The intensity of life.

In yesterday's 'listen.', after listening for 15 minutes, I couldn't help but say, 'Beautiful!'

From the speaker's perspective, it was just 15 minutes of talking.
But to me, it felt like a dive, much like the movie 'The Big Blue'.

While precisely sensing their own feelings, they circled through several scenes from the past, moving like a pendulum, tracing a spiral, yet diving straight down. Their form, as they placed words precisely, immediately discarding them with an 'no, that's not it,' and resolutely moving forward, was like that of a swimmer.

Perhaps it was while following those words that I thought about how everyone has a world with different settings before them, and I reflected on the enormity of the 'ordinariness' of a person trying to live with all the energy they can muster.

'The next 15 minutes are your time.'
The 'Mijikan' (un-two-view) session held in 'listen.' begins with this declaration.

In that instant, a void appears, and eventually, words emerge. Since I haven't told them what to talk about beforehand, nor have I asked to hear anything specific, the first voice resonates in a completely empty space.

The next voice follows that one, and the narrative builds in layers. The events and elements that appear there are completely different for each person. It may sound like I'm stating the obvious, but I think this is an extraordinary thing.

What that person is interested in at that moment, and what they decide to put into words—that crystallization is these 15 minutes. Yesterday, they said it 'went by fast,' but some people talk in the blink of an eye, while others talk in a swaying, drifting manner. Even that sense of time is up to the individual.

Feeling that 'listening is intense!', I wrote this article,

and I decided to hold this meeting with Kumiko Yoshihashi, who read it,

but perhaps the intensity of listening is actually the intensity of the life that each person lives.

That intensity, which usually doesn't surface in the exchange of words, might become vividly apparent in a 'Mijikan' session, where one spends 15 minutes as if holding their breath and diving.