Oh Ryuichi
How gratefulness makes me sing
Life gives us many good things. Gratefulness is that moment when I realize what has been given to me. Maybe even only then I am fully taking in what this good thing has brought into my life. It’s kind of like a gift I get – only if I unwrap it, I really receive it. And that’s where joy awaits me.
This episode is dedicated to Japanese composer and musician Ryuichi Sakamoto and the many hauntingly beautiful tunes he created.
Chapters:
- 00:00:00 Intro
- 00:00:26 Oh Ryuichi – Solo
- 00:01:57 Gratefulness is realizing what I have received
- 00:07:54 Oh Ryuichi – Remix
- 00:09:35 Outro
Transcript
Oh Ryuichi
Oh Ryuichi
Your hopelessly beautiful
Piano melodies
Have broken my heart
So many times
In most beautiful ways
In most beautiful times
Places became special
For that moment of sound
Where so drunk by beauty
Your music me found
That crack in my heart
Open wide
Gets flooded by night
Yellow magic moonlight
Beauty of a heartbeat
Glaciers shed their tears
Your song is a fire
Whites broken
A rainbow of light
A song that carries me
All through the night
©️ Laughing Brook/Peter Müller 2024
Gratefulness is realizing what I have received
Gratefulness is sometimes seen as something that we are obliged to express, almost like a moral debt we owe to the world around us. Especially where it sustains us. And there is, of course, a truth in that.
At its core, though, gratitude is so much more. When I afford myself to tap into gratitude, I am changing the way I look at a certain aspect of my life, be it a person, an event, a gift. I begin to see it in how it relates to my life and how it positively affected and does affect who I am, how it as touched me. Rather than something just being a commodity, something that happens to be present and available in my life, I am realizing how the object of my gratitude deeply affected and afforded for me to be who I am, where I am, how I am.
The jewish philosopher Martin Buber has called this an „I-Thou” encounter. Something we encounter on a cumulative level is interchangeable – there are five apples in a bowl. But something we encounter on this I-Thou plane has a different quality – the apple I ate at the end of a long mountain hike in cold weather gave me the strength to finish my journey and I’m not sure whether I would have made it without it. Such an encounter changes who I am, it changes my awareness, it changes my life.
In gratefulness I become aware how something I’ve encountered has deeply changed my life. I realize the important role that something or someone has played in making me into who I am.
The following poem came spontaneously after a long day of hiking, camping out in a stunningly beautiful valley in the Cerra do Cipo national park in Brazil. The sun had already set when I arrived at my at my tent in the dark and there they were, entering my memory, all of a sudden, all those wonderful and tender moments, stretched over decades, where the hauntingly beautiful melodies of Japanese composer and musician Ryuichi Sakamoto have given me solace and joy. That’s when this poem burst out of me.
Ryuichi passed away of cancer on March 28th 2023. In his hauntingly beautiful last album named 12 it almost seems like he was trying to capture the essence of silence. His piano remains silent now for good, but his music will live on, in the many solo records and soundtracks he has done over the 50 years of his career, and certainly in me and the many people who he enchanted with his music.
Outro:
My name is Laughing Brook, I am a poet, dancer, mystic, nature coach and man whisperer.
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