The Wisdoms in a Moving Voice
Some consider it to be more of a journal, while others liken it to poetry. Although seldom referenced in western literature, Zuihitsu is a form of Japanese writing that can appear as odd or even esoteric, described at times like a voice caught in the wind. But the roots and styles of Zuihitsu have more in common with contemporary culture than one might imagine. Our fragmented media feeds, and their various messaging rituals — when viewed as a whole — all mirror the face of Zuihitsu for a modern time.
The style often consists of a series of essays or poems that move from subject to subject or jump from theme to theme, each adding to the sense of a greater whole. Together, it gathers an inventory of who we are. The expressions depart from no central point; instead, they are pieces and parts that interact with each other while slowly moving towards a centre. There may be prose in one area, poetry in another, and abstractions here with projections there, whose sole function is to absorb positions in ways that fact alone cannot. At times, it has been described as the building of different houses, where the bridges between them are invented and navigated by us — as subjects and audiences — to slowly create new patterns and neighbourhoods from them. In the works presented here, each of the degrees offers a different category of our behaviours, or our shared human code, with each volume rendering themselves through another side of our perceptions of the world. The shared perspectives buried in the two volumes connect through a notion of otherness — or perhaps the spirit of Zuihitsu.
— michael graf