Who is Naoyuki Tsuji? I dunno.  Never heard of him before.  Guess he doesn’t do animation festivals.  Where was he born?  Does it matter?  Do you want to know? 

I can find out.  Hold on…

Someone I don’t know says it’s 1972.  I’ll take his word for it.  Make ‘you’ feel better?

Oh, he’s Japanese.  I bet you guessed that already, though.

Does this tell you enough?  Do you feel you know him better?

Do you wonder if he’s tall or short, thin or fat?  What’s his favourite colour, favourite song?  Where does he live?  Is there more than one guy in the world with his name? Does he eat cheese?  Can he dance?  Does he have legs (one of his characters has no arm)?  Can he drive?  Did he make me cry once?

Does it matter?  Will those things help you know Tsuji any better?  Is there a self we can even know?  Hume said that self was nothing but a bundle of different perceptions.  So identity depends on which given perception is on stage.  I know enough to say that for me Naoyuki Tsuji is the author of Wake Up and A Feather Stare in the Dark.  However, I cannot say that the same Naoyuki Tsuji made these films. Get my drift? 

Doesn’t matter what Tsuji says about his films.  They’re not his anymore.  He already said them once.

Besides, how much can we rely on his memory as truth?  I’m constantly wondering if the loud visions I keep of childhood really existed or if they were stories I pieced together through home movies, slides or old photos.  I’m sure I think I experienced events that I didn’t.  How much of our memory is ours anyway?  How much of other’s memories do we take on that become fragments of our own?

Popeye always bragged that “I yam what I yam.”  No, sorry matey, I think Posh Spice – who knows quite a thing or three about image and identity – said it best when she stunned a Young Girls for America Philosophy Fashion conference in Syracuse, New York by telling them “I am as I am not.”

David Beckham, her learned man, who studies the pre-Socratics when he can, once told his cleated mates before the match of matches that the way up is the way down, the straight and curved line are one and the same, and that the best we can do is expect the unexpected.  Wise words from a man who knows of what he speaks.

“It’s random, yet with direction, ordered towards the future.  I start with no set idea for the film.  Each image I draw and photograph creates suggestions which lead to the next image, and these images build up inside me as the film advances.

Tsuji said that.

“Go at it slow.  Sit back.  Take it in.  Don’t fight.  Just flow.”

I said that.

“I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours”

Bob Dylan said that.

A friend of mine says I am what I am.  It ain’t right.  Can’t be AM ’cause you always ARE – at least till you AIN’T.  Are in the process.  Am is always shifting.  And what you are might not jive with those who know you.  Who says your ARE is more valid than their ARE?  Am(s) is always with the ARE.

Ghost, reminders, memories, past breaths.

I like this guy Tsuji.  He’s everything I like about the best animation.  His work is primitive, kinda ugly, but not in some accidental sloppy way.  This guy knows what he’s doing, sorta like he’s frantically scribbling to try and keep up with the world. As he draws one conclusion, another immediately appears and on it goes.  Yet as he keeps going forward, shadows of what he has learned remain; they are never entirely forgotten.  They move forward with each new bit of knowledge.

Tsuji’s drawings style look like a kid’s.  Quickly, defenders of ART race to clarify that in fact Tsuji’s work is anything BUT childish.  Nonsense says me.  Such an insult to the kids (our future).  I have kids.  They sometimes see the world in a clearer and more profound way than most of us so called adults.  The other day Jarvis (my 9 year old) said that priests are the same as shrinks.  Pretty spot on, I’d say.  Most adults wouldn’t pick that up.  No, I say that Tsuji’s drawings are like those of kids. His scribbles and thoughts are as simple, profound and stupid as any kid’s doodles. That’s what makes them so interesting, inviting and warmer than films by the Krays and Wankmajer.

Tsuji’s got rhythm too.  I said Tsuji’s got rhythm too.  It aint no Fred and Ginger swing.  It’s ‘the swing of the earth’.  Characters move about awkwardly, cautiously, to and fro without control.  Its sort of an Albert Ayler kinda (anti) groove.  Tsuji’s just looking down at that paper and making up the notes with each touch, push and shove of the charcoal.  It’s that attempt at real-time simulation (let’s face it kids, animation can’t be in real time, now can it?) that grounds the work, keeps it from getting too precious and artsy fartsy.  Instead it feels likelife, like a guy who craps like me and ‘you’ (I know who I am but I don’t know ‘you’ or ‘you’). Some of the images are logical, pleasing and insightful, others are just plain surprising, painful and ridiculous.  It’s like seeing the highs and lows of a naked man, naughty bits and all.  Tsuji ain’t no prude.

Breathing cloud.  Cloud grows.  Mountains fade.  Shadows remain.  Cloud expands to take over the whole frame.  Forms a hand, then faces.  Kids snort clouds, get naked and have a ball.  A couple make love, then have a child, then they close their eyes and fade into the cloud.  Tsuji never lets us forget that the universe and the STUFF of us is transient and fragile.  Here today, gone tomorrow.  But it ain’t so bad for Tsuji. He embraces and relishes the uncertainity of our blip of an existence.  Man woman boy birds devils clouds dicks death.  All part of the same volcano (‘flesh quakes’) of this thing we call living.

Tsuji’s embrace of – even enthusiasm for – the unknown keeps us calm.  Unlike the overwhelming chaos of Ayler’s often piercing, violent sounds, you feel somehow at ease in Tsuji’s world.  There is something comforting about the chaos.  No matter how far into wackyland it strays, you always feel connected.  Nothing ever engulfs you as you pass through the torn formations of the shadow ghosts from was and were.

Let’s not forget the music either.  Minimalist peeps that stay back and observe, reminding us of our own fleeting PEEPness.  It’s there, then gone — but oh so gently, like the wind outside my door right now that’s whispering humid.

But do we see, hear, feel?  Are we more consumed with our dreams than our reality? Does it matter?  If reality is just a fleeting dream, then so be it.  Who gives a fug what your truth is?  Just be and flow with the shit (which is where we’ll all end up anyway, ain’t it?)  Like my pals Philip and Thomas said, you ain’t gonna find no salvation in the clouds, you ain’t gonna find no big-ass bearded man waiting to welcome you through the gates.  You’re it.  You’re all.  You’re nothing, you’re everything.  You ARE it.  IT you are.  So be IT.  So it BE.  You’re free to BE.

SCAR-Y.

(“Ain’t dat da tooth” said a rascal)

This is good stuff kids.  Forget all that precious, lovey-dovey, it’s gotta be drawn and designed and executed with the precision of a robot and the grace of a dancer.  That stuff ain’t for me.  Just as there ain’t no big man with the beard waiting at the gate (well, except for my hermit neighbour Paul who lives in an old church), there ain’t no RIGHT way to do animation, to do art.  Tsuji brings a much needed blast of Beat spirit to an artform that needs fewer adults and more raw-powered punks.

Tsuji’s work celebrates the dream of reality and the reality of the dream that will end sometime down the road.  He draws us into a black and white world that is in fact never black and white.

§

Getting to know Naoyuki Tsuji:

Tsuji is taller than Paul Simon but shorter than Steve Coogan.
He can ride a bicycle.
He likes some cheeses, but not others.
He didn’t make me cry yet, but he probably will.
His favourite colour is grey (“where the action is” he told me once  - in a dream)
There is a Naoyuki Tsuji who was President of Hudson Soft USA.
When he dances he feels as though he only has one leg.
Loves the song Talkin’ World War 3 Blues.
He was born in Shizuoka, a city famous for its green tea. 

© Chris Robinson 2007
This text originally appeared in the festival catalogue.