Idiot King
Apr. 13th, 2004 08:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusToday I've been trying to write a song based on characters by Ken Shimura, the Japanese comedian. His most famous creations are Bakatono, a stupid feudal lord or Idiot King who hangs out in his castle romping with naked women, and Henna Ojisan, a dirty old man who shows no shame when women call the police on him. Instead of breaking down, confessing or apologising, Henna Ojisan responds with a catchy kabuki-style song and dance number advertising himself: how old he is, how disgusting and how cunning.
These characters' sex mania is a good excuse for Shimura to invite nubile young girls onto his show, like Mini-Moni, the only-just-pubescent spin-off from Morning Musume. (They're known as Mo-mus in Japan, by the way. I'm Mo-mas. When I posed in 2002 for a Japanese comedy magazine wearing a pink Mo-mus T shirt, comedian Romanporsche forced me to make the classic Morning Musume gesture, which I can only describe as being the bodily expression of the idea 'I am really cute and about to launch a boomerang in your general direction'. I was haggard and jet-lagged and looked even sillier as an honorary Mo-mus than Shimura does in the pink photo above.)
So I've been trying to write my idea of what Henna Ojisan sings in his song. (I've actually never seen Shimura's TV show. I'm piecing together my own versions from descriptions my Japanese flatmate Ayako is giving me and from research on the web.) It's a song about being an old man, a song about lust and its idiocy, and it may involve elixirs and a character of my own invention called the Corkscrew King.
I've been meaning to write a song about an old man for a while. In the back of my mind is Yeats' poem Sailing to Byzantium:
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress
Obviously, being increasingly old and disgraceful myself, I'm attracted to the subject. But physical impairment is getting in the way. Unlike Yeats' old men, I can't 'sing, and louder sing'. A week in headphones, playing my mixes over and over, has left my ears so battered and raw that any exposure to loud music brings me out in a fever and makes me feel dizzy and sick. It's a kind of Ludovico's Treatment. Like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, I can't listen to Beethoven -- or any music -- without feeling ill. I'm going to have to take a few days off to let my ears recover. The 'Henna Ojisan' song will have to wait. I'm not as young as I was last week, you know.
These characters' sex mania is a good excuse for Shimura to invite nubile young girls onto his show, like Mini-Moni, the only-just-pubescent spin-off from Morning Musume. (They're known as Mo-mus in Japan, by the way. I'm Mo-mas. When I posed in 2002 for a Japanese comedy magazine wearing a pink Mo-mus T shirt, comedian Romanporsche forced me to make the classic Morning Musume gesture, which I can only describe as being the bodily expression of the idea 'I am really cute and about to launch a boomerang in your general direction'. I was haggard and jet-lagged and looked even sillier as an honorary Mo-mus than Shimura does in the pink photo above.)
So I've been trying to write my idea of what Henna Ojisan sings in his song. (I've actually never seen Shimura's TV show. I'm piecing together my own versions from descriptions my Japanese flatmate Ayako is giving me and from research on the web.) It's a song about being an old man, a song about lust and its idiocy, and it may involve elixirs and a character of my own invention called the Corkscrew King.
I've been meaning to write a song about an old man for a while. In the back of my mind is Yeats' poem Sailing to Byzantium:
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress
Obviously, being increasingly old and disgraceful myself, I'm attracted to the subject. But physical impairment is getting in the way. Unlike Yeats' old men, I can't 'sing, and louder sing'. A week in headphones, playing my mixes over and over, has left my ears so battered and raw that any exposure to loud music brings me out in a fever and makes me feel dizzy and sick. It's a kind of Ludovico's Treatment. Like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, I can't listen to Beethoven -- or any music -- without feeling ill. I'm going to have to take a few days off to let my ears recover. The 'Henna Ojisan' song will have to wait. I'm not as young as I was last week, you know.
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Date: 2004-04-13 08:24 pm (UTC)