FD: Who is Robert Jarrell? What do you do in Life?

-Robert Jarrell:

First and foremost, I'm an artist, and this translates into many different energies and expressions: graphic design,painting, dj-ing, writing, photography, and my relationships with people and the world. I live in San Francisco, California, and I'm married to a beautiful Japanese woman, Tomoko, who is also an artist.

F.D: Which kind of art does she do?

-Robert Jarrell:

Tomoko is a floral designer. She studied Ikebana and other contemporary forms of flower design in Japan. She is also a potter (ceramist) and is good at drawing and painting as well. We collaborate on drawings and paintings when we have free time.I work full-time as a graphic designer and in my spare timeI'm an editor and designer for HeadLight Journal, a cultural arts online and print magazine. I dj as a hobby, and eventually I want to create original music from the perspective of a non-musician, similar to Brian Eno's approach. My dj style is not dance music, rather I attempt to create atmosphere that communicates other feelings besides dancing. The music I select is textural, abstract, and experimental such as minimal ambient and noise music.dj with the San Francisco butoh group Toumei, which is kind of an odd combination, but the performance theater is an ideal environment for me because the music I like is not suitable for the dance club. I like dance music and there are a thousand great dance djs, especially in San Francisco, but my approach and main musical taste is different. I've also been a strong practicioner of Iyengar Yoga and this parallels my interest in art and butoh in many ways.

F.D: Speak us about this form of yoga. I don't know it.

-Robert Jarrell:

Iyengar Yoga is one school of Yoga. It is popular in San Francisco and is named after its creator, B.K.S. Iyengar, one of the foremost teachers of Yoga in the world who has practiced and taught yoga for over sixty years. Millions of students now follow his method and there are Iyengar yoga centres all over the world. He has written many books on yogic practice and its philosophy including " Light on Yoga ," " Light on Pranayama ," "Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali " and more. I've studied other schools of Yoga, but Iyengar is the best for me because it is precise in its training of breath, body posture, and spiritual attitude. So my artistic expressions are diverse, yet there are many things I still want to try. This becomes a conflict because I need to empty one part of my plate (which is already full) in order to try something new. Some of my friends say all I need to do is make time and do it, but it's not that simple because I'm already very active doing many things. My life is a struggle because my artistic energies are like a tree someone planted in a small room that gets strong sunlight. My tree has grown rapidly and I've already smashed the ceiling. I have choices to make: I can attempt to break through that ceiling, but this is difficult because that ceiling is time and you can't break time, time breaks you; or I can cut down some branches and make room for other branches to grow in their place, but this means compromise and sacrifice.

F.D: I think that is here a beautiful demonstration of life ....I've also much projects but my apartment is too small. And somewhere i feel like an urban tree which have its branches cutted. What is the meaning of Butoh?

-Robert Jarrell:

The meaning of butoh is constantly changing and never stays the same, but fundamentally, butoh means creating movement with impact. It starts with throwing the empty body into space unprotected. This translates into many different meanings depending on the time of its creation. Traditional butoh (Japanese butoh) began in the late 1950s and 60s and meant something completely different then it does now for younger butoh artists. Originally it was "The Dance of Darkness", but the context is different now.

F.D: Can you specify me in what this context is different? ....Don't you think we're actually living in Darkness?
I agree that we are not the survivors of a atomic bomb, although we're all survivors ..... But i would like to say that there are still survivors of this atomic bomb in Japan, and you know that no science is able to know the side effects of the atomic bomb and the radioactivity and unfortunately, there are more weapons on this earth than Light. We continue  living in the atomic period, although we reject and occult this tragic reality .... I let you imagine the disasters of several explosions in the nuclear thermal power stations around the planet. You know that grounds spaces are bought on the planet March. It means a big FEAR.
Can you describe me this world in which you live everyday, tell me the daily-news, speak about the wars scattered in the world, of growing poverty and massacred civils ... etc ....
which difference between living in san-francisco and New York?
What is a homeless people?
what about the last bomb in Spain, etc ...?
What about the Tchernobyl victims, etc ...?
And describe me a baby or other hidden victims after this accident ....
How many weapons are they in Russia? ... and more other questions on the darkness of this world?
let me know about any space on this earth where there is peace and light?
Tell more about this <different context> of Butoh?
Imagine Hajikata and his wife, today, in our world, performing a Butoh dance.

-Robert Jarrell:

Well, you're quite right to point out the problems we are facing in this world. This is not to say that younger butoh artists are not aware of them. When I say the context is different now, I mean to say that it is not the same as when butoh bagan in postwar Japan in the late 1950s. The political, mental, and economic climate was different then. There was a lot of insecurity, but also a lot of optimism. Hajikata and others were avant-garde. The normal Japanese person didn't have dark thoughts or concerns-they had accepted what had happened and were moving on. The Japanese were not stuck and were not gong to be belittled in spite of losing a war and undergoing two huge tragedies regarding the atomic bombings. If you travel to Japan now in 2004, you see the outcome of this attitude-it is a country that in many ways has now surpassed the West in terms of efficiency, technology, design, and beauty. In Tokyo it seems as if the year is 2050 and the people are quite different too. Their presentation and etiquette is superior. You walk into any coffee shop anywhere in Japan and there's a crew of workers in uniform who yell out in unison, "Irasshimase", which means "Welcome". You pull up to a gas station and there's a crew of workers ready to meet your every need. Their trains are always on time and most people are dressed very well, wearing suits, jackets and ties because to them, the clothing they wear is their "face". Also they are a very clean people and you'll find no trash on the trains or buses. If you take this same scenario and move your vantage point to say, San Francisco, what you find is a whole different attitude; you have a bus that is 20 minutes late and full of hip-hop kids with their pants falling down to their knees and spitting sunflower seeds all over the floor and their language is foul and someone's sitting in the back with a ghetto blaster. America has a predominant lower class. Japan doesn't. This is a problem as the lower class attitude in America is growing and if it continues America is going to be in a lot of trouble because we're losing etiquette, respect, and morals.

In any case, today's younger butoh performers have different themes and I haven't seen any of the specific dark issues you mention presented in the performances. In my eyes, at least, the younger artists are interested in showing beauty in all its different facets: body movement, stage lighting, costumes, and music. The questions that are being asked are less political and more existential: What are we doing here? What does life mean in an age of uncertainty? And the answers are: Life is what you do with it from day to day, because it is only what you've done with your life that matters when you're finally in your grave. Are you going to respect life and serve people and have compassion or are you going to sit in the back of a bus and spit sunflower seeds all over the place? And so there is a different attitude with the dancers who have a spiritual attitude and awareness. I don't know if Hajikata and Ohno were spiritual. When one is spiritual you look toward the light for inspiration and power, not the darkness. It's same attitude you find when you practice Yoga and meditation; you use the energy of light to travel through your body and get rid of negative thoughts. So, I want to again stress that in our age of chaos, it is even more important to have this kind of attitude to carry on because there is darkness all around us.
President Bush, Saddham Hussein, Al-Quada: these are all people who are living in darkness, regardless of their praise of the God they swear to follow. The correct attitude for President Bush to have is simple: compassion and that should be the same for everyone. What the world needs are leaders who are no confined by their countries. You have an American President who is only looking out for American interest. This is the wrong attitude. The world is becoming smaller and smaller. We need leaders who will start to look out for the world's interest as a collective. We all live on the same planet we are all human beings that have the same basic needs. The darkness that exist in the world today comes from human beings in powerful positions who lack compassion and self knowledge.
The original butoh artists, Hajikata and his wife, Akiko Motufuji, and Ohno, were avant-garde; they broke from Japanese tradition while still embracing many of its aesthetics, especially Noh Theater and its interest in shadows (a very Japanese trait) and their expressions were also in part a response to WWII and the nuclear bombings. Butoh is also grounded to the earth, it is usually performed low to the ground; it is not loftly like ballet or other dance movements. And like the butoh dancer, I felt it appropriate to also be low to the ground when I dj with the Toumei group so I set up my turntables and mixer on the ground and it feels completely different-it's more spiritual.
By its nature butoh changes, never stays the same as compared to other dance forms that are more inflexible like ballet, or even hip-hop. Butoh can take or leave anything; it can bring hip-hop and ballet to its canvas or it can abandon it. It can be lofty, but only if its expression calls for it. It can bring abstract energies to its canvas or it can be precise and concrete. Its canvas is not material, not confined. The butoh canvas is the universe. Out of all the dance movements I've seen it comes closest to being existential; it strives for knowledge of the universe and of the self. It succeeds beautifully when it abandons the ego, and fails miserably when it does not. As Hajikata once said, "The butoh dancer must be able to relate to a frozen bone that transcends gender". It can be a dark dance like it originally was or it can be quite beautiful as I often see today. The Toumei group, as well as many other young groups like Ledoh's Salt Farm, are moving away from the grotesque tradition and starting to create beautiful and positive forms from its knowledge and this is refreshing. The world has become dark and to still have beauty with dance and performance is important for the spirit. So butoh is struggling with a new wave of younger artists and they are creating post-butoh, which is quite different then original butoh.

F.D: Don' you think that this post-butoh can be withdrawal, somewhere, a return to the japoneses traditions with a form of closed and spiritual esthetism?

-Robert Jarrell:

don't think post-butoh is in a state of withdrawal. I believe it is growing and expanding. There are some groups that keep the original tradiition alive, but I find the performances redundant and not as fresh as some of the other groups that are taking risks and exploring other creative avenues.

F.D: About my opinion, I think that the world is currently very difficult to live and many people lock up and become self-protective into their mind. They're frightened and unable to express this fear. What do you think of the New-Age movement?

-Robert Jarrell:

If you have fear in your life it will create all kinds of limitations. There are a thousand fears all of us must face in our lifetime if we want to get to a point of self-awareness or self-knowledge. If we don't face our fears then we fail in our life and if there's such a thing as reincarnation then we will come back again and have another go at it. The ironic thing about fear is that once you face it and get beyond it you realize that fear is just an illusion of the mind. Fear can be so many different things, complex things and simple things, such as a fear of speaking in front of people, a fear of failing as an artist, or the fear of flying on a plane, but what it really ends up being about is a fear of death. When you no longer fear death you have finally abandoned your ego.

F.D: What is this post-butoh?

-Robert Jarrell:

Post-butoh is similar to postmodern art or even postmodern literature. Postmodern art references modern art, it's takes from those expressions and turns it upside down and inside out; it expands on its vocabulary; it becomes more mature, more intelligent, refined, and experimental as it adapts and progresses. Often, it takes from its origins' failures and strives to make those failures work. For example, the novelist Milan Kundera took the novelistic failures of Broch, Kafka, and Cervantes and created his post-modern novel. Kundera put all the different pieces of the modern novel together and made it work. In many ways he made the novel more complex and more simple at the same time. Post-butoh takes its tradition and plays off it by being ironic toward it. Post-butoh is also is a term I use for a lack of a better term; I can also say that post-butoh is contemporary butoh. Many butoh dancers today have a hard time using the simple word butoh because they feel their work is not similar to original butoh, yet no one has come up with a new word to describe what they are doing. For myself, I use post-butoh.

F.D: Why did you choose this butoh expression?

-Robert Jarrell:

I didn't choose butoh. I was drawn to it. I've seen a lot of performance and butoh was the first time I saw something that finally struck a chord with my personal aesthetic. For me, butoh can be linked to Sogo Ishii, Kafka, and Gerhard Richter, other artists I'm fond of. These artists' mediums are different, but the link is their expression and themes. Prior to butoh, I never saw Ishhi, Kafka or Richter in dance. I was seeing novel expressions in performance, which was entertaining like watching some cliché Hollywood film, but nothing was really meaningful or penetrating. I mean, you watch ballet or other modern dance and you're like ‘That was nice, but what did my spirit learn from it.' 

Butoh was like finally seeing Bergman or Godard or something. When I saw butoh it was like "Finally", I've found what I've been looking for without really looking for it.

F.D: Yes i agree and it's what i feel myself regarding art which can call me, without words, rather an inner voice or something else. I felt that feeling when i could see Butoh for the first time.

Robert Jarrell: I was just going to see a lot of performance art in San Francisco and I kind of stumbled upon butoh, which is very active in San Francisco. I never had any intention of really getting involved with a butoh group or being a participant. My first appreciation of it was as a viewer and then later as a critic.  At that point I started to do a lot of interviews with the artists and I traveled to Japan. I was fortunate to meet many butoh dancers in San Francisco and Japan such as Katsura Kan, Takami, Setsuko Yamada, Akiko Motufuji, Ledo, Kenji Hayashi, and Yan Shu. Takami (who directs the Toumei group) and I became good friends and I started to help her with design elements for her productions and then she invited me to dj with her group. So now I'm participating both musically and visually to the Toumei butoh group and starting to do work with another group, Time of Space.

F.D: I suppose you know that Butoh approved the Artaudian theory of the theatre. Hijikata and Min Takata used Artaud's recording of his "Pour en finir avec le jugement de Dieu" "To have done with the judgement of God" and Kasuo Ohno made a performance after Lautreamont's "Maldoror"... What is your opinion here?

-Robert Jarrell:

Yes, I'm aware of Antonin Artaud's influence on the original founders of butoh and it makes since aesthetically. I've haven't heard the recording of "To Have Done With The Judgment Of God," but from what I understand it expresses many themes such as apocalyptic death rituals, excretion exalted as evidence of life and mortality, America as a baby factory war-mongering machine, and questions consciousness and knowledge, which are pursued and answered with more unanswerable questions. It ends with a scene where God is placed on an autopsy table and portrayed as a dissected organ taken from the defective corpse of mankind. All these images can be used in butoh as themes, ideas, or energies. Like I said before, butoh can ttake or leave anything and Artaud's grotesque imagery as well as Leatreamont's surrealism are fitting. Leatreamont's "Maldoro" reveals a unique world that is half-vision, half-nightmare  filled with angels and gravediggers, hermaphrodites and pederasts, lunatics and strange children. The writing is executed with an unrestrained savagery and menace, and possesses a remarkable hallucinatory quality. It is most famous for the statement : "The fortuitous encounter upon a dissecting-table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella", and thus Leatreamont is considered one of the first pioneers of surrealism, but both Artaud and Leatreamont fail in their overall expression. Who reads "Maldoro" and really understands it or enjoys it?

F.D: Me by example :-)) ;-) I read it, i enjoy it. Several years later i wrote a self-published book called "L'Ecran Caverneux" ....  I felt involved with "Les chants de Maldoror du Comte De Lautreamont, Isidore-Ducasse qui furent my bible"."Sachez que le cauchemar qui se cache dans les angles phosphoriques de l'ombre, la fièvre qui palpe mon visage avec son moignon, chaque animal impur qui dresse sa griffe sanglante, eh bien, c'est ma volonté qui, pour donner un aliment stable, son activite perpétuelle, les fait tourner en rond."..... Difficult to translate these words into English :-)

-Robert Jarrell:

Their visions were too radical and abstract.

F.D: Their visions were not radical, they were only true. I do not think that they were too radical but I would say rather true and disturbing. If people accept violence on this earth and their daily-life, they refuse it in Art and it's very paradoxical.

-Robert Jarrell:

On the opposite pole of Leatreamont you have the Milan Kundera who was able to take Leatreamont's ideas, as well as those of other novelist and present them in a digestable form to the reader. So you can read Kundera's novels and they have surreal elements, but they also make sense. So today, with the younger butoh artists, I also think they are trying to work with more images that make sense, that are not so abstract and radical. They don't want to lose the audience for the sake of being surreal or extreme. And so I feel that Artaud and Lautreamont's ideas would not work as well today because the context is different. When you see butoh performed as it originally was with white make-up and slow, grotesque facial expressions it is almost laughable now, because these are now butoh clichés, but originally they were fresh and shocking.

F.D: Do you think that we live one time similar to that of before the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

-Robert Jarrell:

I'm not sure what you mean by this question. Can you ask me again in more specific terms? Do you mean: Are we living today in a time similar to that before the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and therefore creating the kind of international relationships that can prompt another large-scale tragedy?

F.D: I've written about ... above. How do you perceive our body in our life of today?

-Robert Jarrell:

Our body is more complex then what we give it credit for. We hold memories, fears, and hopes in our body, in our organs. There have been many cases of organ transplants where people who receive organs from donors begin to have their dreams. The body is also a reflection of the spirit and you can witness a person's spirit by their body language. "Our life of today" really depends on where you live and the culture you are part of so you can say that one's body is also a reflection of one's culture and existential space. If you look at the Japanese body in Tokyo and the way it moves, it is much different then, say, the body of a farmer living in rural America, or even a Japanese farmer living in Hokaido. The Tokyo body is more hypnotic, robotic, automated. I've studied people at Tokyo subway stations and it's very fascinating to see the movement of hundreds of thousands of bodies being processed in and out of these stations. It doesn't change much; the movement is clockwork. So what happens to the body when it becomes clockwork? It must have an effect on the spirit. Another example is America's existential space. Here, we have big, fat people as a result of its existential space, its culture of sitting around watching Reality TV (which is actually very fictional) and eating unhealthy food. And so America's existential space right now is bad taste and it is being reflected in the American body. So body and movement are a reflection of existential space-where you happen to live in the world-and I believe this affects one's being. Of course you can train your body to be what you want it to regardless of where you live. I mean, you can do yoga for eight hours a day if you live in Tokyo or if you live in Paris and your body will have the same result because of your discipline. If you're conscious of your body you can live anywhere and be disciplined. Yoga is the art of taming the body, of making the body accessible so that its energy can flow freely.

F.D:What do you think of this thought of Akai Maro? "You have to kill your body to construct a body as a larger fiction. And you can be free at that moment"

-Robert Jarrell:

Akaji Maro may be talking about abandoning the ego. In butoh, when you vanish the ego you transform into any image at any time. Butoh dancers strive to transcend the mind's control of movement and expression. Get rid of the mind's habit of decision making and then the body is free to express itself, to dance butoh. It's like being in a creative zone that athletes and artists often talk about when their actions become effortless. Butoh is essentially about the body and mind's transformation into something else, usually an unhuman quality or energy. The butoh dancer can be a dying flower, a floating cloud, or a nuclear explosion. When the butoh artist is able to achieve that transformation then there is a larger fiction, or perhaps a larger reality that is expressed. On the other hand, Akaji may be speaking about the physical task the butoh dancer faces and how they must go through rigorous training. This is true for all dancers, but since butoh is about spiritual transformation it takes an additional toll on the body. There is a relationship between body and mind. The mind is always trying to control the body, tell it what it can and cannot do. A butoh exercise is to excuse the mind in order for the body to be free. The same thing happens in yoga; the mind is always telling the beginning practitioner that they can't do a handstand or backbend or whatever and so the beginning student always fails at these things, until they learn that they can do these things without the help of the mind. So I would take Akaji's statement and change it: "You have to kill your ego to construct a body as a larger reality and then you can be free at that moment".

F.D: You said to me to have had one or more near death experiences, do you see here a relationship with the butoh?

-Robert Jarrell:

No, I was introduced to butoh before I had these experiences. encountered these near death experiences because of spiritual research-it had nothing to do with butoh. I've read Carlos Cataneda's Don Juan books and was intrigued with his spiritual quest via drug use and shamanism. When I visited Japan the first time I found a head-shop in Tokyo that sold some of the hallunogenic drugs Castaneda used such as Peyote and Salvia Divinorum as well as many other drugs like Hawaiian Baby Woodrose, African Powder, Ecuadorian Broad Leaf, Iboga, Datura, Yopo, Magic Mushrooms, etc.. These same drugs are impossible to find in the U.S. so I decided I would try them while I was in Tokyo. One of the drugs I tried was Salvia Divinorum and it quite shocked me because the world as I knew it vanished and another world appeared that represented my afterlife or death. I felt like I had died and was traveling to the next world. It was frightening, psychedelic, and comical (not that I think death is comical, but its presentation to me was) because death had the audacity to play bosa nova music and evil spirits were singing to me a chorus of all the things I had done wrong in my life. It was like something out of a David Lynch movie. Since that experience I've always questioned if this was just a drug trip or did I overdose and was I about to die? The description of the drug in the headshop's catalog was that it was a little more intense then smoking marijuana, but this is not true; it was a little more intense than taking 10 hits of acid and luckily it didn't last as long, only about twenty seconds or so, but could have lasted longer I suppose if it didn't scare me so much. I actually willed myself out of it because it was too intense and shocking. The vision I had told me this: whatever you do in this world you will be responsible for and all the things that you try to hide will be available for all to see after you have parted with this world. That's heavy stuff because you will being judged for your actions by everyone, not only God. When I came out of it I was shocked and went outside for a walk and for the next hour or so it seemed as if everyone was looking at me: an old woman crossing the street, a young boy on a scooter, a business man, everyone. I couldn't believe how easily the world could change, or that my perception of the world could change so quickly. Although I would never take Salvia Divinorum again (it came with 12 hits, but I threw it all away), the experience made me appreciate life more. It was unbelievable and I have a difficult time telling anyone about it, perhaps the sameway that Carlos Castaneda had a difficult time sharing his experiences, because most people are skeptical. After that experience I will never take this world or my life for granted. My perspective has shifted and I'm no longer interested in all the trivial dramas that I see a lot of people get caught up with-you know, mankind's folly, the dream of the world, is Michael Jackson guilty, did Martha Stewart lie, I mean people should really start paying attention to their own life. So when little inconveniences happen to me like the bus is late, or I get stuck in traffic and I'm late to work, or someone gave me a chicken sandwich when I ordered a tuna sandwich, or someone stole my wallet and I lost $40 or this or that, I don't mind so much anymore because I know there's more important things to consider in this world, that there's a billion stars out in there in the universe and they're indifferent to me and you because we're not the center, but we think we are. There is no center. At least this is the attitude I wish to have, yet I also get caught up in the world and mankind's folly because well, I'm human too.

F.D : I like here your way of seeing this interactif world above. You can find this state of thought in the shamanism and Eastern philosophies ...and these states of "near death experience" are well received here not like in our western world and way of thinking.

-Robert Jarrell:

So this first experience was like a nightmarish revelation. My second experience also happened in Tokyo about two weeks later. Again this was another drug induced experience, but this time it was magic mushrooms, which I had also bought at that same headshop in Tokyo. The odd thing about Japan is that cocaine and marijuana are illegal, yet you can buy all these other dangerous hardcore drugs over the counter. I had taken the mushrooms twice already during my trip (actually before I had tried the Salvia Divinorum) and they were mellow and I was having a good time walking around Tokyo with a big smile on my face, but this time, for some reason it seemed I had taken a little too much and I was on a train going into Tokyo. The train got crowded and hot and I could feel the mushrooms coming on strong, too strong, then I felt nauseous and passed out. I was unconscious for several minutes. When I woke up I was lying on the floor and all these Japanese people were standing around me holding cell phones and taking pictures. I jumped up and an old lady gave me her seat so I could sit down. Everyone looked relieved and so was I. But the vision I had this time was the opposite of the first. It was safe and comforting and there were many guardian spirits around me to help me in the afterworld, whereas my first experience there were a lot of evil spirits. I thought I had only passed out for a few seconds, but someone told me I was out for several minutes. Amazing. So why this opposite vision? I couldn't put it together. Had I changed in the course of a few weeks? I'm not sure, but I had just returned from Kyoto where I had stayed in two Buddhist temples and I felt peaceful. It's embarrassing to talk about because I don't consider myself a drug addict, or heavy drug user. It just happened that on this trip I came across some hallucinogens and was also on a spiritual quest (always). I felt like I wanted to experience something meaningful. I didn't expect to have these profound experiences. I was looking for something a little lighter and friendlier, but tinged with spiritual awakening. What I got was what I wanted to the extreme. So now I've done a lot of spiritual research with the aid of drugs and I don't need the drugs anymore. I've learned what I need to from the drugs and now I can continue my search while being sober.

F.D: But drugs seem much to have brought to you here. And it's great. I've had a near death experience and out of body experience during a coma in intensive cares and some time after, i've been interested in Butoh. Which can be, for you, the relation here?

-Robert Jarrell:

I see aesthetic similarities between butoh and your artwork. It appears that you are drawn to dark images, but not necessarily dark experiences, because of your near death experience and/or outer body experience. Your interest in butoh may be an appreciation of its darkness. Why do you think you are drawn to it?

F.D: he Empty Body is similar to an outer body experience. It is that i can feel through Buto
I would like to add this important detail. I was in a coma and i did suffer as never i could suffer till now. It was an extreme experiment beyond all. I had sinister visions and i'll tell you only this one ..." I was suspended in the cold night, perhaps the galactic space and some invisible creatures removed entrails from my body. They cut my head put it far away from my corpse" .... It is a vision which became a night-dream and although it was frightful, i liked this dream. This suffering was like a rebirth. After this near death experience, i knew terrible things during my life. I had other visions next to a terrible black dog called "the Scucca" in the old English mythology. I always try to express it through my images as i'm haunted by this creature. I could see it again yesterday next to a cemetery.
Every near death experience is single and we have to learn from it.
Somewhere i remember some writings of peoples like Papus, Aleister Crowley and many others .... Several years later, i could find similar visions in shamanism, and I was somewhere safe, because others knew these experiences but they did accept them. I felt less alone. I could say that perhaps, I am familiar to the darkness, and ... without problems. I express this world of beyond.
"Oh quelle souffrance! naître sans cesse!" comme l'a dit Bouddha.
"Oh what suffering! to always be born!" like Bouddha says.
I liked this manga book "panorama of hell" of Hideshi Hino.

-Robert Jarrell:

Your near death experience is interesting. My experience was more like a vision I suppose, but I'm still not sure what really happened. There must be a lot of people who have had similar experiences. I wonder about a project that would collect people's experiences such as we've had and investiage it. I wonder what kind of conclusion or analysis could be made.

F.D : Talk more about music and performances. Present yourself, your work, too.

-Robert Jarrell:

I've always been attracted to butoh since I first saw it, but also to the music most butoh artists incorporate. When Takami asked me to dj with her group I knew I could do it  because I was already familiar with her performance and had heard the music she had used. I had similar taste and a strong interest in Japanese music. I also enjoy the way Takami works-she likes to know exactly what is going to happen with the performance and likes to plan ahead, which is the way I like to work. We're not very good at improvisation, although a tinge of improvisation does occur within Takami's performances and my dj sets. The way we've worked so far is like this: Takami gives me a general idea about what the various movement are and what each movement's theme is and sometime she'll even describe to me the kind of music she's looking for. Then I'll make a CD for her with various songs that she can pick from. I never tell her the artists' names, but usually she picks Japanese noise and ambient artists and I think this is interesting. Then I'll start going to Toumei's rehearsals and watch Toumei's movement and then I play a variety of music I think might work, again not telling anyone who the artists are. So after a couple of weeks of this we pinpoint most of the music and it happens that 90% of it is from Japanese noise and ambient artists. Takami has become especially fond of Susumu Yokota and we've also used music by Takagi Masakatsu, Kozo Inada, Toru Yamanaka and Teiji Furuhashi, Sachiko M, Yoshio Machida, The Saboten, and Aki Onda. Sometimes it's hard to get the right music so Takami will come over and we'll sit around for hours drinking tea and listening to tons of records until we finally get it. After I have all the music then I keep going to rehearsals and learn the cues, where the music needs to go. Once I know the basic composition then I can compose and collage other subtle sources into the dj mix. The main thing that is of importance is that the dancers are not really performing or reacting to the music; they already know their movement. The music is used to create atmosphere, not movement, and creating atmosphere is what I enjoy most about being a dj. Another important element in the music is silence, or Japanese ma, which mean space of time. There are many spots within my dj set that end abruptly and provide silence or space. This allows the audience to focus on the dancers' movement without the aid of sound. And because there is silence, when the music returns, it has more impact. So silence within my dj set is also very important. I learned this mainly from looking at Japanese graphic design, but Takami also prompted me to use more silence.

F.D : I think to understand the meaning of this silence and it reminds this outer body experience i had (during this coma) which was only SILENCE and it was great. I still find that experience disturbing because the silence doesn't exist in our life. Stay alone and listen, you'll always hear some noise.

 

Françoise Duvivier and Robert Jarrell April/May 2004
All my thanks to robert Jarrell for his kindness to have answered my questions on Butoh. 
These photos are mainly of him.
Also, check out Toumei's website with some more photos
on the "upcoming performances" and "profile" pages
<http://www.mobudance.com>
Links to Robert Jarrell
http://www.mobudance.com/index.htm
example
http://www.mobudance.com/profile/main.html
http://www.mobudance.com/gallery/home.html
http://www.headlightjournal.com/