Studio Ghibli

In a conversation last week, Holing pointed out how I like Studio Ghibli so much lol as I was watching a documentary "The Birth of Studio Ghibli"

I have always thought that places in the movie of Studio Ghibli are real places. Until I recently realized that they aren't, I worked out that even if there are similar places, there might not be Totoro in the forest. But the belief has already been so strongly established, and impossible to discard.

As a forgetful person, I grew up knowing how to sing Totoro's theme song in Japanese, and had never managed to get over the feelings of losing my big grey Totoro.

Later on in my life, I remember spending my afternoons playing songs from Laputa on the broken piano of Martin Hostel, falling IN love with a fictional character from the animation, and painting the streets of Spirited Away. It used to be one of my own favourite drawing, but I have managed to lost it in LPC.

I can't help but wonder if we are all perplexed by the boundary between reality and fantasies? I have vivid memories of being on beibei's car on a stormy summer night - the sound of the thunder fusing with the Howl's moving castle soundtrack...

I live in a room filled with Ghibli's puzzle, sometimes, they discourage me from drawing/illustrating. I have always seen art as a gateway for me to reach my dreams, but those shots struck me, that I could never create something as good, and more importantly, I felt like I didn't have to *visualize* my dreams on paper anymore, as it IS there already. .

There were numerous other moments, one of the first gift I gave to bei bei, was a bear music box, coincidentally symbolic, with the song "Always with me"; one of my favourite gifts that bei bei gave me was the romantic story of Whisper of the Heart. My music boxes from Hokkaido that brings me into the magical forests in my mind....... I once said I didn't need to buy another Totoro doll anymore, "as I have already surpassed that stage of searching for something materialistic" the truth is really just because I can't find that, same one again....