More from Christmas 2007.
Violinist Yumi Miyagishima (Shima)
This is a bit of a late entry but I spent Christmas at a small pub in Mitaka, where Shima played violin with a singer, pianist, bassist, guitarist and percussionist.
Tokyo is a haven/heaven for young musicians.
Instead of parties, people get together to listen to music for their souls’ “iyashi.” (The repertoire that night was a collage of sing/clap-alongs _ “Jingle Bells,” “Sunny,” Japanese pop, etc.)
Shima has always said she wants to play music.
Knowing What you Want is important in Life.
And never giving up/never compromising: It’s easier said than done.
Although we may never achieve the heights of our craft we see as Ideal, we can keep going, day by day, (staying True to What We have Decided is our Life) and we go listen to Music in Mitaka to gain courage/strength/purity to go on for the next day.
Despair/Disco (Story of Miu 6)
Miu and I went to a DISCO called The Room in Shibuya.
And it was as tiny and shabby as a room.
People stood next to each other in rows and shifted their weight from one leg to the other nervously to the thump-thump of music as a mirror ball glistened sadly from a corner.
Miu says this is the new, tucked-away look of Tokyo discos.
The big slick ones with shiny floors are obsolete, although they apparently still exist in parts of Roppongi, where old men, many of them foreigners, try to pick up young Japanese women.
We were not dressed appropriately in our T-shirts and jeans.
You must wear short skirts and tops with your breasts about to fall out, then people will want to talk to you and want to have sex with you, according to Miu.
A DISCO is a place where boys take girls they pick up on the streets:
(1) By dancing, the male can make sexual overtures to the female and find out her interests/lack thereof in having sex.
(2) By dancing, the female will get tired, allowing the male to suggest going to a hotel to have sex.
A disco delivers relatively high return for low investment.
Dating for weeks to just kiss isn’t efficient.
“There has to be someone out in the world who is your true love,” Miu says, shouting a bit over the music.
“Romantic love must exist. Like Romeo and Juliet. Or is that unreal like a father’s ghost or a forest moving, which aren’t at all everyday like a disco?”
Miu says a man she got to know recently says he finds someone like Juliet a bit too much.
I’ll tell her maybe it’s better to hang out with another Capulet, or how about my friend Mercutio?
I may be someday someone’s Romeo but I will never find a Juliet, he told Miu.
DESPAIR was one of the paintings on display in Uneo by Edvard Munch.
Munch’s strongest works depict personal angst.
Despair, Anxiety and Scream were shown in two different sequences.
One had the Scream in the middle.
But the Scream has to be the culmination of the series.
Indeed, Munch painted them in that order: Despair, Anxiety, Scream.
Munch believed art should be about everyday people.
Never mind the people in the paintings may look psychotic, surreal and warped.
Not really everyday at all.
“I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love,” Munch said.
Flower Children 3
In any age, Artists get monetary support from others _ the king, the church, the modern market. The means of support affect the Art (eg., portaits of noblemen, Biblical paintings, modern art). In Tokyo today, Artists get support from a community of Artists, who in turn get support/make money as freeters in the straight economy. This distinction becomes easier to understand if one looks at the true function of Art as giving spiritual fulfillment to people who aren’t Artists, those people who are straight and make money. It’s like going to church. Art like religion is “necessary” in every society to remind people of the meaning of life. Because the Artist possesses that special power, the Artist gets money from those who make money, so that the Artist can be free of straight-world commitments to practice that power. If Art becomes funded by a community of like-minded Artists (salaryman/freeter masses), Art becomes very different from Art nurtured in the 20th Century modern art scene of the West. Tokyo Art is not combative. It does not try to make a point. It reaches out to others in harmony like a psychotherapy session. There is no prize committee, rich patron/gallery buyer, even recording label/producer to impress. Sincerity is critical: Are you really an Artist? Or are you more interested in success/money/the straight world? If you are truly a Tokyo Artist, then you are “in” no matter how untrained, how off-key, how absurd your Art may be. But you must Believe.
Chips everywhere
It’s still a test, but computer chips stuck in buildings and corner posts in Tokyo’s Ginza won’t stop talking to you, as evident in my participation in a recent demonstration. The chips are an upgrade of the more common RFID chips in widespread use, which are more like barcodes to identify products. The chips from Professor Sakamura of TRON fame relay information that can be updated on servers. He denies they will be used for “Big Brother” monitoring of human individuals. But that would seem one obvious potential use. Another link to my story.
Hiroko’s blog
Hiroko Tabuchi is someone of similar heart and mind also commenting on the passing of time in the same city that we live in.