Influences

Wassily Kandinsky said "Music is the ultimate teacher."

The first time I saw a Kandinsky painting was like the first time I saw taiko. I said, "I want to do that." I was surprised to find out later that Kandinsky started out as a musician and that his decision to pursue art full-time developed gradually.

I don't know if I could choose to do just music or art. For me they are interconnected. Especially with taiko and the visual aspect of the performance. I enjoy choreography and making shapes with the body. The making of art involves falling into rhythms with my hands. Folding, cutting, drawing. It's visual but also very kinesthetic.

Some people suggested that Kandinsky had synesthesia. His paintings were often named after musical concepts, like "Improvisation" or "Composition." I don't think I'm synesthetic, but have always found the concept fascinating. (Since I was little I've always thought that numbers and colours were connected.)

In The Man Who Tasted Shapes, Richard Cytowic says, "Cross-modal associations are a normal part of our thinking although they occur at an unconscious level. In synesthetes, it is as if these associations poke through to awareness, like the sun poking through dark clouds so we can see it and feel its warmth."

He also says, "Not everything we are capable of knowing and doing is accessible to or expressible in language. This means that some of our personal knowledge is off limits even to our own inner thoughts. Perhaps this is why humans are so often at odds with themselves, because there is more going on in our minds than we can ever consciously know."

I know about being at odds with myself!

These days I am trying to bypass the thinking part when in creative mode. I think this is sometimes where people go wrong in their art-making (can I say wrong? It's probably not pc.) Just because something is yellow doesn't mean it goes well with something else that is yellow.

Bypassing the thinking in taiko is a little harder, but also a goal.

I'll stop here before I have to get into the discussion about aesthetics... Yes, it is subjective.

I haven't done any tributes to Kandinsky. I just like his paintings.