ready for the new year

Fixed my lantern.  I am clean and ready for the new year.  I may even paint with silver tonight.

Get Ready for the New Year

I have a theory that Japanese New Year food tastes much better if you have to suffer to get it, like wine that is better if you pay more for it.  Why else would they stand in 4 hour department store lines or face the crowds I faced yesterday just to get food that could easily be gotten by waiting at home for it to be delivered, or gotten from the local grocery.

Stolen sweets are not sweeter, suffered for is better in Tokyo.

Christmas/New Year break

Hard to transition, to switch from teaching thinking to painting non thinking.  these days I do it by making something, to relax..  This time I have made some single bottom getta for my eldest.  Seems to be working out.  She wants them painted black, so it will take a little more time.

A rabbit roll

Rabbits for the new year.  I have had some postcard pressure.  But this weekend I managed to cut a stone I like.  The cylinder prints are fun to make and fun to print, just roll them out.  And they are different depending upon where the roller starts on the paper.  I made a roller a couple years ago that was capable of telling 7 different stories.

pretty much down

The White Bath Sento of Yanaka if pretty much down.  It was a beautiful all wood building and a great bath. I wonder what will go up in its stead?  Is Yanaka betting better or worse?

getting better

I am in more demand that I thought.  Someone stole the painting right off my undon in front of my studio this week.  Either I am betting better, or my audience is getting drunker - I notice the thief did not do a very good job, and left the edges of the painting behind.

Monday Rabbit

We had an accident with our rabbits last week.

I was in the bath.  Shouting and screaming could be heard from the outside, calls for me to come.  to come quick.  Bit trouble with the rabbits.  being naked and in the bath I declined.

Sometimes it is better to not get involved.  Children and wives are far more capable than they may at first imagine.  It is good to let them find it.

The rabbits, one boy, Madara, and one girl, Daifuku, Dyfuku the result of an accident between our former rabbits, Piyunta (male) and Ell (female), Madara a Monday rabbit escaped from Ueno Zoo.

That Madara was a Monday rabbit is only my guess, but not without reason.  Monday Ueno Zoo is closed, so it is the day that they throw a couple of the adolescent rabbits that have outgrown the petting zoo into the cage with the Tigers.  tigers it seems get lethargic on a constant diet of dead meat and enjoy the sport of a Monday rabbit or two.

Madara was capture dazed and lonely on a Tuesday morning, by the police, just outside Ueno zoo.  They brought him to me as they knew I kept rabbits.  We found out later that he is a natural escaper, always finds or makes his way out.  All this leads me to the suspicion that he was a Monday rabbit.  For the bars and cage made for tigers keeps them well in.  But it is no match for a escaper rabbit, especial with the extra motivation of being chase by tigers.

But this is all very far from my Sunday night, quiet in the bath, loud in the garden emergency.

Bad M+M

I slept on an M+M again last night. 

The M+M, cleanest member of the chocolate family, designed for the US Defense Department for just that reason, to be shipped overseas during the Big One to melt in our boys' mouths and not in their hands, but a full night of the heat and pressure of being under me is of course too much even for the mighty M+M.  It finally gave way to the nature of its inner self and looks for all the world like a bullet hole when one wakes up in the morning having slept upon it, usually in the upper body or thorax region.

In the early morning confusion of just having woke from sleep, and perhaps a dream, to go to the toilet and find a bullet hole still sticky in one's mid section can cause quite a stir, I mean if you give way to the natural urge to scream in panic, "My god I’ve been shot!"

This kind of early morning outburst is good for no one - not the person clutching their side howling for emergency assistance, running in and out of other people's bedrooms, nor the family rudely woken from their own Sunday morning sleep by what seems to be a bullet shot man.

And that this was not the first time I have been tricked by an M+M.  You might think I would ready for the tricks of a melty M+M.  But no one is ready for such a thing at 5:30 in the morning.

So beware, for all the good it will do you.

Thanksgiving

Japan and America are very far away from each other, and with things like grammar and general thinking we seem to be backwards from each other, But both in November give thanksgiving.  Americans give thanks in a wider thanks for what is in front of me sort of a way.  In  Japan we give thanks for our children.  3-5-7, Three year old and seven year old girls, five year old boys - Thanks that they are alive and growing.

I went to my friend's shichi-go-san today.  It was a delight and a memory of my own kids at that age.

at the local jinga.

Another Sento Gone

I saw this sign posted next to the door of my favorite public bath - HatsunenoYu, the White Bath of Yanaka.

It says that the sento will be closed November 21st.

Public baths have been closing in Tokyo at the rate of 100 a year for 10 years now.  If the 7 withing walking distance of my studio 5 have closed since I came to Japan.

OK, for Americans it is probably an unbelievable pain in the ass to go out of the house, and walk 10 minutes down the road to take a bath.  America has been so rich for so long people pretty much forgot what communal feels like.  The culture was dieing out in most of Tokyo before I arrived, pack up your kit and walk down the street, meet your neighbors in the bath.  Kids playing, making noise, having fun with their friends, time for a little talk with neighbors, if you were feeling rich a bottle of soda, or juice, or even a beer when you were done.  Then back out in the rain, or cold, or like tonight - a beautiful new moon in a clear autumn sky, and walk home and go to bed.

There is a difference between luxury and convenience.  A unit bath in your own little cement shell apartment is convent .  A big old public bath steamy hot, a painted Fuji on the back wall, with neighbors, kids, enemies and friends is a great luxury that soon people will only be able to read about, those that still have the inclination to read.

This is the old sento closest to my old house, now turned into an art gallery.  I wonder what will happen to HatsunenoYu.

Painting again

My show is over, and it is good to be able to take down the walls and start to paint again.  While the exhibition was still going on I found myself thinking of some very thick and absorbent washi I had deep in my closest.

Today I started a tiny self portrait on the thick rough paper.  This is a cell phone photo of part of it along with a photo of the studio getting back into working shape.

John le Carre

I pre-ordered his new one and it came this week by mail.  I have only gotten to page 6 but I have to say so far it is OK..

From page 2:

...his rhetoric had alarmed him.  Would Orwell have believed it possible that the same overfed voices which had haunted him in the 1930's, the same crippling incompetence, addiction to foreign wars and assumptions of entitlement, were happily in place in 2009?

If there is anything le Carre goes after better than the Brits, it is the Americans.  But as I said, I am only on page 6 so far.

Why?

 After the exhibition a person is tempted to ask, "why?"  Why go through the economic, emotional, and physical expense of the thing?

Economic is easier.  Sales were sufficient to pay the nut, so OK.  And a big thanks to kind and friendly souls with the great good taste to purchase one of my masterpieces.

The other questions are harder to answer.

Though I do believe an artist should show, except for the outsiders that can not bring themselves to do it.  Show and tell is an old tradition.

The best received of my works were the nearly thrown away head that Sachi tied the  Art group cloth around and directed me to stick to my street sign and the way my favorite painting turned.

I am not sure it was even important to many visitors that the image was workable in any direction they turned it.  I just think they enjoyed turning, having something to do, being a physical part of things.

If I can get up the strength to continue this 20 year old habit of October exhibitions next year I will certainly try to have another doll or puppet head in the street to terrify passing children and something for the adults to turn, poke, twist or otherwise push around.

Thanks to all.

Last day

the back of the book of hours

It has been 2 weekends and the week between them.  I was lucky to have many friends old and new visit.  Tomorrow will be the end of it.

I made a video late last night before I went home.  youtube of the show

Exhibition on the wall and street

There are surprises and levels to an exhibition that were not planed.  For the people passing by, especially the children, this head I stuck on my sign at the last minute is most popular, in the case of the younger ones, horrifying.  I had to hang the cloth to mark the exhibition as part of the Geikoten art festival, the head, one of a hundred ideas gone bad, was fished out of my garbage by my wife and tied appropriately

New Work

The Book of Hours 2010

These new paintings are hard to explain.  They have no top, or rather they have many.
Most are views inside my favorite bar.  In that place everyone has their own point of view.
Each painting has writing to go with it, each part with a different way up.
These pieces are meant to be folded into a sort of a book.  But displayed on a frame that makes them resemble a kite.

"Buildings don't make books."

It is one of my favorite quotes, from a former president of Misuzu Books.  One of the secretaries had complained about the old building they were all working in.  It was his answer.

Sitting in my dirty broken down studio with some visitors last spring I was a little taken back looking around, wondering  what they must have thought of the place.  I have had a remarkable string of famous people and millionaires lately - the paper on the fusuma was all broken, the tatami is from the early Showa era, rubbed clean through in places.

They can not know how important is my squalor - if I had nice clean tatami I would spend half my energy not spilling ink on it.  If the fusuma were new I wouldn't pin works in progress to it for drying.

It is not a showroom, but a working studio.

spreading ink

The first thing I do is grind my ink.  The second is to mix different gradations of ink for painting. 

It is a little depressing to find that the random patterns in the paint dishes when mixing are often more beautiful than my paintings.  The same thing used to happen when oil painting, the pallet, or a scraped away canvas looking better than a finished painting. 

The same thing happens to stock traders I am told, beaten by the market itself or a monkey with a dart board.

Money, art, culture, it is hard to beat the random.

But still we try.

Still Hot Summer

Tokyo has had a run of hot sunny days.  Ambulances are running  the overheated to local hospitals in a constant stream.

It is about now that one feels that summer will never leave, high 90s for the rest of time.  But riding my bike through Ueno park I could hear the samba band practicing, and could see the new mikoshi well on their way. 

The Tokyo Fine Arts University festival is nearly here, which means that Autumn is nearly here as well.  Geisai will be September 3, 4, and 5 this year.

last night in Ueno Park

New Paintings

John  Irving says that before he begins a story he already has written down the last line.  Before he starts he know the ending.  It may be true, but I know that between his first line and his last his book will take him places he never expected.

If you want me to paint you a horse, I will paint you a horse, or an apple, or a sunflower, or a naked man.  But when I am  really working, I can no more control my paintings than I can control my dreams.

My new series of paintings comes as a complete surprise.  I am not sure what they mean, and to tell you the truth, I am not even certain which way is up.

point of view at a gaijin bar

3 sting banjo

New banjo is done, 3 strings and a drone.  Hoping for that high lonesome sound, but as I used a little samba drum for the pot,  it has that high pop of a samba drum, more of a surprise to me than I suppose it should have been.  Fun to play though.  Took it for its test run to the pub last night.  Mike had his old time banjolin and sang a couple old time folk blues songs.  Real fun. 

Now back to the studio and to paint this time.  Banjos production will rest for a while

Kyoko Nakajima

It is a very happy thing to have a friend recognized for her hard work and creativity.  Kyoko-san has been writing such beautiful stories.  Now that she has won the Naoki Award her books are right out front!

Empty Nest Syndrome

Maybe that is why I keep starting banjos -  My work table freshly empty calls out for another banjo to begin. Actually I have an idea about trying to get that high lonesome sound that Bill Monrow spoke about, the two string chords of the mountain fiddle player, with a little 3 stringed banjo.

Rooting about in my studio for a piece of wood for the neck I came upon a wonderful old thing from a neighbor's house.  It was that part of the house that Japanese call a, "nageshi."  It is a heavy strip of  wood that runs all around a traditional Japanese  room, about top of the head height along the top half of the wall beams.  I do not know the original purpose, but the locals use it for hanging things, everything from art, to certificates from the emperor, to shirts on hangers you intend to wear the next day.  The room my neighbor was renovating was built some time in the Meiji Era.  That tree was cut down over 100 years ago, cut and ripped and worked all by hand out of Japanese wood.  More effort went into that nageshi than digging and cutting a diamond.  I could not see the wood thrown away, so it waited in my studio for this banjo call.  It is a kind of softwood, unusual for an instrument neck, but hard, straight grained and strong.  I had to fill some nail holes, as it is originally attached, nailed into the beams through a "V" shaped carpenter's cuts in the back.

It is part of the fun, wondering how it will sound, or if it will even work.

R2D2

The good news is that the sheet metal is on the banjo and stopped cutting my fingers.  The bad news is that the resonator sound it makes got me way too interested in blues and the slide sound.  I am seriously thinking of  making the rounds of the recycle shops and buying a 50 dollar Japanese guitar like Hound Dog Tailor had.

One things does lead to another in this world.

an inturption

Last night walking through Ueno Park I heard sounds.  It is my usual course, from my studio at the end of a good day, to the pub on a Saturday night.  Last night my way was blocked by a  parade, rolling right down the main wide Ueno Hiokoji.

The group I saw first Japanese ladies, 50 of them in the same colored  yukatas, dancing a summer festival dance, with a big loud speaker pulled out in front of them and a scratchy record playing a traditional Japanese song.  Next came the samba, drums and whistles and some very genki dancers on one of the hottest nights of the year.

Libby's Ride

I was just looking at Libby's travel Blog, her and friend in a wagon traversing America.  Downsizing.  Real nice.  Up from the Southwest and back to the land where the Conestoga began.

http://www.whittleddown.com/2010/07/grand-tour.html

sharp metal

I hate working with sheet metal.  I can't go 2 minutes without cutting my finger, foot, leg, or arm.   I don't know how my late friend Shoki did it, putting up sheet copper roofing every day.  But as I remember he turned up at the pub with new bandages on his hands most every day.  I hate sheet metal, but this dobro banjo just can't go any other way.  I tired strips of teak on the front and it looked like someones patio. 

sheet stainless

Stay tuned

back streets

I went down the big wide Meiji Dori to get food for the rabbits. 

On the way home I went a stray, little streets I had no idea were there.  Animal trails that turned into roads not long after Edo.  People that live, tiny family factories, shopping streets, all fading, in the back shadow of these big new apartment buildings.  Different people, a society hidden from the new main stream, as they are not on the way to the station or the grocery store.   Apartment house ghosts have no idea that people live behind them.  (Don't tell them)

I found this drunken dancing dog on a shutter of a pet shop sinking now into time.

New Banjo

I am making another banjo.

Years ago my wife asked my mother, “How many banjos does a person need?” It was a good question. My answer continues to be, “One more.”

Each one is different. One long with a shamisen neck, one short made with a tambourine, for putting in my bag, one with a dobro resonator, making a blues sort of a sound.

This new one is altogether different.

Japanese father

It is essential for a father in Japan to have pets to feed in the morning, especially a father of teenagers. The rabbits wait expectantly, the birds begin to sing, even the goldfish rise up in their tank when they feel my steps through the earth.