#guignol

A few snapshots with of Guignol with his new and fresh look.

This song is the reason for my existence

| The Mortal- Guignol / PV

Propagande Aarch : /

like klezmer folk punk

or jazz folk punk

or ska folk punk

or hip hop folk punk

(photo: lyrics as printed in the vinyl edition of I Am Mortal)

ギニョル // Guignol

Lyrics: Sakurai Atsushi | Music: Miyo Ken

Un. Deux. . Un. Deux. Trois Celluloid Onnn…one foot A slow and pirouetting music box let’s…dance

Lean back beside the window let’s fall in love Your eyes roll back The moon is turning inside-out^

Why is it…I… don’t understand Love Neither tears nor blood can flow It isn’t…working

Roll up your dress let’s make love My eyes are a desiccating jelly` Lapsing into darkness

Who aaare you Teach me love Hollow eyes Glass jewels Who aaam I Make me dance on Let me dream And also be cut to thousands lullaby I had forgotten completely Grand Guignol Theatre

Un, Deux, Trois, Let us dance Halt time Un, Deux, Trois, Let us dance The same as that day Un, Deux, Trois, Let us dance Stop, O time Un, Deux, Trois, Let us dance Just like that day On one foot…well…

Roll up your dress let’s make love My eyes are a desiccating jelly` Lapsing into darkness

Who aaare you Teach me love Hollow eyes Glass jewels Who aaam I Make me dance on Let me dream And also be cut to thousands

Teach me love Give me a kiss Make me dance on Unto forever lullaby I had forgotten completely Grand Guignol Theatre Well, that concludes it

Finit

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Un. Deux . . Un. Deux. Trois SERUROIDO Kataaa . . ashi de Yukkuri to mawaru ORUGORRU Odori . . masho

Madobe ni motare koi wo shiyou Kimi no hitomi ga gururi Tsuki wa uragaeru yo^

Doushite Ai wo shiranai Wata . . shi wa Namida mo chi mo nagarenai Koware . . teiru

DORESU wo makuri ai wo shiyou Boku no hitomi wa dorori` Yami ni ochiteyuku yo

Anata wa daare Ai wo oshiete Utsuro na hitomi GARASU dama Watashi wa daare Odoraseteite Yume wo misasete Chigirete mo lullaby wasuresarareta GURAN • GINYORU Oshibai

Un, Deux, Trois, Odorou Toki wo tomete Un, Deux, Trois, Odorou Ano hi no mama Un, Deux, Trois, Odorou Toki yo tomare Un, Deux, Trois, Odorou Ano hi no you ni Kata-ashi de . . saa

DORESU wo makuri ai wo shiyou Boku no hitomi wa dorori` Yami ni ochiteyuku yo

Anata wa daare Ai wo oshiete Utsuro na hitomi GARASU dama Watashi wa daare Odoraseteite Yume wo misasete Chigirete mo

Ai wo oshiete Kuchizuke wo shite Odoraseteite Itsumademo lullaby wasuresarareta GURAN • GINYORU Oshibai Oshimai da ne

Oshimai sa

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^ The verb in the second half of this line is a doozy and can mean at least three very vivid, different things- to turn inside out, to defect to a different side/team (aka betrayal), and to give a high pitched cracking voice like a broken falsetto. After spending quite a bit of time on it I sold out and went with the most common usage of the word, but knowing Atsushi he could have very well meant all three. I hope this better colors the understanding of this line (especially considering the context).

` The word "dorori" doesn't have a great english equivalent. It is essentially an onomatopoeia that means something disgustingly sticky and gooey, like sticking your hand in the mystery bowl when you're blindfolded at halloween and someone tells you you're touching guts or eyeballs or brains or something. Because of this I decided to insert 'desiccated' because the vibe is weird enough here to suggest he may well be dead, freshly dead, or half dead, etc. Atsushi is taking a seductive, sexy moment, drawing you in, and then pulling away the curtain to show you you've been lusting over a 4h old corpse.

T/N: Going off the beaten path tonight to do this song from Atsushi's last side project, The Mortal. Atsushi has taken advantage of some unique Japanese character stylizations that don't translate terribly well but that I have tried to preserve and reflect in different ways with italics. It felt like skipping ahead in the textbook doing this one, so I'll probably come back to it whenever I reach this album. This song sees Atsushi using a poetic device I've not seen since 'Chiisana mori no hito' which is the poetic 'yo'. This 'yo' functions rather like the Elizabethan english emphatic 'O', such as 'O Time! O Sea!' that sort of thing. The spacing of the lines is also interesting- some given space, others smushed together (so if they seem that way in places it's because they are). Like slowly unraveling thoughts that someone is still trying to hold together but not doing a very good job of it. But let's talk about the title and where we're at in this song....

Welcome to Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol- a very real theatre spectacle that saw its heyday from the late 1890s until WW1. At the Grand Guignol, guests were treated to short form extreme special-effects horror that specialized in the worst possible thing that could possibly happen to you in real life- grusome rapes, petty murders, rebelling psychiatric patients who kill everyone, slashers, revenges, disfigurement, you name it. It was said to be so graphically depicted on stage and the special effects so realistic that people would vomit, scream, cry, faint, and run from the performances. It was also, apparently, such a turn-on that the theatre kept special box rooms containing small windows beneath the stage that patrons could rent to rent to jack off in or have sex during the performances. Apparently folks got so worked up in said boxes that the performers would sometimes break character to stomp on the floor and tell them to keep it down.

And this, friends, is the world Atsushi has decided to take us to in this song. The line, however, it seems is rather blurred. You begin as a guest watching the 13th Floor With Diana-esque stage show, while also fucking in one of the sex boxes beneath the stage. But something is...not quite right. Your beau seems off.....almost dead- either physically or spiritually (or even both)....suddenly, you are part of the horror play yourself. Suddenly you are the performance. The spectacle of the play, the sex, the over-stimulation, the gory horror shocking everyone there, how can anyone feel anything after all this? Who are we- do we even know each other, in this box? Is it just an anonymous fling? "Teach me love". The viscous eyes staring sightlessly back at you as you fuck. The bloody debauchery concludes. The curtain falls. Oshimai sa. NEXT.

What a charming date night.

EDIT: After reading an interview Atsushi did for this album, it seems he merged the earlier concept of the Guignol (a puppet show archetype) with the later one (ie the theatre), which explains a lot more about what exactly is instinctively wrong about our beau in this song. So *originally* Guignol was a french marionette stock character, much like punch and judy are, who was generally a poor guy who did menial labor but was extremely honorable and always came out on top. So while his job and role and relationships to other stock characters might change from puppet show to puppet show, this was the core basis of him. Atsushi, in this interview, initially stated when asked about this song that it was about "how to make a feelingless doll feel" (so, focusing more on the puppet angle than the stock character itself) but neatly dodged the next question about the Grand Guignol Theatre references with simply "I like that sort of thing lol" which....sir....😂 So I think we may say that that our beau in this song is off because he's a fabricated person (atsushi apparently calls him a doll but let's be real here- considering what's going on in this song that is a stretch of a label at best)- perhaps crafted from the celluloid mentioned at the start, but also, judging by the eyes, organic matter. And this is the Grand Guignol Theatre after all- if this was some sort of frankenstein creation, passable enough as human in the dimly lit shadows of a candlelit theatre house at, say, midnight, but a bit of a gruesome horror up close or if you made the mistake of looking at him a little too long...well, the gross jelly eyes get the idea across well enough. This creature has happened upon the theatre looking to learn about human emotion, and the theatre's antics disguise him perfectly until the horror of him unfolds and the sex box encounter becomes another gory performance piece in and of itself. Atsushi really seems to have gotten to dump all his most favorite toys into the sandbox for this one- insatiable yearning, broken emotions, seduction, sex, slow horror, uncomfortably familiar shock- and a shameful desire to want to do it all over again. He really was in his element with this song. It's definitely become one of my favorites.

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Disclaimers: Please do not use my translations, commentary, or photos without express permission. All photos of lyrics are mine- these are from my own collection, even if potato quality.💗

Source details and larger version.