Nobody’s Fool ( January 2011 )
Yoshitomo Nara
Do people look to my childhood for sources of my imagery? Back then, the snow-covered fields of the north were about as far away as you could get from the rapid economic growth happening elsewhere. Both my parents worked and my brothers were much older, so the only one home to greet me when I got back from elementary school was a stray cat we’d taken in. Even so, this was the center of my world. In my lonely room, I would twist the radio dial to the American military base station and out blasted rock and roll music. One of history’s first man-made satellites revolved around me up in the night sky. There I was, in touch with the stars and radio waves.
It doesn’t take much imagination to envision how a lonely childhood in such surroundings might give rise to the sensibility in my work. In fact, I also used to believe in this connection. I would close my eyes and conjure childhood scenes, letting my imagination amplify them like the music coming from my speakers.
But now, past the age of fifty and more cool-headed, I’ve begun to wonder how big a role childhood plays in making us who we are as adults. Looking through reproductions of the countless works I’ve made between my late twenties and now, I get the feeling that childhood experiences were merely a catalyst. My art derives less from the self-centered instincts of childhood than from the day-to-day sensory experiences of an adult who has left this realm behind. And, ultimately, taking the big steps pales in importance to the daily need to keep on walking.
While I was in high school, before I had anything to do with art, I worked part-time in a rock café. There I became friends with a graduate student of mathematics who one day started telling me, in layman’s terms, about his major in topology. His explanation made the subject seem less like a branch of mathematics than some fascinating organic philosophy. My understanding is that topology offers you a way to discover the underlying sameness of countless, seemingly disparate, forms. Conversely, it explains why many people, when confronted with apparently identical things, will accept a fake as the genuine article. I later went on to study art, live in Germany, and travel around the world, and the broader perspective I’ve gained has shown me that topology has long been a subtext of my thinking. The more we add complexity, the more we obscure what is truly valuable. Perhaps the reason I began, in the mid-90s, trying to make paintings as simple as possible stems from that introduction to topology gained in my youth.
As a kid listening to U.S. armed-forces radio, I had no idea what the lyrics meant, but I loved the melody and rhythm of the music. In junior high school, my friends and I were already discussing rock and roll like credible music critics, and by the time I started high school, I was hanging out in rock coffee shops and going to live shows. We may have been a small group of social outcasts, but the older kids, who smoked cigarettes and drank, talked to us all night long about movies they’d seen or books they’d read. If the nighttime student quarter had been the school, I’m sure I would have been a straight-A student.
In the 80s, I left my hometown to attend art school, where I was anything but an honors student. There, a model student was one who brought a researcher’s focus to the work at hand. Your bookshelves were stacked with catalogues and reference materials. When you weren’t working away in your studio, you were meeting with like-minded classmates to discuss art past and present, including your own. You were hoping to set new trends in motion. Wholly lacking any grand ambition, I fell well short of this model, with most of my paintings done to satisfy class assignments. I was, however, filling every one of my notebooks, sketchbooks, and scraps of wrapping paper with crazy, graffiti-like drawings.
Looking back on my younger days—Where did where all that sparkling energy go? I used the money from part-time jobs to buy record albums instead of art supplies and catalogues. I went to movies and concerts, hung out with my girlfriend, did funky drawings on paper, and made midnight raids on friends whose boarding-room lights still happened to be on. I spent the passions of my student days outside the school studio. This is not to say I wasn’t envious of the kids who earned the teachers’ praise or who debuted their talents in early exhibitions. Maybe envy is the wrong word. I guess I had the feeling that we were living in separate worlds. Like puffs of cigarette smoke or the rock songs from my speaker, my adolescent energies all vanished in the sky.
Being outside the city and surrounded by rice fields, my art school had no art scene to speak of—I imagined the art world existing in some unknown dimension, like that of TV or the movies. At the time, art could only be discussed in a Western context, and, therefore, seemed unreal. But just as every country kid dreams of life in the big city, this shaky art-school student had visions of the dazzling, far-off realm of contemporary art. Along with this yearning was an equally strong belief that I didn’t deserve admittance to such a world. A typical provincial underachiever!
I did, however, love to draw every day and the scrawled sketches, never shown to anybody, started piling up. Like journal entries reflecting the events of each day, they sometimes intersected memories from the past. My little everyday world became a trigger for the imagination, and I learned to develop and capture the imagery that arose. I was, however, still a long way off from being able to translate those countless images from paper to canvas.
Visions come to us through daydreams and fantasies. Our emotional reaction towards these images makes them real. Listening to my record collection gave me a similar experience. Before the Internet, the precious little information that did exist was to be found in the two or three music magazines available. Most of my records were imported—no liner notes or lyric sheets in Japanese. No matter how much I liked the music, living in a non-English speaking world sadly meant limited access to the meaning of the lyrics. The music came from a land of societal, religious, and subcultural sensibilities apart from my own, where people moved their bodies to it in a different rhythm. But that didn’t stop me from loving it. I never got tired of poring over every inch of the record jackets on my 12-inch vinyl LPs. I took the sounds and verses into my body. Amidst today’s superabundance of information, choosing music is about how best to single out the right album. For me, it was about making the most use of scant information to sharpen my sensibilities, imagination, and conviction. It might be one verse, melody, guitar riff, rhythmic drum beat or bass line, or record jacket that would inspire me and conjure up fresh imagery. Then, with pencil in hand, I would draw these images on paper, one after the other. Beyond good or bad, the pictures had a will of their own, inhabiting the torn pages with freedom and friendliness.
By the time I graduated from university, my painting began to approach the independence of my drawing. As a means for me to represent a world that was mine and mine alone, the paintings may not have been as nimble as the drawings, but I did them without any preliminary sketching. Prizing feelings that arose as I worked, I just kept painting and over-painting until I gained a certain freedom and the sense, though vague at the time, that I had established a singular way of putting images onto canvas. Yet, I hadn’t reached the point where I could declare that I would paint for the rest of my life.
After receiving my undergraduate degree, I entered the graduate school of my university and got a part-time job teaching at an art yobiko—a prep school for students seeking entrance to an art college. As an instructor, training students how to look at and compose things artistically, meant that I also had to learn how to verbalize my thoughts and feelings. This significant growth experience not only allowed me to take stock of my life at the time, but also provided a refreshing opportunity to connect with teenage hearts and minds.
And idealism! Talking to groups of art students, I naturally found myself describing the ideals of an artist. A painful experience for me—I still had no sense of myself as an artist. The more the students showed their affection for me, the more I felt like a failed artist masquerading as a sensei (teacher). After completing my graduate studies, I kept working as a yobiko instructor. And in telling students about the path to becoming an artist, I began to realize that I was still a student myself, with many things yet to learn. I felt that I needed to become a true art student. I decided to study in Germany. The day I left the city where I had long lived, many of my students appeared on the platform to see me off.
Life as a student in Germany was a happy time. I originally intended to go to London, but for economic reasons chose a tuition-free, and, fortunately, academism-free German school. Personal approaches coexisted with conceptual ones, and students tried out a wide range of modes of expression. Technically speaking, we were all students, but each of us brought a creator’s spirit to the fore. The strong wills and opinions of the local students, though, were well in place before they became artists thanks to the German system of early education. As a reticent foreign student from a far-off land, I must have seemed like a mute child. I decided that I would try to make myself understood not through words, but through having people look at my pictures. When winter came and leaden clouds filled the skies, I found myself slipping back to the winters of my childhood. Forgoing attempts to speak in an unknown language, I redoubled my efforts to express myself through visions of my private world. Thinking rather than talking, then illustrating this thought process in drawings and, finally, realizing it in a painting. Instead of defeating you in an argument, I wanted to invite you inside me. Here I was, in a most unexpected place, rediscovering a value that I thought I had lost—I felt that I had finally gained the ability to learn and think, that I had become a student in the truest sense of the word.
But I still wasn’t your typical honors student. My paintings clearly didn’t look like contemporary art, and nobody would say my images fit in the context of European painting. They did, however, catch the gaze of dealers who, with their antennae out for young artists, saw my paintings as new objects that belonged less to the singular world of art and more to the realm of everyday life. Several were impressed by the freshness of my art, and before I knew it, I was invited to hold exhibitions in established galleries—a big step into a wider world.
The six years that I spent in Germany after completing my studies and before returning to Japan were golden days, both for me and my work. Every day and every night, I worked tirelessly to fix onto canvas all the visions that welled up in my head. My living space/studio was in a dreary, concrete former factory building on the outskirts of Cologne. It was the center of my world. Late at night, my surroundings were enveloped in darkness, but my studio was brightly lit. The songs of folk poets flowed out of my speakers. In that place, standing in front of the canvas sometimes felt like traveling on a solitary voyage in outer space—a lonely little spacecraft floating in the darkness of the void. My spaceship could go anywhere in this fantasy while I was painting, even to the edge of the universe.
Suddenly one day, I was flung outside—my spaceship was to be scrapped. My little vehicle turned back into an old concrete building, one that was slated for destruction because it was falling apart. Having lost the spaceship that had accompanied me on my lonely travels, and lacking the energy to look for a new studio, I immediately decided that I might as well go back to my homeland. It was painful and sad to leave the country where I had lived for twelve years and the handful of people I could call friends. But I had lost my ship. The only place I thought to land was my mother country, where long ago those teenagers had waved me goodbye and, in retrospect, whose letters to me while I was in Germany were a valuable source of fuel.
After my long space flight, I returned to Japan with the strange sense of having made a full orbit around the planet. The new studio was a little warehouse on the outskirts of Tokyo, in an area dotted with rice fields and small factories. When the wind blew, swirls of dust slipped in through the cracks, and water leaked down the walls in heavy rains. In my dilapidated warehouse, only one sheet of corrugated metal separated me from the summer heat and winter cold. Despite the funky environment, I was somehow able to keep in midnight contact with the cosmos—the beings I had drawn and painted in Germany began to mature. The emotional quality of the earlier work gave way to a new sense of composure. I worked at refining the former impulsiveness of the drawings and the monochromatic, almost reverent, backgrounds of the paintings. In my pursuit of fresh imagery, I switched from idle experimentation to a more workmanlike approach towards capturing what I saw beyond the canvas.
Children and animals—what simple motifs! Appearing on neat canvases or in ephemeral drawings, these figures are easy on the viewers’ eyes. Occasionally, they shake off my intentions and leap to the feet of their audience, never to return. Because my motifs are accessible, they are often only understood on a superficial level. Sometimes art that results from a long process of development receives only shallow general acceptance, and those who should be interpreting it fail to do so, either through a lack of knowledge or insufficient powers of expression. Take, for example, the music of a specific era. People who lived during this era will naturally appreciate the music that was then popular. Few of these listeners, however, will know, let alone value, the music produced by minor labels, by introspective musicians working under the radar, because it’s music that’s made in answer to an individual’s desire, not the desires of the times. In this way, people who say that “Nara loves rock,” or “Nara loves punk” should see my album collection. Of four thousand records there are probably fewer than fifty punk albums. I do have a lot of 60s and 70s rock and roll, but most of my music is from little labels that never saw commercial success—traditional roots music by black musicians and white musicians, and contemplative folk. The spirit of any era gives birth to trends and fashions as well as their opposite: countless introspective individual worlds. A simultaneous embrace of both has cultivated my sensibility and way of thinking. My artwork is merely the tip of the iceberg that is my self. But if you analyzed the DNA from this tip, you would probably discover a new way of looking at my art. My viewers become a true audience when they take what I’ve made and make it their own. That’s the moment the works gain their freedom, even from their maker.
After contemplative folk singers taught me about deep empathy, the punk rockers schooled me in explosive expression.
I was born on this star, and I’m still breathing. Since childhood, I’ve been a jumble of things learned and experienced and memories that can’t be forgotten. Their involuntary locomotion is my inspiration. I don’t express in words the contents of my work. I’ll only tell you my history. The countless stories living inside my work would become mere fabrications the moment I put them into words. Instead, I use my pencil to turn them into pictures. Standing before the dark abyss, here’s hoping my spaceship launches safely tonight….
同時也有3部Youtube影片,追蹤數超過1,750的網紅Layton Wu 雷頓狗,也在其Youtube影片中提到,My Mixtape is finally here! Thanks to all the musicians and engineers who helped make this mixtape possible, and to all of you for your love & suppor...
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summer in london lyrics 在 Layton Wu 雷頓狗 Youtube 的最佳貼文
My Mixtape is finally here! Thanks to all the musicians and engineers who helped make this mixtape possible, and to all of you for your love & support.
Special thanks to QQ for giving us a nice listening space, Haniboi for shooting & Joy for coloring this video.
我的混音卡帶將於1/10 正式於演出活動時開賣,感謝所有音樂人和工程師的幫助和大家的收聽。
特別感謝QQ提供地點秋波名曲珈琲給雷頓狗使用為卡帶發表的試聽會,李翰攝影與協助指導和Joy後製影片。
演出人員與狗:Joy,Peggy,QQ,Sonia,李翰,則堯,小薇,少軒,錐頭,倚宏,西川,岱岱,波波,捲捲
地點:秋波名曲珈琲
Tracklist:
Side A
1. Hello
2. Honey Ginger Tea feat. Jayhuana
3. Summertime
4. Midnight Dance
5. Summer Night Wind 夏夜晚風
Side B
1. 1988
2. We Just Feel the Night feat. hung-li & C3LL,
3. Help yourself to get in love
4. Good Friend Song feat. Natasha
5. 等春天 feat. Nicole
6. oO Baby BabyOo
Credit:
Side A
Musician:
Jayhuana - Key and synthesizer on (1, 2)
Composed and Lyrics:
Layton Wu (OP: Sunset Music Productions Co., Ltd | SP Sony Music Publishing (Pte) Ltd., Taiwan Branch) except 5)
伍佰 ( OP:Moonlight Music Co., Ltd. | SP:Rock Music Publishing Co., Ltd.) (5)
Side B
Musician:
Chen Hung-Li - bass on (2)
C3LL - Key and synthesizer on (1, 2)
Composed and Lyrics:
Natasha Tseng -Vocal and Composer (4)
Nicole Tsai - Vocal and Composer (5)
Layton Wu (OP: Sunset Music Productions Co., Ltd | SP Sony Music Publishing (Pte) Ltd., Taiwan Branch
Mixed by Jake Viator at Stones Throw Studios, Los Angeles (side A 2, 3, 4), Layton Wu 雷頓狗, Chicago
Mastered by Guy Davie at Electric Mastering, London (Side A 2, 3, 4 ), Layton Wu 雷頓狗, Chicago
All songs written, arranged, recored and produced by Layton Wu 雷頓狗 at Bedroom Dog Studio 臥室狗, Chicago
Artwork and Design by laishihchi 賴士琦
©Sunset Music Productions Co., Ltd.
Ⓟ Layton Wu 雷頓狗, Never Forget Today.
All rights reserved. Unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable laws.
![post-title](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hQtjgn9acbg/hqdefault.jpg)
summer in london lyrics 在 Layton Wu 雷頓狗 Youtube 的最佳貼文
Available on Spotify, Apple Music, KKBOX...........
—
Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/laytonwoohbill
Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/laytonwoohbill/
—
I finished this song last year and sent it to two post-production engineers, which was my first time working with people in the industry. I always enjoyed a lot of learning on instruments and recording all the tracks in my bedroom. Lastly, this is the first song I wrote when I moved to the US, Chicago, so I hope you and I can really enjoy this summer.
New York City had many romantic memories for me. I wrote this song after a 4 month break up with my ex-girlfriend. We met at the MOMA ps1 event in the summer, first kissed under the bridge and enjoyed some amazing days in New York City. Can I say, it's just like movies! It's so hard to get over it because this is the first girl in my life. I tried to live happier but when the night came it was still pretty hard, so I wrote songs to express that feeling at night.
我去年完成這首Summertime 但重新調整配器與專業音樂工程後製的系列的第二首. 我所有錄音工程都在家中完成 自己非常享受在錄製學習的過程 最後這首歌是在芝加哥第一首寫出來的歌 希望你跟我都能好好享受今年夏天.
紐約是個很浪漫和奇幻的城市,充滿無限可能,無比的繁忙,好像一直不停的發生事情。雷頓狗在紐約的發生的事情,非常浪漫,因此寫了這首歌來記錄這一份情感。
感謝
雷頓狗
When we fell in love it was last year Summertime : ) Midnight Dance down in the Brooklyn street.
Composed by Layton Wu 雷頓狗
Lyrics by Layton Wu 雷頓狗
OP:Sunset Music Productions Co., Ltd
SP:Sony Music Publishing (Pte) Ltd., Taiwan Branch
Produced and arranged by Layton Wu 雷頓狗
Mixed by Jake Viator at Stones Throw Studios, Los Angeles
Mastered by Guy Davie at Electric Mastering, London
Cover by laishihchi 賴士琦
Produced, recorded, arranged, and Vocal by Layton Wu 雷頓狗
Mixed and mastered by Layton Wu 雷頓狗 at Bedroom Dog Studio 臥室狗, Taipei
Special Thanks Sunset Music, Kuo Kuo, Joy, laishihchi, 秋伯樂, Mary and You.
![post-title](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hh_s26tDoWQ/hqdefault.jpg)
summer in london lyrics 在 Ray Shen Youtube 的精選貼文
Watch the full film on Thump's channel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNUTlK...
Buy the album on iTunes: http://bit.ly/ABAcoustic-iTunes
Buy the Special Edition Book: http://bit.ly/ABAcoustic-DVD
In the summer of 2013, Above & Beyond performed some of their best-loved songs acoustically as part of a 15-piece band, across four sold out shows at London's famous Porchester Hall. The response from fans was overwhelming and led to two sold-out nights at The Greek Theater in Los Angeles in October, described by Billboard Magazine as "one of the finest and more memorable shows in EDM history."
Above & Beyond partnered with THUMP on the production and filming of the London shows to create a concert film that captures the Porchester Hall performances and the story behind the acoustic project. The songs performed at Porchester Hall also form the basis of the "Above & Beyond Acoustic" studio album, which was recorded in the spring and summer of 2013 and features a 24-piece orchestra.
"Making Plans" is a brand new Above & Beyond track that was played for the first time acoustically at the Porchester Hall shows.
Lyrics:
Time held its breath
時間讓傷疤褪去
A motionless spell of rapture
一個彷彿靜止般的咒語
Across the room
穿過房間
A memory had been captured
那記錄著我們回憶的地方
And through the years
然而經過了多年
Though distance lay between us
距離還是疏離了我們
I carried your torch
我帶上了妳的光芒
To illuminate the darkness
來照亮我人生中的黑暗
And I still lose myself
但我還是迷失了自我
In that orange glowing moment
在那渺小輝煌的時刻
When your upturned face
當妳那望向我的臉龐
Seemed to answer all my questions
看似會回答所有我的疑問
But when I asked myself
但當我捫心自問時
As I do from time to time now
我這一路走過來啊
Where it all went wrong
究竟是哪裡做錯了呢
Is there really any point
現在去回想這些事物
In making plans?
又有何意義呢?
In making plans?
有何意義呢?
So I made my vows
所以我立下了誓言
In the last low hours of morning
在早晨的最後一刻
As I lay you down
當我放下妳時
I heard you whispering a warning
我聽見妳告誡我的耳語
But then we lost ourselves
但我們還是都迷失了自我
In that orange glowing moment
在那一切結束的那一刻
And your upturned face
當妳轉過頭
Seemed to answer all my questions
看似要回應我的疑惑
But when I asked myself
但當我捫心自問
As I do from time to time now
我一路走來所做過的一切
Where it all went wrong
究竟是哪裡搞砸了
Is there really any point
但現在去設法補救
In making plans?
又有何意義?
In making plans?
有任何意義嗎?
And I still lose myself
到頭來 我還是遺失了自我
I still lose myself
迷失了方向
Making plans
有何意義呢
歌詞翻譯by Ray
Follow Above & Beyond:
http://www.aboveandbeyond.nu
http://www.facebook.com/aboveandbeyond
http://www.twitter.com/aboveandbeyond
http://www.instagram.com/aboveandbeyond
http://www.soundcloud.com/aboveandbey...
http://plus.google.com/+aboveandbeyond
Follow Ray Shen:
https://www.facebook.com/djRayShen/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6Zf...
https://soundcloud.com/ray-shen-3
https://twitter.com/98Ray0429
![post-title](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/3gc7QEoYYxQ/hqdefault.jpg)
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