.

But there is a live one underwater that's active.

-Really? -Yeah.

-Sometimes the-- -If it goes off, we'll call you.

-Yeah. -"Could you pick us up now?"

Yeah, it had been monitored.

Yeah. -The last time, it was on what?

Yellow or, you know, you have different colors

-when it starts to-- Yeah. Mm-hmm. Right.

We're gonna see Rudolph today.

I can feel it.

There's Rudolph...

and that's his house.

I'm proud of him.

Isn't life strange?

So, that's...

that high-pitched thing, that's mostly tree frogs.

That...

And there's two-- they make two sounds,

I think in one gesture,

where one is to establish territory,

it's the male tree frog, and the other one is to--

to attract the female.

And the females rarely make a sound,

but they're attracted to the, uh...

to the...

other sound. And there's a rhythm...

to it.

It all makes sense, like, you-- everybody's done it--

you know, sitting out on the porch

and the crickets are making sounds,

and there's a...

And there's a rhythm to it...

and it locks in.

And it's like, so there's a tree frog there, a tree frog there, a tree--

But there's anoth-- I mean, they seem to almost

be call and response, and answering...

...each other.

But if-- if you kind of try to go along with it,

it always drifts off.

If you just, like, try to sing along for, uh... (

...for two bars, you're out of whack with them already.

Even though it sounds like they're just going...

But they're not.

The pygmies do this music, and it--

it's just...

Oh, it's so beautiful. And it's so rhythmically right.

But you cannot figure out, really, where they are.

It's just--

You can't count it, you can't--

And then--

and you have a hard time getting Western musicians

to play like that,

'cause they get locked into this thing of counting.

And most people, I mean most...

you know, we-- we sort of count to four in our heads

when we're...

exercising or dancing or whatever,

we sort of-- we have an in-built thing--

one-two-three-four, one, two--

But... it really kind of ruins something.

It sort of takes away something beautiful in life,

where you really kind of get locked into this idea

of, like, bar lines.

Bar lines are like a prison. 'Cause this is so musical...

...and there's no bar lines.

That's what I think.

This is the section of our program

where we show you how the white people dance.

Yeah.

Shall I move on to another thing?

Mm-hmm. -That was fine, right? We can use that?

Yeah. Just-- Yeah.

Yes. But-- Yes, John!

Yes. Very good.

You are so fucked up.

-You are so fucked up. That sounded so funny.

You know...

I'm-- I'm doing this show.

-Are we still filming, right? Yeah, we're still filming.

I'm doing this show, and I-- and I--

because I'm-- I'm ill, I mean...

So what we do is...

I-- There was this kid--

well, "kid," he's 33-- he came here...

you know, and I figure, well, it's just like--

You know, 'cause I get an hour or two a day where I'm okay.

And so, like, in a 24-hour period,

we kind of shoot during that hour or two that I'm okay.

Except, uh-- and I-- I didn't...

you know, didn't know what a problem this was gonna be,

but I hate this fucking kid.

I can't stand being around him.

And he's-- he's standing right there.

And he's just unbearable.

It's just, like,

when he eats, the food drips out of his mouth.

-(NESRIN LAUGHS) -(LAUGHING) You can't laugh.

You can't laugh. We're making a show here.

And, uh...

I don't know.