The pleasures of being foreign
Jan. 15th, 2005 12:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusLater today I'm having lunch with Steve Trautlein, the editor of Metropolis magazine (the Tokyo English-language listings mag, not the American design mag of the same name). I owe Steve a huge amount, because he recently lent me his copy of 'Vertigo' by W.G. Sebald, and it's a terrific novel. Sebald is, I suspect, going to become a favourite writer; it's been a quite while since there was anyone whose books I wanted to read one by one, slowly, taking the time to savour every line, every situation, every page.
Perhaps the last author I felt this about was Franz Kafka, so it's appropriate that the article I recently wrote for Metropolis, Staying Foreign, starts with a quote from Kafka:
'SOMEWHERE IN HIS DIARY, Franz Kafka offers a cryptic thought. Happiness, he says, consists in having a goal, but not advancing towards it. As a “failed” pop star who finds failure increasingly interesting — perhaps even a blessing in disguise — I'm more convinced of that every day... This might seem like a strangely negative philosophy for someone who's lived in as many different places as I have; my trajectory from London to Paris to New York to Tokyo to Berlin seems, after all, to have been motivated by some utopian quest to find a place where people “think like me,” where “life is as it ought to be,” where I can find what Goethe called “elective affinities.”
Of all the places I've lived, Japan is where I feel those affinities most strongly. To list all the reasons why, I'd have to write a book. But I think one reason my relationship with Japan has been so good, and will last so long, is that I don't expect to belong, I don't expect to integrate, I don't expect to merge with the beloved. We will hold each other at a distance, and that will be fine.'
Continue reading Staying Foreign...
Re-reading that article today, I see it touching quite succinctly on a theme that's central to my life and my work these days: the paradox of feeling at home with not feeling at home. The spooky, the uncanny, ostranenie, the verfremdungseffekt, disorienteering... the Germans call the uncanny unheimlich, unhomely. The paradox is that the unhomely can become a home from home, and that one's home can become unhomely, unheimlich, too. I noted in a recent audio blog from my hometown of Edinburgh that the whole city seems to have become one enormous ghost tour, to have decided to market itself as 'spooky' for the tourists. How weird that one's home town should pride itself on being unheimlich! Perhaps, though, I'm a typical native son of Edinburgh, no matter how far I am from it. Because I too have become an ambassador of the comfortably uncomfortable, the pleasantly deranged. I have become a sort of Pied Piper of the spooky, a reliably unreliable narrator of the uncanny. Not only is my forthcoming album a tour de force of spooky disorienteering, the Hokkaido project I'm about to start, Lost Radio, Found Sound, was pitched, cannily, as a sort of guided tour of lostness, a ramble in the uncanny. There's a danger that this paradox will become as trite as the 'lonely crowd of outsider cowboys' paradox I dissect on 'Robocowboys', but for the moment, clutching my Cage and Black Dice records and preaching Japanese language unlearning in English language Japanese magazines, I'm quite happy in my 'unhappiness'. I've learned to be at home with the unhomely.
Perhaps the last author I felt this about was Franz Kafka, so it's appropriate that the article I recently wrote for Metropolis, Staying Foreign, starts with a quote from Kafka:
'SOMEWHERE IN HIS DIARY, Franz Kafka offers a cryptic thought. Happiness, he says, consists in having a goal, but not advancing towards it. As a “failed” pop star who finds failure increasingly interesting — perhaps even a blessing in disguise — I'm more convinced of that every day... This might seem like a strangely negative philosophy for someone who's lived in as many different places as I have; my trajectory from London to Paris to New York to Tokyo to Berlin seems, after all, to have been motivated by some utopian quest to find a place where people “think like me,” where “life is as it ought to be,” where I can find what Goethe called “elective affinities.”
Of all the places I've lived, Japan is where I feel those affinities most strongly. To list all the reasons why, I'd have to write a book. But I think one reason my relationship with Japan has been so good, and will last so long, is that I don't expect to belong, I don't expect to integrate, I don't expect to merge with the beloved. We will hold each other at a distance, and that will be fine.'
Continue reading Staying Foreign...
Re-reading that article today, I see it touching quite succinctly on a theme that's central to my life and my work these days: the paradox of feeling at home with not feeling at home. The spooky, the uncanny, ostranenie, the verfremdungseffekt, disorienteering... the Germans call the uncanny unheimlich, unhomely. The paradox is that the unhomely can become a home from home, and that one's home can become unhomely, unheimlich, too. I noted in a recent audio blog from my hometown of Edinburgh that the whole city seems to have become one enormous ghost tour, to have decided to market itself as 'spooky' for the tourists. How weird that one's home town should pride itself on being unheimlich! Perhaps, though, I'm a typical native son of Edinburgh, no matter how far I am from it. Because I too have become an ambassador of the comfortably uncomfortable, the pleasantly deranged. I have become a sort of Pied Piper of the spooky, a reliably unreliable narrator of the uncanny. Not only is my forthcoming album a tour de force of spooky disorienteering, the Hokkaido project I'm about to start, Lost Radio, Found Sound, was pitched, cannily, as a sort of guided tour of lostness, a ramble in the uncanny. There's a danger that this paradox will become as trite as the 'lonely crowd of outsider cowboys' paradox I dissect on 'Robocowboys', but for the moment, clutching my Cage and Black Dice records and preaching Japanese language unlearning in English language Japanese magazines, I'm quite happy in my 'unhappiness'. I've learned to be at home with the unhomely.
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Can I just say
Date: 2005-01-14 01:54 am (UTC)Also, I have read widely in my life but never as much as you or my friend moggy http://www.livejournal.com/users/_moggy_/ and I so applaud that considering I studied lit at uni. And sorry that I didn't ask permission to add you as a friend. We met a long time ago though - I used to go out with your almost namesake Nick Currey who was in David Devant, and Mikey, the lead singer of David Devant, who did stuff with Jyoti Mishra, which is how I met you. I think it was at Dingwalls. I also think you hated me cos I worked at NME at the time.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-14 03:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-14 05:34 am (UTC)while in tokyo
Date: 2005-01-14 07:29 am (UTC)Chris_B
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-14 10:12 am (UTC)Apparently the people who organise tours of Edinburgh castle were told by visitors that it wasn't ghostly or gory enough, hence the shift towards comedy ghost type stuff.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-14 10:21 am (UTC)I've been confined to bed with flu for the last few days and watching the first part of (all 925 mins) of Edgar Reitz's Heimat (http://www.heimat-fanpage.de/h1/fotoalbum/fotoalbum.htm). There's the nostalgic content of the film in all its many expressions and then there's the nostalgia of the viewer remembering what he was doing in 1984 or so when he first saw it on television. My mother rang last night to say that she'd found a buyer for the family house. This place, in which I spent all those years of teenage miserabilism, only last night did I think that I might miss it. As a museum, and just like these characters in the film's final episode in which the sons wander through rooms picking up familiar objects in their familiar locations.
Anyway, I'm digressing a little in the fever, but heimat is very close to the idea of furusato and I'll be intrigued to know how much your future students construct their soundscapes according to their concepts of memory, nostalgia and location. They may look at you quite blankly if you talk about how liberating it is not to be fixed in place. It's unclear how much of that university's intake is from Hakodate or nearby. Do you ever wander Tokyo streets and yelp Natsukashiiiii!
Interestingly, Marxy's album is called Kyoshu Nostalgia, so you could have a fruitful discussion on the construction of furusato. Whilst I have the energy, here's a random song about nostalgia, Sen Masao's (http://metropolis.japantoday.com/BigInJapan/356/biginjapaninc.htm) Miso Shiru no Uta (Song of Miso Soup):
It's freezing, isnt' it? Winter is so cold, making miso soup delicious. Delicious miso soup, hot miso soup, this is the flavour of my mother isn't it? Why is it that when people become adults, they put on airs like big shots, but when they drink hot miso soup, they think of their mother and cannot forget her. Such is the male spirit. We should sleep on futon and our underwear should be fundoshi (http://www.ne.jp/asahi/okera/okera/shiki00993.jpg) and don't call gohan "raisu". Yes, people these days forget the important things in life. Can we still call them Japanese? If people are Japanese, they shouldn't forget their furusato and their miso soup. It's been sixteen years since I left my furusato, and I always see my mother's breast in my dreams. When I recall thus, my heart aches terribly. Without realising it, I find tears welling up in my eyes. I want to taste my mother's miso soup again. Mummy! (Kachan) - trans. Christine Yano (http://www.anthropology.hawaii.edu/faculty/yano/yano.htm)
Now, back to bed.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-14 11:01 am (UTC)I'm a regular reader of your blog and I find it to be quite the tonic. I'm a recent arrival to Japan (since October), being one of those "political refugees" from Bush's America. While living in Brooklyn, me and my wife (who is Japanese) saw the writing on the wall and decided to get out. Japan was simply the most convenient choice, visa-wise. Also, the nature of my business allows me the flexibility to work remotely.
Before arriving I had certain preconceptions of what to expect... luckily I've decided to hold onto only a very few of them. Also, I came into it not expecting to "blend". That will never happen. And while I don't agree with all your characterizations of life here, I find your observations liberating. I have the sometimes troublesome habit of trying to apply fixed meanings to things. But I've been enjoying that slip slidey feeling since I arrived here. It's usefull in lightening expectations. Also, we're here on the extended "vacation" plan for a few years while Bush has his fun. We both still have that New York feeling.
One thing I'll be doing differently though, is attempting to learn the language. If only just so I can walk around untethered for awhile. We've moved to rural Japan and my wife is keeping me from cutting my head on the world everytime I walk out the door. If you're at all interested, I've been blogging about it at http://mckibihon.blogspot.com/
So, thanks for NOT keeping it "real".
mckibillo (http://mckibihon.blogspot.com/) ()
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-14 12:55 pm (UTC)Brian.
Coincidence
Date: 2005-01-14 02:36 pm (UTC)Some months later I found your new blog and discovered that you are a pop musician.
Now I have just discover that the song "Una giapponese a roma" , very popular in italy, is yours !!!
What else still I have to discover?
http://www.tolove.it
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-14 03:04 pm (UTC)I'm sure it's good to be aware, but really, I can't imagine your paradox ever becoming trite.
Date: 2005-01-14 05:33 pm (UTC)I don't think I'm alone in hoping that someday you will, in fact, write a book about Japan.
Speaking of books about Japan, have you read Kuhaku & other accounts from Japan? published by Chin Music Press (http://www.chinmusicpress.com/)it's quite a lovely book to have and to hold, not to mention a pleasure to read.
love,
Darling
New WG Sebald
Date: 2005-01-22 09:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-23 06:13 am (UTC)