March 16, 2014

March 16, 2014

As most of you know that I’m in Tokyo, so today is Sunday.  Sunday, for me, is a day of reflection, but I suspect in Japan it is just another work day.  On March 16, 1968, it’s the anniversary of the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam war. Forty-six years ago, the world at least changed in the U.S. for the worst.  It was a shock to one’s system to realize that evil can occur in any country or culture.  It is just not a national issue, but also how one looks at the or perhaps better stated ‘their’ world.   What makes a group of U.S. soldiers commit murder on innocent villagers.  Not only the male adults, but the aged, the women, and of course the children.  What makes a soldier put a group of these people in a hut, and shoot them in the head.  Or launch a live grenade in a space full of people.  Was it out of fear, or nerves?  How can one order a village to be wiped out, including the food supply there as well as every living animal?   Yet after the investigation, they found one soldier, guilty of the crime.  Eventually he was sentenced to life, but alas, he was let go within a couple of years.

By a weird coincidence, the Nazi SS doctor Josef Mengele was born today, the same date as the My Lai massacre.  He had an obsession with twins from the concentration camps, and committed unthinkable experiments on them.  He was also nice to the children at the camps, but within hours he could have those kids killed without giving a second thought.  It was pointed out that when he experimented on living people, he would whistle a melody. History doesn’t know the song, and perhaps that is all for the best.  He killed countless people, perhaps it is a good thing that we are spared to know the song or classical piece.

As I write this on a very sunny chilly morning in Tokyo, I think how is it possible for me to write a horror narrative that actually took place.  Jean-Luc Godard has mentioned that it’s impossible to film the Holocaust because the images are too unspeakable.  Alain Renasis by passed that by making his “Night and Fog” into a work of memory, which made the horror even more intense and disturbing. Famously, Jerry Lewis tried to film an aspect of the Holocaust in his unreleased film "The Day The Clown Cried." It doesn't work, because the imagination fails to grasp such horror.   Even looking at a picture of Mengele and Second Lieutenant William Calley, who was responsible for the massacre at My Lai, is obscene to me.

Oddly enough, Calley was not admired by his troops.  It has been noted that he had trouble reading maps and compass.  A must for a person in his position, yet he had no trouble following orders to kill an entire village.  The dispute is who gave the orders.  Calley claimed he got direct orders to do the massacre from Captain Ernest Median.  The confusion is between the wording of the actual order.  According to Captain Median, he ordered that all Viet Cong soldiers are expected to be killed, but Calley read this order as killing all the Vietnese in the village.   A misunderstanding of the wording of an order?  Captain Median was acquitted, but Calley was sentenced to life imprisonment and hard labor.  This caused a great deal of debate in the United States, where many felt that Calley was a scapegoat, or the fact that he was the only one convicted in the crime.   Some even saw him as a hero!  Ironically the most interesting defense came from Commanding Officer Chae Myung Shin, who was in the South Korean Vietnam Expeditonary Forces.  He commented that "Calley tried to get revenge for the deaths of his troops. In a war, this is natural. ”

Nevertheless evil is evil.  Dr. Mengele disappeared to South America after the war, and Calley ended up paroled by President Nixon.  Calley at the time served under house arrest for three and a half years.  On August 19, 2009, he spoke to the Kiwanis Club of Greater Columbus.  He was quoted as saying:

“There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai. I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry....If you are asking why I did not stand up to them when I was given the orders, I will have to say that I was a 2nd lieutenant getting orders from my commander and I followed them—foolishly, I guess. ”

March 15, 2014

March 15, 2014

I had the oddest dream last night when I went to a show, and Howard Devoto was playing and after he sang his one song, "The Light Pours Out Of Me", there was only one person in the audience besides me, and every time he clapped, it made a shallow echo sound.  He clapped very slowly keeping a steady rhythm.  I woke up in Meguro still hearing that sound.  Slowly I realized it was my wife gently snoring in a soft rhythm, one could barely hear her, but somehow I picked up the sound and it became a major part of my dream.

The second thought that came to my mind was Howard Devoto.  Why, of all places and time, was I thinking of him in such a freezing cold morning here. I had to piss, and even that, was a little bit difficult, due to the cold.  As I mentioned every room in a Japanese house is chilly.  Some are colder than others, but nevertheless all are cold. So standing up, going to the hallway, which is the coldest by the way, and going to the toilet, a degree less than the hallway.  Even going to the toilet brings up feelings of oddness.   In Japan, the toilet is kept separate from the bathroom, so it is usually in a small room that only one person can fit in. On top of that all the toilets in Japan are mechanically controlled with kanji describing each purpose.  One is a soft flush, the other a full flush, one shoots water up the butt for cleaning purposes, the other is…. A softer version of the water spray and the other is a bidet.  Some have a heater blowing up your butt, but this one doesn’t but I really could use a heater there.  The toilet seat itself is heated so that is a blessing.

I went back to my futon and looked at the ceiling.  The image of Devoto stayed in my head, and I started to hum “The Light Pours Out of Me.” The wife was still asleep so I got up and put on my black jeans on, and went upstairs to make myself a cup of coffee.  I opened up my laptop to determine where I left off with respect to my ongoing ‘memoir’ that I have been working off and on for the last ten years.   It’s kind of amazing moment when you realize that the work you have been working on, sucks.

The first thought is that the Howard Devoto dream was trying to tell me something. The one man clapping slowly, maybe that was not towards Devoto, but me.  Maybe that guy was taunting me, because now thinking of it, he was staring at me when he applauded slowly, not at Howard on the stage.  I realized I found myself in a bad mood this morning because of that figure in my dream.  I needed something uplifting like a Sly Stone song, but that strangely made me think of Devoto again, because he recorded a Sly song with his second band Magazine.   Owing to the cold, the coffee was getting cold after each sip.  I was slowly going down a spiral staircase, with a painful scratch on my back.  I needed to pull myself up out of this misery, because it will spoil my entire day.  And a day wasted is not a proper day my young man (and woman).

I decided to forget about the memoir at this moment, and concentrate on getting myself ready to go out and locate the DVD “Dillinger” starring Lawrence Tierney.  When I was at a DVD rental I saw the package, and I thought to myself this will be perfect for me to study Japanese while watching one of my favorite films with my fave actor in it.   It dawned on me at that moment I’m attracted to figures that carry a certain amount of depression.  All my role models have at its best, a tinge of despair, or worst, total head-on depression.   It got worse when I couldn’t find the Dillinger film at the store, but on the other hand, they did have “J’irai crater sur vis tombes, a film based on the Boris Vian novel, and directed by Michel Gast.  The movie stars Christian Marquand, playing a light-skinned African-American who goes after a whole town, due to the lynching death of his brother.  Vian hated the film, in fact it was the last thing he saw, due that he died during the screening.  Marquand is an interesting actor who had a long career in films.  Nevertheless I rented the film, which made it even weirder to me, because the film is made in France, with French being spoken, about Americans, and the subtitles are in Japanese.  Being an American watching, this was a very disoriented experience.  But then again, just trying to figure out something common-like with a Japanese toilet is equally disorientating as well.

By late afternoon I was determined to go back to my futon bed, and just look at the ceiling till sleep took over me.  Not a perfect day by any means, but alas, I now have some creative thoughts regarding the ceiling in my room.  Life goes on!

March 14, 2014

In the end. There's nothing. Japan. Bliss.

March 13, 2014

March 13, 2014

Like all writers, I have an obsession with what is good and what is bad.  But for me, it’s a blurry line at times.  Which makes it even more evil.  When one looks away from evil, is it because you prefer evil over good?  I never read the works by Paul Morand, but he was an aristocrat wealthy man who counted Jean Cocteau as a friend and actually dined with Marcel Proust. Yet, he was very much part of and supported the Vichy government.  He was also seen as a modernist and a member of Imagist.  That was a literary movement that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language.  Which one can gather by now, is not exactly my aesthetic!

On the other hand I have a deep interest in artists who went along the facist route, and I try to think if that is also in their own work as well.  Cocteau was a real mystery to me in a sense, because he was the poet who sees everything as an extension of poetry.  In other words, an art for art’s sake.  Which to be honest is what I pretty much follow.   But if that art leads one to a darker political path, is it good for the soul?  Is the soul important?  Often participants on both sides of the road, when it involves art, are trying to find a moral ground to stand on.  But I am not sure if that is what art is about.  I think it's about a lot of things, and it’s best to accept the good, but one has to acknowledge the evil as well.  Like Robert Mitchum’s character in “,The Night of the Hunter” when he grasps both hands to show the tattoo “love” and “hate” on the other.  

What I can’t fully understand is why Morand would be for a government that would want to stop the zazous from having a good time listening to jazz and records from America?  Why would he want to hunt down children, who eventually will turn out to be Serge Gainsbourg or Roman Polanski?  In my mind, there are two different types of “art for art’s sake” groupings.  There is the Oscar Wilde, who for sure was a man involved in his world, and acknowledge the political affairs of his time and age.  Then there are people like Morand and perhaps Cocteau, who ‘ignore’ the shit around them.  One uses art to build a wall between the outside world and themselves, and Wilde I think just wanted to make a difference or to being in a world of shit, and somehow stand beyond it.   Celine (who I love as a writer by the way), Cocteau and Morand seemed to love the company of power, or at least acknowledge that power as almost as a turn-on for their art.   Well, let me take Celine back, I reckon he was just nutty.  But Cocteau and Morand were not nutty.  They must have understood what was happening at that time, and while Cocteau’s role is sort of cloudy in those years, what was Morand’s excuse?

What’s interesting is the Imagist movement, because of its need to see things clearly.  Art to me is naturally messy, like nature.  The need to make order out of a mess is a very strong aesthetic, which I have to admit, I share.  But alas I think that need is also the root of an inner-fascism.

Around the same time, Lee Falk, who was a theater person, created the comic strip “The Phantom, ” and “Mandrake the Magician.” As a kid I loved both comics, and to this day I have an obsession with Mandrake.  Again, for me, the visual clothing Mandrake wears - the top hat, the tuxedo, and cape is very extractive to me.  Also in those comic strips there was evil, and evil had to be destroyed.  There were not any gray areas, and it makes one life easier to grasp.  I pretty much follow the comic strips and Oscar Wilde!

I’m also intrigued by someone like L. Ron Hubbard, who was a science fiction writer who somewhere down the line decided to be something much bigger than a pulp writer.   Yet, I feel the organization he started is very much in a pulp tradition.  Its history reads like a noir Southern California fantasy.  It’s interesting how an artist can make a utopia of sorts, and perhaps Morand wanted one as well, to express his wealth, and his stance in the 20th century.  Oddly enough, only one of his novels is available in English.  I must read it!

March 12, 2014 (Tokyo)

March 12, 2014

To experience one’s first death can be such a life-changer, with respect to a loss of a parent.  Reading about Julia Lennon, John’s mom, was very moving to me.  Since I lost a parent, I feel that it was the one defining moment in my life.  I imagine it was the same for Lennon, because I suspect that beyond anything else, it was the one lost that compel him to go for broke with respect to his art and music.  He succeeded greatly, but there is always that price that people are not aware of.  It’s a black hole in one’s life that is not exactly empty but a space that is reserved for a certain amount of pain.  People react to this ‘hole’ in their own distinctive ways.  For Lennon, I think it gave him focus to do the things he had to do.  You’re not afraid of failure because you know the conceptual death is not beyond one’s comprehension.  I think of Liza Minnelli as well, due that she had a parent that was genius-like and lived with incredible intensity, and then dies.  When a parent like Julia or Judy passes away, it for sure has a strong effect on their off-spring.  Especially if they’re doing something creative or performing in front of an audience.

When my dad was alive, we got a phone call from the artist and friend Ed Ruscha that he’s coming over to our house to bring some friends with him.  I was shocked when Liza and her boyfriend at the time, Edward Albert showed up in our living room with Ed.  It was the peak of Liza’s fame and greatness, I believe “Cabaret” was still in the theaters, and she was doing her TV spectaculars, which even for someone like me who knows nothing of the craft and skill of that world, well, I was deeply impressed with her talent.  I never came in the presence of a movie and stage star before, so I didn’t know how I should act in front of her.  The truth is she was very easy to talk to, and very sweet as well as Edward.  I was even impressed with him because I was a huge “Green Acres” fan, and his dad was the star of that show.  

It wasn’t till my dad died, that I started thinking about Liza and John Lennon.  Although Julia, John’s mum, wasn’t a star, it seems she was an outstanding personality.  Someone who was perhaps a bridge between one era of Liverpool life that was restricted and quite conservative, into another more adventuresome world.  Julia introduced John to the joys of rock n’ roll, and therefore I imagine very much that she influenced him greatly.   I wish I can talk to Liza, but surely to have a parent like Judy Garland, must have some effect.  And when a legend like that dies, it becomes really a big deal to the daughter or son.   The thing is John and Liza went on, but forcefully made a new identity of sorts - something that was in honor of their parent, but also they had to leave that influence on the other side of the stage when they performed.

The one fear that we all share is the fear of insanity or losing it.  Lennon and Minnelli, if media reports are accurate, surely touched the edge, where looking down is the abyss.   My dad had an obsession and love for the ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, for whom reasons we can only suspect, totally lost it through his years of not dancing or performing.  If one doesn’t have the outlet to create, to write, to sing, to make music or to write… what is there in life?  I think about that when I look at my blank screen, before I type even one letter.

Boris Vian's "Red Grass" (translated by Paul Knobloch) on the BTBA Fiction Longlist

It's nice to have our book "Red Grass" by Boris Vian (translated by Paul Knobloch) on the BTBA Fiction Longlist. Congrats on the others on the list as well. It is a honor to be on such a list. Merci!
http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/index.php?id=9922

March 11, 2014

March 11, 2014

I woke up early this morning to locate a pirated DVD version of Timothy Carey’s film “The World’s Greatest Siinner," with an original score by Frank Zappa.  I never was a fan of Zappa’s work, because his humor was always too obvious for me, but on the other hand I was always intrigued by Carey.  I first discovered him as a kid watching Stanley Kubrick’s “The Killing, ” which I must have seen ten times over the years.  It is among those films that I play but only in a special celebratory mood, which believed me, doesn’t often come upon me.

II’m usually lucky to locate pirated DVDs in the Shinjuku area, but the nature of the business is sometimes sketchy, and the storefront that is set up in an almost deserted office building can be gone like steam leaving a boiling pot of water.  I have a bad memory of names, especially if it is Japanese, and also I don’t read Kanji, so I have to guess what floor the shop is, and on top of that, if I’m wrong, I go to each floor till I find it.  So by the time I get to the 9th floor and I can’t find the shop, I’m putting it mildly feeling a little bit of a disappointment coming upon me.  It is like each floor that I go to, as I get higher, I become a low.

I’ve been intrigued to see “The World’s Greatest Sinner” ever since I was a teenager and my dad told me about it.  Carey invited him to a screening sometime in the mid-1960s and after seeing the film, he could never stop talking about it.  To this day I don’t know if he actually liked the film, but he liked and admired Carey, even though they weren’t close friends.  More of a friend-of-a-friend type of thing.  The one thing that I never forgot is when my dad told me that whenever anyone shook Carey’s hand, he would give out a loud fart.  At first it was kind of funny, but after doing it on a regular basis, it becomes slightly and disturbingly weird.  Also one might think that he was making a comment on the people he was just meeting.  My dad wasn’t insulted and he always wanted to see the film again, but like the fart that leaves the ass, the smell is there, but not the actual fart.   I guess for a while now I have been looking for that ‘fart, ’ even in Tokyo.

Timothy Carey passed away in 1994, and the only other story I know of him was when I was going out with a girlfriend in the 70s and she was the waitress at a Sambo’s diner in the San Fernando Valley.   She worked the night shift, which at that time was midnight to dawn.  Carey would come in around 3AM to eat breakfast, obviously he was a man who kept his own hours.   It went against the rules, but during her break she would go out with him for a drive on Ventura Boulevard.  She told me that he would have a 8-track tape of Henry Cowell’s music with the volume playing at full-blast.  It was not possible to have a conversation with him, and he didn’t talk, just drove from one end to Ventura and then make a u-turn and take her back to her work.   Surely I thought something sexual happened between the both of them, but that didn’t appear to be the case at all.  He just enjoyed the company while playing Cowell’s music in the car.

In our household, my father had this weird obsession of watching the squarest program on TV, The Lawrence Welk Show.  At first I thought it was a joke, but he seemed to like the music, the production, and the aesthetic quality of Welk’s performance and his music of course.   My dad had exceptional insight into pop culture and all of its weird side-effects on our world.  I loved him for it, and to be honest, I love him for bringing Timothy Carey’s film to my attention.  It may be a film that I will never see, but for sure, I will never smell a Timothy Carey fart.

March 10, 2014 (Tokyo)

March 10, 2014

March 10 is Boris Vian’s birthday.  Today, it’s the date, and I’m going to spend my time today thinking about nothing except Boris Vian.  He is in fact very much part of my life in Japan.    In 1989, when I first went to Tokyo, I was writing short stories, that my wife Lun*na told me that it reminded her of Vian’s fiction.   At the time I sort of knew his name, but the only thing that seemed clear to me was that he was French, and he played French jazz.  Beyond that, I knew nothing of him.  Lun*na took me to Parco Book Center in Shibuya to show the range of Vian titles that were translated into Japanese.  I was amazed that there was a French writer, who was famous in Japan, yet totally unknown in the United States.

It was around this time that I made the decision to start up a press, TamTam Books, to devote itself to the works of Boris Vian.   Mind you that I haven’t read one word from this man, yet my gut reaction was that he was an important figure and more likely a fantastic writer.    Once I came home to Los Angeles, I went to the Downtown Library on 5th and Flower to research Vian’s work, as well as get practical information in starting a business and a publishing house.  The first book I read by Vian is “I Spit on Your Grave.” At first I was confused because there was a quickie - exploration film with the same title.  The narrative was a bit similar, but a totally different context.   I was fascinated with Vian’s interest in American black pop culture, including the jazz music that was being made in the late 40’s. I xeroxed the whole text from “I Spit….” and went home thinking that this will be the source for the first TamTam publication.  Alas, just by chance, I asked the French publisher to send me the Vian novel that he himself translated into English.   His original English title was “I Shall Spit on Your Graves.”  Plus there were some editorial changes in the American mass market edition that came out in the early 60’s.   I restored the title as “I Spit On Your Graves,” and pretty much kept the original Vian translation that he did with an American army buddy at the time.

So that was my first title, the second title I needed was “L’écume des jours.” This is considered to be Vian’s masterpiece.  I had two choices, either re-publish the American or British translation that came out in the 60s, or start from scratch.  I met Brian Harper through the Internet world, and he already wrote a translation of the Vian classic, and sent it off to the Vian estate for approval.  They loved it, and I even liked it more than the other translations.  Also with my edition of the novel, there are end-notes describing the real occurrences that took place during the writing of this novel, as well as some of the more obscure references that are throughout the book.   You could read the original text with no problem, but if you want, you can also read the end notes at a separate time or at the same time while reading the novel.  You choose!   The Brian Harper edition is called “Foam of the Daze.”  

The other editions that came out in the 60s were called “Mood Indigo” in America and the British edition is called “Froth on a Daydream.” Of the two, “Froth is a better title, the American edition had trouble with the poetic title of “L’´ecume des jours, and just used the title of a Duke Ellington song, that is not even mentioned in the novel!  Nevertheless, “Foam of the Daze” is another poetic interpretation of the title, and I am happy with it.  Harper kept the poetry images of the novel intact, and I believe it's a beautiful read.

Over the years, I pretty much published every major Vian title, including his Vernon Sullivan titles “I Spit On Your Graves, ” “To Hell With The Ugly, ” and “The Dead Have No Skin.” All great by the way!

Along with Vian, I also published Serge Gainsbourg.  His short novel “Evguenie Sokolov” and a major biography by Gilles Verlant “Gainsbourg.” The connection between Vian and Gainsbourg is a very strong one.  Vian was one of the first notable figures in France to give Serge attention to his music.   Besides that I also published Guy Debord’s “Considerations on the Assassination of Gérard Lebvoici.” It’s a book about Debord’s friend and publisher, Lebvoici, who was assassinated under mysterious circumstances.  Just right before his death, Lebovici published the French gangster Jacques Mesrine’s “The Death Instinct.” That will be my next and last French literary work I will publish.  “The Death Instinct will come out winter 2014/2015.

Recently I published “In The Words of Sparks… Selected Lyrics, which is edited by Ron and Russell Mael of that band, with an introduction by Morrissey.  First of all, there is not anything better in life than Sparks.  If you don’t like this band, don’t even take the trouble to talk to me.   Having Morrissey taking part in this book is beyond a feverish dream for me.  I love Morrissey, and I love Sparks.  I also love my Lun*na, and I will be publishing her book “A Ring Around The Collar.” After that I am going to retire from publishing and focus on being an internationally known writer.  If I don’t win the Nobel Prize for literature before I turn 80, I will be deeply disappointed and quite bitter over the experience of being looked over by my peers.  Thank you very much for reading and supporting my passion.

March 9, 2014 (Tokyo)

March 9, 2014


At the Spiral in Aoyama Tokyo, they’re did a re-enactment of Bobby Fischer’s famous chess game with Russia’s Boris Spassky entitled “Match of the Century.” The theater piece was done in real time and the match was originally in Reykjavik Iceland.  Fischer was notorious for making demands before he even made a step to Reykjavik.  For instance, he demanded more money, as well as obsessing over the lighting and the cushion in the seat. In fact, he almost forfeited the match, but showed up within hours before the agreed time for the first match.

I know nothing about chess, but I was intrigued by the spectacle surrounding the “Match of the Century.” Tickets were very expensive and there were ten separate performances.  Each performance was for each game, and every performance was conducted in real time.   The original game took place at the height of the Cold War between Russia and the United States. Spassky was supported by the Soviet Empire with all its resources, but Fischer worked totally independently from anyone else.  He was secluded and totally focused on the games once it started.

It is interesting that the re-enactment games are held in Tokyo.  Fischer was a prisoner of sorts when the U.S. provoked his passport, and therefore Fischer went to Japan without the proper documents.  I’m not sure if he was in jail or just ‘stranded’ in Japan, but it has been reports that he married a Japanese woman, before he got citizenship in Iceland.  So in a sense everything here is a circle.  His most renowned game took place in Iceland, and many years later he becomes a citizen of that country.  And here’s another circle of sorts, where the re-enactment is carried out in Tokyo.

For me, chess has to be the most least interesting thing to see, and I couldn’t believe that I actually went to all the performances, all ten games.  The presentation was not that far off from a traditional Noh theater, where time is extended on the stage, or messed about.

To be honest, I found the theater piece boring, but still, I was even intrigued that they even had fake TV cameras on the stage, and they even actually got the chess board as well as the chairs from the actual games.  The only thing that is ‘fake’ is the actors.   But they did hire a Russian actor to play Spassky, and they even went out of their way to find an actor, who at least from a distance, looks exactly like Bobby Fischer.

After ten days straight watching the “Match of the Century, ” I had to lose myself in some other form of activity.  I went to Union Disk to purchase a John Cale CD “Helen of Troy,” which I used to own when I lived in Los Angeles, but somehow got lost over time.  It’s my favorite Cale album, and he remains one of my favorite songwriters as well.  I always admired how he uses external sources for his work.  In a way, he’s very much of a short story writer, who uses non-rock n’ roll narratives to express a horrific world.   I rushed to my favorite bar in Tokyo called Kinema, which is located in Shimokitazawa.  The bar is devoted to Shuji Terayama, and once you enter this wonderful world, you are confronted with books and images by and of Terayama.  Funny enough, and maybe due to the “Match of the Century” I feel like i 'm in a daily theater piece of my choice.  My whole life is a type of re-enactment, but in this case, I don’t know how it ends.

March 8, 2014 (Tokyo)

March 8, 2014

The first Compact Disc demonstrated in front of an audience mostly press and music nerds in 1979.  The excitement must have been intense, because this provided a new avenue of profit for the music record companies.  Few people know this, but the original Compact Disc was my first (and only) solo album “One More For The Road, ” and it was with this specific disc that was played for journalists and music industry people.

I wasn’t there, but of course, was honored that they chose my album as a demonstration to expose the full dynamics of the CD format.  “One For The Road” was very much a conceptual album.   Originally it was a double vinyl set, but I think the CD medium is ideal for my album.   The music is basically one track and it lasts for 80 minutes, which are the correct amount of music for the CD.  My label at the time, Philips, arranged for me to obtain a full orchestra as well as a Rumba band from Cuba to back me up.  I played guitar, baritone sax, and electric organ on the album.

The concept of the album is a narrative where I tell my girlfriend at the time that I want to make love to her for the last time.  What I told her was “one more for the road, ” which at that moment and time I decided was a perfect title for a song and album.  The first ten minutes of the record are actual love-making noise and sounds - and then eventually you hear me start up the car, and I go off on a road trip.   It has been commented that the German band Kraftwerk either ripped me off or as an homage, recorded what many consider their classic album “Autobahn. ”

I never was upset, and in fact, was honored that the German Fab Four recorded this album.   Sadly my record was never a success, and both the vinyl and CD version of the album are very rare.   The last time I looked at Discogs, no one seems to want or to buy the album.  Which is a pity, because now, I am forced to do what I was born to do - and that is to write.   I started off being a publisher of obscure French literature translated into English, but alas, like my recording career, very little interest in my books or work.   So, after working at a bookstore, I made the decision to throw caution against the wind (which on a windy day it often hits me right in the face) and focus on writing.   But I must say with great pride, that my album, one can say, changed the entire music industry - for that one brief moment on March 8 in Amsterdam.

March 7, 2014

March 7, 2014

Over the bus sound system in Tokyo, they were playing Maurice Ravel’s “Bolero as I was heading towards a Piet Mondrian retrospective at the Meguro Museum of Modern Art.  As it is raining, I can’t really can’t see clearly out of the bus window due to the heating system in the bus makes the windows foggy.  I use my hand as a window wiper, and with the music, I go back and forth accordingly to its seductive rhythm.  Since it is nighttime, the mixture of neon lighting and the headlights of the coming traffic give a visual that is blurry, with respect that all the edges from objects, including pedestrians into an expressionist painting.  So unlike Mondrian!   I just wonder if he was on this bus at this very moment, what his thoughts would be.

Once I get off my bus stop, I realize that it was a colossal mistake, due that it's freezing and I’m not wearing the proper clothing for this type of weather.  It’s wet, and I shouldn’t be wearing a lightweight v-neck sweater and open sandals.  What was I thinking?  My need to wear what I think is fashionable is always a major problem for me, with great respect to that day’s or night’s weather.  I have a tendency to ignore whatever the temperature is or if it's raining, snowing, or sunshine.  I wear what I always want to wear and damn everything else!  I think i 'm trying to go for a Jean Marais “Orpheus” look, for tonight’s opening at the Meguro Museum.  Once I got in, I realized by the way people who were looking at me, that I appeared to look stupid. One should not go to a Mondrian opening looking soaked and for god sake wearing open sandals.  What was I thinking?

Since I was by myself, I walked around the gallery looking at the paintings with a profound expression on my face.  I don’t normally have an opinion on Mondrian’s work, but before I checked out of the house tonight, I practiced in the mirror various expressions while looking at a painting.  For sure I just wanted to look smart, and if possible, handsome.  But it's really weird that how you look at yourself in a mirror is quite different from how people look at you.

Nevertheless, the exhibition was excellent.  My life is just so chaotic, so actually looking at a Mondrian painting gives me a sense of peace or security.  The same goes for Ravel’s “Bolero” because musically it goes towards a certain distance, and doesn’t let you off till the end of the piece.  What I like about art is one that leads the viewer/listener to a plateau and lets you hang-out before you go back to your messy and unorganized life.

 Afterwards, feeling cold, wet, and not-that-hot looking, I went to an Asakusa music hall, where they had a tribute to French song and dance man Philippe Clay.  I always loved him, because he was so unusual looking, and tall.  He’s renowned for doing songs by Boris Vian and Serge Gainsbourg, but somehow never got the proper attention in the United States.  In other words, he went off the map.  Another artist/writer I like is Georges Perec, because his writing is very formalized in that it is a puzzle of sorts.  Like Mondrian, he was a self-contained visionary who sees the world as one vast workable structure of some sort.  Sadly I am totally the opposite.  I’m reminded of that fact with the feeling of cold rain water smacking against my toes, due to my open sandals, on this very rainy night out in Tokyo.

March 6, 2014

March 6, 2014

In Tokyo, there is a film and literary festival based around the Zapruder film of the assassination of John F. Kennedy will be held on November 22.  The festival will include the films by William S. Burroughs that were made with Gysin, Sommerville and Balch, Francis Coppola’s “The Conversation, ” Alan J. Pakula’s “The Parallax View, ” and Bruce Conner’s “Report” among other titles.  There will also be readings and conferences regarding the Zapruder film.  Of course anyone who goes to this festival must be frisked, x-rayed, patted down, and turn in their library card, so one can check out what book titles were lent out and etc.  The highlight of the festival will be a live re-enactment of the Kennedy shooting that will take place in Shibuya, on Meji-Dori, which is a large street in the city, but still small with respect to size and width when you compare it to Dallas.   But it's not the accuracy that’s important, but the feeling behind it. 

The National Noh theater will be doing their own version of the Kennedy assassination on their stage in Roppongi by slowing the whole narrative to seven hours.   Viewers are allowed to move around the stage so they can position themselves to see better and also get multi-views of the incident that is probably one of the most significant and horrifying moments in my life.  Also it is reported that the English band The Human League will be doing a special performance of their song “Seconds” which deals with the time-frame of the actual killing of President Kennedy.  The price of ticket is ¥22,000 or for Americans who show their passport, a discount ticket for $22. 

For 51 years, I have been haunted by what happened that afternoon on November 22, and now I want to go to a festival to purge all the negative feelings I had since the death of our President.  JG Ballard tried to do this with his great work of fiction “The Atrocity Exhibition” but there is still a need to face the tragedy head-on, in a sense we all need to get into a car and smash through all the illusions that were built up from that specific date.  They’re even getting a Beatles tribute band to acknowledge the innocence and the need for entertainment during the early 1960s.  There is also the theory that the Kennedy assassination started the 60s as if it was a flame near a sea of gasoline. 

I often feel like Cyrano de Bergerac, with a big nose, but while reading Ring Lardner’s great short story collection “You Know Me Al,” I realize that the illusion is very much part of life, without it the imagination would be useless.  Perhaps all of this was only a dream, and we’re sharing the same images over and over again.   The Zapruder film may be the last great “American” film ever made. 

March 5, 2014

March 5, 2014

I'm at the Lion Cafe in Shibuya, which is in a perfect location, among its sexual slime of love hotels, relaxation clubs, and the water trade.  Here one can avoid the outer world to lose one self into the exquisite world of recorded classical music.  Volume is not so loud but loud enough to drift into a blissful state.  They don't allow photos to be taken and rightfully so. How can an image penetrate the magic that is the Lion Cafe?

When you walk in one notice the mixture of Rocco and post romantic setting of the coffee shop.  It was launched in 1926, and I doubt they have changed the decor over the years.  All the tables and chairs are facing two massive speakers and various turntables as well as a pair of CD players.  The speakers are built-in wooden cabinets in between two poles with a bust of Beethoven's face facing the coffee drinkers.  Along the bust is two decorative candle holders and at its end are two electric fans.  The building is old and looks very much like it was built in the 1920s.

The tables and red velvet chairs seem antiquated as well, but still in good condition.  The only drawback is the smokers that come here.  The smoke lingers like a needy ex-lover you just hope that they will go away.

Overall the lighting is on the dark side, but one can still have enough light to read.    But the best thing to do is meditate and allow yourself to be pulled into its seductive charms.  Before the waiters take out a record to play, they softly make an announcement of what they are about to play.  Servers are in black and they move around the cafe like ninjas in the jungle.  They take your order for coffee in a low volume voice.  Talking, even when ordering drinks, is reduced to a bare minimum.  

The windows facing the street are frosted, so one can only see the dim lighting of the outside world.  No one outside can look in.  It is just like a church but instead of worshiping Jesus or Buddha, one admires the speakers.  On the middle of the woofers, it says "3D Sound System."

The only sound I can hear besides the music is the sound of pen on paper. Behind me is a writer looking over his manuscript.  It's in Japanese of course and his writing paper is horizontal with tiny squares where he writes his kanji in.  I just wonder what he's writing and even more important will he dedicate his book to the Lion Cafe.

 In my notebook, that is only devoted to writings that took place a the Lion Cafe, is focused on the fantasy of the actor Dean Stockwell working with the great Italian poet and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini.  I imagine them working together for some reason, due to the nature of passion spent on modern times.  One of my favorite novels by Pasolini is “”Ragazzi di vita, ” which can be translated to “Boys of Life” which could be read as “hustlers."   I imagine Dean playing a Pasolini character as he roams around Rome to look for trade or adventure.   But the way I would write it, the location would be in Tokyo, and to be more exact the same area where the Lion Cafe is located. 

 I often like to hang out in this neighborhood, because one, the girls here are cute, and two, the mixture of neon lighting for the water business as well as the nervous middle-aged men that haunt this location are an inspiration for me.   Yet, while sitting here, and listening to J.S. Bach’s “The Well-Tempered Clavier Books 1 and 2, ” I find myself approaching the entrance or gateway to a depression.   All of sudden the writer behind me got up from his table, and whispered in my ear, “I wrote this narrative already bud.” He then sat down, gently and in low volume, ordered another cup of coffee, and then started to work on his manuscript.  

I left the cafe, with a heavy heart, and thought of Max Jacob’s great collection of poems, written sometime in the late teens, “The Dice Box” and thinking that it always picked up my spirit, but alas, being in Tokyo, it will be very difficult to find a copy here.  Nevertheless I headed towards the Shibuya station to locate another setting, where I can write, think, and be something that is not me at this moment. 

March 4, 2014

March 4, 2014

In my heart, I felt like Nero when he was appointed title princeps iuventutis (head of the youth).  But then again, I have always had a big head with respect to yours truly.  As I am in Tokyo now, I ran across a friend who collects American cars, and is an enormous fan of Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, and today, he will get one of his custom-made cars.  He has a garage outside of Tokyo, where he keeps his Roth collection.  The most famous car that he owns is the 1961 “Beatnik Bandit” hot rod.  The most unusual aspect of this car that makes it really unique, besides being one-of-a-kind is that instead of a steering wheel, it has a joy stick.  How one can drive this car in excessive speed is beyond me, and when my friend offered me a ride in the grand “Beatnik Bandit, ” I was looking for an excuse to remove myself from his presence and his damn car.  But my brain didn’t work fast enough.  Also amazingly enough, the car had no seat belts, and I was just too polite to ask him about it.  Nevertheless I got in the car with him, and like Batman leaving the Batcave, we speeded off to the two lane blacktop in Tokyo, that is more a residential street than anything else.   I wish I could report what I saw, but I pretty much kept my eyes shut, because every time I opened them, it seems like we were approaching a moving object or an innocent bystander, who god forbid, was in the way of the “Beatnik Bandit.”  

My worst nightmare is when we approached the Shibuya street crossing in front of the station, but luckily the light was green and he speeded through Center Gai, which I thought was only a pedestrian area, but my driver didn’t seem to care.  We stopped in front of Tokyu Hands.  I looked at him and he seemed to be a drunk John Garfield on his last hour on this planet.  I told him that I had to get something in the store, and he should just go on without me.  He, being very respectful, said he will wait for me.  I left his car with wobbly legs and made the decision to run away.  I couldn’t deal with the Pearl White experience of maybe facing death around the corner.   I snuck around the building, and ran into Union Disk’s basement.  There I felt safe, and not only that, but found a French EP by Barney Wilen.  But as far as I know, he may be still waiting for me in Shibuya with the damn “Beatnik Bandit. ”

March 3, 2014 (Tokyo)

March 3, 2014

After working on my memoir project, I took a walk in the rain. Today is Bobby Driscoll’s birthday, who was a friend of my parents. I don’t have a strong memory of him, due that I was a little child when he was around the household. But his presence was felt strongly. What I hear about him is mostly from my mom, who was very fond of him. It’s funny that he was the source material for Disney’s “Peter Pan” and in a sense growing up was a huge pain for him. Not as a man, but the way the entertainment industry treats its children, who work in the film world. They always want to freeze time, yet a human can’t remain what he was, he or she can only be “is.” 

I’m consistently fighting a depressing that lurks underneath my skin, and the weather today, which is stormy, pretty much fits the mood, as if it was a tight suit on a mannequin. I react, but I can’t really express myself. The one thing that makes me feel happy is that there is a Jean Harlow retrospective at Film Forum here in Tokyo. They called her the “Blonde Bombshell” in fact that is the title of the film festival focusing on her work. Tonight they will be showing “Hell’s Angels” double-billed with “Red Dust.” Escaping into the theater to see a film, even though it's a movie I have seen over and over again, is somewhat a spiritual experience for me. It’s very much like a “Last Year at Marienbad” experience where I try to remember the film, but when I do see it again, it seems to be a totally new experience. Certain films work that way for me. It is like going into a theater is similar to walking into a thick fog where you can’t see your hand in front of your eyes, yet you know it is there. Jean Harlow comes in and out of focus in my life, but it is always behind the fog. Perhaps due that she died many years before I was born, yet, her presence (like Driscoll) still affects me even now. Seeing her work in Tokyo may seem to be a strange occurrence, but the city in how it resolves and moves is a mystery as well. 

Asger Jorn, one of my faves, is an artist and writer who I come upon usually by accident. I never think of him, yet once in awhile I come upon a book by him or perhaps something on COBRA, the art movement that he was part of. Their working method was based on spontaneity, which takes the form that I devote my life to. To make plans is to presume one is going from A to B, but in my experience life throws many surprises on that road. It is preferable to be prepared for rapid changes in one’s life. So yes, I will go see the Harlow films, but I won’t even look at the schedule, I will just show up, pay my ticket, and perhaps walk right in the middle of the film. 

On the way to the theater, I ran upon KFC, where one can smell the frying death that was once a chicken or a selection of chicken parts, made in the same sense as Dr. Frankenstein making his monster. I hold my nose, and faced my future without a thought in my head.

Alain Resnais Interview 1

March 2, 2014 (Tokyo)

March 2, 2014 (Tokyo)

Last night I saw a performance of the ballet “The Loves of Mars and Venus” originally choreographed by John Weaver in London in 1717.   Oddly enough, this is the first time that Tokyo had this ancient ballet performed in one of their newer theaters.  It is thought to be the first ballet that conveyed a narrative of sorts.  Although at its time, the ballet was popular, yet, the original music doesn’t exist anymore.  In 1955, Rivierside Records’ Orrin Keepnews commissioned one of the artists on his label Thelonious Monk, to write an updated version of the ballet.  Keepnews changed the location from London to Tokyo, and now the ballet conveys the Great Fire of Meireki, which took place in Edo (now known as Tokyo) in 1657, and it is reported that 100,000 people died from this fire.  Mostly due to the structures that were made by wood and paper, and all of them were close together with very little or no space between the premises. Ironically Keepnews participated in the bombings of Japan during the latter months of World War 2. Whatever there is a connection between the bombings and the fire in Keepnews’ thoughts, are unknown to us. 

Monk based some of the melodies on Kurt Weill’s music for the “The Three-Penny Opera, ” which gives it a strong European feel to the piece.  As close as possible, they kept the Weaver choreography, but surely over time there must have been many changes with respect to the dancing for this ballet.  Like folk music, ballet too can change from time-to-time, and in this case from century to century.

For the current production in Tokyo, they based the sets on drawings by Dr. Seuss, which gave it a whimsical touch but with some poison mixed in as well.  The odd juxtaposition of the different elements in the ballet makes it a flawed, but a very interesting experience.  My friend Jennifer came with me and she thought it was ‘just’ OK, but I believe it was a bit more than that.  Overall I liked how Keepnews' made this giant leap into the ballet world, in fact, how can a man who started an amazing jazz label, as well as producing some of the greatest music of the 20th century got involved in such a vision.  War has often led one to major disappointments, and perhaps his experience as a bomber in World War 2 somehow led him to do this ballet, and perhaps seeing or being involved in the horrors that took place in Japan at the time, sort of see this work as a positive thing to place on this planet.  But then again, who knows?  After the performance Jennifer and I went to Reco-Fan in Shibuya to see if I can locate some obscure recordings by The Shadows.  Lately I have this need to collect recordings by Tony Meehan, who was their drummer and was a major player in the U.K. before The Beatles hit it big.   I have a huge fascination with the world right before the Fab Four hit it big time.  In Japan, as well.   Probably the most important thing that happened for Japanese pop music is the appearance of The Ventures, who toured here in 1961.  After that tour, many Japanese young men got their first electric guitar.

I’m always impressed how culture goes back and forth between the West and the East.  Tomorrow I’m having lunch with Kiichiro who is translating a novel by David Goodis, who I believe will be the perfect fit for contemporary Japanese readers.