Lecture, approximativement 40 minutes, projection vidéo hd, son stéréo
Ce projet est une étape de travail ayant donné lieu à la création de la lecture performée 景色/keshiki.
Captation le 24 janvier 2020, 25 rue des boutiques, Caen, France
I’m writing to you from a place that may not exists. Half way of here and there. A “here” and a “there” I can’t define. I don’t think I’ve lost my way. But I don’t know yet. I don’t know what and how to do. I don’t even know where to start
Nor which direction to follow. Is there even a direction to follow ? I don’t really want to come home. It’s not I feel better here It’s just that it’s never simple never simple to walk on the same roads than the ones who stayed. The ones they are waiting for stories. Stories stuck somewhere in the throat, somewhere between desires, memories and reality. Crossing the bridge Opening eyes and see reality befalling. I could be silent. Maybe I should
Maybe all the people they come back should remain silent. Not looking for words, not looking for ideas, not looking for anything else than to come back. Maybe the travel Maybe it should stay in a silence and never be told again. Never be seen. Maybe we should just let it have been without trying to grab it again. He calls me at sunset FIRST DAY He calls me at sunset (at least that’s what I picture) FIRST DAY FIRST DAY
He calls me at sunset to tell me FIRST DAY it was raining all day and he couldn’t film anything. FIRST DAY it was raining all day and he couldn’t film anything. He tells me he has time to ask himself for what he came for. I I believe he doesn’t know.
I believe he sometimes runs away to try to know who he is beyond where he comes from, beyond automatism from his life and culture. One night he told me he was never quite sure that every step he took one day could be something to questioned the next day
So I listen to him when he doesn’t really know anymore. I imagine him. SECOND DAY I imagine him. SECOND DAY I can see the light through paper walls. SECOND DAY His house warming up slowly. SECOND DAY His house warming up slowly. Breakfast : omelet, bacon, mushrooms,
Onigiri and green tea on the small room floor. Into the light. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t do anything. I’ve got the feeling to find him in the exact same situation than when we met few years before in Normandy. He had spent an entire winter inside his room,
Looking to the course of the sun without doing anything else. He will tell me some days later : “I wonder if i didn’t come to Japan only to live the life I already live.” I’ll answer him that it is a valid hypothesis
And that it would be worth to make it a certainty. Road 60. Road 106 Orange road. Road 437. Road 4. Coastal path. Rock arch in the bay. Citrus scent. Rusted rails trolleys on the slopes between the trees. Dry soil. Former rice paddies cover with bamboos. Hidden solar panels farms.
Dam that no longer irrigate rice fields. Docked boat. Mist and rainwater. Sun and sunset. Birds. A lot. Silence. A few engines. Far away. The sea. The sea. The sea at the end of each street, each road, each slope The forest. The forest. The forest at the top of each hill.
He tells me he’s looking for faces in empty streets. FIFTH DAY He tells me he’s looking for faces in empty streets. FIFTH DAY for words in a language FIFTH DAY for words in a language he doesn’t know how to read nor to understand.
He tells me he doesn’t know where to start. He tells me about harbors and fishermen. He tells me about mountains lost on sea. He tells me about birds and orange scent. In his words I can hear fascination and loneliness arising. Running away from certainties,
He never knew what to look for? But he is keeping walking on world roads. He would have loved to be on of these wanderer monks called “cloud and water” in Japan. But as he always want to understand everything. He stays put, with a heavy heart. I could sreamin silent.
But there is something pushing into me. Is it because i deeply want to live it again ? The desire to believe it really happened. It is real somewhere, Into a time space that is always escaping us and that we always want to reach. Is it the fear of death ?
The fear of emptiness that lead us to tell stories to give ourselves a thickness ? Whatever we have to come back home one day and instead of shutting up and preserving my experience I’m trying to find words. Then my travel is no longer. It becomes a story. A story I need to find shape to. The tops. Kano. Monju. Genmei. Dake. Chokai. Shiraki. Omi. Inoyama. Climbing up. Trying to open hermitages doors. Enter. Sitting for a while. Being lost into the mountain. Looking for someone.
To see nobody. He tells me traveling alone NINTH DAY He tells me traveling alone is not like doing a transatlantic NINTH DAY or a solitary physical challenge. NINTH DAY He doesn’t say it’s more complicated NINTH DAY He doesn’t say it’s more complicated but the sportsman knows where to go.
He does not. He tells me he has to give a great power to the luck. He tells me he feels like a fisherman. But a very bad one Who doesn’t know where is the fish schoal he’s looking for. A fisherman who could only trust luck on a vast and empty sea. “I have to be patient” he says. “There are some rules, some clue to ease the task” but the fish don’t bite.” “I have to be patient”
He says. “As a fisherman and not to let the pressure, stress nor fear taking me.” “I have to be calm and to keep looking for. To keep to wait for the fish to bite. Somewhere.” Curved roof, blue tiled house. Turquoise water. Mountains above the sea. On the horizon. Fishing boats.
Infinite ballet. Walking on the shore. Ringing the bell of the local sanctuary Drinking green tea. Going on road 4. Bike. Basking in hot water at Riyuzaki onsen. Having dinner at a restaurant in front of Agenosho bay. Kites in the sky. The sunset. Alone in the huge dinning hall. Waiting.
He tells me to continue to look for is not easy. THIRTEENTH DAY He tells me to continue to look for is not easy. He’s got trouble to get up THIRTEENTH DAY and to go hunt pictures he can’t really picture. THIRTEENTH DAY and to go hunt pictures he can’t really picture.
He tells me, of course he always have some king of idea, he follows paths that appear to be dead ends. He tells me he still pushes forward, on the road there is always a chance to find something that quicken the heart. But with time the eyes begin to dull.
It’s not necessarily bad. One have to see beyond the tip of the nose. One have to look beyond easy and dummy exoticism. To try to find the other, to try to find life, even if it don’t shows. Before I hang up he tells me what he is most afraid of
Is to not know where to look anymore, to not have any clue no more. To recognize a hill. To recognize a bay. A crossroad. A road. To recognize a locality name. Buying raw fish to the old man of Towa. Trying to communicate. Meeting people. Smiles. Living without furniture on the floor.
The sea. Always, everywhere, blue and clear. Closed curtains. At night. Lights through windows. At day. Some fishermen. Couples spade. Gardens. Saw. In a cemetery some people are singing beating rhythm on a wooden toad. Life. Again. And always. Stories are beautiful, they are transposable, transportable. It’s an event you can live and live again
As many time as we want. But during that transposition, stories lose something : they make reality (that they had to describe in first place) lose its essence? The reality intimate reality, not the mathematical one, what is it, if not what we can only live once, What we can never catch up with,
What we can never measure ? Reality is what it is, how it is, without judgment. Stories on the other hand are the opposite. they use life as a material and transform it. They are only stories we made up, a vague set of ideas, judgments and views about something that had no meaning, intrinsically.
They also are the desperate try to give a meaning, to build something. Stories are the mythology of everything. What comes to end the dizziness caused by reality. They are curtains hiding the face of a too powerful god to be seen as he is. Because he is too infinite, too impenetrable for our brains
Of beings so definitely finished. Reality that has no meaning is not approachable for human beings. And that’s maybe why stories are born. To help us understand, to give us illusion to master something, to make us stand the life, to offer us a meaning, something tangible we could circumscribe. Something we could handle
To build our identities, our relationships with reality. Stories are maybe what makes us truly human, with all the losses, pain, lack of understanding and permanent questioning that come with. Stories are veils but a veil that help us build ourselves. A prison, but made of lace. A breadcrumb that allows us to move forward
Having the certainty to be. TWENTY-FIRST DAY I have no news from him. TWENTY-FIRST DAY I guess he is looking for something. TWENTY-FIRST DAY I guess he is looking for something. I guess he is waiting for something to bite the hook.
He would tell me later he got lost in time, or rather in nothingness. “I didn’t know what to do anymore, the wait that seemed to me few days ago the perfect ally for making my movie, was now a sterile land on which I was lost. $
I was waiting for something to come but nothing would pierce the surface of a daily life that was now a calm sea. Is it his daily life that became a calm sea TWENTY-SIXTH DAY Is it his daily life that became a calm sea
Or his eyes they can no longer see something ? TWENTY-SIXTH DAY or his eyes they can no longer see something ? He thinks he is drowning in the wait but he is just lost in his own desires, because he wants to do something. He is forcing
He is pulling like a madman. He is afraid to come back empty handed and he doesn’t notice he dries up himself. One don’t earn anything while wanting something that is not ready yet to go out of shadows. Learning words. Learning names. understanding words. Understanding names. Sapporo beers.
Seven Stars cigarettes. Bar Kinkio Tei. Trying to communicate. Communicating, a little. Gestures. Other words. Meeting someone. Speaking. Trying. Again. To find words. Common gestures. Finding someone. Meeting someone we know. Waving him. Going back to Riyuzaki onsen. Despite everything looks the same. Finding ourselves talking. Naked. In water. With friends. Looking at the stars.
Becoming sentimental. He calls me and tells me he is sorry he was silent. TWENTY-NINTH DAY He calls me and tells me he is sorry he was silent. He tells me he meet more people everyday. TWENTY-NINTH DAY He tells me he meet more people everyday. He’s going out of the desert,
Slowly, following his own rhythm, thanks to smile and hand held out. He tells me he had a coffee with Ishida-san and Fukumoto-sensei. The coffee became sake in the big crowded kitchen. I understand something has changed. He tells me he meet more people everyday.
He can now entering houses. He tells me the island is opening up. He tells me he shoots less. Even if he can’t understand the rules occurring, he is starting to understand there nothing to look for, nothing to circumscribe. He is starting to understand
His camera is not a hunting tool, he is not a pictures hunter, there is nothing to hunt, nothing to capture. Not even eternity. Anyway tonight, he forget it in the car, his camera. He tells me he’s happy. He tells me there’s maybe nothing to tell.
He tells me he’s here and forget the rest. The movie. Even his own will. He tells me there will be no pictures of the big crowded kitchen and he’s ok with it. Some moments can Stay only for ourselves. Well of course, the monk “cloud and water”, practicing asceticism on the paths, would maybe tell me to stop, to not invent stories anymore. Not for me nor for the other. He would maybe tell me it’s not useful to dream, to made up anything.
You just have to look at reality as it is and to be, always. He would maybe tell me there is nothing to grab, nothing to tame. The veil is not useful, you just have to say “yes” to the reality which is only what it is, one, unique, non-transposable, non-transportable.
He would tell me stories are just distortions of reality and we never live the story. Never. We only fantasized stories and then we miss out on our whole life. He tells me there is nothing new under the rising sun but for him everything has a new meaning under its light.
THIRTY-FOURTH DAY but for him everything has a new meaning under its light. THIRTY-FOURTH DAY He is not looking for anything anymore. He is not waiting anymore. He doesn’t want no more. He is only living the life he already had. The life that is here and only waits for him.
He tells me there is something heady when you forget everything in the morning, when you take your time, when you do nothing else than to be naked on the floor and be there. He tells me it’s a strange feeling, a terrible, wonderful serene dizziness.
He tells me the frontier between taking time and losing it becomes blurrier and blurrier. He tells me he could stay here forever And dissolve into solar rays. He tells me he could forget everything. He tells me he could forget his name. He tells me he could forget his clan.
He tells me he could forget human rights. Peace, moral, good and bad, his poetry and the stories he makes up. He could then become what he was looking for : the wandering, the uprooting, the lack of connection with the story he always invented,
That has always been invented for him. He tells me he could become a salt crystal on the shore. Nothing would happen anymore and everything would and nobody including himself would wait something from him. He is silent I imagine him. Grain. Of salt on the shore. Shouts. Of kites. Fish.
Piercing the surface. Water reflection. A kite is fishing. Eating the fish. Faces. Faces. And. Gestures. A boat. Cuts the sea in two. An old lady. Kimono. Walks. Every day at the same time on the same path. Festival. Of spring. Sake under cherry blossoms. Truck. Fish delivery. Wind. In bamboos. Shouts. Birds Harbor. Night.
Cats. Into spaces between houses. Sheet metal that the wind makes vibrate. Five o’clock AM. Ferry engine. Eleven o’clock AM. Noon. Five o’clock PM. Music on loudspeakers all around the island. False look of English national anthem. Few. Cars. Loud “hellos”. From fishermen. Kitchen. Maki-chan deep fries the fish. Iced tea in pitcher.
Restaurant in the hills a family exiled from Tokyo. Children songs in school. Ishida-san’s orchard. Good harvest. Grains. Of salt on an asteroid. Shouts. Of hundred of kites. Fish. Piercing the surface. Of the sun. He calls me to tell me, of course, FORTY-FIRST DAY He calls me to tell me, of course,
He didn’t dissolve FORTY-FIRST DAY nor stopped to invent stories. FORTY-FIRST DAY nor stopped to invent stories. He tells me he won’t have enough pictures, not enough sounds, not enough stories to make a movie but it’s not important. He tells me :
I’m writing to you from a place that may not exists. Half way from a “here” and a “there” that I finally may have apprehended. I want to come back home. To tell you my story. Of course I didn’t succeed to reach the serenity of the monk “cloud and water”
But i guess it’s not that important because I’m not him. And maybe stories are my need to create link, to create meaning. I don’t think this is a worst way than an other to live ones life. Maybe I just have to simply be aware that reality is distorted in stories,
That stories are just what they are : an interpretation, a simple interpretation of life. I believe we have to stay humble in front of the reality that doesn’t need us to be. It should not be rushed, not to want to… Not to want to make a story before it comes by itself.
And my work then, is only to be vigilant, to wait for a story to run aground at my feet to put it in the vase, like the practitioner of the way of flowers. Nothing else. Walking in the world, navigating on the oceans, knowing a lot of paths, opening some more
And making stories to come closer together. To be together for a moment as we call the one we love during a travel just to tell ourselves. And if I cross the road of the monk “cloud and water” one day, maybe would we be able to look at each other with a smile
Knowing that on both sides we are walking on roads that are only ours.