My songwriting _ “Oh My Buddha” and “I Will Bleed”

Two of my songs in this new album

my songwriting

“Oh My Buddha” and “I Will Bleed,” two songs I co-wrote with Hiroshi Tokieda and Tea, are part of this great album that just came out (October 2017).
“Oh My Buddha” (audio of an earlier reading in the link) is an Asian take on what we often say: “Oh My God,” something that Toshinori Kondo pointed out some time back as what we should be saying as Asians.
And so I imagined what it would have been like to have been married to a great man like Buddha.
It might have not been as wonderful as it might seem.
Tea and I were talking about how fun it would be to write a pop song that was inspired by an Indian theme.
And so this is what we did.
I even rap or read my poem in the recording _ woooh la la !!

OH MY BUDDHA
_ a song about faith, love and other things
By Yuri Kageyama

REPEATING THEME:
My name is Yasodhara
Wife of Buddha
Mother of Rahula
I ride a white elephant
I am Siddharta’s woman

VERSE 1
You took off to find Nirvana
Became a hero for the poor
You just took off one sunny day
And found enlightenment
While I’m stuck in the kitchen
Barefoot and pregnant, alone

(Repeat theme)

VERSE 2
You’ve started a religion
See statues in your likeness
Of gold and bronze and wood
Sitting prim on that lotus
While I’m having your babies
Feeding them, aborting them, alone

(Repeat theme)

VERSE 3
You remember I cooked you breakfast?
So you could go and contemplate
Sitting 49 days under the Bodhi tree
To discover, sacrifice, meditate?
While I’m crying in my misery
Breathing my prayers, alone

(Repeat theme)

REFRAIN
You’re a superstar
I’m a nobody
You live in history
I die unknown
When I awoke
There was no sign of you
When I awoke
There was no sign of you
My universe went up in smoke
My universe went up in smoke
Oh, my Buddha
Oh, my Buddha

I am planning a music video, and I have asked Toshinori “Toshichael” Tani to come up with choreography.
He will dance in the video, which I will film.

“I Will Bleed,” to me, evokes a lot of things _ abortion, miscarriage, birth, heartbeat, love, death.
Love is such a powerful force it is both horrible and awful.
My poem is about that horror, inspired by the double suicides of Chikamatsu, which highlight how the puppets, in death, are able to transcend how miserable, human and lowly they were before that moment of death.
That beauty to me is about the kind of love that crosses boundaries, overcoming racism and other small, discriminatory, confining preconceptions.
It speaks of the potential of our human condition.
I wrote the poem for Hiroshi and Tea.
But it is a poem for all lovers, and the hope love will overcome hate around the world, through the purification of our bleeding.

MY LYRICS FOR A SONG AND MY POEM IN KONCH MAGAZINE

HANDS OF A CLOCK is an R&B song for which I wrote the lyrics for music by Trupti aka Tea and Hiroshi Tokieda _ the same team for I WILL BLEED (featured in the previous post), as well as for “Oh My Buddha.”

HANDS OF A CLOCK is in the January 2016 issue of KONCH magazine, published by Ishmael Reed and edited by Tennessee Reed.

The January 2016 issue of KONCH also published my poem “A Crow’s Request.”

Hands of a Clock
Words by Trupti and Yuri Kageyama
Music by Trupti and Hiroshi Tokieda
Written to be sung by Sybil Thomas in her next album.

Verse 1

Hey, we’ve met before
You say the first night we meet
It feels like a life that’s come around before

Verse 2

Hey, shall we dance?
We’ve met many times in our dreams
I was sure I knew you at first glance

Pre-Chorus

Long before a thing has begun,
We’re tied in a destiny of time
Ticking together as one

Chorus

Like the hands of a clock
We are like the hands of a clock
The world keeps spinning
At every new beginning
We come back around
Like the hands of a clock

Verse 3

Hey, is this reality?
Will this last through the changing times?
‘Coz I am a true believer in eternity

Pre-Chorus

Long before a thing has begun,
We’re tied in a destiny of time
Ticking together as one

Chorus

Like the hands of a clock
We are like the hands of a clock
The world keeps spinning
At every new beginning
We come back around
Like the hands of a clock

Bridge

Seconds Minutes and Hours
Are just ways time stays in a groove
When love has stopped our inner clock
Toward timeless love we will move