autumn tactics

What is it that prompts emotional growth?  For biological things, nutrients and environment are the biggest factors, along with any motivated conditioning.  But what about love, compassion, or social awareness?  If one is loved does one learn love?  If one is shown compassion is it learnable? 

Physical growth is possible largely due to physical factors.  So is emotional growth based on emotional factors?  From my experience it seems like dramatic change prompts growth, however this may only be as the change is memorable, so the events immediately afterwards tend to be catalogued with more scrutiny.  Am I able to love as I do now because of thirty years of slow, accumulated caring?  Could I have realized these things any sooner if I had diverted more resources to the cause?  If that is the case, then we do have direct control over how growth as human beings.  Our free will permits us the opportunity to optimize this equation.  So it is quite true that a man is best judged not by what he has, but how he spends his time.

This is another thing I mean to understand more fully in my heart.  If I did there would be much less guilt in my life, and much more satisfaction.  Thanks to the powers that gave me the conscience to realize this.

The fat bass, the breakdown, some ethereal chorus over a pad that’s been used over and over for the last twenty years. Snap and it picks back up, analysts would say that the predictability of trance is what makes it so soothing to people. Of course we’re going to like what we know. I never accrue a tolerance to its potent formula.

Thirteen years and it grips me all the more. To the crowds, the cheers, the crackling energy spread across a network of hearts desperately yearning for release.

What we all need now is a little planned chaos, what we all need right now is a rave.

Trance will see me through crisis again.

With time comes change, change for all people. Fads fade and bandwagons break, the angst of youth is obviated by personal success. But although my love of rave culture, of trance will change, it will never wilt and die. It will only grow stronger with age, as will my heart. I will always be a raver, singing the praises of peace, love, unity, and respect woven in the tapestry of electronic music until the day I die.

“Above & Beyond isn’t here just to make something out of music, they’re here to motivate and inspire us to make something of ourselves.“

本格的に写真を撮り始めたは2006年です。日本へ移住した四年目、その年色んな区切りとなる時期がありました。愛と出会って恋に落ちた。レイブに行く頻度が上がって、友達の輪が数人だけから広がりました。

なぜ写真を本格的に撮って始まったか。振り返るとコンパクトデジカメの画質に限界もなったし、展示するのことを考え始まった。自分が感じていることは凄く濃くて、経験したことが美しく過ぎて、もう頭がおかしくなると思った。人生からの眩しい誠喜びを誰かとシェアしないといけないと思った。それで、その気持ちを他の人に再現するため、第一歩で芸術的にフィルムの世界に入りました。

Gentenkaiki 12 photos are up.

今はスキャンと整理中の写真はちょっとキャパオーバーしてるから、なかなか仕上がらないけど、原点回帰の写真は恐らく水曜日にアップロードします。

Working through Gentenkaiki film, two rolls of Centuria left to scan… so very tired, and going to be in the darkroom until midnight tomorrow… exhausted much?

Riding on a zephyr, under the full moon, my star is rising.

Some kind of pain, some kind of joy. Look at the heaven and let a bit of yourself go free.

こころがとける。あ~ぁ、参った！かわいい。

Fried does not begin to describe how baked I am. Although I got to Fusamoto station at five ’til eleven, I ended up not catching a train until nearly one. Ultimately it was a comedy of erros. I left my glasses at the cap site and had to trek back all the way from the station to retrieve them. Fortunately, the only thing I lost in the process was a lot of sweat and aoog quart of energy.

I hiked a toatl of four times to get up and down route 297 from Mimata to Fureai, but ti was still a total of four miles up and down the off ramp to the station. I got to meet some nice people in the process, though.

This was the first time I’ve hitched from the side of the road. Previously I’d always started from an interstate parking area which is a lot easier. People have time to size you up on the way into the food court and mull it over for a few minutes before they decide to take you or not. On the side of the road all you have are the five seconds or so from when your thumb becomes visible until they pass you. I didn’t even have a sign saying where I was heading or if I could speak Japanese. Just a big, forced toothy grin doing its best to offset the week of beard and obvious exhaustion on my face.

The first ride I got ws from a middle-aged woman in a BMW M5. She was awefully nice, and not only helped me find the campsite but also drove me up to the driveway. The rides out of the camp site were easier, there was a fairly steady stream of people heading north up 297 towards Ishihara. The second tiem down the road was tougher than the first. My lack of an oversized backpack may have hurt me (I’d left it at the station so I could run). But what that left me was a bandana and a stained undershirt. I was smart enough to take off my sunglasses, eye contact is crucial for this sort of thing.

After running virtually the whoel way back from Mimata, I just made the 1253 train (I only had a window to go home every two hours or so due to the lack of trains in the sticks). Transfers were tight, so I couldn’t get a drink and I’m hurting now from dehydration, but it’s better than waiting another hour to get home. As soon as I get off it’s going to be a huge bottle of water and a cold shower.

なんと力だ？！音力。

You may remember, Indeo, of the first tiem you attened a party; the sights and the sounds, the air moist and thick with pungent odors… how the children sparkled, how touched you were with their openness. So close to so many hearts, the distances between smiles collapsing to an inch, then shooting away, like minnows in a pool.

Different production groups attract different fans, but there still remains a very high degree of familiarity in each circle, people who go to party X generally know the organizers and other fans of party X. And those fans are close-knit similiar groups of people socially. The parties I met Jun-Masa ring of people in are very much the flower side ravers. They are the people that dress in robes and colorful clothes with many affectations around the hair and arms. Today’s Open Air Psychology is more towards the mainstream (if you can really say that) side, but not a complete garu event. the girls all wear jeans or tiny jeanshorts and the boys t-shirts with short-cropped hair. Really everyone is very drunk now; fall down slightly rowdy drunk, which is a different direction that the flower parties. People drink there, but they’re more likely to be feeling good because of something else.

What is it that calls to me, that simmers through my heart? Is it the bass? Or the treble? Or the smiles on young faces and the flare in every eye? Trucks, tents, and incense; grass, rock, and sky. The sweat between cotton fibres and under tousled hair. A light unseen, in a wider spectrum than any machine dreams of. The beat. The anticipation. The flow. Shake and froth, the filter sweeping while it cuts. Dusk melts pastel candied skies, my skin crawls through sound check testing 1..2..3..

Abandon your manmade shells and slide into the twilight– naked, alive as you were first born and radiant as the gods intended.

Welcome the softly loving night.

Does something tribal call inside of you? Not as men and women but as boys and girls and something deeper than that. Like the fire that keeps you transfixed with drunken awe, some sort of primal power sits on your eyelids and jerks at your knees. Colors fall and repeat, noise rattles off of aluminum and quakes through mud. So stop and start relaizing those emotions rooted deep under the topsoil of your soul. This is the time to break free the soft flesh of youth inside of the yesterday you.

Lantern slep fall my heart,
skin splits open and breaks apart.
From inside another you,
moving back to whence it grew.

私は私の中にあります。どうやら一人に居る？
何を探してるを思いつかない。

Cosmos and stars aligned in curves my heart at peace. Would I feel so at peace in another world? Or would the lack of my suffering remvoe meaning from such a soothing balm? The Tao says without the lost there would be no way, so is the altruistic ideal only so gracious because of the voracious world? Is nature clean because the city is dirty? Do lovers love because haters hate? How alone must I feel for another to belong?

So much of beasts make us human.