BGM: Pavement "Range Life"
Christmas is coming. For me, this year I will spend a "lonely Christmas" as usual. Probably I will listen to Jazz classics, read some books and watch some movies. I have watched Wayne Wang's movie "Smoke" every Christmas time as a kind of ritual. How should I do this Christmas? It suits Christmas pleasant times like Rakugo (Japanese traditional tellers' storytelling) and therefore one of my favorite movies. Once I thought the atmosphere of Christmas which forces us to spend time with an intimate lover because it must be a "love capitalism". But now I don't have such an idea. Of course, we can live without easy romance. But love must be a piece of a beautiful life. Can I love someone again in the future?
I heard the news that Kenji Ozawa's "The Dog Barks, But The Caravan Moves On". This album is quite a masterpiece of the 1990s for me. An evergreen one of my youth. I remember a Netflix original movie "We Couldn't Become Adults" by it. It's a little bit sad because it was too introspective and retrospective, but it tells the 90s graffiti and youth seriously and honestly. At last, an artist from us, a Japanese "lost generation", started looking back at our youth and telling the wisdom for surviving now as an adult... Of course, this kind of expression might exist already though.
This might can connect to the topic of Christmas I told above... I have not been interested in the happiness which other people decide. For example, I won't agree with the opinion that "we should spend Christmas time with a lover together". But also, I won't agree "we should spend Christmas alone against the love capitalism". Following the voice from inside of me, I do truly comfortable actions. I won't care about any exclusive or extreme opinions from the media (especially Japanese Twitter). I just read books, listen to music, watch movies. I just let exclusive opinions talk and do make my original way of life.
I read Natsuo Sekikawa's "The encyclopedia of late stages of the human life 2000-03". He tries to tell various "late stages" of famous people and also describes their whole lives from backward. Some of them show terrible "later stage". However, this might be not agreed by some readers, but Sekikawa tries to write the miserable scenery of their life clearly but also keeps a proper distance from them. I thought this must be Sekikawa's fatherly decent kindness. I want to read this work more but also am interested in Douglas Richard Hofstadter's "Gödel, Escher, Bach". I already know this... but, what a terrible cost performance!
