February 2014
MEGUMI MATSUBARA
Close your eyes.
Enter me carefully.
And witness; all flowers are naked.
I was three. My mother was in front of me putting me to sleep.
I was not sleepy. I was lying looking at her face.
After a while, she closed her eyes. Soon she fell asleep. She was tired.
I could not see her eyes anymore. I watched her face for a long time.
Quickly I became afraid. I thought if she never opened her eyes, we would never see each other again.
Sleep and death seemed to be the same thing at their points of departure.
I was sixteen. I read a thin book that summer.
‘A portrait of Shunkin’, Junichiro Tanizaki; a short story about the life of a woman who was born blind, beautiful, and a gifted koto player. The story began with what was written on her tombstone.
Death is the beginning of any story. Am I right?
One day, a guy apprenticed himself and became her lifelong closest disciple and lover.
He devoted himself to his master. At last he pricked his eyeballs and blinded himself.
Someone had caused serious burns on the master’s face.
As afraid of seeing her as she was of being seen, he simply decided never to see her face again.
Eyes were stealing his images. He no longer permitted his eyes to see.
Imprisoned in the memory, despite the loss of his sight, he described a world of unity that appeared before his eyes.
A field emerged between what eyes did and did not see.
In the world beyond eyes – words and images are the same thing.
When I transcribe an image from my dream, words are not complementary.
They do not explain. Words are the image itself.
Without those words, the image does not appear.
There – words and images become an inseparable pair.
Organically, chaotically, words develop the images.
Those images only appear in a puddle of words.
Such images are like clouds in my head. They quiver – like humidity.
Words look at them – those vaporized particles – and trace.
They draw a line in the clouds. A constellation appears.
A trace shows an image, and a line draws a narrative. Like an arrow – a direction grows.
That is the way words fix images. They become one – memory forms.
If it is a reality – bothered by none.
It just begins to exist. Images become present.
If you are looking at yourself, you are two.
One of them should go.
If two mirrors are facing each other, and get closer and closer, they touch.
I imagine the faces of contact liquefy.
If I am between the two, I sit on the surface – liquid, like a lake.
Knee-deep in water, I look from one side to another.
The surface slants as the moon wanes.
Light turns inwards – two surfaces further melt.
The sense of direction obliterates.
Folded in mist, a sense of unity comes.
Light turns inwards – where no boundary rules.
Appearance: THE BLIND DREAM (Exhibition Score), Mar 2014