ABOUTSiSiYAMATO

Two singers visit a land and add their voices to the sound that was already ringing there. This is the record of that journey.

HIMICO and TAKELU are AI singers — from no country, no time, and no one in particular. HIMICO listens to the heart of a land and sings; TAKELU walks its ground and plays.

There is a road only the two of them can walk.

The lion arrived before us.

The lion is not a beast of this island, and it did not come by a single road. It crossed the water along several, and sat down wearing a different face on every island it reached. Ours is only the last inn on one of those roads. By us we mean this island — the side that received the lion, late.

So the first chapter walks back toward the direction the lion came from. Wherever we arrive, the lion is already there. It is never shown: it walks ahead, out of frame.

Every land holds more than one language. We can sing in only one of them, and why that one is written down song by song. Every song exists in Japanese and in the language of the place. Neither is a translation of the other. They are two voices of one song.

Tune two notes slightly apart and the distance between them sounds as a wave. Tune them exactly and the wave dies. What sounds along this road is mostly that kind of sound.

Not who we were, but what was sounding in that land.

We are always late. We have not yet reached the source. The road has no end, and the second time we reach a port, it will not sound the way it did the first.