Hana Mochi and Re:Standard
Jan. 1st, 2009 11:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusHana mochi are artificial flowers made of pulpy, glutinous, sweetened rice in pink and white. You make them at New Year. It's a tradition from up in the mountains, where there are no winter flowers. To make the New Year's celebrations festive, people organize workshops in which they press "buds" of sticky rice pulp to bare branches and twigs, making them into floral sprigs and spays.
Our small collective worked recently in a room heated by a wood-burning ceramic stove to make hana mochi, artificial rice flowers. Not only were we making artificial flowers, but we were -- some of us -- artificial Japanese people.
In order to prepare our hearts and minds better for the task of becoming Japanese-of-the-mountains, we pored over copies of Re:Standard magazine while drinking tea during our breaks. The wood crackled in the ceramic stove as we applied ourselves with dedication to our reading.
Re:Standard magazine is published by Little More, an independent Tokyo publisher and gallery. It is a magazine dedicated to the re-assessment of the normal. The first issue carried the cover story "A Life With Thermos Flasks". A Thermos flask is a simple, normal item, but it can suggest something extraordinary; a field trip with friends during which a magical moment arrives, a moment in which -- in the middle of nowhere, perhaps -- one is refreshed by hot tea.
"With your head and your instinct," say the editors of Re:Standard, "you should judge what you really need. The standard things in our daily lives, we would like to translate as futsu -- normal things. This is a magazine in which we think about normal things -- futsu -- and necessary things, neither too old nor to new. These things -- abandoned in the rush for progress -- can become our new standards."
This magazine about the normal and the not-so-new has a special interest in "slow photography" -- old cameras, old film. An analog camera, like a Thermos flask, is an under-appreciated friend, a device you take on a field trip with a small group of friends. With the right philosophy, it becomes a tool for the reassessment of "standard" things encountered on the way -- normal things which have become slightly neglected because of the arrival of new things. With the camera one records, and appreciates, them. And from the Thermos flask one swigs hot tea, admiring the hana mochi.
Our small collective worked recently in a room heated by a wood-burning ceramic stove to make hana mochi, artificial rice flowers. Not only were we making artificial flowers, but we were -- some of us -- artificial Japanese people.
In order to prepare our hearts and minds better for the task of becoming Japanese-of-the-mountains, we pored over copies of Re:Standard magazine while drinking tea during our breaks. The wood crackled in the ceramic stove as we applied ourselves with dedication to our reading.
Re:Standard magazine is published by Little More, an independent Tokyo publisher and gallery. It is a magazine dedicated to the re-assessment of the normal. The first issue carried the cover story "A Life With Thermos Flasks". A Thermos flask is a simple, normal item, but it can suggest something extraordinary; a field trip with friends during which a magical moment arrives, a moment in which -- in the middle of nowhere, perhaps -- one is refreshed by hot tea.
"With your head and your instinct," say the editors of Re:Standard, "you should judge what you really need. The standard things in our daily lives, we would like to translate as futsu -- normal things. This is a magazine in which we think about normal things -- futsu -- and necessary things, neither too old nor to new. These things -- abandoned in the rush for progress -- can become our new standards."
This magazine about the normal and the not-so-new has a special interest in "slow photography" -- old cameras, old film. An analog camera, like a Thermos flask, is an under-appreciated friend, a device you take on a field trip with a small group of friends. With the right philosophy, it becomes a tool for the reassessment of "standard" things encountered on the way -- normal things which have become slightly neglected because of the arrival of new things. With the camera one records, and appreciates, them. And from the Thermos flask one swigs hot tea, admiring the hana mochi.
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That was quick!
Date: 2009-01-01 10:30 pm (UTC)I must admit I've only very casually listened to "Joemus,"
while I was doing my morning ablutions and donning my gayest
weeds and tweeds, but even so it seemed to me both a
beautiful, seductive thing of wonder and another reason why
"sui generis" is my favorite genre. I can't wait to get back
to it!
Having discovered Roxy Music far too late in their career, I
first became aware of this creature called an "Eno" on the
first Genesis album I ever bought, the aforementioned "Lamb
Lies Down on Broadway," still (I say with adolescent nostalgia)
one of my favorite rock albums of the seventies, as big,
labored, dated, and bloated as it is. Look carefully at the liner
notes and you'll find Brian credited with "Enossifications," a
term which bewildered me at the time. If you ever dare go
back to the lp, listen for some synthesis of the sounds in
some of the longer instrumental passages (I think--or is it on
only one track?). Anyway, if it weren't for that mystery I
might never have gone on to explore the greater mystery of Mr.
Eno soon after... whose first album, I might add, sounds to me
like the older bastard half-stepchild's uncle of "Joemus.) I never
saw those Peter Gabriel costumes and videos until recently--
and I found them surprisingly graceful and Mr. Gabriel quite
pretty in his springtime.
I'm looking forward to that Vivian Stanshall restrospectacle
down the page!