Happiness

Jack Johnson - Sleep Through the Static (the song)

Today, a public holiday! *checks* The day of Showa (the previous emperor).

I just got home from Nagisa festival, where I went with Ikeyan and a work buddy of his from Kyuushuu, Nonchan and Reggae. What a day! Gorgeous weather, extremely colorful people, music spanning the spectrum from punk to techno, rock to jazz and even afrobeat, can you believe it!? 13 Japanese (including 3 percussionists) playing Fela Kuti covers as well as original material (which sounds identical!). Japan is a wonderful place. Good food, non-stop dancing and the festival atmosphere I hadn't seen for quite a while. Jodie told me he'd performed there once with Eric and the Tribe, so if he and I work on our two-person dance music fest, we might be able to perform there next October or next April. It seems the perfect venue for our kind of project, and I'd love to perform at this festival, so I'm all pumped to continue with it.

Skipping back to last night, I had dinner with Manchan (the flamenco guitarist that looks like an Italian pirate), after which I went to a house practice session in Fly dance studio and ended up crashing at Ikeyan's place, with 3 hours of sleep before waking up for the festival today. Some twelve hours of dancing in two days - exhausted but it feels great!

Coming home in a great mood, I also found out that U-T-A finally posted the next Jungle Lifestyle episode. Haha, I love these guys. To quickly recap the Jungle Mic activity of the past week and a half: a gig at Doushisha University south campus in the middle of nowhere on a beautiful sunny day; three days later, rainy, a gig at Big Cat, a very respectable live house concert hall in Osaka. That evening a certain lady from a certain company came to see our gig and have a chat with us, hinting at a very bright future for Jungle Mic !! So in order to make that happen, we're totally psyched for the recordings next month (three songs, 2 of which are uptempo and one a true ballad .. I'm sure you can find pieces of them scattered around the video blog). This time, I'll be adding lots of cool keyboard parts to fill the space, there will be percussion, raps by me and vocals by me and Yuuki, and even the sax player who I met on the riverside last Friday because I was attracted by his sound will probably make a presence in some or all of the songs (we jammed in the studio this week and it was good stuff)!! Wow, things really couldn't be more exciting.

Of course school is well under way as well, and it's not strange for me to be in the lab around 2 am lately, calculating propagators for the antifermions of quantum field theory. Tomorrow morning I have a presentation, and I'm kinda behind on my Anki reviews (and quite hungry besides), so I'll stop now.

A very happy day indeed.

P.S. Pics coming soon, I promise!!!

My First Frankenstein and The Meaning Of Meaning

Part 1.

After the gig last night in Muse, there was an afterparty in an izakaya closeby. It was more fun than I expected, and I was still somewhat drunk when I finally went to bed around 4. Got up at 12 in order to dance at the qualifications for NF. Since it was early afternoon - too early for dancing, honestly - and my body still hadn't recuperated completely from the previous night, it didn't go as well as I'd have liked it to, but it wasn't bad, and in any case it was fun. We didn't make it through to the final event, but from others' comments and my own experience I gather it's because our kind of dance is more "artistic-kei" than "explosion-kei", and for these kind of huge events "explosion-kei" is better. Anyway, there are 2 other dance events around the same time as NF, and we'll be performing on both of those. More than anything, preparing the show was more fun than performing it would ever be, so no loss there. I love dancing, especially artistic-kei.

After having a bagel (not to be compared to the one I wrote about a couple of weeks ago) and mango juice at the Very Berry Cafe around Sanjo, I crashed at home for an hour and practiced for the recordings I was supposed to be doing right now.

Say what? Yeah, Yuuki (guitarist) and I decided to cancel today's recording half an hour before the planned start, because...on the way from the station where he picked me up to the studio, we were in a car crash. Completely the other party's fault, Yuuki's car is now a wreck and I'm currently enjoying my first Frankenstein experience, i.e. my forehead is stitched together. It's not as bad as it sounds - doc said it would heal by itself, but it would be faster with the stitches. Other than that cut coming from hitting my head on the windshield (I wasn't wearing my seatbelt *gasp*), my right arm's a bit numb and my right leg slightly sore, but I expect things to be back to normal in a couple of days.

Lots of firsts today: First, my first hospital experience in Japan. It's hard to trust the docs and nurses (who unfortunately weren't especially sexy) when they're so ridiculously humble - to me it sounds like you don't know what you're doing when you say "it seems that..." and "hmm, what shall we do next?" all the time. Assertivity over humility any day in docs. First CT scan ever, which revealed a calcium deposit in my brain - unrelated to the accident, and, I was glad to discover after checking it out online, very common and nothing to be concerned about if there are no symptoms of anything.

Moving on...first time meeting Yuuki's little brother (who picked us up from the hospital and drove me home), first time I bled from my head in an amount that might qualify as drinkable, and first time I heard this kind of accident is quite profitable for the victim party here in Japan - if I'm lucky, I'll be able to afford my trip to Hawaii with the compensation dough I'm getting.


Part 2.

When my face was covered with a white piece of paper during stitching time, the thought I was struggling to hold on to (first rapidly-fading-memory experience) was: "If you proceed from the pre-scientific point of view that mind (and therefore self-consciousness, the "I") and body form a duality (avoiding any attempt at defining the mind (or soul, whichever)) towards the point of view that the mind is a consequence of the body, you're likely to remain just as unsatisfied. Or at least, if you're as stubbornly curious as I am. Why? Before, you were wondering what the mind was at all and felt dissatisfaction for not understanding it. After, you know your "I" is just an illusion in a way, and after recovering from your initial sense of loss, you start wondering what you're supposed to do next. Even if it's an illusion, it seems so damn real! And since your thoughts, actions and everything related to you at all is fundamentally tied to this whole "I" concept, you (there it is again) can't do anything without it."

Does it make sense? I feel like I'm at an impasse of sorts. Morals, meaning, all these human constructions that don't have meaning (watch out! There it is again!) outside the mind...I can't put it into words yet, but if you're already feeling what I'm trying to say, please drop me a note with your thoughts. I wanna work it out. Anything will help. I'm addicted to thought. By the way, being in Japan is providing me with a fresh perspective on these things. Japanese thought, though more self-centered than I thought, is way less individualistic than Dutch thought, which makes for interesting observations on the one hand... but then it's not easy finding Japanese people interested in discussing them. No surprise: stepping outside one's frame of reference is so incredibly difficult (impossible?), I usually get stuck when I try to do it myself.

I was talking to Ikeyan today (seems like yesterday - time is playing tricks on me) about reality and dreams, the meaning of life, deep thought and all that good stuff, and after some discussion we decided that we would like to be animals or plants.

P.S. It's One Piece time! After three months of deficiency due to bad internet connections, I'm quite excited.

Music as Identity

During my whole stay here so far, I've been examining myself and the people around me to see how they define themselves (whether consciously or not) and how they come across to others (whether consciously or not). I also have discussions with friends (Japanese and non-) about the existence of a non-bodily soul (which I don't believe in) and the formation of identity. It's a theme that's been on my mind a lot for the past couple of years for sure, but this time in my life is providing me with a wonderfully interesting new light in which to view the evidence.

When I got off the plane on April 2, I wondered how my identity would change while being here. As a more practical matter, I wondered how I would come across to other people. And I was sure that I didn't want to lose touch with the identity, the life that I'd had before (as if that's possible at all - yeah, it was a major change in my life, so there you go). Since day 1, I realized that the main way in which I'm consciously trying to shape and maintain my identity is by music. Of course, that's how things were back in Holland as well, and I remember that I first wrote a list of "songs that are important to me" (sometimes adding the "why") back in late 2003, while I was traveling through Ecuador by myself.

I noticed that I've become more expressive in certain ways during the past two years as a result of focusing on expression through music and dance. I also tend to be attracted to people who have a similar sense of self-expression - in music and dance, of course, but also in other art forms or more down-to-earth things that allow expression, like cooking (unprofessionally), room decoration and clothing (though other priorities restrict my own self-expression in these latter two aspects...a reminder that the person I used to be, and who makes up a big part of my identity, is a true nerd! Awesome).

I guess that for professional musicians, or at least those who have the liberty to create the music they really want to, this is a very common issue, since all they really do is express who they are through their music - I'd love to have some discussion about this with pro musicians though, to see how conscious they are about what they're expressing. In particular, I am wondering about the sense of identity pro musicians - on the road and in the studio 300+ days per year - have. From the rare occasions I've had to speak with them, two contrasting standpoints emerged: the "I can't be bothered to deal with music outside my work - I need a break sometimes" and the "just like anyone else - grab my ipod as soon as the concert [I just performed] is over" way of doing things. Either way, they must certainly have a different attitude towards music than anyone not in their boat. The main thing that's keeping me from creating the dream of a full-fledged professional musician for myself is the fear that, compared to being an amateur musician and dancer who's having a BLAST with music in different settings and with different people, the cons outweigh the pros. We'll see, we'll see...(hell, fundamental physics is just as awesome).

Okay, my laundry's about done and I need to get cooking, so here's a list of music that's important to me right now:

• Tower of Power. Excellent for locking, great balance between mellow soul and fast funk, fun compositions.
• Chiclete de Banana. Party music if I've ever heard it. Having never been to Brazil, the abundance of this kind of music makes me think the Brazilian people have really managed to accomplish something spectacular in the ongoing human quest for how to have the best party. Plus it reminds me of Nice and Maputo, where I've had some great times with Brazilians and their music.
• Marcus Miller. Somehow the coolest sound around. Funky, street-wise arrangements with hip-hop beats and that low-end sound with the dopest attitude...add in the occasional uncommon instrument, and I cannot but think this guy has some major chilling experience.
  
• Kerri Chandler & Dennis Ferrer. Amazing fusion of African (and occasionally Brazilian) sounds with underground club electronics, resulting in some fabulous house music. My favourite dance tunes were created by these guys.
• Ozric Tentacles. A world of inspiration for my synthesizing endeavours. I love listening to their medley of rock, reggae, psychedelia and fast electronic stuff.
• Masters at Work. Would be classified with Kerri & Dennis, but these guys have a slightly more disco edge, and African is replaced by Middle- and South-American. I would recommend their Nuyorican Soul to anyone. In fact, it's speedrocketing (why does Google only give me 4 results on that word? Hmm...) up my list of favorite albums discovered this year (believe me, that number is huge), partially due to the fact that it's really an ALBUM. It's very satisfying to hear so many musicians and styles come together to create something that sounds so consistent, and I really think it attests to their producing mastery.
  
• Tool. Slightly gloomy, unforgivingly genius rock. Together with Hiromi's Martin Valihora, this drummer takes the #1 spot.
• Count Basie. Pure goodness, exciting me for my future jazz bar project with F.
  

Laundry, laundry...

A soul swims in the deep house of this life // an introductory glance at my corkscrews and loopholes

The past week has largely been about increasing my consciousness. I talked a lot with Tareq and Benkei about religion, politics, science, ethics, and philosophy. Nighttime online reading provides the comfort of knowing there are other people dealing with these issues on the same level. Not that I've been doing that much nighttime reading though, since I've been spending most of my nights with my girlfriend or out in the club.

I'm very happy to be studying cosmology, in "retrospect" (i.e. for reasons I didn't see coming that strongly before, though they were always important). In fact, the past 6 months of not studying physics have been very conducive to my motivation to continue with it. In fact, I can't wait, and I am really hoping my skill hasn't decreased that much in 6 months. I'm going to try really hard to reach a respectable level within a short amount of time anyway. Speaking of time, it's like I become more ambitious as it passes. I'm experiencing many new things - and experience is one of the criteria for a "meaningful life" in modern life, so that's cool in itself. But at the same time, the more I experience, the more I want to do, and I get caught up in a sort of roller coaster.

This roller coaster generates a very powerful feeling, which I've come to experience frequently but irregularly over the past couple of years. It's energizing, motivating, and satisfying. It is in fact the all-encompassing feeling that I call life. And to put it in a certain perspective, I am very satisfied with the idea that this all-encompassing feeling is the product of my brain, which is the product of many years of biological evolution. BUT !

More than before, I am exploring the limits of science. Not so much the theoretical limits at the moment, but the limits of science today. For example, I was reading a forum discussion about the probability of extraterrestrial life. And I came to realize that even though the universe is extremely huge beyond comprehension, abiogenesis (a word I learned this week) is actually far from scientifically understood. The Wikipedia article on Abiogenesis is inspiring; so many theories, so many experiments, I get the feeling that we will eventually come closer to understanding this extremely fascinating process. But at the moment, things are much vaguer than I had imagined. I am now entertaining the idea that the probability of extraterrestrial life might be much smaller than my astronomy and cosmology-inspired gut feeling has taught me so far. Let's see where I'm headed the next couple of years.

I don't believe in the afterlife. Strictly speaking, I have no idea what happens when I die, and I have no idea what is really happening in life at all. Of course I am living my daily life very clearly, and I really feel like I "know what I'm doing" to some extent in this way: I want to experience as much as I can, travel the world, make music, try drugs, EAT all the food in the world, get into the HEAD of the Japanese people and who knows what's next, be good to the people around me and continue walking the path of life I constantly feel like I am finding. But beyond that, I am completely in the dark, directly opposed to my friend Tareq who shares much of the same thoughts and feelings with me, but motivated directly by his belief that the God of the Qur'an exists and, most importantly, that there is an afterlife that provides meaning to this life on Earth (we're having some really good discussions - he sleeps with the light on, I like the bewilderment of total darkness). I am completely lacking his kind of convenient idea (I believe it is nothing more than that, at least in the form he believes in), and I am teaching myself to live with this absurd ignorance, to take away the absurdity and make it straightforward. I have accepted it to the extent that I am living a very dedicated and happy life even though "there is no point" as far as I know, and this is already really, really, really good.

To summarize what I am thinking about tonight, life, the universe and everything is REALLY extreme. Fact is stranger than fiction, by a HUGE margin. I am on a quest, I feel like I am going forward every day of my life, and sometimes I can't fall asleep because I am so excited to be alive.

.......................................

Golden Week is just over. I went clubbing, saw full-speed horseriding archers hitting and missing non-moving targets to the backdrop of one of the most famous Shinto shrines in Japan, visited Kobe (where I had a terrific evening with some friends of Benkei's, who are almost triple my age, crazy in the way that I hoped mature Japanese people could be, and paid for plentiful Japanese food and Scottish whisky), walked through thousands of red gates whose meaning is still obscured to me (I am really wondering what the average Japanese person knows of the fundamental elements of Shinto religion, because they are definitely not obvious to a stranger like me), and spent a couple of relaxed nights at Misa's place.

I love.