Slow TV, Bike Ride in Namegawa Japan

Slow TV, Bike Ride in Namegawa Japan

a maze. Only reason I’m recording this is to practice speaking my thoughts out loud because it’s something that I feel like I haven’t been able to do. haven’t learned the skills to do throughout my life is my thoughts and my feelings tend to be different to other people’s. I don’t know how to help that. feel like every conversation I have almost about 80% of the conversations I have I have to translate my initial thoughts and feelings into something that is palatable for others or that can simply just be understood. Because most of the time what I say gets misinterpreted quite easily. That’s been my existence my whole life, you know. and uh yeah therapist once told me that or asked me whether I thought that was most people’s existence and yeah Sure, most people do feel misunderstood at some point in their lives or by some people, but I don’t think a lot of people feel misunderstood by 95% of interactions. Yeah. And even the people that know [Music] you will only really understand you on a small amount of occasions. Majority of your interactions, even with the people that know you and you know them and you love them and they love you, they don’t actually understand what you’re saying and where you perspective is coming from main because I’m I’ uh I don’t know. I’ve been conditioned or I naturally think of the thousand different ways that one sentence can be interpreted. But that seems to be my life. It’s just semi walking on your shells wondering what the how the person’s going to interpret what I say. Almost never comes out the way I think. Uh which which is [Music] fine if I’m which yeah it’s fine when I’m an artist cuz I can just say what I think express what I feel and not have to worry about how too many people interpret it. But problem comes when I want to get paid. If I want to get paid for a mural or I want to go for some public funding, then I have to write about why I want to paint, which feels like you got to run in order to show that you can [Music] swim. It doesn’t make any sense because the way that I see, perceive, think, and feel about the world, it’s it’s all visual. Language is a translation of my experience of existence. It’s not the original experience. [Music] So it’s hard it’s hard to prove like my [Music] visual thoughts to a person. prioritizes uh prioritizes literature or writing above visuals. But then if I try and show them my visual thoughts, it takes a lot of time, takes a lot of effort to to get it to the point where somebody who understands the world through language can actually picture what I’m trying to conceive. [Music] I’m not 100% sure what to do about that, but I think I think I might just make what I want to make. and put it out there and see what the happens. [Music] No, no worry about what the outcome is. Just just enjoy the process. Enjoy the out of the process cuz that’s what everything is really. Everything is process. There’s never a point of success. There’s never there’s never really anything to obtain because as soon as you obtain whatever that thing is, you obtain a house or car or money or fame or fortune, whatever, it always starts decaying as soon as you obtain it. And then the process that process starts the process of decay. And so if you’re always wanting to obtain some per perfected thing, perfect house, perfect car, a perfect life, perfect mind. You’re always going to be disappointed cuz as soon as you get there, decay starts. There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s just the process of life. And that’s okay. You don’t need to feel bad about that. The only reason why we feel bad about it is because being conditioned to go after [Music] things that somehow we are fulfilled when we have more. That’s just glutton in there, right? Trying to fill a void. I can never be filled just like your mom. I like really silly jokes, ones that are just just absurdly immature. Cuz I think they not to not to get into explaining a joke or anything. and kind of ruins it. But I think absurdly immature jokes just give you this sense that [Music] nothing nothing needs to be serious. We don’t need to take anything seriously. Everything is absurd. None of us are as smart as we think we are. The wise man stops being wise as soon as he thinks himself to be wise. And so it’s a I don’t know the word it’s not humbling. It’s uh it’s accepting the immaturity of of yourself and of the human race cuz we we haven’t really matured that much. Takes a long time for us to get small gains in a very quick time to destroy it all. [Music] I wonder if anybody that sitting in this spot in this castle ever thought that a person with my complexion from a westernized country would be sitting on top of their castle, on top of the ruins of their castle. Somebody back then probably had a prophecy about that. A man from far away will come and sit on the ruins of your castle one day. That is always the case. just depends on how far away. Cuz even though everything today might seem okay, death is always on its way because death is a process. [Music] Another heat. Wow. There’s something absurdly angelic about Japan. It’s this fusion of old and new contrasted right next to each other constantly and you see it everywhere and it’s just I don’t know man it’s It’s it it’s kind I I mean it’s definitely a symptom of Japan having to modernize so quickly, right? is that they didn’t deconstruct or the history hasn’t decayed into a new version. You know, the culture hasn’t decayed into a new version of itself. It’s there’s a big event, a crisis that people have [Music] to convert the way that they see the world very quickly. And this has happened multiple times throughout Japanese history, right? You have the Mongols coming to invade and Japan has to militarize overnight and set up fortifications around around the sea because of this impending doom. And that caused all of this taxation difference which caused a whole bunch of administration difference basically overnight in in the time frame of history. And then Japan becomes isolationist. They revert back to the old culture. They keep it around. And then Asia colonization happens. Europeans come in and say, “Hey, we want to trade.” Say, “Nope, we don’t want you here. We don’t want your Christian values or lack thereof.” is I think Christian values only lasted about a thousand years before they were completely used and in the opposite manner than they were initially intended which is so oh it’s such an absurdity such oh man we always take what is good and then use it for the shittiest reasons. Like so many technologies, the creator’s intended purpose for that technology is great. It’s utilit uh it’s utopian and utilitarian. It’s like we’re going to use this to make the world greater, better place. And then it immediately get used to kill people or subjugate people or exploit people. It’s like Jesus Christ, man. What are we doing? What the hell are we doing with this? We can take we can name any technology, right? It’s like bow hunting. Great. Awesome. Now we can take down dangerous animals from a distance. Oh, wait. The dangerous animals are tribe next to us. What the Horseback riding. Awesome. We can travel long distances without wearing ourselves out as much. And And we can carry stuff with us as we go. Oh, let’s make an army out of them and force these animals into charging each other so we can get more lands. Like, what the I mean, gunpowder, right? It’s I don’t know if gunpowder was. It’s technology. I’m just imagining a like a Chinese guy who’s like discovers gunpowder. He’s like, “Oh my god, I can make the most amazing fireworks display for my community.” And or or like I can I can heat up a fire in an instant without having to rub sticks together or some like that. And then the government comes and be like, “Oo, we can use that. We can use that to blow people up for no reason. No real good [Music] reason, you know. There’s no there’s no winners in war.” Well, the only winner is the guy who sells the guns. That’s the only winner in war is the guy who sells guns. For sure. Even even if you’re victorious in in the war. Like your people suffer, you suffer. But the people that orchestrate the war, they never really suffer. I mean, how the could you be in a position where hundreds of thousands of your own countrymen are dying and you see reason to for it to continue? Like, what the is that? That’s that’s the whole crux of the problem, right? is that the the process is the end. The means is the end, right? There’s no ends to means to an end. The process is the end because there really isn’t a future and there really isn’t a past. Because every moment in time is thought of in the present. It is interpreted by the rules and the culture of the present. And you can never get the real sentiment of the past ever again. That’s why you have to live in the present. It’s not because the present’s better than the past or will be better than the future. It’s because you will never get this feeling from looking at the past. You will never obtain the greatness that is now from looking at the future. But our systems are set up so that you must you must think far ahead. Because in order to buy a house that you need to raise kids and have the stability for that living situation, you need to get a loan out, a mortgage, a death debt. This is translation from French to English is is it’s a death debt. It’s a debt that you pay off until you die, which is just like one step above indentured servitude really. It’s like you get to pick what work you do for us to pay us back, which is so up. So you have slavery at the bottom, which is just you don’t get paid. We choose to work for you and we choose your hours and how hard you work. And then the next step up is intention servitude where you’re like, “Okay, I owe you money, so I’ll work for you and I’ll do the work that you need me to do.” And then it’s a mortgage where it’s like, “Okay, you get to choose the labor that that you do, but you still owe us. You can opt out, but you’ll lose your house.” It’s like, “Fuck me.” A so up, man. It’s not It’s It’s really not that much better than indentured servitude, which makes you think that people must have found solace and contentment in those shitty situations, right? Like if if if you’re living in hell as a as a slave or a servant, those people must have found happiness in small moments. like there like there would have had to have been some hope, some happiness otherwise you just couldn’t imagine those people continuing to even live you know and I do understand that there was there there was like suicides of slaves all around the world throughout history because of the atrocious conditions and of wanting to die But there there must have been these tiny little bits of happiness which kept them going cuz I couldn’t I couldn’t imagine people continuing in those situations without some hope. And that’s all our political system is set up to be. It’s just a revolving door of hope and then getting kicked in the face. It’s like, “Yeah, vote for me. I’ll make it better.” And then it gets worse. And you’re like, “Oh, oh well yeah, that other guy sucked, but vote for me and I’ll make it better.” And then that guy sucks, too. And it’s just a revolving door of assery when nobody’s actually making that much of a difference at all. Nobody’s making things as better as they’re falling apart. And the only thing that’s propping up Western democracies is the exploitation of what they consider third world countries. Talking about them like they’re on some other planet. talking about them like they’re not not human. I mean, the term aliens for immigrants is crazy, right? Dehumanization at its most absurd. You’re saying that they’re from another planet. That’s what we consider the third world is another planet, but it’s this one. They’re humans. They live as a global community along with everybody else. And it sucks to see those people suffer, man. But then they some of the happiest people I’ve ever met are from from the poorest nations, which is It is the which is absurd, right? Like you have all this all this wealth in in these nations like America and and New Zealand and Australia and in Europe and most people are miserable comparatively. miserable compared to people in in like places in in Africa and Southeast Asia that I’ve met in South America. Like man. South Americans are some of the most out there partying people there are on the planet. Same with same with like same with Southeast Asians like Vietn V Vietnamese and and Thai people and Filipino people like they’re always happy and smiling and laughing and joking. Us Europeanized people are miserable as have everything we could ever need and we’re killing ourselves with record limits and nobody’s talking about it and then we continue to blame the rest of the world for our own problems or the problems of other people that we’ve caused. But then I don’t know why I’m saying we because I don’t identify with those in power. I don’t identify with the power structures that were set up even the legal system. And I’m like, that is morally very questionable whether that’s even justice at all. Oh, hello be. You’re a weird looking bee, man. But man, I don’t know. I’m just one man sitting on top of a hill. the ruins of a Japanese castle in the middle of nowhere in Japan. It’s um very rural area. Nice and peaceful. I love it. I love life. It’s been great here. I think this has helped. I think this has helped a lot. Just speaking my thoughts out loud, but I went on this massive tangent. I think I’ll come back to Japanese culture, right? history. So the [Music] Europeans, they wanted to trade, but Japan said, “No, off.” They let the Dutch onto one tiny little island which was basically just because the Japanese wanted to know about what was happening on the outside world. They allowed them to stay there in exchange for information about what was going on and a little bit of trade but mostly information. And then the industrial age hits and Europe starts to industrialize and there’s these [Music] steam steam engine I think coal co cold coal fired boats or whatever ironclads whatever they they come over to Japan um I think it was America maybe Britain same difference really the empire is just transferred to to America from Britain. This Yeah, we’re going to go off on a tangent here. Empires always consolidate power when they start to lose it. That’s always what happens. You look at the Roman Empire, they went into the Catholic Church, they own the Vatican now. I mean, it kind of went into the Byzantines, but that also uh consolidated its power. British Empire turned into the Bank of London. They financed two world wars basically. I mean that’s that’s how that’s how much money they had and that’s how much money those wars cost. hundreds of years of exploitation of colonies all around the world accumulated into funding the greatest destruction of mankind has ever seen. I mean it’s it’s no matter how you look at it. Oh Jesus Christ. Now America looking like a wararm monger. It’s going to use its soft power colonization. Soft and medium power. I’d say they’ve militarized most of the most of the world. Got naval and military bases scattered across every single continent. I don’t know how many. Probably probably over thousand all around the world. But yeah, they’re going to consolidate power into Yeah, if I make a prediction on how how America is going to consolidate the power, it’s going to be towards billionaires probably tech companies. And these tech companies are just going to be these [Music] aorphic kind of change with the politics of the time, but really they just out for their own bottom dollar. Uh, and yeah, they’ll just become these kind of I don’t feudal feudal isn’t the right word for it. It’s something new, man. It’s it’s it’s a it’s a strange kind of new where there’s a C CEO class and it really is a class. It’s not it’s not really a position that you can get to if you’re born anywhere. If you’re just if you’re a poor you ain’t getting to the CEO class. But it will seem like it is because the CEO class needs you to think that you can get there. So, it’s not a birthright position, but it is. But it’s not because you were [Music] born into a family that was previously owning the company, but it was because you were born into a family that could set you up to be there. And it’s just I don’t know. It’s not It’s not a hereditary power structure. It’s a It’s almost a cultural power structure. Like if you buy into our culture of bottom dollar above all else, above the exploitation of other people, of this hustle culture kind of mentality. If you buy into that, you might have a chance of getting here. And it’s Yeah, it’s it’s cultish. It’s it’s cultish, man. I mean, I’ve seen the you seen these disgusting. Just Oh, they made a skin crawl. They’re these um conferences where you have a bunch of speakers and 90% of the speakers have dog They don’t know what they’re talking about. They’re just selling courses or something. Um, and then you have that one dude that comes up and actually has something to say or has some expertise that they’ve paid hundreds of thousands of dollars just to speak for 40 minutes or something. And it’s just it it is a real cult cultish thing. It’s a it’s a new kind of new kind of church where where wealth is the god and debt is the sin or not not working hard enough. Leisure. Pleasure. Any ounce of mirth or merrynt or happiness is the enemy is a [Music] sin. Like your your your 20s are meant to be when you cut off all your friends and family and you stick your head in a hole and you work your ass off. so that you can obtain something when like I said the process is the end. The process is the goal to live a life in which the process of living is the one that you want to live. That is the goal. It’s not to waste some time now so that you can set your life up to be what you want it to be later. It’s like no, you want to get to where you want to be by [Music] getting to where you want to be now. You know, you want to be in the process of obtaining the life that you want to live by living a process that aligns with the way that you want to live. Otherwise, you get sucked into all this all this all this thinking that your that your exploitation of other people is is somehow good. somehow justified that you [Music] owning owning houses, being a being a landlord, being a massive landlord is somehow providing housing for people when it’s not. It’s not at all. You’re you’re hoarding a resource that people need to live. Imagine. Imagine if we did that with water or food where there was enough to go around. Oh We do, don’t we? There’s enough to go around, but people buy it all up before it can get to the masses for higher rates than the masses can comfortably afford. and then start selling it off for even more than the masses can comfortably afford, but just enough to where people can and still live. Like, man, that’s that’s the whole system, man. It’s a it’s it’s the classic metaphor of um or the cliche metaphor of the frog in the boiling pot, right? The prices just rise ever so slightly over time. constantly and forever. And the only way that you keep up with them is by giving the companies that constantly increase the prices slowly and forever your money so that they can slowly increase the prices forever. And that’s called the stock market. It’s it’s a up system, man. And I I don’t know. We call it capitalism, but I don’t really know if it’s even I don’t even know if it’s really capitalist. I don’t I think I think it’s the same case that we go back to with Christianity where initially its values are put into place but then over time they’re distorted and and used for consolidating power and and exploiting other people. And that’s just what’s going to happen with any anything that we put into place because there is [Music] no end to the process, right? We have to keep evolving the systems that we have. And in order to do that, we have to be able to question those systems. And the people they question the most tend to be artists, right? That’s why I’m an artist because I can’t I can’t live [Music] in I can’t live inside the system. I can’t be an insider. As much as I want to be like this person that changes things from the inside, I can’t because the process of getting in is not one that I want to obtain for my life. It’s not a process that I want to that I want to partake in to even get in. So, I’m kind of I’m kind of forced into the position I am to to be an outsider constantly being an outsider no matter where I am. And I’m okay with that because it’s the life that I want to live. It’s the process that I want to follow until my last day here on Earth. And so even though I might not have that much money, I’m a lot more fulfilled and satisfied and richer than most people. Most people can’t say that they live their lives exactly how they want to live them. But most days I can. Now, it’s not very profitable for me to be doing it. Well, not yet anyway. But right now, there’s nobody’s life I’d rather be living. There’s nobody on the planet that I’d rather be because I am me. I am who I am. And nobody can take that away from me. Nobody can give that to me. It’s something that I can only give myself. And you can only give yourself. And that’s because it’s all about following a process that aligns with how you want to live. But I also understand that most people have to work a job in order to get money and the options available to them might not be aligned with their morals or their sensibilities. And that’s okay as long as you know that that job is [Music] fulfilling a greater part of yourself. Like if you got kids and you need you don’t want them to starve. Like yeah, it doesn’t really matter what you do as long as you do what you do well and with moral upstanding. Then you’re you’re you’re fulfilling something greater than greater than anything else. You know, creating life, sustaining life. That’s phenomenal. You can’t you can’t You can’t do anything in greater than that I don’t think. So another [Music] tangent. We get back to Japanese history. So the Dutch are in there on an island and they’re trading information about the outside world. The outside world comes to Japan, forces them to open pro I think it was US US forces them to [Music] open open their trade. And so [Music] Japanese neon is forced [Music] to industrialize and modernize very quickly. If they want to if they want to keep their sovereignty, they have to modernize super quickly. And so they do and do it very well and do it quicker than anybody expected them to. Uh but then also the other part of the culture of the time rubs off on them which is [Music] colonization which uh not a great thing for the people in Korea or Manuria which they eventually they take over and parts of China as well and they don’t treat the people that nicely because they’re following suit of western nations of exploiting the land and people from other places to as a steroid for their own nation. And so I mean the standards the moral standards of the time Japan is doing what everybody else is doing and what everybody else is justified in doing. But the western nations don’t like this because they don’t see Asian people as uh as anything better than themselves. You know, they see them as subhuman and and compared to compared to themselves. And so they discount Japan and Russia discounts Japan. They get into a a fight over some islands and Japan wins and it shocks all the European nations who never thought in a thousand years that an Asian army could ever beat a European one. They never thought that that was possible. And Japan said, “Hey, look, I deserve a a seat at the table now. Look how powerful I am. Look how look how good I am at your rules, winning the game on your rules, on your terms.” And Europe went, “Nope. We’re too racist for that. We can’t allow that. And so Japan was kind of left out of the out of the super nation talks, you know, so they went their own path and they decided, well, it. We’re going to we’re going to destroy your colonies in in in Asia. We’re going to take them over. Um, and that’s how their expansionism during World War II happened. It’s like Japan’s like, “Well, if you won’t give us a seat at the table, we’re going to we’re going to flip the table. We’re going to take take on China who has been uh semi coloniz not quite colonized by not not really colonized by European nations but they have taken parts of Asia parts of China like um like Hong Kong and and and Um the Portuguese took part of China as well as a trading post, but really the controlling controlling the economy and politics of the area and China was pretty weak at the time and Japan was looking quite strong at the time and so they took on China and there was the nationalists and then they um communists were basically up in the mountains hiding way making some moves. Nationalists had to decide whether to team up or fight war on two sides. Fight a war that they were already losing on two sides. So they decided to team up with the communists and communists did their part to hold China off but eventually backstabbed the nationalists and pushed them out of the country. when chi when Japan was dealt with and yeah that’s how you got the CCP in control of China and the reun reunification China which was broken up into many smaller nations prior to World War [Music] II and Japan also took have a um colonies of throughout Asia of of different European nations. The Americans in the Philippines. Oh, the Brit was the British in the Philippines. I think it’s British. Oh, no. The Spanish. That’s right. It’s the Spanish in the Philippines. The Dutch in the Indonesia. Um French probably around somewhere. And yeah, they took him over under the guise of of ending colonization in these areas, but really it was just transfer of power to to their own colonial system. Yeah. Did a lot of damage throughout the world. Fought with insane levels of I don’t know if it’s courage or bravery. I don’t I don’t know. There’s a fine line between courage and stupidity. And nobody knows what that line is until until the outcome is is given. But yeah, the the bombs dropped and Japan was faced with a new crisis. [Music] Sudden [Music] annihilation, tens maybe hundreds of thousands of people in an instant. So the people responded, they changed overnight. And now here we are with the old and the new right next to each other. Contrasted forever. The sign of quick [Music] changes, a sign of the old times never decaying, just becoming obsolete. overnight in new ways propping up. The end

Talking into the void to see what feeling reaches out to grab me.