eudaimonia

After creating p i r o p i r o p i r o QQQ, I felt as though I would never be able to compose a piece that surpassed it. Because of that, I couldn`t write music for a while.
This time, though, I managed to overcome that feeling and complete a new work.

Since I`m also planning to produce and sell my first full-length album CD at this year`s university festival, I hope people from my university will look forward to it. Well, the one who`s looking forward to it the most is me, of course.
All artists are like that. When the`re making announcements about their work, the person who`s secretly the most excited is always the artist themselves. Pretending otherwise acting as if its all for the audience feels childish to me. Every artist is, in a sense, a self-pleasuring artist.

Now, let me get to the point.

Eudaimonia is a Greek term meaning the highest good for human beings, true happiness, or a fully realized way of life.
I titled this new piece using the ancient Greek spelling of eudaimonia.

I created this piece because in our present world crowded with complex social structures, diverse values, and individual variations I believe we must think even more deeply about what that concept means today.

So then: what is true happiness for human beings?
I believe it is not consumeristic happiness.
(I will not state what true happiness is. See below.)

Modern society tends to mistake hedonistic, consumptive satisfactions for happiness: buying what you want, sexual release, getting likes on social media, going to concerts of the artists you idolize, and so on.
But these are fleeting pleasures, nothing more than sensations that evaporate with time.

In this piece, I chose to simply ridicule and criticize people whose philosophy of happiness rests on those foundations though not limited to happiness; mainly on their attachments in general. It`s a light-hearted, genius-level, meaningless, and amusing act.

Criticism itself is a pleasure.
I criticize those who pursue that kind of happiness, someone else criticizes me, and so on citizens full of arrogance and pettiness performing their little unhappy make-believe games, all driven by external attachments.

The song`s title is Eudaimonia, yet it does not attempt to present true happiness.
So why did I write such a meaningless set of lyrics?

Because by criticizing consumptive happiness, I am already indulging in the pleasure of criticism which is itself another form of consumptive happiness. I wanted to express that irony.

And besides, this is a song.
How can releasing a song not be an act of consumptive happiness?

Therefore, if I tried to propose true happiness in this work, it would be nothing but hypocrisy.

To avoid that, I created this irony-soaked piece.