Skinny Guys from America and Japan

Two skinny guys from America and Japan met in the Shimbashi neighborhood of Tokyo, last night. Together, they went to a nearby restaurant and tried to solve their calorie deficient dilemma with boiled edamame, cold cucumber salad, yasai (vegetable) tempura and nama (draft beer). It seems they did not succeed in their efforts to become more bulky, but they certainly had fun trying.

It was Toshimaru Nakamura (aka No-input Mixer) that I met in Shimbashi last evening, and it was delightful to resume my ongoing conversation with him on the subjects of music, art, food, and the cultures of Japan and America. Past readers of this blog will remember that Toshi is something of an electronic music sensation due to his proficiency with the no-input mixer. In short, he connects the outputs of his mixer back into the inputs and then manipulates the ensuing feedback. He has released a multitude of CD's, both as a solo artist and in collaboration with others, that feature his musical exploits with the no-input mixer.

This blog has previoiusly gone into detail regarding his methods and his career (see the archives for August 2006 and October 2005). Therefore, in this post I will simply post some highlights from last night's conversation...

"I like having limits," said Toshi, when discussing a recent CD of his, "Side Guitar." Before adopting the no-input mixer, Toshi had originally played guitar. After a seven year hiatus from that instrument, he decided to return to the guitar and try to apply the approach he had learned from the no-input mixer. Creating a feedback loop from a headphone output to the guitar pick-ups and then into the mixer, Toshi created an entire CD of music on his "floor-top guitar." (He explained that he originally tried this set-up on the table top, but it was only when he moved everything to the floor that he began getting results that he liked.) This CD is three long tracks of feedback, with each track possessing its own unique musical personality. I told Toshi about some of the other electronic artists I am meeting here in Japan. Often, they would see such tracks as those found on "Side Guitar," as merely the beginning of musical pieces that would then develop further (via audio processing in various laptop computer programs, for example). This was where Toshi made his point about limits: he enjoyes giving himself one chance to get it right and then moving on. "After all, everything really is a work in progress, anyway," he said, pointing out that even after a performance, a musician might think about a particular piece of music for days afterward - the processing, in this case, being of the mental variety as opposed to that done in the computer. This is a great insight: if all music is truly a "work-in-progress," then it is the artist who must make the very personal choice of where, exactly, the limits are for his/her artistic approach. With an attitude such as his, Toshi might have the most truly Zen approach of the electronic musicians I have met here in Japan.

With this in mind, we unexpectedly made a connection between this idea of "limits" and my vegetarian diet. In Japan, I am frequently asked about this diet. Although Japan is a very easy place to maintain a vegetarian diet (this, due to the huge variety of both the food and the various ways in which it is prepared), you do not generally find many Japanese who are truly vegetarian - hence, the curiosity. Over the many years I have been a vegetarian, I have found that my reasons for maintaining the diet have evolved. Originally, I became a vegetarian because of an experience I had of the outdoors and wildlife in Yellowstone National Park. However, over time, I started to see that the principal value of the vegetarian diet came down to one simple point: the diet made me consider everything that I ate - that is to say, everything that I chose to put into my body. Upon, such consideration, I would not go to eat at, say, the major fast food chains in the US, not so much because of meat or fish products, but instead because I simply felt that they offered neither safe nor healthy food. Thus, the vegetarian diet was a filter, a "limit" that helped me to make careful and, hopefully, wise choices about food.

Such connections and insights always seem to come to the fore when I am hanging out and talking with Toshi. It's easy to see that he is an inspiration to me. Now, if we could only put on some muscle...