last fade live
Jon's short spam on Twitter earlier prompted me to finally -- finally -- write this. Ain't a 'real' report. Just a plain blog post.
It's been a month since I saw fade perform for the last time. It was a... weird night. Just weird.
Not the live, mind you. fade is aptly named in the fact that they make everything fade away when they perform and that night's performance was no different. Once the live started, bang, everything narrowed down to my spot in the front row, the speakers blaring into my right ear, and the five members of fade standing on stage. To be honest, I've lost almost all the details. I can't even remember what they were wearing.
But I remember feeling so excited. ('Excited' is a pretty common word, ain't it, but it's the word I'm looking for. Excited. Ex-cited. Eggs. Ighted. Hehe.)
Very early on, they performed 'Wiser for the Wear'. And, it's pretty funny (funny to me, anyway) because it brought up a very clear memory. The first time I listened to this song was in 2011. I was in the amore gym at Jurong Point. It was pretty packed that day but there was still one unused treadmill machine (there are like ten treadmills in this huge gym). In front of that treadmill is a small television and it was on a Chinese news channel. Anyway, all these are unimportant details.
I was halfway through my run when Wiser for the Wear started playing and tears sprung to my eyes when it got to the chorus.
Every guess we've made
Every great mistake
Words cannot reveal how grateful I really am
Every guess we've made
To be where we are
The love and pain we share makes us wiser for the wear
My life, up to that point at least, was based on mistakes. But in that moment, I thought to myself, hey, I'm right where I wanna be and despite all the mistakes I've made, I wouldn't have gone back and did things differently. Or at least I think I wouldn't have.
I found the image of myself weeping while running on a treadmill funny and embarrassing.
There were also tears in my eyes as I watched fade perform this song live for the first time.
They played a lot of my favourites that night. Filter, She, Till the End of Time, So Far Gone. They didn't play Last Man Standing or It was you (first favourite fade songs, man) but, yanno, the live was perfect in its own way. A perfect blend of old songs and new songs. Not my playlist, but theirs.
The 'Beautiful' performance was hard to watch because Jon was getting quite emotional. His voice was rough at some parts and he looked to be on the verge of tears. Well, when you've been with a band for 12 years and this live is one of the last few lives, anyone would've gotten emotional, I think.
I remember not wanting the live to end.
I remember feeling... nothing when the encore session ended and the curtains were drawn.
I was not sad. Nor disappointed or heartbroken. I just felt absolutely nothing. That's a contradiction because how do you feel nothing? But nothing is exactly what I felt.
I excused myself from our small group (Bernie and her school mates) and headed out to the bar to get a drink with my 500 yen drink token. I don't even remember what the fuck I was drinking. After I took the first gulp, I felt very, very tired and I couldn't stand to be standing so I took a seat at the bar. Got a cig out a few minutes later and everything went downhill from there.
I thought about the 6-to-8 hour long ustream sessions I'd watched and participated in, when all they knew me by was just 'belle-vie', my username on ustream. Thought about the months I'd spent obsessively listening to their music. Eventually, my thoughts led me to my first fade live in Shinjuku Blaze in 2012.
Strangely, I did not think about the other fade lives I'd attended. Not the amazing Sky's The Limit Tour final or the acoustic performance during the After Party. Not the extremely-fun-and-oh-god-I-just-wanna-do-it-again #DamageLiver lives. Just the very first fade live. The TEN Tour final.
When Bernie, Maria and Mariya joined me at the bar, I kept repeating "it's over" and "that was the last live" in some masochistic and not-at-all-soothing mantra.
Then this is where it gets weird (for me) because I started crying which freaks me the fuck out because, throughout the whole night, I'd felt nothing strong enough to render me to this state -- not weeping, not just tears in my eyes, but crying. It didn't build up slowly. It just came. Like a premature ejaculation. It is with complete and utter honesty that I say it weirded me out. My life does not revolve around fade the way some others' do and I can go for days without listening to their music. But, still, I was crying. It was as if my body had gone ahead and done it without my permission.
I was also partly freaked out because I hadn't cried in a long time, and here I was crying in a public space.
Also the tears ruined my make-up so whoop-dee-fucking-doo. I would face the fade members later looking -- and sounding -- as if I had a hangover. It had also gotten quite difficult for me to smile.
Bernie, Maria and Mariya comforted me with hugs and gentle pats to the arms. In a few minutes, the tears stopped. And then the staff was asking everyone, politely, to leave because the event was now over.
Everyone stood outside Shinsaibashi DROP, waiting for the members to leave.
I still felt very tired. I was constantly looking for places to sit. On the sidewalk, on the traffic-pole-thingies-i-don't-know-what-the-fuck-you-call-them. Like, I couldn't stand to stand for more than a minute. I was truly, in every essence of the word, 'faded'.
The members came after about half an hour. I got Jon's signature on a transparent iPhone case (thank you bernz for the idea), talked and got my photo taken with him and Rui, got all the members' signatures on my ticket (my entry number was A001, which got a "wow" outta Nori). Then we all sang happy birthday to Jon because it would be his birthday in about two hours, haha. Two months prior, I'd started thinking about what to get for him as a birthday present but nothing came to mind. I went window-shopping, hoping to chance across something suitable, but alas I'd found nothing. In the end, all I'd given him was a 100 yen birthday card.
"What do you say to someone you know you're not likely to see ever again?"
I'd asked myself that dramatic question a few times that day. I came up with stuff like, "thank you" and "all the best for the future" but I'd said none of it to fade in the end.
Not unlike previous lives, when the members started getting on the van, I felt panicked. Like, shit, I'm not going to see fade ever again, or not for a very long time at the very least.
But then they were gone. Van driving off into the night. And then came the usual joke of "let's follow their van", haha.
So, that was my last fade live. The live itself had been crazily good. Everything else, though, had just been one inconceivable, wacky dream.
Anyway, after that, the rest of June saw me crying at least two more times. But I'm all better now. I had the opportunity to interview Alice Nine and attend their concert in Singapore. Had a GACKThering to celebrate G's birthday. Then it was back to school. Also started exercising regularly again which makes me feel really good. All of this will be in separate blog posts in the future, I predict.
Oh and, one pretty important thing.
I finally read Murakami Haruki's Norwegian Wood. I don't recall which part of this book this is but Watanabe Toru was just simply telling himself, "let's try to make today a good day". I'd tried doing that in past but I'd forced myself to say it while being cheerful and enthusiastic, like, "TODAY IS GOING TO BE A GREAT FUCKING DAY. BRING IT ON, WORLD, I'M GOING TO LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF THINGS NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS" which, quite honestly, was very tiring.
But here Watanabe Toru is sleepy and slightly gloomy and is not at all hyped up for the day. He's not shouting or forcing himself to smile or be cheerful. He's just simply saying, "let's try to make today a good day".
Anyway, that line had a huge impact on me and I'm trying to live my days out like that. Sorry for that random bit.
So yeah. That's me.
It's been a month since I saw fade perform for the last time. It was a... weird night. Just weird.
Not the live, mind you. fade is aptly named in the fact that they make everything fade away when they perform and that night's performance was no different. Once the live started, bang, everything narrowed down to my spot in the front row, the speakers blaring into my right ear, and the five members of fade standing on stage. To be honest, I've lost almost all the details. I can't even remember what they were wearing.
But I remember feeling so excited. ('Excited' is a pretty common word, ain't it, but it's the word I'm looking for. Excited. Ex-cited. Eggs. Ighted. Hehe.)
Very early on, they performed 'Wiser for the Wear'. And, it's pretty funny (funny to me, anyway) because it brought up a very clear memory. The first time I listened to this song was in 2011. I was in the amore gym at Jurong Point. It was pretty packed that day but there was still one unused treadmill machine (there are like ten treadmills in this huge gym). In front of that treadmill is a small television and it was on a Chinese news channel. Anyway, all these are unimportant details.
I was halfway through my run when Wiser for the Wear started playing and tears sprung to my eyes when it got to the chorus.
Every guess we've made
Every great mistake
Words cannot reveal how grateful I really am
Every guess we've made
To be where we are
The love and pain we share makes us wiser for the wear
My life, up to that point at least, was based on mistakes. But in that moment, I thought to myself, hey, I'm right where I wanna be and despite all the mistakes I've made, I wouldn't have gone back and did things differently. Or at least I think I wouldn't have.
I found the image of myself weeping while running on a treadmill funny and embarrassing.
There were also tears in my eyes as I watched fade perform this song live for the first time.
They played a lot of my favourites that night. Filter, She, Till the End of Time, So Far Gone. They didn't play Last Man Standing or It was you (first favourite fade songs, man) but, yanno, the live was perfect in its own way. A perfect blend of old songs and new songs. Not my playlist, but theirs.
The 'Beautiful' performance was hard to watch because Jon was getting quite emotional. His voice was rough at some parts and he looked to be on the verge of tears. Well, when you've been with a band for 12 years and this live is one of the last few lives, anyone would've gotten emotional, I think.
I remember not wanting the live to end.
I remember feeling... nothing when the encore session ended and the curtains were drawn.
I was not sad. Nor disappointed or heartbroken. I just felt absolutely nothing. That's a contradiction because how do you feel nothing? But nothing is exactly what I felt.
I excused myself from our small group (Bernie and her school mates) and headed out to the bar to get a drink with my 500 yen drink token. I don't even remember what the fuck I was drinking. After I took the first gulp, I felt very, very tired and I couldn't stand to be standing so I took a seat at the bar. Got a cig out a few minutes later and everything went downhill from there.
I thought about the 6-to-8 hour long ustream sessions I'd watched and participated in, when all they knew me by was just 'belle-vie', my username on ustream. Thought about the months I'd spent obsessively listening to their music. Eventually, my thoughts led me to my first fade live in Shinjuku Blaze in 2012.
Strangely, I did not think about the other fade lives I'd attended. Not the amazing Sky's The Limit Tour final or the acoustic performance during the After Party. Not the extremely-fun-and-oh-god-I-just-wanna-do-it-again #DamageLiver lives. Just the very first fade live. The TEN Tour final.
When Bernie, Maria and Mariya joined me at the bar, I kept repeating "it's over" and "that was the last live" in some masochistic and not-at-all-soothing mantra.
Then this is where it gets weird (for me) because I started crying which freaks me the fuck out because, throughout the whole night, I'd felt nothing strong enough to render me to this state -- not weeping, not just tears in my eyes, but crying. It didn't build up slowly. It just came. Like a premature ejaculation. It is with complete and utter honesty that I say it weirded me out. My life does not revolve around fade the way some others' do and I can go for days without listening to their music. But, still, I was crying. It was as if my body had gone ahead and done it without my permission.
I was also partly freaked out because I hadn't cried in a long time, and here I was crying in a public space.
Also the tears ruined my make-up so whoop-dee-fucking-doo. I would face the fade members later looking -- and sounding -- as if I had a hangover. It had also gotten quite difficult for me to smile.
Bernie, Maria and Mariya comforted me with hugs and gentle pats to the arms. In a few minutes, the tears stopped. And then the staff was asking everyone, politely, to leave because the event was now over.
Everyone stood outside Shinsaibashi DROP, waiting for the members to leave.
I still felt very tired. I was constantly looking for places to sit. On the sidewalk, on the traffic-pole-thingies-i-don't-know-what-the-fuck-you-call-them. Like, I couldn't stand to stand for more than a minute. I was truly, in every essence of the word, 'faded'.
The members came after about half an hour. I got Jon's signature on a transparent iPhone case (thank you bernz for the idea), talked and got my photo taken with him and Rui, got all the members' signatures on my ticket (my entry number was A001, which got a "wow" outta Nori). Then we all sang happy birthday to Jon because it would be his birthday in about two hours, haha. Two months prior, I'd started thinking about what to get for him as a birthday present but nothing came to mind. I went window-shopping, hoping to chance across something suitable, but alas I'd found nothing. In the end, all I'd given him was a 100 yen birthday card.
"What do you say to someone you know you're not likely to see ever again?"
I'd asked myself that dramatic question a few times that day. I came up with stuff like, "thank you" and "all the best for the future" but I'd said none of it to fade in the end.
Not unlike previous lives, when the members started getting on the van, I felt panicked. Like, shit, I'm not going to see fade ever again, or not for a very long time at the very least.
But then they were gone. Van driving off into the night. And then came the usual joke of "let's follow their van", haha.
So, that was my last fade live. The live itself had been crazily good. Everything else, though, had just been one inconceivable, wacky dream.
Anyway, after that, the rest of June saw me crying at least two more times. But I'm all better now. I had the opportunity to interview Alice Nine and attend their concert in Singapore. Had a GACKThering to celebrate G's birthday. Then it was back to school. Also started exercising regularly again which makes me feel really good. All of this will be in separate blog posts in the future, I predict.
Oh and, one pretty important thing.
I finally read Murakami Haruki's Norwegian Wood. I don't recall which part of this book this is but Watanabe Toru was just simply telling himself, "let's try to make today a good day". I'd tried doing that in past but I'd forced myself to say it while being cheerful and enthusiastic, like, "TODAY IS GOING TO BE A GREAT FUCKING DAY. BRING IT ON, WORLD, I'M GOING TO LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF THINGS NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS" which, quite honestly, was very tiring.
But here Watanabe Toru is sleepy and slightly gloomy and is not at all hyped up for the day. He's not shouting or forcing himself to smile or be cheerful. He's just simply saying, "let's try to make today a good day".
Anyway, that line had a huge impact on me and I'm trying to live my days out like that. Sorry for that random bit.
So yeah. That's me.