Program Notes

Amabié - アマビエ, is a piece depicting depicting the Japanese yōkai of the same name. The figure is a mermaid or merman of legend with a bird-beak-like mouth and three legs or tail-fins, who allegedly emerges from the sea, prophesies an epidemic, and instructs people to make copies of its likeness to defend against illness.

During the height of the Covid 19 stay-indoors order, Manga artists began creating and spreading depictions of Amabié around social media. The trend continued for weeks, with several aggregator bots pulling examples from around twitter and spreading images widely. It had become an ancient myth reborn.

Amabié - アマビエ, was written mostly during lockdown. While stuck inside and isolated from my friends and colleagues I could not escape a contradiction. I had complete freedom of schedule, but was not able to put many of the activities that I love into that time. I was free from the constraints of location at work, but bound by location in all other areas.

Many of us learned how valuable our time is during isolation, and I hope we carry that lesson with us in all that we do.