BGM: Ryuichi Sakamoto - Behind The Mask
I worked late today. This morning, I went to the library to borrow Ryuichi Sakamoto's book "Sakamoto Library [坂本龍一『坂本図書』]". This book is about what books Sakamoto had enjoyed during his life once. TBH, I also want to write something about the books I have enjoyed like this one of his, therefore I chose this to borrow again. What books will come to my mind as the important ones? With the music by a collaboration with Fennesz and Sakamoto, I thought about this idea.
When I was young, I couldn't enjoy any of Sakamoto's music because it was simply too sophisticated to enjoy casually. At that period, even though I had tried to enjoy various sophisticated/cool city pop music (we called it "Shibuya-Kei") to improve my senses, I was only an uncool countryside/suburbia guy so I couldn't overcome a certain inferior complex to him though. But now, the more I enjoy his music (I make my mind as simple as I can to enjoy his great music), the more I can feel an emotion of respect for him.
Around the 1990s, in my teenage days and 20s, the internet was still unavailable as a free tool like now. Therefore, the foreign/outer world from this island country was too far. Sakamoto was already a great pop star for us who had achieved great works as a Yellow Magic Orchestra member and his solo career. At that period I was a very foolish guy therefore I couldn't see how hard he had made much effort to achieve them, so I had to do paradoxical things to face his works. To treat him as a kind of perfect existence, and also disrespect him as a kind of evil. In another way, I couldn't praise or criticize him simply as a human being who must have had problems in his career and life. Black and White... Too simple.
Now I can treat him as a great charisma/master who produced great music, even though he must not have been God. One thing (at least) I have learned during this stranger life is that "nobody is perfect" at all. People must have their troubles, their paradoxes within their personalities, and sometimes show their weaknesses to other people. Even they make mistakes... But those accidental things must be a kind of evidence that says they are human. Yes, maybe therefore that is even lovely.
