Sweet Nothing 🌊

Celebrating Hayao Miyazaki and the Japanese concept of Ma

Dec 13, 2023

Wednesday December 13th, 2023 Winnipeg

My guy -

The Boy and The Heron, a new film by Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, opened in North America this past week, and flew to no. 1 at the box office -- very rare for an anime film.

Hayao Miyazaki is 82 years old and just won't stop producing his incredible work.

He loves to work from 9am-9pm, 6 days a week, at his drawing desk, smokes about 80 cigarettes a day, often working holidays. The only reason he comes home at 9 and not any later each day is because his wife made him promise to.

The Boy and the Heron happens to be the first movie he's been able to make so far in his career without creepy fat-cat financial investors to impinge on his creative decisions (Harvey Weinstein used to be one of them). Studio Ghibli funded this puppy completely on their own. An independent work. Worth celebrating!

There's so much to love about Miyazaki's films, but Roger Ebert touched on some of the truly special magic in them when he interviewed Miyazaki 21 years ago:

Ebert: "Instead of every movement being dictated by the story, sometimes people will just sit for a moment, or they will sigh, or look in a running stream, or do something extra, not to advance the story, but only to give the sense of time and place and who they are.

Miyazaki: "We have a word for that in Japanese. It's called ma. Emptiness. It's there intentionally. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it's just busyness. but if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb.

Writer Kiyoshi Matsumoto defines the nothing that is Ma --

"The Japanese concept of Ma is something that relates to all aspects of life.

It has been described as a pause in time, an interval or emptiness in space.

Ma is the fundamental time and space from which life needs to grow.

Space, for the Japanese psyche, directly impacts the individual’s progress.

These principles are universal, when applied effectively they enhance the way one thinks and how one engages with one’s surroundings.

Japanese can visually identify with the meaning of Ma from its kanji symbol. Ma combines door 門 and sun 日. Together these two characters depict a door through the crevice of which the sunlight peeps in 間."

I find all of that incredibly beautiful and relieving at this crazy time of year.

Still more dimensions of this particular kind of nothingness -- since it's so other-worldly-seeming to me personally --

"Another example would be the silent pause in conversation. The Japanese way of communication is full of emptiness; subjects of sentences are often left unsaid.

Clarity in words is not always necessary, reaching an intuitive understanding in a silent pause is considered highly intelligent and sophisticated.

This opposes the more direct western standards of communication, especially in the US where nothing should be left for speculation, and conversations avoid the ‘awkwardness’ of silence."

I will never think of a silence in conversation the same way again.

Quick check-in, do *you* feel like your psyche has the space it wants right now?

Is it social media or capitalism or both taking up all the sexy, gorgeous, negative space in our lives?

Debussy wrote that the music is not in the notes, but in the spaces between them.

Miles Davis: “It’s not the notes you play; it’s the notes you don’t play."

Ma is the emptiness full of possibilities, like a promise yet to be fulfilled.

From the New York TImes; "One of the most arresting objects on display in the musical instruments galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a 2,000-year-old bell from Japan that was built to be mute.

Dotaku bells such as this one still puzzle historians, but we know they were made without clappers and buried in earth, probably as part of a ritual designed to bless crops."

VIDEOS TO PEEP 👀

Director Guillermo Del Toro loves Hiyao Miazaki's work and explains why beautifully.

Del Toro: "Miazaki is a guy that has exquisite technical finesse, but also is a man that has decided to confide in us his most intimate biography through his work." Big fan of this short reel of gorgeous Studio Ghibli animations paired with this sweet director heaping love upon his fearless colleague ^^^

Slow Spirit - Pile Of Books

WATCH: Slow Spirit - Pile of Books on youtube or IG - this came out this week! Making things like this with many artists this week. Stoked to share em soon <3

A REAL GOOD THING

NEW MUSIC TO HEAR - Curt by Compost

Very exciting that the band Compost (formerly known as Pizza Blanket), which has been rehearsing tirelessly over the past year at my house every week, has released their first ever single. Check it out on bandcamp here.

"Compost (Eric Roberts, Justin Alcock and Julian Beutel) is the grit and grind of deep bass and decomposing blown-out beats from which spectral Fender Rhodes flower. It is the mycelium that reaches for the roots of their shared experience. Based in Winnipeg, the instrumental trio references 90s beat makers and European electronic music, cycling between movement and meditation."

Welcome to the world, Compost 🍄🌱🐌 Glad you're here.

BONUS SPRINKLES

4 Hours of Asian Mum to Help You Focus on Practising/Studying/Working

I find this verrrry cute and helpful - a violinist made a 4-hour-long video satirizing his mother, who, when he was growing up, would diligently check up on her son's study/practice sessions literally every 2 minutes all evening, to make sure he was still on task. So play this video if you require somebody checking up on you every 2 minutes for 4 straight hours. Maybe you'll get *that thing* done.

Big fan of yours - hope you find some beautiful, sexy, gorgeous open space this week to bask in - rooting for you!

Til next week - take good care over there. ttys -

Natalie Bohrn

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