Love, Death, and Escapes

Hello, kids, and welcome to September! Does anyone else feel like time is speeding up these days? Could this be a side-effect of social isolation, or some kind of mysterious change in the fabric of the space-time continuum? If the Buck-Tick members know, they aren't telling us... probably because there's so much going on in Buck-Tickistan, and plus, the band members are hard at work, rehearsing for a tour that will never hit the stage, and Instagramming all the while (at least in the case of Imai).

Buck-Tick's latest single, Moonlight Escape, was released last Wednesday, and we appreciate your patience in waiting for us to deliver the translations to you. Translations, kanji and romaji for both "Moonlight Escape" and the b-side "Kogoeru" are now up over on This is NOT Greatest Site, so go ahead and check them out, and feel free to leave your comments on this post. True to their word, Buck-Tick have delivered us a pair of songs that are simple and stripped-down, both musically and lyrically - yet in typical Buck-Tick fashion, the simplicity is deceptive - the music and lyrics to both songs are precisely layered like shadows in moonlight, building off the band's previous work and complementing one another like two chapters in the same story.

For those of you who wondered why the single cover features Mr. Sakurai swishing a goth cloak around... well, it's because in the lyrics, he's singing about swishing a goth cloak around! As he explained to Fish Tank last month, in "Moonlight Escape," Sakurai sings from the perspective of a boy eagerly awaiting the night, when he can escape into his dreamworld, fly and feel the love that has been missing from his waking life. Though Sakurai stated that he intended this song as encouragement for the children of today who are struggling with abusive circumstances, it's obvious that Sakurai's narrative here comes out of his own experiences as an abused child - he's often stated that he feels more comfortable at night, in the moonlight, than in the daytime and sunlight, and it's easy to imagine that he might have felt this way since childhood - free from abuse with his family asleep, free in the dark to feel his own feelings, and able to see, in the moon and the starry sky, a vast universe full of infinite possibility. In the first verse, the goth cloak is a sort of security blanket, wrapping him up to protect him, but in the second verse, it becomes a symbol of his self-expression and power over his own life - with a swish of his cloak, he's gone, off to the moon. Poof! Abracadabra! It's an inspiring reminder of how even for the saddest, most neglected children, adulthood is waiting, with the promise of the chance to stand up on the stage of your own life, put on whatever snazzy costume you like, and sing your own song.

In his comments about these lyrics, Sakurai remarked that he wanted to express "escapism," which is often treated like a bad thing, in a positive light. If your reality is painful and you can't change it, having an outlet for emotional escape may save your life. He's dealt with this theme before, most notably in "Kagerou" - "If all you see is a nightmare/Is it bad to shut your eyes?" But in both "Kagerou" and "Moonlight Escape," there's something more than a mere endorsement of the power of escapist fantasy - there's the question of whether the so-called "real" world is really so real after all. This "life is but a dream" idea has always been one of the central themes of Buck-Tick's work. Who are we, before we're born, and after we die? In "Brain Whisper Head Hate is Noise" and "Bolero," Imai says that before we're born, we're stars. In "Kick" and "Mienai Mono," Sakurai says that the truth is waiting for us in the darkness, but we're not allowed to know what it is until we cross back over. What is this experience called "life," really? In songs like "Die" and "Solaris," Sakurai suggests that maybe life itself is also a dream, and to die is to awaken. 

Modern secular society is so attached to the idea of the external, material world that the power, validity, and importance of the internal experience of being a conscious soul have been ignored and treated as irrelevant - but Eastern spiritual traditions such as Buddhism teach that the internal experience of consciousness is everything, that everything in the universe is connected to everything else, and within each conscious soul lies a miniature reflection of the totality of the whole - as above, so below, as within, so without - an idea intriguingly similar to the holographic principle being discussed in physics today. Thousands of years before quantum mechanics, mystical, occult, and spiritual traditions have worked with the idea that thoughts and emotions can affect external reality - then along came the quantum physicists, wondering why it is that the presence of an observer always alters the outcome of an experiment. What's the mechanism behind the power of prayer? Why do you know who's calling before you pick up the phone? Consciousness is energy.

Sakurai's work is full of dreams within dreams, and "Moonlight Escape" is no exception. He's also often worked, both explicitly and obliquely, with the idea that so-called "real life" is the nightmare, hence the need for escape into a deeper dream level to reconnect with love and beauty. On a surface level, "Moonlight Escape" is another exploration of this theme - but there's something more there, as well - a sense of empowerment, which builds in the music with the ascending major scale leading into the chorus, and Sakurai's triumphant belt of, "And I  fly now." Once, Sakurai was that sad child, escaping into his dreams to protect him from the trauma of real life. Now, Sakurai is an internationally famous rock-n-roll legend at the peak of his creative prowess. What an inspirational role model he's become! And how did he get there? Where does the creativity come from? From the dreams, of course! What makes Sakurai's lyrics and performances so powerful is that he has used his art to externalize his inner world, offering his dreams and emotional experiences as a gift to his audiences. Abracadabra is a magic word of manifestation, and "Moonlight Escape" reflects this theme by implicitly showing how dreams can create reality.

In Sakurai's case, this ended up being literally true - the difficult emotional experiences of his childhood, and the dreams he turned to to escape them, became the power source for his lyrics and performance, and hence his successful career. However, there's a more metaphysical aspect to this idea as well. In "Adult Children," one of Sakurai's earlier songs dealing explicitly with his abusive childhood, the crux of the song is the line "you should know that you are free." At the end, Sakurai realizes he is free to create his own reality, and chooses to become a singer. But the point of the song isn't about the physical action of becoming a singer - it's the epiphany that in his soul, he is free. 

Something similar happens in "Moonlight Escape." In the verses, with a small handful of very gentle words, Sakurai deftly expresses the emotional struggle of the child narrator - "God, I'm praying, please forgive me," - "Papa, Mama, please I hope you won't forget about me." The boy wonders if somehow his bad situation is his own fault. Is he being punished by God? Does he matter to his parents at all? Do they love him? Do they not love him, because he's bad? A lack of love in childhood scars people for life because they grow up believing they're not worthy of love. If you believe you're not worthy of love, it's easy to spend your whole life re-enacting the abusive patterns of your past, and just as easy to flee from or sabotage anyone who comes along offering you true, pure, unconditional love. If you believe you're not worthy of love, anyone who claims to really truly love you must either be lying and soon to betray you, or there must be something deeply wrong with them, or they just haven't learned yet how unlovable you are... but they will sooner or later, and then it will all be over, so you might as well just end it now and spare everyone the heartache.

The only way out of this trap is to learn to love yourself - no easy feat in a world that invests so much energy into making people feel dissatisfied and inadequate, so they make easier targets for capitalist advertising and authoritarian control by governments and corporations. Self-love gets branded as narcissism and treated like a dirty word - because it's the key to freedom. Once you love yourself, you realize that your abusive parents, or whoever else, withheld their love from you not because you were unlovable, but because the parents themselves were struggling with their own lack of self-love. Once you love yourself, you refuse to put up with abusive treatment from others any longer. Once you love yourself, you can accept the genuine love that others offer you unconditionally. You are finally free in your soul, to be the person who you truly are, no longer bound by the pain of the past or narratives of others.

"And I fly now," sings Sakurai at the start of the chorus, declaring his freedom, then launches into a soaring melody, singing of his escape to a world where everything is overflowing love, and sadness has ceased to exist. The people who scoff at this kind of fantasy are usually the people who need it most - people who've been rejected or wounded so much in their lives that they're scared to even try to imagine a world of radical acceptance, free from pain. If dreams are the source of inspiration from which we create our realities, then if you can't dream of it, how can you achieve it? Just by daring to imagine his world of love, the boy in "Moonlight Escape" has already gotten closer to actually being there.

The PV does an excellent job of illustrating the themes of the song in succinctly beautiful symbolism. Sakurai, sitting in the defensive posture of a frightened child, in a moonlit white room next to a vase of baby's breath flowers (symbolizing both childhood innocence and faithful, everlasting love), watches his own "mental movie" projected by an old-fashioned reel-to-reel. Meanwhile, the band members are playing in their own moonlit rooms, in front of stairways and lighted windows, as if to show us that there's always a way up, a way out. As the moon rises, it begins to come out from behind its eclipse, and suddenly the darkness is replaced with light. Sakurai swishes his cloak, does some abracadabra magic hands, shoots a circle of light at the camera, and suddenly the band members are in outer space, playing live on the moon! 

In the second verse, Sakurai's posture has shifted - now he's intrigued, leaning forward to watch the films of the band members performing, both in their separate rooms, and together on the moon, and then the film of himself, doing the abracadabra goth cloak magic. At the beginning of the instrumental break, the magic circle of light reappears and homes in on the moon. The black of the eclipse is entirely replaced with blinding white light, and we see a momentary flash of blue sky. Sakurai closes his eyes, puts his hands to his temples, and swirls into ectoplasmic white mist, as if he's astrally projecting his consciousness out of his body. The moon appears on the film screen, next to a pair of speakers, one black, one white, like the yin-yang - an acknowledgement that for there to be light, there must always be darkness as well. Sakurai smiles conspiratorially at the camera, and then pop! He's standing center stage on the moon, performing with the rest of the band! And the misty blue (no pun intended) of the earth in the background matches the color of Imai's hair and jacket exactly. So if you wondered why Imai dyed his hair blue, well, this is why (does Imai really need a reason to dye his hair blue?)

Buck-Tick have always been masters of expressing deep, multi-layered concepts with simple, low-budget music videos, but they've outdone themselves with "Moonlight Escape." Every single cut is timed perfectly with the music and lyrics. Not a single second or image is wasted. And the outer space theme is lyrically beautiful - why waste time being sad when there's a whole universe out there to explore? Buck-Tick should know. After all, they came from outer space. If you doubted us before, this PV ought to be 100% rock-solid proof.

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Like "Moonlight Escape," "Kogoeru" is heavy on the moon imagery, and also deals obliquely with themes of child abuse, but "Kogoeru" is as despondent as "Moonlight Escape" is uplifting. Buck-Tick love exploring two sides of the same theme - day and night, black and white, sleep and waking, love and death - and as a pair, these two songs fit into that pattern. "Moonlight Escape" is the love song, and "Kogoeru," with its suicidal theme, is the death song. In "Moonlight Escape," Sakurai challenges the idea that escapist fantasy is weakness, declaring that in fact, it can be a source of love and strength. In "Kogoeru," Sakurai challenges the idea that suicide, as an escape from life, is wrong. Resurrecting the moon-as-blade imagery he used in "Pain Drop" and "Tsuki" on I Am Mortal, he faces his sense of disconnection from himself and from life, staring at himself reflected in a dark window, wondering who he is, imagining that the moon is weeping with him, imagining that the moon is a knife to slit his wrists.

Overcoming childhood trauma and maintaining self love is monumentally difficult. Sakurai has clearly come a long, long way in processing and overcoming the wounds of his past, but scars that deep never heal entirely. In the interviews he gave at the end of 2019, he spoke about his complex feelings about the fact that at age 53, he was the same age as the age his abusive father was when his father died. 

"The same blood runs in my veins," he told Kanemitsu Hirofumi in PHY vol. 15. "I've always felt both... pity and hatred. We have the same blood type, and the same birthday, a 1/365 chance! Do things like that even happen? I look just like him, too. And now, I'm the same age... I feel like he's pulling at me. Like, 'come to papa'... that was a joke, but, you know (laughs). My older brother said, 'just hang on till you turn 54' ...there I go again (sighs)." [Sakurai tries to change the subject, and fails.] "Part of it's my age, and part of it's my personality... I understand that I still can't get out of this. I tried to be prepared for it, but I realized that I really can't escape it. I've talked about this again and again, but my father's behavior was what we'd now call domestic violence. My father beat my mother as a daily routine. Those memories have stayed with me, of always being afraid... I always talk about it, though... When I was in the hospital, I realized I need to suck it up and keep living even through my exhaustion, but then I wonder how long I can go on. I'm able to do what I love, and I'm able to make music and somehow pump myself up, but when I got sick, it was like my father was calling me... that's why I can't wait to turn 54. But, I'm so lucky to be blessed to be able to do what I love, and lately I feel more strongly that I'm really doing it, so I guess you could say that I'm happy."

Sakurai stated that with the lyrics to "Kogoeru," he wanted to allow himself the freedom to be as cutting and sharp as he felt was honest, without censoring himself at all. Lyrics like this may be difficult for some of his fans to accept, but for what it's worth, we're pretty sure he's not actually suicidal - it's more like he's using these lyrics to face and explore a passing suicidal feeling he won't act on. Those of you readers who have struggled with depression yourselves likely have sympathy for the nature of the kind of black mood that can take hold and make you feel like everything is worthless, futile suffering and nothing will ever be better or feel good ever again. It's not remotely the objective truth, and some hidden part of you knows that the mood will pass, but when you're in a mood like that, you feel trapped there. After more than two years of struggling with our own serious physical illness, we also feel a lot of empathy for Sakurai's descriptions of how difficult it can be to keep your chin up emotionally when you're physically ill and exhausted. When you're both ill and depressed, death starts to look like a very attractive option... not even because you want to die, exactly, but because, as Sakurai sings in this song, it would be so nice to be able to rest.

To illustrate his desire for sweet repose, Sakurai repeats the phrases "nenne shi na" and "nen nen okorori yo" from "Edo Lullaby," probably the most famous traditional Japanese lullaby (Dir en grey fans already know this one from the lyrics to "[KR] Cube"), thereby arriving in a simple, unaffected way at the real theme of the song - the fact that the lingering scars of his childhood trauma are still the source of his pain. There's so much in that one line, "please won't you sing me a lullaby, for your sweet baby." In fact, the line we translated as "for your sweet baby" literally means, "tell me I'm a good boy." We opted not to use this translation because it reminds us too much of the comic below for us to feel that it would be serious enough in tone for this song...

...however. This line is pretty much the heart of the song. With his exquisitely gentle vocal delivery, Sakurai makes you feel just how much he's been wishing all his life that he had been given that validation by his parents, that he was good and worthy of love. He still feels it so keenly, sometimes it makes him want to die. Sometimes he wonders if dying is the only way to return to the unconditional love that in life, we can so often only grasp at.

There are certain elements of these lyrics that can't be translated into English. One is the fact that "komoriuta" [子守唄], the Japanese word for "lullaby," literally means "child-protection song" - [子] = "ko," child, [守] = "mamoru," to protect, [唄] "uta" = song. Sakurai's request for a lullaby means a lot more when you see the word spelled with these kanji. Another interesting thing is that "nen nen," the archaic Japanese for "sleep, sleep," sounds like the "nen" [念], meaning "emotional energy" or "feelings," often with the implication of strong, tangible feelings, the kind that can affect material reality - like Sakurai's unresolved feelings, and the emotional energy he wishes he could have received from his parents.

Though this is overall a very dark, sad, heavy song, there's still an element of salvation at the end. The major-key melody of the last lines injects a sense of hope despite everything, especially as it inverts from descending to ascending, with more and more voices joining in the chorus of backing vocals, as if the audience has joined in singing with Sakurai in order to cheer him up, saying, "you're not alone, we will sing with you." Sakurai's more than outdone himself on both lead and backing vocals with both songs on this single, and the mixing of the backing vocals is superb - they're more present than on many previous Buck-Tick records, drawing strong attention to the presence of harmony and multiple voices, while still putting the lead vocals front and center. The major-key chords of the outro draw a strong contrast to the moody minor-key synth of the intro, making us feel encouraged that no matter how bad things feel, the sun really will rise again. Healing is possible.

"Kogoeru" also comes back to the theme of the "real world dream," and the theme of sin and forgiveness, which were present not only in "Moonlight Escape" but were also big themes in "Datenshi" - which probably makes sense, because the band wrote all these songs in summer of 2019, and stated that originally, they had planned to release "Moonlight Escape" as the earlier single instead of "Datenshi," but changed their minds at the last minute. The lines in "Datenshi," "Forgive me forgive me / My flesh and my flesh are hurting now" were almost certainly inspired by Sakurai's 2018 illness, just as "Night of the Beasts" was inspired by his comeback from the same illness, and it certainly seems that "Kogoeru" is also related to the illness theme, albeit in a more oblique way. Funny, how illness was already a theme on Abracadabra long before the coronavirus was even a thing. 

And on that note... we know y'all are feeling depressed and isolated, and possibly drinking too much, but please do take care of your health, and that includes your mental health. If you need emotional support, don't be afraid to ask for it. And if you can offer emotional support to someone else, please do it. Don't assume anyone is okay. The turbulent times are taking a toll on everyone and the best possible thing we can do is be there for each other emotionally. But also, consider - this life may be a dream, or maybe an RPG game, who knows? If you approach things from that angle, everything seems more fun. Don't get so hung up on the idea of "real reality" that you deny yourself the fun of escaping. Outer space is a great place.

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That's all for now, but before we sign off, we'd like to extend our thanks to everyone who was so kind as to support us on Ko-fi. It really means a lot to us! If you have the means and feel so moved, please continue to support us. It might not seem like much, but to us, right now, it's a lot.

The Year the Earth Stood Still

Hey, folks! Doesn't time seem to be flying by these days? We notice that our last post was on February 1st... we're so sorry for not keeping up better with the blogging, but thank all of you who continue to support us, on Ko-Fi and via email. While we are much closer to being fully recovered than we were, we're still far below our normal energy levels, and unfortunately, writing has been a little too much for us to handle. 

And now, just as we're recovering, it's the rest of the world who's sick. We'll get to the Buck-Tick updates in a minute. For now, we'd like to do something else, and share some more personal thoughts on the global pandemic, regarding humanity, and humanity's relationship with Planet Earth. This may be unusual for us, but due to our own illness we've been thinking a great deal about these issues since long before the pandemic started, and watching the panic drifting through the air like a plague in itself, we feel compelled to share. 

We, Cayce, have been sick for a year and eight months now. For much of that time, we were more or less incapacitated. Up till we got sick, we were always the type to be constantly on the move, working on lots of projects at once, burning the candle at both ends, and feeling perpetually annoyed with ourselves for not managing to accomplish as much in a given time as we'd hoped. We were always pushing ourselves to be more productive, holding ourselves to higher and higher standards, and beating ourselves up for being lazy when we were lazy. To be forced off our work and project schedule by a mere illness... it was unacceptable! Nothing was going to get done on time! Surely, our life was going to fall apart!

In fact, our life did fall apart, in a way. The body our non-corporeal essence uses as its avatar in this dimension fell apart pretty spectacularly. We were unable to work, and we had to put most of our precious projects on hold. We struggled through a lot of physical pain, anxiety, and uncertainty. But at the same time... things were totally okay. Friends and family gave us love and support when we needed it the most. We found sources of healing in surprising places. In the midst of our suffering, we experienced a great deal of unexpected moments of beauty and awe.

We've always believed that everything in life is a lesson, but still, this illness was so brutal that for quite a while it was hard to see the lesson. And then, at last, at our very lowest point, when we were at our weakest and the pain was the very worst, we saw it. It unfolded, flower-like, through our awareness, like a message from the voice of the Universe.

"You've been so attached to the role you've been playing that you've forgotten it's only a role," the voice said. "You work and work and strive and strive, set yourself tough deadlines and beat yourself up for not meeting them, in order to maintain the image you've constructed of how you want to appear in the world. You were afraid that if you couldn't maintain that image, the people in your life would judge you, desert you, not love you anymore. This illness has made it impossible for you to maintain that image any longer... but see how you're still you? Anyone who would desert you in your time of weakness doesn't love you and never has. They just love the image of you. Let those people go.

"You feel you have to be strong all the time because you fear that to be weak is an imposition on others. But love works both ways. You care for your loved ones in their weakness. Now you must let them care for you in yours. When you are weak and vulnerable, it gives others an even bigger opportunity to express their love. Give them that opportunity, and accept the love they offer. You want to love others unconditionally, but for that, you must also be able to love yourself unconditionally. Unconditional: no conditions. In health and in sickness, for richer and for poorer. Whether or not you look sleek and healthy or emaciated and ill. Whether or not you can strive and achieve. For who you are, not what you do.

"The image you tried to maintain was ego. Ego sits like a wall between this back-and-forth, in-and-out exchange of love, preventing others from seeing and loving the real you. Ego is the desire for control.

"The lesson in this illness is, let go of image, let go of ego. Be who you are, in this moment, authentically and totally, openly and honestly. You need not strive to become more. You are already enough. Give up trying to control. Control is an illusion. Give up trying to control the timeline. Stop regretting that things didn't go the way they were 'supposed' to go. Stop punishing yourself for 'not being on schedule' due to being weak and ill. 

"If you can't be compassionate to yourself, how can you be compassionate to others? You must learn to forgive yourself as much as you forgive the people you love. If you are always chasing after love, how can love find you? Sit and wait, and let the love come to you. Sit and wait, and see what happens."

It was a hard lesson to swallow, at first. One of the hardest we've ever had to learn, but also one of the most valuable. We'd been trying vainly to cling to some sense of normacly, pushing ourselves to still engage in our usual activities, working, going to Buck-Tick shows... but now the Buck-Tick tour was postponed (due to Mr. Sakurai's own illness), and we had to admit defeat. We were too ill to do anything anymore. We went on medical leave from our clients and sank into the life of an invalid. We accepted that it was going to take a lot more time for us to recover, and we just let go and let it happen.

For a while, we were so sick, we lost all sense of identity. The image or role the voice spoke of was completely gone. In spiritual terms, this kind of experience is often called "ego death." But that, too, was okay. Identity or not, we were still here. Gradually, we healed. 

As we returned to the world of light and life (slowly, painfully, gradually), we realized our perspective had completely changed. The deadlines and plans had all been postponed, so what? When we were ready to, when we were well again, we could still do all the projects. We floated through the hustle and bustle of the Tokyo crowds, remembering how we used to be caught up in all that, too - always worrying about time, always rushing, out of sync with the rhythm of the Universe, and tripping over our feet.

The thing is, it's only human beings that try to move outside of the rhythm of the Universe. We never get angry at our cats for being lazy. Why are we so hard on ourselves and each other?

Breathe in, breathe out. Things take the time they take. We started to listen for that Universal heartbeat, and we heard it. We started to move in time with its music, and amazing things began to happen. Lights would turn green for us as we walked down the street, right on cue. We had all kinds of chance meetings with friends, new and old. Circumstances started to align through miraculous-seeming coincidences. New opportunities began opening up. As soon as we started to go with the flow, rather than swim against the current, it really was smooth sailing.

And then, we started to realize that the lesson we'd been given in our illness wasn't just about us and our small existence, but also about Planet Earth and human society at this pivotal moment in history.

Control, and time. Image, ego, and the dual/nondual nature of love. 

Global society has been dominated by the obsession with controlling everything: life hacks, job hacks, health hacks, productivity upgrades, quarterly statements. Everyone's impatient for results, results, results! And we're obsessed with time - being on it, having enough of it... despite the fact that the time on the clock is a very recent invention and before electricity, human life, too, moved at the pace of night and day, and the pace of the seasons. How is it than in a little over a hundred years, the phrase "you're late" came to ruin everyone's lives? Late to class, late to work, missed your deadline... you fail, you're fired, you failure as a human you! So you'd rather be smelling the flowers or looking at the sky? So there's a blizzard or a typhoon in the way? Don't care. Fuck Mother Nature, and fuck you.

The thing is, the fact that human society has been making such a concerted effort to fuck Mother Nature (or fuck her over, more like) has made it abundantly clear that 1) control is an illusion and 2) Mother Nature's time is our time, too. Our obsession with so-called "productivity" has led us to trashing our environment and steamrolling over the most important part of life: living. Global capitalism always demands more, more, more - and we keep on destroying and destroying in service of that greed. But the climate is changing. The ice caps are melting. Extreme storms and wildfires are raging. We don't control nature. We live within nature.

But we've let Nature come to seem like the enemy, because caught in that rat race hamster wheel, people so rarely take the time to appreciate what they have. Worrying constantly about the next deadline and the next quarter's results, so many of us fail to ever appreciate the now while we're in it. And then it's gone, and we realize only too late how much it meant to us, and we sit around regretting the past - still failing to appreciate the now. We tie ourselves up in knots over perceived past failures and perceived future stresses, down and down a vicious spiral of anxiety, guilt, shame, fear, and panic. And all because we've been taught that we're not valuable for who we are, only for what we do. That if we don't achieve, and achieve on time, we're worthless.

We, Cayce, have a friend who likes to berate her fat, lazy, adorable fluffball cat. "Get a job, Toby!" she says. "Start pulling your weight around here." Toby would flop over and go to sleep, and the two of us would laugh and laugh. Why are our standards for cats and humans so different?

It has something to do with ego - wanting to be perceived a certain way, wanting to be seen as "better" in some way. Striving for external acceptance or praise based on someone else's standards. But this struggle is endless and unfailingly unsatisfying. The richest men on earth seem to be among the most dissatisfied - always seeking more, more, more, and destroying the planet in the process.

Where does this dissatisfaction come from? Ego. Self-hatred, based in fear. Fear of not being enough. Not being the "right" way, by someone else's standard. Need to fill that void of self-hatred with external validation. But like the voice told us: how can you love others if you can't love yourself? No one else can fill the hole within you, not until you realize that there is no hole.

Too often, people are valued only for what they do or accomplish, but like the Dalai Lama said, "we are human beings, not human doings." Being weak, being sick - it doesn't make you less worthy as a human. Even if you are not "producing," you are experiencing. That's the meaning of life. To experience. To live. Conscious experience is the experience of the present moment. The present moment is all we have.

Mother Nature's time is the unfolding of experience. A seed falls, sprouts, grows leaves, buds, flowers, fruits. It happens at the right time, and it takes the time it takes. The cherry trees bloom in the spring, and the apples ripen in the fall. What kind of doofus would scream at an apple seedling in May, "not enough apples this quarter!" What kind of doofus would ask a woman three months' pregnant why she hasn't given birth yet? It's not a race to a goal. Each step in the process reveals something new and beautiful - the moment the first little greet shoot pokes out of the soil, the moment when the tiny leaves open up, the moment when the tiny buds appear on the stems, the slow unfolding of the flower, the swelling of the fruit - and then, yes, of course, the harvest. But it is each moment in the whole cycle that holds the meaning, and the beauty.  

When you get so sick that you're not capable of doing anything, but simply being... you remember that you are a part of nature and a part of this cycle. Healing doesn't happen instantaneously. Healing happens in its own time, and it's not a time you can control through force of will. Sometimes, all you can do is keep breathing. And as you breathe, you start to feel your life in a whole new way. 

You've faced your own frailty. You lose the illusion of control. But you see that despite this, life goes on! The sun comes up in the morning and sets in the evening. Fall turns to winter turns to spring. The earth turns, the stars wheel, the planets track their paths across the sky. You realize, far from not having enough time, you have all the time in the world, in each moment.

Maybe y'all thought this post has nothing to do with Buck-Tick, but it does. This appreciation of the present moment and living in the rhythm of nature is a huge theme in Buck-Tick's work. Sakurai conveys it perfectly in "Yumemiru Uchuu," with the lines:

For an instant

Or forever

Driven wild

We are...

Turning and turning, turning

Waltz of the night, and the moon

Rapt in dreaming space

"Bi Universe" is another wonderful song on this theme. So is "Rondo."

It's also at the ancient foundation of Eastern spirituality, expressed in Japan through Buddhism. At the entrance to Japanese temples stand two gate guardians: "Ah" on the right, and "Un" on the left (these Ah-Un are usually statues of lions, foxes, or dogs, but they come in many other forms, too.) The Ah on the right symbolizes yang, prana, the Divine Masculine, alpha, initiation, like the Magician card in the tarot (manipulation of the elements by exercising the will, archetypal masculine control as symbolized by the phallic magic wand). The Un on the left symbolizes yin, akasha, the Divine Feminine, omega, receptivity, like the World/Universe card in the tarot (the womblike void in which lies the totality of the universe, the completion of a cycle, forming the number zero, to begin a new cycle). 

Together, they represent inhalation and exhalation - the breathing state of meditation which allows these energies to flow through human consciousness. The Ah is depicted with mouth open, speaking, "Ah." The Un is depicted with mouth closed, responding with "Un" (an affirmation: "I am listening.") Join the two syllables, and you get "Om," the ancient Indian mantra to awaken the third eye, the gateway to higher consciousness. The Un also often holds a baby, symbolizing birth (the feminine receives the masculine and conceives new life), while the Ah often holds a Flower of Life globe, symbolizing the oneness of all things. (You can see both the baby and the Flower of Life globe in the photo below.)

In Japanese, an "Ah-Un kankei," or "Ah-Un relationship," refers to the kind of deeply balanced, harmonious relationship where people hardly need to even use words to communicate because they're so much on the same wavelength, they can practically get by with telepathy alone. This is the duality/nonduality of love. To have either, one must have both. Giving and receiving. They cannot be separated, for each defines the other. (Another huge Buck-Tick theme, but we already wrote about that in our last article so we'll leave it for now.)

One thing we'd like to point out again is that in this gender-obsessed age, people lose track of the fact that in the context of spirituality and metaphysics, "masculine" and "feminine" have nothing to do with physical sex or gender identity. Rather, masculine and feminine are the qualities of energy embodied by the Ah and the Un. Everyone of every gender contains these energies. They often get misrepresented in the West as "active" (masculine) vs. "passive" (feminine), but a better way to describe them would be active vs. receptive. Feminine listens. Feminine receives. Feminine accepts. The fact that these feminine aspects are considered lesser in society today is a mark of the sickness in society.

For the body and spirit to flower, these qualities must be in balance, at every level. In every person, and in society as a whole. But that's not how things are today. The masculine is praised and the feminine is demonized. This can be seen not only in the physical oppression of women - everything from rape, domestic violence and human trafficking, to women not being taken seriously by health care professionals, women not receiving equal pay for equal work, devaluing of unpaid labor usually performed by women (housekeeping, childcare, etc.), but also in the way that jobs historically performed by women often pay less and are seen as lesser whether it's men or women who are doing them (caregiving, teaching, and service roles especially). It's all over the workplace - macho, aggressive bullies get promotions. Workers are often prevented from taking time off for illness or to care for family members, or they are seen as weak for doing so. Men are shunned for trying to take paternity leave. In queer communities, this demonization of the Divine Feminine can be seen in femmephobia and violence against trans women. In fashion, it can be seen in the way in which, while women who take on masculine styles are often praised as "badass," men who take on feminine styles are still viciously attacked (women wear pants as if it's the most normal thing in the world, but it's still unusual to see a man in a dress unless he's a drag queen... why?) Boys are taught that expressing emotion is weakness, that everything associated with the feminine is unmanly and should be avoided. Girls are taught that their value in the world is contingent on the services they perform for others, and get called selfish if they choose to serve their own needs and defend their boundaries.

The list is endless. 

But in a greater sense, this demonization of the Divine Feminine manifests in our destruction of nature in the name of capitalist greed. Mother Nature. Mother Earth. Earth, giver of life, has been seen as feminine since the dawn of humanity. Now, wherever you turn, people are cutting down trees and destroying wild places as if they absolutely hate the earth, and hate nature. But we need to build this development! We need to build this strip mall, this factory! We need profit for our shareholders!

This is the Divine Masculine out of control. Out-of-control growth. You know what that is, kids. It's a cancer. Or, well, a virus. (We take no credit for the originality of this idea. Agent Smith said it long before we did.)

We are not separate from nature, we ARE nature. Destroying nature is every bit as much murder as killing a human being. And it is suicide as well, because we humans are not the individuals we think we are. Earth is a super-organism, and all the life forms on Earth are like cells in the body of this super-organism. 

As a matter of fact, human beings are also super-organisms. About 90% of the cells in a human body aren't human cells - they are symbiotic bacteria, found mainly in the digestive tract, and without those symbiotic bacteria, you not only wouldn't be able to digest your food, you wouldn't be able to live at all. You'd be dead. Over the past few decades, there's been more and more research on this "microbiome," and the ways in which lack of biodiversity, or lack of balance in species, can have catastrophic effects on the health of the whole human. Also, on the ways in which healing this microbiome can have drastic healing effects on the whole human.

We are all like tiny planets on this one big planet. The macro is reflected in the micro. The branching bronchioles in our lungs are the same fractal shape as the branches of a tree, or a bolt of lightning. The logarithmic spiral of the seashell and the sunflower is the same spiral as the human fetus and the Milky Way. These correspondences are everywhere - the entire universe is made of them. The five Platonic solids embedded within the geometry of the Flower of Life describe the geometry of the entire universe, from the structure of molecules to the structure of galaxies (if you want to know more about this, look up "sacred geometry" and prepare to have your mind blown.) This is the true meaning of the Holographic Principle - each dimension is a reflection, or hologram, of a higher dimension. This is the meaning of the Pagan wisdom, "As above, so below, as within, so without."

Flower of Life with Metatron Cube

Metatron Cube with Platonic solids

But when we're out of balance towards the masculine, we lose touch with this. The "Ah" is always speaking... but let me ask you this. Two people meet each other, and talk. One does all the talking. The other does all the listening. When they part, which person walks away with more than what they had before? The listener, right? Without the speaker, there would be nothing to listen to... but if you're too busy talking to ever listen, how can you ever learn, grow, or be inspired? 

Creative artists, scientists, and inventors alike all know that the best inspirations usually come in the spaces in between - riding the train, sitting in the bath, going for a walk, doing some meditative slow-food cooking, getting up to pee in the middle of the night, or just zoning out. Everyone loves talking about meditation these days, but all meditation really amounts to is "just zoning out." Taking the time to stop. To breathe. To be. Then bam! Epiphany! Inspiration! Be the Un. Make yourself feminine. Be a receptive, empty vessel, and the Universe will come along and fill you with new insight and new wisdom.  

So... where are we going with all this?

The pandemic, of course.

Just like lil' Cayce here, the whole out-of-control, desperately striving world has been forced by illness into a standstill.

But there's so much fear. So much panic. So much blame.

Since long before the pandemic started, people around the world were pointing out that we're living in increasingly polarized times - everyone speaking, no one listening. On the right, there's been a rise in ethno-nationalist politics around the world, based largely around fear, fear of being swallowed up by the demonized Other. (They'll take your jobs, they'll take your culture, build a wall, blah, blah.) Telling lies, refusing to hear the other sides of the story (the side of the migrants, the low-wage workers, the racial and ethnic minorities). That bit's easy to see.

On the other hand, on the left, there's been a rise in "call out culture," based largely around the comfort of self-righteousness in the face of a growing sense of powerlessness. Public shaming campaigns on Twitter against people who use words perceived as "problematic" are on the same continuum as lynch mobs. This kind of call-out culture stifles freedom by making people too scared to express themselves. Making long lists of things no one is allowed to say precludes the possibility of conversation. Shouting down people for not knowing the right word, or understanding the nuances of difficult ethnographic, socioeconomic, etc. issues doesn't promote education, understanding, or a shift in mindset. It's its own form of bullying - make the one doing the calling out feel superior, making the called out feel angry, embarrassed and small.

All talk. No listening. Building a sense of fear, of constantly being attacked and under threat. We're not a big Star Wars fan, but "fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering." Yeah, that's true.

The world is now saturated on media, and the media thrives on fear. Fear is addictive. It's a rush, like a drug. Keep watching, keep clicking for the latest news. Oh no, more bad news! Keep watching, keep clicking! The death rate may be lower than first thought, but that's bad news because it means MORE infections! Young people, don't think you'll be safe, you might die of a STROKE! Don't cuddle your kitty for comfort, turns out cats might carry CORONAVIRUS!!! Oh my god, we're all gonna die!!!! Better buy some more toilet paper!!!!! (And don't you DARE joke about this. You're not taking this SERIOUSLY!!!!!111 PEOPLE ARE DYING!!!!!!)

Spoiler alert: we're all gonna die. Guys, you knew that already. Stop acting like it's news. Let's step back for a minute and take a deep breath. Ah and un. 

This kind of fear-based media has been around for as long as news has been around. We're all so used to it that we've been brainwashed into believing that feeling really bad about scary world events is somehow virtuous. Reading about scary, terrible things happening tends to make you feel powerless. But hey, if I feel concerned enough, will it help things? By feeling really bad, aren't I doing my duty as a Person Who Cares? Doesn't the fact that I'm sufficiently afraid make me better prepared for the worst?

No, friends. No it does not. We've received many, many letters from y'all readers over the years, and many of you have written about your struggles with anxiety and depression. We've struggled with anxiety and depression ourselves, so we also understand this firsthand. When you feel so depressed you can't get out of bed in the morning, and all your creative juices and ability to enjoy life seem to have been sucked away, who is that helping? No one. It's not helping you, and neither is it helping your concerned family and friends. And when you're having a panic attack, do those feelings you feel in the midst of the attack, like the walls are closing in, or you're having a heart attack, or some nameless terrible thing is about to swallow you whole - are those feelings in any way a reflection of external reality? No. Those are symptoms of fear attacking you.

Feeling bad about bad news is a natural response - which is why you shouldn't wallow in bad news! When you're wandering around mired in bad feelings, you are living less. You are out of the flow of the rhythm of the universe. You forget to appreciate, baby, the beauty and the joy of the here and now, whatever it may be - a flower, a good cup of coffee, a silly cat meme.

As for fear, Frank Herbert, author of Dune, said it a lot better than we did in the Litany Against Fear.

I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear is the little death which brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone I will turn my head to see Fear's path.

Where Fear has gone there will be nothing.

Only I will remain.

If you feel really freaked out, try speaking this litany out loud. It helps! (But don't take our word for it, try it.)

As for panic, Douglas Adams said it best, in large, friendly letters. DON'T PANIC.

The news is carefully crafted to make you feel as sad and scared as possible, but only to make you easier to control. Scared people are easy to control because they're willing to do anything to make the fear go away. They give up their rights, they do nonsensical things like hoard toilet paper, and they don't treat others well because they have a scarcity mentality. Harassing others because "they might have the coronavirus." Hoarding masks so there aren't enough for health-care workers. Berating others online for not being "frightened enough." Fear is the mind-killer.

What are you actually supposed to do in a crisis? Keep a cool head. Panic, fear, and worry accomplish nothing. They save no lives, develop no vaccines, provide no aid to the struggling unemployed. What panic, fear and worry DO do: raise your body's stress response, thereby lowering your immune response, making it more likely that you will get sick. No matter how bad things get, panic will never solve anything, it will only make things worse. Survivors are the people who take things as they come and do what needs to be done, with cool heads.

Meanwhile, if you're so busy trying to feel bad about the entire world that you feel like shit all day, you're not effectively able to enjoy whatever amount of this life you have left (because, spoiler alert: it has always been true that any of us could die at any time. Remember Memento Mori?) If you're sitting around feeling bad all day, you're also not as capable of expressing your unique gifts and talents to create positive change in the world, which is what you're supposed to be doing.

Think that it's unfair to feel happiness and joy when others are suffering? No, it is not! Life is made of both suffering and joy. There is always someone out there who's suffering. There always has been. Does that mean all the happiness and joy you ever felt were unfair? No! Love and joy are what give life meaning, and they are limitless. By all means, try to alleviate the suffering of others where you can. But never let anyone guilt you out of your love and your joy.

Sakurai addresses this in the lyrics to "Foolish":

What is it like, from over there?  

Is it deep darkness?

What can you see from over there?  

Is it love and joy?

There will be no salvation

Is it deep darkness?

I’m just living now

In love and joy

We are so bound by our transactional, capitalist understanding of the world that we've come to believe we have to pay an equal price of sadness or pain for our love and our joy, but we don't. You can be as happy as you want to be, at any time. The things to be happy about are limitless. Kittens. Flowers. That cat with the sexy legs from Nyanko Daisenkyou! Imai on Instagram wearing a plague mask, playing guitar! That clip from At the Night Side of Hide falling off the stage - perfect thing to watch on repeat as you shelter in place!

And as for love, we probably don't need to explain to y'all Buck-Tick fans how it's possible to love the same five people more and more every day and still have love to spare (shucks that's so sweet our teeth are rotting. Thanks, Hide!)

We are not trying to deny that this pandemic is causing very real pain. Our heart goes out to all of you - sick people, people with sick loved ones, people who've lost loved ones, people who've lost their jobs, people cooped up at home with family members they don't get along with, and of course, all the workers who are busting their butts and risking their lives and getting nowhere near the hazard pay they deserve. And, y'know, the morticians. Really puts the graveyard in "graveyard smash"! Hang in there, guys. We could never do what you do. Respect. 

But at the same time, we hope and believe that the unfolding outcomes of this will end up being for the greater good. Most of us (here on Planet Earth) have known for a long time that society as it was was not working, but on a global scale we (humanity) weren't able to step up and make the necessary change. Very quickly, this pandemic has exposed in a new way many aspects of society that aren't working, from supply lines to pandemic contingency plans to sick leave to the devaluing of service workers to the dangers of misinformation (and many other issues too numerous to list). Raising these issues into mainstream consciousness creates an opening for change. At the same time, the effect of the global shutdown on the natural environment has been stunning to witness. It needs to be witnessed more. How beautifully Earth breathes when humanity stands still!

Being afraid accomplishes nothing. Feeling bad accomplishes nothing. Don't feel like you have to take on the burden of the whole world all by yourself. Superhero stories are fun, but they can also promote another toxic idea that's all over mass media - the idea that one person can save the world.

We're a superorganism, remember? Cells in the body of Gaia. No one cell does anything alone. Your immune system alone is composed of dozens of different types of cells, each specialized for a specific function. Your whole body is the same. Which of your organs is the best? Which is the most important? What is a brain with no heart? Lungs with no liver? Intestines with no kidneys? Each cell on its own might not seem that important. If it dies, other cells will take its place. But on a whole body level, you need all those cells and all those organs. Without each one of those vital organs, you die.

Asking "which organ is the best?" or "which organ is the most important" - that's the kind of question the ego asks. But it's a fundamentally ridiculous question. What's the best color of the rainbow? Without all the colors, it wouldn't be a rainbow, right?

Accordingly, you, as a human being, must live and act on a human scale. You are not super human. You can't be a superhero, so don't waste your time trying to be one. It is your immediate, moment to moment life that you should focus on. Do what you can, when you can, to the extent that you can. Do not be swept away by fear-mongering news or wild-eyed predictions about the future. Instead, take this unprecedented moment of stillness to be still. Be. Still. Still alive. Still being. Being in stillness. Enjoy the silence. Experience the now. Notice. Observe. The unfolding of nature, and the unfolding of yourself, within you. Let go of images and expectations. Find that you who remains even when ego-you deserts. You are not your roles or attachments or anything you have done. You are what you are. This moment of stillness is a gift. Savor it. Cherish it. See what happens when you give up trying to control, and start drifting in the flow. 

Find your way back to your connection with Mother Earth, with Mother Nature. And if you can possibly find a way to do so, go outside, and spend time in nature. Every day, if you can. Please observe social distancing, but for the love of fuck, go outside! You may be isolated from other humans but you are never isolated from nature. Fill yourself up with the beauty of the season. Smell the flowers, touch the leaves, watch the insects, gaze at the clouds. Go out at night and look at the stars. Be feminine. Be receptive. Listen. Breathe. Do what brings you joy, offline, if possible. Read a book, exercise, cook, take a bath, pet a cat, listen to music, play music, make art - whatever you can, embody physical space. Embody your physical being. Be here, now. Don't worry about the future. Now is all there is.

The thing is, we are all connected. That comes with being part of a super-organism. (Btw if you're into science and you want to look into this further from a sciency perspective, check out the work of Lynn Margulis, Rupert Sheldrake, and Bruce Lipton, for a start.) If you want to do something to help the rest of the world, but you feel powerless because you're just one small human... there is still something you can do: send your love! Have patience with people who are still struggling with panic. Don't judge or condemn others. Don't pile on the Shame and Blame Train. This situation is difficult for everyone. You don't know what others are going through or how things look to them, so don't snipe at people. Don't gripe on social media. Leave those other people be. Just let them do their thing. You can't change them even if you wish you could. Instead, focus on centering yourself. Breathe in. Breathe out. Remember beauty and joy. And send your love. 

Remember, if you're on Blog-Tick, that means you're a member of the Barairo Juujidan. 

Tell a story of love, yeah

Even dripping in blood oh

Tell a story of dreams, yeah

You are a rose yourself

Ah, a blood red rose

This life is full of crosses to bear, but your heart is a rose. Now visualize that rose opening, unfurling, blooming as the most vividly colored, fragrant, perfect rose you've ever seen. That's you! Only you. Now visualize a rainbow of light, pulsing within that rose, to the beat of your heart. Slowly, the light spreads outwards, bathing all the people you love in its glow, shooting downward into the center of the earth, and upward into the heavens, growing brighter and brighter. You are held by the earth, and loved by the universe. You have the life force of the earth and the universe within you. Send it outward, around the globe, and visualize a better future. Healing society, healing illness, healing our wounds, healing our relationship with the earth. Each neuron might not be able to perceive the image contained in the entire brain - but that doesn't matter, that's not its function. Its function is to pass the signal along. Now yours is, too.

Pass the signal along. Pass it every day, every minute. Let it flow through you. Let it become you. If you are here reading this because you love Buck-Tick, you already know. Don't be afraid to know because someone told you to be afraid. The time for fear is over. The signal is love. Love is greater than fear.

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In our next post, we'll address the state of affairs in Buck-Tickistan.

Meanwhile, thank y'all again for your support. Also, we've received a lot of requests for doing capsule analyses of the lyrics to individual Buck-Tick songs. Are y'all still interested? If so, please tell us which songs you'd like us to start with and we'll take it from there.

(That cat with the sexy legs from Nyanko Daisenkyou)