illustrator's block

just a sketch i did when i was in a fit of the illustrator's equivalent to writer's block. enjoy

aka

in japan, it seems like the criteria for making things sacred is hanging other things from those things. trees and temples have shimenawa ropes, cell phones have one piece charms, and Jizo and other similar creatures have red bibs. the bib is hung by a grieving parent to represent their agony over the loss of a child. to read more on this little guy and why i think he's so damned cool (literally), check this post out:

http://benjicarpey.blogspot.com/2010/12/jizo-patron-saint-of-being-totally-boss.html

i drew this after i saw a cartoon cat wearing a jizo bib in kabukicho with Nats and Nick. i was walking quite fast at the time.

P.S. the word "aka" means red

visual journalism in shinjuku

I recently spent the afternoon in a commercial district called Shinjuku. i did these smug drawings. they are not meant to look finished, or even aesthetically pleasing for the most part. rather, they're just exercises, and expressions of being related to where at the moment i was.

sometimes i just like to observe. i don't really take a lot of pictures, because i figure that while most people fill memory cards up with every step they take, i like to just kinda explore. i have nothing against it, and i'm really glad my friends all do this, if for no other reason than that it gives me the luxury of not having to worry about doing it myself. i know it may be less personal in this sense, but when i go to an extravagant temple or a drum & bass club at 3:30 AM in shibuya, i don't want to be experiencing it through the lens of a camera. i feel like if i'm too worried about recording this moment and saving it for later, then that very compulsion stunts my excitement for what's happening in the present. instead, my thought process is a bit more detached: "so this is what i'm doing in the spring semester of my junior year in college.. i'm in shinjuku right now.. cool... who knows where i'll be in a year? i bet i'll be having fun.. it's a nice day out... yeah... word..."

kind of like, there needs to be no proof i chilled in shinjuku that day. i know i was there. and as for remembering my travels years down the road, thats why i write and draw. much like the photographer, my actions are the result of a compulsion. i couldn't tell you where it comes from, i just know it's something i gotta do sometimes. it's my way of becoming intimate with the space i'm interacting with, while simultaneously preventing myself from getting too caught up in making sure everybody (most importantly myself) knows i was there. after all, as you'll read in some of the passages below, it takes a lot more motivation even just to scribble something down than it does to push a button. and i am a lazy boy

the ikegami affect

Funny thing, when you're flooded with memories of things that haven't even happened yet. I know I won't be ready to go back by the time the sakuras start blooming. Truth of the matter is that I feel more at home here than anywhere else in the world. Sure, there are pros and cons to any society, but from as far back as I can remember, i've always felt a strange disconnect from the place I grew up, like it never wanted me there, and I didn't want to be there either. Like it was a dead end. I take things for granted there. And yet, none of that seems to happen here. But in the mean time, sometimes I feel like I'm going insane.

Ever hear someone talk about the acceleration of time? I never used to believe in it until I came here. The days are going by faster than I can even think, and trust me, I'm thinking pretty damned fast. It's like I can feel the minutes and hours rushing by me in a stream of metaphysical energy I always thought you either had to be a physicist or a hippy to understand.

I know this completely contradicts the last post I put up, but I currently feel quite sad. Or perhaps it's not so much sadness I'm experiencing, but rather a reluctance to submit. I know it's completely fucking self indulgent to acknowledge this, but I think that's kind of okay right now. In Eastern philosophy, this emotion is called resistance. Resistance is what happens when one's mind tires to displace the discomfort of being overcome by an unpleasant sensation, be it sadness, fatigue, laziness, regret, and just about any other negative emotion known to man.

I am well-versed in the volumes of resistance. In my short time on this earth, i've experienced just about every kind of resistance there is. Pangs of jealousy; stagnant laziness; burning lust; these are a few of my favorite things. But right now, none of that is what's bothering me. Rather, I feel the time that I spend here slipping through the cracks of my fingers like sand. It seems that with every second I spend in toyko, time gains momentum, my mind seemingly doing so with it. All I want to do is swallow this city whole, but it appears to be swallowing me instead.

Thing is, if you do enough stupid things in life (which I have), you learn to negotiate with this little devil. Monks deal with it by meditating until it literally hurts, and starving themselves of any desire whatsoever. Personally, I've always thought desire is way too much fun to just toss in the cosmic wastebasket, but seeing as how desire and resistance are close friends I am ever aware that if I choose to indulge one, I walk a paper-thin line of being consumed by the other. But hell, I like it that way. It keeps me out of my comfort zone. Like if I'm not on the verge of totally losing it at any moment, I must not be doing something right.

To put this all in perspective, think of resistance as like a rubik's cube that is constantly shifting its own algorithms, or a maze with multiple levels that's in a constant state of flux. You think you've conquered it, but then you gotta find another way out. But if you know the way it works, then you can figure out how to deal. In my experience, there is a common thread that ties all forms of it together: when you feel resistance, you feel completely overwhelmed.

When they say this place is overstimulating, they aren't kidding. Every time I step off of the train I am simultaneously coerced and enticed to participate in the sea of insidiously seductive consumerism which this metropolis seems to thrive on. My five senses fall victim to a hostile takeover, and I just let it happen. Sometimes I try to fight it, and thus the resistance is born, and more times than not, the higher power known to only some as TOKYU wins.

But to quote a friend, if you look at it this way, then there's just “no fucking horizon”. See, coming here was never about being a tourist. I've done that before, and yeah, it was totally dope. But this time I entered the country with one goal in mind: to see if I could live here and not only function, but prosper in a place that has such an incredible amount to offer; so much, in fact, that at times it can apparently be too much to handle. With this said, I have recently realized that if I'm going to pursue this goal, then it is essential to abide by a golden principle I had taken solace in the first time I was given this much freedom when I started college. It's pretty simple: consumerism is a hollow endeavor.

No matter how many different rice cakes you taste, how many mild sevens you smoke, how many naruto phone charms you purchase, and how much Kirin Lager you drink, you will never be full. We think of ourselves as humans, but we are really just hungry ghosts. We wander this plane of existence in search of something, never really knowing what that something is. And so we buy and spend and consume to try and fill the hole we have created by buying and spending and consuming, never stopping to consider, literally, where in the hell we are.

And I am no different. In fact, I am way worse in that my prerogative in life is to keep my romanticizing right lobe running on full blast all the time, making it virtually impossible for my mind to gain footing on any kind of solid mental ground. Think of tokyo as the gasoline to my fire.

But lucky for me, I'm a stubborn bastard. The fact of the matter is that as much as I'm predisposed to fall into the consumerist paradigm, I am even more prone to rebel against it. Call me a masochist, but I take a kind of sick pleasure in watching myself squirm as I refuse my commercial suiters with every fiber of my being. This is called right action; to force oneself to take action against a negative situation, even if one knows there may not be any immediate payoff.

However, because this goes against my natural tendencies, it confuses me, and reduces my capacity to think clearly to that of a monkey's. Soon I am no longer even a hungry ghost, but rather just a beast, too disoriented to even think about the fact that I only have a month and a half left here, which is the very thought that started this cosmic temper tantrum in the first place.

But I've done this before. It's the same story with a different title, published in Asia this time instead of the States. I know what happens at the end, and instead of becoming entrapped in my own existential “writer's block”, I think i'll just take right action and see what happens during the climax of this familiarly unpleasant arc. After all, I think that I can have enough faith that the resolution will lead to a decent epilogue. It always does.