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I might describe it as a kind of spatialization of narrative, like entering an installation at a museum or gallery.
If there is a word that disagrees with ennui, then Tokyo expresses just that: a sense of being overwhelmed and excited about the details and detours of thought, imagination, possibility, probability, memory and culture.
I knew I was putting on a mask, a costume. What I really wanted to talk about was how I got to that point, the process of making the costume, and putting it on, and why I was even doing it. I think the short works I was working on in between the two novels were moving increasingly toward creating process-oriented fiction, turning the mask inside out, letting us see the drips of paint.
At first, I was just trying to create an environment of interesting language. Sentence by sentence, the piece wanted lyricism, surprise, ruptures of expectation and sense, which explains its surreal quality.
But I was also inclined toward some kind of narrative, or the suggestion of it, and just constructing sentences seemed to compel me in that direction.
Crossing the border, any border, with the aim of immigration, is a kind of fairy tale, a classic journey of danger and education. It requires guides, more or less honest, or you make the journey at your own peril. You go to the border to be reborn, to come out new on the other side, more free, more yourself, maybe, which means someone else.
