KAKKO-II.COM BLOG

I don’t know how to answer Zush’s last post. I thought that by leaving it, my mind would somehow sprout into all kinds of wisdom. I’m staring at my laptop screen now, blank like a canvas devoid of it’s painter. A good beginning is important. I suppose I’m still looking for that beginning, the entrance to the conversation. Give me a few hours. Please.

I was ironing a big pile of clothes today. They were crisp with deep wrinkles . Maps of land that don’t exist. But if you used your imagination, you could definitely see a world living within the heap of shit I like to call, clothes that haven’t been ironed for months.

I started this post yesterday but never came back to it. I listened to old jazz records instead. And after that, opened a few cans of beer. I then ventured up into the attic, plugged in my guitar, turned the amp on, and jammed for hours. When I began it was light. When I finished I couldn’t see my hands. The whole thing was something else. Mind, body and soul disconnected from the physical, entering an exclusive haunt.

My guitar opens up a world. A world I walk in and out of, living through anything I want to live through. Be it the past, present of future, my guitar lets me into these places. It is my hero, my lover, my best friend, my conscience.

Our love for music, I later thought, must give birth from the same source. Zush explained “When you listen to any kind of music, you want to make your life more bearable. You get kicks from that music”. we connect with music because it understands us. Because the artists behind the instruments and the microphones are living and breathing the same air as us. Songs are mini riots. Explosions of colours that make up the world. We create the paintings from them.

Artists work for themselves. They have big egos and self-indulge. Its all part of the process. But no matter what they want us to feel from their songs, we take what we make of it. We’re all artists.

My clothes still looked liked maps after an hour of solid ironing. I didn’t care though. Hitomi Yaida’s ‘Kodoku na cowboy’ began to roar from my headphones. I was back in Malaysia with my best friend, being woken up by my little cousin at 6am in the morning. The cicadas were still chirping outside the window. The faint sounds of a dog barking. The draft of the air-conditioner. The mickey mouse clock ticking away annoyingly on top of the old television. The smell of cooked breakfast outside the bedroom door. My auntie telling off her son for breaking into our room. ‘Kodoku na cowboy’ takes me back to ‘that’ place.

I’m currently playing the song now. My heart remembers. It remembers because it’s telling me. Heavy like clouds about to rain. The chorus sends me back to that whole holiday. I’m now in ‘that’ place. That place Zush has mentioned before. Here is good karma.

 Wu-san

[to be continued]

Are we going to dive deep into our memories, dreams, hopes and fears? Might be so but that last one is too scary and private subject to be taken to our blog agenda. But who knows. My mood is so unbalanced today.

You are talking about time & life. How you watch, like an outsider, what is happening there in the real world. How you feel you are wasting your time and your life when trying to catch up that reality with your pen. Living your own life through your written words.

That’s well-known philosophical dilemma as you know. There is you and your inner world and there is The Real World. I believe that in many cases this inner/outer polarity generates great art. I feel the same as you. Many times I’ve thaught that I’m living in a wrong place in a wrong time. Like I don’t fit here where I am now. There is always that unexplained longing to experience something more, to live somewhere far away from this place, to feel that you are finally at home, to be Happy.

These thoughts lead us to this quite heavy question: What actually makes me love Japanese culture? If I have had some pints I can easily tell you that in previous life I was living in Japan. That’s why Japan attracts me so strongly. There must be more reasonable explanations for that but this is the easiest one. Well, maybe I tell another one. I think we, after all, have many common charasteristics between Japanese and Finnish people. In a way we both love simplicity. In a way we both are also reserved. And so on.

When you listen to any kind of music, you want to make your life more bearable. You get kicks from that music. You can become a member of a music tribe and feel kind of unity. I’m a member in many tribes. Most important for me is at this moment The Tribe called Berryz. Music can make you stronger. It can ease your pain. It can even get you in the fighting spirit. Music is more than just music.

When I listen to Japanese pop and rock I slide in to this state of mind that could be called “Almost there”. As I wrote in the begining of this blog: Memories, dreams and hopes. They are all there. Another reality that is still a dream for me but real life for those people living there in far away land.

Zush

[to be continued]

The days move quickly. As quickly as I can count them on my hands. Each finger is a day leading into the next. A day that rarely moves me, managing to pass me by without my knowing. Sometimes I like to stare at the clouds. Today they are a velveteen of greys. Ready to pore down on this little café. A café that holds my attention and hides me from the moving world outside. Here I write about the importance of existing. It must be important because it’s all I ever seem to write about. How I waste mine. How I sit in my café, writing about the world instead of living in it. Here is my world. Here is where time runs without me, skipping along with the sound of my pen brushing against the grain of my journal paper. Here I am lost with my words and my thoughts. My feelings. When I close my journal they continue to linger as afterthoughts. I buy another cup of coffee and return to my seat. I continue to stare at the people outside. Scenes of colours moving, existing, living to exist. I want to be normal like them. But I stop myself simply by being here. Here in this café drinking all day long, waiting for it to rain.

I think of all the people I have not met. Zush included. Of course. All of the friends I have made online. All of the friends I have lost through the grandeur of growing up. And like most landmarks, it is a grandeur hidden beneath the veil of time. A time that tries to put perspective on things, root things down into the ground.

When Zush writes about himself, he does so in a way I can never capture and tell. There is something bare and honest about it. That is the true power of writing. The message is clear. The intent free flowing and unpretentious. A kind of humility that hints at all kinds of possibilities instead of limiting them to concrete words.

As the wooden seat I rest on warms up from my unmoving body, I think about Zush in Shibuya, doing all the things he said. Experiencing all the things he experienced. I cannot put something like that into words because I cannot relate detail for detail. I have not been to Japan, and everything Japanese in my room has been airmailed. I am unsure if this is a true response to his latest blog.

All I can say for now is I am alone in a café, reading, writing, watching people and listening to J-pop. I must always listen to music. It helps cover the plainness of my world with an array of colours. Japanese music is a palate with a full rainbow. Beautiful in every kind of way. From alternative, underground rock, to formulaic – feel-good – pop.

Right now I am listening to ‘All for one and one for all’ by ‘H!P All Stars’, slightly high off the whisky I have added to my coffee. The song is a simple melody, the choir of H!P voices turning this keepsake into an anthem for the ages. The more I drink, the happier I am. After awhile I order another coffee, still determined to keep it Irish. I begin to write down the Romanized lyrics to ‘All for one and one for all’ in my journal and stare at the Japanese blankly. What does this song mean to me? I wish I had a memory like Zush, somehow connected to H!P in some way. But I don’t. And that’s ok. Maybe it’s not my time to go crazy in Shibuya waving around Morning Musume CDs. I’m just glad I know someone who has lived something like that.

I place my pen in my bag and retreat to nothingness. A state of mind where all I am is a process. A process of raising my hand, opening my mouth and pouring in the drink. I put on ‘Morning Coffee‘. I think back to pockets of small moments in my childhood. Thankful that a song can bring back memories I hold dear to me.

Wu-san

[to be continued]

My feet were aching & burning but I kept walking. I felt like a long distance athletic walker who have still long way to go before he reaches the finishing line. Only one thought in mind: Must walk, must reach my target. Then I’m almost there. I’m in kind of semi Heaven. Before me I saw hundreds of people walking & runing across Shibuya’s main crossing near metro station.

That view wasn’t anymore a photo from a book or documentary clip from TV. I really was THERE. I stood in Shibuya Station Square and felt no pain. Dreams sometimes come true. Busy people passing by me and I’m like in trance watching super large video screen across the street displaying various Japanese commercials.

That was spring in the year 2002. My first trip to Tokyo. Hanami season at it’s best.

I remembered very well Morning Musume’s long version of Love Machine PV. In the begining of that video worker guys glue together giant size MM billboard near Shibuya Station. It was of course an advert of Love Machine single. Maki Goto’s debut in MM. Maki is also in a leading role on that PV. She is browsing some CDs in a record store somewhere in Shibuya. She’s smiling so mischievously. I remember that smile forever.

Back to reality. I crossed the Shibuya crossing and walked about hundred metres up to road that led me to HMV store. When going in I instantly had deja vu, I was quite sure that this was the place where Maki was smiling. I looked around. Yeah, this must be it! Then I almost died. Morning Musume posters hit my eyes. Never seen these before. And there on large stand was hundreds of brand new MM albums waiting for their new homes. When I got over that pleasant shock I realised that this album, 4th Ikimasshoi!, was released just day before. Lucky me. I stayed in HMV quite a long time and when finally got myself out, had something very precious in my bag.

Then, when walking through Shibuya Hills, another thought hit me. I was there. I have been walking the same footsteps those Maki had walked before. I was smiling and the pain was gone.

In the end of Love Machine’s long version one guy in HMV is listening Love Machine with his headphones. First he does not recognize Maki, who’s picking MM’s new single from the stand before him. When Maki leaves store, she smiles to this guy and then he realizes who was smiling to him. The face expression of that guy is priceless.

Zush

[to be continued]