My blogging friend Deacon Greg Kandra, whom I sent the video and back story to, posted it on his blog The Deacon's Bench. You may have seen it and enjoyed it there.
I, of course, can't speak a lick of Japanese beyond "yes" and "hello," so I have no idea what the lyrics, that the singer/leader Genki Sudo is warbling here, mean. I only know that this tune is stuck in my head, and I like it.
I also like the visual performance— alot! To me, see, this is performance art of a very high caliber. Though Sudo's group, called World Order, is labeled as being a part of "popular culture," I can't help but look at their art through the lens of Catholicism, and from a contrarian perspective as a result. You see, this is how I look at everything now.
The Lenten season, you know, is right around the corner, and another blogging friend, Elizabeth Scalia, manager of the Catholic Portal at the website Patheos, announced that to help us prepare for Lent, a new columnist has come on board there. It is Fr. Dwight Longenecker, who will be posting twice weekly under the heading Slubgrip Instructs. The posts (I believe) will be based on Fr. Dwight's book entitled The Gargoyle Code, which is inspired by author C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters, but modernized and specifically adapted for Catholics.
Blogger Eric Sammons reviewed Fr. D's book over at his blog last year. The first installment at Patheos is up and it is about "the purpose of popular culture." I suggest you go read it just like I would recommend that you read The Art of War, by Sun Tzu. But I also suggest that you approach popular culture from what military strategist B.H. Liddell Hart called "the indirect approach." I call it viewing popular culture from an oblique perspective. Here is what I mean.
View and enjoy the video below by Sudo's group. Shot in Tokyo with five dancers, notice how most of the adults ignore Sudo & Company. The adults are very focused on "adult stuff" almost to the point that they don't even see Sudo & the gang. While you are watching, notice too how the children notice and interact altogether differently with the group than the adults do. Have a look,
Uh-huh, the city is loud! Did you see the difference in the way the children and adults interacted with the artists? Here is another song by World Order, again shot in Tokyo, but with seven performers. Note the children vs. adult behaviors again,
Isn't that great? Did you see the children on the playground? What joy, what fun, what joie de vivre! I especially enjoyed when the performers all lined up behind Sudo, and all you could see were the hands, or heads of the others. And then an adult came in and threw the light switch on. Exit stage right!
So what are you getting at Frank? Oh nothing, really, except while watching the children in these videos, obliquely you see, these words popped into my head over and over again,
Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:3-4)
Do you see now what I see? Now you can go and read Fr. Dwight's post with the mindset of the guerilla cultural warrior that you are called to be.
