Dokutoramo - Les yeux roi - cassette, digital - 2017 - Black Ship
A1 Your friendly neighbourhood watch
A2 Land of catastrophe
A3 Izanagi boom
A4 Tombo
A5 they greatly bended back
B1 Tout l'univers, gauche
B2 As I lay eyeing
B3 exit okiagari-city
B4 Narumori
C1 Ox-hour visits
C2 Wastes of weeds
D1 Tout l'univers, droit
D2 The second-hand mirror comes alive
D3 Le grand mot
Dokutoramo: Percussion, guitar, prepared guitar, effects, tapes, whistles
Recorded, processed and engineered at Black Ship 2016-17
Ink calligraphy by Kanako Mitsuzumi
Ink calligraphy by Kanako Mitsuzumi
"It is said that eyesight peaks at fifteen.
Mine got worse from ten, so I could say I got at least a five years headstart looking through worn-out eyes. White shapes on the blackboard at school; a bloated eagle soaring above the forest, or another mote on my retina? It all blurred without the specs, and suspiciously cleared with them on. Comfort appeared in sounds, textures, and flavours; away from the complicating asymetry of left and right apertures.
A couple of years later, struggling with a deep-reaching fatigue that escalated to intense hallucinations during waking hours, and nightmares during sleep, I often blacked out, coming to in a sweat not knowing where I was nor recognizing surrounding faces. After several such episodes, I came to thinking I traveled to another place, a sort of alternate reality, of which I caught a glimpse every blackout; time, space and sound all distorted, terrifying in a way, as if caught under a massive wave at sea, near the beach but unsure to make it; or that brief period of half-sleep paralysis in the morning, when phantoms are best seen. It showed me an alternate plane where senseless terrors made sense, and the whole meaning of existence was to exist to see a bit more. The differences were often subtle, and I got used to this biverse, thinking of everything and its simultaneous ephemeral double.
Over time the trips ceased, and drinks and smokes seemed to replace them, although I realized they weren't more to me than short moments of playful disorientation.
One summer many years later on another continent, I started taking walks at night without wearing contact lenses. My real eyes let me see things again in the distance, a flash around the corner, a shadow across the parking lot, a story behind windows. I did the same during the day sometimes too, somewhat relieved to once again navigate the other side. The living city, the foggy murk along the canal, the slow-motion rice paddy dragonfly, the windswept train platform, the deserted arcade, the sunny boulevard at four am and four pm, the dead city, all gave me passage to the flip side."
