Giving the scene in focus a shot of its iridescent “sensurrific” pleasure like a music video capturing the dynamics and attraction of youth culture, Mission 1 of Train Man opens up with a familiar attention-grabbing accident, but not in the usual picture of singularly boy-meets-girl brushing of the shoulders.

What I mean by “sensurrific” is the adjectival electricity made surreal by sensual attraction or the distance narrowed with every beat of the heart breezily excited by the body chemicals, which according to Diane Ackerman in A Natural History of Love are being classified as oxytocin and phenylethylamine. Speaking of attraction, there are transgeneric texts with which to negotiate, as it were, two cultural texts bordering on the contextual issues of social spectrality, namely Hitori Nakano’s Train Man and Björk’s Joga.

Intertextually, I sire a vision to negotiate the forces of the social subjectile occurring in Train Man which is a case of a carefully experienced incident bound by a narrative of activity surrounding, as it were, characters and the optic they project out of romance, and in the music of indie vocal artist Björk who in Joga explores the universal claim to an accident leading into inquiry and a state of emergency that investigates the volcanic nature of the appositional-oppositional reworking of the mind.

The new critical method to produce an “imagined dialogue” expands the textual and thematic approaches of close reading in order to reconcile the molecular forces of desire recounted or depicted both in the novel and the song. Therefore, I propose that Mission 1—the most exciting and nourishing chapter of Train Man—which critically depicts social relations situating the speaker in Joga as a “man-in-spectacle” rather than the obvious “man-of-spectacle”, thereby technically revealed as more (tropic) imaginary than tectonic. Not only is the imaginary dialogue is introduced as a means to foreground key areas of engagement but also the envisioning of a meta-spectacle that suggests its own language, gesture, or a moment of poem-ness.

Copied and pasted from Eksentrika.

Copied and pasted from Eksentrika.

I grew up listening to Björk’s tectonic music in the 90s; it’s undoubtedly a period of self-discovery that investigates the volcanic nature of the appositional-oppositional reworking of the mind. Now, what do I mean by this proposition? It’s the feeling of having faced for the first a situation in which one could find himself a tad uncomfortable, simply put.

All these accidents that happen

Here, I would like to clarify that the ‘accident’ should be superseded with ‘incident’. Accidents are like momentary flashes on one hand, and incidents are reported accidents on the other, which means to say that the accident referred to in the line applies for Train Man meeting for the first time Lady Miss Hermes. The incident however occurs as the old drunkard initially presses an unpleasant tactic against the ladies. Yet still not knowing each other by formal introduction, the universe governs this kind of spectacle called an accident. By fanatical expression, people say that love moves in mysterious ways. And to think about the setting happening in a train, with chaos surprising the characters, is all but a romantic offshoot of modernism. The train is a perfect image transporting characters into new revealing narratives.

Follow the dot

Train Man has trained ears for good music and for hearing (or detecting) moral panic. He rhetorically jumps into the fog, fearlessly sending no more SOS to the world. He’s a man and out there testing the waters. The scuffle however signifies the strangeness of reactions. Volumes of perspective may arise as to whether Train Man is offering help to rescue the ladies or indisputably testing his courage to see if he can man up and not end up like a sore loser of a nerd he is. Thus, following the dot is tantamount to challenging his decision-making power.

Coincidence makes sense
Only with you

Although the conversation between Train Man and Lady Miss Hermes appears to be artificial since the former happens to be confused and seems to be engendering a quietist personality, I think the scuffle spectacle in Mission 1 is the only scene that celebrates innocence and young love amid the chaos which is so romantic of a movie backdrop, not to mention the secret gaze, the often-repeated phrase “the lady who sat next to me”, and the symbolic representation of the two teacups which highlight that surreal moment of falling in love (which too is a display of psychic spectacle) meant to be shared ”Only with you.”

You don’t have to speak

Silence is privileged by the likes of Lady Miss Hermes who would rather prefer receiving or writing a letter than acknowledging the gift of modern talk. As described in the novel Lady Miss Hermes got class which adds a dash of mystery to her already bedazzling aura. Theoretically speaking, the privileging of writing over speech, which both Train Man and Lady Miss Hermes endeavour to practice in a way to save the courtship tradition from apparent technocracy, inverts Derrida’s critical assumption which would meet their theses head-on.

Copied and pasted from Eksentrika.

Copied and pasted from Eksentrika.

There is likewise an online debate inspired by The Geeks encouraging Train Man to either phone Lady Miss Hermes (speech) or just simply write her a thank-you letter (writing). All opinions and comments froze up. Train Man could not choose from nor speak about the variety of choices offered to him. He would only instead say, “I’m gonna read everybody’s comments again and work myself up for tomorrow…”

I feel  

Emotion overrules here. Poetic pauses or caesuras cut all lines of dialogues. In Mission 1 there is tension when the scuffle motions into the center to create panic. Although this metaphysical beat or tectonic tension allows Train Man to be subsumed under the spell of affective fallacy, that is, allowing himself to interpret differently the impression people make about a techie dork like him, the centrality of emotion is being recharged and reconstructed to further appreciate “the beauty of being in a state of emergency“. According to a 1997 SPIN issue, Bjork’s Joga produces “strong beats—referred to as ‘volcanic’— to reflect Iceland’s primal and chaotic nature.” And due to its harsh beats and halfway drop, some modern critics have described the track as proto-dubstep.

Emotional landscapes
They puzzle me

Since the train describes the spectacle’s semiosphere, I am regarding as well the internet, restaurant, and the police station where all the characters are confined to their own habitus recognizing their distinct classes—personal, social, economic, cultural. But the emotional landscapes referred to here would probably be, on a figurative level, the overall sensual attraction between Train Man and Lady Miss Hermes which is a kind of language mutually puzzling and hard to spoil. Emotional landscapes are so entrenched into the surreal that can hardly be a site of engagement among spaces, or of a counterpoise between the present-absent and the absent-present feeling.

This state of emergency
How beautiful to be

Train Man is obviously the one who benefits from the spectacle. It is assuming of him to be mustering courage as a will so exposed it could challenge his aura not knowing whether such courageous foray could save his face or be devalued as a form of paradox. Taking a risk can serve him in two ways, to a degree that is paradoxically inevitable: first, his being too brave to confront the old drunkard makes him an instant hero in the eyes of the ladies in distress; and, secondly, his being so assuming that he can weather the storm signifies a potential for a love of spectacle, regardless of the discomfiture or social disgrace, but this can de-characterize Train Man out of context for falling prey to pretence.

Having the familiar movie moments in which destined lovers meet for the first time has already stood poised for media consumption. To create a magical feel out of this scene is to deconstruct its context. Fortunately, this is what Mission 1 has done for the readers of the intern(e)ational-bestseller Train Man. Besides the innovative technicalities of its new media art narrative, Train Man as the protagonist enjoys living for the moment—so impulsive and uncertain that indeed being in a state of emergency makes him feel safe, satisfied, and always searching. Thus his mantra,

State of emergency
Is where I want to be.

I would say that the novel Train Man does not really historicize contemporary youth culture nor publicize teenage love, but rather it is a work of art that gives rise to social actions by acknowledging the need of the spectacle not to be subdued by any forms of temporal embrasures. I have a strong feeling that social life takes place in every corner of the city, though an individual can survive urban decay by depending on his cultural capital, this individualized activity is nonetheless a social recognition that shows that he cannot create something without the offerings of cosmopolitan life.

Also, it is interesting to note that correlating a text with another text is a true mark of reconciliation, a characteristic of the new critical foundation in the treatment of particular texts. Gone are the days when the twin Enlightenment ideas would dominate our understanding of literary and cultural texts. What is being patient for the most of our scholarly career is the concentrated attention we give to a phenomenon, good or bad, that can change our view of the world.

Cover image sourced from björk / YouTube and Carousell. The copyright of this piece belongs to the author of this literary work.  

Copied and pasted from Eksentrika.

Submit your short stories, poems, essays, reviews, and more here.