While meditating, you are supposed to have a clear mind and not think about anything. But of course many thoughts come into your mind at times, especially when you are sitting for long hours. Many of the thoughts that come into my mind are often driven by bodily and psychological needs and desire, such as pain from sitting, craving for food (in my case cigarette as well), sensual thoughts, greedy thoughts etc.

This gave me a chance to reflect on my needs, what I desire, and what I want to obtain as a greedy self. It gave me a chance to reflect how our mind works and raised and raise a question – When does human desires become too much? How do we deal with this as a society?

Our collective goal to create ‘better life’ and happiness based on our desires drives our civilization, culture and science over all. Especially in the post war era in the west, many of basic needs were satisfied. Families in such countries sought new homes, cars, appliances and so on in the name of ‘better life’.

In between the meditation, I was wondering what the differences are between pursuing healthy desires and greedy needs.

Pursuit of happiness,
Pursuit of desire,
Pursuit of greed.

What I feel is that I am often misled to believe these 3 points are interchangeable, especially in market driven consumer led culture.

In 2012 I worked at an international advertising agency as a key member advising the fashion brand Prada on their overall digital strategy. Marketing and advertising agencies carefully and strategically target consumers’ consciousness which desire for ‘better life’ to create demands for products and services.

Desire creation is a big business. But this kind of desire created in minds are often relentless. It is agitation like mind-set with no end. As soon as your desire is satisfied, next desire comes up. To make matter worse, our society allows these desires and greed to be justified with our ‘rights’ to be happy.  Like famous L O’real advertising copy – “Because I am worth it”.

Dr. Tomabechi, a Japanese cognitive scientist and psychologist claims that there are two types of desires in our daily life. One is physical desire, such as hunger, need for sleep etc and these are essential desires for supporting human life. The other is information-based-desire where one’s desire is driven by information. He reminds us to watch out for this information-based-desire, as it may not always be what one really desires. He uses an example of someone wanting to own a Ferrari. This person might desire type 453, instead of 430, but in reality the difference of driving experience may be small but the desire is driven by the attachment to the information of how it’s lie to drive 453. In fact if the main goal of buying a car was to get from A to B, perhaps small car might do the job.

Coming back fro usual life from the meditation retreat made me aware of how my desires are driven, how to observe my desire come and go. I am more aware of my essential desires and or if they are relentless desire based on information, obsession or attachment.

On the night of closing ceremony, we went to Hackney Picture House, which is near by from the Stadium to watch a fim, Ai Wei Wei – Never Sorry. He is probably the leading (in terms of fame in the west) contemporary artist from China now. At the last Olympics, he created the Bird Next stadiam with Herzog de Muron.

After the Olympic Ai became more and more vocal about political climates especially human rights issues in China, and since then he has been on battles with the communist government. He has been arrested and detained for 81 days, and recently been charged with tax bills amounting to 2.4 million US dollars.

The film mainly deals with his legacy following from his departure to USA in 80’s and his recent struggle with the regime, and his will to bring freedom to China. He use social media such as Twitter and his blog as a tool to maintain following in and outside China.

In this film, I was particularly intersted in the history surrounding his early years. His farther was also an artist, who moved to Paris in 1930’s. I imagine he came from an intellectual family to study in Paris this time. And when he returned to China after 3 years, he was jailed by the National Party. In jail as he could not paint, he started to write poems and he bacema one of the most influential poet of his time.

Ai’s farther became a collaborator for the Communist Party like many of the intellectual youths of that time, and they fought against Japanese and then National Party to build People’s Republic of China in 1949.

However in 1960’s, Mao’s cultural revolution labelled him as a counter-revolutionary because he was an intellectual. Under the revolution, much of the culture was destroyed in China, from books, temples, artifacts to art. It really was a crazy time, when school kids were regarded as more important than their teachers because of their lack of knowledge and closer to being the position of pure worker.

Ai’s farther was sent to northen part of China near the desert as a labourer. He cleaned the public toilet everyday. There are millions of stories like this. Jung Chang’s book Wild Swan illustrates such tragedy very vividly, as well as Zhang Yimou’s 1994 film – To Live (He also orchestrated the foot print fireworks for 2008 Olympics in Beijing)

So Ai Wei Wei would watch his farther clean the toilet everyday growing up. There were no art, although Ai’s farther would talk about his time in Paris on odd occasion. Ai entered eventually entered Beijing Film Academy then moved to study in US in 80’s with support from the government.

I saw a Ai’s exhibition at Martin-Gropius Bau museum last year. It showed many photographs from Ai’s stay in New York in the 80’s. He spoke no English when he landed in US, but he leaned the language quickly then entered Parsons School of Arts and spend over 10 years there. Many of the photographs echoes his fresh experience and his curiousity.

Han, my friend who visted today also moved to New York after his study in New Zealand for 6 months. When I visted him in New Yrok, remember him living with 2 other Chinese (illegal) immigrant in hosing project. Other chinese people living in the apartment were smuggled from China in a container ship.

Han’s parents were also intellectuals in China who participated in movement of Tiananmen in other city. They moved to New Zealand after this era, as they saw no bright future in China.

One thing which speaks to me in Ai’s story as well as Han’s, is that they have very high ambition in their 20’s and how their family legacy shines through despite their hardship and immigrating to completely different context.

These parallel stories makes me think of essence of what such families can pass on,  such as attitude towards knowledge despite the shift in social, political or economic surroundings.

WSJ reports:

“No Japanese crew members aboard the whaling fleet have ever been injured by the group. The Sea Shepherd started tailing the annual hunt eight years ago with the aim of blocking the fleet from catching whales.”

Which is not true..

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8511988.stm

Andy Sachs: No. No, no. Nothing’s… You know, it’s just that both those belts look exactly the same to me. You know, I’m still learning about all this stuff and, uh…

Miranda Priestly: ‘This… stuff’? Oh. Okay. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select… I don’t know… that lumpy blue sweater, for instance because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise. It’s not lapis. It’s actually cerulean. And you’re also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves Saint Laurent… wasn’t it who showed cerulean military jackets? I think we need a jacket here. And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. And then it, uh, filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic Casual Corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room from a pile of stuff.

When I attended The School of Art Institute of Chicago for my MFA, I had a series of long conversation with a professor Francis Whitehead on this work and we tried to look at clues for which it might lead me to understand what my artistic value is.

We came to agree that it was heavily influenced by Japanese culture, and Zen. We started to think about philosophical debate in Zen, illustrated by Koan. She also told me to look at Marcel Duchamp and similarity with Zen ideas with a hope that this might lead to understanding where my questions are coming from.

There are many ideas Duchamp and Zen shares, such as non-attachment, rejection of language and system and poetic use of them. They both try to have a stance that question a stance itself therefore question was shifted from a specific to a whole. Chance is also a common theme that occurs in Zen stories and Duchamp’s works. It is no surprise artist such as John Cage who succeed Duchamp’s lineage looked at Zen seriously in his process of art makings.

Chance and probability is also a way of looking at the world. (Like presupposed idea such as causality) Giving ‘chance’ a thought provides us with an opportunity to look at unknown. Did we really come from small probability of one lucky sperm meeting the egg? In the byproduct of such a small chance, there is something we feel as beautiful.  As human, we sense beauty in unexplainable unknown, such as the birth of a child, sunset, and explosion of atomic bomb etc.
This also creates desire for us to uncover the truth of all things, and drives us to push our civilization.

Another point of interest is – “art and life”. My enquiry includes questions such as – How can art look art our lives and create a relationship with art works and objects that is shown inside white walls with what is happening outside? How does art’s nature of contextulization affect when we talk about life?  How can meaning of art share meaning of life? Can art and life share a place?
(We saw Rirkrit Tiravanija’s interview with Mary Jane Jocob)

The last part is things I have have not yet come to understand what my nature of enquiry is. This part of my questions includes “experience”. I am not sure how we can evaluate experience using our language, but I have huge interest in creating certain feelings with art, in a installation work for a example. Feelings and experience are closely associated. They inform many things such as memories, perception, realities, and so on.

I like looking at these things and to talk and exchange ideas between friends.

This unluckiest person BBC featured on this show was a survivor from an atomic bomb, who experienced the horror of atomic bomb not only in Hiroshima on 6 Aug 1945 but also in Nagasaki on 9th Aug 1945.

Mr. Yamaguchi was on a business trip to Hiroshima from Nagasaki and just after 6th of August, he returned to his home town where another bomb was dropped.

It is reported that Japanese citizen in England contacted Japanese embassy in UK to report this program as unappropriate, which then lead to Japanese government to protest Britain. The producer of the program later apologised.

Mr. Yamaguchi’s experience has been recorded in a number of interviews, news archives and documentaries in the past in Japan. Many Japanese news media reported this BBC incident as highly inappropriate for victims of nuclear weapon and broadcasted the films of the man explaining the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the past.

The man has past away few years a go, so his daughter was interviewed. She expressed her disgrace for being made fun for being a victim of such atrocity.  She also continued to say that country such as United Kingdom posses nuclear weapon and them making fun of nuclear bomb is not funny at all.

This whole story came to my attention not only because I live in UK and I am a Japanese, but also I felt it was quite typical misunderstanding and gap in views, culture and position.

On one level, I am sure that the producer of this program did not have a good understanding of the actual impact of the A-bomb. This is partly because in UK or USA, many of the horrific footage from the bomb is not widely circulated. Compare to what is shown in Japan, American media like History channel does not as much documents of men, women, child, babies in Hiroshima/Nagasaki with heavy burns of half of their face falling off. Of course winnerd of war still need to maintain their position on war and this is politically motivated.

In Japan, these horrific images aree used at schools to educate how bad wars are, and how terrible it was for Japan to undertake in the last one. (In my opinion, this is also politically motivated as American had power over what should be taught at school after the war) And as Japan is the only victim of A-bomb in the world, they have the non-nuclear principle of “Not making”, “Not having” and “Not allowing to bring” nuclear weapons.
It is a extremely touchy subject for the Japanese and my feelings also hurt when Mr. Yamaguchi talks about river full of dead burnt people which he saw that day. It tells horror of the weapon and what he had to go through.

At the same time, I feel how Japanese media’s report on this BBC program was also misleading. They reported QI as a “comedy program” (used the word ‘Variety program’ which is widely used as comedy, shows etc in Japan) They also reported as though cast of the program laughed at the man, and dropping of A-bombs. I think British have sense of humour where often laugh at tragic occasions, not to make fun of the people or the situation, but laugh to make it more bearable perhaps.

To me, the program is not making the fun of the victim, in fact these cast are professionals and they were quite skillful in not making a direct joke. One of the cast’s comments on “It is amazing that the training was running the next day” is really a comment making a fun of inefficiency of British trains, and it was the ‘material’ they are laughing at, not to the a-bomb victims.

For me, stories like this makes me think about how tricky it can be when it comes to inter-cultural and historical positions, views and contexts. As someone who understand British humour and grew up watching documentary of atrocities of A-bombs, I think clear and well articulated communication is vital in this kind of case.

To a degree, British humour has its legetimacy in culture and so as the voices of the victims of A-bombs. And both legitimacy can only be consolidated to a fair ground when they can both communicate. Personaly I am interested in this issue because I feel well articulated communication can give us place to understand each other.

僕は日本で中学と高校の入試を経験したのだがやはり間違った時に消せるえんぴつを使っていた。日本ではいつも基本的に勉学はシャープペンシルかえんぴつだった。（本当は英語でシャープペンシルはメカニカルペンシルといいます）

そして、１６歳になってニュージーランドに留学することになって高校１年生に編入したのだが、ここでは生徒はみんなペンを使っていて僕もペンを使うよう指導された。なので間違った時のための修正液もみんな持っていた。

一回先生に鉛筆ではなんでだめなのか聞いてみたら、ペンで書くと正しいことを書くようになるというようなものだった。もう、もとどおりできないのだから自分の書いていることに自信をもって書き進んでいくスタイルをよしとしている感じだった。

これはニュージーランドだけではなくイギリス（ニュージーランドの教育システムはイギリスとほぼ同じ）やアメリカでもこうである。
これを大きく解釈するとやっぱりアングロサクソン系の国ではこういうようなことが言えると思う。
自分の行為や書いたものに責任を持つ。
間違いやミスであっても自分の意見を押し通すことにある程度の意義を持たせている。
一回で間違いなしに成功させることに重きを置く。

一方日本ではいつミスが起こるかわからないという不安感が念頭にある。
ペンで書いて間違いを認めないのは横着だという観念がある。
丁寧にミスを少しずつ訂正しながら書いているものをよりよく完成させていく。
これから何が学び取れるのかはわからないが書くこと一つを文化の背後にある哲学とういのはこんなに違うのです。