The curtain has closed — on fabrication
Dance, dance to the sound of my hands, til the evening
Untie the knot — a corpse
Pivot, go mad to the sound of my hands, present world
Everyone and their mother stares at squares
Discharging both hatred and delight ²
At dawn you woke from a dream;
Just how much of it was real?
Were you to speak of it,
The punchline would be you looking a fool
Yeah, go on and play ³
You fish for trash like a speckled cat
In the nook of a bustling street
You can’t even decide on the colour white or black
Even today, you leave it up to others
If I got drunk, I expect I’d forget
How much I dreamed — and what’s beyond the wall
The electronic phone gambit
Will steal your heart away I guess,
Your happiness and sadness
A drama all laid out in advance ⁴
Yeah, go on and play ³
Everyone and their mother stares at squares
Discharging both hatred and delight ²
With me
At dawn you woke from a dream;
Just how much of it was real?
Were you to speak of it,
The punchline would be you looking a fool
Yeah, go on and play in the electron quarter ³
You existing in this place
Is the one and only beloved reality
.
NOTES / INTERPRETATION:
Blue font indicates text originally written in English in the official booklet.
oo1. Right off the bat, the title of the song is a bit of a game. The title is comprised of a word in Chinese* (my apologies if this is inaccurate — *I know very little about Chinese languages/dialects), and then a romanized Japanese word. Interestingly, though you might assume that the Japanese word was meant as a translation, the two words are different. At least that’s the impression I have gotten, upon doing a bit of research. The word in Chinese* can be read either as a noun or a verb (I treated it as a noun), and means game, often associated with video games. The romanized Japanese word simply means “play” (as in, to press “play”). Thus, I chose to translate the title as it appears above. But it is important to note that the international, digital title of the song is just “ASOBI” (“PLAY”).
oo2. The construction of this set of lines is full of interesting things. For starters, what I chose to translate as “Everyone and their mother” is quite literally “Even a cat and a ladle” in Japanese. It’s an expression that means “everyone, indiscriminately”. There is also a line in the lyrics about a cat fishing for trash, so that little symbolic connection between the disparate lines is interesting (and the translation unfortunately removes it). In any case, the tone of these lines is both darkly comical and somewhat disparaging, so it took me a bit of thinking, but I figured that the English expression “Everyone and their mother” fit the bill.
Next, the word “discharge”, as used here, has a very specific connotation. It does not mean electrical discharge. It has a fluid connotation. Read the lines and let it sink in. I don’t think I need to spell the social commentary out for anyone.
oo3. Quite literally this should be something more along the lines of “Go on, play and play”, however, that doesn’t capture the tone in Japanese quite as well as how I paraphrased it, I think. Given the rest of the lyrics, and the musical tone of the song, I tried to inject a little bit of weariness or resignation into the line. The emotional tone of this song is extremely complicated.
oo4. I chose to paraphrase this with “in advance”, because the term used here can also be translated as “prepared” or “arranged”, which incorporates the idea that things have been planned in advance. With “laid out” (i.e. plans), I just thought the addition of “in advance” was smoother.
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アリス九號. ★ 游戏-ASOBI- → 不夜城エデン (将・2020)
ALICE NINE. – ASOBI | From NIGHTLESS CITY EDEN (Show – 2020)
Original text translated from Japanese.
Listen via your preferred digital platform.