The echoes that I am still hearing
I listen to carefully, holding them close —
The sound of waves
That keep coming near and drawing back
To the shore of my faded memories
Purposeless, we were born and fell
Within hundreds of millions of lives
You and I managed to meet
Water droplets, tears overflow and spill in the middle of eternity
I will not turn my eyes away
That transparent smile of yours
Kept the undying flame at the bottom of my heart lit
Rather than an unending story
I want to shoot through this moment
And in this place
Exist with you
Even now, the landscape goes on flowing;
Like a darkness to cut out the light
You take the shape of me
Within the Gemini of eternity
.
NOTES / INTERPRETATION:
Thoughts. Certain lines in this song match those in GEMINI-0-eternal, tying the suite together. One particularly interesting thing to note about this suite (and the album it is named after) is that they pronounce the final vowel of “gemini” as “ee” whereas in English, we’d pronounce it as “eye”. Given that in the final line of these lyrics, “gemini” was written in Japanese, we get a further bit of wordplay when we translate it into English by thinking of the word in its English pronunciation as sounding out the phrase “gem-in-eye”. If the eyes are the window to the soul (as the expression goes), then perhaps you can imagine both the speaker and the “you” as gems in eachother’s eyes. Or as a gem made whole in their shared eye. Not that the I and the U are corporeal by this point… it’s such a richly painted image over the darkly warm denouement of the song.
You may also have thought to yourself “why not just write love?” when you first saw the title of the song. It most likely wasn’t a simple whim! SHOU (and Saga) are huge LUNA SEA fans and “Luv U” is a song off their album STYLE. Isn’t it interesting that the title of that song incorporates a “U” as well?
The imagery of waves coming near and drawing back from the shore of faded memories is so poignant, especially considering the “Entr’acte” in the middle of the album — an interlude of a track that presages the conclusion of the album that even ties back to the beach of the beautiful name, and now to that of Grace as well. The echoes of Entr’acte ripple through the latter half of the album and beyond.
And this song? This suite is like a novel, musical take on a creation myth for the Gemini constellation.
To this day and beyond, beloved by listeners.
.
アリス九號. ★ ALICE NINE.
GEMINI-II-the luv
GEMINI (2011)
17th THEATRE (2021)
Lyrics by 将/SHOU
Music by 沙我/Saga
Original text translated from Japanese.
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