日本の空は何故こんなにも低いのだろう？

日本の空は何故こんなにも低いのだろう？ずっとここに住んでいると、そうも感じないかもしれないが、アメリカの壮大な田舎に住んでいるせいか、日本の空がとても低く感じる。地面が空を自分の方に引っ張っているみたい。あまりに低くて押しつぶされそうだ。手を伸ばせば届きそうな空に覆われた空間は密で複雑で、そこに住む人々は､いかに限られた空間を使うかを常に考えている。低い空の下に家が立ち並び、森がそびえ、建物がひしめきあい、田んぼが広がる。東京のような都会はもとより、田舎でさえも、凝縮感を覚えるのだ。山や森、川や家、人や道や建物や車といった全ての要素が、まるでパズルのようにきちんとはまっていて、相互関係を確立しているその様子は、驚くばかりだ。そして、空間は言葉と呼応する。4年間のブランクの後、日本を訪問していたときよく耳にした言葉は、「寄り添う」と「思いやる」。二つとも日本では、とても大事なコンセプトだが、実はどちらも英語に訳しにくい。「寄り添う」ー　‘stay beside’? ‘「思いやる」ー　‘think/feel for another’? 英語だとはっきりするのが、これらの言葉は、自分以外の誰かに働きかけることを示唆しているということだ。でも、日本語の「思いやる」や「寄り添う」行為では、自分と相手との境界線が曖昧になる。そこには自分も自分以外をも含む大きな共同体の存在が感じられる。この共同体の中では、「迷惑をかけず」「助け合う」美徳が重んじられ、それは、暗黙の中、言葉だけでなく、空間や人間関係、生き方までも形作っていく。低い空は、こうした相互関係をしっかりと地面にアンカーさせるのに必須なのだろう。そこに現れる空間は、ウエットで心地よく、浦島太郎の竜宮城のごとく魅惑的だ。一度入るともう二度と離れたくなくなるような非常にアブナイ空間でもある。

Beginner's Mind

There is a Japanese saying I'm fond of - "Shoshin Wasururu bekarazu". It means ' remember your original intension' or 'don't forget beginner's mind'. This phrase was created by Zeami, 15h century visionary, actor, playwright who established Noh as an art form in Japan. For me, this phrase has double implications. What is so significant about beginner's mind? When you are a beginner of something, you approach and honor every moment of life. The depth of my commitment to each moment determines the depth of experience, which then determines the quality of a person I can become. The other is to approach the seemingly similar experience with a different. mindset.

本当のこと

本当のことに気づく為にはたくさんの勉強が必要だ。強靭な洞察力。そして最後には自分で判断しなければならない。その自分とは何か、そこから始まるのだ。どこまで遡ればいいのか。自分と世界が本当に見えるようになるには。空っぽだと思っていたのは錯覚ではなかった。全く空っぽだったのだ。自分がそこに居ない時、幻想とランデブーするのは易しい。ああ、こういう事にずっと昔に気づいていれば無駄な時間を過ごさずにすんだだろうに。大事なことはいつも見逃す近くにところにあったのだ。いや、まだ遅くはない。遠く、深く、広く、ある時は緻密に又ある時は緩く、一瞬一瞬が最大限の可能性を持つような生き方が出来れば、表現するものも本当に少しは近づくのかもしれない。 In order to grasp the real truth, one has to have resilient and piercing insights. In the end, it is only one person who can make the final decisions - self. What is self? This is the beginning of everything. Research. How far should I go back? To high school? To kindergarten? Or back to the womb? Or even before? How can I see the relationship between myself and the world? The vast hollowness was quietly screaming  inside. When one is not really there, it is easy to rendez-vous with illusions.  The most important thing was always in the nearest place to me only to be overlooked. Perhaps it's not too late. As far as possible, as deep as possible, as vast as possible, sometimes meticulously and precisely, and other times loosely and gradually, if I can live in the way every moment is open to maximum potential, then and only then what I express might approach a bit closer to what is real.

RE: Kaspar (4) - desire to label

Last week I met Mr. John Spitzer, a theatre director who staged multiple works of Peter Handke through Fraudulent Production, an avant-garde theatre company active in DC for 18 years. Although the company doesn't seem to be operating anymore, he is still performing, directing, and writing. I met him as a part of the preparation for the upcoming production of "Kaspar" at my school in March 2011. While we discussed the play and Handke, one question he pointed out kept ringing in my head. This was also the question one of my students in the class 'Ensemble Theatre Lab' raised after 7 weeks of exploring "Kaspar". The question was, ' if something doesn't have a name, does it really exist?' This is an extremely curious question on many levels. We name things so that we can use these objects as references in order to communicate our ideas. So if we cannot name something, it makes us very inefficient. For instance, if we don't have a word for 'beer' and we have to describe it to somebody, how would we do that? "Can you get me that brownish slightly bitter liquid that sparks and gives you buzz? " The status 'beer' had under its name diminishes significantly. Plus there might be another 'thing' that fits this description. What makes 'beer' beer becomes quite nebulous at this point. Or what if none of these words I just used were available? Can I still talk about this thing and feel like it really exists? This phenomenon acutely points to our desire to define and be defined through labeling. What drives this desire to make things exist? Is that our fear? Last year during "Paraffin" rehearsals, one of the performers described that what's undefinable is eternal. So is it our fear of the eternal? Or is it our fear of disappearing and losing? In Kobo Abe's "The Wall", the protagonist loses his name to his own name card. His name card assumes his identity and takes over his life. The man who lost his name wanders around the city, not being able to claim his existence to anything or anyone. This story suggest the absurd nature of our identity. The only means to prove our existence comes from external definition. But if, if we didn't know that things are supposed to have names, labels, then we might not have such fear. We just exist and things just exist. The only way to get to know something is to experience it. The identity of the object is only proved by its own life.

Kaspar (3)

My friend Ryuzo Fukuhara told me what happened when he tried to make his students articulate their feedback after viewing someone's dance. "I liked this dance." "why did you like it?" "Her arms were ..." "What about the arms?" etc, etc. As he pursued the question, the student who was giving a feedback started crying. He explained that it was because something she had at the core resonated with the dance she was watching. She was just not realizing that until she was pursued to articulate her instinctive response. I was experiencing something similar to this episode. The play I'm working on now, "Kaspar" is about the possible reversal power relationship between language and thoughts. It is about the phenomenon of idiomized use of language. It is about the loss of subjective language and subjective reality. It is, really about human rights and freedom. I was starting to remember how my process of  English language acquisition went in the past twenty years. In the initial stage of acquisition, I tried to speak like Americans because I wanted to reach that freedom which seemed to be there if I could only speak the language. As I acquired the language further and further, I felt more and more powerful. It was shocking how it works. All of a sudden, you rise from the inferior to the superior because you can speak the language. You become someone from noone. Pretty soon, language starts walking by itself.

There seemed to be a transition in my acquisition about the time I started exploring the body. I noticed that the accent I tried to lose so hard was revisiting me. And I was actually enjoying my accent. I was now speaking English from a Japanese person's point of view. I'm not sure if it was a survival instinct. Or perhaps it was the embodiment of my further inquiry about freedom. At the same time, I was increasingly interested in 'non-speaking body' vs. 'speaking body'.

When we lose the subjective language, we lose ourselves. We lose our subjective reality. But where does the subjective reality start? How much is our world colored by other people's thoughts? A Japanese body-worker I acquainted with said something intriguing about this. "What is thinking? Thinking is to apply  yourself to someone else's thoughts." Ultimately, the question is, where are 'you'? And it has to go back to the body, the most immediate, where we hope we are, where we hope we feel our subjective reality.

Threshold

I removed one of the 'noren's in the house today for the wash. Noren is a Japanese curtain that hangs anywhere from one foot to several feet down from the top of the door opening towards the ground. It covers certain amount of the opening  from one room into another. After removing it, I noticed a dramatic difference in the degree of revelation. This particular noren covered about 1/3 of the door opening from my bedroom to the kitchen. Because of this 1/3, certain parts or the room I was entering was covered completely. Of course, when you go through the threshold and enter into the kitchen, what is covered by the curtain gets revealed, but it seems that something happens in the moment you go through the threshold. First of all, since this 'noren' covers 1/3 of the door, you are only seeing 2/3 of what is in the next room. So you are not perceiving what is in the upper 1/3 of the room. Somehow, when you go through the noren, some kind of magic happens to change your perception. After entering into the room, the upper 1/3 of the room gets revealed in a different light. What was hidden gets revealed in a completely different look. This is, of course, part of the aesthetics of the hidden and obscured.

As I was experiencing this change, I remembered what I read in the architecture book about the size of the door in old Japanese houses. The doors in old Japanese architecture are made very small and low. In order to go through, you have to crouch down quite a bit. (I remember that I used to hit my head a number of times, forgetting the size of the door even if I can actually see the size with my eyes.) The reason why the door is so small and low is because of the belief that there is another world in the space after you go through the threshold. It was also believed that a spirit goes through small openings, not big openings.

08

Mary-webster dictionary gives the following meanings for the word 'threshold'"

1: the plank, stone, or piece of timber that lies under a door : sill2 a: gate, door b (1): end, boundary ; specifically : the end of a runway (2): the place or point of entering or beginning : outset <on the threshold of a new age>3 a: the point at which a physiological or psychological effect begins to be produced <has a high threshold for pain> b: a level, point, or value above which something is true or will take place and below which it is not or will not

The last one ' a level, point, or value above which something is true or will take place and below which it is not or will not'. Is it ok to think 'above' is beyond and 'below' is here? So after going through the threshold, I will be in a place where something is true or will take place? If that's the case, it makes so much sense that the opening, the threshold is small and challenging to go through in order to be in the place truth is going to be revealed. I cannot wait to get back my noren to make this opening smaller.

Definition of professional

I've been thinking about the definition of  'professional'.

The other day, I went back to my favorite liquor store to exchange a bottle of red wine. This is rather unusual since there is usually a wine specialist I've acquainted well with and he is very thorough and accurate about his recommendation. However, this bottle I purchased was through someone else's advice. Luckily, I located this wine specialist whom I don't know very well and explained the situation. The wine was too sweet. When I first brought it up, he seemed to be in disbelief. Then I remembered how confident he was when suggesting this particular brand over the other one I had liked in the past. Without hiding his disbelief, he bluntly said, "you can choose another one." After picking up the one I always liked, he guided me to the casher and glanced at the bottle I picked up. "You like that one and not this one?" "this one is too sweet" "it's not sugar sweet and this one is smoother" "I'm just used to drinking this other one." Throughout this exchange, he kept looking unsatisfied as if I knew nothing about wine.

Recommending a certain taste to someone you don't know very well is tricky. I remember the wine specialist I've acquainted in this same store and how he approached his work as an advisor. He always listened to me very carefully and selected several bottles and gave me very detailed explanation about each one. From the second visit and on, he remembered my face and came to help me with the selection. And his selection always hit the mark. I compared these two specialists and wondered why this new one was less successful in 'discovering and satisfying' my preference, which is his job. Perhaps it has something to do with 'service' - the spirit to 'serve' people. In order to truly serve people, you have to examine your ego. You have to disappear in service of others' needs. It requires deep study of the information you are sharing. It also requires deep study of who the people are you are serving. It's not an easy job to be a wine specialist. Whenever I am with my favorite wine specialist, I feel well taken care of. I have the trust and can even enjoy other conversations with him since I'm not worried if the one he recommends would be overpriced or not suited for my palate. He has cultivated an air to ease the customer who comes to his store, share his knowledge, and always gives room for the customer to make a decision. I sense his pride in his work. I haven't yet had to return anything he recommended to me, but if that ever happens, I'm sure what he would do is to listen to me, consult me, bring three more options to choose, and say, "don't hesitate to bring it back if you don't like it". He sure is in my eyes, a true professional.

I encountered another professional on TV. A while ago, I watched how an autism specialist works with children in a TV program called "Professional." She had opened a center, like a nursing home, where the autistic children can stay and spend time with other autistic children and the caretakers. There was one impossible child who kept escaping from this home. Noone seemed to have a solution to solve this child's problem. His manner was violent and his situation was clearly severe. After about the third escape of the day, the reporter asked the specialist, "what are you going to do now?" Without changing her facial expression a bit, she replied," I'm going to keep working with him until he becomes well because I'm a professional. I will never give up."

Am I professional? When things don't go well, am I not finding the excuses? Am I not making a leeway for myself? Being a professional means  to be able to take responsibility for your work. Professional means to pursue the goal of your work no matter how long it takes or how complex it is. Also, professional means to think about your work and its relation to the people who are affected by your work. It means to invest in the question, 'what is the relationship between my work and the world's present?'

Proof of existence

I participated in Dance Hakushu Festival last summer in Hakushu, Japan. As I was reading some of the e-mail exchanges amongst the staff members, I ran into one of this year's participants' blog. He was someone I had known from almost 19 years ago in Japan. At that time, he and dance seemed inseparable. I firmly believed that he was going to dance until the end of his life. I myself was just starting to make a serious commitment to the 'act of dance' and 'performance' without thinking too much about motivation or meaning. I clearly remember the time he faced me and asked me this question in a serious manner: "why do you have to dance?" He told me how 'he could not live without dancing". Dance was a proof of his existence. I didn't understand what he had meant at that time. Now I'm slowly starting to understand it. When asked, "what do you dance for?" after one of  his performances at PS 1 in November 2007, Min Tanaka answered, "first for myself, then for others, but I'm always in need of others's eyes." When I cast that same question onto myself, do I have an answer now?  I dance to explore. What is possible? Where is the boundary? Limit? How does inside and outside co-exist? How does past, present, and future co-exist in my body, through my body? How can I disappear and exist at the same time? How can I transcend this body? What is self? How do you reach ego-less body? Can I go there or am I staying here?

Dance is a quest to find the answers to myself. Answers to my existence. My existence in relation to the universe. The existence of the universe. It is a way to investigate what it means to exist. For me, it is a way to examine what this whole thing means, not to prove it.

In the blog, this dancer mentioned that he hadn't danced for quite a while since his ways of proving his existence has been shifted to his other business. After calling this opportunity his 'last time to dance', he casts a question, 'I wonder what might happen if I dance now. Would this really become the last time or not?" I wonder if this occasion is going to become a trigger to shake and move his existence and if that's the case, I wonder if the reason for him to dance might now be to find himself, not to prove himself.

Visible/Invisible

Recently, I attended one of my friend's mother's memorial service. The service was conducted in a church she used to attend.  While I sat on a pew and listened to the pastor's talk, one phrase caught my ears. "What's visible is temporary. What's invisible is eternal." It was a quote from II Corinthians and it does have a highly biblical meaning. However, for me who has been thinking visible/invisible, this phrase came as a revelation. Isn't it true that what's visible, what is on the surface, what is showing outside doesn't last long and what's invisible, what is in deep inside, what is unseen and unsaid lasts much longer? I wonder what happens to things we thought of saying but don't say? Where do they go? I often think of visible/invisible in dance. What is visible is very minimalistic, but what is invisible is vast, deep, and huge. The viewers 'sense' what is invisible, what is undefined, and what is hidden. Minimal action evokes indefinite, undefined, deep response inside of the viewers. This, to me, is a much richer experience and therefore, the phrase 'What's visible is temporary. What's invisible is eternal' resonated with me so strongly.