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Dream Trading in Tokyo…
I am in the heart. I am in the middle of a boat called megapolis.
My feelings changed towards the city I once called “my bride.” I wonder — what changed?
Crossing the infamous streets, I used to look up in awe… it used to feel like flowers of human imagination sprung off concrete boxes that pierced the sky. Roads spread across the ever-floating island like lines of haiku. (I read them during my lonely walks). Light of scarce neon signs, a reminder of once economic miracle, reflecting from cars stuck in traffic. Streets of life and noise. Streets of dead silence. Temples hidden behind apartments. People on belt conveyors. Staccato beat of passing trains. Fish beating on thick glass.
Japan. Tokyo. Is not my bride anymore…
Where once I saw people — now I just see stretched plastic that suppose to resemble skin, with holes that suppose to resemble the presence of life. Everything is a lie. In industry, that part of me belongs, we call it “yume shobai” — “dream trading.” But what we really mean is “mizu shobai” — “trading of water” — pimping that is… we whore dreams in commercial fever. We retouch, stretch and capture a lie. You take it like a migraine pill that makes everything fine on the surface. Mind you — we also create the migraine…
Maybe it’s because I am one of the creators of such dreams. Youth rotates in front of my lens, and I pamper it with glossy preeminence — it is…
