I have some writing from Taico Club, but it’s on scraps of paper right now and I’m still disorganized. However, the photos are up, so please have a look. For some reason the gallery RSS isn’t working right now it seems.
こんにちは！今週末の長野県の「TAICO CLUB」パーティの入場券が買えなかったです買えました。（＾_＾) ず～っと行きたかったけど、結局購入失敗大成功しました。誰かが、入場券一枚が余っているか、いけなくて販売したい方がいたらを持っているなら、是非連絡してください。現地で遊ぼう！
As I mentioned, today is the first day I’ve had off in a long time, and to be honest it’s never been truer that I don’t know how to take it easy. I can’t stand feeling like I’m wasting my body, my time, my life. I’ve watched a couple episodes of Quantum Leap and old E.R., but aside from that I’ve sorted the past months photographs, read some of The Negative, had a healthy fish dinner, and straightened up my desk. I’m too groggy to clean, sick of tv, and I have my console memory cards interred with an acquaintance. I can’t go to bed yet but I can’t waste any more time… reading a book would put me to sleep so I guess I’ll do some more studying with the internet. Fortunately etn is always there to give me a fresh stream of trance to keep my spirits up. There are so many things to do, some many ways to grow, so much to produce. There is a never-ending supply of liquid coal running through my veins, and my body is pulsing craton heated by the fire in my soul. I will not let this life expire unused.
You know the feeling you had as a kid right before something big happened? A special moment of clarity when you woke up from your own world and read the tension in all the grownups’ faces. That weighty realization, like the morning of a major operation or waiting on the front steps for your lost dog to come home.
It’s like I’ve had that feeling for so long that I’d stopped paying attention to it, and kind of forgot that it was even there. But life changes in ways you can never imagine. There are moments when you’re near friends and no one says a thing, but you can feel that it’s going to be all right, really, because it is all right.
Looking out of a minivan window full of dusty, exhausted travellers, the only sound trickling piano raindrops from the radio. Muddy rice fields and mountains flew by with the beat of my heart, all of us part of some great giant dreaming beyond the horizon.
ほこりっぽくて疲れた旅行者でいっぱいのミニバン窓の外を見ながら、唯一の音はラジオのパラパラなピアノだった。心臓の鼓動と一緒に濁った田圃と山を走り回って、僕らは地平線の彼方にいる巨漢の見てる夢の一部。
ばらの花 - くるり
雨降りの朝で今日も会えないや
何となく でも少しほっとして
飲み干したジンジャーエール 気が抜けて
安心な僕らは旅に出ようぜ
思い切り泣いたり笑ったりしようぜ
愛のばら掲げて遠回りしてまた転んで
相づち打つよ君の弱さを探す為に
安心な僕らは旅に出ようぜ
思い切り泣いたり笑ったりしようぜ
僕らお互い弱虫すぎて
踏み込めないまま朝を迎える
暗がりを走る 君が見てるから
でもいない君も僕も
最終バス乗り過ごしてもう君に会えない
あんなに近づいたのに遠くなってゆく
だけどこんなに胸が痛むのは
何の花に例えられましょう
ジンジャーエール買って飲んだ
こんな味だったっけな
ジンジャーエール買って飲んだ
こんな味だったっけな
安心な僕らは旅に出ようぜ
思い切り泣いたり笑ったりしようぜ
There are a number of train stations scattered on the outskirts of central Tokyo, at one time probably unique but now more or less all convenient, well-lit clones of one another. Kawasaki. Omiya. Tachikawa. To the south, to the north, to the west.
This weekend I went to my third Gentenkaiki at Tamagawa Camp Village just inside of Yamanashi near Sagamiko. Recently I was talking about the evolution of raving from a challenge to a pasttime. These days I don’t fend off overly amorous advances from fellow man so much share handshakes and nods on the way in and out. Dancing is less of a tense, grinding shudder and more a coarsing river stalled on the occasional break of rocks when I stop to think about the now I foolishly believe in.
I look for something unique and burn through the cliche’, devouring the unfamiliar in short order, separating custom while at the same time absorbing it. The beats, pauses, breaks, and glides assemble themselves fifteen feet ahead of my soul, an organic glass driveway crystallizing through space. The smiles come easier, I wean myself from the supplements, and fabricate karma just inside my left breast. The highs are longer and sustained, not a personal side effect but an on-ramp springboard into the stream. We manifest the fever in different ways, but unmistakably it boils through every crevice between our teeth.
A few more testaments to the fidelity of Portra and Super Presto are up in Gallery (the feedback loop is shrinking, mhmm, yes…).
This is the road I was born off of and migrated onto with manhood. Never alone, I’m always moving forward, slip like fish in a school on into the blue.
[originally recorded September 23rd, 2007]
It’s an inescapable fact that as one gets older, one mellows. I remember parties when I first started raving, how nervous and high strung I was.
“What happens, next? What should I do now? What are they thinking of me?”
Now it’s been seven years of parties, most of which have been in Japan. A community is closing in on me, and I move through time as a slow escape. The adventurer spirit is dampened when travelling with friends, this is a given. But now instead of wild uncharted experiences, I look inwards for answers and enlightenment.
Last night I had a three stage progression of multi-faceted enlightenment. I saw Asura and fled from her crazed, in a cold sweat. I was cast out of the temple in the midst of an unraveling, and then spent a harsh exile sleeping in the road.
[originally recorded September 22nd, 2007]
In something, I am alone. The fire; the wood; the sound of crackling; the whistles in the music. Alive, dormant. Waiting in a dream for an awakening. Sleeping in a life rocking on my heels, anticipating the sun.
No, not yet morning. No, not a time to open my eyes. Still, a vision, still a phantom, still only one small part of the future that maybe will become.
Burning, beating, shaking in the flames. We all see things that mean something significant in our lives. How odd, to mean nothing, but see something in the most natural and unrelated of events…
[originally recorded September 22, 2007]
In Kawasaki, or in Virginia, everything is the same. Love is love. People are people. My grandmother, or my friend. We are a community. We live together. We work together. We are one.
Ice cream is delicious. Ninjyou is ninjyou. I am all that I am because of the kindness of my friends. Thank you, everyone. You have made me.
expression.
through a lattice of shade
from an autumn sun,
the joyful youth of Tokyo
assembled.
blades of tall grass and smiling faces
sunglasses, blue jeans, and cigarettes
the air is damp with vapor rub incense.
bass ricochets through trees and
rattles in concert with sub-way below.
staring at my thumbnail I realized
the primary difference between
photography and music: time.
I’m sweaty sunk in that celebration–
the weekend a 48 hour drag
on a glorious 4-D joint.
Though I’ve been taking pictures of raves for seven years, I rarely ever post pictures from them. However, last weekend I went to Tenrinsai in Fukushima, and was set on taking a substantial number of photographs. I planned for varying weather conditions (Centuria), as well as extremely low light levels (Super Presto 1600, pushed to 3200). In the end I got through six rolls of film on the A-1 and Macha’s borrowed Holga, with a couple snapshots in between with the PowerShot. There are some very show-worthy shots, though if I can successfully integrate them into a theme is another issue.
I have some reflection to put up along with these, but for now just take a look the pictures, and get a little taste of Japanese country psytrance.
I have over half a dozen unfinished blog posts sitting in the queue, awaiting grammatical edits, lyrics, and photos. The problem is that my WordPress db was axed a last week and now I’m in a disorganized knot.
I think this is okay, because I sense that readership is down anyway… lots of photographs, half-thoughts.
This weekend I’m going to a hippie village in the middle of nowhere for a rave over the three-day holiday. I anticipate much writing, photography, psytrance, experimenting, and live, clucking poultry. If we’re lucky, I’ll muster the concentration and perseverance to get it up here for you to read about.
Things are such a mess right now, I wish I could go to bed and wake up an absolute master of HLSL.
on being
what is techno what is love?
to illuminate or fade, so many choices at instants in our life.
unthought, unspoken, unfelt, but in the pit of our souls a gear is turning.
yes today was x, y, and z.
tomorrow I will do great things and be songworthy
but no… yet no…
now we are faced with a challenge as always:
to burn, or to fold.
tomorrow is uncertain, now the blood of time is within you.
so ignite! so shine!
so give every last drop of your beautiful broken life to the stars,
for only in this instant will they weep for you!
on dancing
pulse until you drop thrive shake and spin
do not listen to the music!
run ahead of it!
you already know the next four beats, this is obvious.
they have telegraphed themselves into your brain,
you need only to complete the sequence.
it is a game of chess encoded in the rhythm of raindrops;
you have no choice honestly except to submit to their will.
Happy Showa day, see you next week.
I could say a lot about raving in Japan, about how it’s still pure, how it still nurtures a lot of the innocence that built the PLUR movement over fifteen years ago. But I have a fever of 102 right now and I’m buried in my own work for society so I can’t go into details. Instead, I’ll let a picture say it better than I could ever describe. This is Yoyogi Park, my liberal, open air backyard, where nearly every Sunday there is a free party set up by someone who just loves spinning and seeing people having a good time.
Young and old, affluent and impoverished, peace, love, unity, and respect are for everyone.
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