“Serving Maximum Sentences”
by Hanna
I’ve been loving this song since I first heard it in late February for the first time. It reminds me of all the amazing Noh masks of the Mitsui collection (the former Kongo collection). The masks are no longer used on stage, only displayed in glass cases once a year at the Mitsui Museum. Locked in the museum, the nuances of their beauty are imperceivable, because no master performer may elicit the subtle expressions carefully carved into the faces.
But the song isn’t about museum objects that aren’t being put to their intended use. It’s about an unfeeling coldness in a museum, where lifeless images surround the visitor and where an unnatural feeling of permanence pervades.
