Lovely Sonny Rollins


I had a chance to meet him in person to interview him a few days ago. We were going to do it the ordinary way which the interviewer asks questions, I interpret them, have the interviewee answer them and then I interpret them back to the interviewer. But we only had 10 minutes for the interview and 5 minutes for a photo shoot. They originally gave us 20-25 minutes but the Japanese national television crew, who interviewed him before us, stole our 10 minutes! Very rude!! Typical "we-are-bigger-than-you" attitude!! Hey, that's one of the reasons why I don't watch your channel.

Anyway, the TV crew let us see their shooting. I felt a bit like spying on them but it was interesting to see it at the same time. Totally different from how we usually do an interview for magazines. I mean, I know they need a pause between dialogues to be able to edit it later to fit in a programme but that actually loses the comfortable tempo of conversation. I thought like, "Haha, I can make it a better, more fun conversation." :p

As I mentioned above, we only had 10 minutes. I instinctively decided to do it myself with selected questions from the interviewer written on paper. And I had to make sure all the questions should be different from what the TV interviewers had asked. I successfully did it and noticed Sonny actually spoke faster, more like normal speed of how he usually speaks. Oh yeah, that's how my interview should go!

Sonny, who just turned 80 years, said, " I recently learned new philosophy. Which is, I can't change the world but I can change myself. So I want to be better. It took me 80 years to realise that." And he smiled. He has become to think like that after 9.11 when he saw the attacked buildings collapse from his house which was 6 blocks away from them.

"Wanting to be better" --- it's simple but very hard to keep trying. We often get tired, give up trying to be better and just stay as who we already are, right? This new philosophy of his is very inspiring to me. I still don't know precisely how or what to make me a better person but feel it will come to me as long as I keep trying to be better for myself as well as for those who I love. Thank you, Sonny!!

Meanwhile, it seems me that my virtual romance days with good-looking guys on TV will come to an end soon. At last! I see the real thing getting closer to me right now. Or maybe an illusion? No, I hope not! But what really surprised me this morning is this...


I was about to cut off the morning glory I got seeds of from my fellow editor Tsujii-kun 4 months ago because no flower came out during the summer. But this morning, already in October, the first flower starts to bloom. Don't you think it's a sign of something good? I do! And I want to believe so, too. We'll see ;)

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