autumn tactics

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 simmer, the filter sweeping while it cuts. Dusk melts pastel candied skies, my skin crawls through soundcheck testing 1..2..3…

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

Welcome the softly loving night.

So I’m currently riding on the haggard and glum JR Keiyo Line, a mundaneity normally reserved for trips to Disneyland or the Tokyo Game Show (which ironically I’ll be doing again Friday). But today’s adventures extends well beyond Maihama, and even overblown Makuhari. Today I ride to the end of the line, to the fabled Soga, onyl to change lines twice more, following the Sotobo Line to the eastern tup of Chiba and the Pacific Ocean. From there lays the much anticipated private Isumi Tetsudo Line into th eheart of the Boso Peninsula, for a rave in Kachiura. Solstice, a promoter whose events I haven’t had interaction with in at least five years! This is classic raving, back in time to the days when I would set ou into the wilderness alone, with only a hand drawn map and my sense of direction to guide me. I very nearly missed my route, sleeping late dreaming of God knows what half satisfying fantasy. But I kicked me ass in gear, doing dishes, laundry, trash and just enough vacuuming to get my affairs in order. Actually, through partial laziness I’ve had a bag packed since Nature Wind, my complete camping gear set just by the front door.

I caught the exact train all the way across the board, grabbed a mostly meaningless shower, fed and watered the cat, and arrived sweaty and heaving on the Hibiya Subway Line to rearrange my effects. Less that suave but effective. I have all the envergy bars, beer, and film I require in a highly optimized Ferrino hiking pack for adventure. Passing Maihama TATE cries that “Happiness is Overrated” and iodine burns through the scrapes left in the wake of my destruction with Ai.

And speaking of
Little Miss Catherine
I feel swell, oh well
Because losing you
Was something I always…

Sorry, I really lost my head
Oh, I’m so sorry, I really lost my head
Oh, those words you said
-The Airborne Toxic Event

Missing the War

All is quiet, his tired eyes
See figures jotted down
And clothes all strewn around the bedroom floor
Now nothing’s adding up
And nothing’s making sense
She’s sleeping like a baby
She doesn’t know he wasn’t meant for this
I’m missing the war
I’m missing the war, all night
Missing the war
I’m missing the war

So much time so little to say
-Ben Folds

I can hear the blood in my ears.

In the distance, a rooster crows. My flesh is red from the late summer sun. Sweat is lacquer-heavy in my hair. The car smells like my grandmother’s old Cadillac; it’s the smell of early 90s cloth interior and wood trim.

In my mind I can still feel the waves of arresting pitch.

Another escape, another break in the tides.

Without circumstance, November has come to an end. My annual review and company retreat are over, Thanksgiving has passed sans oven-baked bird, and the cold permeates all.

I am awash in media, after finishing last week’s after parties for Natural Smile, Drop, and Fukushi. I have a collection of CDs from new acquaintances DJs Funnel, Slam, and Sugluma. Also, I’m not quite sure how, but French band Air has been really in the back of my mind lately, so yesterday I picked up Pocket Symphony, Talkie Walkie, and a limited edition DVD set of Moon Safari.

Now I am shivering in my home trying to fight my way through the mountains of film from Europe, sipping Asahi and contemplating how much more comfortable reading books in the park would be.

Natural Smile and Drop albums are up, so feel free to take a look if you like. You also may notice that European blog posts are trickling in as well, so check the feed or scroll back to October.

Shatter.

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.