John M. Ford passed away today. Possibly my favorite SF author; certainly the best I’ve read. I’m sad that he died so young (49), that I never got to meet him, but most of all, for all the stories he never got to write and I never got to read. Which is selfish, but true. I was going to write something about all of my favorite stories of his, only to remember that I already did so, two years ago, practically eulogizing him in life. At that point, however, he hadn’t yet contributed to the fantastic Infernokrusher manifesto. And I neglected to link his poem 110 Stories, which is probably the best writing I’ve seen in response to September 11.

He will be missed, by myself and many others.

I would like to thank Apple’s designers for making manifest the future I was promised as a child. I would be happy to wear any additional computers companies care to design for me.

After writing about Cocco herself, anything I say about the concerts will seem anticlimactic–a rote recitation of events without the why. The why was Cocco.

The first evening, in Kobe, my friend and I were seated about 15 rows back. This show was the more melancholy of the two, and the set list reflected that: she played Raining, as well as Rainbow, my forced-to-choose-at-gunpoint favorite Cocco song. She brought out a cardboard box with a “?” on the side and proclaimed that she had made this box to choose a song randomly each concert–but tonight she didn’t want to use it; tonight she wanted to play Rainbow. My friend and I went nuts–despite being one of her best songs, Rainbow was released as a post-final-album B-side and never properly collected, and thus occupies a position of partial apocrypha within Cocco’s discography.

Cocco’s live band (and studio band for the past two albums) are Dr. Strange Love, who really rock and really elevate all of her material, old and new, to a higher level. I hope that there’s a live CD or DVD of this tour, as the studio recordings of the new album, in retrospect, seem somewhat lifeless when compared to the tour arrangements; conceptual sketches of the tour’s full realizations.

The highlight of the first show was when Cocco wrote a song live on stage. She told the audience that she had written a song while walking around Kobe and wanted to try it out, then took a piece of paper from out of her shirt and said, “haha, it’s soaked.” She warned the audience that they might want to sit down because this could take a while, then turned around to the band and started singing a capella. This was not staged; the expressions on the band members’ faces made it clear that this was not what we had planned, but they took it in stride and started frantically scribbling down notes and chord progressions and working through the transitions. After about 15 minutes, Cocco turned around to the audience, said “let’s try it for real!” They did, and it was pretty great. As wonderful as it is to see your favorite artist perform, seeing them create is that much more astonishing.

The second evening, in Osaka, Cocco was in much higher spirits. My friend and I also had much better seats–first row, about six seats left of dead center. Which just goes to show: money can buy happiness, and it’s sold on Yahoo! Auctions. Huge thanks to my friends Brian and Colin, who handled the domestic furikomi (money transfers) that made my fanboy dreams come true.

As great as the first night was, the second was even better–being 12 feet away from the band has a way of making everything larger-than-life, and being close enough to hear Cocco’s voice unamplified and see every facial expression? Instead of watching and listening to Cocco perform live, we were living it. If you ever have a chance to see your favorite artist perform live, I strongly recommend you do so from the first row. The experience is quite unparalleled.

She played the song that she had written in Kobe again, and this time it absolutely rocked–having an extra day to polish it had changed it from a surprisingly good thought-experiment into a completely real song. Once the song had finished, she announced, “that was the song I wrote yesterday,” *reaches into shirt*, “here’s the one I wrote today.” The band went all bug-eyed again, but such are the hazards of having Cocco at your helm. This one was a jazzy number in English, and Cocco kept trying to communicate the bassline through emphatic sashaying. The bassist got it eventually. In all, there were four new songs across two evenings, and a future album is all but assured. Thankfully, the fears I had that Cocco would retreat into re-retirement after the tour appear unfounded.

The band definitely noticed the two white guys in the front row, especially as our enthusiasm far exceeded that of the standard-issue sleepwalking Japanese crowd. Cocco gave us some surreptitious glances during her English songs. (About 1-2 songs per album are in English, thanks to her Okinawan roots; her English is slightly awkward, but perfectly conversational.) Best of all, our combined “THANK YOU!” as she left the stage fetched us one of Cocco’s patented shrieking giggles.

So, yeah. The trip was more than two great concerts; it was, frankly, life-affirming. I almost didn’t go at all: the trip was short, expensive, and foolish, and I had neither the time nor the money. But I learned that if your dreams aren’t ridiculous, then they aren’t dreams at all; they’re just expectations, filled automatically by life’s gears turning. Other people might think that going to Japan for two concerts in three days is ridiculous, but other people can go to Hell. Your dreams are yours and you must protect them, because no one else will do it for you.