Evenings Blurrings
Michael Gardiner

A pillow book dreams the circuitry of a floating world…

A collection of observational fragments set adrift in the intermingling of the senses-- Sei Shonagon’s Pillow Book[1] is a unique document incorporating multiple literary techniques and their resultant effects.

In her own words:

“I now had a vast quantity of paper at my disposal, and I set about filling the notebooks with odd facts, stories from the past, and all sorts of other things, often including the most trivial material…”[2]

This essay is less an analysis than a strategy (among others) for navigating these fragments. A sifting and straining through heaps of ‘trivial material’.

The process begins…

Atop verandas, behind blinds, under curtains, through slightly parted screens, from inside carriages, numerous views are gleaned:

of jealousy, women’s undergarments, flowers, bickering nuns, flavored ice, a tree’s imitation of an insect’s song, memories, scents, sounds…

Scenes infected with humanity and those having escaped its grasp all find there way into the lists and tables of the Pillow Book’s fragments.

But the ‘glimpse’ does more than describe:

(excerpt A)
“Just then the escorts passed close to my carriage - remarkably close, in fact, considering the vastness of the palace grounds - and I could actually see the texture of their faces. Some of them were not properly powdered; here and there skin showed through unpleasantly like the dark patches of earth in a garden where the snow has begun to melt.”[3]

In the ‘vastness’ of the palace grounds the glimpse acts as a telescoping lens, enhancing vision (and its accompanying criticisms) considerably. Hyper-sensitized to the surface defects of the skin, a topology of blotched make-up, possibly oozing rashes, lesions, scaling, crusting, blistering…calling to mind a fragment of Rimbaud:

“A fat face with ill concealed defects upon the skin, then a smell, strangely horrible; we notice above all some microscopic blemishes in front…and with a grunt she bends and shows the ulcer on her anus.”[4] [the fetish-glimpse?]

Sight is by no means the only sense subjected to this procedure in the Pillow Book:

“I believe he could hear the sound of a mosquito’s eyelash falling on the floor.”[5]

“One finds that a hair has got caught in the stone on which one is rubbing one’s ink stick…making a nasty, grating sound.”[6]

“One has gone to bed and is about to doze off when a mosquito appears, announcing himself in a reedy voice. One can actually feel the wind made by his wings and, slight though it is, one finds it hateful in the extreme.”[7]

So many magnified imperfections/annoyances, but also cinematic framings of elegance-a woman of the court:
(excerpt B)
“Bright green bamboo blinds are a delight, especially when underneath them, one can make out the many layers of a woman’s clothes emerging from under brilliantly colored curtains of state. The men who glimpse this sight from the veranda.”[8]

Layers of a woman’s garments framed (blocked, cut) through multiple two-dimensional surfaces-- the blinds and curtains. Layers seen through.

Another facet of this passage: the view of a view. Has she caught men looking at her? Is this a memory? Does she (do we) watch from another level (veranda-plane) unbeknownst to the curious suitors? A watched watching. With these two excerpts (A+B) at least two ends are achieved:

A telescoping apparatus is formed. One capable of penetrating hitherto unknown regions, affording a microscopic view of scenic constituents. In the first passage (A) this process draws the observer out of the carriage and into the vastness of the ‘melted-garden-skin’. The close up pierces through the observer/observed membrane establishing new positions. The Outside. Features lose their (organizing) bodies. Disorganized.

The creation of a multiple perspective dimensionality (B), the ‘view of a view’ (capable of further multiplications). A lattice-work of glances (visionary rays).

These characteristics, aside from achieving various analytical perspectives could be used in a more ‘recreational’/poetic manner-as prescription medicine often offers various chemical insights other than its architecture intended. A re-organization of the ‘bodiless features’--hallucinations from a new plateau. Dys-organized. The dizzying side effects of the glimpse… participation in an evening’s blurrings:

(excerpt C)
“During the hot months it is a great delight to sit on the veranda, enjoying the cool of the evening and observing how the outlines of objects gradually become blurred. At such a moment I particularly enjoy the sight of a gentleman’s carriage, preceded by outriders clearing the way. Sometimes a couple of commoners will pass in a carriage with the rear blinds slightly raised. As the oxen trot along, one has a pleasant sense of freshness. It is still more delightful when the sound of a lute or flute comes from inside the carriage, and one feels sorry when it disappears in the distance. Occasionally one catches a whiff of the oxen’s leather cruppers; it is a strange, unfamiliar, but absurd as it may seem, I find something rather pleasant about it.
On a very dark night it is delightful when the aroma of smoke from the pine-torches at the head of a procession is wafted through the air and pervades the carriage in which one is traveling.”[9]

An observer/participant, delighting in the blurred outlines of objects. What kind of objects? This lack of specification puts forth the series as an open set, encompassing all scenic elements--different times, multiple memories, and the interplay of the senses, all as possible objects.

A blurred set…

Views and views of views:

While the author’s presence is implied (by the very fact a scene is being described) in excerpt (B), here it is a given: ‘I particularly enjoy the sight of a gentleman’s carriage…’ This quote, in addition to establishing the first view, also places the reader and the author on a different plane, whereas before they shared a common one. Another layer. As the commoners pass the gentleman’s carriage with slightly raised blinds, stealing a glimpse, yet another view is formed.

Excerpt (A) confessed the pre-disposition of courtesans to steal looks from inside carriages as well. Who is the gentleman inside (in excerpt C)? Does he return our (reader) / their (commoners) / her (author) glances? Do the commoners look up at the veranda? Multiplications of view. The veranda, perhaps, is just another plane as opposed to a hierarchal position. In this scene, nobody knows exactly who’s looking at whom. Furthermore, two of the views are themselves in motion (the commoners’ and the gentleman’s carriages).

Blurring of perspectives…

The certainty of the observer betrayed

Transgendered teleportations?

These blurrings are more than just observations, they are transformations, transmutations, even teleportations. Let us activate the apparatus…

Over what kind of time span does this scene take place? The first temporal reference is ‘during the hot months,’ a period lasting 2-3 months. Next is a reference to ‘the cool of the evening,’ a period of several hours. Suddenly, ‘at such a moment,’ an instant, lacking a reference point--outside of framed time.

Is this fragment a description of one or several scenes? The author mentions ‘enjoying the cool of the evening’ [which one?].

After the temporal scheme has been compressed to a timeless instant, references to multiple encounters emerge:

‘sometimes a couple of commoners…’
‘occasionally one catches a whiff…’
‘the sound of a lute or flute…’ [which was it?]

These examples create an allusion to motion similar to the way Proust re-constructs a collective view of fragmented landscapes seen from train windows:

“I spent my time running from one window to the other to reassemble, to collect on a single canvas the intermittent, antipodean fragments of my fine, scarlet, ever-changing morning, and to obtain a comprehensive view and a continuous picture of it.”[10]

We are outside a specific scene, outside a specific time, outside a specific person…a between-ness (is not ‘evening’ itself a kind of between-time?) where the senses begin to mingle.

Regarding this interplay of the senses, it could be helpful to note that in Buddhist thought the mind which houses the aggregates of the senses is itself a sense--here to be ‘delighted’ in as much as a flute tune wafting through on a breeze, carrying with it a wisp of incense…to quote The Lotus Sutra:

“Such persons [those who uphold the Sutra] will obtain eight hundred eye benefits, twelve hundred ear benefits, eight hundred nose benefits, twelve hundred tongue benefits, eight hundred body benefits, and twelve hundred mind benefits. With these benefits they will be able to adorn their six sense organs, making all of them pure.”[11]

The Sutra then delves into each sense and displays the multiplicities of perception, an example from hearing shows the possibility of another sonic telescoping apparatus, one that hears through layers upon layers of worlds:

“With ears received at birth from one’s parents, pure and without stain or defilement, with these ordinary ears one can hear the sounds of three thousand worlds, elephant, horse, carriage, ox sounds, bell, chime, conch, drum sounds, pipe and flute sounds…they can hear all the different varieties of words and sounds in the three thousand-millionfold world.”[12]

The sonic elements of three thousand fractal worlds infest our participant (the dosage was higher than we had anticipated) inducing malfunctions of the circuitry…it’s getting darker. Upon entering the ‘freshness’ exuded by the oxen’s trot (itself an invocation of non-visual phenomena), no more references to sight are given. The lattice-work of views has multiplied and collapsed as evening gives way to night. It is ‘strange’, ‘unfamiliar’, and ‘absurd’, but ‘pleasant’ all the same. Other stimuli serve to bore a passage through the labyrinthine catacombs of perception.

Upon surfacing again we are within the temporal duration of a night (‘on a dark night’). It is darker still. Blurrings which end in blindness…only the scent of a torch denied its light remains.

Where are we?

No longer seated on veranda we are traveling inside a carriage.

Has she become the nameless gentleman inside?

His outriders become her procession?

Having telescoped through the wasteland, we emerge on the opposite border…

Transformed: [Reformed-hermaphrodite-Dysorganization]

+ ZOOM IMAGE +

Notes
1. The Pillow Book details daily life at court in 10th century Japan (Heian period) through a series of fragments for which no one knows the intended ordering (if indeed there is one).
2. All Pillow Book quotations taken from the Penguin Classics Edition translated by Ivan Morris.
3. Ibid. pg 22
4. Rimbaud, Venus Anadyomene, Everyman's Library, translated by Paul Schmidt
5. Pillow Book pg 205
6. Ibid. pg 44
7. Ibid. pg 46
8. Ibid. pg 85
9. Ibid. pg 200
10. Proust, In Search of Lost Time, vol II. trans. by Moncrieff and Kilmartin. The Modern Library, pg 317
11. The Lotus Sutra, trans. By Burton Watson, Columbia Univ. Press, pg 251
12. Ibid. pg 253

Michael Gardiner is a composer/theorist currently enrolled in the doctoral program at The New England Conservatory of Music and has had performances in America, Europe and Japan.

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