Monday, September 4, 2017

JAPANESE TO ENGLISH Part 1

JAPANESE TO ENGLISH IN THE UNREAL
PAUSE FOR THE JETS




I have always loved Prince. I also have very strange and detailed dreams. Both of those facts came together to create the weird Japanese dialog pieces that you hear on Earwig’s album ‘Pause For The Jets’. 

 The album is based around a short novel that I am writing (but will likely never finish) that details a series of dreams that I had where I was searching for The Enigma Guitar. This special guitar is a magical musical artifact that, in the right hands, can be used to save the Multiverse. The very first guitar riff was written on this guitar and somehow it had fallen under the control of the bad guys and I was tasked (in my dream) with locating the Enigma Guitar and saving the universe.

 The characters in my dreams often spoke Japanese (don’t ask me why, I’m not a psychiatrist), but I could somehow understand them. I was also able to communicate from inside the dream world with my cohorts in Team Earwig who were in the every day world. 

 My biggest nemesis on my quest to find the Enigma Guitar was Silverheels. Silverheels is a white-witch demon in a pointy hat and rocket boots who cruises the UnReal (that’s the name of the alternate universe in my dreams) astride a large white lizard/dragon. Silverheels does not speak, her dragon does all of her talking. I first met her before a battle that was about to take place in the UnReal and she seemed all too familiar. I felt like I knew her from somewhere. When I confronted her, her eyes glowed and she reared up on her dragon who bellowed the following speech in Japanese.

“Dearly beloved, welcome to the UnReal!
This is the dream of Mona Lisa, the other side of soul.
Electric word Enigma.
Are you tracking me? Do you know who I am?
You know me well.
You have known me for a long time, Lizard.
This is my last visit.
The time has come to rock the ending. Yr on your own!
And if that which you desire is unobtainable, you must revert to many worlds…”

Well, that’s a close approximation of what she said in my dream. I kept a dream journal and wrote everything down and that’s my best recollection. For the album, it’s mixed in with inspiration from the “eulogy” organ sermon that precedes Prince’s song “Let’s Go Crazy”. If you listen to Earwig’s recording of ‘Silverheels' with this in mind, you will find that our organ and the speech mimic the organ and “eulogy” in Prince’s song almost exactly. Give it a listen and play spot the similarity!



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