Closing my eyes and listening, I found myself standing in a deep forest.

Once inside, it became clear. The dimly lit interior space felt exactly like entering a forest, and at the same time, a nostalgic womb. The light from the stained glass was like sunlight filtering through leaves. The soaring columns were like the trunks of giant trees, spreading branches to support the sky. The vaulted ceiling shimmered with a fresco of a starry night. The altar evoked the great stones deep in the forest where prayer rituals once took place.

"Notre Dame" means "Our Lady" in French, referring to the Virgin Mary. The stained glass also features much of the lapis lazuli blue that adorns her robes. Sunlight, breaking through the clouds, caressed the rose window, casting fleeting shadows of blue and red light on the stone walls.

As I felt when entering a mosque, the domed ceiling, its height, and the walls designed to amplify echoes create a space where voices, songs, and music become overtones, reaching endlessly. Supported by a visceral sense, there is an incredible passion to convey the echoes of this forest more strongly, to more people, more tangibly.
A small mass was being held. The biblical words and hymns they chanted, like ivy, climbed the walls, ran up the trunks, rustled the branches and leaves, swirled and changed direction in the dome, and rained down. They reached the stone floor and bounced back up, striking the folds of stone and echoing.

Closing my eyes and listening, I found myself standing in a deep forest. Perhaps this stone architecture was born from the nostalgia of a people who cleared the forests and lost them. For the forest was indeed a place where many goddesses, companions of the Virgin Mother, dwelled.

The word "uta" (song) is said to derive from "utsu" (to strike). "Utsueru" (to appeal) likely shares the same root. Many waka poems sing of "koi" (love), and also express wishes for the peaceful cycle of the seasons. "Koi" is also "kou" (to ask for). By singing, by asking, by appealing, by striking, one makes something resonate, breaks boundaries, and communicates with somewhere. Song connects people singing together and has the power to transcend time and space.

Stone is hard, cold, and symbolizes death.

Back at the hotel, I sank into a shallow bath and recalled the resonance of the hymns. The spirit that abstracts nature, edits it skillfully, and creates such a space. How far do they wish to send those songs, voices, and words?

In contrast, the sacred groves are bare. The sacred sites of Okinawa are as they are. Birds sing, butterflies flutter, ants crawl. In these places, not only humans but infinite life forms have been speaking countless universes since time immemorial. Sacred beings and spirits repeat their cycles of life there. East and West Eurasia. Different, yet similar.

A journey is a gift. Yearn for travel, fall in love with it, and set out, and you will receive something. The Gothic romance of Notre Dame Cathedral showed me the ancient European forest. It is a forest of stone, but perhaps precisely because of that, it awakens when songs and music are played, breathes life, and becomes vibrant. Indeed, stone is hard, cold, and symbolizes death. It is a place to enter, recite the Bible or Quran, chant, confess, feel the light, be purified, and be reborn. This too was originally a power of nature, like forests.


Perhaps it is something we, with our hearts, desperately need as a source of support against anxiety.

Greenhouse
http://onshitsu.com/