On Falling and One More Step

What I find so moving about working with the choral groups at SRJC is the way they take ownership of the songs I bring to them. You bring in this song, this little thing you’ve made, and they take it up and say, it’s ours! It’s really a tremendous honor. It is challenging also because I have to let go of what I expected the piece to be and let it become what we all will make of it together. But that process is oh so worth it.

Falling is about so many things. The main point is that we cannot share this world. We have ways of translating into so many languages. And yet, we still don’t understand each other. We have come so far as a species and with all the capacity to think and create. Still, our solutions are economic, religious, and physical violence. When we make each other the enemy, we are falling. We see animals and nature as other. When we separate ourselves from this, we fall. When we choose money over life we fall. We have the potential to do better and we choose not to.

Falling is also a story of love. You say to the universe that you want so much to find someone to have a deep connection with, someone who inspires you, someone who devastates you with their presence. You want someone to give your breath and body to. The universe answers and you are unprepared. You are not enough to deal with the gift. Regardless, you fall. You fall in love. And you fall because you have been taken to the height of your being. You’ve set foot in paradise. But paradise is fleeting. Once you set foot there it begins to disappear and nothing you have can contain or save it.

One More Step says to keep going. It’s what we do. It’s what our bodies do. And when they’re done, someone after you will keep up the journey. You can fall and your friends will be there to walk with you.

Here’s a song I wrote. I worked with my friend Deanna who sang the lead vocals.

100 Demons

One of my favorite cartoonists, Lynda Barry, put out a book called One! Hundred! Demons! She was inspired by a scroll painted by a sixteenth century Japanese monk. The scroll featured one hundred demons chasing each other. In the beginning of her book she encourages people to try their hand at drawing their own demons. And so I thought, why not?

(More info here: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/75748 )

As a Japanese American person, some things about my Japanese culture don’t work well for me under the American caste system. But one of the things I do appreciate about the Japanese mindset is that everything has a spirit. In the scroll the idea is that everything, even kitchen utensils, must be disposed of properly or else their spirit will not be at rest.

The demons are like food: medicine or poison depending on the dosage. They are sustaining and sometimes nourishing. They can also lead to self destruction or a miscalculation of a person’s self worth.