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I gaze at the yellow iris and coral rose and purple of the silken
garment glistening in a world that did not see it anymore. They
contrast so much with the modern world that time itself seems to stop
abruptly when they pass. Even if women of entertainment, women of
pleasure, one can but feel intimidated or touched by their dispense of
purity, of cleanliness, of grace and easiness. When I was there, in
Japan, I did not see geishas as symbol of luxury, but as a necessity in
a society that was slowly losing its values and traditions.
“The first time I saw a geisha, it was for me a world apart, a world
I could have understood without acknowledging it. A gueisha is at the
same time this mild woman who reads poetry and this woman
accompanist with whom you spend time. The Japanese worked so
much on the notion of orientation, of eyesight and image that they
became oversensitive to it. The kimonos of geishas are very bright,
and they wear a thick white layer of paint over their face as in the
Noh theater.
This make up was too much for me. I thought that even if I admired
the notion of being entertained by an intelligent and knowledgeable
woman, I could never be in contact with a Asian woman because they
usually use a lot of make up. I feel personally aggressed by the
Oriental colors, by the purple color so recurrent in the eastern
cultures, and by everything that is dazzling brilliant and mingled. You
go to their place, and even the smell of the cuisine is aggressive.
Several odors mix garlic and boiled oil, and something else. I could
never get used to it. In Morocco, the colors, the sun make them fade
away. The fact that they live in a society, in a culture where clarity is
very important, Arabs focus on making vanish everything aggressive
to the senses. This is expressed in all the way of life. An Arab would
not tolerate strong odors or vibrant colors in his house. In food, spices
were not known in the Occidental countries or in the Arabic countries
for a long time; they were imported from Asia. Spices are also
something strong brought from the East.”
And it is a fact that the colors in Japan seem to be endowed with life,
with the notion of high status or dignity. Even the heroes of the Noh
theater use them to parade like birds.
The interpreters move very slowly on the scene as in order to give
only the faintest hint of movement. They recite mainly poetry pieces,
but also prose from the 14th century upper class Japanese, inflected in
such a way as to be comprehensible only to the scholars.
The first Noh plays were written during a time when
complete self-annihilation in death was considered absolutely
necessary in order to reach Nirvana in the Buddhist asceticism. Thus,
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many Noh plays are concerned with ghosts or spirits of people who
are detained upon earth by their memories, unfulfilled passions or
jealousies. It is only by giving up the self completely that they can
reach eternal peace. Sutra read or prayers offered by priests were
thought to help send straying ghosts to Nirvana. It was also believed
that a person could be what he thought himself to be. Usually, only
three actors play on the scene. Three pine sapplings are planted a little
apart along the front of the bridge, suggesting on the one hand the
close approximation to Nature, and marking on the other the actor's
progress between heaven, earth, and mankind. There is a narrow
space on the ground along the side and front of the stage covered with
sand and gravel; we are almost in the Zen garden again.
This because this art, inherited from the Japanese fourteenth century,
is imbued from the start with a serious Buddhist tone. It is in a sense a
theater of meditation; it compares to the Zen garden.
2000-2001 http://www.arttoday.com
I continue to look though Ibrâhim's photos.
Here and there, I saw people who spend days painting silk, arranging
flowers (ikebana), people who pinch musical strings unrivetted by a
stream (a shamisen), a boat being ornamented with dazzling ribbons
swinging in the wind, all these pictures talked about the old Japan, the
cultural Japan. And all talked about the silence... about a thumping
immobility."
This back side seems to be constantly present in Japan, this despite
high technology and westernized habits. I see it also in the pictures of
fossiles Ibrâhim brought back from the country of the Levant. They
are beautiful, but fix, looking like seahorses mastered with three
stems, so silent in their nudity! They seem to have been painted by
ancient calligraphers. Marked by vibrant undertones --yellow, orange,
blue and white-- marbled shellfishes caught the light of the
photographer like the gentle colors of the geishas silken dresses.
This thumping immobility is again perceptible in the Zen garden of
Kyoto where the temple Kinkaku-ji made of pure gold stands forever
unrusted amongst the scaled trees and the hundred colors of autumn.
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