Translation by ockess. Editing by @blame_robot
After a roughly seven-hour flight, I went down in the airport, and a dark-skinned, strangely woven-haired, but extremely well-mannered native young man called out to me. He was my driver from the island's only hotel, "F.S.R." With my luggage packed deftly into the trunk, he welcomed me into the backseat, saying:
"Please, get in. Welcome to Lospass."
Lospass Island isn’t a place you’d see published in cheap backpack tour leaflets. It’s only got one airport, one hotel, and it's small enough to cover the whole island on foot in a few hours. An exquisite resort for the likes of European celebs who desire a place of absolute privacy.
It’s not easy, becoming completely free of cellphones and the internet while you're in Japan. Well, actually, no matter where you go in the world, there's probably no place at all where you can cut yourself off from those things. As I laid on the water's edge on Lospass' beach, tons of giant passenger jets passed overhead. They had gathered somewhere out there in the world, passed through the sky above me, and landed somewhere else in the world. The place I'm in right now exists only as a point to pass through. I wonder if I even exist in this world? The question washed over me; it was a pleasant doubt to have.
I'm a city person, and I've gotten tired of that life. My job is to convert clients’ data into numerical values and input it into a computer. If you were to take each and every bit of that data and analyze it, you could read out a single person's whole life just off the screen. But what's the point of all that? As I repeated that same task day after day, my body and mind wore away. I started to become bored of dancing to loud music at the club on the weekend. That's when I came to know him. He worked as a modern music composer, working on things from obscure movies to techno remixes. Late at night, we’d chat and drink at a bar in the middle of the city that only played “real deal” bossa nova records. It was a far better fit for him compared to clubs filled with a non-stop digital beat. But as for me, I didn’t get the need to listen to music from the furthest countries of Earth just so you could get drunk, so I was a little uncomfortable. You could say I'm ignorant about music. I used my exceptionally boring and simple life as comparison like this:
"It's like that, you know, that song. The one they make you listen to in middle school and write an essay about. The orchestra keeps repeating and repeating this phrase, and it's super monotonous but it slowly hypes you up. You start worrying about, like, how long is this gonna go on for? And then, bam, it ends like someone had it cut off."
"Ahh, the bolero. Ravel's Bolero, right."
"Yeah, it was something like that, I think."
Truly, my life was nothing like a bolero, not gradually, gradually growing louder showing sign of approaching a crescendo, and no sign of being suddenly cut off. Just an aimless something, and just that.
"I totally get what you mean."
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Then he went on to tell me the reason he liked bossa nova so much.
"Bossa nova... it's got this secret sustained tension to it."
I felt I completely understood the abstract ideas he was conveying.
"For bossa nova, I'm sure there's people just who see it as a quiet, carefree, relaxing type of music, but that's wrong. Just like Brazilian samba, it's got that same maddening, encompassing groove. The basis of the groove is syncopation. Syncopation, how do I say... creates a moment where the sound doesn't exist. For bossa nova, that expresses an unusual restraint in the performance. Like the intense rush of your blood flow converging when you're relaxing your body into a Bellini sofa. Coming across music with such intrinsic value is pretty difficult, though."
"I wonder if there's a place out there where you can listen to music like that."
"Maybe if you go to Lospass Island, you could. There are ruins from the Megalith era still left over in the middle of that island. No one can explain why those giant stones were made to stand up like that. But I suspect they're antennas... to receive the music of eternity.”
One day, he suddenly disappeared. And I don't know why.
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On Lospass Island, you'll notice that the last half century of American cultural imports has simply not arrived. So, everything around the island -- the cars, the buildings, the hotel furnishings, the music flowing through the lounge, and even the atmosphere of the beach -- all carry an air of nostalgia for some place or another in Europe, almost like if time itself had stopped. The newest popular music on the island includes Scott Joplin's ragtime piano, and Gershwin's musicals. These are from America, of course, but that’s really all there is. Instead, there's slightly older music, such as Ravel, Debussy, Dvořák, and Satie – all well-loved composers of Europe. All these from the end of the 19th century, or the start of the 20th... All of this is information I was told by Hotel "F.S.R."'s manager, Edo.
Edo also told me what goes on in the sealed space in Hotel "F.S.R." They said that on beautiful, moonlit nights, the spirits of artists gather from the underworld. Using it as a Paris cafe, they each exchange with each other their respective views on art but have slowly grown bored of it. These gatherings have continued now for decades. Even veterans like Bach and Schumann seem to be within their ranks. They eagerly wait for new artists to join them in their salon, hoping to bring in with them new perspectives. I decided to go along with Edo's joke for a bit.
"Now that you mention it... I feel I’ve surely heard some strange voices about, and what sounds like a piano too."
"Recently Maurice Martenot has been welcomed into the group. The new model of synthesizer he brought with him has caught everyone’s attention. Right now, everyone has been waiting with bated breath for the arrival of Glenn Miller. But unfortunately, Mr. Miller is still missing in the Pacific, so..."
Edo explained this all to me in such a lively and playful manner, it was almost like he had been there for the ghosts’ conversations himself.
"Edo, please stop. You're creeping me out a little."
"Oh, I am?"
He seemed perplexed.
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"Hey, can I say something?"
I asked Locke from the back seat.
"Yes?"
"I understand that the name Lospass Island comes from it being known as "The island that has lost its past", but I think it's the complete opposite. The past is living here on this island. What I heard from Edo last night seemed the same way, what has been lost continues to live on here."
"What did you hear from the manager?"
"The story about the spirits of the composers."
"He's a troublesome one. He likes to tell guests stories like that and revels in their reactions."
"Oh, really."
"Yes. Anyway, you were asking about the origin of the hotel's name?"
"No."
"Ah, but this is much more interesting. The "F" is the "F" from "Flower". The "S" from "Sun", the "R" from "Rain". They are all beautiful symbols of this island."
"I see. I've already seen two of them. As I landed into the airport the first things to jump into view were flower and sun. But I've yet to see rain."
"I believe you will today, actually."
"How do you know?"
"Just before, the wind had a tinge of humidity to it."
I didn't know it then, but Locke was spot on. When I arrived at the ruins deep in the woods at the centre of the island, black clouds began to gather overhead, and as I noticed the light of the sun being covered, large droplets of rain began to fall. I stood unmoving, allowing myself to be pattered by the rain for a short while. Locke watched on from the driver's seat.
On the ride home to the hotel, he told me there is no one thing more beautiful than a flower being pattered by rain.
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As suddenly as when the rain began to fall, it stopped, and that night became one that allowed the viewing of the beauty of the light of the moon. I, for whatever reason, laid in a daze on my bed in my room, and wanted to feel nothing.That moment, I began to hear a strange raspy voice from somewhere.
"Grrrrrr. I do not want to lose to him. I do not want to lose."
It appeared that the voice was traveling through a crack in the wall, allowing me to hear it. I went and looked into the neighboring room through the crack. An old, European looking man covered in white hair was there holding his head in his hands.
"Excuse me, is there something wrong?"
I tried to talk to him.
"Hmmm, tonight the moon is beautiful. On nights like these I am reminded of the song that man wrote and am seized with an intense jealousy."
"What man?"
"Ah, I speak of Claude. Claude Achille. My eternal rival. Young lady, between my works and his, which do you prefer?"
"How should I know..."
"Hm, right, yes I suppose you're right. Hm. By the way, young lady, it appears to me that you have been crying."
He was right.
"What is the matter? Would you care to try speaking to me about it?"
"I couldn't hear it. I went there just as the rain began to fall, and I still could not hear the eternal music."
The old man had appeared to have digested all the information.
"I see, going to that place meant you surely would have hear the eternal music. If you went there and listened to that eternal music or what have you, you would surely learn the reason he disappeared. That is what you were thinking. But you were unable to hear anything."
"Correct."
"But for example, we could say you heard the absence of sound, couldn't we? The precise moment when nothing sounds, that sound brings forth the absence of its existence. Isn't that it?"
Right, from his absence, his existence became that much more unforgettable to me.
"WONDERFUL! What a wonderful concept. It exists, but it won't allow you to recognize it exists. It doesn't exist but forces you to recognize its existence. Much like furniture...! Oh yes. I believe I can write a song to surpass him with this!"
It didn't appear the old man was paying any more attention to me.
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No longer able to stand looking at me in my depressed state, Locke guided me to the foot of the island's grandmother, Ritz.
"Ever since the day she went to the ruins, she hasn't been well."
That's how Locke introduced me to Ritz. Ritz is a storyteller who passes down the legend of the island. She is well versed in the mysteries surrounding the ruins. Just from looking at me, Ritz discerned everything in an instant.
"I can see it. He already exists here. I can feel it. If you can feel it, he will appear within your heart as well. …Like a squall. Water will alleviate it all for you. Everything will be alright."
At that time, I couldn't understand the true meaning behind Ritz's words.
"If you can see him, somehow, convey this to him. Convey my existence, somehow..."