To not be beaten down by the rain
I'm re-sending this email because it doesn't appear to have made its way to inboxes (while, curiously, showing up in the Archive). I'm sorry if you somehow receive this twice now.
Isn't it interesting how much the internet is a time-wasting tool even if you are not mindlessly surfing? Just now, I was wondering whether there was new music by Efdemin (Berlin based Phillip Sollmann), only to end up on YouTube where there was a video of him playing some music on his assortment of samplers and drum machines:
And all that only because I was looking for some background music to write to.
Anyway...
A little while ago, I came across a little book on Moyako Akai's Instagram. Akai is a Japanese bookbinder who is also interested in miniature books. The book in question is called Ame ni mo Makezu (雨ニモ負ケズ), and it contains the poem of that title, which was written by Kenji Miayazawa (1896-1933). I can't read Kanji (Chinese characters), but the book also includes Romaji (Japanese written using Latin script). Since I love little books, and I'm trying to learn Japanese, I thought I might as well have a look. Long story short, I ordered a copy of the softcover (would have maybe preferred the hardcover, but I couldn't justify the expense, what with my current precarious financial situation).
About a week after I had placed my order, Akai told me via email that she had finished binding the book and had put it into the mail. It arrived at my house a little over two weeks later. I'm completely enarmoured with the little book.
I figured I should spend some time with the poem. After all, that was part of the reason why I ordered the book in the first place. If you want to listen to the poem, the video above has someone read it. As it turns out, some of its language is a little dated, using forms that aren't very common any longer. But I already know many of the words used in the poem, and its overall language (the grammar) isn't super complicated. A translation -- that's an entirely different matter. Here's the beginning of the poem, along with the translation featured on Wikipedia, which was done by Hart Larrabee:
ame ni mo makezu
kaze ni mo makezu
yuki ni mo natsu no atsusa ni mo makenu
Unbeaten by the rain
Unbeaten by the wind
Bested by neither snow nor summer heat
This page has another translations, David Sulz's:
Be not defeated by the rain. Nor let the wind prove your better.
Succumb not to the snows of winter. Nor be bested by the heat of summer.
Stephen Venti arrived at this:
Unperturbed by the rain
Unruffled by the wind
Unflurried by the snow or unraveled by the summer heat
And this is Michael Brase:
Someone who is unfazed by the rain,
undaunted by the wind,
unbowed by the snow or the summer sun.
They're all the same, and yet they're all so different, aren't they? Might as well throw in mine:
To not be beaten down by the rain,
to not be beaten down by the wind,
by the snow, or by the sweltering summer heat.
It's probably safe to say that I have no future as a translator of Japanese poetry ahead of me. Oh well.
Anyway...
I just received the digital galleys of an article I wrote about censorship on Instagram. It's my second larger article, and I'm guessing there might be more. Then again, it's not clear what there is to say any longer. Based on all I can tell, Instagram (or rather their overlords at Facebook) literally don't give a shit about artists or educators. There's no dialogue. In fact you can't even talk to anyone (some people I talked to who got their account suspended only got it back because they somehow knew a person on the inside).
In a nutshell, Instagram is not a viable platform for many artists or educators. Artists routinely are being harassed over supposed violations of the so-called "Community Guidelines" (nice Orwellian phrase, isn't it?). More often than not, these artists are either people of colour, women or non-cisgendered people, members of the queer community... You get the idea. At this stage, I have heard too many stories to think that anything will ever change.
So many artists on Instagram are unable to post what they actually do: where artists are not censored by the platform they self-censor themselves so as not to lose access to a site they consider essential for what they do (where/how else to get the word out?).
This morning, I received a number of notifications by Zuckerberg's photokraken that some of my posts violated their "Community Guidelines". After the release of my book Vaterland, which deals with the threat of far-right violence in Germany, I had posted a large number of photobooks from Germany, covering the whole range of the country's history. Apparently, that fell foul of whatever they think they're doing at IG. Meanwhile, people who actively supported the insurrection/storming of the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 are still active on IG -- I guess insurrection and trying to overthrow the US government is not a problem for IG. Like I said, IG isn't a feasible site for educators.
Anyway...
On Twitter, I came across a thread by journalist Jeet Heer who decided to move to Substack. Ignoring the problems with Substack (see my very first email here on Buttondown), there were a few sentiments expressed that I can only whole-heartedly endorse:
I never stopped blogging, but I did miss the very same things (in their photoland variants). That's why I started my Mailing List: to try to get back to the original spirit of blogging. It's really interesting to me to see how wide spread that sentiment is. And for that spirit to come back, you need a minimal, non-intrusive site -- as opposed to a privacy violating kraken that selectively censors people.
Anyway...
That concludes this iteration of my Mailing List. I was going to tell you about my adventures with the SX-70 camera that I pulled out storage. I'll leave that for another day.
As always thank you for reading!
Jörg