AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

14 August 2006 11am

I still haven't made it to the bridge. That's not just dissapointing, it's frightening. Everything becomes a distraction. One responsibility justifies procrastination of another.

My S.O. has been reading a lot of Haruki Murakami lately, and she told me that she was starting to get fed up with him because fundamentally, all his books struggle with, but do not address, the same issue over and over again.

When Murakami visited MIT a while back, S.O. told me she regretted not asking a particular question at the Q&A; regarding his level of personal investment in the world that his writings struggle with - this subconscious underworld of curses and watery emotion. After doing some more reading and pondering the matter for a few months - well almost a year, actually, she decided that, in a certain way, his writing is insincere.

No, he's not creative and original. He's gifted and intuitive, and he's writing about the world as it really is, except he's afraid to enter that world, and perhaps afraid to even believe in it. Why? because he's carved out a nice little niche for himself. Because he's comfortable where he is, and crossing that threshold can only mean change. He hasn't had any real experience, and that's why he can't get past the surface. That's why his books start out brilliant, get brighter, and then wind down into nothing.

It's like the Wachowski brothers with their Matrix movies. They intuitively grasp that there is a truth beyond truth, but they themselves have never dared to "take the red pill", which is why their movies degenerated into speculative, pretentious nonsense once the narrative progressed past the point of Contact.

I myself have only ever read one Murakami book, and I have to say that it was an amazing, seemingly life changing experience at the time. The essence of the book somehow merged into the essence of me, and the hidden, cursed world began to take over, until about 2/3 of the way into the book, when it all became about "finishing the story".

I guess what I'm saying is I don't want to end up like that. I'd rather tell a beautiful lie that is true than tell a beautiful truth that is a lie. That's why it's so important to follow the yellow ghost. That's why I have to get to that bridge, ride that train, etc. Because even though it's scary to go down these blind alleys and follow leads that don't make any sense, it's even scarier to not follow them.