Excerpt: Butoh War Games
After passing the derelict wooden structure of the immense Koma cinema that Richie loved and would be demolished soon after, the cacophony of Shinjuku faded out and we entered the near-darkened, near-silent and dense alleyways of the Golden Gai area, almost untouched for 50 years, and arrived at the discretely signposted bar, ‘La Jet ée’, owned by Richie’s friend, another obsessive agent of memory, the French film-maker Chris Marker, possessed by his own memories of the future, which Tokyo above all other cities disgorges, annulling or reversing linear time, oscillating between future-directed political contestations and now-lost corporeal gestures, transforming the megalopolis’s facades and the imprinted bodies they momentarily contain.
By Stephen Barber.
Manifesto Eye Of Signs
1
In their masks and disguises, the idle companions of his table represent him as conversing with serpents.
2
Some imitated lovers: they even created a magical group, seldom laughing.
3
The rest dispense with stories of my beloved: in meditation they gather proverbs from nature.
A new poem from Paul Holman.