October 10th, 2008
Events, places, muishiki
Hirota-san says that when you’re really buried in a project, you not only lose track of time but reality as well. Riding on a crowded train, or walking through the city, you don’t pay attention to anyone. Your mind is so involved with work that nothing else even exists.
Hoka no hito ga ittemo, imi nai; kankei nai.
Even if other people are around, it means nothing. They are not related to what you’re doing and might as well not exist.
It’s not an intentional thought, or a position of haughtiness. Your reality simply collapses to the minimal set of conditions required to achieve the goal, whatever it is. (Most likely having lost all meaning in the process, you probably couldn’t explain it even if someone asked.) I think this tunnel vision is some kind of instinct, a primitive defense mechanism to conserve energy and prevent one from going insane. If you actually stopped to contemplate about how your mortal coil is all but evaporating out from beneath you, you’d probably literally get sick.
I’ve come out of one of these tunnels now… my entire summer was devoted to an already ridiculously intense project, and I have not a single summer memory aside from the one time I went to Enoshima for a few hours on the first train after pulling an all-nighter. Now, everything is nothing, and even coming close to thinking about it incurs some sort of queer cloister phobic-like panic. All of the unused tickets, the skipped concerts, the people I never called back… Now I’m twitching in withdrawal from that unhealthy work addiction, staying at the office doing almost nothing but feeling reluctant to leave. Almost unconsciously, I filled every single weekend for six straight weeks with multi-day events. Hertzberg on the 27th of September, Toyama the weekend after that, Gentenkaiki this weekend, Natural Smile the following weekend, a photo exhibition at Drop, eight days in Europe, and then Design Festa in the beginning of November. I supposedly have a birthday somewhere in there, but I won’t be near anyone who knows me for it so I don’t really think of it as happening.
Sitting now on a bench cross legged in the massive east wing of Messe and looking out into the vacant dusk sky, it’s pretty much still as Hirota-san says, hito ga ittemo, imi nai. Kankei nai.
Even if we’re together, I’m not there.
