(2 & 3)

2. Follow Yr Bliss

Next chapter, turn the page...

I chose my undergrad college (University of Pittsburgh) for two main reasons:

1. It wasn't located in the state of New Jersey, which I was eager to flee, and
2. ...there were places where I could easily see live Indian Classical music performed on campus. In fact, when I visited the campus for the first time ever with my father, there was a live performance with Zakir Hussain on tabla that evening not only in town, but at a hall owned by the university. This turned out to be the first time I ever saw Indian tabla performed live, and by a master, no less! At the time I was very, very into Indian classical music, indeed. Rag, dagadididagadada. This was enough to convince me that I needed to be at the University of Pittsburgh, to study and to live in Pittsburgh, and not to study at Rutgers University, not to have to live in New Jersey, even if it was a distant part of New Jersey, nowhere near my hometown (yet just as unattractive to me). The latter was a school to which I would also be accepted, ultimately, and which perhaps even had a higher reputation overall than the former university, especially in the sciences, which impressed my father, who originally wanted me to study to be an (don't hold your breath... OK, here goes...) accountant (!!!), not to mention that tuition would have been a lot cheaper, as I qualified for "in-state tuition," but I chose the latter, much to my father's chagrin. Years later I realized, too, that, well, student loans take a really long time to pay off. Do I have regrets about the choice I made now?

None whatsoever.

Anyway, at university I eventually wound up majoring in Japanese literature. I had wanted to take Hindi as my required "second/foreign language" class, but the class was full, so I settled on what was then my second choice: Japanese. Turned out to be a rather wise, not to mention completely life-changing, decision.

From the very first day of Japanese language classes, I knew I had discovered my bliss, and I would, I determined, also follow it (my bliss), to borrow a phrase the late Joseph Campbell often used. I'd listened to Campbell's lectures in my late teens, read his books, having discovered him via Bill Moyers and PBS. It was thanks to Campbell, in many ways, that I ended up wanting to study Hindi. It was thanks to Campbell that I chose U of Pitt, i.e. because of that classical Indian music concert (well, and also because I didn't want to live in New Jersey anymore!). And it was thanks to Campbell, at least indirectly, that, because the Hindi class was closed, I was forced to choose Japanese, my second choice, which changed the course of my entire life. 

Isn't life interesting?

Follow your bliss, indeed.

OK. So, fast forward to the following year, 1995, after having studied my butt off trying to learn to speak Japanese, spending my afternoons and evenings, even on weekends, in the language lab. I could also, to an extent, read and write in Japanese after the first year, though the kanji syllabary would take many more years to master sufficiently to read literature, or even a newspaper. This continues while I am at university, both during the regular semester and all summer long, prior to the beginning of the study abroad program to which I am admitted. (I will switch to the present tense here, to keep the reader on his or her toes, a very Alain Robbe-Grillet-ish move, n'est-ce pas?).

I come to Japan as an exchange student, studying the language and literature of Japan, wearing tinted glasses to protect my over-sensitive Sinatra-blue eyes from the sun and keeping my hair trimmed short. I am in Osaka, Kyoto, the Kinki/Kansai region. I decide one day early in the term -- it was September, as the semester for foreign students at the university followed the Western calendar for fall/spring terms rather than the Japanese calendar, which begins in October for fall -- to take a walk (or maybe it was a bus) to the local Tsutaya (a rental shop in Japan for videos and CDs), close to where I am living with my then-homestay family (they were, by the bye, shinko-shukyo 新興宗教, or "New Religion" people, which was a rare thing, as none of my fellow study abroad acquaintances were experiencing such things). I go with the intention of buying King Crimson's latest 2x live set, which had recently come out, but I end up buying David Bowie's new LP instead, having been totally unaware of its existence right up until seeing it on the "New Releases" shelf at that very moment! 

"1. Outside," which had a really cool cover, a painting/self-portrait of Bowie's face in a semi-abstract style, grabs my attention immediately. Not only am I a longtime Bowie fan (a fan, especially, of the
Berlin Trilogy, but I also don’t hate Tin Machine or the then-recent "Black Tie, White Noise" solo comeback LP, though it isn't his best work, IMO), but...it looks way cool. And it says it’s produced by Brian Eno, too! And the song titles sound pretty damn cool as well... "The Heart's Filthy Lesson"? "I'm Deranged"!?! And, and, and... And this LP actually changes my life, as previous Bowie LPs from the 70's also had, especially "Low," "Heroes," and, if not "Lodger," per se, then definitely "Scary Monsters.” 

In any case, after a single semester, I move out of my homestay family's house: too much "New Religion" stuff for me, including weekly meetings to which they keep inviting me, where guests who come to the house are speaking in tongues in the room next door to where I am staying, not to mention that the food portions at breakfast and dinner are exceedingly small, with no lunch served on weekends when everyone is out, and so I am always hungry (and, generally-seaking, I am not a big eater, to give the reader some idea of how little food was served)... After moving into the dorms for foreign students, I meet S, who is from Oklahoma in the U.S., and my musical world suddenly opens much wider. From him, I am introduced to the genre of so-called "Industrial" music, to artists such as Coil, Skinny Puppy, Psychic T.V., and also to Japanoise, or Japanese noise artists such as Merzbow and AUBE.

Fast-forward again...

In 1997, about a year after I’d returned to the U.S. from my nine-month Japan study-abroad adventure, living at home in New Jersey and miserable enough to decide to move back to Pittsburgh, where I'd been studying as an undergrad, just to get away from, well, New Jersey again, I finally get to see Bowie live in Philly (i.e. the term the locals use for "Philadelphia," in the state of Pennsylvania, for those reading this who are not familiar so much with Amerika); I had missed him when he had been in Osaka in ‘96, the date falling after my study abroad time was up and I was forced to "return home" to the U.S., much to my extreme disappointment. Also, I caught the alternative "post-rock" band Swans, who disbanded after the tour -- which could be gleaned by its name: Swans Are Dead Tour, 1997 -- finished. *

* They eventually reformed some years years later with different members, most obvious to fans of the former band the absence of the founder’s ex-girlfriend, the singer/avant garde performer Jarboe, with whom, around a year after Swans dissolved, my friend James Izzo -- whom I will meet in "Joisey" in 1998, via the internet -- would collaborate on two songs, including the single “In Sweet Sorrow." James died in his sleep, it was reported by his family, in 2011, apparently a side-effect of some medications he was taking for a chronic condition. And also, as a somewhat-related aside, the friend at whose place I stayed for the Swans show died of cancer in her 30s, less than a year after we saw the show together in Philly. Life is fragile and uncertain, indeed.

While living for a time again in NJ, before returning to Japan to be close to my then-girlfriend in Kyoto (now my ex-wife...I'll return to this, briefly, a bit later), I performed drums with my friend James Izzo, mentioned above, live, in '98, billed under his project name, "Thread," and after my then-girlfriend and I were married at a Shinto shrine, both of us so still young and wearing traditional kimono garb solely for her family’s sake, the following year (long story, but we were quickly married the very same year I returned to Japan to be with her...Yes, it's a very long and too-personal story to write about here...) and we returned to the U.S., together this time, so that I could eventually begin my graduate studies in Japanese literature, I also recorded drums for James’s LP "Abnormal Love," and my then-wife and I, too, contributed some spoken word (in Japanese), which ended up as the track "Blue Darkness." The two tracks featuring Jarboe were also included on the LP.

And then...years go by without me doing any music at all.

Nothing.

Zilch.

Nil.

3. Graduate School²

Next chapter.

After a year of working in an office job I am not extremely crazy about, though the people in the office are kind to me, and also seemingly a bit perplexed as to why I am not teaching classes at a university instead of filing papers and greeting guests and answering the telephone for nearly a year (the reason being primarily that I had wanted first to get “state residency,” so I didn’t have a repeat of what had happened with my undergraduate loans), I attend graduate school, studying to obtain a degree in Japanese literature at the University of Colorado in beautiful, clean, hippy-land Boulder, surrounded by mountains but no water. Dry, dry, dry…and also very sunny most of the time. 

But dry.

My interest in the Japanese author Kobo Abe, whose work I'd been both intrigued and perplexed by since discovering Box Man, or Hako-otoko (箱男), in translation as a study-abroad student in ‘95, grows and grows. I am also at this time practicing the Chinese meditative art of Qigong (氣功), or “energy work,” often referred to as “Chinese Yoga” in English-language texts, and am studying, in addition to literature, both Buddhism and Daoism, simultaneously, as part of a newly-created joint-departmental “dual M.A.” degree program that had then-recently been agreed upon between the East Asian Studies and Religious Studies departments (this was, perhaps, the only thing the two departments could agree upon at the time!). Although I still love music, and am listening to it whenever I can, aside from a brief flirtation with the Japanese bamboo flute, called the Shakuhachi, written 尺八 in Chinese characters (which I end up quitting after only a year, not obsessed enough with it to persist in practicing with the sheet music my teacher gives me, playing the same damn pieces, only one or two, the same pieces, and not the ones I want to play, over and over for months, which bores me... Did I mention I was practicing the same only two or three pieces for months?!), I do not touch any instruments. I often sing along with music I am listening to when alone: David Bowie, Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, etc. (this is the early noughties...you know, the '00s), but I am neither practicing anything nor performing any music, neither privately nor publicly. As I have caught the writing bug, my energy outside of my university studies is primarily funneled into my writing original fiction and prose poetry, most of it what one might call "experimental writing," strongly influenced by my reading lots of Kobo Abe and other authors of dark and abstract/metaphorical/philosophical literature, such as, well, the aforementioned French experimentative rabblerouser Robbe-Grillet, as well as Borges, Cortazar, the Oulipo writers, etc. I also become more and more obsessed with philosophical, postmodern detective fiction.

Only months before graduation, I quit the Religious Studies part of my double M.A. major, despite having finished all but the final thesis (not "ABD," as they say, but  "ABT”...) in order to be granted permission (by the department/university) to write a paper instead on Kobo Abe's fiction and essays, especially those dealing with his writing process and his interest in dreams (and nightmares), which he discusses in a modest-size Japanese language-only volume I am reading entitled Warau-tsuki, or "Laughing Moon." Had I gotten the dual degree, I would have been forced to write on a non-literary topic that focused on sacred Buddhist texts or Daoist rituals or something similar instead, which, at that time, was simply not where my interests lay. So, I quit.

After I get my M.A. degree in Japanese literature, a degree that, at the time, seemed essentially useless for work/teaching in the U.S. sans Ph.D., my wife and I move to Hiroshima, Japan, where I write and write and write to keep my sanity -- and because I am obsessed with writing and reading weird literature, much of it in translation from European languages -- while teaching Business English, mostly one-on-one, to adults working at Ford/Mazda, who need it for their jobs. There is music in my ears virtually all of the time whenever I am not teaching, generally moving several times from one location to another in the same day on train or by foot, via a clunky iPod (this is c. 2004-5, so it's still before Apple called it the "Classic," but this is the style or model I am essentially describing, the one with the largest storage capacity). Despite my total obsession with frequently buying and listening to music, however, I am still not playing any instruments or music myself, just singing whenever I can to my favorite songs and imagining what it would be like to stand on a stage performing in front of an actual live audience.

15 minutes…

After returning to the U.S. to obtain another higher-education degree, possibly a Ph.D., so that I might eventually get a university teaching job, and because I now badly want to be more involved in the world of fiction writing, publishing, and teaching, I am accepted to Brown University's two-year competitive program in (Innovative) Creative Writing from the fall of 2018. During the time I am in the program, I continue to write all kinds of fiction, publish a chapbook with an indies press located in the U.K. (A Tour of Beaujardin, French for “beautiful garden,” though the novella is a dystopia), as well as two online collections of shorter fiction, and I finish a couple of novels (to this day both remain unpublished, which is fine by me; they are still locked up on the hard disk of a computer I cannot remember the password for, so perhaps they will one day become “the lost novels of...”). After graduating, I am accepted as a visiting professor in the literature department at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan, to teach American literature to both grads and undergrads for two years, thanks to the literature-related creative writing MFA degree I had obtained from Brown and to my many fiction/story publications, though they are not academic. It isn’t until after entering the university as a visiting professor that I begin to publish in a few academic literary journals, including a revision of a paper I had written on Vladimir Nabokov’s work for a class I was auditing while at Brown University.

Big news: My wife becomes pregnant, which is a bit of a surprise to us both (well, actually, not just a bit, though I won’t tell you she “freaked out,” or, well, I won’t use those exact words, when she first learned of it…). Three weeks before we are set to board a plane and thereby to begin our new lives together in Japan, anticipating the birth of our first child together, the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster of March 11, 2011 occurs in Fukushima, Japan, and the people around me in the U.S. -- my friends, family, etc. -- worry aloud about me, my wife, and our as-yet unborn daughter (who was, happily, let me add, born a healthy baby in July of that year in Japan, though I was in a classroom teaching American literature to graduate students when I learned that "the water broke," since my then-wife had already, in anticipation of the birth, been staying with her parents in her hometown, located in the countryside over four hours away from the university in Fukuoka). Everyone worries about the radiation from the plant that has been released into the air and water and which could potentially cause our new family to be sick, etc. My wife and I decided of course to come to Japan anyway, explaining to all concerned (quite logically) that we would be living on the southernmost island of Kyushu, nowhere near Fukushima in the north, and after we have moved, once again, things begin to go in a totally new direction, as they are wont to do whenever one decides to "follow one's bliss"...