Published on April 18, 2019.
Through an encounter with Ernesto Cortazar’s piano music, this piece reflects on memories of illness, blood transfusions and hospital life, the support found in George Harrison’s music, and heartfelt prayers offered to Rikako Ikee and Rika Kihira.
It is a deeply grateful and reflective essay showing how music can purify the heart and restore the strength to live.

2019-04-18
Ernesto Cortazar is a truly precious gift from YouTube Music, the music division of the largest library in human history.
Ernesto Cortazar is a truly precious gift from YouTube Music, the music division of the largest library in human history.
The piece through which I first realized his greatness… one of my friends, who is also one of the most devoted readers I know, was likewise moved by it… but I decided not to upload that one… it felt the same as not telling people about the restaurant you truly love most.
But if it were to be given to Rikako Ikee, who is now fighting illness, what then… yes, that would be all right… it was that kind of piece we spoke about.
Last night I tried playing it while eating dinner… as expected… through SONY’s audio system.
But that piece was not quite right for dinner.
So I searched for some of his other recordings, and what came up was this one.
What an astonishing resonance!
This is the finest version of this piece.
Even though I was in the middle of dinner… I could not hold back my sobbing.
This morning, when I told that same close friend about it… I said, I am thinking of giving this one instead… but… and explained what had happened last night… he said, no, shedding tears, letting tears flow, is a good thing… because it purifies the heart.
Indeed….
There is no need to fear that it will worsen one’s condition, even if it may help improve it.
Certainly….
In my case, unlike Ms. Ikee, at first the medicine worked so poorly that my attending doctor was worried….
For Ms. Ikee, the medicine worked intensely from the very beginning… thousands of times harder than she had imagined… indescribable headaches, nausea, severe stomatitis so painful that she could not even chew food… all the side effects appeared at once….
Because the medicine worked poorly for me and only gradually began to take effect, the side effects were not as intense as they were for Ms. Ikee… but I still vividly remember the patients I saw on the ward floors and in the rooms of Saiseikai Hospital, where I was first admitted… patients in whom the side effects had appeared with brutal clarity.
As for me… after several much-appreciated blood transfusions and the like… and thanks to the wonderful doctors and nurses, when I was moving toward complete remission….
At the time of the IV drips, together with the stand….
What the IV stand makes me remember is Tom Hanks’s performance of a lifetime….
He and Denzel Washington alike delivered performances of terrifying intensity….
While listening to an aria sung by Maria Callas… ♬ I am love, I am life.
I descended to this earth to bring peace… ♬, Tom Hanks hummed the melody and explained the meaning of the song, while Washington listened with his eyes wide open.
As I walked the thankfully spacious circular corridor of Kitano Hospital… what I was listening to was… for some reason, a song by George Harrison….
Nothing reached my heart more deeply than the last songs he wrote while fighting the brain tumor with which he had been afflicted.
Among them, Marwa Blues….
The other day, when I read that Paul McCartney had commented that it was “one of my favorite songs,” I felt very happy.
But now, it is this piece that I offer to Ms. Ikee, who is in the midst of her fight against illness.
With the feelings of all the people in Japan and throughout the world… all those who were moved by your character and by your dedication as you advanced on the path of becoming the world’s greatest swimmer.
To Murasaki Shikibu, to Sei Shonagon… to the more than 2,600 years of Japanese history and culture that gave birth to such greatness….
And I offer it also to Rika Kihira, another flower who, leaving all worldly matters behind, is devoting herself wholly to the path of becoming an absolute queen… the very essence and flower of Japan.
Begin the Beguine Ernesto Cortazar Piano Solo Earth from Satellite