Dance Dance Dance

The Dolphin Hotel often appears in my dreams. In these dreams, I find myself there, caught up in some ongoing event. Everything around me tells me that I am part of this ongoing dream. The Dolphin Hotel is unusual because it is so narrow that it resembles a long bridge. However, it is a covered bridge, a bridge that extends endlessly in time. There, I find myself inside it, but there is another person crying too. I always find the hotel surrounding me on all sides. I feel its pulse and warmth. In my dreams, I find myself a part of it. I wake up, but where am I? I don’t even think about it. I have already asked myself the question: “Where am I?” As if I didn’t know: I exist, in my life, and my existence is an aspect of the world. I don’t recall ever having agreed to these things, this state, or this set of events in which I appear. There may be a woman sleeping next to me, but for the most part, I’m alone. There’s just me, the highway that runs directly alongside my apartment, a glass (there was still five milliliters of whiskey in it), and the dusty morning light. Sometimes it’s raining. The Dolphin Hotel is a real hotel, and it really is in a neighborhood in Sapporo. I spent a week there several years ago—how many years ago, to be precise? Four years, or even more precisely, four and a half. I was still in my twenties when I checked into the Dolphin Hotel with the help of a woman I was living with, and she was the one who chose the place when she said, “This is where we’re staying.” Without her, I would never have set foot in such a place. It was a small, ugly hotel. The whole time we were there, I don’t know if we saw any other guests. There were some keys missing from the panel behind the reception desk, which makes me guess that there were other guests there… It’s a hotel surrounded by mystery on all sides. It reminds me of biological death, of a genetic relapse. It’s a strange creation of nature that has thrown a being down the wrong path with no way back… But we stayed there, and I remember her saying, “This is where we’re staying,” but then she disappeared. She appeared and then disappeared. It was the masked man who told me this when he said: The woman left on her own in the afternoon. Somehow the masked man knew this. He knew that she had to leave, just as I know now. Her intention was to take me there, as if it were her destiny, like the Voltava River flowing towards its estuary in the sea, like rain falling to the earth. When these dreams about the Dolphin Hotel began to haunt me, they were the first thing that came to mind. They were searching for me. Otherwise, why would the same dream appear to me again and again?… Murakami navigates this novel between the fantasy that expresses virtual reality and real, lived life. It is the life of modern capitalist society, the life of searching for friendship, love, and food, and the growing needs of consumerism, as well as a life of individualism, fragmentation, and isolation. The life of Hakone’s parents: the mother, a professional photographer, a famous artist, who leaves her daughter alone, her concern being traveling to filming locations… and to her lovers… and the wealthy father, who lives in another world and is happy to find someone who cares for his daughter, giving him not only what he wants, but what he might even desire. In the background of this novel, there is always the masked man, the possessor of wisdom and the keeper of the history of human transformations. This man repeats to the protagonist: “You must dance… dance…” thereby expressing the contemporary lifestyle.