The mystery of art is very much spiritual, being healed through expressing despair, the dark night of the soul, being transformed through healing and sharing the joy of recovery with others. Oe sees prayers in Hikari s intensive concentration on music. In this regard, Simone Weil enlightened Oe s understanding very much. Hikari may not be much good with words, but where music is concerned he has a carefully cultivated ability to concentrate, one that his mother and his teachers have helped him develop but which he himself has also honed by listening to recordings and the radio during almost every waking hour for more than twenty years. The French philosopher Simone Weil has written about this sort of concentration, asking what it is that could link such apparently disparate experiences as study and the love of god , and concluding that the key is in the fact that prayer is a matter of concentration.
Prayer is the directing of all the attention of which the soul is capable toward god .
Thus, in this context, music is prayer for Hikari. Finally, music for Hikari is care for others and response to it. Oe is very much enlightened by Simone Weil in this aspect, too. In the same way I feel the people who have most helped Hikari have approached him with the same enquiry. Among them, for example, are the performers in the concert you re about to hear, each of whom, moreover, has that same ability to concentrate on his or her own discipline.