autumn tactics

With some trouble, I open the window and turn off the embalming cool of the air conditioner. It’s in the upper seventies and cloudy, a typical late spring Saturday with moderate traffic.

The buses come regularly and often, stopping outside of the guest house three stories below. Nearby someone is intermittently running a ban saw and children squeal with joy across the street. An old bicycle’s brake whines to avoid hitting a kindly old lady, largely oblivious to the bustle around her.

My head is slightly swollen and stuffed with menthol tissues, another night of too much beer and cigarettes. The lump in the back of my throat is easy to ignore, the gentle throbbing behind the peaks of my disheveled eyebrows is strangely satisfying; a kind of half-conscious telekinetic massage.

Today I have three meetings in order, mostly photography and exhibition related. Then tomorrow a photo shoot at Zushi beach and a date for mayhem and villainy with Rob.

But first I must start with enjoying this glorious day of low grade hangover in placidly busy Tokyo. The atmosphere is far too stimulating.

Counting the days ’til summer…

This is the view looking down my street to the west. Depending on the time of year and weather, the sun gets low enough to cut through all the air pollution and make a glorious golden light, which reflects at just the right angle off of the sound-dampening panels on the outside of the highway. In person it’s actually much, much, more beautiful, and much, much brighter; so bright that you’re nearly blinded by the reflection. But the computer monitor is a poor medium for portraying such majesty, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

Admittedly, there has been a distinct dearth of writing this year. However, there has not been a lack of fantastic electronic music. I’m about four or five years behind the curve of certain compatriots in terms of purchasing media, but I’ve been making great strides so far this year. Normally I’m a listen-to-it-on-ETN-and-rip-it kind of guy, but this doesn’t work for albums, especially vintage stuff. However the closure of Virgin Megastore and some shrewd international Amazoning has allowed me to get my hands on a number of classic recordings (some for the second time).

Chicane - Far From the Maddening Crowds (1997)
Namesake of autumn tactics, electronica artist Chicane’s debut album. Before Behind the Sun, in 1997 Nick Bracegirdle composed this seminal album of glasslike cool. In particular the track Offshore is reminiscient of winding through the rising Applachians on my way to Pittsburgh during grad school.

Paul Oakenfold - Tranceport (1998)
Tranceport is the album that pulled me headfirst into trance. Though Moby and Aphex Twin got me started on electronica, it was Paul Oakenfold that metamorphisized me. I used to listen to this album on a Sony Walkman brick of a tape player while running around Lake Sammamish in the cool, green, summer of 2000. This is at the top of my list when I need to plow through something in 74 minutes.

Ulrich Schnauss - Far Away Trains Passing By (2001)
Ever since meeting him at Taico Club last May, I’ve had Ulrich Schnauss in my heavy rotation for riding home at night. Minimalist electronica that ranges from the chill to the grand in Ulrich’s first album under his own name.

Sasha - Airdrawndagger (2002)
I bought this album simply for the zen nature of Cloud Cuckoo, but Sasha’s self-produced work is growing on me.

and a couple more recent releases:

Oceanlab - Sirens of the Sea (2008)
I’ve always loved Above and Beyond’s anthems, especially Oceanlab mixes by Ferry Corsten. Justine Suissa’s vocals are fair on this album, not up to the level of Autumn Tactics, but a couple of the tracks are nice.

Nick Warren - GU035 Lima (2008)
I don’t get out of trance enough, unfortunately, so I was happy to run into this album when at the Virgin Megastore in San Francisco. Even in its progressive format, house is still more suited for small clubs rather than raves but it’s a nice change, and I’m enjoying the double CD. It makes me pine for my old GU004, Paul Oakenfold in Oslo.

I planned on writing more in March, especially since I was on the road so much, but in the end the advent of a notebook that could compile made little else possible. Probably through stress more than anything, I’ve managed to run myself down to a lot less robust level than usual. I tire easily, waking up is a problem seven days a week, and there’s a constant blunt ache in my body. The weather has improved dramatically in recent weeks, however, and the sunshine and fair temperatures are starting to recharge me (like Superman).

Still, things are a mess all over and my priorities are all out of whack. My photography class starts tomorrow, I need to decide what kind of pictures I’m going to take with me to show since we’re supposed to start with that and self-introductions. I bought a license to FL Studio in February, but I haven’t made much use of it yet since I’ve been sucked into Resident Evil 4 (again), and seasons 10 and 11 of ER. I think that I need a schedule again for off-time, even though I don’t have any exhibitions on the horizon. I’ve let communication with too many important people slide in the name of short-term release. Thankfully, rave season starts in two weeks. A return to reflection, to sound and to quiet, and to good people all around.

So many twisted dreams going on now involving all the people I have issues with. ::sigh:: Work is never-ending and it’s nothing but responsibility I cannot manage without significant pain.

So my business trip to Los Angeles ends as quickly as it began. Fifty-one hours of Pacific Standard Time. It was educational, warm, fully of tasty things to eat, and garnered a few more memories to weave into my sterling silver bachelor’s band.

I got into town at eight-thirty Tuesday morning, seven hours earlier than when I left. Having a good amount of time on my hands before I could check into the hotel, I took a cab to Venice Beach and walked up Santa Monica to enjoy the weather. Along the way I met a pair of recently discharged Japanese office workers from Kyushu, and stopped at Big Dean’s for a ginormous double burger with fries and a pint of Sam Adams at the lovely body clock time of five a.m.

In between meetings I picked my way along the walk of fame and spent a good deal of time in the hotel conferring with coworkers back east. In some ways I think I could get used to living on the road: my room was about three times the size of my apartment and had a pretty decent view of the sunrise and Hollywood Hills.

Oddly enough my good high school friend Adam who I’d seen once in the last twelve years lives about five minutes’ drive from my hotel. We walked the dog, talked about old times, and his fiancee made us some lovely Cuba cuisine.

It was a short trip, but well-balanced and even had a good degree of intrigue and romance. Ah, the two carry-on lifestyle.

It’s reasonable to say that the changes to one’s personality over time are influenced by the environment one lives in. The people one interacts with on a daily basis, he absorbs their means of communicating and dealing with problems. It’s never a complete assimilation, but an intermediary interpolation, an annealing process.

I think in general as people grow older they become more calm and passive. It’s a matter of waiting, thinking, and responding. However, living in Japan may accelerate my evolution into this frame of mind. I undoubtedly have my opinions, and thoughts on events and dialogue, however as time has passed I’ve become more prone to listen quietly and reflect. It’s nothing astounding, it’s just a smooth mellowing that I’m conscious of and entertained by. Waiting is.

This morning when I awoke the air was damp, fresh, and slightly warm. Last night I went to Yoyogi park on the way home to practice guitar. I sat by the lake as a sprinkling rain began and fumbled through my standard repretoire. Tokyo has so much light pollution that in even the middle of night very few places are truly dark. Silhouettes of lovers and and homeless men are easy to pick out, silent and thoughtful.

Two months in the year have passed and I feel like I’ve accomplished little. It’s not often that I feel that time passes quickly, but I’ve been home so little this year, doing things without photographs it runs together. Parks, row boats, guitars, wine, skiing, and smokey bars. Ah, but it is life, sweet and ripe, even if feeling somewhat lost in it.

Tokyo is a city of endless fascination. The rivers and sandlots, the storage rooms and offices, a sea of billboards and dingy katakana signs. Houses apartments are packed together like a tacklebox, an endless array of multicoloured plaster, concrete, and tile. I could devote a lifetime to exploring it all and never discover a fraction of its secrets. Families and grocery shopping, torrid affairs and love hotels, a panolpy of rust, plastic, sin, and perservance all under the bleary eye of a tired sun.

I board the train to the airporte at Shinjuku and impulsively swallow down an inari and tarako onigiri set with takuan. Wrestling off the cap of my blythe green tea I take a few strained belts. Muscles still coiled from the rushed disarray of morning, I put on m hopelessly broken headphones and try to calm myself down with some Final Fantasy piano concertos. The start of a journey and so much angstful longing for the good old wandering romantic me, I wish I were riding the train in the other direction, back to my ramshackle commuter bicycle. But this is the start, thirty hours of travel and forty-nine in Los Angeles. Four days of a businessman’s solitude.

The thirty days beginning from the end of February are a challenge in displacement endurance. Three locations, five days of skiing over a nine-day period, roughly thirty-hours on buses. Tuesday I head to Los Angeles for a business trip. Two weeks later I’m in San Francisco for another. Fortunately I’ve come into use of a laptop notebook that weighs less than nine pounds and has a battery life of more than five minutes. Mind maps, Visual Assist, blog entries. It’s interesting to think how what seems so convenient and state-of-the-art now will be laughable in a decade’s time.

The downside of all this travelling is a virtual freeze on artistic development. There has been little writing, and virtually no photographic advancements made in the last eighty days, save for a one day darkroom course I took last month. I made a wiki for what I’ve learned, but I have to use a discount coupon by Saturday for another session.

My visa expires at the end of May, but I think I will continue to get more than my money’s worth on my re-entry permit before then. Six unbroken years in Japan. Six. So much work, so many trips, so few regrets. Life is rich, and so are the possibilities… for a road warrior.

And the cold, and the rain, and it means nothing. There is so little of weather in malaise. A haircut and a shave, a new bed and some tools. But fingernails still grow and there is no satisfying quiet.

I haven’t put up many pictures yet demonstrating the MC Zenitar 16mm lens I bought for the Fujica last autumn. It provides interesting shots if you’re unfamiliar with fisheyes, but the gimmick of the distortion is a bit of a handicap; it can easily destroy a shot. Another element to manipulate.

This afternoon I was mucking about in FL Studio, but I kept getting distracted because I’ve had it in my mind to streamline my footprint, both physical and digital. I have plans to collapse the site as it is and fold it back to something much more basic. Right now I’m just thinking photography, the blog, and the wiki. No more college-era neophyte attempts at creation. That past has long since outlived its usefulness and now it’s more of an eyesore than anything else.

I brushed up a very few minor parts of the blog template. Headers should be uniform more or less through all category and monthly archives. I think I’ve figured out a way to fix 90% of the broken image links in the history, I just need to risk a global search-and-replace on the DB. The older blogger titles will have to be done by hand, unfortunately. There’s four hundred and eighty-some to deal with.

I put the search form back, it should work all right, though it’ll bring a harsh light onto all of those stupid blogger title entries. Once I get the older posts all marked up with titles, categories, and slugs I’ll add the most dense category labels to the sidebar.

Yesterday I took a one-day course in dark room printing. It was pretty interesting, though as you’d expect quite frustrating at first. There are so many steps in manual printing that are handled for you digitally, mostly alignment-related things. I have a couple of discount coupons to go again in the next few months, though, so I’m looking forward to that.

It’s February. I’m two months out from starting a photography workshop directed towards a personal gallery exhibition. The wind is cold, but the sky is blue. I’ve spent too much time playing games (BioShock and Red Dead Revolver) over the past couple of weeks, so I have again sent my memory cards into hiding so I can get some work done.

I’ve been pining for a winter camellia (man that’s an awful pun worthy of a Quest for Glory game), but haven’t found one yet. However, I was enchanted by a very beautiful boke (flowering quince) at the corner plant shop. I think I will try to grow it as a bonsai, but I really have no idea how that’ll work out, so for now my goal is to just not kill the poor thing.

Last weekend, for founder’s day I got a chance to visit with Nami and her husband Taka at their home in Sumiyoshi. Nami and I have been friends since the first day I came to Japan, so she and I have quite a considerable amount of history. We met at the 2002 IWEC workshop in Makuhari. At the time she was studying art at an applied media school while I was starting my internship with ATR.

I’ve always been a fan of her doujinshi (fan published manga), the vibrance and exotic nature of her style always electrifies me.

For our New Year’s party I decided to make some cookies to share. The most fun part was decorating them.

Taka and Nami both wore kimono for the occasion, and I was fortunate enough to be able to try on Taka’s outfit after dinner.

Wearing hakama (divided skirt worn by males on formal occasions) feels pretty cool, actually. I put on my best Final Fantasy-inspired pose. Can’t you just imagine me overcoming all adversity to save mankind and more importantly, the heroine?

[Yes, technically if I was indoors I'd have my wakizashi out instead of my full length sword, since I'd very much be likely to get it stuck in a rafter during a strike, but this just looks cooler and my daimyou wasn't around.]

Kawasaki-shi Kyomachi is still the same. The same tired, old buildings, empty of people but lived in. The same early morning shadows in winter, soft and blue in fresh January air.

The more I learn about them, the more I can imagine myself using narcotics to maximize my output from life; stimulants for when I don’t sleep, to help me focus, to be able to grind out hour upon hour of photographs, music, and prose. Reading volumes and consuming everything, augmented and completely wired to my core. Then inevitably I’d need depressants to relax me, to help me get the three hours’ sleep that would keep my body from collapsing, to put the brakes on the endless surges that carry me all the way up the stairs to my apartment after work. So many things I’m capable of, so much light to consume and refract.

But there are limits, and like all substances there has to be something to give for what I receive, sooner or later. So I just imagine it, and compromise the government-recommended way: an endless supply of coffee and self-denial.

It’s a clear day. It’s a very saturated day.