I had one of those sudden moments of clarity on the sodden, seats-in-the-aisles bus ride to Boracay from Bacolod this afternoon. It was that, despite silence from nearly all quarters, there is some movement from behind the iron doors that Pink Floyd so eloquently sang about and came, unfortunately, to embody. The gatekeepers may be ossified, but they are not asleep––the go-getters they have set in their place, those people seeking "new voices" are not doing their jobs very well. And that is gradually dawning, beyond the franticisims of the preachers of algorithmic virality and mass-feed manipulation.
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.
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.
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