Good-by, My Dear Friends hr685

 Our furniture and appliances have finished being moved into our new apartment. My partner and I were gazing at an array of our musical instruments spread all over the floor in the living room of our empty apartment.
Five synthesizers, two electric guitars, an 88-key MIDI board, two rhythm machines, three sequencers, three sound source modules, many effectors, an 8-track open reel recorder, an 8-track mixer, a 16-track mixer, a drum set and accessories. Those instruments have occupied a large space of our tiny apartment although they haven't been used for over twenty years since a computer became a dominant tool for me to make my music. Today, a person from the used instrument purchase company was coming to our apartment to make an assessment and collect them. The instruments that spent so many years with me were on standby for their last work with a  somewhat tense look.
We shared a lot of memories. It was my custom in my old days to carry several heavy instruments on foot and by train into the studio every time my band practiced and rehearsed. I input data of the arrangement I made for my song on the sequencer by staying up all night and the entire data was all gone in a flash when I tripped on the power cord toward morning that got pulled out of the outlet. Technical difficulties were rampant on the live stage since I used so many kinds of electric instruments connected to each other in place of human band members, such as no sound came out of the sequencer or unexpected sound was produced from the synthesizer, which needless to say horrified me and gave me a cold sweat each time. The instruments felt much heavier on my way home whenever I lost a contest or an audition. We had trodden together on a long, endless road of disappointment and cravings. Though I had already stopped using most of them by the time I moved into this apartment, I brought them anyway by paying costly moving expenses because I was too attached to them to let them go.
For this move, however, I decided not to bring them to my new apartment. I was no longer my past self who had desperately coveted success as a band or had focused too much on writing songs and recording them without sleep until I harmed my health. As I grew older and accumulated more experiences, I came to understand things and be mature. That helped me sort out my feelings. I felt it was time to take the next step of my life, thus time to leave my instruments.
Looking back, not all the memories we shared were bitter. There were fond memories as well. An extremely hopeful feeling that I had when I got a new instrument with all the money I saved by working for months on my part-time job. An indescribable satisfaction I obtained when I got the best take after redid recording hundreds of times. Heavenly bliss I felt when I listened to my completed song after a long period of time of making. After all those years, I finally realized how happy I had been and how valuable my experiences were.
The person who came to our apartment from the used instrument purchase company was a young man who undoubtedly wasn't born yet when I bought these instruments. He carefully looked into each of them to decide the price. When he was done, he asked, "Why are you selling them?" My partner replied, "We make music with a computer now and don't use them anymore." Then he said to my partner and me, "It's so wonderful that you have been making music all the way together."
The price he offered was far higher than we had expected. While we didn't have much income from our music no matter how hard we strove with those instruments, they earned a good sum of money for us at the very end. We helped him load the sold instruments onto his van and saw them off. I was a little sad, but somehow refreshed and cleared at the same time. And that made me feel like our new life had just begun.

 

The Gap between the Music Industry and Me hr683

 I used to go to music school and present my songs on the live stage there in the early ’90s. The presentation event was held once a month where the students sang their own songs in front of the renowned music producers and the top artists of the time, who gave their suggestions or impressions of the songs. I tried to seize the opportunity for a break and made a new song every month for the event by writing, arranging and recording the accompaniment until dawn with cutting down on my sleep. Though I was picked as the best of the class and the producers and the artists were impressed at my song on every stage, nothing further ever happened. I had imagined that people in the music business were looking for songs of good quality so that I could sign a contract only if I provided them, which wasn’t how it worked as it turned out.
In those days, my partner with whom I created music together worked part-time as an attraction cast at the theme park which host is the famous mouse. Since our music career hadn’t been going as we had expected, he constantly brooded over his future as a musician. He couldn’t get rid of anxiety out of his mind and felt at a deadlock. One day, too much distress caused him a panic attack during work at the theme park and he suddenly pushed the stop switch without thinking. His operational error made the entire attraction aborted and the guests had to leave the attraction. Fortunately the matter was settled by submitting a letter of apology and he was spared from being fired. Nevertheless, he thought he couldn’t go on with such a mental state of his and quit voluntarily. To recuperate mentally, he was walking for a couple of hours every day and rented a movie at a rental video shop that existed at the time to watch one film per day. Now that he had gotten time to spare, he looked up music producers of Japanese record companies, copied my songs that I presented at the music school on cassette tapes, and sent them out to the producers.
While he had been sending to thirty or forty producers each time I completed a song, some of them contacted us and we had a meeting. In those cases, we were nervous but extremely excited at the same time to picture that this could be a break. We visited the high-rise shining building where the major record company resided and met quite a few producers there. The best meeting for me was with the one who worked for the very band whose songs had been the decisive reason why I became a musician. He told me that the artist of the band of whom I was an avid fan had actually listened to my song and admired it. In another case, a producer even promised to prepare a studio for us to rehearse the recording. After that meeting, my partner and I opened a bottle of champagne at home. The thing was, they would stop contacting us after the meeting without exception. Although all the meetings seemingly went so well, everything stopped right there and no further progress occurred. They never called us again. No matter how excited the producer sounded when we received a call from him, his passion dispersed once we met face to face. It seemed that their sweet offers were only to avoid conflict and end the meeting peacefully. When we called them day after day persistently to ask how things they had promised were going, they were always out. They apparently dodged us. Then I finally learned that it was our looks and uncompromising music business model. What they were looking for was good-looking musicians who would give in to any demand from the producer. On the contrary, we had determined what our working style as musicians should be and expressed we had no intention to change that, while my partner wasn’t handsome and I wasn’t pretty. No matter how good our music was, they regarded us as useless the minute they saw we weren’t beautiful puppets whom they needed. I was circling in a tormenting loop where I completed the best song in my life, sent it to producers, had meetings with them, and lost contact.
During those unrewarded years, I had searched for a way to fill the gap between what the music industry wanted and what I wanted. Although I couldn’t find the way, it was a shame to give up because I was confident of my songs’ quality. An unbreakable heavy wall appeared in front of me who had simply thought that making good music would lead to a contract with a major record company. Back then, I was a young musician who had believed making a big hit meant success. Sadly and foolishly, it was decades later that I finally understood the notion like that was all wrong and what success truly meant.

 

Pride or Survival hr680

When I lived in Tokyo in my early twenties, I desperately tried to succeed as a musician while working at a part-time job. Although I had clearly envisioned a plan for success, reality was much more cruel than I had expected and ate into me both physically and mentally. I consumed a large amount of alcohol every night to get rid of stress and exhaustion. I knew it didn’t help as I found in the packed train car one morning on my way to my part-time job that I had left home wearing an unmatched pair of shoes inadvertently.

I abandoned a presupposed secure life for me in which I would take a husband into my family by an arranged marriage, have a child as a next successor to me and live in the family house as the successor until I die when I left home for Tokyo to be a musician. That was the reason why I wasn’t willing to ask for financial help from my grandfather who had been the master of the family that used to be wealthy. I thought I should be on my own if I wanted to live my life. Japanese people’s consensus in those days was that doing what one wanted to do for life was a childish idea since the possibility of financial sustainability in that kind of life was one in a million. Most of them believed that adults should lead a responsible life by standing on their own feet. Doing what they didn’t want to do was the norm for financial independence, and to have a family eventually. That notion had prevailed so deeply that not only my friends but also a stranger who had a chat with me and happened to know I was trying to become a professional musician scolded me and told me to live seriously.

In those unrewarding, exhausting days of my life, I heard about a music school that a renowned Japanese musician newly opened. As a conceited young musician, I thought there was nothing to learn there for me, but I saw it as ties to the Japanese music business because the owner was the best selling, top artist in Japan. Also thinking that it was an opportunity to change my stifling situation, I decided to enroll. Needless to say, I had neither time nor money for the school. To make time, I quit my part-time job. For money, I resorted to my grandfather’s fortune. Although it wasn’t a solution of my liking, or of Japanese society’s common sense for that matter, I no longer had leeway for how I looked to others. My career as a musician had been stuck and nothing went according to my plan. I had been less motivated and drinking more instead. I had been cornered to the point that my choice was either to get financial support for my dream or to die.

The music school where I started to go was like no other ordinary school. It was more like a small salon. It didn’t have classes. Students came to school to present their music. A teacher gave them some advice and an impression. It held a presentation event once a month where students sang their songs on stage in front of the owner famous musician or other top Japanese music producers. In the first presentation I participated in, I was picked as the best. Until then, I had felt other students were my enemies to beat and they had kept me at a distance probably because they sensed how I looked at them. But after that event, their attitude changed. I seemed to have earned their respect and they came to talk to me. I learned they were struggling musicians like myself and we had a lot in common. My attitude toward them softened as well. We even hung out at the family restaurant after school. They were fellow challengers and rivals among whom I tried to be the best in every presentation. As it was held monthly, I completed my song every month, which was an amazing rapid pace for me. It was as if something inside me had woken up. I drank less and less, and lost weight for the monthly stage.

The school brought a drastic change to my life. Driven by a competitive spirit, I was motivated and focused to make music more than ever. I noticed I was breathing. My stifling days were over and I found myself out of darkness.

A Super Drummer Appears! hr676

 

There used to be numerous kinds of music magazines at book stores in the mid-80’s when my partner and I moved to Tokyo to become professional musicians. Those magazines had classified ads on the last few pages to recruit band members. Among them, a magazine called ‘Player’ spared almost more than half the entire contents for the classified ads. In fact, my partner and I ran across each other through one of the ads in that magazine when I still lived in Kyoto.

One of the reasons why we came to Tokyo was that we had thought many good musicians would be found in Tokyo, which would enable us to form a band with professional quality in no time. Finding a good player had been extremely difficult when we played around the kyoto area. We recruited one after another who had never met our standard. In the end, we used a rhythm machine and sequencers in place of human members. It was the time when those gadgets had been just put on the market so that the technology was lamentably primitive. Machine troubles had been our norm in the gigs and we had bitterly learned the limitations of machine members.

Once we moved to Tokyo, we put as many classified ads as possible in the music magazines and met so many musicians. While we repeated test sessions with each candidate in the studio, we couldn’t find good enough members who matched our quest for the ones with high skill and a strong motivation to become professional. We gradually began to think that we had overestimated Tokyo.

On one of those days, we found Mr. Maejima. He was a highly motivated drummer of a bag of bones, who was refined and courteous, a dropout of college from passion for music as I was. In the studio session, he played accurately and delicately, who was the best drummer we had ever come across. He joined us as a band member instantly. We got along so well. We shared not only eagerness for success in music but also even hobbies, which made us closer. He invited us to his home where he lived with his parents. He gave me his old, first drum set that he had gotten by working part time so strenuously when he was a student, and came to my apartment with it to set it up for me. He also gave me a lot of gaming software that he had finished playing. The legendary film ‘Back to the Future’ was first known to us as his best picture. Together we ate out and even went to that famous theme park of the mouse, where I introduced him to the mouse as my band’s drummer. We were on good terms, that was quite rare for my partner and I who had no friends.

As for other members however, we continuously had no luck. We couldn’t find a bassist and a guitarist, and had to compromise with the temporary members to play for gigs and auditions. Those members played awfully in the studio for rehearsal and in the actual gigs. What irritated us most was they would make a big mistake at the important contest of all things and ruin our chance. On top of that, we were caught in a fight with the promoter of the gig who turned out to be a fraud. We were besieged with bad luck and our band had been in hot water for months.

Then at last, Mr. Maejima told us that he wanted to quit the band. My partner and I understood his feeling since a long predicament of the band added to our part time jobs for living had exhausted us as well. We were too dispirited to persuade him to stay. Nevertheless, it was so hard to see an unfailing partner leaving. A leaden heart by his leaving drove us to switch to recording our songs with synthesizers from playing them in a gig. In hindsight, it was a good decision that would work for us well.

A few years later, I received a letter from Mr. Maejima unexpectedly. It said that he had joined a new religious group and worked as a drummer of the group’s band. He suggested that I join it. While I should have felt happy for him, I felt sad instead. The fact that the mainstream of the music scene had no place for such a talented, motivated musician like Mr. Maejima. The reality that a would-be artist with good looks and no talent sold well and was adored. I knew that the world was unfair, but his letter made me realize it anew.

Decades have passed since then, and I have moved around several times. Still, I have a drum set that Mr. Maejima gave me. It’s on active service, only disassembled to components. They are used as containers in my apartment, holding my stuff including passion. 

Montreal hr637

 

I wish I could live in Montreal. That’s the thought which frequently enters my mind. Yet I don’t know why it should be Montreal for myself. As a person who was born and grew up in Japan, I had had only a little vague knowledge of it as an Olympic venue of ancient before until I first visited it. I even didn’t choose it as my travel destination for the city itself. I’m an avid Formula One race fan and had been looking for an alternative race to go to see other than the one held in Japan that was too costly and poorly managed. The circuit with the most convenient access from a downtown hotel was located in Montreal, that was the simple reason I chose to go there and a start of my love for the city.
Twenty hours later after I left my apartment in Tokyo, I got off the airport bus in downtown Montreal past midnight. I was headed with my partner for the hotel I had booked that was a 10-minute walk away. My Japanese acquaintance has once told me that he got mugged in downtown Los Angeles and was robbed of his wallet, shoes, and even a tooth capped with gold. I recalled it and thought I was doing the stupidest thing to walk pulling my big suitcase in a strange city, in the witching hour of night. Then I saw someone while I was waiting for the traffic lights at a quiet crossing. A teen-age girl wearing a mini skirt appeared from nowhere and crossed the street humming merrily and dancing ballet. The sight of her gave me a sense that Montreal might be a safe, relaxing and enjoyable city. And it proved true.
I had lived in Southern California for four years before and I imagined that Montreal was quite alike since it was also in North America. But actually, it turned out to be a totally different place. Virtually everything – people’s appearances, values, the way of living and a cityscape – was far from alike. When I lived in California, I believed that life is a competition and that a happy life can’t be attained without success. I had been all worn up with that belief. My work as a singer-songwriter didn’t go well accordingly and I ended up moving back to Japan for a financial difficulty, broken-heartedly. But Montreal’s beautiful cityscape and its fashionable locals who enjoy life not with caring about money but with a laid-back attitude healed me. I fell in love in this city deeply enough to stay for a long period of time repeatedly.

Photo by Ella Wei on Pexels.com

Of course familiar flaws and problems existed since it’s not heaven. I too much often received a wrong change when shopping. One shop clerk surprised me when he gave me a handful of change without counting. He saw my dubious face and added one more handful of coins. I was also surprised that ordinary-looking people begged for small change. A young woman who seemed to be an ordinary house wife asked me to spare change while she was pushing a stroller with a baby in it. Or a bunch of young decent boys asked for change casually while they were having fun talking and laughing on the street. I glared at them for caution when I passed by, and they apologized to me. It seemed like it was their custom or routine to ask for money in passing. I wondered why they would do so in the city that didn’t look jobless nor degenerate. Come to think of it, I had spotted people idling and just sitting on the steps to an apartment in the daytime so many times. Commute traffic jammed at as early as 4 p.m. which looked so odd to a Japanese in whose country the train around midnight is running full with commuters. While I appreciated the city’s peacefulness with no tension of racism or success, its too-easy-going atmosphere sometimes irritated me. But it was probably too much of a luxury to ask for more. Before I was aware, I wished to settle in Montreal and work on my music there. My wish was to be crushed afterwards however, because reality was harsh.
I remember my happy days in Montreal every time I watch Canadian GP on TV. The city’s skyscrapers over the circuit ask me through the TV screen if I can come back someday. I desperately cheer myself up, telling myself that I can, I want to, I’m supposed to. On one Canada Day in the future, while I’m watching the mega-sized fireworks at the head of the Old Montreal pier with my partner, my eyes will be filled with light and shed tears of joy.

A New Life hr563

I usually watch US TV dramas and movies by recording them on a digital video recorder. As the selection is unbearably limited in Japan, I make up other US programs by getting DVDs. Recently, my DVR hasn’t been in good shape and I needed to come up with a new way to watch US shows. I use a fiber-optic Internet connection at home and it earns points every month. Those points are redeemable for a Hulu subscription and I noticed my accumulated points were worth about six-month free Hulu. I decided to get a Fire Stick TV to watch Hulu on the TV screen and stepped into the Hulu world for the first time. An almost countless, vast numbers of US shows and movies have become available twenty-four seven. It flipped a switch in my brain to an English mode and let me feel as if I lived in US. Rather, I felt as if I lived inside the drama, to be exact. I finally got to watch ‘The Walking Dead’ that wasn’t aired in Japan and I’d been dying for. As I watched two or three episodes per day every day, I thought about the story even while I wasn’t watching it. I’m all jumpy when I walk along the dim hallway of my apartment building every night. Since I live in a remote, rural town, a view from my apartment simply consists of mountains, woods and the sky. Thanks to that and Hulu, I now can forget about being in Japan except for the time I go to the city once a week. I even get the illusion that I successfully escaped from life in Japan without living abroad. It may be possible that I have acquired my desired life by this way in which I plug away at my music here and take a trip to US or Canada once a year or two. And that makes me wonder. Is my desired life writing and recording songs in my small apartment that nobody would listen to until I die? On the other hand though, it’s a waste of life to get money and fame by writing a catchy empty hit song with casual effort. Does that mean life goes to waste either way? It’s ideal that my strenuous song makes a smash hit by chance and I get successful without losing anything. Does that mean we have to live depending on luck? Is the only way we attain happiness by giving up greed for money and fame, or does that mean a loser? Too many US TV shows have led me into too much thinking. They are interesting and amusing enough to cause lack of sleep every night and I’m in slightly poor condition. As I’ve been concerned about dizzy spells that occurs once or twice a day lately, I had a dream in which I had massive vertigo and the world was whirling…