Featuring Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky) & Michael Sakamoto
Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky) & Michael Sakamoto awarded National Dance Project Production Grant 2024 – MORE INFO
Essay by Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky
Ryuichi Sakamoto – Butterfly Soul
There are two deeply rooted stories in Japanese mythology that have been a constant reminder for me of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s work. One is the tradition of Jisei poetry, or poems written by artists, creatives, and monks just before their death. The other is the tradition of enso, or dream poems that symbolize the eternal circle in Buddhism, the entangled spirit that dances between life and death, constantly rejoicing in the memory and potential of any thinking being, whether it’s a butterfly or a monk dreaming he is a butterfly.
One of my favorite poems that embodies and synthesized these traditions is from Zen master Ichikyo Kozan. Legend has it that he passed away after putting down the brush he painted his poem with. He sat upright, uttered the poem, and consciousness passed from his body.
The poem goes as follows
Empty handed I entered the world
Barefoot I leave it.
My coming, my going –
Two simple happenings
That got entangled…
Written in 1360, that poem could be one of the best visions of how we look at the complexity of the universe that surrounds us.
I met Sakamoto-San at the beginning of my career. As a young African American musician and composer, I was more familiar with his work through Yellow Magic Orchestra, the band that spearheaded the rise of electronic music in Japan, and set the tone for so many styles of music that we listen to today. They, like Kraftwerk, like Afrika Bambaata, and so many legends from the later half of the 20th Century, created a legacy that Sakamoto-san built in and expanded. As a composer there were no boundaries. You can see his influence in so many musicians and artists in the 21st Century. We met at his space in the West Village off of the Village Vanguard or the Whitney Museum, or Smorgas, the Swedish restaurant he would occasionally eat at with friends. When you get asked by such a legendary figure to participate in an album called The Dischord Symphony, you have to wonder what will come of it all. He had asked to have me DJ with the symphony, and projected Laurie Anderson reading poems throughout the compositions. There’s a generosity at work. There’s a cross cultural curiosity at work. Sakamoto-san embedded this kind of will to break down the silos between cultures, worlds, and the universe that sometimes seems to be so distant from all the human senses that we use to navigate the complex relationships that make our existence on this planet sometimes make sense. Sakamoto-san made music about tree roots. He made music about contemplation. He made music for film. He made music about art, science, and so many other topics that drove his relentless curiousity. We are all so fortunate to have had such a prodigy in our lifetime. Today a VR installation of Sakamoto-san plays at an art space in NYC. The term kagami in Japanese simply means mirror, and it is fitting that his work from so many genres are presented in a mixed reality approach. As he said towards the end of his struggle with cancer:
There is, in reality, a virtual me.
This virtual me will not age, and will continue to play the piano for years, decades, centuries.
Will there be humans then?
Will the squids that will conquer the earth after humanity listen to me?
What will pianos be to them?
What about music?
Will there be empathy there?
Empathy that spans hundreds of thousands of years.
Ah, but the batteries won’t last that long.
—Ryuichi Sakamoto, 2023
Sakamoto-san, rest in power. You will be missed, but never forgotten.
Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky
Livingston Manor 2023
