8/8
ヴィスビーは本当に良い街だよ。サンタ・マリア大聖堂から右方の階段を登ると、街を一望出来る丘上の道に出られる。よく晴れた日の夕方は、ここから水平線へと沈む落陽が見えるんだ。
とは言っても長居をし過ぎたと思う。お金もインクも、残り少ない。これから僕はストックホルムへ戻る。幼少期の僕が歩いた街だ。
ちょうど一年のこの日くらいだったかな。僕がバイトを辞めたのは。辞めたことは前にも書いたっけ。正確に言えば、辞めたんじゃ無い。逃げたんだよ。その日も些細な失敗から店主に怒鳴られ頭を垂れながら、僕はずっと別のことを考えていた。ロバートジョンソンも、ジミヘンドリクスも、ブライアンジョーンズも、ジムモリソンも、あの頃の良いミュージシャンは皆２７歳で死んだ。２７クラブなんて言うジンクスもある。有名な話だ。僕には人生の終わり際、これで良かったと言えるだけのものが内側に残っているんだろうか。２７とは言わない。残りの寿命はたったのこれだけですと限定された時、それならばいっそ、と全てを投げ出して音楽にだけ向き合うのだろうか。
このままそんな事は有り得ないと、今の生活を続けたまま、死ぬまで燻り、淀んだ、意味のない日常を送るんだろうか。
そんな事を考えているうち、気づけば荷物だってそのままに、外へ飛び出していた。欠けた月の綺麗な夜だった。自転車に乗って、東伏見の駅前を無心になって漕いだ。何処か遠くへ行ければ良かった。今になって思う。あの時僕はもう、この夏に全て終わらせると決めていたんだ。
一年だ。この一年が僕の一生だ。
人生は何事もなさぬにはあまりに長いが、何事かをなすにはあまりに短い。
君の言葉、山月記の引用だったんだろう。木漏れ日みたいな月明りの下で。
その時やっと思い出したんだよ、エルマ。
8/8
Visby really is a nice city. If you climb the stairs to the right of the Sankta Maria Cathedral, you'll come out onto a hilltop road where you can look out over the entire town. On clear evenings, you can watch the setting sun from here as it sinks into the ocean.
Having said that, I think I've far overstayed my time here. Little remains of my money and ink. From here, I'll go back to Stockholm. The city I walked through when I was just a small child.
It must have been just about one year ago today. When I quit my job. Maybe I already wrote about quitting before. To be precise, I didn't quit. I ran away. It was another day where the manager was yelling at me over some small mistake, and as I hung my head, I was thinking about other things entirely. Robert Johnson, Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison - all the good musicians in those days died at the age of 27. There's even a sort of jinx called the "27 Club". It's well-known. Would I, at the end of my life, have something left inside me that would let me feel like I could say I had done enough? I won't say 27. If the years remaining in my life were restricted down to just this, would I think, at that moment, "then instead, I'll--!", and throw away everything to turn myself solely towards music?
Will I tell myself that that's impossible for me as I am, and keep passing my time living as I do now - languishing, stagnant, every day meaningless, until I die?
While these thoughts were passing through my head, the next thing I noticed, I had leapt outside, leaving all of my things behind. The moon was waning; it was a beautiful night. I got on my bike and rode to Higashi-Fushimi Station with my mind completely clear. I wish I could've gone somewhere far away. When I think about it now... At that moment, I had already decided that I would end it all, during this summer.
One year. This one year is my entire life.
"Life is too long to do nothing, but too short to do anything worthwhile."
You were quoting "The Moon Over the Mountain"1, weren't you. There under the moonlight, falling like sun through the trees.
That day was when I finally remembered, Elma.
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1 山月記 (sangetsuki), "The Moon Over the Mountain", is a short story by author Nakajima Atsushi (1909 - 1942). It's frequently included in students' textbooks in Japan. The story tells of a Chinese civil servant who gave up his struggle to become a famous poet in order to work as an official and feed his family. One night, he snapped, and ran off into the woods, ultimately transforming into a tiger. He later recounts that this transformation is, he believes, a reflection of the arrogance with which he treated others and the sense of superiority with which he regarded himself. He sees himself as having sabotaged his own artistic career by being too cowardly to confront the possibility that he wasn't as good as he thought he was, and might need practice or tutelage. Instead, he blamed those around him for not seeing his genius. Ultimately, he recites some of his poetry to an old friend who happens upon him, so that some amount of his artistic legacy might live, then instructs that friend to tell his family that he's long dead, before he disappears into the trees, roaring at the moon.
This short story bears a large amount of thematic resemblance to the narrative of this album, and I would recommend reading it if you can find a copy.
I've quoted here from Asa Yoneda's translation, published by Kodansha. The full line is: "Now I see that I utterly wasted what little gift I had. I postured cynically, claiming that life was too long to do nothing but too short to do anything worthwhile, when in fact I was gripped by the craven anxiety that I might be revealed as an impostor, along with a shiftlessness that made me shy away from strenuous effort."