跳舞猫日録

Life goes on brah!

2023/01/08 English

2023/01/08 BGM: Perfume - チョコレイト・ディスコ

Today was a day off. This morning I read Michael Ende's "Momo" with Radiohead's "OK Computer". TBH I had never read "Momo" until today, and I got impressed by its profound messages. Through the battle between a girl who appeared in an imaginary city Momo and the grey gentlemen, the author points out that modern capitalism and society has its serious problem. That kind of seeking for better "cost performance" lose a great thing we always need. How important do we play in our imagination? The attitude of reflecting on the "time" that we always have enough therefore we rarely find its meaning... Ende suggests the point of view of our deaths. I'm sad because I have NEVER read this kind of great literature in my childhood, but c'est la vie.

On Thursdays nights, I enjoy meeting on ZOOM with some members from Shiso International Association and also its city office. And next Thursday I have to do the presentation so I want to talk about "Momo". I started making its draft. During that process, I thought about my life's "cost performance", "time performance (this might sound weird. Yes, this is "Japanese English"), and "waste". For me, being a student of Waseda is even a waste of time, maybe... you won't think it sounds good. But in that four-year period, I almost could do nothing. It was truly free time but I couldn't use that freedom well. I was just soaked into the depression... I should do some part-time jobs modestly. Or I had to read books more. If I tried to learn French through that period, how I could be? Indeed, this kind of "if" always makes me sick.

We Japanese shorten "time performance" to "Taipa". And in Japan, Generation X was the one who wants to watch movies twice fast times or enjoy the dramas from their last episodes to try them having knowledge of the stories. But, while googling about that, I read the opinion that says "traditional training of Sushi maestro must be a waste of time" and "we can have Sushi maestro easier if we try to seek for its 'cost performance'". Is "Taipa" one of the serious problems "we all" have? But I learned that there is a way of living which is called a "slow life". It means living in the countryside intentionally with caring sustainability and ecology. I have to learn "slow reading" because my style of reading is truly chaotic. It must be a great disorder but that's autism.

This evening I read the book "The Language Game" that I read halfway. Indeed, this year has just begun but this must be one of the best books of this year. We tend to think that we are using our languages with obeying their rule of usage, but this book tells us that our communication is based on the "readymade" coincidence that was made by our gesture games and improvisation. I am just an amateur so can't judge if this is true, so I was only impressed saying "Ho". But this opinion which says coincidence is great for us might be connected to Wittgenstein's keyword "The Language Game". We also might be able to connect it to the enigma of communication of Wittgenstein's philosophy. But, is it just a delusion of my brain which is full of nonsense?