Night and Fog by Tosh Berman

 

Night and Fog by Tosh Berman

My je t'aime, je t'aime by Tosh Berman

 

My je t'aime, je t'aime

Sounds of Japan by Tosh Berman

 

Sounds of Japan by Tosh Berman

Tosh's Journal - August 29

Very rarely has my father dealt with his memory of a place or time. He looked at the world as "now," and history I think meant a lot to him, but he was a person who existed for the present. So one would never ask him what it was like being in a recording studio with Charlie Parker. My father is dead, and I'm curious to know these things now, for instance, what did Parker say or do in that recording studio in Glendale, California? To hold that much culture on one's shoulder, one would think someone needs to share that information. Alas, as time marches on, the faces and names get cloudy, but surely Charlie Parker is important enough to share that tib-bit of details regarding what it was like to be in a room with Charlie Parker.



It comes as no surprise that I feel like Pinkie in Graham Greene's novel "Brighton Rock, which was also an excellent film starring Richard Attenborough. I'm so full of anger that I take out - anything, anyone, anywhere. I want to destroy so I can be devastated. My existence is so full of holes, that if you drew it on paper, you would need to have a mouse sticking his head through one of the cheese holes. Because that is what my life is like, Swiss cheese.



Then again, I should relax a bit more. One thing that is important to live is to laugh. I sometimes forget how significant it is to be able to walk into a movie theater, hopefully, a comedy, and just putting your angst aside and laugh what's on the big screen in front of you. What's in back of you can wait till the film is over. The thing is, I project Pinkie's face over everyone in the movie. I laugh, but it is like swallowing air, and it makes me sick to my stomach. I'm searching like a manic that there is some humor, either being said or implied. For all I care they could be showing "Night and Fog," and I would be laughing my head off. I sit in the theater, and I feel my scar on my cheek. I remember when I got into the fight, and he slashed my cheek. It didn't hurt for some reason, and when I went into the bathroom to examine the wound, I was intrigued by the cleanness of the cut. I took my thumb and little finger on my right hand, and open the cut to see if blood would come out. It reminded me of a woman's vagina, as I opened and closed the wound on my face. Thinking about the cut on my cheek in those terms made the pain bearable. It seemed like it didn't happen. I often dream at night that I have a loose front tooth, or an open scar on my body that is bleeding in front of the public, and when I wake-up, I feel that those physical dreams are quite real. It takes me at least five minutes to recognize that I was dreaming and the fact is that I don't have a loose tooth or a scar on my cheek. Yet, I play with my cheek, thinking that I have such an injury.



I wonder at times if I'm here or not. I often felt that I'm in someone else's dream or vision of a life that is not exactly mine. Perhaps Charlie Parker didn't exist, nor did my father. I feel I have seen something, and I can remember the scent of my father's shaving cologne, but as one gets older the senses get duller, and you eventually have a memory of having the experience of smelling such a scent. I imagine Joan of Arc, who heard voices from another world, as she knew the game was up and had to face the bonfire, that she had no choice but to follow the voice that came within, and surely not from another source outside her body. At the very least, I have the physical copy of the album cover that my father did for Dial Records, which is the first time Charlie Parker has appeared on a disk. That's real, and my memories are a movie as if it was directed and written by Preston Sturges.

The Sunday Series: Sunday June 14, 2015

The Sunday Series
Sunday June 14, 2015


For the past 25 years, I go to Japan every year.  Usually I spend up to a month to two months at a time in Tokyo. The funny thing is I have no visual memory of that country.  What I do remember are the sounds of Japan.  Mostly due to the fact that I own "Sounds of Japan."   It is 34 authentic sound effects recorded in their actual locale. The album was put together by Katsumasa Takasago, who I know very little about.  

The beauty of such recordings is that one doesn't have to leave their home to appreciate another country's culture.   In 1965, I don't think that many American tourists went to Japan, yet here we have everyday sounds of a city that looks back to its past, but alas, very much part of the present life as well.  1965 can be 1975 as well as 2015.  I try to imagine what it must be like to listen to this album in 1965.  You never were in Japan, yet, you're thrown into a soundtrack to a movie that you imagine you have seen, but never actually saw it.

For whatever reason I think of Alain Resnais' film "Hiroshima mon amour," starring Emmanuelle Riva and the Japanese actor Ejii Okada.   The film script was written by Marguerite Duras.  It deals with memory, but like the powers of recall, it is always one's point-of-view, and therefore there is no truth.  So when a tourist approach a 'foreign' country or city, it is from the point-of-the-view of the visitor, who may or may not know nothing about the culture, but at least heard of it.

Listening to this album on a Sunday morning is like traveling through a Japanese city with your eyes closed.   One can easily feel or taste the country just by listening to the album.  The Snake Charmer in Asakusa who is on this album is more likely dead, but surely his son has taken over his spot in that beautiful part of Tokyo.  The snake charmer demonstrates the love making of snakes, which greatly amuse the children that walk by him.   There is something sinister about such a profession, especially when late daylight turns into evening.  In the darkness, there is another world.  Asakusa is the old downtown of Tokyo, and there is quite a difference between day and night there.  In fact, all of Tokyo changes of identity - it is not that dissimilar to Bruce Wayne when he puts the bat-mask on.  Another personality takes over the city as soon as the neon lighting is turned on.

"Last Year at Marienbad" can easily turn into "Last Year at Tokyo."  I want to wonder through the streets of the Ginza to locate the lost love I had there.  Once I find her, will she remember me?    Perhaps not.  The faint texture of being forgotten, left, or abandoned is all part of the Japanese feeling.  When I go by a bar and I can hear the hostess sing float beyond the entrance door, I think of her.  It is never a city of now, but a city of memories.   This album represents memories.  Even when the record came out in 1965, it was already a memory.

"Elevator girls at Takashimaya Department Store" would announce each floor in a high -pitched accent with an ultra feminine voice.  Announcing the goods on each floor, one is in a sense getting a floor show at a supper club, but alas, it is in an elevator.   The perfect choreographed gestures of using their white gloved hands to express what is on each floor and also to announce the upcoming floor number.   One is not encouraged to talk to them. It would be like talking to an actor on stage as he or she is performing.

It's odd for me to sit here this Sunday morning in Silver Lake, and listen to this album.  Whenever I leave Japan I feel great sadness.  I have almost a fear that I won't stay alive till the next visit.  I never want to think that this will be my last visit to Tokyo.  "Sounds of Japan," is my safety-net.   As long as I have this album, Japan will never leave me.  It is very strange to listen to this album. Even though it was recorded in 1965 in various parts of Tokyo and Kyoto, I still feel that it could have been recorded today.  Nothing has changed. Yet everything has changed.  The story of my life.

June 3, 2014

June 3, 2014

I have always been fascinated with the difference between reality and cinema life, and sometimes it is very difficult to tell the difference between the two worlds.  To be honest, I had a very sheltered life, and my exposure to the outside world was watching TV - but mostly shows that were on early in the morning and on Saturdays.  I became obsessed with a film series starring The Bowery Boys, who were a gang that hung out at Louie’s Sweet Shop at 3rd and Canal in Manhattan.  Before the Bowery Boys, they were the Dead End Kids, who got their start in a Broadway play “Dead End.” Samuel Goldwyn brought the kids to Hollywood, and soon regrets it due to the physical damage they cause his studio.  Boys will be boys as they say, but as a young tot myself, I was impressed with the idea of being a part of a gang, and for me that gang was clearly the Bowery Boys.

I was mainly impressed with the actor (and real street punk) Leo Gorcey, due to the fact that he led these gangs of New York misfits into numerous adventures.   His fictional name, Terrence Aloysius "Slip" Mahoney, or just “Slip” had a nice ring to it, and as a young boy interested in words and phrases, I found a hero of sorts.  He was famed for his consistent use of using malapropisms, which Is using an incorrect word in place of a word with a similar sound.  For instance, he would say “a clever seduction” for “a clever deduction, ” “I depreciate it! (“I appreciate it!”), “I regurgitate” (“I reiterate”), and “optical delusion” (“optical illusion”).   What endears me to this character is that I have the exact same problem with the English language.  I have consistently used malapropisms throughout my life (and still do) due to either a speech impairment or thinking too fast for my pronunciations.   I had a friend, who always liked to comment in front of other people while I was talking, when I did use the wrong word, and publicly I laughed it off, but in reality, it was really painful for me  to have him make fun of me in front of other friends or a crowd.  Which made me feel closer to Leo (“Slip”) than my real friend.

I think due to my speech impairment, I felt I had a choice of being withdrawn from people or better yet, utilize your imperfections and magnified it to a remarkable degree, and therefore you will stand out against any crowd or audience.  I decided to use the shame I felt and focused on that as almost a seductive tool.  I always imagined myself as a Sidney Falco trying to make it in the world.  But also memory plays a part, in that one imagines themselves more miserable than they actually were.  Like wandering through the hallways of a noble house in Marienbad, one is never sure if looking at your life is actually correct or not.  When I look back to my past, I imagine it as a film, and I have done this for so long now, I totally can’t recall what actually happened or my film version of history.

I know there is the Bowery Boys, but also around the same time there were also the zoot-suit riots in Los Angeles.  When I walk down on Main Street, Downtown, I try to imagine what it must have been like in that time or night, where the violence took place between members of the military (mostly white men) and the teenaged or young male  Mexican-Americans, who wore zoot-suits.  To wear such beautiful clothing and to be hunted down on the streets of Los Angeles for having style and a specific culture, is totally not real to me.  The photographs I have seen of the riots, always seem like a depression era Warner Brothers movie to me - even though the action takes place in World War II era downtown Los Angeles.

To this very day, I try to make sense of what I think is my history, but I can only recall the representatives of that narrative, and that, I believe was only a film I have once seen many years ago.

April 10, 2014 (100th day)

April 10, 2014

The shock of the new for me is when Paul McCartney announced to the world that he was leaving The Beatles.  I was a teenager at the time, and of course, like most American teenagers I was totally wrapped up in everything that was the Fab Four.  It was the first time that I experienced the feeling that things can’t last forever, and their breakup caused a major head-fuck for me, because I couldn’t understand at the time, why they had to break up.  I mean, couldn’t they just talk it out.  What was worst was reading the John Lennon interview in Rolling Stone that year, where he just exposed all his inner-feelings about Paul to the public.  I was not only shocked to read this interview, but I actually hated him for letting his true feelings out.  I have great faith in a world where one has the illusion of a perfect domain, and that they should with all their power, keep that world intact.   Here, Lennon was shitting on the Beatle world, therefore my world as well.

The one illusion that was important to me was the TV series “The Rifleman” starring Chuck Connors as Lucas McCain and Johnny Crawford as his son, Mark McCain.   It was the first show to portray a widowed parent raising a child by himself.   Lucas’s character is that of a rancher who purchased a ranch and is making a concerted effort to make it all work, with his son helping out with the daily duties of running a ranch.  McCain was also a excellent rifleman, and had a specially made rifle which could be fired rapidly.   But the heart of the show is the relationship between Lucas and his son.  In fact, I never have seen such a relationship before on TV or in a film.  Whenever I watch the series I felt a great deal of comfort, because the Dad here is very decent, very powerful, and is basically concerned about his son’s welfare.   Scenes where McCain is without his son, or being tortured by a villain, were extremely disturbing to me.  Looking at the shows now, they do have a sub-text of S&M, at least emotionally so.  But at the time I was totally caught up with the relationship between Dad and Son.  I felt that way about The Beatles as well, because in my thoughts, here is a gang that won’t never let each other down.

Relationships are extremely important to me, and when something unexpectedly goes wrong, it disturbs me to the very core of my being.  I often can identify with the main character in Alain Resnais’s film “Last Year at Marienbad” written by Alain Robbe-Grillet.   The man approaches a woman at a social gathering at a baroque hotel, convinced that they have met the year before, and both agreed to meet the next year.  Now that the year has passed, he sees her, but she claimed to never had met him before.  In a sense he had a ‘false’ hope that this relationship will happen, but alas, it becomes an illusion of sorts.  My expectation of relationships, through the personal, as well as through the media of film and music, is one where I find myself wanting to assume that what I see on the screen or hear is true.  And it is true in my heart, but alas, the world moves differently in another dimension.

The great American composer Martin Denny portrayed a world that was beautiful and exotic through his music.  In the 1950s travel became a huge industry, and there was a need to find and visit exotic lands, for instance Hawaii.   Denny conveys a world that is Hawaii, but now I’m not sure if that is a correct representation.  I never been to Hawaii, but I know Hawaii through Denny’s music.  My Hawaii is very much expressed in Denny’s album “Exotica.”   There have been numerous times where I could have gone to Hawaii, but I always turn down the trip because I am deeply afraid that the Hawaii that I will come upon will not be the same as Denny’s Hawaii, and I wouldn’t be able to take the disappointment.

So the fact that Paul left The Beatles left a major scar in my psyche.  But also gave me the gift to observe that I live in two lives.  Almost in another dimension, in there is a world where things work out perfectly such as Martin Denny’s Hawaii landscape, and "The Rifleman."   On the other side is the Beatles split, and the disappointment that is the heart of “Last Year at Marienbad. ”

Alain Resnais Interview 1

Alain Robbe-Grillet and Alain Resnais' "Last Year at Marienbad"