Director's Note
 

TAMASHI, which means soul in Japanese, was born out of a desire to share climbing as performance art and pure expression of the body. My father, a Butoh dancer and my former mentor, always taught me to move with my soul, and yet many pains and joys between us have gone unexpressed.

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The short film weaves together my exploration and quest for healing intergenerational trauma alongside my father and the story of the indigenous Nuumu who populate the lands of Payahuunadü (the land of flowing water). So much of my climbing career has been focused on individual achievement, and I wanted to give space and voice to other intergenerational traumas and the fraught histories tied to the beautiful land where climbers have the privilege to climb.

Despite the popularity of Bishop as a climbing destination, the story of the Nuumu and Newe peoples and how the land was stripped of its vital life force, the water, by the LADWP, is little known. The experimental nature of this film gave space to weave in their important narrative, and while filming, a metaphor I received from the land planted the seed of healing my relationship with my father.

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In Taoist mythology, a hardened, dry clay vessel is vulnerable to cracking, but this breakage can be a porous opening for new forms to be created with the generosity of water mixed in with the clay. Flexible shapes can be molded anew. The fissures of the land and the human heart go through similar stages of brittleness. Breakages are invitations, where water, or tears, can enter as a necessary element to nourish itself and heal.

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In the act of making the film through our performance art, my father and I reached a realm of conversation where words cannot enter — as in the words of dancer Kazuo Ohno, the “realm of poetry which only the body can express”