all the news that print will fit.
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| notes from underground - societal whispers all the news that print will fit. |
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Tuesday, June 14, 2005 np: drive-by truckers - "carl perkins' cadillac" Hokke Club Hotel, Kyoto - 12:00am (JT) 15th June musical moments are forever etched in my memory like inlaid wood carvings, subtle and emotive in their simplicity. brief times where music became intertwined with the moment i was living: singing petey pablo's "raise up" in filthy mcnasty's in london; listening to the handsome family's "my sister's tiny hands" as i rode the bus to work in london; singing "carl perkins' cadillac" as part of a two-person choir in an exxon parking lot in chapel hill. these moments wash me over. and at least three more now reside with me. see them take me through the day. our major visit yesterday was to the saiho-ji moss garden. a truly gorgeous site leading to the discovery that things like this may and can be tended by man, but they certainly cannot be created by him. upon our entry to the garden, we were made to sit and copy (using ink and brush/nub) a prayer/invocation in japanese characters. it was rather lengthy and some of us (cynthia and i) ended up taking upwards of half an hour to complete it, but as we settled into the task, the idea of how form begins to take on just as much importance as substance came to my mind. did it truly matter that i didn't understand any of the writing i was copying? not if i let the emotions i had speak through the strokes of my brush. truly calligraphy is an art in this language. at the end we wrote a wish, our names and home cities onto the sheets and left them at the shrine. the bus ride back to kyoto station took us through some of the more working class neighborhoods of kyoto and it was at some point on this journey i found myself listening to the drive-by truckers' the dirty south. i figured this album would be a great thing to listen to when thoughts of home were needed, and yet on this bus, with the plaintive guitar parts of "carl perkins' cadillac" in my ears, i could not help but smile intensely. it seemed of the moment so clearly, so perfectly. alabama, north carolina and kyoto forever linked. adam, cynthia, keisha and i returned to our downtown stomping grounds again during the evening and we spent our evening exploring the downtown mall complex and whatever else we found our noses stuck into. at the first bar we entered that evening, selfish cream, our resident bartender (who was the immaculate host - adam refers to him as 'cream slice,' an appropriate play (i assume) on 'home slice,' whose relevency will appear momentarily) showed us his tupac cell phone screen and then played us some tupac, along with, at my behest, nas. he then counted down his five favorite rappers (in order from 5 to 1: dr. dre, nas, snoop dogg, tupac and warren g) which led us to serenade him with an excerpt from that classic of the g-funk era, "regulators." that i would find such a fan of warren g in japan is just a testament to how beautiful and strange this world sometimes is. finally, we returned to ING. our friend hakko (neé-Richards) played us great music (including patti smith and television) and the evening again found us in fine singing form as our table and one full of canadians belted out the chorus of pearl jam's "alive." i'll just leave that there. we met a pair of people, ying and mark, who engaged us in conversation for most of the rest of our late evening. mark is a former minnesotan who has lived in japan for 6 years and ying, a china native, his friend, although adam asserts ying told him that she brings mark out as a bodyguard, not as a date. mark greatly resembles ralph nader in physical appearance. he and i had a rambling conversation about american politics. that's how a lot of my evenings end up it seems. aside from adam accidentally thanking our cab driver for the delicious meal, it was a heroically festive evening. tomorrow (the 15th) is our last night in kyoto and i will miss it greatly, i believe. will pizio, a fellow traveler with my group, is posting some of his digital photos from our adventures. if you would like to check them out, click here. he will be attempting to update them every few days so check often. posted by J. Neas | 6/14/2005 10:58:00 AM
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