I’m back in Tokyo again. Only it’s the 21st Century. I want to tell you the story of the Cowboys…the Tokyo Cowboys. Of how they reinvented themselves on the post modern urban frontier. It starts here…no, it starts here…no…I guess it doesn’t matter where it starts or where it ends. We are constructing a kind of truth.
I realize that my reality in Tokyo…when I was living in Tokyo is totally different from my Tokyo reality now. It’s as if they have constructed a new reality for me. By seeing it through their eyes, I was a born again Cowgirl.
Something between Sans Soliel and American Movie. Something that captures a time and a place and these people…documenting Tokyo, early 21st century. the last bastian of innocence. There is no darkness in Tokyo. That is reserved for the countryside.
There are all of these pieces. I feel as if I’m sitting in front of a massive puzzle, and I’m trying to fit all of the pieces together. God help me. And keep thinking about Suzuki–it is impossible to arrange the dots out of order.
Marginalization. the “other”
Went to the bookstore and read some Bauman. I think I’m intellectualizing too much. I was so organic in shooting this, and now I’m being too…non-organic. trying to impose a structure on this thing just doesn’t seem right. but you can’t have an hour and a half collage of voices, sounds, images. people would get bored. there has to be a story, and how to integrate that story into the collage? that’s the question. now i’m tired.
cliched images of japan…gozilla, samurai, geisha. then the bomb, paper cranes, economic prosperity, etc., etc. i used to watch gozilla movies on sundays when i was a kid. they came on after the cartoons.
Japan has always been in my consciousness. it’s part of american history even if you don’t study it.
Been looking at endless hours of Ken footage. He’s always talking, I’m always talking. It’s not until the later footage that I felt comfortable with just letting him be in front of the camera. We both learned how to be with the camera.
