Japan-O-Vasion

Second Edition : Vanilla, the Finest of the Flavors

Turn it up! I wanna hear that funky beat blazing out the windows when I cruise main street! Sing along with me “kimi no boku wa Vanilla” or for those who don’t know Gackt’s “Vanilla” (oh the horror!) let me translate, “ I am your Vanilla” . Yes it’s a very dirty, dirty (did I mention tasty?) song. I was once told that art is the barometer of a time period in history, the emotional map to an era. And I have also been told that music, with it’s primal origins and significance, is the art of overcoming differences and appealing to people on the deepest emotional level possible. Music carries a message, if you get it or not it leaves you with some sort of response. There’s no escaping music, it’s all around you. Pounding on your cranium and doing a salsa through your eardrums. Try and deny that the earworm doesn’t bite you and leave you humming the most annoying, tedious song all day. Yah, you know it does!! Sugar pop sticky goodness melting into ever fissure of your brain. Music connects us even when we disagree and have nothing else in common. To quote Deep Blue Something “and I said what about Breakfast at Tiffany’s and you said yah I think we both kind of liked that.” We even write songs about connecting to each other! You don’t always have to understand every word, hell you don’t even have to speak to language to know a good song when you hear it. You just have to listen and take it in, let it move you. Don’t concentrate on the words, they’re just a gurgling of syllables assembled together to represent something we like to chit chat about. It’s what underneath the words, in the voice, in the soul, in the music. It’s the raw surging emotion. That tingle you feel in your finger tips that makes them itch, the tapping in your foot, the chills down your spine as all the little hairs stand up in unison. Yah lovelies, that’s the feeling, that’s the music.
I learned this lesson one day while dredging through my routines at school. I was at a bad place in my life, dark and alone and frightened of my own existence. Yet somehow, but some saving grace, I was found by someone who cared. She gave to me a gift that teenagers had been sharing in homes, schools, dark alleyways, and high rises for years. She gave me music, music that moved me to tears. I had no clue what he was saying, no clue what it all meant, but it hit me somewhere deep inside and knocked the air out of me. A dark, beautiful voice dripping with melancholy whispering to me miserable. It was the word that described my very soul, lost in some dark shattered place. I was all alone in my suffering when everyone was waiting to me to step outside my own self loathing and return to them. Gackt, with his simple words in Japanese, ripe with longing and sentiment, broke me out of a depression that could have easily claimed my life forever and looked ready to. I took in that sensation I felt course through my body, that chilly fingers down the spine, the fuzzy electrical shock through my spirit. Deep in the core of it’s essence that’s the fundamental nature of music, a tool to help us see past our own blinded soul and into a world where our eyes burn with consciousness and revelation. Peer past the gossamer webs that bind us to our selfishness and shortsightedness. Crack down the windows, turn up that radio, strum that guitar and rub your fingers lovingly over those ivory keys. Spread the word, carry extra copies of your favorite song or artist next t you when you go for a drive. Be ready for someone to reach out with questing minds and ask for you to point to them where the path begins. Be gracious my darlings, and remember it is all in charity you open the blind man’s eyes to the world he never knew. Give us music because it is our liberty, lest we are given death before we know what sweet bliss there is for us. Sweet, sweet Vanilla….I gave my love to you. Your Voodoo doll, Mysse