To inhabit and to leave

Pay respect to the place

Almost two years ago, I started to study the tea ceremony. More than a study, it became a practical, aesthetic and even ethical question. I practiced in my tea master’s pavillon but also in many places without any tools : in the Parisian subway, in a park of Omotesando or even at the top of a temple in Ayutthaya, Thailand.

One of the very first versions of the tea room

Soon, my room in Paris was emptied of any superfluous thing. I put some mats on the floor and then tatamis. A woodboard served as a tokonoma (alcove), some other woodboards were there to hide a plug in the wall. I had the leisure of thinking every single detail in the place. 

Now, I would like to pay my respect to this space.

It is the room where I grew up and never quite felt at home. I tried to make it into a personal space, one in which I could welcome my friends as I would like them to welcome me. No place had me question so much what « to inhabit » means.

On a doorstep

A place can be a prison or a stadium. A maid’s room can be a hideout or a cage. One can make the walls of a condo dance or get lost in its windy rooms. In each of these places, it is the frontiers of our body that are at stake. And when we get familiar enough with such places, things prolong your hands, the spirit wanders in itself as it travels through the walls and the air gets accustomed to our smell, our breath, our habits.

A place that one inhabits for too long ends up disappearing and, like some loves, it fades into a mundane life, weary and invisible. To inhabit without forgetting requires presence and love, a certain care for what surrounds us. A care that is, in the end, pointed at ourselves. Some do not dare to look at their aging body, others refuse to maintain the place they live in.

But sometimes, one must also leave. I lived almost sixteen years in that room. That room saw my rock posters and my Japanese calligraphies.

That lovely tea that might have been

Here, I made tea in the morning for a friend going to a mass, in the afternoon with pop music behind, coming from a public show, at night with candles while the crowd of the Parisian Nuit Blanche was flowing in the street. Its winter’s warmth, its summer sun baths, its round shadows in automns and its shy soliflor in spring. This is what I leave behind. Without much regrets maybe.

I leave at the end of November for Awaji Island, Japan, and I already sold my tatamis.

The next pavillons await me. In the street, in places where I live or sleep. Recently, I did not like to put my bed back into my room after tea. Maybe I already left this bed behind and that only a tea room is left to close. To know how to inhabit and to know when to leave, this is what is sometimes missing when the fear of tomorrow strokes us.

My three old woodboards were always my favorite detail...and a good way to hide a hideous plug.

My deepest thanks go to Francis, photographer and aikido master, maker of Blackroom7 and of numerous exhibitions in France and Japan. He kindly accepted to come at my place for tea and photographs. This article owes him a lot.