Sunday, August 24
A hot summer day, family gathering, temple, black formal, relatives, grown-up kids, sushi, soba, afternoon talk, air conditioner, stale wind, Sunday, too tired to feel tired, swallowed words
Monday, August 25
I’ve been editing and translating an interview. Because the interviewee brought up the piece of Ryoji Ikeda, I thought it’d be nice if I listened to something from Raster-Noton during this process. But it turned out, it was absolutely not suitable when juggling texts.
For the previous interview in the same series, I remember I listened to Mark Fell’s “Atavism” (and the song which gave me a neo-80s feeling) and it worked fine. These two interviewees seem to have many similarities, but probably something is fundamentally different. Well, duh, naturally. They are two different people. I kind of know what it is, but I can’t describe it.
At the end, I listened to the interviewee’s live performance piece (it gets more dramatic and romantic at the end than the original’s, which I liked), a couple of tracks of a Japanese rapper, and a few tracks of Matsuo Ohno that I could find on Spotify. I remembered he once remixed Rei Harakami’s piece (not sure if we should call “Remix”), and I unearthed my old magazine cutouts.
Audio-visual masters like TOMATO, Carsten Nicolai, Dumb Type―they were part of my early 20s “coolness” definition. Their expressions were shining like cold bright stars in the dark sky. While I didn’t, and I still don’t, fully understand what they meant, I saw their expressions as hope amid the flashy and excessive expressions that were everywhere around the millennium. I looked back and thought about a lot of that time and my sensibility back then during this editing process. Past and Present bridged.
Tuesday, August 26
I like making smoothies at Seven Eleven. It makes me feel like I’m doing something healthy, and it makes me feel like I’m kinda in sync with the trend. Is it still a trend? Maybe not. And I’m probably too old to think like this. I know. I know it well. Don’t tell me.
Wednesday, August 27
I had a chill last night, so I wore winter pajamas and went to bed. Then, I felt so hot and got soaking wet with sweat. I took off winter pajamas and got out of bed, but it’s still hot. I searched for cold parts of the bed, but no luck. I couldn’t feel the coolness of the floor. I couldn’t feel the ground. And while I was half-asleep with a headache, I saw a fever dream. Anger, jealousy, fear, schadenfreude… I was swallowed by the huge dark emotions. I tried to run away from them, but the two letters were following me. The two letters. Two Hiragana letters. When I woke up and checked my temperature, I got 38.3.
This week’s track
kZm – Fuck U Tokio I Love U! feat. 5lack
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