The answer depends on your perspective, your perception, your opinion. It’s really a choice. Where you choose to look at something from, is really up to you, isn’t it? Where does “it” start? Where does “what” start? Where does “anything” start? You have to pick. I mean if you’re going to state a starting point of anything, then you are the one deciding it. One of my favorite words is decide. It means to sever, to cut, to separate from. If you decide on a pair of shoes to wear, you are separating that pair from all the others. A decision to make a film led to a decision to go to Japan with my filmmaker. I usually visit there in early April for the Sakura (cherry blossoms) or mid October just for the mild temperate days, but our production schedule demanded an earlier trip. The 1st of September was our departure date. These days are hot in Yokohama. The humidity adds a perceivable ten degrees to how hot it feels. That heavy waft of hot thick air as the jet way door opened to get off the plane triggered the sweat from every pore of my body. We spent the first few days getting footage of my normal route through Kanagawa, Japan, where I tattoo, and got my back piece done. The gardens, the shrines, and busy street routines… I wanted some reprieve from the sweating and decided to take the crew to Nikko Toushougu shrine north of Tokyo. My friend Horien took us. The 2 hour train ride took us through the countryside, with rice fields, small towns, and up into the mountains, passing lots of cemeteries. Those always remind me of how fast our lives go. Those people buried in the ground, they were all familiar with right where we were, just in another time. Our shared experience had similar components. The same forests, the same mountains, the same types of clouds passing over and through the trees with distant rumblings of thunder in the late summer air.
A random decision based on the temperature and humidity. “Let’s go to Nikko.” Keiko, (Horien) met us at the train station. We planned on a certain train to get there, but when we went get the tickets, the guy suggested taking another train and transferring at a different station so it would cost less. Assigned seating on the five tickets purchased, I just handed them out to everyone in no particular order. As we sat down, Keiko showed us that the double chair seats could spin around and we could face each other. My aisle seat then became the window seat facing backwards. I’d been on this trip just a few months earlier so I traded seats with Antonio so he could look outside and I could talk to Keiko. The landscape flew passed sometimes so close it was a blur and sometimes it would open up into epic valleys with the clouds overhead and the long distance to the horizon made me feel like we were going in slow motion back in time. Antonio set his camera on the window sill and we were all just talking. We started talking about synchronicity and how things seem to just magically work out sometimes. About how none of this was planned more than a few weeks prior, and everything seemed spontaneous yet things were falling into place as if orchestrated… Antonio is an amazing photographer, artist, musician, and filmmaker. He was talking about just going with the flow of life, and being open to what could happen. As the train slowed for one of the few stops along the way, we both happened to look down at the camera sitting against the window, I wasn’t looking out the window, I was looking through the viewer screen on the back of the camera. Everything slowed to a stop and there in the frame of that camera was the perfect iconic photo. Perfect lines, perfect planes, contrasting squares and triangles, an amazing color palette, the quintessential Japanese girl talking on the phone with a medical mask. No one else on the platform, it could not have been set up anymore perfect, no adjustments, no moving the camera. The timing, the placement, the synchronicity was incredible. We all saw the picture, then I looked up and out of the window to confirm what I was seeing was real. Antonio put his finger on the shutter button on top of the camera and “click”…
There it was, an image captured. A gift from everywhere and everything. A ghost suspended in time. The train took off again. I looked at Antonio, “Its as easy as that?” I asked... He responded...“Its as easy as that.”
(click on the image above to see it large, Photo by Antonio Melendez Heartisan films)
