Jiro Takamatsu

FROM THE BOOK

On “totality,” or on the annoyance of getting
a straight line in poster color smudged
with a sleeve after having drawn it by carefully deploying a ruler and a drawing pen.

We always feel annoyed when a child smears a newly painted white wall with muddy hands, or when we splash coffee on a newly bought book still reeking the smell of printing ink. It is not limited to these instances, but
it is exceptionally rare for us to be delighted when something happens to a certain thing outside its anticipated relationship.

The American sculptor Tony Smith was reportedly inspired to create abstract sculpture after having sighted discarded airplane parts and debris in a corner of an airport.
He found them beautiful, realizing that was because these things lacked preconceived images. We sometimes find a stain on the
wall or a smudge on printed matter so beau­ tiful. This may have something to do with Smith’s episode. That is to say, when certain predetermined relationships—that the wall should not have scars or stains, printed matter should not have wrinkles or smudges—are removed, when our fixed ideas and consciousnesses about things are removed, various things attract us in such a way never perceived before.

In these circumstances, no matter how tiny an object might be, when we humans have a relationship with it, that relationship becomes multilateral and multidimensional, wherein we can get in touch with its totality.
It is not unlike a love affair that evolves in such a way to infinitely expand confirmation.

Still, it goes without saying that humans can never have a completely total relationship with a thing or comprehend its totality. Even
if we can destroy a certain fixed idea and
have an expansive relationship under a new consciousness, such a relationship eternally constitutes a part within the infinity that
is true totality. If let alone, this new consciousness, too, soon turns into another fixed
idea. Having said that, a consciousness ought to be able to have a direction opposite of binding things tightly with the established and fixed ideas.

In order to appreciate the riches hidden in each and every thing, we need to have
a perpetual revolution of self.

At any rate, we cannot really do anything about the annoyance of getting a straight line in poster color smudged with a sleeve after having drawn it by carefully deploying a ruler and a drawing pen.