Confessions in the Twilight, or inside the Glass Room
Hey, would you mind sitting in that chair for a moment and listening to what I have to say? It has gotten quite chilly outside, and on a night like this, there is no greater luxury than sipping warm tea while plotting a secret plan that no one else can know. I am telling you this, and whispering in your ear right here beside you, precisely because you are so intelligent and possess such a sharp sensitivity that allows you to see into the core of things in an instant. When you look at me with those clear eyes of yours, I feel a bit embarrassed, as if the softest and most vulnerable parts hidden deep within my heart are being completely seen through. Yet, at the same time, I am wrapped in a strange sense of comfort. You are truly a rare, gentle soul who understands the loneliness and pain of others without needing any words.
Oh, where are my manners? I haven’t introduced myself. My name is Mimi Takamizawa. I am a painter who works in a somewhat peculiar way: instead of smearing oil paint onto canvas, I grip a digital pen in front of a liquid crystal screen and fix the images onto high-quality printmaking paper using the latest giclée technique. When you see the single character for “Mimi,” which means “Ear” in my name, didn’t you wonder about it for a moment? Yes, you are exactly right. Vincent van Gogh—that great genius, a man who was so terribly clumsy, and who, in the depths of his utter isolation, cut off his own ear. It was from his intense way of living and the array of colors born from it, which were so beautiful they could drive one mad, that I borrowed my name. If it were not for his paintings and his life, I would not exist here today. It was Van Gogh’s naked soul that rescued me with its bottomless kindness when I was trembling at the very bottom of the darkness.
Because of that, I now wish to return the favor. With a desperate spirit of service that feels like shaving away my own life, I am spinning these words for you, who are irreplaceable right here in front of me. If I can soothe, even just a little, the secret worries you now carry or the loneliness nesting in the corner of your heart, then my life as an artist will be completely rewarded at that very moment.
Shaved Skin and the Canvas that Stares Back
Now, when you gaze intently at my artwork, what is it that you see there? You are bound to notice the countless, yet incredibly eloquent motifs of “eyes” scattered across the picture as if to fill the entire screen. The theme of “Your Eyes, My Eyes” is like a spine that never wavers in my painting creation. Have you ever wondered why I chose the sensory organ of the eye over any other part of the body?
The eye is a mysterious organ. No matter how much one tries to lie by dressing up their words, a single glance exposes that human being’s entire soul, laid bare like a specimen. Have you ever had the experience of having a deeper dialogue than words could ever manage just by looking into someone’s eyes? The very instant eyes meet, we share each other’s loneliness and, for just a moment, create a universe belonging only to the two of us, isolated from the rest of the world. Even while using a tool that appears cold, like digital media, I want to express the ultimate, raw vividness that resides within it—the intersection of souls where you look at me, and I stare right back at you.
To the eyes of ordinary society, artists must look terribly unconventional and like reckless adventurers. After all, they abandon a peaceful daily life and drive themselves into the most difficult and dangerous positions. But that is exactly what it means to put your own skin in the game. What value could there possibly be in a human being who does not torment themselves like this and push themselves to their absolute limits? Only those who take on the pain of others instead of them and sacrifice their own bodies to serve will gain everything in the end. This is an absolute truth that appears again and again in the ancient stories of the world. Most people think that success is about obtaining something. However, in reality, success is about giving—it is about serving others even if it means sacrificing yourself.
Perhaps we are all wounded victims in one way or another. Yet, when the magic of art is unleashed, we are bound to be resurrected and gain eternal life. Loneliness, isolation, and deep suffering. The overwhelming liberation that arrives after passing through them. An artwork that does not symbolize these things is utterly meaningless and holds no value whatsoever. I believe this without a shadow of a doubt.
The Frantic Dance Danced by Willem de Kooning
At this point, allow me to speak of another great artist whom I love, and with whom someone of your deep empathy is sure to resonate strongly. Willem de Kooning. He was a master of Abstract Expressionism who continued to wield his brush like a madman amidst the frenzy of mid-twentieth-century New York.
When you look at the life of a man like de Kooning, don’t you feel a tightening in your chest from a sort of sorrow, mixed at the same time with a thrilling excitement? He was born in the Netherlands and came over to America as a stowaway working on a ship. He had no family to turn to, and his English was clumsy. Amidst extreme isolation and loneliness, the thing he clung to was painting. Have you ever seen the paintings he made, especially that famous “Woman” series?
That is no mere painting of a beautiful lady. It is a tremendous mass of energy, torn apart, disassembled, and reconstructed with brushstrokes that are violent to the point of brutality—appearing like a monster, yet at the same time like a holy mother. The people of the world were furious when they saw his paintings. A storm of criticism erupted, with people shouting, “This is an insult to women,” “It is far too hideous,” and “This is not the work of a sane mind.”
But was that really the case? A person with such deep insight as you should be able to hear the cry of de Kooning’s soul, as if vomiting blood, beneath those violent colors and torn-apart forms. He thrust the raw, muddy desires and inescapable loneliness of human nature exactly as they were right into the face of a hypocritical society that did nothing but line up pretty words.
In front of the canvas, de Kooning was literally shaving away his life as he danced. He would apply a single color of paint, scrape it off with a knife, layer another color on top the next day, and destroy that again—repeating this process for months, and sometimes for years. That was precisely the act of driving himself into the most difficult and dangerous position. This is what it means to put your own skin in the game. He never allowed himself to escape into the easy finish line called “completion.” Why? Because he knew through his wild instinct that real expression could never be born from a human being who does not allow themselves to suffer.
Twisted Salvation Found at the End of Destruction
De Kooning’s endless struggle bewildered the people around him and resulted in deepening his isolation even further. No one could understand the true meaning of his art. Critics called him a “destroyer,” and the public grimaced at his unconventional screens. However, the more lonely he became, the more he exploded that energy directed at the canvas.
Don’t you find it strange? Why do human beings push themselves this far, to the point of sacrificing themselves, just to express something? For de Kooning, the act of painting was the only medical act, a reckless one at that, to rescue his own soul. In order to cure the sickness of the uncontrollable chaos deep within his own mind, he held a brush like a scalpel and continued to dissect his own psyche.
That wordless loneliness you suddenly feel in your daily life, or that sense of alienation as if you have been left behind by the world—the immense void that de Kooning felt when he faced the canvas must have been of the exact same nature. To fill that void, he obsessively kept leaving traces of paint that looked like screams. Look closely at those wide-open, staring “eyes” of the “Women” he drew. Just like the eye motifs overflowing in my own work, aren’t the eyes of the women drawn by de Kooning also staring back from the other side of the canvas, piercing your gaze—yes, your very eyes?
Those eyes are a projection of de Kooning’s own lonely heart, and at the same time, they are a mirror reflecting the inner self of the viewer—which means you. He did not intend to make the viewer uncomfortable. Rather, it was quite the opposite. In his own terribly clumsy way, he was trying to serve the viewer. The true form of a human being is never something like a beautifully arranged doll. He risked his own body to prove to us that humans are more twisted, more violent, more lonely, and yet resilient things that still try to live.
Osamu Dazai’s Gaze and the Rhythm of Self-Sacrifice
Can I change the subject slightly here? So that you won’t get bored, I would like to mention another anchor of my soul. In the world of Japanese literature, there was a man who, just like de Kooning, shaved away his own flesh and showed off his wounds to no end while continuing to provide the ultimate service to his readers. That man was Osamu Dazai.
Dazai’s writing has a unique rhythm, doesn’t it? It is as if he is sitting right next to you, watching your facial expressions, playing the clown, and then suddenly making a serious face to strike at the core of truth. Before we know it, we are fascinated by his way of speaking, and we find ourselves dragged into the vortex of his loneliness. Dazai was also a literary figure who was deeply, deeply influenced by the Christian spirit, particularly by the themes of “self-sacrifice” and “resurrection.”
He exposed his embarrassing parts and his pathetic states to no end. While living an utterly unconventional life, he sublimated all of that suffering into art called the novel. Why did he do such a self-deprecating thing? It was because he loved the “reader (you)” more than anything else. It was a desperate, life-risking spirit of service that said: because I am playing the buffoon, suffering, and sipping mud to this extent, please feel safe, laugh, and survive.
The person who served others the most is the greatest. Dazai’s life was a grand story of self-destruction that embodied those very words. But did he truly perish? No, that is not true at all. Even though his physical body has vanished, his words, and his soul, are vividly resurrected and breathing with eternal life at this very moment as I speak to you by your side. Every genuine artist is bound to be resurrected after they die.
De Kooning, Dazai, and this Mimi Takamizawa—all of us hold the same helpless loneliness while reaching out our hands to find a single strand of light in the darkness. And the one who stands at the destination of that light is none other than you. While you are reading this text, I am staying right by your side the whole time. I am continuing to whisper these words of pleasant rhythm into your ear like a secret story.
The Voice Calling You from the Other Side of the Screen
Let us return to the story of de Kooning. In his later years, he suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, and those violent brushstrokes of his past vanished as if they had been a lie. However, what appeared on his canvas instead were lines of pure color that were surprisingly simple, flowing, and beautiful like heaven.
Many critics made a cold judgment, saying that because he had lost his reason, his art had also come to an end. But I do not think so. A person like you is sure to understand: that calm, transparent screen of his later years, from which all waste had been shaved away, was the very image of “liberation” that he had finally reached at the end of his long journey of suffering.
By sacrificing himself and tormenting himself to the absolute limit, he had finally broken free from all curses and won the salvation of his soul. From the violent eyes of the “Women” to the serene lines of light in his later years—doesn’t that trajectory itself look like a single, massive epic of resurrection? Artists, like Jesus Christ, mostly die as victims amidst the misunderstandings and loneliness of the world. Yet, the works they leave behind never die. Transcending time and crossing borders, they become a bridge connecting your heart and mine tonight, living on eternally.
My theme of “Your Eyes, My Eyes” also exists within that eternal cycle. The countless eyes I draw with a light that burns the retina as I face the digital screen inherit the very lineage of that violent passion for color that de Kooning fought with. Just because I do not use canvas and brushes does not mean the temperature of the soul infused into it is low. Rather, precisely because it is digital—a tool with infinite possibilities—I can appeal to the deepest parts of human psychology more directly and more sensitively.
When you gaze intently at that eye motif printed on the printmaking paper, my eyes capture your eyes, and your eyes stare back into mine. There is absolutely no need for any verbal explanation there. There is only that miraculous moment where two lonely souls click together across time and space.
Our Eternity in the Night that Does Not End
My dear, precious you. The night has grown quite late now. Thank you so very much for gently keeping company with this talk of mine, which has grown a bit too feverish, until the very end. To have met a wonderful reader like you, who is deep, quiet, and understands the pain of others, is the greatest honor and the supreme joy of my life as a painter.
Why do I become so desperate to speak to you and try to serve you? It is because an artist is none other than a doctor of the soul, brought into being with the sole mission of “soothing the worries” of an irreplaceable existence like you. No matter how lonely, sad, or crushed by grief I myself may be, if the words and paintings I produce can warm your heart even just a little, then a value beyond measure dwells within that hardship.
A person who does not put their own skin in the game cannot draw true beauty. A human being who does not stand on the edge of a dangerous cliff cannot produce an expression that shakes the hearts of others. I will continue to grip my digital pen while carving the pain of Van Gogh’s ear, the destructive passion of de Kooning, and the life-risking buffoonery of Osamu Dazai deep into my chest. It is an endless adventure to save you, and at the same time, to save myself.
Even after you finish reading this text, the afterimage of the “eyes” I draw is bound to remain in your head. And when you feel a deep loneliness again, please remember the rhythm of these words at any time and read them over and over again. I will always be sitting right next to you, gently holding your hand from the gaps between the letters, or from the other side of the painting’s screen.
You are not alone. Because your eyes and my eyes are surely connected like this, right now. For now, may you fall into a pleasant sleep tonight. To you, who are wonderful and beloved, with all my gratitude and eternal affection.