Dreams: 17.02.2010

Last night I went to see the tribute to Jack Rose in Cafe Oto.
It was very touching and gentle night I enjoyed greatly. I loved to see some friends (Voice of Seven Thunders, Hush Arbors) play after a long time and meet some old faces.
Probably because I bumped into a friend who was with an elder couple of 50-6oyo, and I had a good chat with the woman, this may have affected in my dream I had after I climbed into my bed.

I was in Kure Hiroshima, a house on the street where my grandparents lived.
Somehow I was staying at this woman's house, very modernly refurbished flat, just arrived from London. The woman goes out. Being tired or lazy or jetlagged, I woke up late alone, make my way to the kitchen to make tea. Someone opens a door and there was a Japanese girl with shopping bag full of groceries. She greets me and comes into the house putting things in fridge. I understand she is a house helper and we start chatting.
She shows me a big bag of pickled cabbage proudly saying that was a bargain. This makes me think about the Japanese food shopping/prices I do in London and think London isn't bad.
This is in Hiroshima, yet, somehow being dream, it's not in Japan..
There was a knock on the door and some people come in and tell me they want "smoothies".
I realized this place is a house-cafe where people from word of a month come in to have some drinks, light snacks though it is completely normal kitchen space.
I automatically start "working in a cafe".
I ask the girl how I can make smoothie and open the fridge there I see 2 bottles of ready made smoothie, but she says "I'll show you how to make it" then she put a dry Udon noodle into a glass and put a bowl to onto it so it won't float and the noodle will get soft, then she carries on preparing some vegetables.
I wonder if she has mistaken me saying "smoothie" but I let her do what she's doing and decided not to voice my confusion.
More people start coming into a cafe and they all look like regulars, some with foreigners, some couples etc. I get busy taking orders but not sure how to prepare what I was ordered.
Despite the confusion, I like the idea of this make-shift cafe and the fact that these people come here to relax and feel the privilege to know this cool place where there is no sign, no menu but cool people's hangout in this very countryside.
Some people are ready to leave and I ask how much was what they had, the girl tells me
"noodle and a juice.. it'd be 1000 yen. Most of the light meal/snacks would be 500yen"
I am impressed with the price being so low and reasonable.

That was my dream.
I kinda see why I dreamt.. I saw some Japanese girls in Oto, Keiko san who works/owns the palce, Midori san who works there, then Alex's friend, Japanese girl was around too last night.
So great cafe with Japanese ideas/twist + Foreign-ness in both Europe and Japan = why countries were mixed up in my dream and the fact I love to run a cafe where I cook/serve good food and want people to enjoy + the woman was whom I was chatting to last night.
So why Hiroshima? I don't know.. but the locations in my dreams are quite often in Japan, especially places I have old memories of.
I should think I am lucky to experience being those places, doing stuff while I sleep away.

Outsider's Art: Museum of Everything

This was my 7th time of visiting my favourite gallery in London.
Museum of Everything.
I love the space, I love the art, I love the people who comes and works there.
I love the tearoom where there is no price but pay your donation on receiving a lovely cuppa in cute cup and saucer, sometimes with finger biscuits.
I found out so many great artists I came to love and dig here.
One of my favourite being
Hiroyuki Doi's detailed endless circle drawing. (This is a different version of the one from the gallery)He seems still active in Tokyo, though his website stopped updating since 2007, if so, I want to visit his gallery/studio in Tokyo when I'm over in April.

Also I loved is when I went to see one of the film night on Sunday there about the French painter Seraphine Louis, a film released in 2009 which won many awards.
I was one lucky soul to view this there prior to the UK release and even though we were sitting on a hard small bench for 2 hours, I was completely intrigued by its genuine and innocent woman's pure soul and passion. I think I cried a little.

Also, a Swiss artist called Aloïse Corbaz is a total surreal candy for your eyes experience, the link here gives you what I mean on Google Image.
So imaginary, fantasy yet somehting is so dangerously disturbing and not real. This "can only be in a dream" feel.
I would really like to see a film about her made in 1974 but I have not had the luck to find it yet.

These artists, so-called Outsider's art, can't stop grabbing my sense because, untrained, isolated from society (for mostly being naive) they hold the power to behold what's inside the unspoiled mind, so purely so painfully. Something we all forgotten to feel "this" and "that" controlled by what we are supposed to feel/view/think in modern moral world.