I wrote before about Billy Bragg's song Tank Park Salute, which was his way to deal with the death of his father, who he watched die slowly of lung cancer, at a time in England when the medical establishment actively advised not to talk about these things. As a result, Bragg watched his father die, nobody saying anything. It's a moving song and reminds me of my relationship with my father and how I didn't get to know him or talk to him before his death.
Billy Bragg now has a new, related project. He's helping others to talk about their impending deaths. He visited a hospice where women with breast cancer were seeking palliative treatment ("Hospices are not places you go to die; they're places you go to fight"), and by talking with them, eventually encouraged them to write about their lives and coming deaths.
The outcome is a CD containing songs such as "We Laughed", songs penned by Bragg based on the writings of the hospice patients. "We Laughed" is the song of a single mother with breast cancer for her young daughter. It's a positive look back on the past as death approaches ("Death is not about you; it's about the people you leave behind"), encouraging people not to be afraid, to remember and celebrate good times, and to say simple things like "I love you" when you still can. Unlike in Bragg's case with his father, when things were left unspoken, "We Laughed" says what needs to be said, and perhaps encourages people in similar positions to do the same.
It's a brave thing for the patients and Bragg to do, in a project more worthwhile than all the political angling, points-scoring and soundbites that fill our televisions and newspapers, more important than all the shite and ranting that is the background noise of our lives. It's also about what art needs to do. It's an example of the reconnection of the artist and the world.
So how does this relate to me?
Well, I've been an emotional coward lately. I've been closing everyone out, pulling down the shutters and locking the door. I've been all but incommunicado from even my family and close friends. Except for the occasional mumbling about abstract inconsequences on this weblog, I've been saying nothing. Nothing at all.
You can become engulfed with sadness and choose not to live. You can worry about all the bad things that might (or eventually will) happen. You can let your guilt tell you to build walls, as your unconfined presence would just hurt others. If you self-indulge enough, you can even convince yourself the whole world is out to get you.
You can justify your gloom by talking about experiencing premature death and other bad endings. You can make excuses about your soul hardening in the impersonal world of the Japanese company or the transient realm of expatriate friendship. You can explain about your self-imposed expatriate distance from the ones you love at home, and your guilt about not being there for them when they need you. You can find any number of reasons to harden, and all range of people and circumstances to blame. You can blame the sorry state of the world. You can even blame your country of residence.
But in the end it's just cowardice and self-pity, and all you're doing is running ever further away.
How does it relate to me?
It helps me realize it's all a question of attitude. You can choose not to worry about life's problems before they arise.
Happiness and sadness, beginning and ending, love and loss, good and evil, past and future, and birth and death all come as packages. You can't have one without the other. And you can't opt out of both and still live.
Billy Bragg's new project, along with two much closer-to-home happenings not suitable for a public weblog (some of you might say I've already crossed the line with this post), were my little random triggers (for that's all they are, random triggers setting off something ready to happen anyway). Billy Bragg's project just happened to be one of the sounds in my wake-up call.
You'll have to excuse the stench of maudlin around here today folks. It's what comes out when emotionally-retarded peasant stock try to open the jar. It's also the scent of minor breakthrough. It could even, at a stretch, be taken as advice. But it's not meant to be. More than anything, it's an expression of return. Catharsis, as they say. If I was better at describing the important things, you'd be able to bottle the relief.
How does it relate to me?
I did something small but inherently difficult today. I sent an email to my mother and told her I loved her.
I heard this poem again recently after many years so I've decided to share it with you all on this perfect Friday morning here in Tokyo. You can't beat a bit of beauty on a sunny Friday morning.
Adam's Curse
We sat together at one summer's end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, 'A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.'
And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
There's many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied: 'To be born woman is to know--
Although they do not talk of it at school--
That we must labour to be beautiful.'
I said, 'It's certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam's fall but needs much labouring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be
So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks
Precedents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.'
We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time's waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.
I had a thought for no one's but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we'd grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.
Funny the things we assume we know.
The United Kingdom is the shortened form of The United Kingdom of Britain and Northern Ireland. Britain is a political or geographical term meaning England, Scotland and Wales. It does not include Northern Ireland and is not a synonym for the United Kingdom.
How often do we hear the term "the British government"?
Interesting article. Apparently Shintaro Ishihara has been championing Dogs and Demons.
Kerr has good things to say about Koizumi—likening him to the alcoholic who takes the first and biggest step, recognizing the disease.
He also talks about Debito Arudou. His take on Debito is surprising.
via Gen Kanai
Clear skies in Tokyo today after all the rain.
Sometimes I have to work on speeches for important people like ministers or chief justices. Often they request that the speech is ³ÊÄ´¤Î¹â¤¤, which in English translates as something like lofty, haut, high-toned, or sophisticated.
In Japanese, this means using archaic words and phrases that have literary resonance and are reserved for poets or people of importance.
In English, we just don't do this. Anyone making a speech today in the tone of Emerson or Thoreau would rightly be considered pompous at best and stupid at worst. Unwittingly, what the client is asking is this: "We'd like you to make the minister sound like a mincing ponce."
English values simplicity and clarity of message. Why use a rare word when a commonly used one will do? Why use five words when two will do? In English, the style is in the substance. In Japanese, the style is a thing of its own. For sophistication in English, less is more. In Japanese, less is less. The concepts couldn't be more opposite.
Our concept of sophistication in simplicity is their concept of low-brow. Their concept of deliberate high-tone is our concept of needless pompousness.
And the translator gets stuck in the middle.
In the past, I used to do those speeches so that they appeared sophisticated to the client, knowing full well that they'd sound ridiculous to the audience. The client was usually happy enough.
Now I try to explain the difference. Smart clients get it, but many don't.
Either way, when the request comes in for a lofty speech, you know that East and West are going to collide.
Apparently there was a big earthquake last night in Tokyo.
I missed it. I was running in the gym at the time. The fellow on the treadmill next to me was tramping on his machine like a fleeing wildebeest shot up the arse with a pellet gun, and groaning like the star of a porn film for the hard of hearing.
Got up at 5.45 on Sunday morning and headed off into the rain to Hakone to go up Myojingatake and walk the open ridge. Seemed like a stupid idea right up to about 11 o'clock, when the mountain started to kick in.
Best moment was sloshing up through a river of mud, the rain driving down, with Streams of Whiskey by the Pogues live at the Brixton Academy circa 1980 blasting out on the iPod.
Everest: The West Ridge tells the story of Thomas Horbein and Willy Unsoeld's pioneering ascent of Everest by the west ridge route.
Horbein and Unsoeld's accomplishments (first ascent from the west ridge, first traverse of the mountain, highest bivouac) stand alongside Hillary and Norgay's first ascent and Messner's later deeds (first climb without oxygen, first solo ascent, first alpine-style ascent) as among the greatest-ever feats on Everest.
You wouldn't know that from reading the book, because of its light, understated tone. It's so light, you'd think it was the story of two friends who went out for a stroll one Sunday on Mount Takao.
Everest: The West Ridge captures the ideals of a now-tainted American spirit: frontier adventure (where the battle is against yourself and the rewards internal), free, fun-loving spirit, quiet heroism, the idea of the "buddy" (where great but always unspoken loyalty lives naturally with constant surface piss-taking), taking on and surmounting incredible odds, the joy of competition, and most importantly, never taking yourself too seriously in the process. The ability to laugh. Driving ambition coated in a light, casual veneer. (Where did it all go wrong, George? Why does such a basically decent ideal spirit now sound so cliched and laughable? Even sinister?)
When I say this book is light, I don't mean "no lights on upstairs" light, either. This book is the work of smart people who know what they did needs no spin. It's an intelligent, page-turning read. It's smooth, too, finding the right balance between interesting tangent, attention to detail and suspense-filled narrative. Everest: The West Ridge knows where it's going.
As a bonus, for those into mountain photography, the third edition comes with 48 beautiful colour photographs, including as its cover Barry Bishop's famous photo for National Geographic of Hornbein and Unsoeld as two small dots on the immense whiteness of the west ridge. It also has some evocative portraits of the Sherpas and perhaps the ultimate sunset shot, Everest in orange. This is mountain photography at its very best, my friends.
A great book. I read it pretty much in one sitting.
Lounging on the old sofa, the mid-October sun a warm glow through the window behind, a full breakfast prepared and time to spare, Pornography by the Cure low and deep in the background, a smile.
The lamely named Hokkaido Highway Blues contains the ramblings of a large Canadian who hitchhiked the whole length of Japan (not just Hokkaido, boneheads) following the Cherry Blossom Front.
Time-in-Japan snobs beware. This fellow had only been here two years when he decided to squeeze out his Japan book. Sound the alarms. And he couldn't speak or read much Japanese. Cynical cynics will wonder how, then, did he have all the conversations he describes. "Was he making them up, the lying whopper?" they'll inquire.
And let's face it. Resting knowingly and yet so at ease in the long-established tradition of the Japanese "pilgrimage travelogue" (blurb radar bleeping indignantly, like a sheep with every right to be indignant), following in the hallowed footsteps of the Japanese poet-wanderer Basho and British master travel writer Alan Booth (bleeping like a metal detector that's just struck cucumber in Spinal Tap), just isn't enough to make people shell out for your book.
People are much smarter and duller than that.
You can almost hear their whispers: Only two years. No Japanese. And from Canada.
It's an ask.
(Alright, this particular snob thought the same. He only read it because someone said the writer was better than Alan Booth.)
But but but. HHB is a good book. It's well-written. It's funny (blurbs would say irreverent). It's only annoying at times (economically viable blurbs probably wouldn't say that). And it's not afraid to take the piss unmercifully in a land that often needs it. Yes, all the usual sorry expat cliches are trotted out like gaijin teachers at a sportsday. But it also has--wait for it--moments of authentic insight (blurb alert raised to evacuate--the sheep leave town).
I'd no choice, your honour. "Authentic insight" was the right phrase. Exactly the right phrase. It's insight because all-seeing me hadn't thought of it. And it's authentic because it doesn't smell the place out like a stable of reeking horseshit. Like some of the nonsense you hear from the "Japanese are very polite" brigade. The two-year stage can be a rosy-tinted time in a man's expatriatism.
But not for this fellow. "Ferguson reached an early understanding of the enforced freedoms and limitations of the narrow role of the foreigner in Japanese society," an academic might pontificate.
He did. And then wrote a pretty funny book.
Japanese ability or not, some see early. Add hitchhiking, humour, self-deprecation, the occasional cracking of sarcasm's whip, and the innate ability of the storyteller, and you've got yourself a decent, enjoyable book.
Just couldn't help feeling it's been done before, and better. But what does that matter?
Widening the range of bike courses on a rainy long weekend.
The Kanda River runs from the Imperial Palace out through Shinjuku-ku, Nakano-ku and on to Inokashira Park in Kichijoji. Along the way it is joined by the Zempukuji River, which also ends near Kichijoji, in Zempukuji Park.
This allows for a loop course, going up one river and back the other. At times there is very little space beside the Zempukuji, but other than that it's a decent course. For me, cycling 40k in central Tokyo is equivalent to doing 80k in the countryside.
I'm in my local park, a concrete lane along a river bank.
It's night. First I pass the statue-man, the guardian at the gate, sitting upright as ever on the park bench, wrapped up like an Everest adventurer with only his eyes not covered. It's eight o'clock and he's on his bench, asleep for the night, his bicycle beside him.
I pass the cat ladies. They're setting up to feed their babies. There's a loneliness in coming here to feed stray cats. They give the best of food, served from a variety of carefully-packed lunch boxes. They're doing no harm, and cats are, after all, cuter than homeless people.
I pass the youngsters practicing roller-blading. They've set up camp a few benches away. They're well prepared and tentative. It's serious business.
I pass the homeless who sleep in the sheltered area further down. They're a peaceful bunch. One has a ginger cat he keeps on a leash. Many collect second-hand magazines and manga comics to sell outside stations. They get on well. But every morning before Official Local Park-Cleaning Troupe No. 75 Regiment—a bunch of zealous, self-righteous, retired volunteers proud of their cleanliness and diligence—storm in on their serious and important mission, the homeless must vacate their homes.
The homeless ones and the ones that hose down roads.
I pass housewives and their well-dressed miniature dogs, old men doing stretches, others belching, farting, scratching their balls and hocking on the path. The ones who never look where they're going but get indignant when they walk right into you. The ones who stare. The ones who won't move out of the way. There's no surrender in their war. I pass the joggers, the power-walkers, the old and the infirm. The high-pitched students on their mobile phones. I see the boots of autumn.
I see fashions changing with the seasons but always the same scene. Another night in my concrete local park.
I know them but they don't know me.
Just another outsider always passing through.
There but not there.
Sad sarcasm in the land without irony.
