"If I've Been Enveloped in Tenderness" - Kiki's Wish
“Father, Mother, how are you? Jiji and I are both very well. My work’s on the right track and I’m confident. It’s been hard sometimes, but I love this town.”
I’ve written about how music moves me. How practicing can bring me to tears. Rachmaninoff can do that, and Schubert, and Beethoven of course. Classical repertoire has that kind of depth and power.
But so does the cute and childlike. Anime music. The power of nostalgia, innocence, simplicity.
This music can instantly break my heart (as in, when it is icy cold and cannot even warm up to Rachmaninoff or Bach or Mozart...) because of how piercingly true it is. How tender. How precious. How empowering in its melancholy and yet wishful, peaceful, pure sentiment of inexhaustible hope and belief.
When I have depressive episodes, my most reliable confidants is Kiki. Not just because she is a magical flying witch with a cheeky cat, but that her coming of age story is one of courage and vulnerability that exists in all of us at all ages of our lives. Charging out into the world with bright-eyed hope, with naivety, headstrong with energetic curiosity, trying to find ourselves, make our place, fit into a place where we don’t feel like we belong, where we notice how different we are to others, how strange to ourselves. And then facing the disillusionment, the melancholia, the sudden loss of inspiration, the persistence of our irritable, swinging moods, not to mention trying to run a business as to have grocery money and make some blueberry pancakes for breakfast.
Each time I return to this film, I grow with Kiki. I feel comforted and warm. Free. Real. I find strength and understanding in the honesty of her dreams, her daily struggles, her continuous efforts to live in such a peculiar yet beautiful world. This “Town with an Ocean View”. Perhaps it’s innocently idealistic, but the resonance with her spirit, the spirit of the whole world in that film, actually, is something truly magical and profound.
So, when I found the lyrics to this last song in the arrangement of Kiki’s Potpourri, I was completely devastated. The overwhelming emotions when someone’s words somehow manages to capture the million sentiments and memories and all the different past ages of your existence in ways you could never have thought possible. Even just with the title I was melting - “If I’ve Been Enveloped in Tenderness.” If, if I had been. And I had been. I had been enveloped in all the tenderness.
Even before reading the translations, I had the feeling this was exactly what the music was capturing. And now, it’s like the words were written especially, specifically for these sentiments, when actually they came much before. How curious, how magical.
By the second stanza I was full on crying. It felt so raw. And I went to the piano to make those sounds of the melody myself. And I cried more. Just so damn simple. It takes just a few harmonies, a few notes arranged in this certain shape, this certain rhythm. It’s piercingly powerful. Miracles happen, even when you grow up.
“When I was small there were gods
And they granted my wish in mysterious ways.
On mornings when you wake up feeling at ease
Miracles happen even when you grow up.
Open the curtain wide and let the faint sunbeams shine through
Let their gentleness engulf you, I’m sure
All that appears before your eyes is a message
When I was small there were gods
And everyday they sent me their love
Deep in my heart a precious box
Long forgotten the time to open it is now
In a garden where the rain has stopped the faint fragrance of gardenias
Let their gentleness engulf you, I’m sure
All that appears before your eyes is a message”
“Hey, Let’s Go”
Along The Path of the Wind
Let’s ride the Cat Bus
Together, to meet and cuddle
Our dear Neighbour Totoro
GHIBLILANE is more than just a concert of precious music. It’s our collective play. Our reflections on our memories, our world, our before and after. Our love for Strangers. It’s a guided journey to make a physical time capsule.
Each person will find a secrete envelope. A unique message. Instructions to create Miyazaki’s magical world together with us. We will write, we will read, we will listen and feel and pay attention.
Even in a socially distanced space, we can find connection in a deeply powerful and touching way.
This is our promise.
See you soon,
<3
Kiki, Totoro, and Chihiro
