You`re the brother of one of the world`s most famous “cult” DJs – maybe the most famous – if such a thing is possible. Such is his credibility that he only has to play a record and everyone wants it. Its price goes up a minimum of five-fold. Everything he produces or remixes sells out in days. Is discussed ad nauseum. All other DJs now grow beards and wear their hair long. You`re his younger brother. You`re also a DJ. In fact, you were organizing warehouse parties back when he was happy to hang out, get high and play drums in a punk band. Visa problems mean he can`t fly. He`s effectively trapped where he is. Its not a bad place to be – sun and surf – but a world-wide audience misses out. What do you do?
I tell you what I`d do. I`d milk it for all it was worth. The world can`t have my brother, let them have me. I`d grow the beard. Grow the hair. Play the records. To be fair half of them were mine in the first place. I`d be out every night. Cashing in.
What does Guy do? He`s clean shaven and wears a close crop. Despite the fact that he spends all his dough on records (and is on first names terms with all the shop owners – who are all DJs), in the three years he`s been in Japan he`s only had two gigs. I`ve had nine in eight months and I`m shit and by no means connected. I couldn`t believe it. He uses Japan`s most famous swordsman, Miyamoto Musashi, as his on-line avatar, but you couldn’t meet a more modest person
Guy spends his days teaching English and looking after his son while his wife works all hours running her business. She leaves around ten. Never comes home before midnight. Six, sometimes seven, days a week. He struck me as one of a lot of lonely people in Tokyo. To begin with I thought it was only the displaced gaijin who were lonely here. Homesick. The time difference making regular conversations with those back home impossible. Spending too many late nights, checking emails, visiting message boards. Hoping someone will have responded.
I`ve since realized that everyone is lonely in Tokyo. All the Japanese mums I meet at the nursery, never see their husbands. They`re working late. Six days a week. Often they`re abroad. In Singapore. In Thailand. The kids never see their dads – which must be why they all jump up and down chanting when they see me. My career as a clown is on the up. You`ve also got this comedy of manners where etiquette ensures that no-one says what they really feel and no-one really gets close to anyone else. They fuck for sure. The Love Hotels are……lovely. So I`m told. But that`s not what I mean. It`s like a film of Victorian England. It`s like being stuck in an E.M. Forster novel, where politeness is more important than life. Someone told me it has to be this way. There are so many people packed into such a small space, that the alternative would be chaos. Carnage.
For the gaijin, there is a way to forget the loneliness. Go out drinking every night. Do the private clubs in Roppongi. Accept every phone number. Every opportunity. But you have to keep moving. The truth is still there in the hangover and the amateur porn on your phone. It sometimes seems there are only two games in town. No inbetweens. Some of us came here with families and signing up for the Tokyo Foreign Legion isn’t really an option. Your wife`s never around, but would you risk losing your kids. You would lose them. She earns the money, she has no intention of leaving. You`d be back in Blighty, lipstick on your collar. No means of support. No kids.
I have said it out loud that I sometimes feel like a butterfly that`s been collected. An interesting specimen. A “trophy” husband. I write (kind of), I DJ (kind of), I paint (kind of). I look like a cross between George Clooney and Brad Pitt. And that pear-shaped mad axe murderer from your local estate. Wife pursues her career. I`m in my jar. Unable to communicate. Starting my second year on the couch.
Before I came out here, I compared the move to Kerouac`s stint as forestry fire warden. Six months at a time with only himself for company. He thought he`d find satori. Instead he lost his mind and ended a broken – and lonely – drunk. It`s interesting what happens when you move away. Life for loved ones goes on without you. It has to. Life without you doesn`t change. You begin to realize your place in the scheme of things. In a way its like dying. Like you never existed.
For me happiness is all about choice. I have to feel I have a choice. I cannot change my current situation, so my choices are either to spend my days as miserable as sin – chalking a tally of my time on the wall – and making everyone else miserable I might add – or to make the best of it.
For me that means coming off-line. Stop trying to lead a virtual life back where I was born (home has to be where my kids are). Start trying to meet as many people here as possible. Start making these people my friends. Start treating them as such.
I`ve got Guy a wig and beard on order and we`re taking bookings.
For an ageing DJ, music is the key.
Guy plays every second Wednesday at Bar Jam, Ebisu. An example of his work can be found as part of the “live at Bar Jam” series at www.jellycast.com