Friday, March 28, 2014

Hidemi’s Rambling No.510

It took my partner and I the whole past year to put together a book by selecting stories about my family from ‘Hidemi’s Rambling’, writing some new stories and re-editing them. When the book was close to go on sale, my partner found out about Amazon Breakthrough Award and was lured on to an entry for it. His excitement about it was caused by a $50,000 advance for the winner. There were several qualifications for the entry. Firstly, it had to be fiction. Secondly, no selection or collection from what had been already published was allowed. Lastly, it’s author had to be one person. We pondered a lot and came to the reluctant conclusion that we regarded our book as an “I” novel although everything written in there was what really happened. Also, we decided to stop the publication of our existing ‘Hidemi’s Rambling’ e-books at Kindle. We cleared the two qualifications, but the last one was a toughie. Since we had published everything in the name of 88th Planet that is a unit name, we needed to change the author name to my name, Hidemi Woods. That drew an argument between us over who wrote the stories. They were mixed with what I wrote on my own from the beginning to the end, and what my partner chose interesting experiences of mine, wrote down outlines in Japanese, and then I constructed them to the whole story in English by adding details. Considering his involvement, it wasn’t fair to eliminate his name from the author. To make it consistent, we also considered using my name for our music in place of the unit name. We had been talking about it seriously for a few weeks. Ridiculously enough, we even talked about how we would split the prize money of $50,000. I had been moping for the demise of ‘Hidemi’s Rambling’ e-books even though they hardly sold. When we settled on Hidemi Woods for the author name and everything for the entry was prepared at last, my partner found out that there was a length qualification. Our book was simply too short for the entry. We were brought back to our senses and gave up the entry. I regretted our useless deliberations and felt disappointed about losing $50,000 that we wouldn’t have won even if we had entered the competition. The funniest thing was our desperate attitude toward a blog that we had started as a break from music in the first place. Our e-books are on sale as before and the new book has been published, as non-fiction, but in the name of Hidemi Woods like a relic of the foolish fuss…

Friday, March 21, 2014

Hidemi’s Rambling No.509

My long-awaited first appearance on the stage drew unwelcome laughter in the school play but I had been absorbed in my role as an evil stepmother too much to care about the audience’s wrong response. A hush fell over them quickly and tension of the play was conveyed to them as the play went on. They even screamed in the scene that I slapped hard the heroine on the cheek. When I killed her near the end, I heard them raise an outcry. The play was a big success. It was part of entertainment in a welcome party for new students. Since the school had both junior high and high school, the drama club had two performances on that day for each school. While I was cast in both performances, the heroine was double-cast. My favorite senior member of the club played it in the first performance and every scene with her went so well probably because chemistry between us was right. Especially when I slapped her, it produced an ideal loud whack. Miss Fujiwara, who had snatched a role away from me months before, was the heroine for the second performance. She asked me to slap her just as I did to another heroine. She was envious of the dramatic scene we had created. Unfortunately, she overacted the scene and my slapping made a dull thud. I knew it would go that way considering our bad chemistry. Or maybe my hand hit her too hard by carrying my bad feelings toward her. After the play, the teacher in charge of the drama club ran up to me and proudly proclaimed, “A star is born!” He introduced me to his colleagues as a new star in the drama club. I gained a weird celebrity status at school. Every time students spotted me, they would shout abuse at me for what I had done in the play, or they would try to avoid me because they were scared of me. It seemed I acted the role so well that they believed I was a naturally vicious person off the stage. When a play was a hit in the welcome party, usually there would be a large number of new comers for the club. But that year, only few joined, because there was a rumor that I was a relentless evil senior in the club. I actually had had a hard time getting out of the character I played. I had been in an intensive interpretation and couldn’t remove the character. I unintentionally acted the evil stepmother when I needed to read out something in class. And sadly, as the role was too fit for me, I got typecast ever since. My role was either old, evil, or both, play after play…

Friday, March 14, 2014

Hidemi’s Rambling No.508

As the school play of the drama club approached, I had prepared for my first role vigorously. Once I remembered all the lines, acting itself actually felt much easier than the backstage work I had done for three years. The difficult part was timing for some action. In one scene, I threw a bowl at the heroine but she had to show her back to me when it happened. I sat with my back to her and couldn’t see her positions. We made the sound of her knees tapping the stage floor a signal that she had turned her back to me. Because the sound was so subtle, I was afraid of missing it. Near the end of the play, an evil stepmother, who was played by me, killed a heroine with a poker. It was a custom of the club that the club members would visit a shrine together to pray for safety before the play if it had a murder scene. We did that after school, with me standing right in front of the altar because I was the murderer. Now, I had everything ready for my first play, and the day had come. Since it was a Japanese period play, I had borrowed kimono from my grandmother as my costume. My role was an old woman and I drew lines on my face and sprinkled talcum powder over my hair. While I was waiting for the play to start in the wings, I got tensed up and my hands began to tremble. There’s an old trick in Japanese show business, that tracing a Chinese character that means ‘human’ on a palm with a finger three times and pretending to swallow it removes tension when you’re nervous. I threw myself on the trick but it didn’t work at all. Suddenly I lost self-confidence and told one of the juniors that I was so nervous. Although she would also appear in the play as a bit part, she was surprisingly calm. She suggested the trick placidly and said that she couldn’t help me because she had never been nervous in her entire life. As I doubted if she was a human being, the play started. Following a heroine’s monologue, the curtain was raised and I was standing in the center of the stage. The unexpected happened: before I uttered a word, the hall got engulfed in an explosion of laughter. The audience burst out laughing at the scene in which a stumpy girl was standing with old makeup. Although the play was a serious drama, my first ever appearance was laughed away…

Friday, March 7, 2014

Hidemi’s Rambling No.507

At long last, I got my first role in a school play at the drama club when I was a freshman in high school. It took me three years to get it as a member of the club. Since many senior members had quit for some reason and I had been in a higher position by then for casting that had the seniority system, my role was quite big. It was a villain in a Japanese period piece, who tormented her pretty stepdaughter and killed her. I was the evil stepmother of a heroine, which was played by the same Miss Fujiwara who had taken a role away from me by one vote in the last play. My mistake of not voting for myself made her one step senior to me and yielded bigger consequences as time went on. Now she was a heroine and I was a wicked old woman. Nonetheless, I was absorbed in interpretation and rehearsals now that I got what I had been craving for three years. I tried to think and live like an evil person for the interpretation every day. Acting evil was easy for me: I’m used to picking on my little sister and besides, an object of my bullying was Miss Fujiwara. Hatred toward her was naturally transfused into my acting and I blew steam off by yelling at her, hitting her and killing her on the stage in every rehearsal. The retired senior members of the club sometimes came to observe rehearsals. My character went mad in the end of the play and it was told by the narration. They admired my acting and suggested adding the scene for me instead of the narration. I was so honored and acted the madness intensely when they wanted me to try. While I was satisfied with my acting, the scene was cut and back to the narration. Probably I overacted it and was too distasteful to watch…