night rpm

Sakuma-san and Mono; Tadashi-san; Maira Kalman

Back in March, I befriended an elderly Japanese man, Tadashi-san. He is 62 years old and works in a governmental facility, in social welfare. I found him through flickr because his pictures - whether they were still-lifes, or blurring horizons seen through the window of his car, or of surfers catching waves at Chitose Point - had this P.O.V., a gaze that seemed infinitely patient, kind and empathetic. God knows there are many gifted photographers out there, both pro and amateur. But late at night, I found myself ritualistically going through pages of his delightful pictures.

His view of Fuji, for example:

A bird perched atop a light post:

A fish:

We wrote to each other almost daily. It felt strange - almost too easy - talking to this man who was much older than me, and perhaps he felt the same way in the beginning. But we opened up to each other very naturally. So naturally, that it almost made me understand the kind of friendship that must have existed between young Mendelssohn and old Goethe, something like that. When I told him about my fondness of playing old 78s on my record player, he told me about the experience of attending his friend’s wedding reception thirty-plus years ago, where Edith Piaf’s Hymne a l’amour was playing through a little portable record player.

What a cool, elegant guy is Tadashi-san! And Japanese wedding receptions seem way cooler than American ones!

He also happens to be a friend of Sakuma-san, who is famous in certain circles for building highly idiosyncratic mono tube amplifiers based on new old-stock tubes. Sakuma-san believes in playing music only through a single speaker - pure mono; he owns a restaurant called the Concord:

where his signature dish seems to be the hamburg steak (yum!):

At any rate, lurking in this restaurant is a gigantic vintage Altec A5 speaker, and a plethora of handbuilt, bijou tube amplifiers and preamps with which Sakuma-san plays music for his friends and guests:

Sakuma-san:

When Tadashi-san and I were corresponding, it was a stressful time for him, as his mother had suffered a stroke (she is 87), and he was very much afraid that she wouldn’t recover well. Tadashi-san’s father passed away four years ago and he told me that when he came home, he found his mother unconscious… and it seemed that Tadashi-san was very much afraid of being truly alone (meaning parentless) in the world. No matter how old we are, we are children to the core, it seems… at least some of us.

At any rate, Tadashi-san told me that while visiting his mother’s hospital, he found out that Sakuma-san was also hospitalized in the ICU. Apparently, his colon had ruptured and he wasn’t doing well. 

Since I admired Sakuma-san’s work (and Tadashi-san had been conversing to Sakuma-san about me in the hospital), I decided to send a small gift to perhaps lift his spirits while he was hospitalized. The book I purchased for him, especially as Mr. Sakuma does not understand English, was Maira Kalman’s Principles of Uncertainty.

After a few days, Tadashi-san told me that the book had arrived, and that Sakuma-san sends his gratitude. He took a few pictures of the book at the hospital lobby, and it really felt bizarrely… touching, that such a small gesture on my part reached across the ocean, and landed in welcoming hands.

Sakuma-san was hospitalized in Kameda Hospital, in Kamogawa City, in Chiba. This is a view from Tadashi-san’s driver’s seat, as he rounds the bend toward the hospital:

Kameda Hospital is no ordinary hospital; it was designed by Tadao Ando:

Kameda’s waiting room:

My gift - Kalman’s book - on the table:

Walter Benjamin… in Japan! (with my handwritten postcard wedging out of the pages):

People’s backs always seem a bit sad to me:

Tadashi-san was very taken with Kalman’s book and bought a copy for himself via amazon.com:

He told me that the title made him think of the Heisenberg Principle. I recommended Michael Frayn’s play Copenhagen, which I’d read back in the nineties, when I was basically a bum in Los Angeles. 

Good news eventually reached me, that both Tadashi-san’s mother and Sakuma-san had fully recovered. He wrote me a few more e-mails. He told me about taking a walk along the Tojo Beach by the hospital, and for a respite, stopping by a cafe/gallery called Cafe Schiele and seeing these flowers:

I haven’t talked to Tadashi-san since May. I miss conversing with him. I’m beginning to think that I liked our conversations because in sharing his life with me, he quietly nudged me into examining mine. Especially when I look at his pictures, I recognize myself not in the subject of his pictures, but always, in Tadashi-san’s gaze. His pictures always make me feel as though I am not looking at the beauty of the captured world, but am only witnessing its passing. Into what? I dunno. Something always unknowable.

HEISENBERG. Now we’re all dead and gone, yes, and there are only two things the world remembers about me. One is the uncertainty principle, and the other is my mysterious visit to Niels Bohr in Copenhagen in 1941. Everyone understands uncertainty. Or thinks he does. No one understands my trip to Copenhagen… The more I’ve explained, the deeper the uncertainty has become… Now we’re all dead and gone. Now no one can be hurt, now no one can be betrayed.

from Copenhagen, by Michael Frayn

6 August 2010 ·

• Tags
• Sakuma
• Tadashi
• Hi-fi
• Maira Kalman
• copenhagen
• Frayn
• Heisenberg
• Uncertainty Principle