In Nara, in the capital of nice deer, where you can stroll in joy and tranquility under the trees, if there is a place where you know how to welcome and have fun, it is at the Ryokan Matsumae . This place located in the old town, initially dedicated to welcoming tourists in the traditional guesthouse style, where calligraphy, Kyogen and Yoga are practiced in particular, is in the process of undergoing its gradual reconversion after Covid and we are participating in this transition. It is quite possible that in some time this place will become an artists’ residence and we are the first to initiate this movement. Our friend Tohkei Naomi-san, the mistress of this house, a talented calligrapher, is committed to moving forward and knowing how to change if necessary. We wish her all the best to keep things going smoothly and where they need to go. And then it is also true that it becomes a little hard for her and also for Fuwa-san, whom we affectionately call “Fuwa-rin” (the one who flutters), second hand of the house, to be in this indefinite expectation a clientele that has almost deserted the city since the Covid, so much these two love their work. Maybe Fuwa-san could take advantage of it too, now that he has more energy available, to go a little more towards the arts, those visuals, by continuing to film the deer of the city, or maybe to be also the artists of passage, he who knew so well how to film us during the session “The Butterfly and the Aubier” which we carried out here.
It was planned that Naomi-san will produce two works during this session in “performance” mode, for people who have chosen this counterpart to the crowdfunding of the project. After the chiaroscuro tone of “Le Papillon et l’Aubier” maybe we needed to go more playful? In any case, that’s what we did. The initial theme for this improvisation was the rings of trees but there was also the idea of the tops.
The kanji “Rin” that we see here means “wheel” and by derivative the circle, the cycles. We find this kanji in the word which designates the rings of the tree and which is completed by the kanji “nen” which means “year”. Tohkei Naomi-san reminded us that it is not with sapwood that we build very solid things, but with heartwood. At the same time she also showed us that the shape of a part of this kanji represents wooden plates on top of each other, held by a coiled wire (Rin), on which things were written a long time ago. important, those that we absolutely had to remember. She said that perhaps we are aubar, but that, like the energy present on these planks which were also intended to pass through time, there is within us this same strong need to say, to transmit.
The aubar … doesn’t it become, circle after circle, little by little, the heartwood ?
Tohkei Naomi Yanï : calligraphie. Ludovic B.A : chant. Yöko Takeda : violon. Steve Eto : percussions
