The Unhappy at the Happiest Place hr671

 

Looking back, the bottom of my life was several years in the mid-80’s when I left my hometown and came to live in Tokyo where I was struggling for success as a musician. While I was working part-time for a living, I was making songs, looking for band members, doing gigs and selling our demos to the record companies. Those days were so energy-consuming without any luck that my mind and body had been both tuckered out. I began to drink and smoke.

It happened at the theme park in the Tokyo area which host was the mouse. I had been working part-time as an attraction cast member at the park that was newly opened only a few years back. Because it was in the midst of the Japanese holiday week, the park was quite crowded. The attraction where I worked had a full house all day and a long waiting line continued. When I was introducing the attraction over the PA system at the holding area inside, I saw a group of three peevishly-looking men in their late twenties eating popcorn. After I put down the microphone, I approached them and gently with a smile asked not to eat inside, which was strictly instructed as a working procedure. Then I noticed they were sitting on a swung chain in front of the mural painting. I went to them and again asked not to because the chain was easily detached from the poles thus dangerous, which was also what the cast member was strictly told to do. The whole thing originated with these two trivial incidents.

Next to the holding area was the preshow area where the short movie was shown. In the middle of the movie, I saw some people open the door and enter the next theater, which was prohibited. I followed them into the theater where the main attraction was. They were the same men who had infringed the attraction rules at the holding area. I politely asked them to return to the preshow or go out as they weren’t allowed to skip the process. One of them said to me angrily, “You have kept telling me not to do this and that all the way! Stop that already!” They refused what I asked and tried to stay in the main theater. I explained the preshow would end merely in about a few minutes and asked them to go back. Then he yelled at me, “Shut up, ugly!”

The word ‘ugly’ had been a cue for me since I was a child. I battered a boy who uttered the word to me at elementary school. Even in my adult life, I once tried to strangle a middle-aged hoodlum and push him over the bridge-rail down to the river. In that case, I was carrying all the musical instruments and walking slowly when the man yelled at me from behind, “Walk fast!” I turned around and explained why I couldn’t do so with a heavy burden, and he said, “Don’t bar the way, ugly!” Probably because of my complex, I easily lost control whenever somebody told me ‘ugly’.

The man’s cue at the theme park made me thrust him with my both hands. He fired up as well and shouted, “Violence! Violence here!” Next moment, I found myself punching him. He looked surprised and terrified, then repeated like a child, “Violence! I was hit by an employee!” Other cast members came running toward us. Without a word, I left the attraction for the break area where I smoked a Camel.

Nobody came to me and I returned to work after I pulled myself together half an hour or so later. Neither the supervisor nor my colleagues mentioned the incident. They acted perfectly as if nothing had happened. They behaved similarly the next day, too, except for a distant attitude. Since it was in those times when companies’ awareness of compliance was low and social media where people upload their video clips was yet to come, the incident didn’t raise a fuss. Even so, I didn’t feel relieved not to be fired. I just felt sorry for the mouse who was the host of the park, that I did violence at my favorite place. I noticed how low I had gotten as a person. The sense I needed to clean up my act and change led me to quit the job soon after the incident.

I am so ashamed of my past self. I couldn’t, and still can’t, forgive my behavior. Just because I was unhappy, I shouldn’t have taken it out to others. I realized I was a foolish punk myself, and bitterly hated myself for that. The decision to quit the job was the new cue to try to become a better person. What I didn’t see was that the cue consequently turned my life for the better. I thought I was completely cornered and resigned to live at the bottom, not knowing I had gotten out of the worst already.

Passion hr656

 

What I had been doing before I decided to become a musician was studying to enter one of Japanese first-rate universities, which was ostensibly believed so. That was when I was a high school student in the early 80’s.

To tell you the truth, I had in fact, not been studying in those days, which I had never told anyone. I just had been pretending to study every day. While I had acted in front of my family and friends as if I had been preparing for fiercely competitive entrance examinations and studying desperately to succeed in them, I hadn’t been able to find any sort of motivation to study once I sat at my desk in my room. To stimulate myself, I would listen to the records of my favorite band, but then gaze blankly at empty space or take a nap instead of being stimulated. I had tried to study in the middle of the night, which was supposed to be quieter and easier to concentrate, but I would listen to late night radio shows at which I would laugh until dawn.

After I had spent months in those routines while arrogantly declaring to people around me that I would get in the leading university, I came to my senses and began to wonder how I could succeed without studying. Now I had trembled every day with a fear that I would have failed the entrance examination of all first-rate universities. Even though I was grasped with the fear, I still couldn’t feel like studying. And in the end, that fear did materialize.

Am I a born sluggard? Am I a loser? In the depths of despair, I made up my mind to be a musician. Then in an instant my attitude changed completely. I earnestly searched for and joined a professional-oriented band, spent all the savings I had on a synthesizer, and practiced every day at the far-off rental studio to which I took a train and brought the synthesizer weighing fifty pounds and carried by me who is merely five feet. I would sweat all over even in winter just carrying it from and to the platform at the train station.

On one occasion at the station, as though he couldn’t stand to watch me struggling with the synthesizer any more, a man approached me silently and lifted it on his shoulder. He went down the stairs from the platform carrying it for me. While he staggered along the way and slowed down  probably because it was heavier than he had thought, he brought it to the bottom of the stairs and disappeared without a word. I felt like a hero came to rescue me.

But a villain also appeared as well. On another occasion, I was walking over the bridge carrying it in addition to other instruments. Because it was impossible for me to walk continuously with all that heavy stuff, I posed and put down all the instruments every few yards. And a vulgar man yelled at me from behind, “Get out of my way, you slow-walking ugly!” I snapped at the word ‘ugly’, put down the instruments, and stopped him by saying, “What did you say?” Then I seized him by the neck, squeezed it and pushed him to the bridge-rail. I was wringing his neck seriously and intended to push him down to the river. The man gasped for air and screamed “Call the police! Please, someone!” By that time, passersby had gathered, and a woman untangled my hands on his neck and broke us up. It seemed I turned into a villain there.

When I wasn’t in the studio, I had practiced playing the keyboard at home and worked at a part-time job to pay for the rental studio. Although my new routine had totally exhausted me, I was willing to take the ordeal. I never lost my passion as if I were possessed by something. And I haven’t lost it to this day after decades have passed.

To keep going can lead to many setbacks. Sometimes there are those nights when I want to give up and throw everything away. Still, when it dawns, I get motivated again gradually. Not vanity nor prosperity but passion keeps me alive. I don’t want to quit staying alive just yet.

A Guest Appearance in The Tonight Show hr614

I am a singer-songwriter but don’t do any gigs before audience any more as I used to do.
   I’m too self-conscious and have an almost morbid complex about my looks. Whenever I give a live performance, I worry too much about the way I look instead of the way I play. Since I duly know my looks are bad, I can’t focus on my play. All the while I’m singing, I keep chanting in my head, “I’m ugly, I’m ugly, I’m ugly.” Acute lack of self-confidence for looks makes me extra-nervous. As a result, I get tense excessively, sweat all over, forget the words of my song, and play terribly. I’ve lost every single live contest or audition. It’s easy to assume one of the reasons why I haven’t been successful to date.
   Countless numbers of failure later, I’ve become a recording artist who don’t perform before audience. As such, I regularly practice singing to record my songs. During the practice, I sing alone in my room. It usually goes smoothly. But the minute I imagine I were singing in public, my technique disappears and deteriorates to rock bottom. I have a sense that I need to cure this public-phobia in order to be successful. Therefore, I started practicing by turning my room into an imaginary studio as if I were on The Tonight Show.
   Since then, when I practice in my room, I’ve sung in The Tonight Show in my head almost every day for years. It has been therapy rather than practice. In that way, my singing is awful because I lose focus on a song. My focus easily turns towards looks. The words of a song in my head are replaced by the thoughts about how I look on TV. Do I look like an old woman? Does my nose get shiny? Are my ugly teeth showing? Am I too fat? Is my hair too thin? Endless concerns hinder my singing. Although I understand it’s desperately shallow, I can’t help it.
   But as I’ve practiced that way for a long time, there is a day when I sing well on the imaginary show occasionally. In a case like that, I feel like I’m ready for the actual show. That leads me another difficult phantom aspect - a talk with the host. I imagine myself sitting in the sofa beside the host. Instantly I’m worried about if I don’t talk like a stupid woman, if I cross my legs properly, if I put in clever jokes, if they don’t fall flat, if I leave the stage in style with a big punch line at which the audience laughs and goes crazy, and if people think Hidemi Woods is cute and smart with a superb sense of humor. Because of those worries, an imaginary self on the imaginary show is extremely nervous, fumble the talk all the way with cracked voice, speak broken English, tell a sick joke, sweat like a pig, and the audience goes silent. Seeing an unsightly, nightmarish myself in my head, I again realize that it’s impossible for me to act in public let alone The Tonight Show.
   I am clumsy all my life. And I had been very fat since eight years old until all through teenage time. That is probably why I long for good looks too much. As a clumsy person, I definitely believe that I’ve already gone through more embarrassment than ordinary people usually experience in lifetime...