Monday, September 07, 2009

Liquid in life

I had a public dialogue with the designer Taku Sato. in the Les Deux Magots Cafe Tokyo, Shibuya. Taku is widely known and appreciated for his design of packages, in which he depicts, in the utmost simplicity and elegance, the essential properties of a particular brand.

When I have a discussion in public, I rarely meet the counterpart beforehand. I prefer to let the conversation follow its own life force ad libitum, rather than to adhere to a designated structure.

The spontaneous verbal exchanges with Taku last night was exceptionally successful, thanks to the gaiety of his spirit.

Taku said that surfing has been his passion for more than two decades, and described the experience in precise and poignant words. Taku's reference to the oceanic sport on the waves led us to the appreciation of the liquid in life.

In civilization, we are tend to be surrounded by solids made of steel, concrete, and other infrastructures. Given the unavoidable trends, life continues to thrive, gets to its highest points, in liquids. That something which is without any definite shape, always changing, breaking our expectations, calling for a total engagement by the body, shifting, penetrating, mixing, gorging, going over everything, into everywhere, becoming time itself in its transitions. That something, ubiquitously liquid.

The lively conversation with Taku left a vivid and viable aftertaste. I thrive in that tone today.

Here's to the liquid in life.


With Taku Sato in the Les Deux Magots Cafe Tokyo.

2 comments:

Junko said...

The title "Liquid in life" is matched with the appearance of two guys. Nice photo!

Though I didn't have a chance to hear the discussion , your blog taught me the importance of flexibility. Thank you.

sky said...

I was impressed by your expression, "becoming time itself", in this article.

In science(especially in physics and mathematics),
the time can be considered as the parameter, t, "outside" a system.
The behavior of the system, now, can be described
by some mapping from "t" to a state of the system.
In this sense, "t" have provided us with the gratful descriptive power. But, is "t" enough to understand this world ?

In our dairy life,
the subjective feeling of time seems to be more flexible, similar to liquid.
I feel the quite big difference between "t" and our sense of time.
Extremely speaking, "t" makes our world ice, while our world is always moving and changing(our world is warm!). However, moving and changing may precede "t". If so, shouldn't we try to understand such an aspect, without killing the warmth of our world ?