Something New (This Week)
A 2017 documentary, and some future records.
Welcome to Something New (This Week), a lighter, shorter entry that is typically a grab bag of new stuff. This week I’m brushing over a person and an event and some ideas that I’ve had for a couple of weeks, and mainly just want to get off my chest, firing from the hip.
On March 28th, Ryuichi Sakamoto died after a long battle with multiple cancers.
Death, of course, is tragic. It’s the end of the story – every story. It brings along with it grief and sadness that linger for the rest of our time. And I hate how much growth and inspiration and love it can inspire in me. I hate how it can cut deeper into my consciousness than anything else and plant a seed of a new perspective, a new value, a core memory, that moves me forward while another stops moving. I hate that death is what allows me to become a bigger admirer than I ever was in one’s life.
I’m so sad about this passing. I’m so sad to learn how much Sakamoto’s ideas and values and sounds and voice are so in-line with what I value and enjoy and look up to, about how much he was able to create and to give, and how it floated around me in object impermanence, waiting to be found, only to sit idly until his journey was concluded and I finally decided to really look his way.
I watched the 2017 documentary Ryuichi Sakamoto: CODA this week, a sparse, gorgeous, sad, and inspiring telling of Sakamoto’s first brush with cancer, and his impulse to search for and create meaningful work. As all things, it takes on a brutal color now, after his passing. I’m glad to have watched it, it’s well made, and I think many if not all of you would value it.
I cried after it was over, and I imagined being on a train. I’m riding in the caboose, and there are no windows, but the door that leads out the back is open, and I can see things rushing away from me, the train rushing away from them. I can’t see what this train will whizz by and leave behind – I can’t predict what comes next. I can only see things after they pass, and are left alongside the tracks, never coming with me. Those things that are left behind are visible, but only for a while, as the train barrels forward, and the things we leave behind grow smaller and smaller with time and distance, until they fade the light no longer reaches them, our senses unable to keep hold.
This scene in my head was a cold one, but not without its inaccuracies and workarounds. It’s deeply moving moments like these, like a passing of an icon, that imprint deep enough into me to change me, and move me. And it’s in these moments that I have found the real value of physical media, of pieces of the real world crafted to commemorate and celebrate art and creativity. There’s records out there that human hands molded just days after Sakamoto finished an album – any and all of his albums. Records sitting and waiting, gathering dust or maybe gathering wear and tear from a listener’s use. Photos and CD’s and books that record moments, or words, or specifically here: sounds. They keep people and places and things in our lives with us – they can come with me on the train. And they do more than let me remember and hold onto others: they note importance and moments in my own life. They let me remember who I was when I buy them, or find them, or consume them for the first time. They bind me to a moment in time, like a photo does, while also carrying whatever it is they were designed to carry. We leave our mark on them, and they leave a mark on us.
The train moves forward. I may not be able to share with the world any more moments of a new Ryuichi Sakamoto release, but his and my story is not over. The sun is breaching the clouds outside, the temperature is crawling upward, and there are some record stores opening soon. It’s never too late to become a fan.
Happy Friday, happy weekend, happy spring. Let’s all treat ourselves to an addition to our physical media collection sometime soon. We’ve earned it. And yeah, maybe I already bought six books from Powell’s this week, but no one knows that but me. Can’t wait to see what you find.
TTFN
B