Kaz S. Matamura

I was raised by a Pollyanna mother. When I broke my nose, she praised the fact that I had the guts to physically take on boys. When I ran from home for at the age of eight, she encouraged me to become an explorer in the Amazon. Having her permission to smoke drink or fight took away the excitement and desire to do these things. In her eyes I could do no wrong. But in my teen years, as typical as a teen can be, I rebelled against her view of the world. I started to train myself to be pessimistic.

By seventeen I was running an independant advertisement agency in Tokyo. My job required no previous training because each situation was different; I was a troubleshooter. When one thing goes wrong, such as a client getting red roses instead of white, or the color of the invitation didn’t come out like the proof, I showed up and met with the frustrated client. I talked for a thirty minutes and walked away with a client who cannot wait to work with our firm again. The only training I ever had was a theatre improv game.

I was a superman who flies site to site. I was a savior whom people sought when there was no one else to turn to. The pessimist Kaz was ready for any worst situation.

That was until the morning a friend of mine jumped off the building.

It was early and we were all suffering from hangovers from a night before.
“Mr. Suga is dead,” a man shouted as he is warning an arrival of William the Conqueror.
We knew only one Suga. Suga with the glasses. Suga the communicator between a designer and a client. Suga who speaks so low on the phone, you preferred to just go to his office to avoid the trouble of asking him if he could please speak up?

Out of uncomfortable silence, a couple of guys started to mumble.

“What is the next meeting he was supposed to take from the fuji Company?”
“Do you know how far he along he got on the samples?”

The Wall Street like chaos started. A few of us wondered how Mr. Suga died, but no one dared to ask. I stood there, awaiting the time to jump in to solve the problem.

Later that evening, another man from Mr. Suga’s office joined our gathering at a local bar. He told us that Mr. Suga’s wife wanted to see where Mr. Suga’s body hit the asphalt. The police told her that by the time she got there it would be all cleaned up.

One guy who saw it happen said, “It was just like a watermelon – squashed and spread everywhere.” Mr. Suga didn’t jump off from the building he worked at, but from a building none of us ever heard of, but only two minutes away. We wondered. He was always there when we called his office. He too had lost a lot of money in the stock market a year before. But we all did. He was a cushion between creativity and productivity – and he made sure everything he promised was delivered to his clients on time.

There was no way to get Mr. Suga out of this mess. He was gone. There was nothing I could do about it.

Then I was told that there would be a fee charged the family for clearing away the body. It would be more than $10,000.

My last attempt to claim my Superman-ness. “Shall we all chip in to support his family?”

“No, they will be ashamed.”
“They were not hurting for money”
“It’s suicide. Not an accident.”

That was end of my being a problem solving super hero. I was tired of speculating. I just wanted everything to be as it is. I couldn’t or didn’t need to change anything.

Even after the suicides of four close friends, I have never come to understand why people kill themselves. I couldn’t see how ending your life is the only way to troubleshoot a problem.

It’s all about how much you can give, not how much you can get.
The more you give, the more you have.

That is the biggest bull that my Buddhist culture engraved into me. We were taught that we are just travelers, and this life is just a merely a lodge that we stay temporary (yes, fuzzy metaphor again!!!). All we know is we are born naked and die naked. We don’t have a point system to get a ticket to heaven. Buddhists dare to make up what happens after we die. So it is all about now – how generous can you be in this limited life.

As a child, I already had hardest time to receive, so for me to TAKE was a very difficult task. Then, I thought, how about if I changed it to “give and receive”? And I convinced myself that if I am not receiving what’s offered to me, I am killing the Karma flow. Learning to accept was the first step, before I learned to TAKE IT!!!

In Japan, people appreciate nice things that you do to them, and they will try to pay you back in someway, but NOT here in the States. Especially, in show biz. I’m surrounded by low self-esteem impotents who need to hear applause and ask a total stranger what he thought of his performance. They don’t ask for opinion they seek for praise.

There have been many people who helped me along the way, and of course, in return, a little Japanese me tried to help back the others who needed a leg up. But often when I gave a leg up, they either stepped on my head and kept going, OR demanded another leg up. And if I cannot give them what they want, they became bitter.

I believed that the success meant that you cease to “expect”. Success was a state of mind – the wholeness with yourself. When you are successful, you are capable of making decision based on your preference, not based on your needs. So, I consider myself pretty successful, being able to lead my bohemien life in this strange country. But lately, it’s been quite frustrating, maybe it’s my mid-life crisis. I have always been anti-idiots, and idiots always bring out the violence in me. I came to the conclusion what is my source of frustration. More than morons, it’s the ungrateful bastards.

We are– the war-is -not-real generation. We are spoiled rotten and we never had to shave ice to keep the meat cold – We have a fridge. We just need to turn the nozzle to get hot water, and the microwave took the sense of planning ahead. Everything was there and it was just given to us, sometimes without asking for it. So, what’s-in- it- for- me attitude was cultivated in us from the moment we open the fridge to get a TV dinner.

Japanese are known for their even tempered (of course, there are always exception) and it’s not that they are controlling their emotion or not have one, but we are trained not to expect anything. Sure, we hope and plan for the best, but when you don’t get it, instead of getting mad, we move on . We say “Forget about it” or simple “let go. Let it be a past,” instead of “What’s wrong with that mother fucker?”

But I’m holding a grudge. Maybe it’s my Tennessee Williams drama queeness, but I don’t let go of stuff. If you keep on “forget about it,” you won’t learn anything from trusting some bastards. Quite simply, I am tired of being a short stick collector.

This is what I advice to my fellow SSC.

• Be nice to the people who are nice to you. Give them one chance.
• Make sure your good will is not wasted on some dried up well of needs
• Bad thing happens? Take it personally. Life is all about you.
• If you are a giver, you cannot help but to give. But remember, the only things that jerks deserve to get is Hell. You can be a Christian when you need to be.

 However I must admit the oddest thing. I don’t know how I have been thriving, as a professional and as a director of a small non-profit organization. We give free classes, donate the theatre space, volunteer and perform for other organizations’ fundraisers, finance other artists to launch their projects. After 11 years, I am still here. Maybe because we don’t expect anything in return and we keep focusing on “doing.” And as long as we are capable of doing what we can do, that itself is a gift. Maybe what other people take from you doesn’t matter. It’s all about what you can do for yourself, not what you can keep. It’s a crucial time we live in. We, as an individuals must focus on what we can do for ourselves, not what others can do for us. Time has changed. It is time to take responsibility for your own life and give yourself a chance to be the best you can be. We have to maximize your limited time on this earth. Everything is running out now.

Dreams are over-rated

“Do what you love to do” is bullshit. I am sure it makes you feel good, but if you are not able to continue what you love to do, you will end up just like anyone else who didn’t pursue their dream… a bitter old person.

Americans make their decisions and action plans based on their emotion. Based on what they “feel” like doing. Problem here is feeling changes. Well, everything is impermanent, but there is nothing more jello-er than our feelings.

I know so many people who gave up on acting. “I lost passion,” is the biggest excuse. The truth is they didn’t get the success they expected, so they got tired of waiting for the next big break and moved on.

I don’t believe they ever felt passionate about acting. They just loved or liked the idea of being an actor.

Feeling and passion differ like “being horny” and “being passionate toward your lover.” When you have a boiling passion inside, you just cannot ignore it. All you can do is to just let it out, and continue doing it, no matter what. It always leads you to something larger (or trouble). When you let it out, there is a sense of satisfaction. The reward is in the doing, just like Charles Schwaltz, the papa snoopy said, “If you can make that passion your profession, you are truly the lucky one.”

Passion overpowers any dragging emotions, such as insecurity of feeling not good enough, or simply “I don’t feel like doing it.” Passion is the drive and the fuel that keep us creating our own unique life. It gives us the patience to learn the craft.

It is the BEST cure for laziness. The irony is, you just cannot teach passion to lazy people. They must find it within.

I never “felt” tired when I worked at the theatre. I have been frustrated and exhausted physically, and often cursed and yelled, “Why the hell do I have to do this?”