symbolic 19: sharks in the water
Takeshi Miike is a shark. He has to keep moving or he'll die.
Sharks make us nervous. We prefer the comfort of being in the water with dolphins or very large tuna. Sharks, with their dead, flat eyes, have hidden agendas. You never know how a shark is going to move in the water. You follow sharks at your own risks.
Anyone who has seen Miike's film Audition has their own story about the ending. Audition was my first Miike film; I saw it at a packed theater as part of the Seattle Film Festival. I took my wife. She may have forgiven me but I don't really know for sure, we don't talk much about those last twenty minutes of film.
I hear that his films play for two weeks at only one theater in Tokyo before they disappear to video and DVD. His audience lives in the underground, passing fervent whispers of his latest work through their Internet networks. By the time a film sees release on video, he's already got three or four more films in the can. The man doesn't stop.
Do you ever wonder what pushes such a man? It can't be the commercial success, because there isn't any. It can't be the wide-eyed adoration of his scattered world-wide audience. It's got to the process, the creative delight of putting something on film which no one expects. Harrowing physical torture, ultra-violent Yakuza gangsters, killer women with armed vaginas, a rubber-suited "superhero" whose powers come from the depths of his fucked up psyche, a ghost story musical even. And needles. Always with the needles.
Christ, he gets under my skin.
Not because his films make me squirm, but because he's got access to the deep pit of nightmares. He knows how to stain a scene with the ichor of the night terrors, to imbue his films with moments which will force you to breathe uncontrollably. You've got to be dead to not be affected by his films.
I've no desire to return to those last twenty minutes of Audition. But I can't forget them. All this talk of epiphanies and illuminatory moments has made me think about that night in the theater again: the stream of people leaving the theater, my fingers clawing at the armrests, my wife with her hands over her eyes. There was no air on the room, everyone still seated was gulping oxygen. On one hand, our brains were trying not to watch what was happening on that twenty-foot screen in front of us, but with all that oxygen we were sucking in, our synapses were sizzling with fuel. We were all quite alive, flush and fervent.
Some nights I lie awake and think about the end of Audition, and I realize it wasn't that bad. It's much worse when I think about the images, when I start to add to them.
Is this what drives Miike?
writing
This is a reasonably comprehensive list of my published work, both virtual and physical.
THE MISFIT LIBRARY
I am Nine of Thirteen, one of the members of the Misfit Library, a writing collective which puts out a quarterly journal of our respective work. We are scattered across the globe and determined to change the face of the planet one story at a time. The link above will take you to Misfit Central where you can acquire copies of the journal as well as read exclusive online material.
SYMBOLIC
I wrote a column for OPi8.com's Transmit blogs: journals of the new dark underground. SYMBOLIC tracked the novel I was working on, referencing the process and the research materials which mad up the backbone of the work. In addition, SYMBOLIC busied itself with ruminations and considerations on the nature of language and communication. And a wee bit of mythology. The first 100 entries of SYMBOLIC can be found here on this site as well as at OPi8.com.
LITERARY REPRESENTATION
I am represented by Scribe Agency as my literary agents. Please contact these gentleman if you have any queries about my work.