JAPAN DAY 2 and 3-TOKYO YO-YO-A-GO-GO
TAMA ART UNIVERSITY Lecture and Performance

Got up Wed. morn, again to light sleep. Have I forgotten how to sleep? Are those bastards asleep? I have forgotten how.

Tues/early Wed morn, 2am passed out only to wake up to Marshall moving about preparing his 4 hour toillette. shower, laundry, primping and a ton of coffee. He says, "this coffee (Ethiopian Mocha Harrar, official coffee of the 2006 Cinema Soloriens Japan Tour) is good but it doesn't have that pop i need in my java."

Yeah, 30 min. later Marshall is "on the joe". Scattin, jiving, telling us half-a-dozen stories that only the severe of ADD could follow.

Wake up and the room is filled with cigarette smoke so thick comin from the bathroom-i pass back out to wake up acouple of hours later to find that M is still in the bathroom smokin it up. i am thinking he has fallin asleep in there.

i open the window and sleep with the covers over my head and enjoy the burn in me nostrils.

up at 4am, back to sleep to awaken at 8am.

feel pretty good. me and bob suited up and went for a jog in a beautiful park.

had a nice breakfast and delicious pickles.

got to work on the lecture for Tama Art University.

Here are the notes...
TAMA ART UNIVERSITY-FILM LECTURE

MEDITATION IN EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA

I want to focus my attention on describing my approach to cinema. I do not want to attempt to tell you what to see but perhaps how to further your visual sensibilities. Hopefully this talk also will act as a positive motivator in your own art making and creative philosophies.

When approaching cinema, try to become aware that you are not looking at continuity. In a sense, film frames act a lot like hieroglyphics. Try to think of the individual film frame, always as a glyph and gradually you will better understand cinema. The moving image is not of course, moving. Cinema is a rapid succession of still images that create the illusion of movement and time. It is within the illusion that I explore in my own filmmaking. The experience of viewing Personal or Experimental Cinema as it is sometimes called is a lot like a Yoga discipline. Perhaps viewing any visual art one could make the same comparison. Visual meditation exercises are based on locating a central point in your personal visual field. How can that are approached with the moving visual image?

In cinema, the duration of 1 second is equal to 24 film frames. That ratio of time allows me an infinite palate to express visual phenomenon. 24 frames per second enables the Artist to effect the viewer’s perceptions sway their emotions and maybe change the audience’s thoughts through the Artist’s force of will.

Light is the life-force of cinema. With the moving visual image, the Artist works with light as the medium, shaping light, sculpting with it, discovering how light changes the visual field. The Artist discovers new ways to make light rhythmic, communicate with it. Can you make light poetic and lyrical? Can you make light sing?

With new art, it should strive to reach a point where there is no separation between science, observation and philosophy. The Artist works in similar ways as a scientist, but at time the Artist can focus more in an area of consciousness and explore subjective phenomenon.

In my art-making, my aim is to involve the viewer not knowing whether they are seeing, hearing or feeling the visual experience. I strive to create externally what I see internally, allowing the medium to act as an extension of my mind. I make art with sincerity and discipline, attempting to always put the correct image, in the correct place, for the correct amount of time. These films are heavily crafted works of spiritual self-examination that are part of a long history and tradition of image-makers that began with two French brothers whose family name translates as light-Lumiere!

Over the years, I turned to early Alchemical texts from the 16th and 17th Centuries for guidance and confirmation of my own cinematic structures. I believe that the people that developed the Alchemical visual vocabulary were the first multimedia artists. I suggest researching Michael Maier’s Alchemical opus, Atalanta Fugiens (the fleeing Atalanta) for inspiration. The work is a series of visual puzzles, epigrams, poems and images for meditation on the Alchemical cycle. Accompanying the text is music to be sung or played while pondering the pictures.

For 10 years, I have been working with music and film together, to act as a complete synthesis of my art-making. Filmmaking is very slow moving, you have labs to work with, work-prints, editing, more labs and more time. It is not immediate. When I began to explore live music and film together, it satisfied the need for creating in real time-blow wind through a flute and sound is produced. Collaboration also granted me exchanges of fresh ideas and perspectives unknown to me, expanding my creative range and maturing me.

This lecture would not be complete without some visual stimulation. I have prepared a selection of my films that I think best illustrate direct ideas on visual meditation. In addition, I have with me Marshall Allen, leader of The Sun Ra Arkestra and R.E. Mahoney. Together, we will perform a live soundtrack to the films.

After the film program, I would like very much to hear from the audience directly. Please share with me your thoughts, ideas and experiences. I would be honored to speak directly with you, so please approach me with any questions as well. Thank you. CUE FILMS. Talk about films.


END


I am thankful to some inspiration from my fellow Berks Filmmakers for some helpful suggestions on issue to cover that i could so easily forget in my anxiety of discussing such a challenging topic with a culture so imbued with the knowledge of meditation.

Thank you to James Broughton for showing me the humor and delight in personal image making. His words on poetry and cinema have often pulled me out of the darkness, and with love i cite some important wisdoms for the developing artist.

The trek to Tama was looong, many trains and subways, also carrying much gear.

we get there and see the most incredible art college imaginable, they had a special latex studio, huge modern architecture, hip, hard-working students.

we get inside the lecture space and they show me the most beautiful postor they made specially for the program. it was so beautiful that i almost cried. thank you Tama.

So i did the lecture-i had my notes as you can see-what do i do? i ditch the notes and go improv.

Very challenging dealing with translators. I had two going on while i spoke in order to capture the gist of my words. some were so difficult to translate, like "cosmology", "alchemy", sometimes we had to break it down.

i really wanted to create a personal informal salon, make the students comfortable and perhaps make them feel inspired and uplited in their own art making. i also tried to stress that the ability to communicate visually is a true gift and should be used with care and sincerity. i also stressed the need to have fun. i told them funny stories in the making of the films they witnessed-goats chewin my ass when filming Thompson-Neeley House, losing my glasses when filming Pomom Morans and using the camera dioptor to hopefully find them, only to have to beg some children to help as the sun was quickly going down. Bob's work on the acoustic guitar was fantastic. in fact he lead the performance, i took my cues from him. very nice!

my work was very well received. the questions were some of the most interesting, thoughtful and moving i have ever experienced. they found my films inspirational, devotional, touching, honoring the dead, elegiac, poetic, familiar, having profound referenced to Buddhism and even moreso early Shinto philosphies.

i was very cool the interaction with translators-so facinating, i was very comfortable talking to about 50 students and faculty.

me, marshall and did our thing. was very good, simple acoustic performance, deeply meditative. not too much playing "out" in the beginning.

a great moment was at the end the last film, For Sun Ra began with marshall grunting a couple of times, then i began to growl and make these strange wispering swooshing sounds. very interesting.

off to eat. very good food at this small eatery. we ate horse, squid and cartilage, also chicken balls, pickled eggplant, marinated meats and garlic. very good and tasty.

musch beer and sake.

we also did an interview with a writer , frank for yomiuri shinbun newspaper. very good questions. he was from boston, cool guy.

had a great long talk with marshall on the way back. much to learn from him. a great man, teacher and friend. i love marshall very much, and dig him, the hippest man on earth.


back to hotel to the elusive sleep at 2AM.