Shuji Terayama – the avant garde film-maker, poet, essayist and counter-cultural provocateur – was a devotee of the racing track. He briefly owned a racing horse and contributed a regular column on the gee-gees to a national paper. In 1973, he appeared in a TV commercial for the Japan Central Racing Association, reciting some lines of his own invention. My translation is below.
We will be talking about Terayama at the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation’s Japan House in London on May 30th. See the details here.
Seagulls learn their song while flying. Life is growing older while playing.
Play is like a second life.
In play you can experience losing in a way that would be impossible in real life.
Every person contains this theatre. In it are comedy and tragedy, meetings and farewells.
You can be the main character and a member of the audience at the same time.
Anybody can have two lives. That’s what playing shows us.