schindler house/wrapping oneself in the kimono
On my recent trip to Los Angeles, I went to the Schindler House, a small house built in the "Space Architecture" style. One gets the sense while in it that the space itself is breathing the California air, basking in the sun along with you.
For me, visiting the house was a kind of pilgrimage. I remember being a teenager in the deep south reading accounts of how John Cage would present his new works and ideas in the salons held there. When I was young I created an idealized version of this house in my mind, a free environment for artists and thinkers to talk with others who deeply care about the same things, sailing above the pettiness of the masses. Yes, I really did think this way, and on good days I still do! I had total confidence that living like this was all that was required, ideas and big art were really all that mattered.
So now, I'm 28, and I finally get to visit Schindler House and the first thing I notice is how derivative of Japanese style it is. The sliding doors could be from the most common countryside family home in Japan, the use of tall greenery to partition the inner and outer garden space is a trick from suburban Tokyo, the glass windows divided with thin dark wood is old style Japanese construction, little more.
I wouldn't say that my visit was a disappointment, the space has a magic about it. But my idealism is gone, I'm afraid, and not just for the house. In fact it is difficult to not make similar accusations of derivative aesthetics against Cage himself, in the way he was so so fond of picking and choosing from Japanese ideas and presenting them as being somehow new to the west.
Yuji Takahashi (here is previous commentary from this blog) is a composer I see as being organically creative, gaining aesthetic nourishment in a knowing way from his culture. He's not selling snake oil. He's refreshingly uninterested in playing the role of the cultural ambassador, at this time anyhow. And, on a deeply intuitive level, I hear his music as being seminally Japanese. What does that sound like? Just give his piece Ito a listen.
(A very good essay on Takahashi, as pianist, was written by Thomas Schultz).