Midaregami

Some weeks ago I mused aloud about how best to start building a home recording setup. Upon arriving home in the US, I began seriously thinking about how to do this.

And after a few days of agonizing, and a few brow-furrowing trips to various music stores both online and off, I realized that I was going about this all wrong. Were I to drop a bunch of cash on drum mics and a recording deck, I’d be able to record… my drums. And not much else. That is no way to go about conceptualizing and composing music.

But a keyboard might get me somewhere.

I despise intercontinental air travel. Airports are now, more than ever, concentrated hubs of stress, carefully calculated to reduce even the most enlightened guru into a powerlessly indignant pile of meat. Since I am several levels of understanding removed from any kind of enlightenment, this is bad for me.

Furthermore, it is one of the quirks of the long-distance relationship that airports inevitably become landmarks of longing; every escalator and security check a reminder of the one-way path that begins the cycle of separation. Even when I’m not playing the pain game with Herself, I have learned to loathe airports.

I arrived at Kansai International Airport about two hours before my flight, and I did not dally. Nonetheless, I barely boarded in time. Let’s discuss some of the indignities that were visited upon me over the course of my travel.

I have heard, recently, whisperings of a vicious rumor, a notion of the most vile sort. People are saying that I have a web site.

I know. Imagine my shock, my revulsion, at discovering that the very statements I had once dismissed as mean-spirited lies were actually true. And, sweet flaming barbecue, I have not updated in weeks. Well, here goes.

Or the last one for me, anyway. It doesn’t seem real, that I’m leaving Japan. It should; my bank account’s been emptied, my utilities canceled, my plane ticket booked—if these facts didn’t drive the matter home, one would think that the fact that the majority of my kipple has been shipped home would do it. But no.

Maybe it’s Shena Ringo-induced brain freeze. Maybe it’s the first stage of inverse culture shock. Maybe it’s just plain-vanilla denial. Whatever the cause, I am blind to the future.

Clouded visions to occur to me in harrowing mind-spasms, from time to time, and they seem to suggest that I will be writing about the rest of the Yamabikari festival, the “Dolls” Lolita Cosplay event in Kobe, and later, waxing nostalgic about Japan. There was also something in the vision about discussing Blankey Jet City and JUDE, but that also involved a gecko as large as a man that spoke in Kenichi Asai’s voice—spoke of Cadillacs, and Yankees—so the prudent reader will avoid making major life decisions based this prediction.

And anyway, waxing tearily nostalgic about Japan would require me to be somewhere else, though, and that’s just silly. Me, leave Japan? Preposterous. I live here.

…don’t I?