Dead Trees Bloom Flowers

I. Fortune

Although I have no religion and do not believe in omens, something takes hold of me whenever I step into a church or a temple. My cast of mind shifts into the superstitious. I find myself hunting for revelation.

At the crowded Sensō-ji temple in Tokyo, I received an auspicious fortune: Just like dead trees bloom flowers when spring comes, everything will be prosperous. I smiled as if I’d won a rare prize. For a moment, I believed this random piece of paper knew things about my life.

The lady next to me received a bad fortune. It actually said 'Bad Fortune' in several languages, and the portion I glimpsed warned her that happiness and money would be scarce and a season of loneliness was on its way. Bad fortunes are folded up and tied to a metal rack. A few laugh it off, but others look shaken, and we give them sympathetic looks.

II. Movement

Entering a sacred zone demands a shift in thinking. Some say the raised stone thresholds we step over to enter a temple are there to repel bad spirits, but a woman told me they are meant to humble us. In the past, people were forced to bow as they lifted their robes to cross.

I wish we had some architecture to humble us today. I’d like to see people bow as they enter a Target or a Taco Bell.

I’m jealous of those who know how to move through religious spaces—the ones whose faith seems limbic, their bodies following a secret choreography they’ve always known. They know which way to cross themselves. They know when to kneel, or bow, or clap.

At Taoist temples, people often bow three times before they approach the altar, and I envied their holy thoughts—the sutras and incantations in their heads. I later learned that, with each bow, they often recite their name, birthday, and address, to make sure the gods can find them if they’re listening.

Knowing this took the pressure off. Let the ultramundane and the spiritualized mingle.

III. Concrete

Designed by Kenzo Tange in 1962, St. Mary’s Cathedral in Tokyo's Sekiguchi neighborhood is an alien tower of stainless steel that forms a cross. Inside, waves of soaring concrete are slashed with sunlight and shadow, their surfaces stained with time.

As I sat in an empty pew, I gazed at the skylight fifteen stories above my head and thought about my mother, even though we never went to church together. Enveloped by forces beyond my usual scale, I felt strangely tranquil. I felt held.

No photographs were allowed, and I admired this policy. It forced me to deal with the space through language and ink. I made this sketch—something I haven’t done in years:

There was no stained glass or Biblical scenery. Only a massive solitary cross that made the notion of religion seem even more otherworldly. A spotlight hung over the altar, casting the only electric light. There was no noise except the occasional rustle of a visitor shifting in their seat, and a low hum that sounded like outer space.

I watched and listened in a way I hadn’t in a long time. It occured to me that all those bad fortunes knotted together on a metal rack looked like snow-covered branches of flowers, just like my auspicious fortune had promised.

Metaphors abound, but on to tonight’s episode, which kicks off with a Buddhist chant that bleeds into my favorite song of the year so far. Like Kenzo Tange’s cathedral—which feels both like mid-20th-century optimism and a vision from a still-distant future—“Romance in the Age of Adaptive Feedback” simultaneously sounds like 1982 and the year 3000. After a few detours through Shibuya and Shinjuku, we’ll find our way to Sugar Plant, a Japanese duo whose dreamy vapor from the 1990s ought to be etched into memory alongside names like Cocteau Twins and Slowdive.

Unspecified Enemies - Romance in the Age of Adaptive Feedback
Numbers, 2025 | Bandcamp
Tomo Akikawabaya - A Dream of No Pillow
The Invitation of the Dead, 1986 | Bandcamp
Brian Reitzell and Roger Joseph Manning Jr - Shibuya
Lost in Translation Soundtrack, 2003
2814 - 新宿ゴールデン街 (Shinjuku Golden Street)
Birth of a New Day | Dream Catalogue, 2015 | Bandcamp
Sugar Plant - Happy
Wonder, 1998 | Bandcamp

Also features field recordings I made of ritualistic chants and the soothing sounds of a shopping mall at the Tokyo Dome. Listen below or better yet, download a neon-soaked mp3 here.

The next episode will be dedicated to fire purification, taiko drums, and as always, reverb. Thank you for listening. The request lines are open.