Lascivious

3.14

I pray that people can smile just a little more.

We've come to fully understand just how powerless we are against Nature.
Things keep getting worse, but I think that the very worst is much farther away.
I've always said to force yourself to be positive, but I think that the way you feel can change things, even if it's the smallest tiniest shaft of light. So if there's someone near you, I want you to comfort each other.

I can only pray that there's something out of everything SuG has made up to now that helps you cheer up, that erases your anxiousness.

Writing that on the blog here, it may only reach our fans. But that's enough.

I've got no way of processing this, so I'm just going to be honest here. Reading the painful amount of messages you've all sent us is so, so painful. They make me so sad that I can't do anything else. I don't mean for you to stop sending them. I can't share half of it, but even if it's 'sorrow', the one thing I know for sure is that we're connected. We're definitely, definitely connected. We're connected, whether through the internet, or through something else.

So all of you who are feeling so alone you can't stand it, don't hesitate to send a message!

You always give us so much love, I can take something that like. I want to feel what you're feeling. I'll be okay, I'm a boy!

In the past, I said "I don't think I can change the world, but I believe that I can change each person's individual world. If you read my blog and you feel a little relieved, or it makes you smile...

...you don't need to give your thanks to me. I want you to give it to the person next to you.

Maybe it's just a little thing, but I believe that something will start to change.

What can those of us who are far away do, besides conserving electricity? We can live our lives, and do what we need to do.

So, I'm going to rack my brain so that when people are smiling again - I won't say when things are back to how they used to be, but when the environment has stabalized - I can create something that will make you all smile. I'm going to create. Because I realize that that's the only thing I can do

Unscrupulous is a scary word but I want to create something that will one day make you smile.

Comedians, and manga artists and animator have an amazing power. Personally, I hope that they will give smiles to the children who are in a whirpool of confusion, not understanding anything

If you just stand there wallowing in your sorrow, nothing will change. We can't taste the same pain and even if we could, it wouldn't save anyone. So I want to make people smile.

Because I'm an entertainer.

I want to give them courage.

I'm trying to find other things too. If the route is cleared, I'd like to participate in a charity auction.

All of you in the disaster areas, you're not alone.

I can't hug you, but I can send these words to you. This isn't the worst, I know it! This isn't the worst. Don't despair!

I'm sorry if these seem like simplifications, but if we could get things back to how they were, I know we'd be even happier than we were!

It won't be an easy road, but it's not a closed road, either.

Laugh! Remember how to make our funny faces and laugh! Remember the stupid things we've done and laugh! Your smile will surely bring happiness to the person next to you. I'll laugh too. Laugh!

This really brings home the fact that we can't take being alive for granted.

I want to live.
I want to live.
If we're alive, we can love, we can forgive, we can share, we can even fight and then make up. We'll get through this, and we'll meet again. Let's meet again, for sure! For sure! I hope that will be even just a little motivation to live.

I promise I'll make songs that will make you all much, much, much happier!

Someday. Someday.

So for the sake of that someday, please don't give up hope. Please stay positive, and live on. I'm begging you. Please give me a chance to make you happy. I know it sounds crazy, but please, first just get through one day at a time.

I never felt grateful for the passing days, but then I found SuG, and it made me want to live with all my heart. It gave me this precious place to belong.

I was always scared of the word 'LOVE', but now I like it.

Thank you so much. It's times like this that I most want to say thank you. So now it's my turn to give back. It's my turn to give back all the love you've given me. Even to people whose faces I've never seen, to people I might meet later. I'll definitely, definitely make you happy! I'll say it once more. It may sound crazy, but give me a chance.

That's the only hope that I can give. All of us have to give what hope we can.
I think that those who are going directly to help people, they're our most precious hope right now. Please, please let the damage lessen.

I hope that my message, however clumsy, will give home to even one more person! I want to see you! Let's see each other!For sure! Even if we can't see each other right now, as long as we're alive, we can see each other some day! We will see each other!

It will be okay! It will be okay! It will be okay! It will be okay! Don't be fooled by the word 'simplication'. It takes just as much energy, so let's say things that are positive and full of love! Remember the power of words! Words, once voiced, have power!

Let's see each other, for sure!

Note: this is kind of messed up because the scans are cut off a little bit.

Hamasaki Ayumi talks about 'Love Songs'.

"Rather than wanting people to sympathize or relate to the songs, I want the songs to become a mirror that reflects the listeners and thereby give the listener a chance to take a look at their own reflection..."
That was the thought in Ayu's mind as she worked on her new album 'Love songs'. What was it that she wanted to ask everyone through her songs about all different kinds of love?

The title 'Love songs' made me look forward to a really pink album, but now I realize that was stupid. (LOL)

I'd never made an album like that! I mean, this is me we're talking about. (LOL) Even the first song 'love song' isn't a ballad.

So first off, could you tell us why you wanted to make this album?

It all started with my 7 days show at Yoyogi. I thought that'd I'd be　totally exhausted after I made it through those seven days, so I wanted to give myself a little rest. But after it was all actually over, I thought "I can't stop here." "I need to take all the things I learned in those seven days and keep on moving forward." To put it succinctly, I felt enlightened.

Enlightened?

My idea of the kind of singer I needed to be, that I wanted to be, suddenly became very clear and simple. I realized once again that I want to be a vocalist. That I didn't want to use complicated gimmicks, I wanted to get things across to people in a simple way, by expressing what I want through my songs. I realized that that is how I should be.

I see. And this new album is your first after realizing that.

Up until now, I always had an ulterior motive in choosing my words, some sort of darker side or reason behind them. I didn't want that, I just wanted to make an album that was a collection of songs that were simply about different kinds of love. That's when I thought of the title of 'Love songs'.

I do think that there are all kinds of love on the album. What does 'love' mean to you?

I think it's the greatest theme of our lives. The most important thing. Life has no meaning without love, and we're living because of love, and it's the biggest, most beautiful, most difficult thing in the world. Choosing to write about love like that was very difficult emotionally, as well. I felt like I was climbing this huge mountain. (LOL)

No wonder. Could you give us your definition of a love song?

It's all summed up by the album title 'Love songs', but within that, when I tried to write what I think of as a love song, what I wrote was 'Love song'. That's where I am right now. 'Love Song' isn't saying 'I fell in love' or 'I'm singing about all these romances'. -------- or fun, or sweet, or gentle or passionate. I think that's 'romance'. We don't know what love looks like, or if it's warm, or cold - it might be hot enough to burn, or ice cold. It's not something tangible that you can reach out and touch. I even think that whether love is good or bad depends on the person. Some people deny love. So I wanted to sing about all of those different kinds of love. That's where----

The last song is a recording of 'Seven Days War' from the final day of your 7 days show. What was the meaning behind that?

If 'LOVE = LIVE' then that moment there contains my very core. I was just sobbing so I couldn't sing very well, but I felt like all of my emotions, everything I feel about why I want to be a singer, and everything I take pride in as a singer, it was all there on that day, in that song, and that's why I immediately decided to include it on the album.

The songs on this album talk about all kinds of love, but I wondered if 'NOVEMBER' isn't actually---

I'm not telling. (LOL) I know that's the most difficult thing, but that's a mystery I'm going let you all enjoy solving.

I got this wild idea 'Is this actually about Ayu? Has she met the One?'

Who knows?

And maybe his birthday is in November?

Hahaha! That's the last reason I'd use that title!

Too bad! I thought we'd get to chat about your lovelife, but maybe next time!

I liked those 50 questions I did last time. I'd like to do that again. It would also be easier to answer questions about my love life that way.

Like, 'Are you in love right now?

--------

"I think it was something that was really necessary for me to become an adult, to move forward to the next thing."

Since her debut, Utada Hikaru has put out numerous hits, and always been in the spotlight, but in August, she announced on her official homepage: 'Starting in 2011, I'm going to stop my activities for a while.'


"I debuted when I was 15, and I started doing (music) without really knowing anything. When I got to a turning point, I was able to do what I said I wanted to do, but I've come all this way never knowing where it was all taking me, whether I was headed towards a mountain, or a cliff. I've always said "Being random is a family trait!", but I feel like that came out in a negative way, you know? I got to the point where I realized, "Oh man, if I kept on this way I'd fall of this cliff', and for the first time, I realized the danger of that."

Did I get here by my own, as a person? I've had a lot of experiences as an artist, but maybe I've only had really narrow experiences. This fragmenting of Utada Hikaru's emotions could be seen in the text she wrote in TEN, the official book she released in Spring of 2009 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of her debut. She took a look at the various events in her past, and the point she was at currently, and wrote about emotions that only she could understand.

"I think that writing that was a catalyst in a way. In terms of taking a look at myself, or facing myself, leaving a record like that which couldn't be erased meant that I had to take responsibility for what I was saying, so I think that I gained something by facing up to that responsibility. When I look at what I write now, from an outsider's perspective, part of me feels like, "Oh, that was kind of selfish", but by letting out that confusion, instead of holding it inside, I was able to re-evaluate it and digest it. Of course, if I read it ten years from now, I may be really embarrassed by what I said.(laugh) But I think it was something that was really necessary for me to become an adult, to move forward to the next thing. Because I was able to get out all these things that I had kept inside and tried to force down, these emotions that I had tried not to show my parents and the people around me.So I feel like I can finally be glad that I was able to get it all out. I think it will help me take the next step."

"Utada Hikaru SINGLE COLLECTION VOL.2", the best album to be released before her hiatus will contain not only the singles she released in the past 6 years, but also 5 new songs in which she had put all the gratitude she feels to everyone who have supported Utada Hikaru this whole time.

"I wanted to put some new songs on it. I wanted to write songs, and I had things I wanted to say. This is the first time I had something I wanted to say. Up until now, in interviews when they'd asked me to give a message to everyone, I was like, "Sorry, I guess they can just take it from my songs.", I didn't really know, myself. But this time I thought about some really important things. I really had something to say."

In the songs she wrote in the past, she could see herself of those 6 years. The songs told her both good things and not so good things. She's living in the present. She's trying to walk on her own two feet into the future. So she wanted to put her current self into [the new songs] and show it to everyone.

" 'Can Wait 'Til Christmas' is a little different, but the other 4 songs are all about the same thing. It's the first time I've had a cohesive theme like that, and since I said want I wanted through 4 songs, so it has the most coherent storyline of anything I've done. They're a reconciliation with myself, and a reconciliation with my past, like, they share a theme of "What does it mean to love?" and "What is love?", and facing yourself and facing your fears.

"Why? Because I wanted to sing. I mean, I am singer."

'Arashi no Megami' (The Goddess of Storms) is a song where Utada Hikaru was able to express the emotions she could never really tell her mother in the word 'Thank you'.

"When I realized how necessary it was to face myself, I thought, well that must start with knowing yourself. And knowing your parents...I realized that for me, accepting myself also meant accepting my mother. I was born as her daughter, so I thought that was the first thing I needed to get past."

'Show Me Love (Not a Dream)', with it's strong band sound and powerful vocals was called 'PURPLE' when she created the demo two years ago.

"I want to talk about how the contradictions inside me gradually started to wear on my heart, and steal my energy. When the green light for 'GO' and the red light for 'STOP' overlap, those feelings are purple. I felt like those of us who live in this modern society are all confused. Like, it's not a good thing to want to cry but not be able to, not know how to cry. Crying is just as important as eating or going to the bathroom, but we can't do it because we're thinking with our heads too much."

'Goodbye Happiness' is a light dance song, written because, much like 'traveling', she wanted a cheerful song.

"I wanted to do something kind of like a 90s dance song. The arrangement and the melody are pretty classic, but I didn't want it to be too corny. It's pretty ubiquitous, but I hope that some of my own personality comes out in it too, then I'll have succeeded in what I was trying to do."

'Hymne à l'amour　~Ai no Anthem~', which was used in the Pepsi Next Commercial she appeared in, is a cover of French chanson singer Edith Piaf's 'Hymne a l'amour'. A second of the lyrics are Utada Hikaru's own translation.

"You now the woman in that famous painting from the French Revolution (Delacroix's 'Liberty Leading the People')? The lyrics of the original song made me think of a woman with a flag raised, leading the citizens. Piaf wrote this song during a period of extreme emotion, just after her true love had been killed in an accident. I've never experienced anything like that, but I knew I couldn't translate the lyrics if I didn't try to understand what she was feeling then. It made me realize that trying to understand other people results in understand yourself, so it was a really good experience."

The last song on DISC 2 is Utada Hikaru's first Christmas Song, 'Can't Wait 'Til Christmas'

"I wanted to write a cute song. But not like, a really cutesy song. I think girls try to put up a strong front a lot - I know I do. Like, we can't express our own cuteness, we hide the girly parts of ourselves and say things like "I'm not jealous!" or "I don't need any promises from you!" But I think that - and I don't just mean when it comes to relationships - hiding parts of yourself, hiding or negating the cute or really passionate parts of yourself is really bad for you. I never wrote much about that [part of myself] in my lyrics before, but I felt like I could write it now."

In December, she will have a concert at the Yokohama Arena, which will be her first Japanese concert in 4 years.

"I really wanted to do a tour, but none of the venues had days free, so it ended up being just the Yokohama Arena. But I wanted to have a concert, even just for two days. Why? Because I wanted to sing. I mean, I am singer."

This the most honest interview I've seen with them in a while. What I mean is, they're always honest in interviews - always being clear about their feelings on things, even if they aren't positive, but I've never seen an interview where they talk so much about their love lives, both past and present...

( Read more... )

Adam Lambert has come to Japan to mark his Japanese debut. Adam has a god like vocal range, and even got the full support of American Idol's sharp tongued judge, Simon Cowell. Even before his debut, he's been the subject of a lot of talk, after coming out as gay, etc. What is he really like


He loves Japanese fashion! He's transfixed by the boys in Harajuku!

He won runner up on American Idol. After that, he came out as gay. His debut album is a huge hit! Adam is　a true child of his generation! We go after his true self!

I went to Harajuku, and the boys there were so pretty. (LOL) The girls were really cute too, with their false lashes and wigs. I got the sense that they were enjoying concept based fashion, and I could really relate to how artistic it all was. I have fun with fashion myself, mixing high-end brands and inexpensive brands. That's what I did with my outfit I'm wearing today. I'm wearing a suit with a t-shirt, just the kind of high-low mix that Vivi readers do! This tear drop shaped rhinestone [under my eye], I bought in Singapore when I was looking for rhinestones for my dancers.

Adam's icons are Madonna, Michael Jackson, and...

Adam's style is based on 70s glam-rock.

"That's right. I get a lot of my inspiration from 70's glam-rock, and arrange it in my own style. I'm really influenced visually by David Bowie. I'm influenced both visually and musical by Michael Jackson and madonna. They've been artists I've watched and looked up to since I was little. As far as current artists go, I love Lady Gaga and Beyonce.

His performances have people calling him the second coming of Elvis Presley, and people are also paying attention to his make up and fashion. Does he had an awareness of himself as an icon?

"I'm nowhere near an icon. (LOL) I think it takes time to get to that level. I mean, I'm still young. But I think that that kind of youth and immaturity is also connected to creativity. I try to trust my instincts. But when it comes to business, I think that the grown up side of myself starts looking at things objectively. I use my young side and my adult side every day. I think I've got a good balance going. I've gotten so many more opportunities to sing different places, and I feel like I'm into new territory now, and I need to look at things from all different view points."

Sometimes, Adam takes a cool and objective look at himself. Perhaps that side of him is connected to his sudden coming out.
What does he think of shy Japanese?

"I think that sometimes you need to be upfront about what you're thinking. I think that if you tell someone respectfully, they will respect you and listen to what you're saying. I don't like beating around the bush. I think that everyone should believe in themselves and do what they want. Not do what I do. You're the only one who can make your life better. And I think it best to be positive. My artistic vision comes from a positive place. I do get stressed sometimes because I can be hard on myself, but I try to find a balance. The thing is to think positively. The key words are: Love, Joy and Sex! Be confident in yourself!

And buy my album. (LOL) Then I can come to Japan again. I love Japanese fashion, and next time I come I want to do some more shopping and sight seeing! And of course I want to play a lot of shows too!"

Let's enjoy fashion and work like Adam, and head towards our dreams!

( Read more... )

Fake cut to Afterword from Vol 1.


Fake cut to Afterword from Vol 2.

SURVIVE

music/lyrics by MIYAVI



Hello the world.

I'm gonna bite you I'll bite u Don't look away
Who the fxxk saying that I don't got fangs anymore?
If it's for the sake of what I need to protect I can be back at ZERO
Over and over Like a wolf I'll keep on crawling up

I'm still starvin'
I'm the Wolf survivin' with Love

Take a look Look around u Notice anything?
It don't pay to be honest to a fault
All your pride, it's ain't got NO meaning what so ever
That shit Throw it away Just throw it in the gutter
Can you hear me? I'm screamin' out from Tokyo
Covered with wounds, I'm singing Peace and Love ROCK ON
Love and lust and emotion, and this time, all of that, everything
Yeah, Imma gonna Break 'em all 　I'll slash through it all

This is The way a Wolf survives with Love.





t/n: 1)italicized parts are originally in English
2) There's a Japanese proverb 'Shojikimono ga baka wo miru', which is the equivalent of 'Honesty doesn't pay'. What Miyavi says here is basically just a roughed up version of that.