autumn tactics

There’s something I was supposed to do today… lots of things, actually. But for the life of me I can’t remember any of them. I am alive, very much so, but exhausted to my core and rind. There is an effervescent haze that encircles my every thought like a Shanghai summer, coughing up black.

Tomorrow I leave for Thailand, fulfilling my two international trips a year quota early. I want to be quiet and peaceful, I want to say little and listen much, I want to walk through ruins that look like the set of Ico and have ages’ old Buddhism seep into my subway-texting deadened pores and give me some kind of vibrance deeper than I can extract from any brown, small caffeine-laced bottle.

Oh the road so far out it doesn’t even make sense from a map or my mind. The texture of stone.

この24時間はどうしてのか空前な写真家として充実な一日でした。昨日PLACE Mのワークショップに写真を見せずに90分の他の人の写真をじっくり分析した。他の素人をみると、自分がどこで前に間違えたのか振り替えて、まだ間違えてるところを洗い出す。目が覚めた。

昨夜遅くまで誕生日会で、午後までゆっくりして、SHANEを視て分析した。監督の精選はなぜそういう風にした。なるほど。

午後からMASUO亭の写真を撮るのが依頼されて、店の魅力を表現するために5Dと露出的にアンダーの環境で挑戦した。それ後夜with triangleの伊藤さんと出版業界について下北のFREE FACTORYに話し合いました。

紹介してくれたり、熱心が移ったり、レベルアップさせたり．．．

感謝。

感激。

昨日代休を取って、海に行った。初めてクラゲが刺すの経験した。変な感じ。

今日色々作品を整理して、写真ワークショップ久しぶり出席した。夜にマイちゃんの誕生日会．．．カラオケ、ボウリング。なっくんが居た。古い友達と楽しめた。新しい人と知り合った。

心の中で、懐かしい好奇心が生えた。思案しています。

やわらかくて刺激的。

Waiting is.

All I can say is…

感謝です。

Thank you, everyone.

It’s hot again, but pleasingly so. Sitting on the edge of the sofa right now in front of the fan feels good. The moist spots in the backs of my elbows are sticky-soft. It would be so nice to just fall asleep here now, though I have the feeling it would alienate my customers to be so relaxed. I’ve made up the gallery to be cozy. The sofa has my blankets from home, the coffee table is adorned with my albums and a flower bouquet. The super maneki neko smiles on his pillow. Ah, peace of midday. World traveller Keiko stopped by on her way back from the store to give me a cold bottle of tea.

It may be the heat and the fatigue, but this is surreal. It’s easy to forget why I’m here, in fact I’m not even sure anymore, it’s like a dream. It must be too early to be patting myself on the back… I put so much emphasis on the setup that I may be off the mark on the execution. But so drowsy, so comfortable.

舌を巻いた。

Today has been the wildest and most dynamic day I’ve had all week. It’s just before eight o’clock and I’m enjoying the first lull since one-thirty. A lot of my co-workers came by, bring family members and friends, probably close to thirty people in total. I also had a chance to talk passionately about photography to several passers by, doing the best I could to construct Japanese robust enough to suit my granite theories and formulaic processes that build the framework for my photographic method.

My feet are aching and I’ve been sweating constantly for the last seven and a half hours, but it feels wonderful. People have come to support me, with beers and flowers, with smiles and compliments. All of the stress and fatigue is ground into my muscles like pepper worked with raw steak, and the dense moisture of effort, worry, and community laces the humid air. I am fortunate, blessed, exhausted and frazzled. To be honest, I really wouldn’t have it any other way.

今週があっという間に終わって、もう週末と信じられない。先週と同じに、仕事が終わったら飲みにいって、心の底から疲れました。筋肉が痛い。頭がふわふわ。11時まで寝ていたけど熟睡できなかった。

今の問題が80％ストレスと分かってるけど簡単に直せない。今日楽しめるように努力します。

今日は客さん色々来てもらって、良い一日でした。夜に出版業界の人たちが見てもらって、写真集について色々話せました。段々こういう人たちに会いたい。

視覚芸術、音楽、出版、雑誌、編集、など。

自分をセルフプロデュースして、他の人から色々学んで身に付けて技術を磨いを掛けたい。

今日初めての客さんが来ました。友達の何人か訪問してくれて、ハガキの幾つかを買ってくれました。広角レンズを持っていくのは忘れたので、いっきに見せないですけど、大体こんな感じです。

雰囲気がよくて、よくできてる気がするけど、初個展だからちょっと甘くて見えてるだけかもしれない。

今日写真を入荷して、壁に貼りました。色々試して、結局かなりリラックスできるなさっぱりしてる雰囲気ができました。写真撮ったけど、解像度が低すぎて、見せないから、明日ちゃんとしたカメラで撮って、明日の夜に見せます。以外とよくいった、かも。（笑）

入荷で色々大変なんだけど、昼から夜まで準備を徹底したので、今からのはお客さんの際は、成功と思えますね。

とにかく、みんなの応援を感謝します。ありがとう！

明後日がようやく一年半ぶり展示会なんだけど、先週木曜日急にPCが壊れて、データが無くした。バックアップが一週間程度適当に取ったけど、要するは何十時間が消えた。やり直ししかない。大変。ちょっと大変。メールも個人情報なども無くしたけど、今そのことを考える暇が無い。今夜が徹夜で、全力最高な画質に出すように頑張ります。今週時間があれば、ぜひ参観しに来てください！

皆さん、

来週写真展を開催します。真夏の海の日と伴って海辺の写真です。興味がある方はどうぞ参観しに来てください。

重要な情報

作品名：江ノ島：海辺の情事
日程：七月二十日～二十五日
時刻：平日19:00-21:00、土13:00-21:00、日13:00-20:00
展示場：あ～とすぺ～すMASUO、北沢
案内：http://ichigoichie.org/enoshima

土日は 13:00からオープンで、終日展示場にいる予定です。

写真展について

今回の展示作品は2010年7月に神山一朗が撮影したものです。真夏のロマンスをフィルムに焼き付け、海の日の翌日より展示いたします。テーマは神山が長年に渡り深い思い入れを持つ片瀬江ノ島の町です。湘南の地元の人たちや建物を、夏の潮風が運ぶどこか懐かしい風景の中に収めました。

北沢における写真展

世田谷区の人情味あふれる北沢商店街にある『あ～とすぺ～すMasuo』にて7月20日（火）‐7月25日（日）写真展を開催いたします。平日は15:00-21:00の開催で、神山一朗本人は19:00以降ギャラリーにおります。土日は13:00-21:00と開催時間を拡大いたしまして、神山は終日ギャラリーにおります。また神山の作品をハガキにしたオリジナルポストカードを展示開催中ギャラリーにて販売いたします。

Melody, rhythm, sweeps, filters, effects. 1, 2, 3, 4, two bars and a drum roll. The build up and break down.

Time smooths my rough edges like a stone in the ocean, but the marrow of my soul is at its core unchanged, and only strengthened, growing thicker and more unyielding with age like a redwood.

Next month I have my first attempt at a private exhibition, that is to say a photographic event. My work will be at Art Space Masuo for the second to last week of July. Fittingly, since the exhibition starts on Umi no hi, Ocean Day, my theme is about my long lasting love afffair with Enoshima. I have been visiting Fujisawa beaches virtually since I moved here after college. It’s one of the easiest to access from Shinjuku while not being overly unclean like most of the beaches in Tokyo Bay. Enoshima is worn in some ways, like the string of paint-peeled love hotels along Route 1, and rebuilt and constantly changing in others, like the recent flurry of gya-ru (think tough, overly baked valley girls) run beachside bars cobbled together annually out of plywood. There is the classic tourist element as well, being close to Kamakura which for over a hundred years was the political and spritual seat of Japan during the Hojo Shogunate.

The Enoden ambles along, one of the areas oldest and most photographed railways. Fish are salted and roasted on spits, hawked by streetfront restaurant owners. A certain variety of rice crackers and tiny dried fish, shirasu, are the famous local exports, and prominently featured in every shop window.

But for me Enoshima isn’t the Buddhist temples or the fish, it is the ocean. The surfers that congregate in droves during the early morning and evening hours of summer, the old man and his wife renting deck chairs and innertubes, boring holes for beach umbrellas with a cordless drill and an extra-long rusted bit.
It’s waking up at an ungodly hour (or possibly not even sleeping the night before) and taking a picnic lunch with ice cold beer and groggily catching the first train to the shoreline. To arrive with the break of dawn and fall asleep in the humid sea air listening to FM Yokohama with a copy of Catcher in the Rye over my face.

I want to show all these things in my exhibition, but the viewpoint may be too varied and dilute my message. So I’m just going to try and take as many photographs as I can over the next three weeks and hopefully end up with about twenty or so that enbody a little bit of the magic that sleeps latent within the dunes.

Today I got five-and-a-half, about 200 shots. A good start.

Time moves on whether you like it or not. Suns rise and set, the days go by and you do your best living. There is progress whether you choose to be conscious of it or not. Perhaps it’s the simple idea of things progressing naturally that’s reassuring. As humans we are inclined to feel a need for control, that we can stop the car whenever we want. But there’s a special peace of mind that comes from the expected, even if it’s out of our control. The plants will grow, the birds will sing, and time will go on, giving us an infinite array of moments to experience, savor, and smile upon.

I have big plans, and sometimes when they don’t go how I envision them it bothers me. But as time goes by things not going as you plan comes to have it’s own appeal. You’d think that as experience grows you would become jaded and accustomed to the world. But it’s not like that. You can be surprised every day of your life if you just give yourself the chance. I’m enjoying it.

People come and go, meeting only for a moment or joining hands for the rest of their lives. And all of them are special, unique, and to be treasured. From the girl you catch a smile from on a crowded train to family member who will be with you until the end. In the world there is so much chaos and unpredictability, but that’s not a challenge, it’s a blessing.

Tickles.