"Let's Meet Here Again"
Click to viewI know it was not their purpose to show pain. Rather, what they wanted to show was the ability to move on, not leaving the past behind but facing the past, taking it along with ourselves. We don't need to look back.
But it was so painful to watch the children. :(
When i first saw this video, i wondered - who was/were the 'ghosts'? The little boy? Or the band and the other children?
Then i realized... that it doesn't matter. No one needs to be a ghost. Everyone is alive - in reality, in imagination. We carry our loved ones with us, wherever time takes us.
Time doesn't need to be seen as the demarcation between the past, the present and the future. Or the demarcation between destruction and creation, or death and life. It all lives together, in the rainbow of our tears. There is only 'here', where we will meet, again and again.
It's such a beautiful song, and even more beautiful an interpretation in the video.
But it hurts so much to see the children. :(
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EDIT, because i didn't want to end on a depressing note:
Go here to see gorgeous pictures of Minamimachi Cadocco. :)
The Children’s CornerOn a street corner in the Minamimachi district of Kesennuma, there’s a building with the word “Cadocco” on its façade. If you looked in a window a year ago, you’d have seen a pharmacy. Look in that window today and you’ll see kids. Lots of kids, maybe 60 at a time. And they’re having the time of their lives.
Some are chalking colorful artworks on a floor-to-ceiling blackboard. Others sit on the sleek bamboo floor with a nimble-fingered volunteer and learn how to make a scarf by weaving yarn on their fingers. Still others play games, enjoy stories, and have fun as if the tsunami never happened.
But it did, and it swept away schools and playgrounds and left the children with no place to play. It swept away the pharmacy too, and left only the gutted shell of the building that housed it. Clever minds put two and two together, and the result is Minamimachi Cadocco, a children's play center that opened its doors with music and ceremony on December 18.
And what music! Big taiko drums rumbled their stirring rhythms under the flashing sticks of Hachimantaiko Junior, a famed and well-traveled troupe of young drummers. Peppy band music filled the air, performed by a small band with a big name: the Kesennuma Elementary School and Minami Kesennuma Elementary School Joint Brass Band. The 'Joint' tells you that the two schools joined forces when the Minami school was destroyed.
Shinko Okuhara, an illustrator from Minamimachi, acted as producer and headed the design team. Shigeki Hattori of the Osaka-based design firm Graf handled the architectural work, and Kiyomasa Sugawara led a local group of parents and friends called the Minamimachi-Kashizaki Young Adults in the construction work. Donations funneled through NPOs that support children's programs. A shopping arcade in Yokohama even organized a benefit concert.
On a wall in Cadocco there's now a cheer-up message from musicians of the great Berlin Philharmonic. They say they'll return to Japan and play for us in two years. So mark your calendar, and come join us then! And when you do, be sure to check out Cadocco's elevator. There isn't one - but what kid could hold back a giggle at the panel of elevator buttons by the door to the toilet?
Photos by Michiari Saito
Source: http://facebook.com/kesennuma/