Some lines from William Blake:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And Heaven in a Wild Flower;
To hold infinity in the Palm of your Hand
And Eternity in an Hour
***
He who binds to himself a joy
Doth the winged life destroy.
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in Eternity's sunrise
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Thursday, October 23, 2008
An End to Fear
An overly ambitious title! I arrived in this country on such a high, dreams and imaginations filled my mind and even the first weeks grueling training couldn't suppress my joy. The moment I stepped into my apartment though and the manager who showed me to it closed the door I was overcome with fear and loneliness. One way or another these two feelings have predominated in my experiences in Japan so far. No matter how many wonderful things I have done or great people I have met the overwhelming feeling has been one of depression and fear and misery.
Now that is starting to lift! Have you been depressed, dear reader? I imagine you have, as most of us have at one time or another. The lifting of that veil is itself a frightening process. It is scary to let go of feeling bad all the time. To contemplate the fact that perhaps the joy you are looking for is already present in this moment. It is raining in Saitama Prefecture right now. How can I put into words the beauty of rain in Japan. Rain that doesnt flit in and flit out but sets in and pours down for hours and days at a time. Rain that truly deserves to be called rain.
I have been grieving the end of my long term relationship for three weeks now. Three weeks are nothing really when compared to the many years of my life I am trying to come to terms of. In many ways this is just the beginning. At the same time the intensity of the grief is getting less. I am starting to feel more secure in myself. In the last week I have even experienced extended feelings of joy and contentedness even amidst the work week. Twice this week I went to bed before midnight. Simple things like this are quite unfamiliar to me. I am beginning to think I might actually be able to enjoy my life here. I am so used to thinking myself into all kinds of traps which take me away from the lived experience of each day. I search for epic projects which will overwhelm my time and capacity to just sit and read a novel for the sheer pleasure of it. I am reading Harry Potter now. The guilt I feel just sitting and reading in the morning, despite the fact that I have nothing more pressing to do, is intense. Emails I might vaguely want to write press on my mind as if they are matters of life and death and I am a bad person for sitting with my book instead.
Ha! I will defeat you guilty conscience! I have nothing particular to do here in Japan, everything is up to me. I am free. I am even learning, somehow, to enjoy work! Something I never thought I could say and something which itself scares me quite a bit. Yet I have many beautiful children with whom to play English language games and a mass of interesting people from whom I can learn different things about life.
Perhaps this is the most vague and rambling of my posts so far! I know not. All I know is I had to give voice to the joy which threatens to infest my heart. Pure and simple joy of living.
Now that is starting to lift! Have you been depressed, dear reader? I imagine you have, as most of us have at one time or another. The lifting of that veil is itself a frightening process. It is scary to let go of feeling bad all the time. To contemplate the fact that perhaps the joy you are looking for is already present in this moment. It is raining in Saitama Prefecture right now. How can I put into words the beauty of rain in Japan. Rain that doesnt flit in and flit out but sets in and pours down for hours and days at a time. Rain that truly deserves to be called rain.
I have been grieving the end of my long term relationship for three weeks now. Three weeks are nothing really when compared to the many years of my life I am trying to come to terms of. In many ways this is just the beginning. At the same time the intensity of the grief is getting less. I am starting to feel more secure in myself. In the last week I have even experienced extended feelings of joy and contentedness even amidst the work week. Twice this week I went to bed before midnight. Simple things like this are quite unfamiliar to me. I am beginning to think I might actually be able to enjoy my life here. I am so used to thinking myself into all kinds of traps which take me away from the lived experience of each day. I search for epic projects which will overwhelm my time and capacity to just sit and read a novel for the sheer pleasure of it. I am reading Harry Potter now. The guilt I feel just sitting and reading in the morning, despite the fact that I have nothing more pressing to do, is intense. Emails I might vaguely want to write press on my mind as if they are matters of life and death and I am a bad person for sitting with my book instead.
Ha! I will defeat you guilty conscience! I have nothing particular to do here in Japan, everything is up to me. I am free. I am even learning, somehow, to enjoy work! Something I never thought I could say and something which itself scares me quite a bit. Yet I have many beautiful children with whom to play English language games and a mass of interesting people from whom I can learn different things about life.
Perhaps this is the most vague and rambling of my posts so far! I know not. All I know is I had to give voice to the joy which threatens to infest my heart. Pure and simple joy of living.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Shibuya and Harajuku with Tim and Fi
Last weekend (Oct 11-13) I was lucky enough to have a visit from Tim and Fi who my devoted readers first encountered at Nozawa Onsen. On their way home to Australia they stopped in for a dance and general exploration of Tokyo. They couldn't have come at a better time as I really needed people to talk to and I really needed to go out and have some fun. And fun was had by all!
On Saturday night after work we went into Koenji and had a very pleasant drink and snacks at a small izakaya where we could sit outside. The streets of Koenji are small and windy and full of small shops and interesting people so just hanging out and watching the world go by is an experience. Despite the fact that I haven't really had a relationship with Tim since primary school and I had only just met Fi they were very supportive and helped me to come to terms with my grief. At the same time we could talk about lots of positive things too and reflect on the experience of being in Japan. They have been here a lot longer than me but also in a very different way so we all had different aspects of the experience to bring together and reflect upon.
We headed to a small bar which is part of 'Amateur Riot' and had another drink before catching the last train back to Niiza. This small bar is really cool and has a really interesting feel. The guy behind the bar on Saturday night, Jeremy, lives in Koenji and speaks fluent Japanese. I have been wanting to get over there and hang out with him for ages but one thing or another kept coming up so I am glad I finally had the chance.
On Sunday morning we had a delicious breakfast at home and then headed into the city. Finding lockers for their stuff in Shibuya station was not easy and all the large one's were taken so we just made musical instruments out of them instead. Then we headed over to Harajuku to find Yoyogi park and see all the interesting people who hang out there. Unfortunately we took a wrong turn, missed the entrance by about 50 metres and spent nearly 2 hours wandering through the garden of Meiji shrine, managing to do a complete circuit of Yoyogi park without encountering it.
Of course, the gardens are beautiful - a grand forest in the middle of Tokyo but the huge crowds of tourists weren't really the people we came to watch. At long last after a circuit which took me past the location of my orientation camp when I first came to Japan at the old Olympic village we found the park entrance.
First we passed the homeless people's tent village and found our first port of call - a cup of tea at the barter cafe. Two artists live in the tent village and have done for 5 years. They run a barter cafe on the weekends. I was able to swap some Australian animal key rings for my cup of tea and cake while Tim and Fi put on a performance involving juggling and playing some interesting hand-held percussion instruments they found at a hippie festival. We were entertained by a man from Shibuya who told us all kinds of anecdotes and gave us Japanese names.
True to form the park itself was awesome and full of people hanging out, playing musical instruments, practicing dance moves, juggling and getting up to all sorts of high jinks. Tim and Fi joined the jugglers and were able to borrow various pieces of equipment. I went and had a tai chi practice next to them as I can't juggle. We wandered around a bit in Harajuku and looked at some cool little clothes shops before meeting up with Matt (a teacher I met during my trainign) and heading over to Shibuya. The destination was a club called Module which was having a Drum 'n' Bass night. I'm not familiar with Drum 'n' Bass but Tim and Fi are into it and I am keen to expand my musical horizons.
It was awesome. I thought some of the music was pretty ordinary while parts of it were really good. More importantly though I was able to dance and dance and let go of some of the tension which has been building up inside me ever since C and I separated. Chikako from my work came along as well and brought a friend. She isn't a regular club goer but after a while she started dancing too. I love it when people start to enjoy dancing, we all need to dance! The club itself was small but just the right size really for the crowd although it did get very hot. After the music finished Tim and Fi and I headed out to experience the night in Shibuya. It finished at 11pm so there was plenty of time. We went shopping in a discount store called Don Quixote and then sat near the Hachiko entrance to Shibuya station and drank, chatted and watched the people moving all around us. There are so many people in Shibuya! Although by 4 am it was looking distinctly empty, noone crossing at the big crossing. 
After that we went to try and find a bar I have been to once but unfortunately it was closed so we just got some more beers at a convenience store and drank them on the street. We checked out love hotels for a cheap nights accommodation but they didn't seem so cheap, especially when you are comparing an internet cafe which costs next to nothing. We found a yaki-niku restaurant which had cheap beer and I promptly fell asleep (it was pretty late). Eventually Tim and Fi managed to wake me and we wandered around trying to find an internet cafe to have a rest in. Eventually we found one but all the men's seats were taken. After much wandering around deciding what to do we went back there, Fi took a place and Tim and I sat in the waiting area. You pay a basic hourly rate even to sit in the waiting area but it includes access to the drink bar and soft serve icecream. I knew that what I needed after being up all night, drinking, eating grilled meat and dancing was two soft serve icecreams so I ate them and felt horribly sick. A place came up pretty quickly but it was nearly time for the first train so I deferred to Tim and headed home to bed.
Thanks Tim and Fi and Matt and Chikako and Ayako!
On Saturday night after work we went into Koenji and had a very pleasant drink and snacks at a small izakaya where we could sit outside. The streets of Koenji are small and windy and full of small shops and interesting people so just hanging out and watching the world go by is an experience. Despite the fact that I haven't really had a relationship with Tim since primary school and I had only just met Fi they were very supportive and helped me to come to terms with my grief. At the same time we could talk about lots of positive things too and reflect on the experience of being in Japan. They have been here a lot longer than me but also in a very different way so we all had different aspects of the experience to bring together and reflect upon.
We headed to a small bar which is part of 'Amateur Riot' and had another drink before catching the last train back to Niiza. This small bar is really cool and has a really interesting feel. The guy behind the bar on Saturday night, Jeremy, lives in Koenji and speaks fluent Japanese. I have been wanting to get over there and hang out with him for ages but one thing or another kept coming up so I am glad I finally had the chance.
On Sunday morning we had a delicious breakfast at home and then headed into the city. Finding lockers for their stuff in Shibuya station was not easy and all the large one's were taken so we just made musical instruments out of them instead. Then we headed over to Harajuku to find Yoyogi park and see all the interesting people who hang out there. Unfortunately we took a wrong turn, missed the entrance by about 50 metres and spent nearly 2 hours wandering through the garden of Meiji shrine, managing to do a complete circuit of Yoyogi park without encountering it.
Of course, the gardens are beautiful - a grand forest in the middle of Tokyo but the huge crowds of tourists weren't really the people we came to watch. At long last after a circuit which took me past the location of my orientation camp when I first came to Japan at the old Olympic village we found the park entrance.
First we passed the homeless people's tent village and found our first port of call - a cup of tea at the barter cafe. Two artists live in the tent village and have done for 5 years. They run a barter cafe on the weekends. I was able to swap some Australian animal key rings for my cup of tea and cake while Tim and Fi put on a performance involving juggling and playing some interesting hand-held percussion instruments they found at a hippie festival. We were entertained by a man from Shibuya who told us all kinds of anecdotes and gave us Japanese names.
True to form the park itself was awesome and full of people hanging out, playing musical instruments, practicing dance moves, juggling and getting up to all sorts of high jinks. Tim and Fi joined the jugglers and were able to borrow various pieces of equipment. I went and had a tai chi practice next to them as I can't juggle. We wandered around a bit in Harajuku and looked at some cool little clothes shops before meeting up with Matt (a teacher I met during my trainign) and heading over to Shibuya. The destination was a club called Module which was having a Drum 'n' Bass night. I'm not familiar with Drum 'n' Bass but Tim and Fi are into it and I am keen to expand my musical horizons.
It was awesome. I thought some of the music was pretty ordinary while parts of it were really good. More importantly though I was able to dance and dance and let go of some of the tension which has been building up inside me ever since C and I separated. Chikako from my work came along as well and brought a friend. She isn't a regular club goer but after a while she started dancing too. I love it when people start to enjoy dancing, we all need to dance! The club itself was small but just the right size really for the crowd although it did get very hot. After the music finished Tim and Fi and I headed out to experience the night in Shibuya. It finished at 11pm so there was plenty of time. We went shopping in a discount store called Don Quixote and then sat near the Hachiko entrance to Shibuya station and drank, chatted and watched the people moving all around us. There are so many people in Shibuya! Although by 4 am it was looking distinctly empty, noone crossing at the big crossing. After that we went to try and find a bar I have been to once but unfortunately it was closed so we just got some more beers at a convenience store and drank them on the street. We checked out love hotels for a cheap nights accommodation but they didn't seem so cheap, especially when you are comparing an internet cafe which costs next to nothing. We found a yaki-niku restaurant which had cheap beer and I promptly fell asleep (it was pretty late). Eventually Tim and Fi managed to wake me and we wandered around trying to find an internet cafe to have a rest in. Eventually we found one but all the men's seats were taken. After much wandering around deciding what to do we went back there, Fi took a place and Tim and I sat in the waiting area. You pay a basic hourly rate even to sit in the waiting area but it includes access to the drink bar and soft serve icecream. I knew that what I needed after being up all night, drinking, eating grilled meat and dancing was two soft serve icecreams so I ate them and felt horribly sick. A place came up pretty quickly but it was nearly time for the first train so I deferred to Tim and headed home to bed.
Thanks Tim and Fi and Matt and Chikako and Ayako!
 |
| Tim and Fi and Me in Tokyo |
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Life as Poetry
The sadness is welling up inside me again today. It is a quiet weekend and without the noise of the crowd to drown it out I am forced to be alone with my grief and self-doubt.
Life as poetry, I coined this title out of whimsy and a need to find a blog name that wasn't already taken! How little did I realise how true it would be.
I have been questioning myself a lot lately. In particular I am searching for my creativity, for my true life's work. I am a writer, I know that, and I write for myself and for others as the mood strikes me. More than that though I think it is my life itself which is my greatest work. I endeavor to use this life of mine to generate love all around me and in doing so I live my life as a love poem. So from now on I declare myself to be an artist. Life is my canvas and i will dance across it making great, broad strokes of love.
What pain love can bring though! Now all the old stanzas have to fall away and make space for a new chapter. Now I must learn to love again in new ways. I long to discover my own sexuality, my own loving, sexual, caring way of relating to people around me. I am so afraid of this journey, so unsure of where it will lead me. Free love? What is that? I know that for me free love meant choosing not to marry, even when I was sure I had found the love of my life. I cannot stand the idea of imposing any constituted relationship over the free flow of love and passion between two people. Despite the many changes in social norms about love, sex and marriage the mystical union of two people for life still holds great power. (Dear married readers, forgive me, I speak not of your journey or truth but of my own.) The closeness, the intimacy that comes from spending a decade with someone is a beautiful gift but it is fragile.
As this long year of painful separation draws to a close the northern Autumn is closing in. With it comes the premonition of winter and the final, cold severance of my old concept of myself. When the new year dawns I will gather my strength again and as I wait out the winter prepare myself to move once more, move across the surface of the earth.
***
It is later now and by keeping on moving the day's pain has largely passed and been replace by a feeling of quiet satisfaction and happiness. C has really helped to show me in the last few years that the way to confront pain is not to stay home and wallow in misery but to move, get out, see your friends and stay active. I started the day with a long cycle ride and tai chi practice. I actually didn't get back to the house for nearly 3 hours. Then at long last I got home, ate something and finished drafting a proposal for a Masters thesis for next year. I met up with Risa in Kunitachi in the afternoon and had coffee and cake in the grounds of the university. It was nice to chat with someone I have known a little longer and we made plans for a last minute camping trip before the winter comes.
Then this evening I went into Shibuya and took my first dance class. Yay! It's a four week introductory course which demonstrates each of the eight latin styles. Today we did Tango and Rumba. It was so fun and so difficult. I felt like such a clutz but luckily I don't give a fuck! I'm determined to learn to dance well and I know that for someone as clumsy as me that is going to be hard but if I stick with it I can do it. I feel a little sorry for my partners who have little choice but to deal with my enormous frame and clumsy feet but there ain't nothing I can do about it! It's wonderful to feel like I know I look stupid and not to really care. One day I won't look stupid, I'll look sexy! I can't imagine how good it will feel to be able to go to a salsa party and ask someone to dance and be able to do it. I love psytrance dancing with its 'no rules' stomping dance but there is something very beautiful about a more structured form. I guess I think of it as being a bit like Tai Chi, the form exists to help the individual style to emerge. Furthermore, I am sure that dance will help make me a little less clumsy and that can only be a good thing.
It amazes me that in the space of one day I can feel so low and so high. Well, I don't think I feel high today but certainly happy. I feel like everything is going to be OK. I stopped in at Quintrix, the psytrance record shop in Shibuya on my way home and had a beer at the bar. I chatted with a few people, nicely rounding out the day. I want to go to a psytrance party next Saturday actually but I have to work Sunday so I'm not sure that I'll make it. Can I work 5 hours on 3 hours sleep? Hmmm... The following weekend D-Nox is coming to Tokyo!!!!! That is going to be an amazing night.
These are the ups and downs of my life in Tokyo.
Life as poetry, I coined this title out of whimsy and a need to find a blog name that wasn't already taken! How little did I realise how true it would be.
I have been questioning myself a lot lately. In particular I am searching for my creativity, for my true life's work. I am a writer, I know that, and I write for myself and for others as the mood strikes me. More than that though I think it is my life itself which is my greatest work. I endeavor to use this life of mine to generate love all around me and in doing so I live my life as a love poem. So from now on I declare myself to be an artist. Life is my canvas and i will dance across it making great, broad strokes of love.
What pain love can bring though! Now all the old stanzas have to fall away and make space for a new chapter. Now I must learn to love again in new ways. I long to discover my own sexuality, my own loving, sexual, caring way of relating to people around me. I am so afraid of this journey, so unsure of where it will lead me. Free love? What is that? I know that for me free love meant choosing not to marry, even when I was sure I had found the love of my life. I cannot stand the idea of imposing any constituted relationship over the free flow of love and passion between two people. Despite the many changes in social norms about love, sex and marriage the mystical union of two people for life still holds great power. (Dear married readers, forgive me, I speak not of your journey or truth but of my own.) The closeness, the intimacy that comes from spending a decade with someone is a beautiful gift but it is fragile.
As this long year of painful separation draws to a close the northern Autumn is closing in. With it comes the premonition of winter and the final, cold severance of my old concept of myself. When the new year dawns I will gather my strength again and as I wait out the winter prepare myself to move once more, move across the surface of the earth.
***
It is later now and by keeping on moving the day's pain has largely passed and been replace by a feeling of quiet satisfaction and happiness. C has really helped to show me in the last few years that the way to confront pain is not to stay home and wallow in misery but to move, get out, see your friends and stay active. I started the day with a long cycle ride and tai chi practice. I actually didn't get back to the house for nearly 3 hours. Then at long last I got home, ate something and finished drafting a proposal for a Masters thesis for next year. I met up with Risa in Kunitachi in the afternoon and had coffee and cake in the grounds of the university. It was nice to chat with someone I have known a little longer and we made plans for a last minute camping trip before the winter comes.
Then this evening I went into Shibuya and took my first dance class. Yay! It's a four week introductory course which demonstrates each of the eight latin styles. Today we did Tango and Rumba. It was so fun and so difficult. I felt like such a clutz but luckily I don't give a fuck! I'm determined to learn to dance well and I know that for someone as clumsy as me that is going to be hard but if I stick with it I can do it. I feel a little sorry for my partners who have little choice but to deal with my enormous frame and clumsy feet but there ain't nothing I can do about it! It's wonderful to feel like I know I look stupid and not to really care. One day I won't look stupid, I'll look sexy! I can't imagine how good it will feel to be able to go to a salsa party and ask someone to dance and be able to do it. I love psytrance dancing with its 'no rules' stomping dance but there is something very beautiful about a more structured form. I guess I think of it as being a bit like Tai Chi, the form exists to help the individual style to emerge. Furthermore, I am sure that dance will help make me a little less clumsy and that can only be a good thing.
It amazes me that in the space of one day I can feel so low and so high. Well, I don't think I feel high today but certainly happy. I feel like everything is going to be OK. I stopped in at Quintrix, the psytrance record shop in Shibuya on my way home and had a beer at the bar. I chatted with a few people, nicely rounding out the day. I want to go to a psytrance party next Saturday actually but I have to work Sunday so I'm not sure that I'll make it. Can I work 5 hours on 3 hours sleep? Hmmm... The following weekend D-Nox is coming to Tokyo!!!!! That is going to be an amazing night.
These are the ups and downs of my life in Tokyo.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Where Do I Start, Where Do I Begin
Sunday morning I'm waking up
Can't even focus on a coffee cup
Don't even know whose bed I'm in
Where do I start
Where do I begin
(The Private Psychedelic Reel, The Chemical Brothers)
Each morning I wake up with the pain of my separation from the greatest love I have ever known. And each morning the pain is getting less. Today is the first morning I haven't cried first thing in the morning, though I am sure that that will come. I am immersed in the question: who am I? What am I doing with this life of mine? Now that I am separated from C, what is left of me? ... the tears have come now, those bitter, sweet, healing, tears. This grief which flows from my heart leaving space behind for new love to grow.
To feel rejected by the person I have loved with all my heart is a bitter, bitter pill to swallow. To feel that I am not attractive enough, not man enough to retain her interest makes me question all that I am. It doesn't really matter anymore I suppose what her reasons or her feelings are, what matters is that I need to know how how I feel, how I act, what I want in this life. I am thinking of my life's soundtrack at the moment. Since I came to Japan I have lost some of my connection with music. C and I came together over our shared passion for the music of our early adolescence: the Cure, the Sisters of Mercy, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, Bauhaus. The heartache in the songs matched our own heartache as we struggled to grow into adulthood. Both of us left these musicians long ago as more joyful lyrics sang us into a more joyful life. I return to them sometimes, to remind myself of how I felt as a teenager, to grieve to, to cry about my relationship with C. In the last few weeks as I grew to know in my heart what I refused to recognise in my conscious mind I have listened to them again and mourned the passing of something on which I have built my life. On which I have built my sense of self.
"Where do I start, where do I begin?" This lyric from the Chemical Brothers has been ringing in my ears lately as I try to sort out what is left of myself out of the emotional wreckage of my long term relationship.
Houses and gardens and children all loomed large for both of us a few years ago until finally C snapped and decided that she wanted to go back to uni and become an artist again. This firm rejection of what I had been dreaming about set in train a process of reevaluation of my own life in which I discovered how unhappy I was about dreaming myself into a stereotype. C and I have spent most of our time together being deeply depressed and we have spent most of our time together really stoned. In amongst all that our lives have been lived and they have been full lives but neither of us were happy with being slaves to a drug that only distorted and diminished our ability to face life full on. I think she is much more courageous than me. She quit smoking before me and seized hold of her Sydney artist dream while I continued to wallow in the emotional turmoil of my failed homoeopathy practice, my poverty and my lack of any clear idea of the line of march.
As much as I still don't want to admit it it seems obvious now that the relationship which has been a constant feature of my life since I began my journey into adulthood would change radically as the two of us wrestled with what it was to be adults. Being depressed together has meant that we both were able to avoid the question of who am I in favour of taking care of the other one. Maybe it is time, at this point in the piece to stop talking of 'us' and limit myself to my own experience. For the truth be told the deeply depressed girl that I knew has blossomed into a much more confident woman who is more than capable of taking care of herself. The truth is that I built a lot of my identity around taking care of her and in turn derived self-affirmation from the fact that I was the stable one. As she changed and stopped relying on me so much for emotional support I felt lost. I fought to retain the power I felt from being the dominant one in the relationship and as she grew stronger I lost the battle. It was a battle I had no desire to win. I would often recognise this feeling in myself and hate myself for it. To resent someone that you love for being happier and stronger is not a good place to be. I have watched myself try to undermine her as she struggled to be a better person even while at the same time I tried to support her. Of course, being human, she still needed emotional support and so I was able to continue to derive my identity in no small part from this ever shrinking window.
At the same time I began to create my own separate identity too and of course, in its turn this evoked a somewhat similar reaction in her. It has been a two-way battle for power and control which has exhausted the love we feel for one another and blinded us both to the unique individuality and strength of the other. In my case it blinded me to my own uniqueness, beauty and strength. Upon this foundation of continuing affection and love, mixed with powerful feelings of resentment, jealousy and the desire to escape it that we hatched a plan to live apart and see how we went as individuals. Not wanting to do things by halves only life on separate hemispheres would do.
This separation has had different effects on me. Part of me has struggled against it and tried to hold onto the old relationship we had. I have romanticised that relationship and created an image of it in my own mind which is far rosier than the reality actually was. I tend to forget the abandonment and isolation I felt even when we were in the same room. At the same time, the better part of me has used this opportunity to begin my search for myself. Constantly dogged by my own idealisation of her strength I have sought my own strength not because I wanted to but because I felt I had no choice. What I wanted to do most of the time was to sink back into it and give up and have Caitlin pick up the pieces.
When I was in Australia I was working all the time and made deeply unhappy by it but at least I had friends. I had old friends who understood me and supported me and new friends who not only gave me their love but gave me the opportunity to understand that I was in fact worthy and deserving of love. I think in the bitter struggle which my relationship with C had become I lost my sense of how amazing and wonderful I am. Her constant pulling away from me made me feel like this is all that I deserved. My friends made me realise that I was worthy of love for my own sake.
Then came Japan.
Since I arrived here all my fear, my anxiety have returned with a vengeance. Every day is an enormous struggle again. I don't have any close friends around me and so everything I do requires me to rely upon myself. I can't really rely on anyone to include me or think of me because they don't know me. This is starting to change. I have kept knocking at the doors until someone noticed I was there. Of course, I am so anxious that even when I do get to meet people I am not able to manifest my qualities fully. I hold back and my unhappiness comes through in my words, my posture and my actions. Somehow in spite of all the obstacles I have kept pushing out though and I feel like I have some friends now. I know that with time I will develop many more.
I have questioned all of the reasons that I came to Japan. I took a job here at an English conversation school in order to finance my vision of pursuing a life in Japan. Unfortunately I didn't fully appreciate how difficult it would be for me to cope in the corporate environment. I work for a large corporation and so my working environment is pretty much the opposite of what I desire! It is a struggle to get through the week and make it to the weekend when I can go out and experience the life I came here to experience. I can't decide whether it is worth the sacrifice of 5/7 of my time for the sake of 2/7 that I actually enjoy! To build a life here that can make me happy is going to take so long. I can't decide whether I am prepared to make the effort and whether it is worth it when I have such a good life back home. I miss my friends so much. I struggled so hard to build those relationships and so many of them are so new. I am really questioning whether I want to do without them for the sake of living overseas.
Then I think about my dreams! I dream such vivid dreams! It is my usual habit each day to construct a hundred castles in the air. I know that part of this is escapist but another part of it is just who I am. This life we know, this divided, alienated life-under-capitalism is not ideal. I dream of a better life for myself and for the people I love. I dream dreams of overseas study and involvement in political movements all over the world and a deep sense of connection with the revolutionary movements which seek to change it. I have heard so much about the joys of travel. Of how it helps people to find themselves. Of the freedom it brings. I am desperate to taste that. Coming to Japan was a bit like deciding to travel but it was bound up with the idea of building a life and ongoing connections which surely requires a more stable existence? Now I need to make some decisions about my life.
This great love I have known and do know is a part of who I am. Who I am will always in part be determined by the people with whom I share my life. It is in others that we see ourselves reflected. We learn from others, we compare ourselves with them, we experience their love and it gives us the strength to carry on the struggle. But the Chemical Brothers words seem to me to encapsulate an essential part of the question. Although we must of necessity build ourselves out of the people that we know and love it is our love of ourselves that must form the foundation. Where do I start, where do I begin? With myself - now, who is that?
Can't even focus on a coffee cup
Don't even know whose bed I'm in
Where do I start
Where do I begin
(The Private Psychedelic Reel, The Chemical Brothers)
Each morning I wake up with the pain of my separation from the greatest love I have ever known. And each morning the pain is getting less. Today is the first morning I haven't cried first thing in the morning, though I am sure that that will come. I am immersed in the question: who am I? What am I doing with this life of mine? Now that I am separated from C, what is left of me? ... the tears have come now, those bitter, sweet, healing, tears. This grief which flows from my heart leaving space behind for new love to grow.
To feel rejected by the person I have loved with all my heart is a bitter, bitter pill to swallow. To feel that I am not attractive enough, not man enough to retain her interest makes me question all that I am. It doesn't really matter anymore I suppose what her reasons or her feelings are, what matters is that I need to know how how I feel, how I act, what I want in this life. I am thinking of my life's soundtrack at the moment. Since I came to Japan I have lost some of my connection with music. C and I came together over our shared passion for the music of our early adolescence: the Cure, the Sisters of Mercy, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, Bauhaus. The heartache in the songs matched our own heartache as we struggled to grow into adulthood. Both of us left these musicians long ago as more joyful lyrics sang us into a more joyful life. I return to them sometimes, to remind myself of how I felt as a teenager, to grieve to, to cry about my relationship with C. In the last few weeks as I grew to know in my heart what I refused to recognise in my conscious mind I have listened to them again and mourned the passing of something on which I have built my life. On which I have built my sense of self.
"Where do I start, where do I begin?" This lyric from the Chemical Brothers has been ringing in my ears lately as I try to sort out what is left of myself out of the emotional wreckage of my long term relationship.
Houses and gardens and children all loomed large for both of us a few years ago until finally C snapped and decided that she wanted to go back to uni and become an artist again. This firm rejection of what I had been dreaming about set in train a process of reevaluation of my own life in which I discovered how unhappy I was about dreaming myself into a stereotype. C and I have spent most of our time together being deeply depressed and we have spent most of our time together really stoned. In amongst all that our lives have been lived and they have been full lives but neither of us were happy with being slaves to a drug that only distorted and diminished our ability to face life full on. I think she is much more courageous than me. She quit smoking before me and seized hold of her Sydney artist dream while I continued to wallow in the emotional turmoil of my failed homoeopathy practice, my poverty and my lack of any clear idea of the line of march.
As much as I still don't want to admit it it seems obvious now that the relationship which has been a constant feature of my life since I began my journey into adulthood would change radically as the two of us wrestled with what it was to be adults. Being depressed together has meant that we both were able to avoid the question of who am I in favour of taking care of the other one. Maybe it is time, at this point in the piece to stop talking of 'us' and limit myself to my own experience. For the truth be told the deeply depressed girl that I knew has blossomed into a much more confident woman who is more than capable of taking care of herself. The truth is that I built a lot of my identity around taking care of her and in turn derived self-affirmation from the fact that I was the stable one. As she changed and stopped relying on me so much for emotional support I felt lost. I fought to retain the power I felt from being the dominant one in the relationship and as she grew stronger I lost the battle. It was a battle I had no desire to win. I would often recognise this feeling in myself and hate myself for it. To resent someone that you love for being happier and stronger is not a good place to be. I have watched myself try to undermine her as she struggled to be a better person even while at the same time I tried to support her. Of course, being human, she still needed emotional support and so I was able to continue to derive my identity in no small part from this ever shrinking window.
At the same time I began to create my own separate identity too and of course, in its turn this evoked a somewhat similar reaction in her. It has been a two-way battle for power and control which has exhausted the love we feel for one another and blinded us both to the unique individuality and strength of the other. In my case it blinded me to my own uniqueness, beauty and strength. Upon this foundation of continuing affection and love, mixed with powerful feelings of resentment, jealousy and the desire to escape it that we hatched a plan to live apart and see how we went as individuals. Not wanting to do things by halves only life on separate hemispheres would do.
This separation has had different effects on me. Part of me has struggled against it and tried to hold onto the old relationship we had. I have romanticised that relationship and created an image of it in my own mind which is far rosier than the reality actually was. I tend to forget the abandonment and isolation I felt even when we were in the same room. At the same time, the better part of me has used this opportunity to begin my search for myself. Constantly dogged by my own idealisation of her strength I have sought my own strength not because I wanted to but because I felt I had no choice. What I wanted to do most of the time was to sink back into it and give up and have Caitlin pick up the pieces.
When I was in Australia I was working all the time and made deeply unhappy by it but at least I had friends. I had old friends who understood me and supported me and new friends who not only gave me their love but gave me the opportunity to understand that I was in fact worthy and deserving of love. I think in the bitter struggle which my relationship with C had become I lost my sense of how amazing and wonderful I am. Her constant pulling away from me made me feel like this is all that I deserved. My friends made me realise that I was worthy of love for my own sake.
Then came Japan.
Since I arrived here all my fear, my anxiety have returned with a vengeance. Every day is an enormous struggle again. I don't have any close friends around me and so everything I do requires me to rely upon myself. I can't really rely on anyone to include me or think of me because they don't know me. This is starting to change. I have kept knocking at the doors until someone noticed I was there. Of course, I am so anxious that even when I do get to meet people I am not able to manifest my qualities fully. I hold back and my unhappiness comes through in my words, my posture and my actions. Somehow in spite of all the obstacles I have kept pushing out though and I feel like I have some friends now. I know that with time I will develop many more.
I have questioned all of the reasons that I came to Japan. I took a job here at an English conversation school in order to finance my vision of pursuing a life in Japan. Unfortunately I didn't fully appreciate how difficult it would be for me to cope in the corporate environment. I work for a large corporation and so my working environment is pretty much the opposite of what I desire! It is a struggle to get through the week and make it to the weekend when I can go out and experience the life I came here to experience. I can't decide whether it is worth the sacrifice of 5/7 of my time for the sake of 2/7 that I actually enjoy! To build a life here that can make me happy is going to take so long. I can't decide whether I am prepared to make the effort and whether it is worth it when I have such a good life back home. I miss my friends so much. I struggled so hard to build those relationships and so many of them are so new. I am really questioning whether I want to do without them for the sake of living overseas.
Then I think about my dreams! I dream such vivid dreams! It is my usual habit each day to construct a hundred castles in the air. I know that part of this is escapist but another part of it is just who I am. This life we know, this divided, alienated life-under-capitalism is not ideal. I dream of a better life for myself and for the people I love. I dream dreams of overseas study and involvement in political movements all over the world and a deep sense of connection with the revolutionary movements which seek to change it. I have heard so much about the joys of travel. Of how it helps people to find themselves. Of the freedom it brings. I am desperate to taste that. Coming to Japan was a bit like deciding to travel but it was bound up with the idea of building a life and ongoing connections which surely requires a more stable existence? Now I need to make some decisions about my life.
This great love I have known and do know is a part of who I am. Who I am will always in part be determined by the people with whom I share my life. It is in others that we see ourselves reflected. We learn from others, we compare ourselves with them, we experience their love and it gives us the strength to carry on the struggle. But the Chemical Brothers words seem to me to encapsulate an essential part of the question. Although we must of necessity build ourselves out of the people that we know and love it is our love of ourselves that must form the foundation. Where do I start, where do I begin? With myself - now, who is that?
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Water, Water, Everywhere: A Journey to Nozawa Onsen
In Australia I have lived for years with the ever present lack of rainfall. We have water restrictions in place and everywhere you look rivers are low and the grass is brown. In the year leading up to my departure we finally had some decent rain and there was green in places I hadn't seen it for years. Here in Japan there is water everywhere and people are rather blase about it. It is still perfectly acceptable to hose down hard surfaces, something which fills me with horror. Yet at the same time, Japan apparently imports bottled drinking water! You have to love the insane logic of capitalism, they probably import it from Australia!
Nowhere have I witnessed so much water as in Nozawa Onsen in Nagano prefecture which I visited 21-23 September. I arrived there on Sunday afternoon and was met at the train station by Tim in the van whom I haven't seen for at least 12 years! He drove me up to the onsen village ski resort where they are staying and introduced me to his girlfriend Fiona.
She was very nice and we had tea and a chat. Before long we headed out to find an onsen and wander around the village. There are numerous free onsen baths scattered about the village and we passed a few before deciding on one.There is a set of 'baths' outdoors which are used not for bathing but for cooking vegetables, eggs and some kind of cane that I assume was being left in the boiling hot water to steam. Next to the cooking baths, which are roped off with a sign 'For Villagers Only' is a small shrine at the top of a steep staircase. Climbing the stairs the shrine is much the same as any small Japanese shinto shrine but the view of the village was great and the trees around us were beautiful. Above one can see the travelator which apparently takes skiers further up the mountain. One of the most remarkable features of the village was the extensive drainage network that ran along every street and between almost every house. Everywhere you go in the village you hear the sound of running water and many of the drains are open so you can see the constant stream rushing past.
There must be a lot of water rushing down from the mountains above. Some of the drains were like waterfalls so they were very pretty. Others ran beneath the street and could be heard gushing through numerous grates. Apparently the hot spring water is channeled beneath some of the streets in order to keep the roads free of snow. It would be interesting to see this in operation were I to come back in the ski season.
Tim and Fi are currently staying at one of two lodges in the town belonging to an Australian guy and doing some odd jobs in exchange for their accommodation. They have been promised work at the lodge in the winter season but are not yet sure exactly what the job will entail. They spent the last Winter in Hokkaido managing a ski lodge in Niseko, which is frequented by Australian ski tourists. They had to cook breakfast for all the guests in the morning but were free to spend the day out on the slopes before returning to do various jobs at night. Included in the job was a season lift pass, obviously worth its weight in gold to a serious snowboarder, accomodation and a monthly stipend. They appear to have been able to save some money and as they are both snowboard lovers they were able to spend an entire winter snowboarding. The powder in Hokkaido is legendary and they confirmed that it was indeed fantastic. It was also cold, so cold that after a few hours out on the slopes they had to take refuge inside and warm up before heading out again.Since then they have been living in their van and traveling around Japan. Sometimes they would sleep in the van and after a while just driving around and parking, checking things out, they would head to a WWOOF placement for a week or so in order to get out of the van, wash their clothes and experience Japanese rural life. They worked with goats at one placement but more often worked with plants. They said the farm life was very hard and while they enjoyed it they were amazed at the stamina of the men and particularly the women who work all their lives on the farm. The women work all day out on the farm just as hard as the men but also take responsibility for cooking an amazing meal and keeping the house clean. Tim and Fi both commented on the extensive use of chemicals on Japanese farms. While WWOOF farms are mostly organic or at least partially so they border farms which use pesticides and other chemicals and there is no way to prevent cross-contamination. In particular they pointed out that the water in the rice paddies flows between neighbouring fields making any kind of separation impossible.
On Tuesday morning we went to another onsen, this one was very hot. I could only stand to stay in the water for a few minutes and when I submerged my hands in it they immediately started to develop really intense pins and needles. When you are in a very, very hot bath you feel as if as long as you stay still you are OK but as soon as you move the heat hits you. It was boiling! Outside the bathhouse has a receptacle into which you can place eggs. After 20-25 minutes they are ready and we so we made some for lunch. This method of cooking is called onsen-tamago (onsen eggs). The eggs are somewhere between hard and soft boiled with the yellow being quite well done but the white quite runny. We made a delicious meal of eggs, brown rice, seaweed and miso soup. Tim and Fi after spending many breakfasts on Japanese farms have developed a taste for the fermented soy-bean product called natto and they had that as well. I can't quite get used to its slightly 'off' smell and sticky, mucilaginous consistency. Japanese people's traditional breakfast is natto with rice and apparently on the many farms they visited as WWOOF volunteers this was the customary breakfast. I have asked some of my students about natto and while most of them like it only a few eat it for breakfast regularly.I rode a nice old local train back to Nagano from Togari-Noazawa-onsen station after getting a lift to the station from Nozawa Onsen with Tim and Fi.
Their van was really cool and they lived in it for several months. The train line wound its way through a valley. On the right mountain chains rose up against the hazy sky. The valley was filled with golden fields of rice nearly ready for harvest. In Nozawa Onsen I saw people actually harvesting their crops using small tractors, one of which was hand operated. The machines seem to cut the rice in bunches and toss them to each side in very neat diagonal rows. I guess the rice is planted in tufts to make it suitable for this style of harvesting. Once the rice has been harvested it is hung upside-down on lines across the paddies and there are many paddies with their rows of drying rice on either side of my train window.
Wherever you look around here every available piece of space is occupied by rice paddies or small vegetable plots. 
I don't think Nagano is particularly well known for its rice production so the real rice producing prefectures must be a sight to see. As the train stopped at Iiyama station I noticed a building with an imitation statue of liberty on it! It is quite big and the building displays the large katakana letters ribatihiruzu (Liberty Hills)! What a sight! out in this rural Nagano village. The building was on a hill overlooking the station and main town. Riding the train was lovely. It rumbled along slowly offering plentiful opportunities to gaze out the window and the gentle rocking was soothing.
The mountains here in Nagano are so big and steep and rise out of the flat land of the valleys so rapidly. I think they are typical of mountains in the whole region. I have passed many temples on this short train journey (about 1 hour) and they all seem to have big, red roofs. Most of the buddhist temples I have seen in Japan have brown roofs so it is quite different. I hope to come back to Nozawa Onsen in the ski season and stay at the lodge once again. It would be great to see Tim and Fi again and to see the town under a blanket of snow. I may not make it though as they mentioned March was the most likely season and I may have other plans for March. They will be heading back to Australia in a few days to await the coming of Winter and I look forward to seeing them in Tokyo. We are off to check out Neon - Deepflow Drum'n'Bass at Module in Shibuya. Should be fun!
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| Nozawa Onsen, Nagano Prefecture 22-23 September |
Dreaming
We are quite ordinary women and men, children and old people, that is, rebellious, non-conformist, uncomfortable, dreamers. (Subcomandante Marcos, La Jornada, 4 de agosto de 1999)
I am a dreamer. I fight constantly with myself, telling myself that I ought to dream less and focus on the present more. True as this may be I think it's about time I learnt to love some things about myself which are unlikely to change. Being a dreamer means I can see possibilities in every situation. It enables me to hang on when life seems really hard by imagining a better future. It allows me to see things which other people cannot see. It allows the possibility of living those dreams. As Ella Fitzgerald says: "If you don't have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?"
So I dreamed a dream about life in Japan and here I am. The dream was definitely rosier than the reality! I completely underestimated the challenges which would lie in wait for me here. Now I am single, working in a corporate job which I hate and living alone in the drab outskirts of Tokyo! All these worries prey on my mind, especially now and especially since my birthday a month ago. Birthdays make us think about where we are in life. Sitting alone in a cheap ramen restaurant drinking beer was not really the place I wanted to be on my birthday this year. Fortunately I had a great farewell party before I left so I will retrospectively proclaim it my farewell/pre-birthday party! Last night my friend Gavin had a skype birthday party which I unfortunately missed. I spoke to him though and he said it was a little schizophrenic but very rewarding.
Yet being alone in one sense I am not in another. My friends and family in Australia have continued to be extremely supportive and their love is what has kept me going in the last week. As tears well up in my eyes and my heart feels like it is being crushed in a vice, a kind word on facebook or a skype call nurses me back to life. Doing tai chi this morning in what I will call my forest of sadness
I feel no chi in my hands. I try to focus the chi but it is all bound up in a horrible knot in my stomach so I just wave my hands in the air in the appropriate way and hope that the next day, or the next I will be able to focus.
I can't help but feel that I needed to be in a position where I have little choice but to rely on myself. I have relied on my partner to know who I am but only I can know that.
I am pushing out too (thanks Mehtap). Each week brings me new friends. There is something exciting about this because people I don't know and have no real previous connection show an interest in getting to know me. As much as I think we have to find our self worth in our selves there is no doubt that friendships of all sorts play an important role in helping us build a secure self-image. Japan is full of amazing people and I think I have been pretty lucky so far in the people that I have met.
So let me re-imagine the current reality of my Japanese dream. I am living in a wonderful, different and exciting place meeting lots of new and interesting people. My apartment is in a nice, quiet area surrounded by vegetable plots and close to a large forest which lovingly embraces my tai chi practice. I am facing the corporate monster that is my work each day and coming out in one piece. I am continuing to develop my relationships with people in Australia and around the world via the wonderful medium of the internet. I am writing an awesome blog and last but not least:
I am dreaming my way back into myself.
I am a dreamer. I fight constantly with myself, telling myself that I ought to dream less and focus on the present more. True as this may be I think it's about time I learnt to love some things about myself which are unlikely to change. Being a dreamer means I can see possibilities in every situation. It enables me to hang on when life seems really hard by imagining a better future. It allows me to see things which other people cannot see. It allows the possibility of living those dreams. As Ella Fitzgerald says: "If you don't have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?"
So I dreamed a dream about life in Japan and here I am. The dream was definitely rosier than the reality! I completely underestimated the challenges which would lie in wait for me here. Now I am single, working in a corporate job which I hate and living alone in the drab outskirts of Tokyo! All these worries prey on my mind, especially now and especially since my birthday a month ago. Birthdays make us think about where we are in life. Sitting alone in a cheap ramen restaurant drinking beer was not really the place I wanted to be on my birthday this year. Fortunately I had a great farewell party before I left so I will retrospectively proclaim it my farewell/pre-birthday party! Last night my friend Gavin had a skype birthday party which I unfortunately missed. I spoke to him though and he said it was a little schizophrenic but very rewarding.
Yet being alone in one sense I am not in another. My friends and family in Australia have continued to be extremely supportive and their love is what has kept me going in the last week. As tears well up in my eyes and my heart feels like it is being crushed in a vice, a kind word on facebook or a skype call nurses me back to life. Doing tai chi this morning in what I will call my forest of sadness
I feel no chi in my hands. I try to focus the chi but it is all bound up in a horrible knot in my stomach so I just wave my hands in the air in the appropriate way and hope that the next day, or the next I will be able to focus.I can't help but feel that I needed to be in a position where I have little choice but to rely on myself. I have relied on my partner to know who I am but only I can know that.
I am pushing out too (thanks Mehtap). Each week brings me new friends. There is something exciting about this because people I don't know and have no real previous connection show an interest in getting to know me. As much as I think we have to find our self worth in our selves there is no doubt that friendships of all sorts play an important role in helping us build a secure self-image. Japan is full of amazing people and I think I have been pretty lucky so far in the people that I have met.
So let me re-imagine the current reality of my Japanese dream. I am living in a wonderful, different and exciting place meeting lots of new and interesting people. My apartment is in a nice, quiet area surrounded by vegetable plots and close to a large forest which lovingly embraces my tai chi practice. I am facing the corporate monster that is my work each day and coming out in one piece. I am continuing to develop my relationships with people in Australia and around the world via the wonderful medium of the internet. I am writing an awesome blog and last but not least:
I am dreaming my way back into myself.
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| Niiza and Surrounds |
Monday, October 6, 2008
Simple Pleasures
Today was a challenging day but a very successful one. It was a day in which I recovered a little piece of myself.I have learnt over the years that in the morning when I first wake up I am very vulnerable emotionally. I often get depressing, recurrent thoughts at this time and the longer I lie there the worse they get. In recent times I have generally reacted to this situation by taking the obvious step: getting up. Since I have been in Japan, however, I have often had trouble mustering the willpower for that and instead lay there worrying more and more. Today was not one of those days!
I realise that I need to take care of this body of mine. My mind is a wild and undisciplined creature and it tends to lead me on a daily wild goose chase through a myriad of possible futures and a forest of whimsy. I figure I can't do all that much about that so at least I can make the vehicle as comfortable as possible. I did some stretching this morning and some Tai Chi and started the day feeling a bit better in my body than I usually do. Then I went to the dry cleaners. This is a small pleasure for me because I always go to the same small shop on the other side of the tracks and the woman who works there knows me now. Although we don't speak much it makes me feel like I am known and that I live in this place. I need that feeling to help anchor me to the present. Another thing that helps me to feel that I live here is starting to explore the neighbourhood. I have taken a few adventures on foot but on Friday I picked up my new bicycle and since then I have been on a few rides and started to get a better sense of where I am.
Not wanting to spend the whole day on my own at home on facebook I decided it would be a good idea to ride to Tokyo. Well I made it almost as far as Ikebukuro before I decided I had ridden far enough and tried to find something to eat. I saw the sign to Koenji at about this point but it was another 5 kilometres and I didn't feel I wanted to go quite that far.
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| From Tokyo Scenes - Various |
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| From Tokyo Scenes - Various |
It's great to have ridden as far as a sign that says Koenji though because in my mind I thought I was much further away than that. An hour and a half is actually not a bad ride if the weather is OK. I only worry about the return journey, tired at the end of a day. I found a very delicious little sushi restaurant and had a very tasty lunch with no book! I just sat and ate my food slowly and deliberately. At least those two zen sittings I attended reminded me that I should pay attention while I eat my food.
Returning to Niiza I passed a large army base in Asaka. I think one of my students is stationed there. I went to 'Jonathans' family restaurant to have a coffee and do my homework. Unfortunately it was very noisy and dark and I was seduced by dessert so I ended up feeling sick. At least I finished my homework though. The dessert was black sesame and soft-serve ice-cream with these weird little gelatinous white balls. I think they were made out of some sort of plant gum.
I went to Takadanobaba in the evening and cooked dinner with Jaime at her place there. I met Jaime at the Mother festival in Nagano where she was volunteering. She has lived in Japan for 8 years! We chatted about life, love, the future and other such things. Jaime, who used to organise parties in Japan, played me some house music. I love listening to new music and learning to appreciate different styles. This is the first time I have eaten a meal at someone's house (other than my own) since I have been here. It was so nice to do something so normal. I am fascinated by electronic music and its evolution. Eating with people in restaurants and bars just doesn't compare to a nice meal at home on a Monday night. I am reminded by this evenings and yesterdays cooking of how much I enjoy cooking for people. I hope I can do something with this, maybe next year in Italy for the G8!
So today has been a day of simple pleasures.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
The Sound of Vibrator
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| From Le Placard JP 2008 at Enjoy Kitanaka Hall |
The audience dons a pair of headphones and listens. Who thought of this strange idea? Well, apparently it started in France about 10 years. The younger brother of the guy who started it was at the concert and played the closing set. It's been going on in Japan for about 7 years. I'm not sure what the original idea was but at Enjoy Kitanaka Hall it wouldn't be possible to have a regular concert because of noise issues so it was just the thing.I didn't even know I was going to a concert! And an experimental music one at that. I am not generally a fan of experimental music, although I can't help but respect people who try to push the boundaries of what constitutes music.
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| From Le Placard JP 2008 at Enjoy Kitanaka Hall |
The concert was interesting. I enjoyed some of the music while some of it was just noise to me. The first act was an interesting guitarist/singer who ended every song by saying "genki? iizou", which means something like "happy?, that's great".
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| From Le Placard JP 2008 at Enjoy Kitanaka Hall |
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| From Le Placard JP 2008 at Enjoy Kitanaka Hall |
My favourite artist of the evening was Masa
whose performance consisted of sound recordings of demonstrations in Shimokitazawa and elsewhere and of a Koenji personality called Matsumoto mixed with really good beats. Musically this was the best performance for me because unlike the really experimental pieces it wasn't just interesting it was enjoyable to listen to. The sounds he created were very reminiscent of psychadelic trance which I later found out is one of Masa's interests. Another performer, whose name I have unfortunately forgotten, also created a very musical set. He also performed two hip-hop pieces which was very cool. 
I chatted to him before the concert while I was cooking, he was one of the organisers, and he said that there isn't really any political hip-hop in Japan. I was surprised to hear that but after listening to him perform political hip-hop I know there is at least one such artist in the big city. One of his other pieces combined electronic beats and glockenspiel which worked out much better than it sounds! Listening to that was like being in another world.One of the most unusual acts was a French duo who played some kind of Nintendo DS, a computer (they used some kind of pick-up to 'play' the computer), a kazoo and a vibrator. As you might expect a vibrator projected through a sound system sounds kind of vibratey. They played a series of unusual clips on the laptop screen they were using for an instrument. The most memorable was a segment of a French cooking show where they demonstrated how to cook an eel starting with the live eel and proceeding to kill, skin and chop up the enormous creature. Not a pretty sight, especially in a country where they actually eat eel. Eel is very tasty, a lot like chicken ... but now I'm not so sure.
I actually spent most of the conert sewing while I listened. I sewed a 'Make Capitalism History' patch on the back of a T-shirt. I sewed another patch on the front the first time I went so now I think the shirt looks pretty nifty. I really enjoyed doing this because it's the sort of thing I wouldn't normally do. One of the reasons I decided to go overseas was to force myself to do things I don't normally do. The fact is I was unhappy a lot of the time back in Australia and I have been unhappy most of the time here in Japan too. However, coming here has forced me to challenge myself every day and stripped away most of the things I use to hide behind. I'm really confused at the moment about what I am doing here, who I am and what I will do in the future but no matter what happens next this experience has changed me for the better already. I have no regrets about coming.
In addition to the sewing I also made some stamps out of erasers which read 世界で平和を (peace for the world). I intend to use these eraser-stamps to make some kind of artwork by stamping pieces of paper with this message. I haven't worked out the final details yet! I ended up chatting with quite a lot of the people at the concert (which was very small, probably 20 people came and went all in all). Among them was the aforementioned artist Masa who I had a drink with at a nearby cafe afterwards. He owns and operates a shop in Shimokitazawa and is active in movements to prevent Shimokitazawa being gentrified and overdeveloped. He and some of the other people at the concert are fans of trance and other genres of electronic dance music. I found the psytrance/political connection! And it only took 3 months (and a few days).
My emotions have been pretty strong lately and I am often thinking about particular pieces of music and listening to various parts of my music collection. This has run the whole gamut from the old teenage angst music such as the Cure to the psytrance which has become such an important part of my life in the last year or so. I have reflected often on the connection between music and our lives. The music I listen to evokes memories of different parts of my life. I realised in the last week or so that my collection hasn't really expanded at all since I came here. I think this is a clear sign that my head has not been in a good place and I intend to rectify the situtation as quickly as possible!
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| Le Placard JP 2008 at Enjoy Kitanaka Hall |
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