Your Melody Refreshement Today: Beautiful Things Remix – Kenichiro Nishihara
This is a special column of stories, only featured and originally published here on my website.
Stories that never really happen. Not here on earth.
But stories that truly do happen. Far away on Planet xxx041.
— Right in my fantasy. Embroidered with reluctant wording. Wrapping imaginary non-sense inside.
I take pictures wherever I travel.
Some are posted in blogs, others ending up on social media to win likes. While I mercilessly throw those sequential pixels from device to device, adding filters that are able to reluctantly fill a stormy day with overwhelming sunlight, something’s missing, since images are not going to tell.
The rainbow I saw on the Ottawa River never talks about the hush and heavy rain before its advent.
The 1:38 AM beam projected on Göteborg Central Station never talks about the McFluffy I got from the only open McDonal’s in its neighbourhood.
The chicken and salmon burger I had in Hungry Dane, Copenhagen never talks about how I’m regretful that I didn’t tell the waiter/chef that the burger was indeed tasty, as was called “the best burger” in that city.
The intro page to “Museum of Illusions” in Vilnius never helps me to apologize for not showing up at the annual light show that night.
The architecture of two tangled hands in Hiroshima never reveals my gratitude and honor to be part of the great international peace project and how much I miss everyone devoted to the cause of peace as youths with different nationalities.
The Freedom Monument in Riga never shows any sign of my injured feet as I walked through the entire city the whole day.
The sneaky photos of some Soviet-Time jokes never tell that I did resonate with the burgeoning country for the highly similar experiences we shared in the past.
The hot chocolate in Fulgen, Oslo never knows about my slipping and falling over the frozen road on my way to see it.
The beautiful snowy tops on mountains and stunning beauty of fjords in Bergen never disclose about my suffer from cold sores generously granted by the Norwegian chill.
The breathtaking night view over Brussels on the flight never knows how late my Leuven homies waited for my delayed arrival, or how considerate they were to have accompanied back to accommodation at 11:53 pm.
The clip of my daily commute train in Edmonton is never able to contain all those unforgettably fabulous moments I had at Alberta Phonetics Lab, as an impotent and trouble-making intern who’s luckily favoured by the kindness of all the other members.
I take pictures in order to, at least trying to, always keep my memories fresh and ready to tell.
Memories are the priceless treasure that makes me who I am, in a way someone else might censure as “being restricted to the past”. I’m not the type of human that easily let go, which I am sometimes bothered by but would always take pride in. Based on the universal rule of mutuality, as someone becomes part of and generously impacts my life, I am silently engaged in theirs as well.
However, this is too extensive a mission that the single medium of images might find hard to fulfill. Images are static, blind, distorting and quite forgetful.
So starting today, I will write stories for the places that I imprint my existence in.
Stories that may not actually match the reality, but are inclusive enough to visualize, in a literary way, my feelings about the cities, the cultures and who I am when I hurried by as an anonymous nobody.
NOBODY here on Planet Earth.
But almost EVERYBODY out there on my Planet xxx041.
Most significantly, despite the virtuality of such stories, always feel free to let me know if there’s anything inappropriate in both choices of vocabulary and the storylines.
Thanks for reading, for now and in the future.