Slow Boat

^{LINER NOTES} WRITING ABOUT WHAT I’M WRITING ABOUT

This book demands explanation. You open it up to find the title on the title page. Fair enough. But then there’s a subtitle under it. A strange subtitle—right? You keep going, but the Contents page is no less strange. Some readers might wonder: “Where have I seen these words before? They look kind of familiar.”

These chapter titles are borrowed. Phrases lifted from the work of another writer.

I’ve sampled them.

Maybe that sounds a little too musical. But I’ve never been the sort of writer who lives in an entirely literary world. Pop culture is the air I breathe. I know how it feels to put a record on a turntable, to flip it over and play the other side. And I know how it feels to grip a gamepad or dip my hand into a bag of chips while watching a movie. But music has probably given me the most, and it just keeps giving me more.

Maybe the best gift of all: music has shown me how to survive.

Music comes in many forms. Radio, tape, CD. But the song has a way of moving on its own—from generation to generation. Take the cover song. Singing the hits of the past today. With nothing but the deepest respect for those who came before.

Like with the early Beatles or the Stones. The way they did it.

Now.

There’s no reason you can’t do the same thing with stories. To take your love for the original and situate it in the present. Back to this book. To the subtitle: A Slow Boat to China RMX. A nod to Haruki Murakami’s unforgettable short story—“A Slow Boat to China”. The story where my story begins.

For me, Murakami is at the centre of it all—the roots of my soul.

RMX stands for “remix”. Remixes, covers… It’s easy to get them mixed up. But “misreading” is a big part of what this book is about, so I hope you’ll forgive me. Whenever I think about remixing, I think about this one story I know. It has to do with a well-known remixer, whose name I forget. When an artist comes to him for a track, he doesn’t run to the studio. He puts the song on repeat and goes to bed. He lets it play all night. Then, when he wakes up in the morning, he knows exactly what to do.

That’s what I’m talking about when I talk about remixing.

Unconsciousness. Dreams. And love that has no value other than purity.

This book is dedicated to Tokyo, 2002—and all the years that went into making it.

And to the roots of my soul. Hope he doesn’t mind.