Moon Sayonara Wo Oshiete -A tale in loving memory of Atsushi Sakurai
A Space Opera in Three Acts
Captain’s Log -Wednesday 25 October 2023
Moon Waxing Gibbous, 11.03 days old and 88.15% illuminated with a tilt of 140.749°. The approximate distance from Earth to the moon is 364,920.31 km and the moon sign is Pisces.
I wake up with a jolt from a wild dream, into a nightmare that is even wilder.
It has nothing to do with the state of the world.
The world keeps on turning, as always, around itself, around the sun. Now and then bright and beautiful, full of sunlight and vivid colours and rainbows. More often frowning and gloomy and bleak, drowning in a myriad shades of grey.
You, you always loved grey…You loved the rain and the traces that the memory of water leaves upon the Earth. And you never, ever chased after the pot of gold at the end of elusive rainbows, sparkling under the sun.
You always preferred the silver of the Moon -each night you took off to meet her, a Beloved as ethereal and enticing as she was distant, flying on the back of your magical Phoenix bird.
Word had it that your pen was made of Phoenix bone, was given wing by a Phoenix feather. That was why you always rose out of your own ashes. Cheated death over and over. Styled yourself an angel, out of the darkest places of hell.
He had been through a lot, that Phoenix of yours. He’d been burned in hundreds of fires, been killed by so many Suns…
You were alike, you and he. That’s how he had become your familiar.
This time, you two flew far too high. Travelled way too far.
25th of October 2023 and my phone’s screen lights up. No good mornings.
My own little world catapults into darkness.
‘’I don’t know how to tell you this…Atsushi is no longer with us. Atsushi passed away on the 19th of October. They wouldn’t let us know until now.’’
It’s my best friend, Karen. My sister messaging from the land of the rising sun, on the other side of the world, the same corner of the Earth where you live, where you write your poetry, where you sing your songs.
Lived. Wrote. Sang.
I blink — surely, I’m still in the middle of my nightmare.
It must be one of those where I realise that I’m dreaming and try to wake up, only to find myself ‘waking’ inside yet another dream, darker and worse than the first.
And if not, there must be some other explanation. Surely, one of the trolls that swarm the forest perilous that is the internet, felt like it was time for horror stories and decided it would be a great idea to spice them up by making you the protagonist.
After all, you are only 57. Nothing on your face or body betrays your years. And as for your soul, that was ancient and full of secrets to begin with. One has but to read your lyrics. You have stared straight into the eyes of the sun of this world. Turned around it so many times. Sojourned here on this planet for countless moons.
You got to know this world and its ways by now, like the back of your hand.
You were tough enough to stand on its stages, in the middle of arenas, heart on your sleeve, scars like medals of honour on your chest.
In the face of fear.
‘’I can’t feel the passage of time. I don’t understand what ‘35 years’ is supposed to mean’’ — wasn’t that what you said hardly a year ago, on the 35th anniversary of Buck-Tick, the band you still front since the very beginning? You had no intention to stop. To leave. Your soul, deep like a still lake, yet burning volcanic, was too restless. Your spirit ancient yet eternally youthful, you intended to keep on tearing your shirt, offering your heart to the crowd forever. For as long as it lasted. As long as the Phoenix kept returning to take you on its wings and journey on a moonbeam road, made of words and music.
No more.
The words on the digital, heartless pages are like bullets. Each one straight through the heart. Upon the stage, under the lights, as the smoke was going down, you faltered. You fell.
It happened in Yokohama. On the 19th. Holding on to the mic that was always your sword. On the stage, the place where you found your voice and you became once and for all your Self — the stage, that from a battle ground between the old you and the new, went on to become your Home.
Tonight, you had not been yourself. You sang the first song. Sat down to perform the second, visibly unwell. Your head was splitting. You could not go on. They rushed you to a nearby hospital where you died at 11:09. The cause of your death was revealed to be a brainstem haemorrhage.
You didn’t stand a chance.
The condition ‘’caused bleeding into that area controlling many essential bodily processes, known as histiocytes. Functions like breathing and heartbeat. Its abrupt manifestation during your performance was devastating for you, as well as traumatising for thousands of fans, who witnessed such an unthinkable tragedy first hand’’ read the bullet words.
They couldn’t save you.
There is a void in my heart where your voice was, where your smile was, in my darkest of darknesses for over ten years.
Where did they go?
Why you, why now, when your light was so bright, when the world grows darker and darker?
Where are you?
In a daze, I stare at your recent videos. High up on the stage, your pale face shines like the moon, framed by the ink of your hair. You have always been like the moon –half of you forever hidden away.
Envious, the shadows rise to deface you, swallow you up — an obliterating, total eclipse.
Captain’s Log -Thursday 19 October 2023.
Moon Waxing Gibbous, 4.79 days old and 23.87% illuminated with a tilt of -174.34°. The approximate distance from Earth to the moon is 380,693.80 km and the moon sign is Sagittarius.
Somewhere Nowhere.
You are void of course.
Doko da?….Doko nan do yo? Docchi da?
Wakaranee…
…
Kanzen ni mayotta, kuso..
Dochi da? Doko da? Dochi da?…
Wakaranee…
Dou sureba ii?…
Doko da, docchi da, koko wa?…
Koko wa, doko da? Dochi da? Doko da yo?
Dare ka? DARE KA?!?
Where am I? Where is this? Where?
I don’t get it
I am completely lost, shit
Where is this? Where am I? Where is this?
I don’t understand
What should I do?
Where, where the hell is this place?
Where is this place? Where?
Where? Somebody? ANYBODY !?!
Drifting.
Cast adrift in a red sea, and the sun is setting. You can’t remember how long you’ve been fighting to stay afloat.
At first, the maelstrom threatened to annihilate you. The water, crimson and salty, choked you, its taste like blood. When the winds stopped howling, you were barely there.
Lonely and freezing cold.
It must be days now. It could be forever now.
Where is everyone? The sea you loved, the sea of faces, what happened to it? They’ve always been there to catch you. Raised towards you. The arms of strangers.
Nowhere to be found now. When you need them the most.
Someone had warned you that this would eventually happen.
And the Phoenix, where is he? He had promised to be back for you until the bitter end.
When, if not now?
‘’You ask the wrong questions.’’
There he is. Suddenly, for the first time since that night on the stage, when your voice was taken from you, you feel lighter as he rises out of the water like liquid silver. Your breath eases out in one go. As if you had been holding it in for days. Trying not to sink.
‘’It’s not about when anymore. Time is but a mortal device. Here, it has no dominion.’’
‘’Where is here?’’
‘’Good question. Here is a Choice.’’
‘’Choice?’’
‘’You can go back to that broken body in that broken place that you have always tried to make into something more beautiful than it really is, mixing raindrops and moon dust and blood and mud. But your fingers will not be able to hold a pen and weave worlds anymore, phoenix feathers or not. Your voice won’t come out. You will no longer command melody. Your thought, your memory or both at once, might leave you. Your feet will not dance again. Your heartbeat has no rhythm. You can go back there, and lose any and all of these things. Or…you can come with me one last time.’’
You nod silently and let him help you climb up on his back out of the blood red sea. You don’t need him to explain to you.
You have a choice, he said, but there’s no choice. Not for your soul.
To sing. To draw tears from stones, to make the birds and beasts and even the trees move to the rhythms of your lyre -to be Orpheus or nothing. This is what you came for.
To return as a stone, as a tree — that is no return. No gift to bargain for.
It took you years to learn how to win. But you were born knowing how to lose. At one point, you even thought you were born for that.
‘’Here is when the gods demand their gifts back,’’ whispers the Phoenix in his solemn voice that has murmured so many lyrics and melodies to you before. ‘’Those gifts are never ones to have and to hold. And everything that has a beginning has an end. And the end is always chasing after that which has began.’’
Nodding, you caress his shimmering feathers -made of stardust and moonlight, like your songs. Its tail a blazing shooting star as you ascend together, fast, lighter and lighter.
The sea of red, your pupils dilating behind closing eyelids, the broken shell, the hospital, the oceans of faces, the kindness of strangers, the cruelty of strangers, neon dreams, the orb in the sea of space, a bright emerald and azure jewel against the dark, grow smaller and smaller.
You let your voice rise, one last goodbye.
Taiyo ni korosareta
Sayonara wa
iu mae ni…
I was killed by the Sun
Before I could say goobye
The curtain is rising on the night stage
Time is halted
I can’t stand up
I can’t move
Don’t look at me
Ah, the embalming makeup that I put
on for you
Is wearing off
In the applause
It feels like my ears are being torn off
‘’Is it beautiful? Is it ugly? Try to answer if you can’’
And I can’t laugh, and I won’t cry
alone in the shadow play
deserted
‘’It’s the truth, it’s a lie, it makes no difference at all’’
Soon, the curtain will close
amidst melancholy
‘’Is it alive? Is it dead? What are you searching for?’’
Taiyo ni korosareta…
‘’That’s it.’’ The Phoenix turns his head and smiles at you, in approval. ‘’The gods will be pleased to receive back what they gave you, honoured and multiplied. You will be able to stand proudly before them and say that you are empty. That you have given your all, every drop they once infused in you, just like you were meant to.’’
‘’That’s only half the truth.’’
For the first time since you left Earth, you protest.
‘’My glass was half full still. There were hundreds of songs left in me, one for each and every soul that was willing to listen, and join me, and sing. If the gods had only given me a warning…I’d show them.’’
‘’Come now…You know better than that.’’ The firebird laughs. ‘’You out of everyone, should know better…When your number is up, it’s up. ‘’
‘’I get no encore?’’
‘’You get no encore.’’
Captain’s Log -Friday, 27 October 2023
Moon Waxing Gibbous phase. 13.1 days old and 98.85% illuminated with a tilt of 154.811°. The approximate distance from Earth to the moon is 367,074.55 km and the moon sign is Aries. Visible through most of the night sky, setting a few hours before sunrise.
You can’t tell how long you have been flying. All sense of time, of place, lost. It could be an instant. It could be forever.
‘’Where we go, none of that will matter anyway,’’ says your familiar and you wonder if it is your lost senses he is referring to, or your songs. ‘’Look at the Moon. You’ve always worshipped her. She is waxing -her belly grows fuller, all the more bright now, in harvest time. She calls back to her those souls whose time has come. Come tomorrow, Samhain in mortal time, she will be full and partially eclipsed. A Hunter’s Moon -did you know they call it that? You were a poet, after all…’’
You narrow your eyes, uncomfortable. Up here, away from the sea of blood, you no longer feel resigned. You are weightless and feel like starfire -the tail of the Phoenix, his wings, are your body now, are they not? It’s your own soul you are riding, is it not? And there is no time -only the speed of light…
‘’Once a poet, always a poet,’’ you say, defiant. The Phoenix sighs.
‘’Ah, yes. Always the rebel. But where we’re headed, that won’t matter either. In the Gardens of the Moon, you will drink from the Water of Lethe. Like all souls do. All pain, all rage will be forgotten. Every word you never said. Every kiss you gave, and those you regretted not giving, and those kisses that you regret giving, too. The songs in the half filled glass of blood your heartbeat didn’t get to sing.’’
Increasingly uneasy you shift on his back. His words freeze you down to the core.
‘’That was not…That was not what you told me. Not what we agreed upon. I never ever signed up to forget that.’’
The Phoenix turns his head, his eye piercing through your soul, and you notice for the first time how much his eyes resemble yours.
‘’I am afraid you have no choice in this. This is what all mortals have to go through. Surely, you have always known this. You and your band mates had a whole album out called Memento Mori. You wrote another one, with your other band mates, called I am Mortal…You knew about Lethe. Better than anyone. You have always known. All singers do — the line of Orpheus…And you chose to die a singer.’’
‘’Once a singer, always a singer.’’ You raise your voice. ‘’And no, I won’t take ‘’it doesn’t matter’’ from you. We chose it because it did.’’
‘’Would you rather you went back to that body then.’’ The firebird’s eyes blaze. ‘’You know it would be useless to us now. I would never let you imprison me in there. Besides, there is no way back. It is too late for you to make me turn back. There is only one way. On to the moon we go -second star to the left and straight on til morning, or whatever it was that that tale your mother read to you once upon a time said. The moonbeam roads are clear. On the day of the Eclipse, the Sun, the Earth and the Moon will be ever so slightly imperfectly aligned. The Moon passing through only part of the Earth’s Umbra.
‘’It is not a perfect alignment, same way your mortal life has not been perfect. It is still a great honour. It will ease our passage. The veil will be thinner than other times. The gods want you to be able to travel back and forth in dreams for a little while. So you can say goodbye. It pleases them to grant you all these privileges, because you pleased them with your song. You are still mortal though. You still have to return your gift to them. Be blank once more, waiting to be reborn upon the wheel of the worlds…’’
For the first time since you departed, sheer terror takes hold of you. The light from you is flickering frantically. To those down below, it’s like a twinkling star, among myriads of stars on the milky way, on its perilous journey home among the unfathomable realms of space.
How — how can you ever dispute Them?
‘’No encore…You said I get no encore.’’
‘’That’s right.’’
You smile. ‘’That’s impossible.’’
‘’Oh?’’ Your Phoenix chuckles. ‘’How so? Are you so special that you have drunk from the elixir of immortality? The mead of poetry was not enough for you?’’
‘’You can laugh at me all you want -but the best laugh is always the last laugh.’’
‘’The gods always have the last laugh.’’
It is then that you summon all your light.
You raise your voice again. With all the star fire burning in you, you turn your gaze back in the direction of the little planet, now a dot in the expanse behind you. And you sing.
Calling out to them all. All those who would raise their glass for you and toast your name. All those who would run out to join you like a pied piper under the stage, a sea of faces, a sea of dancing shadows and smoke and strobe lights. All those who would raise their voices and sing with you, in the life that is now passing by fast before your eyes, leaving you behind.
You have to reach them. Call them to you. You need them now more than ever before. Last curtain call.
The night I met you
Was the night I was born
We’re lost in the dreaming Cosmos
In the Milky Way
For an instant or forever
we are driven mad
We are turning and turning and turning
waltz of the night and the moon
Lost in dreaming Space
Shall we dance?
Both joy and sorrow so dear
My dear, we two can’t return…
Dance with me…
Down here on Earth, I re-member you.
I follow you breadcrumbs in the songs you left behind. The guide to piecing you back together.
That boy whose name was Atsushi Sakurai — a name like a poem. Foreshadowing what was to come.
Atsushi — compassionate, industrious warrior. A lover and a fighter.
Sakurai — cherry blossom well.
That boy who was, by all indication, born to lose. Be a nobody in his hometown of Fujioka, Gunma prefecture, somewhere nowhere, under the looming shadow of a raging, alcoholic father.
That boy kept to himself, drowning in fear and ennui and sorrow -unless he was hanging out with the bad kids.
That boy contemplated death in a darkened room. Sang No Future.
He didn’t know it then but fate had other plans. The gods smiled upon him -those gods that favour song and dreams.
Those gods that bestow beauty. Enchant the eye of the beholder. Obliterate fear.
This one was not meant to go out with a whimper into that good night.
By coincidence or by design, his soulmates were not far away. They all sojourned in Gunma. Waiting.
They talked big and dreamt even bigger -the captain of their starship, visionary music genius Imai Hisahi. His trusty, gifted lieutenants, guitarist Hidehiko Hoshino and bassist Yutaka Higuchi. Drummer Yagami Toll, fuelling the engines.
The stars would align. Against all odds, the boy that was Atsushi Sakurai would become a man and move with them to Tokyo. From Kansas to the land of Oz. Together, they would eventually form what became the permanent line up of Buck-Tick, their band that would pass from dreams into the stuff of legend, going on to release 23 studio albums between 1987, the same year I came to this world, and 2023, when you departed from it.
All of them conquered the Japanese Oricon charts, eventually crossing all language and cultural barriers and reaching the West — and me.
Baku-chiku, stylised as Buck-Tick, means firecracker.
That boy that was you had fireworks in his lungs and eyes ever since he grabbed the mic and insisted he would sing, pilot the ship, stand on the stage and reign over it. Seize the throne, because he was destined to become who you became.
Your story, and that of your brothers in arms, will be retold over and over by music critics and journalists in your native land, but also elsewhere, by those like myself, who had the honour to hear your voice and sing your poetry. Your story now belongs to time for all time. Until the names of the players become but names, like those that came before them. Their faces distant icons, staring down from a galaxy of static stars, their smiles trapped in amber.
The destiny of names and faces. No encore. Your number up. Curtain close.
But see, that was not your true face. Your true story.
It was those songs. Outside of time, out of the void and into eternity.
Up there, light years away already, drawing closer to the dark side of the moon, you weave a web out of blood red yarns, and each thread reaching down to Earth is a song. Your song cascades down the threads of memory and down the centre of the labyrinth that is the deep, dark Space we call consciousness and you find me there. You find us all, all of those you claimed as your own — your crowd. Your people. Your pack scattered across the winds, all points of the rose compass.
My dear, we can’t return
Palm to palm our fingers touch
And you are a mirage dancing into the sky.
Dream, dreaming Universe I love…
For an instant or forever
driven mad
We can’t return
so dance with me
At the end of our goodbye
I’ll hold you
When I close my eyes
Say good night
Dream, dreaming Universe
At the end of our goodbye,
I’ll hold you…
We are that family that is not of the blood, but of the soul.
We are not allowed at your funeral, that took place silently, days before your passing was announced to us.
But that doesn’t matter so much.
Because you see, we can still hold you.
Like we always have, we will come find you in Space, while it’s dreaming its endless dream and hold you, because we remember.
In the Milky Way, on this small speck of emerald and azure, in an instant or forever, I re -member you.
Now the Moon is rising fast, too fast to greet you, her arms open, her belly full of lost souls, drinking the sweet milk of Lethe.
There is a web of red yarns, around your soul, around ours.
Her face grows paler. Her shadow darkens.
You won’t move closer.
You change course. Ever so slightly on your almost perfectly aligned road. 45 degrees. It is enough.
She panics. She thought they owned you, those Lords of Time that cut your thread, she thought she had you where she wanted you — didn’t you always gaze up at her, howled at her, sang her your songs?
‘’Come to me,’’ she commands. ‘’It’s time. You know it’s time. For you to be eclipsed. For your spark to be returned to the sun. To be weightless and bare. Come at once.’’
I look up at her through the window, the branches of the trees tracing a ladder to the stars.
‘’Not so fast’’ I chant. ‘Not yet. He is not yours yet.’’
The crowd demands an encore.
I pull out one of your last records. Your last trick, out of its sleeve.
Out of the corner of my eye, behind the thinning veil, I can see you winking at your Phoenix, suspended on the crossroads of time, a fixed star.
‘’Never trust poets.’’ Your eyes smile at me from the album cover. ‘’You never know where the next turn of phrase will come from. We won’t stop weaving until we get…poetic justice. Never trust stage -men either.’’
I press play.
Moon, say goodbye to me
Moon Sayonara Wo Oshiete
Oyasumi no kisu wo
Suite yume no hajimari ne
A goodnight kiss is
the beginning of the dream
Me wo tojite soshite
Close your eyes and then goodnight
Nugaigoto wo kanete nagarete wa kieru
Grant me a wish before I disappear.
I sing for you.
I re-member you.
Piece by piece.
One footprint on the snow after the other.
One song after another.
One album after another.
I break into dance, last number
The shards of glass, la-la-reflect me
ESCAPE
MOONLIGHT ESCAPE
Oh please God forgive me for everything
ESCAPE,
MOONLIGHT ESCAPE
Wrapped up in my cloak
Good night, into the dream beyond my dreams…
I flutter and dance
Embracing love until it spills out of me
To a world without sadness, an eternal ESCAPE
Before this night is over and dawn breaks, ESCAPE
Please don’t forget about me
With a wave of my cloak
Goodbye, higher and higher
I flutter and dance
Up there in the sky, over the mountains of the moon
Beyond the valley of the shadow
You ride
Having the last laugh.
28 October 2023 00:59
In loving memory of
Atsushi Sakurai
7 March 1966–19 October 2023 — Forever
Ride boldly
Wherever you are, my precious,
Guide.
心の底より感謝申し上げます
For everything.
Song Credits:
-Taiyo Ni Korosareta (Killed by the Sun)
Buck-Tick album: Kurutta Taiyo (1991)
Lyrics: Sakurai Atsushi
Music: Imai Hisashi
-Somewhere Nowhere
Buck-Tick album: Six/Nine (1995)
Lyrics: Sakurai Atsushi
Music: Imai Hisashi
-Yume Miru Uchuu (Dreaming Universe)
Buck -Tick album: Yume Miru Uchuu (2012)
Lyrics: Sakurai Atsushi
Music: Imai Hisashi
-Moon Sayonara Wo Oshiete (Moon Say Goodbye to Me)
Buck-Tick Album: №0 (2018)
Lyrics: Sakurai Atsushi
Music: Imai Hisashi
-Moonlight Escape (2020)
Buck-Tick Album: Abracadabra (2020)
Lyrics: Sakurai Atsushi
Music: Imai Hisashi
