Literature in its truest incarnation has never been about the masses––it has been about reaching and moving one or two souls. About setting in place a line of causality that may flower in unexpected ways, in generations unknown. If the audience for good writing is silent, so be it. It is hopefully the silence of contemplation, not disregard.
I do not congratulate others for the ways that they have moved me, those who have touched me the deepest. Moods, dreams, ancient etchings on the wall––their destinies were fulfilled by the very act of expression, of exerting movement of some novel feeling within themselves.
If Arisugawa Park is mechanical, as one editor described it, how do you think it felt to be in the watch spring each day, immersed in commuter flows and komakai longings? The moments of true thought are hard fought, subtle, the freedoms minute and jealously observed. Maybe this is changing... pendulum swing. But I was in hot house Roppongi for one night and the bartenders and hostesses were still calculating by the minute, the price of leisure purchased. Knowing everything, knowing nothing––the wisest human has only lived a single lifetime.