What might he possibly mean by “My dream is to draw time”?
We are all temporal beings thus mortal and we cannot tie time itself, but vice versa - metaphorically speaking as manacles. Yohji Yamamoto is pining for his world that thirsts for time as immortality. Overriding time in terms of making time irrelevant or putting it down to paper would not only convey timelessness but far beyond that, where the transition proceeds into transcendence.
The Japanese origin of the designer probably played an important role in his personal vision of the world. The Japanese culture is a charming fusion of opposition. On one side the country keep a strong connection with the ancient tradition, a vision of life far away from the daily priority of contemporary time; on the other hand the Japanese people took up the western, cultural and technological challenge, introduced by the English colonization. So today the slow cohabitates with the fast, the newest faster train in the world crosses Japan at 639 Km/h while the ritual of the tea is still enjoyed with slow calculated movements. However with further observation, these are concepts part of the Japanese philosophy of life since ever. That idea has been transmitted like a genetic heritage. Timeless concepts are common to all the cultures, such as the idea of the fluid flowing of everything. The emptiness that exists just in function of bridges is able to connect time and space. The Japanese concept of “ma”, like the Greek philosopher Aristotle “nature abhorret a vacuo” (=nature refuses the emptiness), make the emptiness in the vision of space and time, not an experience of missing, but instead an opportunity of connection between two different places and two different moments. And it is probably the highest ambition of every artist, to break the fragmentation by creating a bridge, a connection and/or a transcendental creation. The artist, thanks to his special sensitivity can look beyond the imitated vision that the contemporary life imposes us, made of deadlines, moments, instants, and can make stronger the threat that runs through time and space like an endless story.
Fragmentation
From the Latium “frangere” in English would be to break. Fragmentation connected from the human being, who is broken, doesn’t work properly. But which are the parameters of someone who is broken? Still today the concept of fragmentation and constantly someone who doesn’t work properly is associated to the physical disabilities. Even in the modern society were the new technologies the engineers, the Internet eliminated all the barriers, we still consider that disable persons like not able to work properly don’t fit into the society. How is it possible? Probably the problem lives not in our fragmentation itself (especially physical Fragmentation) but in what we consider the human unity. The modern society is accused to be superficial to give more and more importance to the external aspects of the reality. However it was a critic already moved by illuminated minds to the past society. Over the century’s philosophers, writers, artists understood that the only unity for each human doesn’t depend from your practical material possibilities. It depends instead from our ability to develop the immaterial and psychological part, which represents fundamental element of our sense of completeness. The examples about these beautiful minds are many but probably remarkable for his humor and his ability to touch such delicate topic in human history is the Italian writer Luigi Pirandello. Principle focus of his novels was the relationship between the human personality and multiplicity of masks that the society makes us wearing. The ego fragmentation is the obvious consequence of the strict, formal and inappropriate social rules. Pirandello believes that every single man wears ever day several hundreds of different masks totally disconnected from his deep, instinctual genuine nature, his real ego, but generally accepted from the society. The human soul therefore is fragmented because it is captured in a social cage and disconnected from the energy of the universe, which is in continued transformation without rules and bon ton. The Pirandello universe, remembering the famous “Pantha Rhei” (everything flows) of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus is considered like a global fluid energy. The same energy we could synthetize with the word life. Into the society we renounce to the real fluid multiplicity of our personality to accept another kind of multiplicity, that one of the social rules and the social behaviors, stucked/ cemented / fastened and crystalized but that gives us sure and stable images of our consciousness of ourselves. The result is a division between life and form (vita + forma), we don’t live our real indefinable and multiple personality, we just accept the multiple behaviors, which limited our life.
I think that Pirandello incredibly smart and surprising contemporary through an incredible fusion of literature, psychology, art, philosophy, sociology. Pirandello reveals the biggest mistake of the human history. Even today for example we can see brilliant and successful, who perfectly fits with the society of his time and too often we forget that the most important and incredible progress for the human kind have been made by few man’s able to look through the wall of the convention far away from the social rules and able to connect their soul in their mind to a primitive force the force of the universe. Using the metaphor connected with the concept of fluid energy life of Pirandello, we can consider this kind of man like boiling water able to melt at least in part freezing iceberg of the society making all of us a bit closer to the fluid liquid energy of the universe.
One, no one and hundredtousands. Two multiplicities for Pirandello is not made of different elements defined. 1universe, being part is like part of the big magma stucked, dead of the social rules what is right, wrong, bad and good, nice and ugly. We need to recognize, classify and organize. The multiplicity of the behaviors and different definitions and the rules appropriate and not appropriate. But Pirandello thinks that the real identify of every single man is in the universe in this kind of multiplicity not possible to define every single man like a list of things human consciousness is undefined. Illusion to be one we could be one if we were be able with one universe one energy, our self as one subject but just our illusion, in the same times we are nobody. Why? We will never touch our real identity just accepted the stereotypes which the society gives to use. 1000m just one person we are 100s of persons different person according to the different person who is in front of us. Every single person you are a different person other identity but no one is our real identity.
The craziness is one way to escape from all this; seems to be a paradox but who is crazy is no more following the social rules; is free and able to follow his own real identity. This kind of social critic finding in Pirandello is strictly connected to common consideration splendorous like artists. Geniality is in part craziness. What is general considered as geniality and craziness works together, seems to be what Pirandello wrote, someone who is able to get geniality to think out of the box, to find his unity, unique identity renouncing to all the fake identity in society and creating a connection with the energy of the universe. This is the secrete, which make them able to create masterpieces, that still today have inside that little fire and watching the operas. We can feel the fires thats why art, music all this personal deep intimate manifestation of the genius are still able to make a deep movement of our inside, our emotions, because maybe in that masterpiece we see what we could be, but we are not brave enough to accept a not defined multiplicity.
An artist is able to connect himself with the universe really rare, totally emarginated, free but probably lonely. Francis Bacon just before he died he said I become a painter because I wanted to be loved. To give us this suggestion they pay for it with the loneness sometimes. History is full of artists consider crazy, like emarginated, strange thinking in a different ways.