Status Updates From 音樂使人自由

‘—my birthday, January 17—the war broke out—someone close to me was called to action, it—rattled me—You see this sort of thing in movies all the time, but I saw it happen with my own eyes—a new kind of hegemony, something that I found detestable. Barcelona really won me over—to the point where it started feeling like a second home for me. Because it has no heavy industry—they really focus on—value—life force—a gift.’

‘Lately,—I’ve been drawn to the idea of relocating—I don’t think I want to die in a place where I can’t get by with just my first language—Nam June Paik—said something once that stuck with me: ‘Koreans are hunters. They’ll travel wherever the prey is. If it moves, they’ll follow. But—Japanese are fishers. While they’ll gladly go on deep-sea fishing expeditions, they’ll always come back to port, to their hometown.’

‘The musicians in Bali—extremely talented—they don’t make music for a living—farmers,—carpenters—if Okinawan music were to survive, it couldn’t be locked in the past—it should be free—even if only slightly—Right after—Ryu Murakami visited—& you know what he said to me? ‘You smell like an immigrant.’ That wasn’t easy to forget—seems to think that I’d cut all ties with my homeland, like some kind of rootless wanderer—’

‘—Pierrot le Fou—my fav. Godard—I remember listening to Steve Reich—staring off into the sea as—thoughts churned—I just wanted to do whatever I could do to help her out. It’s not like I was trying to save her—she was far stronger than me—I simply felt that as a man—a human being,—a musician, I had to do whatever I could to protect her—But hey, that’s life, right?—Fascism depends on a strong yearning for the sublime.’

‘1970s—people started—spending money on meaningless things. This is also when I lost one friend after the other—I’m not sure what to say about their deaths. All I can say is that it wakes you up to how much space exists between—to just how little you can know about a person in the end—I told myself—I’m gonna leave, it’s now or never—Until that point, I’d done my best to avoid committing to any single course in life.’

‘This was an era of dismantling—I had a strong gag reflex for the lyrics—but—contained—captivating echoes—To somebody like me, obsessed w/ Indigenous folkways, this—was fascinating—their passion was contagious—As much as I sympathised with—these movements—I didn’t see losing the fight on the political front as a sufficient reason to make a hard pivot to organic agriculture—That felt to me like an admission of defeat’

‘If I was hitting on a girl, I’d bring up politics. ‘Crazy what’s happening—What are your thoughts on that? There’s a—Wanna go?’ Once we were there, I’d help her toward the centre of the crowd so that she wouldn’t get whacked—There’s a tall tale about me sitting down at the piano in the barricaded school to play Debussy with my helmet on, but I’m not sure if I remember that—I read a lot of Kobo Abe and Kenzaburo Oe.’

‘I’d—written—something insane like ‘You are the victim & the executioner,’ after a poem—Baudelaire. I left it in her shoe cubby without signing my name, thinking for sure that when she found it, she would know who it was from—Really, though, what sane person would recognise that—Jazz cafes had a certain je ne sais quoi that I found irresistible—full of student movement types—reading books they bought at Kinokuniya—’

‘—my mom’s dad—sang kouta ballads—Born in Kyushu—He spent—years in poverty (but) his drive to learn couldn’t be stopped. No part of me saw music as my calling—My affinity for Debussy—blurred my sense of self. I started thinking of him, despite being dead for ages, as if his life & mine were one & the same—From a young age,—I suppose I was precocious in my reading, or perhaps promiscuous—‘Beauty in disarray,’ I said—’

‘It was another kind of beauty—glee of transgression—Another thing—I remember is the way my unease about drawing on the windows was compounded by the question, ‘If we use up all the glass, what will the next kids have to paint?’ I was haunted by concern for the coming generations. This was a formative experience for me—a memory breaks free from the bounds of time & space—in place of what is lost, a channel opens up—’