Some Memories of Bamboo
Some Memories of Bamboo is a CD of unprocessed (but layered) field recordings made in the Kami Katsura district of NW Kyoto during three weeks of walking up and down a parcel of land measuring 500 metres long and no more than 100 metres wide. Nothing much happens: rain drips into a cemetery watering-can; the maroon trains of the Hankyu company gleam north and south; the hubbub of one café and the more subdued mood of another; the river bubbling and sliding through the valley, birds and insects marking out the air with their noises; people wandering the forest trail or crossing the asphalt roads. The CD has a booklet containing short texts and its production was supported by grants from the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation and the Anglo-Daiwa Foundation.
Shitsuren Shimashita (2.12)
For me there is something special about seeing the moon against an afternoon sky. Maybe the moon is commonly out on daytime watch and all that is unusual is that I have found the time to look up but since childhood I have experienced the sight as a kind of blessing, a sign of luck and life.
A white moon was high against a deep blue sky on Thursday the 22nd of May as I walked past the Koke-dera temple. A black taxi had just drawn to a halt and the white-gloved driver was opening the door to help a passenger out. Although I passed the Moss Temple every day for several weeks and although it was celebrated as one of Kyoto’s most beautiful, I had never been inside. I told myself that I preferred the quieter attractions of the smaller temples less directly part of the tourist trail.
I caught the softest suggestion of sad singing in the air and hurriedly connected the microphone to the recorder and settled the headphones over my ears. I looked around until I saw an immaculately dressed older woman, a silk scarf knotted around her throat, leaning against the railing by the Saihoji gawa stream. As we strolled together, she sang and talked, we ate boiled sweets and I understood her to have suffered grievously in love. A week later, we met again on a small path below my favourite Jizoin Temple. A Japanese friend revealed that the woman’s sufferings were medical rather than romantic. Her heartbreak had been a literal one.
For me there is something special about seeing the moon against an afternoon sky. Maybe the moon is commonly out on daytime watch and all that is unusual is that I have found the time to look up but since childhood I have experienced the sight as a kind of blessing, a sign of luck and life.
A white moon was high against a deep blue sky on Thursday the 22nd of May as I walked past the Koke-dera temple. A black taxi had just drawn to a halt and the white-gloved driver was opening the door to help a passenger out. Although I passed the Moss Temple every day for several weeks and although it was celebrated as one of Kyoto’s most beautiful, I had never been inside. I told myself that I preferred the quieter attractions of the smaller temples less directly part of the tourist trail.
I caught the softest suggestion of sad singing in the air and hurriedly connected the microphone to the recorder and settled the headphones over my ears. I looked around until I saw an immaculately dressed older woman, a silk scarf knotted around her throat, leaning against the railing by the Saihoji gawa stream. As we strolled together, she sang and talked, we ate boiled sweets and I understood her to have suffered grievously in love. A week later, we met again on a small path below my favourite Jizoin Temple. A Japanese friend revealed that the woman’s sufferings were medical rather than romantic. Her heartbreak had been a literal one.
Saihoji gawa (4.52)
Sitting on the riverbank, I can see through the shallow water to the small sediment-covered rocks. Yellow leaves, fallen from over-hanging trees, circle on the surface, casting spinning shadows below. The air around me is soaked through with wetness: plips and plops, gurgles and trickles all break through the surface of a rushing, swirling and roaring sound that spreads out across the valley floor. Something similar must have been heard here for the hundreds of thousands of years that the river has taken to cut its way down through the geology.
I went fishing for water: casting a hydrophone into the current, lowering a microphone down a storm drain, catching the drips that fell from a graveyard tap into a metal watering can and the reverberations of rocks thrown from concrete bridges by blue-blazered boys.
The pleasures of present and the proximate were all around yet there was still that sharp tug of distance, the pull of my wife and children far away.
Sitting on the riverbank, I can see through the shallow water to the small sediment-covered rocks. Yellow leaves, fallen from over-hanging trees, circle on the surface, casting spinning shadows below. The air around me is soaked through with wetness: plips and plops, gurgles and trickles all break through the surface of a rushing, swirling and roaring sound that spreads out across the valley floor. Something similar must have been heard here for the hundreds of thousands of years that the river has taken to cut its way down through the geology.
I went fishing for water: casting a hydrophone into the current, lowering a microphone down a storm drain, catching the drips that fell from a graveyard tap into a metal watering can and the reverberations of rocks thrown from concrete bridges by blue-blazered boys.
The pleasures of present and the proximate were all around yet there was still that sharp tug of distance, the pull of my wife and children far away.
