A round of pure sorrow in the water mirror

Listen to the last show of YOSHIKI Classical 10th Anniversary Tour on October 28th at Carnegie Hall in New York. There are so many stories and legends about YOSHIKI that it is impossible to mention them all. Just sitting there (this time I rarely bought a perfect middle seat), I suddenly thought that as a rock musician, as an entertainer, as an artist, he is extremely rare in today's world, and never performs The output of values ​​is only about emotions.

As a YOSHIKI fan for 10 years, I always want to talk about some theory and explain why. I have been analyzing and analyzing YOSHIKI, but fortunately he is a person with extremely rich personality and extremely complex charm. But ten years later, I finally realized that it was just love, as said in Dream of Red Mansions.

On November 7th, US time, news broke that X JAPAN’s bassist HEATH had passed away. As Sister Sakuya said on Weibo back then, this is the first time I have experienced the death of an active member of the Honmeidan.

Most people may not be able to understand this shock and disbelief. The pursuit of Japanese visual kei has such a cult-like and unique atmosphere. Those past events of the past thirty or forty years, "other people's affairs", are all treasured. I was too young to pursue visual kei in my youth. Even in mainland China, when visual kei was introduced, I was still twenty-one. At the beginning of the century, the literary and artistic atmosphere during that period, especially among teenagers, is what I have always missed. That kind of stream-of-consciousness style, which seems to be pretentious and ignorant of youth, is actually sincere and heartfelt. Use various stories to express what is in your heart. It’s just feelings and emotions. Let’s talk about the youth that pursues visual kei—it’s the “coolness” that is associated with this atmosphere and belongs to me and the previous generation. Now, of course, no one understands it. Even I belatedly fell in love with YOSHIKI almost ten years ago. Of course no one understands. It’s hard to describe the charm of visual kei rock and roll in words. I can only say, go and see, go and see. It’s a pity that beauty has faded away. Even the most beautiful HYDE, who is as beautiful as a doll, has many wrinkles. .

Let’s just talk about visual kei. Firstly, it may be the courage to express oneself through makeup in East Asian society. Secondly, it is also an intuitive aesthetic that is different but has a rock core. Thirdly, it is just a reflection of the passionate youth—— What a group of friends do together is touching.

(And this also convinced me that only writing can preserve my feelings.)

And when I got to know YOSHIKI, he had already become a legend, or in other words, demonized. He was famous all over the world and was slandered accordingly. Say he is shameless, say he likes to promote himself, say he is vain, say he is self-righteous, say he can no longer make good music, say he is a profit-seeking businessman, say his drum and piano skills are mediocre, say he is ugly , how how. As soon as I "entered the trap", so many shady materials rushed towards me, and I was determined to get to the bottom of the matter, so I felt that I had no illusions about him and had a full understanding of him.

His businessman side has always talked about the death of Hide, the death of his father, and the death of TAIJI, which has been criticized by many people in Japanese, Chinese, and English. But these, to me, are the source of his complexity and charm. This time I saw him again after seven years (if you don’t count The Last Rock Stars live in February, the last time I saw him was at Carnegie Hall in early 2017). When I saw him, I still missed my old friend. This time I added the last year. His mother passed away (it goes without saying how important his mother was to him), so sad, and what saddens me the most is that he has really grown old and lost a lot of weight. He didn’t even feel that he was live in February. This time I followed him from Los Angeles to New York in October and felt his sadness, fatigue, and strength. It's not just the beauty of the mirror, the flowers of the tree, the trees, I can't bear to look at it anymore.

In today's world, under the bombardment of the information age, the public has begun to advocate "insensitivity" and propose the benefits of being unsympathetic, indifferent, and purely goal-oriented. Indeed, if it is too real and emotional, you will only suffer after all. Even the old Chinese saying says that strength is easily broken but deep love will not last long.

YOSHIKI may be special because he has been so affectionate and strong for thirty years. He doesn't let people see the things he likes to see, such as being down and out, having talents that are not appreciated, or being forgotten after being so proud. Instead, he is always online, making moves, and becoming more and more successful.

"Slander will follow", there must be some hatred that cannot see the joke.

After the news of HEATH's death broke, he was naturally scolded again. One of them was that he returned to Japan on November 3 and posted a selfie wearing formal mourning clothes on SNS. This is taken as proof that he is not sad for HEATH and is "selfish".

Ruan Ji is rampant and does not follow etiquette. When his mother died, he still drank alcohol and ate meat, which aroused criticism. However, when his mother was buried, he cried uncontrollably and vomited several liters of blood. Whether a person is sincere and the true meaning of others can be measured by the rigid model of "etiquette"? Eighteen hundred years later, the public is still full of suspicion and disbelief when they see someone who violates the rules and regulations.

Ruan Ji is so arrogant, how can he cry at the end of the road? Why do you cry when you are at the end of your journey?

He is basically the person with the deepest, purest and most serious feelings, but he is repeatedly called heartless because he cannot act according to the "public's" script.

It was naturally wrong for him to show his emotions. Commemorating the death of teammates every January is just a show to take advantage of the popularity, but forget that hide is a saint. He has been dead for 25 years today. He talks about his father, tears open the wound and shows it to others. It's like "using death for marketing". In fact, when did he start telling others about these pains in more than 30 years and almost 40 years?

Year after year, month after month, he never exported his values, but only told people his feelings and asked for empathy.

After watching too much YOSHIKI stuff, I’m actually a little tired and have a “dull feeling”. But if you step away for a moment and look at it from an "outsider's" perspective, you will be able to appreciate his uniqueness and greatness. Hearing him talk about Red Swan, whose red wings are stained with blood but still trying to fly, gave me a headache. However, in the comment area of ​​the video of Red Swan, the OP of "Attack on Titan", I saw such comments from passers-by:

"This song is too miserable. I don't like it very much. I don't like the sad melody. The red swan is a blood-stained swan. It flies to heaven and dies. It's so sad. How can a rose bloom in the crack? Roses are not. There is no need for this kind of suffering."

This keen "dislike" made me horrified. There was no need for this kind of suffering, but it was real to him and happened again and again. Who needs suffering? But death has been with him from beginning to end. The images he has always liked, rain, roses, swans, and recently the sky, have been mentioned year after year, month by month, for more than thirty years. In fact, the feelings represented by the images have never changed. , but people fell into "unbelief". Think it's cheesey, cliche. When I heard Red Swan for the first time, I was far from being as keen as a passerby to "dislike" me. I didn't realize that the swan was stained with blood, and I didn't realize that he, who had been saying "white bird" all the time, would not like it this time. The bird is red. "red".

When did society’s values ​​turn into contempt? But music is a perceptual art. The emotions shown by YOSHIKI are just looking at the shadows, looking at the flowers in the water, and the water is just a mirror. There was only him and his past in the mirror. He keeps talking and talking, is it so that he will not forget? Is it because I don’t dare to let myself leave that feeling, because once it recovers, does it mean forgetting? Does it cease to exist after being forgotten? Talk about it every year and every month, maybe what you want is just empathy.

Are you afraid or unable to bear such deep and overwhelming feelings, or are you numb and insensitive, and instead have a hatred for true love? Is it because I don’t believe there is such an emotion, so I have to push it into the category of kitsch and accuse it of being hypocritical, in order to use some easy-to-understand simplistic impression to explain characters beyond narrow cognition?

His love is only about "loss" and is about love. From beginning to end, I was just talking to myself. He is Urashima Taro of Ryugu Castle, the king has entered Lanke Mountain, and his innocent heart has not changed in the past days, and it has been thousands of years in the world. I have long made the conclusion that he, like Zhang Ailing, is an artist who spends his entire life working with one material. So he never exports any values, only seeks empathy. But nowadays, empathy is the rarest luxury.

What he "lost" was time and the people he cared about, but on another level, it was also about his former partners and his own youth, which still had infinite possibilities, boundless ambitions, and incomparable courage that were interrupted and had no chance to be realized. Dreams of mourning. After seeing the Extasy Summit in 1992, or the Visual Japan Summit in 2016, can you not be moved by the wantonness and chaos running around the venue, and the banner of "invincibility"? This is freedom.

In the era of melodrama and short videos, all concepts are consumer goods and fast food. The symbols may look similar, but the public can no longer tell whether there is sincerity, originality, and real feelings and emotions behind them. Most people don't actually have sophisticated enough cognitive abilities to care.

I just don’t understand. Just don't believe it.

If you don’t believe it, don’t believe it. For this classical concert, he said he hopes to create music that people will listen to a hundred or two hundred years from now. As Zhang Ailing said, as long as you write it down, someone will always understand it in the vast river of time.

In Lin Jiashu's life, there was Art of Life, Amethyst, Endless Rain, and Red, and there were several songs that should be passed down to the world. In the vast river of time, there will always be someone who understands.

There will be a big disaster in the future. My mouth will be dry and my lips will be dry. Everyone should like the joy today.