*This article is translated transcription of Kengo Yoshida's interview👇 on youtube.com.
Kengo Yoshida, or Kengoman, is a Japanese musician, instrumentalist, plastic artist, and dome architecture researcher. Also known as the developer and godfather of "Patica". After working on "Gourd Market", he is now living off the grid in a forest of Aso in Japan with his partner Nobu.
Kengoman Series
This 6th video in this series is a nightly conversation with Kengoman
- Kengoman, Kengoman just talked about a lot of things and there was "shift" as the key word?
Shift, yes
- I really sympathize with the word "shift" and was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about it in depth. Could you please do that?
Well, yes, shifting is a theme that I've been thinking about.
Changing my lifestyle was first of all a shift.
Materially, it's obvious.
I'd never lived in the woods before.
I'd never had a horse before.
When I lived like that, my surroundings got different, so they were a shift for me.
So my environment has shifted, but even after five years, I still don't know what's changed.
My friends told me that I've become a woodsman, like I said before.
I told them that I'm still the same person I was before.
I didn't feel like I had changed, but after six or seven years, those words were still in my head.
I thought it's nice to be a woodsman.
I was expecting to see myself changing in some way too.
And now that I look back on it, there really came a realization, or perhaps a flash of inspiration within me.
You know what, I always thought of life as a line. When something grows, it does in a line.
But do you know what the growth point of a plant is?
- The growth point.
When the sprouts come out, and then the leaves come out, and then the stems grow up, there's the point of growth, you know?
That is called a growth point, which includes a word 'point'.
I looked it up on the Internet.
And I found that there's a growth point on the root and on the tip of the trunk.
So I learned that it's a point where something grows.
That's where things a little difficult for me to get, had started.
I couldn't understand that it's a point or dot.
You see, when you look at a plant, the tip of the plant is a dot.
It means a dot creates the next dot, and it grows.
That is, from a dot, it'll certainly be two dots through cell division.
When another dot is born, it just pops out.
I suddenly had the image in my mind of a dot being popping out and born.
It made sense that growing point could certainly mean a cell division.
I realized cell division is about a dot.
- Is it an expression of creating something new?
Creating.
Time to be born.
For example, Taro Okamoto said "Art is an explosion."
When a dot grows, it's an explosion.
like boom, pop.
- So it's not a line.
It's not a line.
- Not a line but..
I used to think it's a line.
But it's actually a dot.
- So everything in life is a dot.
And at the same time, I wondered where the inspiration came from.
We've done a lot of things in our life, so I guess that can be where the inspiration comes from.
But inspiration is not a line.
Like a epiphany.
It just pops up.
- That's intuition.
Intuition?
- Intuition is so important nowadays.
Intuition doesn't seem to come slowly.
It comes suddenly.
- That's true.
The idea of dot had been a theme in my mind for about two years.
Before that, when I was playing the kalimba and singing or performing on stage, I started improvising. Not like practicing and singing my own songs, but I just get on stage with the kalimba and start singing.
I'm really attracted to the improvisation, and there are times when I can improvise and times when I can't.
So I tried to improvise as much as possible when I could.
When we were all playing together by the fire, I would improvise and play like "dong clang claang, ding clang claang" and say the words that came to my mind or use whatever melody came up at the time.
But it's scary to go out on stage with a lot of people and suddenly start improvising live, isn't it?
- Indeed.
And I began to think about what I'm afraid of.
I can't help but be anxious like "What if the melody doesn't come out in improvisation?" or "What if I can't sing?", and I always kept thinking deeply about this.
Even when I play kalimba by myself in my room, I would try to improvise.
And at the same time, I started to be aware that the growing point is a dot.
Like that I realized that there is something that emerges in the moment, just at the place.
I realized I am me in the moment, at the place, after all.
And the kalimba was a very important private instrument for me because it was easy to tune to it and play.
I didn't know if I'm tuning the kalimba or if I'm tuning my mind.
Both are right probably, there's a sense of fit that both are going together in tune.
And as I was playing the kalimba, I realized various things.
When I play like "clang", I'm listening to that sound.
Then the next note pops up in my head and I want to play it.
And when I play the second note, the relationship between two notes is born, and inspired by that, I'll go on to the third one.
While it goes in sequence, you concentrate on the point, dot, one note.
This time you focus on listening to it and go next.. Because you're listening to it, you get the next step.
The next step after that, the next three or two steps, you can't think about it at all, and there's no need to think about it.
I became be able to go 100% to the current step, I felt at ease and knew that it's the best thing to do.
I became more and more convinced that if I focus 100% on the current step, I can always see the next step.
And then one day I got like 'a dot thoughts'.
I was like, "I had a dot thoughts and I'm going to live with it."
Started from the kalimba and I've been trying to live with that for years now.
Aren't the animals pretty close to that? Don't you think that's what they're doing?
- Yes it is.
Right?
- Humans are always like get up in the morning, at the right time, and then start the job..
It's all fixed.
- It is.
At this time I have to finish eating, and at that time I have to leave the house.
Like that.
Like, "Or else I won't make it in time.", "I can't ride the usual rail."
That's just the way we humans see the world.
It's also a human's concept.
- It's a concept?
Shifting is actually about changing concepts.
It would be about changing concepts.
It's difficult to get out from or get rid of the concepts once, but I was very interested in it.
And then I realized we're in full of concepts.
That's what we've been living with since we were little.
But I thought like "wait a minute, it's not like that, if we take that away, we can see infinite ways."
But it's me to do that and I can't go two ways at once, and I don't feel like trying go both.
But my first step, the next step, and the next step after that can be done with my one step.
I thought I can do that and I'd give it a try.
Fortunately, I had been living by my own will before that.
So friends and folks were like, "Well, he's Kengoman, it can't be helped."
I know it sounds selfish, but I was trying to do what I wanted to do, and to say that I don't want to do if I don't want to.
I wanted to be light.
So what's the opposite of being light?
What do you think?
- The opposite of 'light'?
What does it mean to be heavy?
Being heavy means you have a heavy load on your back.
But if you unload it, you become light, right?
- That's right.
Relationships are big issue.
When you think about it, since you have ties, you can't say no, it's hard to turn down, all that keep you from being light.
Once you joined a project, you can't suddenly leave it, so you have to work on it until you reach the goal.
You are doing it because you wanted to do it, but what if there's something more important that you want to do right in front of you?
You have to give it up, if you go with the project.
I had not been doing that.
If I want to do something else, while I have what I wanted to do so badly, but something more attractive comes along, I'll choose it.
If you keep doing that, you're going to become lighter and lighter.
Relationships, too.
- But a lot of people can't do that in today's society.
I don't think they can.
- They have their job, of course.
And, you know, with all the relationships in today's society, it's hard do that in it.
That's what most of them say, and that's what they say is common sense, and what we're supposed to take for granted.
- That's concept.
Concept, I think that's a concept too.
- So it is.
Then there's no other way but to get away from that.
While I'm talking about dot-oriented things now, but people end up in "those who can do it are fine, but we can't."
No that's not right, I'm saying that you can do it, and if you don't do it, it won't change.
- For the first step, the first step to get rid of the concepts, if everyone is wondering how we can do that, where do Kengoman think we should start from?
Well, in Earth Village, it's pretty much in the direction of changing lifestyle, isn't it?
- Yes it is.
So, you know, in reality, it's a big problem because people think they have to earn money to survive.
People tend to think changing your life means like you have to stop earning money.
- Yes, certainly.
I quitted making money.
I mean, I quitted my job like just to make money.
So ideally, you do what you want to do, and you can live off of it.
If you could live doing what you want to do, that would be great.
What we have to shift is how we spend money, I think we have to shift our lives in relation to money.
Now I love my job, which makes my life worth living, is creative, and I love creating new things where there are none.
Earth Village is also trying to create something new where there is nothing, isn't it?
If that becomes your job, if you would live in a situation where you just work hard at it and get support from many people, that would be an ideal.
I'm not saying it's an ideal, but I think it's possible.
I don't know what is non-vague and specific things you should do.
Because people are suited to different things, so I'm doing like this, but I don't know what is good for others.
But I don't think we should give up on that, and I think each one of us has to take his or her step forward.
So one step, if it's a small step, even if it's a half step, if you take the next step forward, you should give it 100%.
Without hesitation, if there is any hesitation, the feeling and the energy that the person is giving off will be dispersed.
It doesn't have to be a big deal, just something that you want to do.
If you do that all the time, if you focus on that, I guess you'll see the next step.
I love creating something from zero to one.
It's fascinating to create something where there is nothing.
In these days, there is everything in this world. right?
But it's quite fascinating to create something that wasn't there before.
It's also about coming up with an idea, no matter how small, and wanting to try it yourself, and then actually doing it and having it show up.
It's the same with making things, and that's what I really like.
It's a synergistic effect that Katsumin makes a video of it and that can be seen by many people.
My work and what you have been doing and want to do in the future make 'one plus one is more than two.'
- Yes.
Perhaps.
- With Kengoman's thoughts and my thoughts together, 1+1 is not 2, but more power is born.
Yes, I certainly felt it.
And I actually go beyond me.
I'm already inspired by working with Katsumin on this filming.
I guess my inner self is happy with the synergistic energy.
It's bringing out from me something that I haven't had before.
I go beyond my normal self.
It's beyond me, so it's expanding, I can feel it.
- Well, I feel the same way.
I think Kengoman has brought out more of me than I did myself, and I really feel the same way.
Really? Then, if you spread this to as many people as possible, I'll come up with something more.
- And more and more dots will be exploding.
It'll explode. Yes, yes.
You know what, actually, you never know unless you try.
I mean, if you do it, you'll get a response.
When I get a response, I ride on that energy.
Then I send it out, and I get a response again.
You go as far as you can and I call it a synergistic effect.
I made a piece called "Synergy," a song.
- A song?
I know it has the power to create miracles in the future, and an infinite synergy or spiral.
I'm sure we've all had the experience of great conversation going on and on all night until morning.
Or you talked till morning and the next day you're tired and kind of lazy.
After all that synergy, you just end up saying, "That was fun yesterday, wasn't it?"
Nothing like that, it forms and creates what emerges next.
With Dot Thinking.
The first and second steps are crucial.
Don't think about the second and third steps.
If you go 100% on the second step, you'll see the next two steps.
- That's right.
That exactly is.
That's what I'd like to experience, together.
- Likewise.
With many people.
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