Murakamiesque 6

"Air Chrysalis"

A scene from Haruki Murakami's latest novel 1Q84. You have to read it to believe it.

Murakamiesque 5

Inspired from Haruki Murakami's "A Wild Sheep Chase", a story about a man's unusual adventure that leads him on a hunt for a mysterious sheep that seems to have powers to control the world. It is filled with quirky characters including a girl with magically seductive ears (that can increase the quality of sex a thousand-fold! woah!), a strange man that wears sheep clothing and many more.

Murakamiesque 4

Inspired from Murakami's The Little Green Monster, a story about a woman who finds how irresistible she is to a small green monster that burrowed through her garden. I really felt sorry for the creature and made me wonder who the real monster in the story was.

I started drawing this as a character in my Visoliloquy series at http://revcruz.tumblr.com, but realized I should feature it in my Moleskine as well.

Murakamiesque 3

I know it didn't happen exactly this way in the short story. In fact, in the story, the aunt simply appeared – matter-of-factly – with not so much as an alarm to the author. But if it did happen to me, and taking it literally, I would be surprised and somewhat disgusted at the thought of someone growing out of my back – and a poor aunt at that! Should we take the story either its literal or symbolic level, it reminds us of how our memories, like people, we don't need or take for granted suddenly poke out like a sore thumb… emotions that pent up… build up and even take its form into a physical being. We wish them out of our lives but really we could not do it ever because they are a part of us… and if we do manage to erase them completely which is so unlikely, they leave us empty and less of who we really are…

Murakamiesque 2

Inspired from another Murakami masterpiece, this time from a novel… ""I had no idea if what I was thinking was right or wrong, but I knew that as long as I was here, I had to defeat this thing. This was the war that I would have to fight."

The initial reviews for the preview of its stage production is so intriguing… "Imagine watching a David Lynch film on stage." (City Arts New York)

Murakamiesque

I've been reading a lot of Murakami's works lately, interspersing between his novels and collections of short stories. It may not come as a surprise that some of his ideas may seep into one's consciousness and/or imagination, just as situations in his stories seem to thin out the line between reality and dream. The imagery created by his works are said to be unique to the medium, and may derive a variety of different emotions and interpretations from its readers. Despite having had some of his works turned into film adaptations (I've already seen the Ichikawa "Tony Takitani" and Logevall's "All God's Children Can Dance", but have yet to see Anh Hung Tran's "Norwegian Wood") and upcoming theatrical presentations ("Wind-Up Bird Chronicle"), interpreting them poses a unique challenge. I can't help making some illustrations while I was reading his books and I must say my drawings will never do justice to his story, but I'll post some of them in succeeding posts, as a sort of mini-game for Murakami fans out there.

Now try to guess which story the above drawing is inspired from. It's a dead giveaway actually. (By the way, this happens to be my first Moleskine drawing for the year… I've been very busy. Plus, I might have very interesting Moleskine related-news soon.)

Here's the original drawing I made, and that in itself is a clue.