Bolero (from Kenshi Yonezu's diary)

Recently, with work on my new album finally nearing an end, I can't make a decision as to short or long sleeves in these unstable temperatures. Thinking about it, I've experienced September twenty-four, twenty-five times, yet every time September comes, I get all flustered like it's a brand new occurrence. The sun rising, setting, and up to rising again is called one day, the period of about 30 of those repeating is called one month, and the period of 12 months repeating is called a year - but even these handy definitions have no meaning to a person so thick-headed as to not remember what they had for dinner last night.

I'm dull enough to sometimes not notice that I've caught the flu, and there are all sorts of things I don't notice until they become serious problems, so I've started going jogging to counter it. I feel like moving your body somehow makes you more aware of everything. It's kind of jumping to conclusions, and I don't know if it's really making me more attentive, but I do find that I notice things I usually don't. A town has all kinds of rhythms within it, and running makes them stand out. The beating of waves from the river, the streetlights between buildings, all of these things have rhythms. And if you consider the speed you move at as your BPM, by keeping a fixed BPM, you start to see those rhythms.

Wearing earphones to listen to music and looking at the town, there are moments where the music from my earphones, despite not sharing them with anyone, perfectly synchronizes with the steps of the person walking in front of me. I feel like I'm witnessing an astounding moment, and even think that maybe staying with this person walking in front of me will bring me good fortune. But ultimately, it's only for a brief moment that they're in sync, and they separate in the next moment. I thought, I want to have a mutual understanding with someone. And I had a gut realization that in order to have that, I have to search out rhythms in the space between myself and someone else.

If we can call anything that repeats a rhythm, then maybe we who live on the repeating calendar are rhythm itself. Jumping over the hurdle markers of one day, one month, one year, we repeat dates always cut up in the same way. To create music directed at others, it's important to similarly jump over each of the hurdles that everyone else is naturally jumping over. It's obvious, but I only recently noticed it. Like I said, I'm thick-headed.

Posted September 16th, 2015

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