A Long Way to Freedom hr670

 

I have started a video Podcast.

A complex about looks resides in me always, all my life. When I was a child, my mother used to say, “If only you don’t have a nose like that,” by shading my nose with her hand. She daily instructed me that the only way for me to make it through in this society was to be affable to anyone since I wasn’t pretty. Adding to the piggy nose, I was fat, and given a constant notion from my mother that I was ugly. Although I had a dream to be a singer, the complex about being ugly led me to switch my dream to be a radio personality that could hide looks. Then, while I had been suffering many more bitter experiences of my looks mainly at school as a teenager that relentlessly implied my ugliness, there came a big music trend in Japan, in which singer-songwriters who didn’t have good looks and abstained from TV appearances made big hits. I saw a new path appear in front of me. My dream to be a singer was back on and with my own songs this time.

Sadly, that music trend didn’t last long. By the time I got down to pursue my music career in earnest, the trend had died out and good looks had been required for singer-songwriters as well. Although many record companies and music producers contacted me when they listened to my songs that I sent to them, they turned down the offer as soon as they saw me at the first meeting. I had tried to hide my looks as much as possible in the course of my career as a musician because they would work adversely. My complex had deepened further.

I am vain by nature. I grew up hearing my mother say that the most important thing is how we look to others. It seems I’m unable to break her spell. While my life has been a long journey to fix my flaws and complexes, the biggest obstacle is my vanity. I thought it was about time to face off. Now that I’m no longer young, my vanity has been forced to be compromised drastically. Aging has made my looks even worse, my moves clumsier, my careless mistakes more frequent. I’m too old to care about good looks that are way out of my reach now. To get rid of the complex by beating my vanity once and for all, I decided to take on a video Podcast that would reveal my bad looks to the public.

I connected my microphone into my computer and set a photo shoot light that I newly bought. The light got broken quickly and the microphone didn’t work properly on the computer. I ended up shooting with my smartphone. Although I had recorded several Podcasts without a picture for some time, doing on video is a whole different business. Sitting in front of a smartphone with makeup and good clothes feels as if I were in front of others. Because I’m not social, I easily get extremely tense and can’t talk as I usually do. On every recording, I sweat all over from tension. Sometimes my head goes blank and I just stare into space while opening and closing my mouth that utters nothing. I begin to get nervous a couple of days before the recording and feel like running away by the time I start shooting.

However, I feel surprisingly refreshed when I finish, and I want to do more. Since it appears to work as therapy for my social phobia and stage fright too, I think I had better continue. Above all, it helps me to be free from my mother’s spell though it took so long. I should be content to show myself as I am even if nobody watches or I look hideous or I can’t speak as I intend to. And I hope that recording becomes enjoyable for me someday. That would be the day when I have overcome my complex and have won this battle. 

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~Talking and Reading from Japan by Hidemi Woods~

video Podcast: [ Youtube ] [ spotify ]

Podcast: [ Amazon Music ] [Apple Podcast] [Castbox]

Lazy and Talented hr666

 

I started taking piano lessons at the age of four and had continued on and off until I was fourteen years old. Yet, not a single classical piece exists that I can play properly. There are several clear reasons for that.

Photo by Do The Lan on Pexels.com

To begin with, the motive for the lesson was wrong. My vain mother bought the piano as a symbol of wealth not to play it but to show it to visitors although she really hated music. Then she assumed she would be ashamed if someone noticed the piano in our house stood exclusively for a decorative purpose and she decided to make me play it well. I took lessons at my mother’s order, not from my own passion. At first, a neighbor woman who had played the piano when she was young came to my house regularly to teach me. With an introduction from her, I got into Kuribayashi Piano School before long.

The school held a recital once a year at the big hall in downtown. My mother would invite her parents to show the pretty dress in which she clothed me. She would make me practice so earnestly for this once because her vain couldn’t allow me to fail on the stage in front of a large audience. It used to be a big night for my family. The piece for each student was picked up according to their skill by Mr. Kuribayashi every year. Gradually, year after year, the students who were much younger than I was were assigned to much more difficult pieces than mine because I had developed my skill too slowly due to lack of practice. The spot of the students in a recital was decided in ascending order of difficulty of the piece, from the easiest to the most difficult. Consequently the best student of the school played last in the recital. In this order, I had become next to a small boy by the time I was a junior high student. The rehearsal was taken place in the large living room of Mr. Kuribayashi’s home. When my turn came and I sat in front of the piano, I found the chair was too high as the player before me was a small boy. I tried to adjust the chair but didn’t know how. I struggled for some time while other students were quietly waiting and staring. I became panicky with embarrassment. I was all of a sweat jiggling the chair for the time I felt eternally. I glanced at Mr. Kurubayashi for help. He was just watching without a word. At that moment, I suddenly realized. I had long been not his favorite any more. How could I have not known for such a long time, about such an  apparent fact like this, I wondered. Amid terrible embarrassment, horrible disappointment gripped me. A girl who was about my age became unable to just watch my embarrassing fight with the chair and came up to me. She adjusted the chair for me in a flash. That girl was assigned to the last spot of the recital that year, which meant she was the best student. She beautifully played her piece, Chopin’s ‘Fantaisie-Impromptu’ that I believe is the most difficult piece for the piano in the world. When I listened to her play, I felt embarrassed further for my low skill and my longtime self-conceit. And I was clearly convinced that she was the favorite of Mr. Kuribayashi. Immediately after the recital, I left the school.

While I liked music so much that I wanted to become a professional singer someday, I loathed practicing the piano. My older cousin who was good at the piano visited our house one day and asked me to show how much progress I had made so far in playing the piano. I couldn’t understand why she tried to ruin her visit that I had been looking forward to. As I had imagined, she pointed out flaws in my play and began to teach me by which the day was ruined for me. Before I knew it, the keys went blurred because I was crying. She was shocked to see it and apologized repeatedly, but seemed puzzled why practice gave me so much pain. I shared her wonder for that matter.

As I hated practice that much, lessons at Kuribayashi Piano School became a torture. I took a lesson once a week, but I often didn’t touch the piano for the whole week until my next lesson. I was such a lazy student who was always short of practice. Nevertheless, I was somehow the favorite of my teacher, Mr. Kuribayashi. He liked my playing that was stumbled almost constantly, and kept admiring me by saying “You’re talented.” While I was playing, he often hummed along and danced to it. He hadn’t been in good spirits like that with other students. He instructed them strictly and sometimes scolded them. My younger sister started taking lessons a few years later and going to the school with me. Unlike me, my sister was a diligent student and practiced playing every day at home. In one lesson, after Mr. Kuribayashi danced to my usual bad playing and uttered his ‘You’re talented’, in my sister’s turn he slapped my sister’s hand and yelled at her, “No, no, no! It’s not like that! Not at all!”, which drove her to quit the piano for good. On the other hand, he had never scolded me. He was pleased with my play no matter how badly I played. He just showed his frustration saying, “If only you would practice…” Even when I was lazy enough to come to his lesson without cutting my nails, he would quietly hand me a clipper and tell me to be ready while he taught another student. Since I was too dependent on his ‘You’re talented’ and fully conceited, sometimes it took months to finish one piece and move on to another. In those cases, Mr. Kuribayashi would say, “Let’s change the mood, shall we?” and introduce me to a different composer’s piece for lessons, but would never scold me even then.

Ironically, I have never hated playing the piano. On the contrary, I’m fond of it after decades have passed since I quit lessons. While I still don’t practice, being able to play Chopin’s ‘Fantaisie-Impromptu’ remains one of my far-fetched dreams to this day.