Art of the Bouquet

Ever since moving to Paris, I have been admiring the French culture of floral art and horticulture. Perhaps thanks to the ubiquitous balconies of Parisian apartments, there is hardly a street in this town without a healthy array of florists. Having been accustomed to living in the US, where florists in strip-malls appear and disappear like mayflies , I am deeply impressed by the French insistence on living alongside plants. 

I recently decided to challenge myself to make my own bouquet champêtre (country style bouquet), since I always tend to fall back on my minimalist Japanese taste. So I walked to one of the fifteen florists in my neighborhood to buy some loose-cut flowers and foliage. I'm not going to lie. I watched about five tutorials and attempted eight bouquets before I got sufficiently close to achieving that French aesthetic balance between "carelessly natural" and "perfectly beautiful." 

But in the process, I learned some surprising lessons about creative processes.

Your first step points you in a direction. I learned through trial and error that a good bouquet begins with a few solid, straight pieces of foliage in the center. Without this centerpiece that essentially serves as a pillar for the rest of the structure, the bouquet easily loses form and integrity. When starting to compose a new piece of music, I've fallen into the same trap of starting somewhat vainly with flowery ideas, textures, or melodies that end up not providing me with the solid framework for the rest of the piece. This leads to loss of momentum, roadblocks in the flow of creativity, a weak sense of form, or worse yet, a lack of genuine integrity.

What the bouquet-making taught me is that the first step determines the direction of the work. The initial intention of a creative act has an inevitable impact on the course of events to follow, and therefore orients the work towards its own parameter of strengths and weaknesses. A bouquet begins with the essence of what it is: a bundle of loose plants organized into solid form. Then follow the how: the flowers, the size, the occasion etc. Just as my bouquet needed to start with strong, straight eucalyptus foliages before roses and gypsophile blossoms, I realized the importance of placing clear and solid intention at the center of my work and build the expressivity around it. Actually, it's the kind of metaphor that could be used in many aspects of life. Thank you eucalyptus! 

Know what not to use. My first few attempts at the bouquet were truly terrible. Eucalyptus branches flew out aggressively in all directions, my roses were completely overwhelmed by the swarm of white gypsophiles, and the overall form of the bouquet looked something like a brie cheese left out in a summer afternoon. It was a hot mess. My turning point happened when I started weeding out boughs that were too bent, cutting and adjusting lengths, picking off unwanted leaves, and generally taking more control over the forms of individual plants and discerning what not to use.

This was not only a good lesson in the economy of means, but in working with the materials as opposed to for it. Sometimes, when I become too beholden to the original aspects of a creative material, I become a servant to the material and lose the sense of the integral whole. I have to recognize the fact that materials have to be reworked, reshaped, reduced, and often removed for the sake of creating a cohesive work. It can be a bittersweet process to cut away genuinely good materials and foliages, but loss is a necessary element of a healthy, balanced ecosystem.

Are roses timeless or ephemeral? There came a moment in my repeated attempts when I realized that I was trying to make something beyond a good bouquet champêtre. As I carefully selected the right placement for each flower—like calling audition results for actors—I started having flashbacks of my pudgy little five year old hands picking columbines and forget-me-nots in my grandmother's garden; of running with my siblings through the leafy green shade of my great-grandmother's overgrown vegetable patch; of hearing the piercing vibration of cicadas as my friend and I squatted on the ground looking for four-leaf clovers. What keeps us picking flowers and making bouquets when we know that it will wither away in a week?

I felt like I began to understand for the first time. Because all moments wither away, but some will stay with us. The loved ones who first taught us the names of flowers, the convenient store bouquet from a teenage crush, wishes carried away on dandelion fluffs... These memories may fade, but the seeds that drop in our subconscious take root and sprout at strange moments in our lives. And trying to make sense of it all—or at the least something beautiful out of it—we carefully gather these experiences into a bundle, tie it with a twine, dip it in fresh water, and admire the cyclicality of seasons, the quiet composition of our memories, and the timeless nature of an ephemeral bouquet.

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Ideas for Practical Applications in Music:

Placing a strong foliage in the middle…

• When planning a work schedule for the day, it’s well worth spending the extra five minutes to set some daily goals (reach, target, and minimum hurdles) and design a structure for achieving them. You might make slight adjustments throughout the day, but starting out with a strong sense of direction and integrity can enormously boost your attention level and help to channel your energy more efficiently.

• Refrain from jumping into the fun and apparent levels of detail–such as appealing melodic ideas, particularly flashy passages, compositional gimmicks/processes, etc.–and question what is holding the work together as a whole. Identifying the structural backbone of the work can be a great tool of efficiency, and help us to snap out of the pedantry of an idea-to-idea mode of linear thinking.

Knowing what not to use…

• When developing ideas, don’t be afraid to cut out inessential elements. Even a very appealing idea may not serve the integrity of the whole. Set it aside for another project! (And never generate material for the sake of racking up minutes…)

• In terms of choosing repertoire, accepting gigs, and signing commission contracts, the same principle applies. Saying no to unnecessary opportunities will create space for the ones that truly matter to blossom and take form.

Why do we make bouquets…?

• It can be easy to lose sight of why we write, make, and listen to music when we get caught up in the sundry obligations, challenges, and routines of being professional musicians. I find it important to have a brief moment of reflection on a regular basis, just to make sure that I am still in touch with the childhood Sato who always wanted to be a musician. Recently, I finished a passion project of listening to a Haydn Symphony every morning with my breakfast. A hundred-and-six days later, my love of music is compounded and enriched, simply because I took a few minutes every morning to simply enjoy and discover.

• I always try to remember the people who nurtured me as a composer. All of my teachers, students, family and friends, amazing colleagues, inspiring collaborators, innovators of the past and present… The list goes on. Being grounded in gratitude not only makes work more enjoyable, but also sheds insight on my musical DNA, evolving constantly from the flowers of wisdom I receive from the community around me. 

• Most importantly, don’t just reminisce, do it! It’s fun to pontificate on the nature of bouquets and music, but at the end of the day, it’s about picking up your choice of weapon (whether it’s flowers, a pencil, or your instrument) and realizing your craft. And don’t be afraid to make a few bad bouquets before it comes out right!

Art of the Sake

Photo by Thomas Northcut/Photodisc / Getty Images

If you have a taste for sake, you may have wondered why it's served in such tiny portions. Shouldn't all good things come in hearty quantities? Like a giant mug of hot cocoa, topped with a heaping Olympia of whipped cream? A good pint of English ale should surely be capped to the rim with pearly foam, and so on so forth. But with sake, one serving is never enough to satisfy even the most modest partaker, amounting roughly to a shot of table wine. 

The reason is simple and, I think, beautiful. The ritual of sake drinking is not about my experience, but about your experience. Serving sake to myself would be considered a rude and selfish gesture, and the small cups allow friends to continuously serve one another throughout the night. To pour sake is to honor friendship and celebrate the joy of looking after one another. 

In many circumstances in life, I'm the first to admit that I often neglect my neighbors, and likewise to refuse their helping hands. In the American culture of rugged individualism, this kind of self-sufficiency is often praised. But I've been increasing disappointed by this self-service culture, because too often it legitimizes ego centricity and marginalizes trust, even at the subsurface level.

The idea of fulfillment through giving is nothing original and groundbreaking, but I do have a difficult time acting upon my own principals. It's easy to claim credit for success and tempting to shirk responsibility for failure. Ultimately, I narrate and navigate situations as if I am pouring the sake for myself. Sure, I may get a good amount of sake. But at the end of the day, I'm also left with the inevitable emptiness of having served myself over my friends. 

In art, too, I'm increasingly impatient towards works that are clearly not meant for the viewer/audience, but for the artist's self image. How do I expect anyone's precious time and attention if my art is intended for my own sense of intellectual validation and psycho-fulfillment? While seemingly basic and obvious in principle, this notion is difficult in practice; especially in a climate of high pressure and competition, it's frustratingly tempting to flaunt one's technical and intellectual abilities and outsmart the audience in order to mask our own insecurities. As a composer I've certainly find myself putting my individualism on a pedestal while neglecting the experience of my neighbors. 

The kind of art that resonates with me is much like the Way of the Sake: a ritual celebration of the human-to-human trust, sharing those simple and profound moments in life that are truly worth sharing. Good music, theatre, painting - and what have you - make me feel that reverberation between myself and others. The object itself is only of interest to me in the sense of craftsmanship; the quality of sake no doubt affects the enjoyment of the moment, just as much as the technical craftsmanship of the artwork. But to me, what gives creation its ultimate meaning is the immeasurable pleasure of sharing our time, space, and (most importantly) experience with others.

I am not advocating for any radical abandonment of individualism and style. Self-mpowerment is beautiful and admirable. But so often, I do feel a lack of human communion in moments of art-making. For this, I would like to raise the glass and propose amends, to honor and celebrate those at the table and to serve them proudly through art.