A Survivior's Tale

The man who survived both the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki passed today: aged 93.

He was visiting Hiroshima and walking outdoors only 2 miles from ground zero when the bomb hit. He is one of the few eyewitnesses who has recorded what actually happens that close to a nuclear explosion.

He was badly burned and took the next train to his home, in Nagasaki, to rest and recover. Heavily bandaged he actually reported to work, at a Mitsibushi plant, a few days later to tell his coworkers what had happened [the bomb knocked out all communications and most Japanese still had no idea that anything had happened] and what to do if something like that happened again. That you had to get behind as much mass as possible and not leave any part of your body exposed in the open, that this thing could melt flesh and burn anything not protected by lots of concrete, etc.

His boss overheard him lecturing to all the engineers in the room and chastised him, saying that what he was saying was treason, that he must have suffered a head injury, that they were all engineers and should know better, that there was no such thing that could cause the non-blast effects he described or destroy an entire city in seconds.

Just as the boss finished admonishing him, a blinding flash filled the room, the Nagasaki bomb had hit.

Everyone in the room quickly followed his advice. The 30 men in that room were the only ones in that entire Mitsibushi plant of over 300 that survived that day.

The man eventually came to feel it was an omen and calling that he had survived both blasts, and in places where almost everyone else around him had perished instantly. He, predictably, became an activist for the abolition of all nuclear weapons. He worked with youth and people at risk and felt it was necessary to fight evil at its very roots- in the hearts of young men before they turned to destructive thinking and habits -- or became leaders, engineers, politicians. That what had happened that week in 1945 was the essence of evil on earth ...

So I offer this post in honor of the memory of these things and the need to prevent the unleashing of such evil in the future. In remembrance of what happened, I watched Hiroshima Mon Amor as part of my Remembrance observation. I urge others to do the same ... this is an issue that has not gone away ... only gone silent, into forgetting, which is the theme of Hiroshima Mon Amor.

Today, weapons as destructive as those used on Japan are stockpiled as cannon rounds, the actual weapons loaded onto our missle warheads are a hundred to a thousand times more powerful and destructive. These weapons detiorate, are expensive, and have to be constantly maintained - with our taxes. Part of the huge hunk of military spending that we spend every year - more than all the other major powers put together. Every April 15 each of us collaborates in the insanity. For the most part, silently. Think about it. Do not let oblivion and forgetfulness rule.

Primal Marking

My work is about human marking, the initial urge, seen as soon as homo sapiens emerge, on cave walls, on an ax shaft, stones, earth, bodies.

We make our mark. The mark of the hand appears, echoing the mark of consciousness. Some of it turns into written language, the rest, no less meaningful, seeps from our depths like the gutteral howls of Janis Joplin, or the improvised riffs of a deep bulerias. Words, explicit signs, are not necessary, not sufficient.

Improvisation is necessary for certain states of consciousness, for certain edges, communal communications, attained, transferred, transformed. A higher determination enters into the improvised moment, a greater presence is demanded; a deeper sense of time.

The heart speaks more directly, free of the planned intrusions of the intellect, the deeper nuances emerge, like music. Witness the play of Imrat Khan, Charusia, Debendra Krishna Chattoppadhyay, Flamengo, Miles Davis, Theolonius Monk, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Dewey Redman, the Sabri brothers. Play emerges triumphant, ecstatic, dancing across the moment, as the eternal Now. The heart of art.

Enter into these visual worlds. Give them time, drift around in them awhile and ask yourself if there is a mark without meaning, a nuance you have not felt?