Translation: I'm Sort Of (Haruomi Hosono)

I'm Sort Of is Hosono doing (and dare I say, with all due love, outdoing) The Band. It's one of the best instances of Caramel Mama/Tin Pan Alley ensemble playing that I can think of. And it has lyrics that, what with Hosono's melodies and phrasing, make me weep like a baby. A few of the other songs I've translated reduce me to helpless tears too, but so far they've all been Takashi's... no, I forgot! There are also three of Yukihiro's. In any case, this time it was Haruomi's turn.

The album sequencing is incredible — this song (the second on the album) and The Rose and the Wild Beast (the second to last) are in eerie conversation. Here in A2, Hosono describes the dream that, in B5, he finds himself being rudely woken from. So all the other songs in the middle of Hosono House are just various details of the dream, by which I mean the artistic commune life in Sayama that was so beautiful at its best (Crossing the Winter) but was to run its course come mid-1974 or so. Hosono just seems to have known it early. Or recognized his own restlessness.

But I'm Sort Of and the Rose don't contradict each other. They're not enemies. Because the awakening does not undercut the need or the importance of the dream.

It's clear from the lyrics that what Hosono was desperate to find, at the start of the Sayama era, was a resting place. What he's hoping for, with such disarming and moving passion, is time to quiet down and recover, regroup. But the lyrics don't necessarily suggest that he wants to live that way forever. I mean, he does sing of settling down. But at the end of the chorus that accompanies that last verse, he grants that he only intends to keep quiet for a little while, rather than "from now on and forever," as the Rock-a-Bye, My Baby lyric goes.

But it's the fullness of his determination here that conveys just how hurt and weary he really feels. In that sense, I'm Sort Of reminds me of Golden Slumbers and Carry That Weight (and music gets no more poignant than those two songs, does it? — but there are things equal to them, such as this).

Devendra Banhart wrote a charmingly light and lovely response song — Kantori Ongaku, track A2 on his album Ma — but it's a response song by way of structure and conceit rather than anything thematic; Devendra was simply taken with how the lyrics in Hosono's song are all in Japanese, except for the one phrase, "country music." So he wrote a song that's in English, except for the words "kantori ongaku." Returning the favor, as it were.



:::

How about enjoying the sunshine together a little?

We could sit, drink tea, and talk.

What do you think we should talk about?

Maybe the things that might happen tomorrow

in the land of the rising sun.

And while we're at it, why don't we take a walk?

We could get to our feet

and brush the dirt off the cuffs of our clothes.

And where do you think we should go walking?

Maybe down the gleaming roadways

in the land of the rising sun.

The sunset will shine

in the slush of the road.

It's bound to be quiet

in the red afternoon.

And you know, I'm sort of

expecting I'll laugh.

How about we settle down

right here in this neighborhood?

We could move out of that old place,

come hear live country music.

How about we look for a house painted totally white?

And — just you and me — climb the hill 

to watch the rising sun?

The last of the sunbeams

will be buried in the withered trees.

It's bound to be quiet

in the afternoon at home.

And you know, I'm sort of thinking 

of keeping quiet for a while myself.

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