The Joyful Privilege of Being Alive
"Why don’t I check it right now?" I suggest, sitting down in one of the office chairs. It’s still sweltering outside, so I am in fact purchasing a few moments of AC cooled comfort. Liu goes back to work while I pull out my laptop. I find the email she sent and that I had't yet answered, and that she has just reminded me of. Liu is a photographer who also works in the Koganecho office. She is creating a photobook about Koganecho, the other day she came by to interview me and take photos. Her style, like other good photographers I know, is so chill and casual that I wonder if she is actually taking photos. *Snap* [saunters to another location] *snap* [turns a bit] snap [saunter to another location] *snap* ect… What I’m checking, while in the airconditioned office, is the final text that accompanies the photos.
I look up from my laptop, “Liu, this is my favourite writing about KocoGarden.” It’s not an exaggeration. I love it. Liu just smiles in response, super chill photographer that she is.
This is my favourite line “[Steve's] approach is not one of intervention, but of gentle companionship. Living, observing, and co-creating alongside rivers, streets, neighbors, and fellow artists,” And then this, “As a soft, ever-unfinished container, KocoGarden continues its quiet practice of "coexistence" through the small moments of everyday life.”
Wow. Having my work reflected back this way helps me see it. First of all, simply see it. Sometimes you lose the forest for the trees. Second, when the spirit of the thing is captured so beautifully, well, it must be there. I hope it’s there, the spirit of it I mean, but again forests and trees. Sometimes I get a bit lost. Having the work seen and reflected back is reorienting, a triangulation of sorts; someone else, the work and me. It’s not a mirage, I’m not making it up, the spirit I see really is there.
I ask Liu, can I share this on Trembling Aspen? “Of course! Share it where ever you like.” So here it is, your own pre-publication secret viewing of the final layout, photos and text as they will appear in the book. It will come out in October—she hopes. I'll keep you updated.
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In the meantime, the Four Intentions (as I have come to call them) are coming along. The exhibition opening is next week. I'm still not exactly sure why sharing them felt so vulnerable. Perhaps it's because there is so much room for failure. Or perhaps because the intentions are so, well, loose I really didn't have a sense of what they will be in the end. I kind of get what they are, but not really. To recap, the Four Intentions are:
i. I have a loosely held plan to create a mind-map collage on on the south wall of KocoGarden.
ii. Another loosely held plan is to build a natural wood speaker system for the back wall. I’d like it to eventually be interactive by way of a drift wood sculpture/control surface.
iii. Another loosely held plan is to create a 2 x 1 meter paper map of HatsuKoHi (my neighbourhood) for the north wall of Kocogarden to use with interactive walks.
iv. My last loosely held plan is to install six fabric curtains dyed with indigo from Little Indigo Village (in Kamiyama). When the curtains are down the curtains and speakers make KocoGarden a “fourth place” for quiet reflection, work or study. When they are up, the north and south walls are visible for exhibition.
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The Kodama Speakers (intention ii) are complete and installed. Woohoo! They sound great. Everyone says they sound great. They smell great. Everyone says they smell great. I love them. I am happy.
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Just today I’ve been making final arrangements with Jo in Kamiyama about intention iv. It looks like I will indeed have fabric hand dyed in organic, traditionally made indigo from Kamiyama. I can’t wait to tell you more about that.
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The 2 x 1 meter map. The map, the map, the map. I was up until way too late last night. I spent hours trying figure out how tile a large image over multiple A3 sheets of paper so as to export it to a multi-page PDF rather than one large image. Seriously, I used Claude, Perplexity and ChatGTP. It stumped everyone, including me. You think it’d be easier. Seems recent OS changes have made it difficult. In my stubborn lack-of-sleep-haze I started thinking there was some authoritarian conspiracy against printing maps. Too much power. Too much freedom. Too much hope. Something like that. In the calm light of day I think it’s just a dumb technical problem of the kind that occasionally needs tackling. I’m prone to think of these kinds of problems as a frustrating distraction (as the many and profuse expletives uttered last night tend to prove). I'd rather practice being present to and accepting of experiences I don't enjoy as part of the overall joyful privilege of being alive. These experiences are a mirror, I'm learning something. I'd like to learn to find playfulness and joy in everything I do, including seemingly unnecessarily complicated technical issues. Last night I failed. Today, I’ll try again. And so it goes.
Once it gets done, I have cool plans for the map. Can't wait to tell you about that as well.
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More to come my friends. We we go.