The Elysian Fields

Today's tune is, in fact, "tunes", as there are two pieces in the video. Both Hajimari and Sozo are off Kitaro's album Kojiki.

This video is a performance of another sort, and not a live Kitaro piece ~ what we're seeing is, for the most part is a projected screen. Off to the side of the screen, is a sand painter, changing the designs before a live audience...

The Forgetting Room: A Fiction by Nick Bantock

Whatever you may think of the story lines in Nick Bantock's works, it is the art and the way it is implemented that draw you into the story and impress it upon you after only a single reading.

It's probably been about six months since I read this, and when I close my eyes, I can still see the scenes in this book, the images haunting me, as if I had been in that village square or investigated the contents of that house I inherited, or stood upon that very bridge.

Novels read after this work fade, so that I am not confident of writing even one of my skewed and skewered alleged reviews without having the book in hand to make sure I'm not making it up, or, even, remembering it enough to do it justice. And these novels are not cheesy things easily forgotten, they're ones I really enjoyed, and will heap with lavish praise when I make the time to just sit down and write about them. And yes, I have a number that I read prior to this still awaiting review... I'm a veritable speedboat of reviewing, if someone could just tow me back into the harbor...

As for the story itself - which is really hard to separate from the images and the way it is told - it has wormed its way past the other Bantock books I've read and become my favorite. Although there are a few other authors doing similar things, the only thing I already know of that might be comparable would be a Neil Gaiman / Dave McKean collaboration. As those two guys, as far as words and images go, represent pinnacles of the ideal for me, that should be taken as rather high praise of Mr. Bantock, who somehow manages to roll up a whole bunch of talent into a single byline.