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imomusIn Britain I spent a lot of time in art and design bookshops, flipping through magazines, researching an article I'm writing for AIGA Voice about design as religion and these bookshops as its chapels and temples. But I must say that, although I saw some nice magazines, none of them comes as close to the things of my heart as Japanese magazine Studio Voice, the latest issue of which, the Life in the Woods issue, was waiting for me in a pile of post when I got back to Berlin last night.
Now, you might say that the timing for this issue is not great; the tsunami has made nature seem less like a benign force, less like a good in itself, than it has for a long time. But trees and forests are a perennial symbol of nature's benign side, its healing and restorative properties. A whole issue of a culture magazine about them is welcome, and this issue more than repays its debt to the pulped trees which were needed to make the recycled paper it's printed on.
The issue proposes its themes as 'dialogue with the life of the forest, the will to freedom'. A quick flip-through gives an idea of the cultural reference points ('keywords', as the Japanese put it), even if you don't speak Japanese. Starting at the back, we get an article about 'Self-Build in the Woods'. Studio Voice has long run photos of self-built houses. (In other magazines and books recently it's been architecture features which have most excited me: Jonathan Glancey on the architecture of Antarctica in the Guardian the other day in an article entitled Cold Comfort, and a book about prefab architecture featuring the work of Adam Kalkin.)
Amidst gorgeous photos of woods and forests, lakes and mountains, Studio Voice continues with an article on the philosophers of the woods, Emerson, Thoreau, Muir and Leopold. The Japanese nature-love and Japanese thoroughness continues; there's an article on 'New Aspects of Thoreau', a study of Frank Lloyd Wright's 'Falling Water' house, three pages about James E. Lovelock and Gaia, two on John Cage's 'Thoreau Mix', a piece on the concept of universality in civil disobedience (it seems to be about Martin Luther King and his concept of nature), an article linking Thoreau to the Beat Generation, an article about the Walden House and the Kit-Kit Dizze Houses (more log cabins in the woods), an article about Rachel Carson's book 'Silent Spring' (appearing in 1962, it's a piece of radical environmentalism which attacks the unsustainable practices of agribusiness), then an article about nature as it appears in children's books, 'The Genealogy of Nature Writing'.
Next it's 'Eliot Porter and Nature Photography', a piece about parks and shrines as 'forests in the city', a lovely piece about 'Thinking in the Woods' (forest cabins as places in which to 'get your head together', write poetry, etc), a nature book guide, a nature CD guide, then Studio Voice's regular round-up of fashion, art, film and music. Plus a special portfolio by Christine Rebet, the French artist whose Robin Hood show last year inspired the song of the same name on my forthcoming album. Robin Hood, a man for whom the forest is a symbol of justice, a corrective to the inequalities and evils of the city.
Many western style mags leave me cold with their brash, nasty, silly and selfish consumerism. Literary reviews recently have been all about the awfulness of the Bush regime or the Iraq war. More specialised magazines about visual culture and taste alienate me with snobby intellectualism which seems, ultimately, to be a matter of class distinction rather than a real interest in the subjects discussed (even favourites like The Wire and Frieze seemed a bit tedious this month). But Studio Voice just confirmed, once again, why it's my favourite magazine. I admire the thoroughness and research that goes into its theme issues, but above all I admire its love and positivity. In a humane and intelligent way, the magazine is showing a way forward, campaigning for values which are both ethical and aesthetic. There's a tender-minded utopianism here which is also a style, a way of being.
That phrase 'a way of being' was knocking around in my head the last couple of days in London as I tried to analyse why the city grates on me so much these days. I decided that it's London's 'way of being' which disturbs me, its 'habitus', its soul. London drags me down to a dark place of the soul; its way of being seems to me to be fundamentally wrong. Back in Berlin the air is fresher, people are quieter, slower and more serious, the buildings are more solid and the forest doesn't feel far away. Next week (and for the next two months) I'll be in Japan, a land of mountains, forests, cities and sea. Although many of this month's articles are about the forest in American culture, Studio Voice reminds me of how important the forest is to the Japanese too. Even for city-dwellers, the forest can be an important template, a part of our soul, our sensibility, our habitus. Perhaps all London needs is a corrective forest. Perhaps only forest – forest planted through all its streets, thick cone-thudding, car-banishing forest – could save the place.
Now, you might say that the timing for this issue is not great; the tsunami has made nature seem less like a benign force, less like a good in itself, than it has for a long time. But trees and forests are a perennial symbol of nature's benign side, its healing and restorative properties. A whole issue of a culture magazine about them is welcome, and this issue more than repays its debt to the pulped trees which were needed to make the recycled paper it's printed on.
The issue proposes its themes as 'dialogue with the life of the forest, the will to freedom'. A quick flip-through gives an idea of the cultural reference points ('keywords', as the Japanese put it), even if you don't speak Japanese. Starting at the back, we get an article about 'Self-Build in the Woods'. Studio Voice has long run photos of self-built houses. (In other magazines and books recently it's been architecture features which have most excited me: Jonathan Glancey on the architecture of Antarctica in the Guardian the other day in an article entitled Cold Comfort, and a book about prefab architecture featuring the work of Adam Kalkin.)
Amidst gorgeous photos of woods and forests, lakes and mountains, Studio Voice continues with an article on the philosophers of the woods, Emerson, Thoreau, Muir and Leopold. The Japanese nature-love and Japanese thoroughness continues; there's an article on 'New Aspects of Thoreau', a study of Frank Lloyd Wright's 'Falling Water' house, three pages about James E. Lovelock and Gaia, two on John Cage's 'Thoreau Mix', a piece on the concept of universality in civil disobedience (it seems to be about Martin Luther King and his concept of nature), an article linking Thoreau to the Beat Generation, an article about the Walden House and the Kit-Kit Dizze Houses (more log cabins in the woods), an article about Rachel Carson's book 'Silent Spring' (appearing in 1962, it's a piece of radical environmentalism which attacks the unsustainable practices of agribusiness), then an article about nature as it appears in children's books, 'The Genealogy of Nature Writing'.
Next it's 'Eliot Porter and Nature Photography', a piece about parks and shrines as 'forests in the city', a lovely piece about 'Thinking in the Woods' (forest cabins as places in which to 'get your head together', write poetry, etc), a nature book guide, a nature CD guide, then Studio Voice's regular round-up of fashion, art, film and music. Plus a special portfolio by Christine Rebet, the French artist whose Robin Hood show last year inspired the song of the same name on my forthcoming album. Robin Hood, a man for whom the forest is a symbol of justice, a corrective to the inequalities and evils of the city.
Many western style mags leave me cold with their brash, nasty, silly and selfish consumerism. Literary reviews recently have been all about the awfulness of the Bush regime or the Iraq war. More specialised magazines about visual culture and taste alienate me with snobby intellectualism which seems, ultimately, to be a matter of class distinction rather than a real interest in the subjects discussed (even favourites like The Wire and Frieze seemed a bit tedious this month). But Studio Voice just confirmed, once again, why it's my favourite magazine. I admire the thoroughness and research that goes into its theme issues, but above all I admire its love and positivity. In a humane and intelligent way, the magazine is showing a way forward, campaigning for values which are both ethical and aesthetic. There's a tender-minded utopianism here which is also a style, a way of being.
That phrase 'a way of being' was knocking around in my head the last couple of days in London as I tried to analyse why the city grates on me so much these days. I decided that it's London's 'way of being' which disturbs me, its 'habitus', its soul. London drags me down to a dark place of the soul; its way of being seems to me to be fundamentally wrong. Back in Berlin the air is fresher, people are quieter, slower and more serious, the buildings are more solid and the forest doesn't feel far away. Next week (and for the next two months) I'll be in Japan, a land of mountains, forests, cities and sea. Although many of this month's articles are about the forest in American culture, Studio Voice reminds me of how important the forest is to the Japanese too. Even for city-dwellers, the forest can be an important template, a part of our soul, our sensibility, our habitus. Perhaps all London needs is a corrective forest. Perhaps only forest – forest planted through all its streets, thick cone-thudding, car-banishing forest – could save the place.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-05 10:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-05 10:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-05 11:21 am (UTC)If we have a corrective forest in London, it would have to be Hampstead Heath, especially particular areas when night approaches...
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-05 11:43 am (UTC)Woodwork
Date: 2005-01-05 01:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-05 01:25 pm (UTC)Never having been to Japan, I can't judge how close the author is to the mark, but I found it to be a fascinating read.
Re: Woodwork
Date: 2005-01-05 01:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-05 02:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-05 02:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-05 03:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-05 03:42 pm (UTC)to Japan for the first time for an exhibition of my artwork. Studio Voice did
an interview with me and wrote what was probably the most thoughtful and insightful article ever written about my work.
Anyway I pretty much agree with almost
everything Momus has to say about Japan. I know my
experiences there changed my life forever.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-05 03:56 pm (UTC)Consider the lilies
Date: 2005-01-05 04:18 pm (UTC)That's why I personally found Japan so sterile - no wilderness, exactly. I grew up in the countryside. I actually do love nature. However bad I might feel about things, if I take a walk where trees and foliage are pretty much left to their own devices, it always makes me feel better.
In the twenty eight months I spent in Japan, I never found anywhere relaxing to walk in quite the same way (incidentally, the Japanese people around me could never understand my wish to simply 'go for a walk' without some purpose such as shopping). I always felt like the proverbial rat in a cage.
I did wonder if - as Alex Kerr seems to believe - love of nature was there before, but I suspect that it wasn't to any significant degree. I remember a Japanese friend telling me about the famous Zen figure Ikkyu, who was a master of the tea ceremony. One day, apparently, Ikkyu invited the local daimyo, or some similar dignitary, to come to his tea-shack to see the lilies that were now freshly in bloom. The daimyo came, and there was not a single lily in sight. He wondered what was happening. Anyway, Ikkyu invited him into the hut, he sat down, and then he saw, in the scroll alcove, in a vase, was a single lily. Ikkyu had cut up all the lilies and thrown them away except for this one. There the story ended. It's supposed to be like a koan or something, and we're supposed admire the esoteric aestheticism of it, and ponder on Ikkyu's meaning. Personally, my first reaction, if I'm to be quite honest, was disgust at the desecration that was involved for the sake of making some etiolated aesthetic statement.
On the other hand, I do see love of nature in some of the literature, and some of the customs. This is usually tied up with events that mark the passing of the seasons - the cherry blossoms and the red leaves of autumn. These never seem to become cliches for the Japanese, but I often felt that most people were unable to see nature outside of the customary poetic images that have been handed down for centuries. So when I say literature and customs, these two things are actually tied together - picnic under the cherry blossoms and write a haiku about them as you do. Perhaps that is one way in which 'love of nature' has become a mere formalised profession of love.
I started this post, and now I find it's all very complicated. I won't write a book on the subject right here and now though.
Re: Consider the lilies
Date: 2005-01-05 04:57 pm (UTC)Re: Consider the lilies
Date: 2005-01-05 06:04 pm (UTC)Re: Consider the lilies
Date: 2005-01-05 07:17 pm (UTC)Anyway, let me finish with an excerpt from a piece of zuihitsu by one of my favourite authors, Nagai Kafu:
Head for alleys, walk on side streets. I clop clop in low geta to back streets where I always find shrines to malicious gods. These shrines have never been under governmental aegis. It's fine that with the connivance of some local officials these shrines have been let be; often local administrations clear them away.
Nevertheless, Tokyo has an uncountable number of these shrines. I like them. They add charm to back streets. They far surpass bronze statues in aesthetic value. Even now votive tablets or towels always hang from the small shrines or weather-beaten stone images of Jizo next to the bridge over the moat in Honjo-Fukagawa, or at the bottom of the steep slope of Azabu-Shiba, or between the warehouses of bustling quarters, or on corners in templed back streets. Sometimes there are sticks of incense.
I got this translation from The East (http://www.theeast.co.jp/) magazine. I think the translator is Kawabata Hideko.
Re: Consider the lilies
Date: 2005-01-05 08:27 pm (UTC)Kafu Nagai looks like a Japanese Pessoa.
erik
the netherlands
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-05 08:36 pm (UTC)Let's hope that Japan does have some love of Nature: the ecological footprint (http://www.gdrc.org/uem/tokyo-fprint.html) of Tokyo alone is estimated to be approximately 3.6 times as large as Japan's habitable land area.
Re: Consider the lilies
Date: 2005-01-05 08:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-05 08:41 pm (UTC)All those statistics and methodologies, and their biggest desire is to shock? A firework down my neck when I'm not looking would work just as well, and save wear and tear on the calculator.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-05 08:56 pm (UTC)My travel experience in Hokkaido (perhaps 3 weeks total over two trips) showed it to be just as groomed as other places I've seen, but with more open spaces and wider roads. What's lacking there for me is the long history and multiple layers of culture found in other parts of Japan. Hakodate is probably the most interesting place, from this latter point of view.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-05 09:02 pm (UTC)Rather a far stretch.
I suspect you might be able to find gainful employment as a PR man for the Ministry of Public Works.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-05 09:11 pm (UTC)Shock tactics seem to be needed in some quarters.
But the larger point is, Japan is not an isolated self-sufficient entity and its existence relies on a vast and continuous stream of imported natural resources from other places. 'Ecological footprint' seems a helpful concept in fostering consideration of the inter-connectedness of economies, nations, human socities in different places.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-05 09:27 pm (UTC)tree planting project (http://www.circularsystem.com/trees/).
BTW a prominant university in Kyoto originally planned to sponsor an event relatet to this project. They abruptly dropped the promised sponsership with no explanation, but the inside information was that they became worried when they noticed Joseph Beuys cited as an inspiration.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-05 09:37 pm (UTC)Sounds like a political act. Is their city council anti-Green/SDP?