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[title]Whether you’ve seen her on a festival stage, in Netflix’s First Love, Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days, in the just-released art book Ebizazen or a viral vegetable-dance video, chances are you’ve been captivated by Aoi Yamada’s creative range at some point over the past few years. The Nagano-born multihyphenate appears to be wearing so many hats, we couldn’t help but wonder how she stays on balance.
Just fine, she says (and demonstrates as much on our cover). We caught up with Yamada in between yoga poses to uncover her wellness secrets – and learned how deep her bond with veggies truly goes.
How do you start your day?
I have two indispensable habits: running – usually in my local park – and making my lunch bento. I find running incredibly calming and energising. It helps me stay aware of my body, how it gets warm and tires.
When I’m running, I often think like, ‘I want to stop, this is hard’. But I don’t – I push a little further, and that makes me feel like I’m growing, little by little, like a tree or the grass.
When do you feel most alive?
When I sense the warmth of the sun, hear the sound of the wind, and birds singing. When I’m troubled by something, the world around me gets shut out, but when I’m in a good mood, I can take it all in.
I’ve always wanted to become a tree or a flower. A vegetable would be fine too. A living thing that can grow without breaking, swaying with whatever flow nature brings. Just the other day, I harvested some zucchini and eggplant in my garden, and when I ate them I thought, ‘I want to be like these guys’.
You know, those tiny seedlings I had planted had grown so big and splendid, and then nourished me in turn. Vegetables are such powerful forms of life, and I aspire to be more like them.
You’ll be appearing as (Yamada and Tuki Takamura’s performance duo) Aoi Tuki at Ringo Music Fest in Matsumoto again this year. What can we expect from the show?
The venue is really close to the house where I was born and raised, and where my grandmother still lives. I’d like to give a performance that makes each person watching feel that their story, the story of where they come from, is something truly irreplaceable.
Ringo Music Fest takes place September 26–27 at Alps Park in Matsumoto, Nagano. Follow Aoi Yamada @aoiyamada0624.