YFC - Class Essay
For my creative writing class this semester, we were assigned to either write a short fictional piece or an essay about something in our life that's had a major impact on us.
So after some debate and deliberation, I decided to write my piece about my experiences with YFC, both from this summer and the summer before, because when talking about our holidays, just about every single one of my classmates wanted to know why I would fly out to Germany just to see a band.
The essay was written to fit the requirements on the class and was formatted for an audience with no exposure to YFC, Japanese rock music, or even concerts...
I've cut out some of the more personal aspects of the essay, but the piece focuses mainly on how my experiences changed my outlook, especially regarding the Dears community, from that of a lone fan to a member of what I now regard as a family (although it can be dysfunctional at times).
There was a lot more I wanted to say, but left out because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to convey it properly. However, the truth is, during the concert in Berlin this summer I reached a moment of personal enlightenment. I felt what it was to truly live and I will never be able to convey that feeling and realization adequately to someone else: the feeling of nothing but being in a moment of utter joy and contentment with the beauty that is life.
Obviously, this is very personal to me so I do feel like I am exposing a lot with this piece even as much as I've stripped it down...
But, I hope someone might be able to enjoy it and perhaps connect with it, in some way....
Welcome to the Family
July 6, 2010
I have never heard such silence or been in such isolation. Although silence and isolation from a live venue filled with nearly 3000 people sweating, gasping and fighting to stay conscious, seems improbable. But in those few moments, it was. In those moments, our bodies forgot how to secrete the beads of sweat which made our skin glisten under the crimson lights, our lungs forgot how to fill with the oxygen that needed to flow to the hearts that forgot to beat. I have never been to a church, but I imagine the silence to be similar, one of reverence. We clung on to every word that was not yet spoken, thinking that maybe they belonged to us alone.
The air was hot, from the mix of bodies that rubbed so close together it was impossible to tell my skin from another’s and from the stage lights that radiated heat over the audience. It had been at least an hour since my mouth lost its ability to produce saliva and my throat had begun to ache in protest in response to every time I had willed an honorary scream.
I was not certain how long I had been standing there. I just knew that the black tank top that I was wearing was wetter than it would have been if I had been thrown into a pool, and my hair was more matted than it had been this morning, when I slipped off the too-hard mattress after an entirely sleepless night. I did not know it then, but the ticket in my pocket was wet too, dampened by sweat that had seeped through my pants and the water that had been sprayed onto the crowd from chilled plastic bottles. Ticket number two hundred and eighty-seven. At the beginning of the day, it had been crisp and brilliant. By the end, it was torn and ragged with the ink faded, the paper corners fraying.
A couple hours before, when my ticket had been checked by security, my controlled walk into the venue had deteriorated after a ten second count by the most accurate clock. It changed to a brisk stride through the nearly vacant lobby, and then to a full-sprint down the dimly lit black hallway, past the furthest double doors into the main stage room. The venue was bigger than any of the clubs I had seen concerts in back in the US, but it was far from Tokyo Dome. My Swiss companion, Vivi, was right behind me but we split up quickly, and soon I was alone in the crowd, just waiting for the lights to dim. I did not dare to count the minutes ticking far too merrily on the watch around my wrist.
That night, I had no chance to breathe, no time to fathom a thought, nowhere to move, no moment to comprehend that I was several thousand miles from home, and that finally, finally… I was in front of him.
The night went by both too slowly and too quickly, and when we left and met outside, Vivi and I compared the bruises on our hips and the scratches from nails on our arms, how wet our shirts were, how hoarse our voices and how messy our hair. The train ride back was full of our giggles as she scolded me for stealing one of his flyers off the outside of the venue walls, but I insisted that they would have just been taken down and thrown away anyways. Once in our hotel room, I showered, changed, and then got back onto the too-hard mattress of our bed. I turned by back to Vivi and did not fall asleep. I just wanted to once again be alone inside that venue, not able to breathe, not able to think, not able to register that I was actually surrounded by a few thousand.
July 8, 2010
I stood in the back of the venue, leaning on the far left of the very last barrier. I had made the decision weeks before, upon seeing my ticket number. Well over a thousand people had entered the venue before me, walking as fast as they could without running, but just for the first minute. That restraint never held through. They all would break into a sprint as soon as they had passed through the double doors of the Zepp Osaka, having paid their five hundred yen drink fee, intent only on getting the closest spot to the stage. Just like I had two nights before.
When the staff member finally checked my ticket and nodded me through, I walked calmly, tucking my ticket into my pocket. Two middle-aged women dashed past me, giggling with each other in a language that my ears recognized, but my brain had not yet been trained to translate. Once again, Vivi and I had separated. I told her that I would stand in the back to “just enjoy the music.”
I latched onto that piece of barrier when I found it, glancing around the venue. Women near me were chatting amicably with one another, but I couldn’t understand them. In front of the barrier was a couple, the girl dabbing a towel over the back of her boyfriend’s neck. Behind me on the balconies above, I recognized a couple western faces, pretty European girls I had met at the first concert but had not said much to. Even up at the very front of the venue, a group of men had clustered themselves together, shouting out, “Aniki!” to the empty stage every few minutes. Briefly, I wondered if I should try to go up on the balcony to join the girls or if I should try to locate Vivi. But I stayed, isolated.
When the lights dimmed, my body rocked in sync with everyone’s at the opening number. When the shouts for “onna” carried from the stage, I cheered with the women, and when the shouts for “otoko” came, I was silent with them, listening to the deep male voices respond. When the front of the stage and the audience close to it was covered in a mist of white, my lips managed to curl up at the corners. Because I knew that the gush of carbon dioxide from the fire extinguisher that he wielded was more than welcomed by all those close to it, as two nights before I too had held my breath and tilted my face up into the undoubtfully unhealthy mix of compressed gases.
When that fire extinguisher was emptied and when those crimson lights faded into blue, that silence settled. It could not have lasted more than a minute, shattered when his lone voice resonated.
The shivers started from the backs of my ears and then trickled down the vertebrate of my neck. They spread halfway through my shoulder blades in each direction before surging down my spine, millions of nerves firing off all the way to the V of my hips and the insides of my full thighs, tickling at the backs of my kneecaps and making my toes curl in the flat shoes I had worn, only because he had asked the women to forgo heels, lest we accidentally step on someone else inside that crowded venue.
The first time I had heard him, I had been running from a friend’s brother through their house. Whether it was some game of chase or something else, I cannot recall. Once my giggles had faded and I had lain on the bed, trying to catch my breath as I had won whatever game we had been playing, the music that was flowing from the cassette player whispered against my eardrums. There was no description apt for that ballroom masquerade-like melody and my memories of my exact impressions have long become muddled. But when that voice filled the room, it would never leave my mind again. From the very first note, that voice caused me to forget every sense but one as I listened to it sing lyrics I could not understand and had yet never found more meaning behind.
It was eight and half years before I could finally stand in a crowd of people whom I had always envied, clutching my hands to my chest, right above my heart, because there was no other place for them. Even when most of the venue had cleared out, I stood still. My fingers were curled around the barrier and the tissue which had been offered silently to me by a woman beside me, after those a cappella notes had sunk into my body.
“Ally. Ally, hey.” Vivi’s French accent had pulled me back to the venue. “We have to go, the staff is clearing people out,” she said. Or something along those lines.
I believe I nodded, then pulled away from the barrier I had not let go of for the last two hours, careful as I ducked under it to join her. All those that had stood near me were already gone, but the other European girls that had been up on the balcony earlier were with her. When we had all waited outside the venue before the show, we had not spoken to each other. If I am honest, I had harbored envy for them, as they had mentioned being there the night of his birthday live, and traveling out for the tour the year before. Unlike Vivi and I, they did not seem to leave each other’s sides for more than a minute.
“It’s okay,” one of the girls said to me. “I cried the first time too.” Until then, I had not noticed the droplets clinging to my eyelashes, explaining the blur to my vision for the last three songs and the tissue which was still between my clenched fingers.
The train ride back, although just as crowded as the one on the first night, insists in holding to my memory as a silent one. I am certain there had been Japanese chatter all around me and Vivi’s French accent in my ear as she suggested we get a dinner I don’t remember eating. Yet the only voice I could hear was my own, questioning whether a trip to a foreign country had really been worth it because the next time I heard that voice, it would be back on a prerecorded and studio edited compact disc. It would not capture how heavy his breathing was between each line, or how painfully the notes had faltered only once despite the fact only a couple days before he had been back in the hospital, treated for a throat that bled when he strained it too much in his endless efforts to seem infallible.
“Thanks for being here with me.” It’s the only thing I remember her saying that night, before I had rolled into the corner of the impossibly uncomfortable hotel bed with the too-hard mattress and forced myself to sleep, believing it would be almost another decade before I had this chance again.
August 1, 2011
I had bought my plane tickets without hesitation, as soon as I had received the message from Iris, one of the girls that I had spent all of ten minutes talking to cautiously in Japan. “Why don’t you come to Europe?” The few messages we exchanged after we had returned from our mutual vacations were enough for her to invite me to Europe over a year later, to spend time with her and her father, to be my tour guide, to introduce me to friends and to help me with understanding the German menus that I would constantly misread during my two weeks in the foreign country.
I did not understand the meaning behind the invitation until long after I had arrived alone shortly after seven in the morning outside the Munich venue, where a few girls were already sitting and laying, wrapped in blankets and sleeping bags. One of them greeted me in a sleep-deprived voice, and then blinked in surprise when I had replied.
“Where are you from?”
The two who had been lying down, seemingly asleep, glanced up when I said America, giving me the look like I was crazy when they were the ones who had slept outside all night. I settled down on the mats they had spread over the concrete, after a few minutes in a relative quiet, I spoke. “So how did everyone become fans?”
There were gazes exchanged and a bit of murmuring before one of the girls spoke up. Her English was clear and proper, but accented. “That’s a long story.”
“We have twelve hours before the live,” I pointed out. “Is it better just to sit in silence?” They each laughed and nodded, starting off in an organized circle after a little more prompting. Someone had seen a magazine. Someone else had a friend lend them a CD. Someone had played the Final Fantasy Dirge of Cerberus game and had looked up the song used for the opening animation sequence. Another had stumbled upon a news article highlighting strange foreign musicians.
Twelve hours later, having recorded mixed-language comments into the cameras of the film crew, having played word games and card games, debated favorite songs and interviews, taken short runs out to the gas station four blocks away to use the restrooms, caused much laughter at my failed attempts to recite German swear words, and checked watches countless times, we were ushered toward the doors. No ticket numbers like in Japan. Here, I had been only the eighth to arrive that morning, but one of the girls squeezed my hand, pushing me to the front of the line, saying I deserved it even though she had been waiting there since the previous day. None of the others protested.
August 3, 2011
I swear that Iris and I leaned on each other for the entire show in Berlin, whether we were bouncing on our heels to the rhythm of the brand new song with insanely dirty lyrics, or grabbing onto each other in laughter because the lacy red bras we had thrown onstage were not just picked up but put on, or clutching onto each other’s hands as all fifteen hundred voices in that venue sang the refrain to the ballad most of them were only hearing for the first time but all could grasp the message behind.
Vivi was barely ten feet from my left, but this time we were separated by friends. She was the real reason I had ever gathered enough courage to do something this crazy. She was the reason I had gone to Japan and seen him there, having emailed me months before her trip to say, “Ally, come with me.” As simple as that. One line that could have just been seen as a whim or a joke or hopeful wish and not a serious invitation to spend a month with her in Japan. Exactly like the one line from Iris that had invited me to Germany.
And then, it wasn’t about hearing the silence. It was about the moment after, when his voice faded and ours replaced it in screams, in laughter and in the chants of “Aniki, Aniki, Aniki” which when translated to English, “big brother,” does not quite hold the same meaning. It was about that night, when I looked around at the girls I was sharing my hotel room with and pointed out that we had a Brit, an Italian, a Swiss and an American all in a German hotel to see a Japanese musician, and yet for some reason, that did not seem preposterous. Because, just like he had shouted that night and every night during the tour, “We are all different. Different cultures. Different colors. But… we are all family, right?”
That was why, wasn’t it? That was why those girls had pushed me in front of them in line. That was why Vivi had invited me to Japan, and then a year later had flown out from Geneva to Berlin for only one day, saying she would not have done it for him if I had not come. That was why the woman in Japan handed me a tissue. And that was why, after the live that final night, Iris threw her arms around me as the tears left glistening trails down her cheeks while she swore at him, cursed him for bringing us together and for separating us, calling me her little sister all at the same time.
I could and have listened to each song a hundred times over, but somehow I will still close my eyes at a stoplight when driving to work or pause mid-step while walking to class just to listen, to take in the complexity of each composition, depth of the lyrics I can now understand, the power of his voice. It does not matter if it is one of his orchestral-structured rock songs which uses the sound of a beating heart as the backdrop, or if it is one of his ballads which layers demanding violins over a melancholy piano, or if it is one of his experimental tracks which creates music from the sound of marching military, machines guns emptying their belts and the static-muddled recording of a World War II era German speech interlacing with his falsetto, or if it is his infamous “Vanilla” which never fails to make me want to thrust my hips in imitation of his playful onstage choreography.
Somewhere along the past ten years, his influence progressed beyond my love for his music. Each day, I wake up and recite words from him on a poster above my bed, “Stress is a wonderful source of energy... turn it into a source of action.” He’s the reason I speak four languages. He’s the reason I can take nine classes per semester, work two part-time jobs an hour’s drive apart, travel, lead an annual convention, play tennis, and still find time to date and attempt to translate his ridiculously complicated concepts and promotional projects whenever news regarding them is published. He’s the reason I’ve found my career path, set my goals so high and yet have never doubted my ability to reach them.
He can make me cry with blog posts about his band’s trip to Sendai, with photos and reflections on the aftermath of the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami, the countryside still destroyed eight months later. He can make me laugh with interview stories about how in high school he and classmates hoisted up a strict teacher’s car and set it vertically against a wall. He can frustrate me when there are mentions saying he’s in the hospital yet again, collapsed from overwork, but at least it means he’s sleeping for the first time in a week. And he can make a blush dust and burn itself across my cheeks as I remember how sinfully beautiful he looked in front of me in Munich, droplets of stage-lit sweat gliding down his bare chest and toned abdominals, disappearing under the black uniform capris that were pushed dangerously low on his hips.
That night in Berlin, it was not about standing in the back and clinging to the silence and isolation. It was about breaking it, about standing with a family that I had met only five years before, a year before, two days before and some only a few hours before. It was about singing with them, my flawed and off-key voice blending in beautifully with over a thousand others. It was about clutching onto Iris’ hand, who sent me a birthday card from her hometown in Holland months later and signed it, “your oneechan,” your sister. It was about spending even just one full day with Vivi, being able to share our endless list of inside jokes face-to-face. It was about the almost hundred messages I received when I returned to the US, from people I had met outside and inside the German venues, people who had come from Thailand, Russia, Brazil, and even from his home country of Japan, people who had talked and laughed with me without seemingly a single barrier.
It was about the moments between those brief silences, in which we could all truly, genuinely and wholeheartedly live.
So after some debate and deliberation, I decided to write my piece about my experiences with YFC, both from this summer and the summer before, because when talking about our holidays, just about every single one of my classmates wanted to know why I would fly out to Germany just to see a band.
The essay was written to fit the requirements on the class and was formatted for an audience with no exposure to YFC, Japanese rock music, or even concerts...
I've cut out some of the more personal aspects of the essay, but the piece focuses mainly on how my experiences changed my outlook, especially regarding the Dears community, from that of a lone fan to a member of what I now regard as a family (although it can be dysfunctional at times).
There was a lot more I wanted to say, but left out because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to convey it properly. However, the truth is, during the concert in Berlin this summer I reached a moment of personal enlightenment. I felt what it was to truly live and I will never be able to convey that feeling and realization adequately to someone else: the feeling of nothing but being in a moment of utter joy and contentment with the beauty that is life.
Obviously, this is very personal to me so I do feel like I am exposing a lot with this piece even as much as I've stripped it down...
But, I hope someone might be able to enjoy it and perhaps connect with it, in some way....
Welcome to the Family
July 6, 2010
I have never heard such silence or been in such isolation. Although silence and isolation from a live venue filled with nearly 3000 people sweating, gasping and fighting to stay conscious, seems improbable. But in those few moments, it was. In those moments, our bodies forgot how to secrete the beads of sweat which made our skin glisten under the crimson lights, our lungs forgot how to fill with the oxygen that needed to flow to the hearts that forgot to beat. I have never been to a church, but I imagine the silence to be similar, one of reverence. We clung on to every word that was not yet spoken, thinking that maybe they belonged to us alone.
The air was hot, from the mix of bodies that rubbed so close together it was impossible to tell my skin from another’s and from the stage lights that radiated heat over the audience. It had been at least an hour since my mouth lost its ability to produce saliva and my throat had begun to ache in protest in response to every time I had willed an honorary scream.
I was not certain how long I had been standing there. I just knew that the black tank top that I was wearing was wetter than it would have been if I had been thrown into a pool, and my hair was more matted than it had been this morning, when I slipped off the too-hard mattress after an entirely sleepless night. I did not know it then, but the ticket in my pocket was wet too, dampened by sweat that had seeped through my pants and the water that had been sprayed onto the crowd from chilled plastic bottles. Ticket number two hundred and eighty-seven. At the beginning of the day, it had been crisp and brilliant. By the end, it was torn and ragged with the ink faded, the paper corners fraying.
A couple hours before, when my ticket had been checked by security, my controlled walk into the venue had deteriorated after a ten second count by the most accurate clock. It changed to a brisk stride through the nearly vacant lobby, and then to a full-sprint down the dimly lit black hallway, past the furthest double doors into the main stage room. The venue was bigger than any of the clubs I had seen concerts in back in the US, but it was far from Tokyo Dome. My Swiss companion, Vivi, was right behind me but we split up quickly, and soon I was alone in the crowd, just waiting for the lights to dim. I did not dare to count the minutes ticking far too merrily on the watch around my wrist.
That night, I had no chance to breathe, no time to fathom a thought, nowhere to move, no moment to comprehend that I was several thousand miles from home, and that finally, finally… I was in front of him.
The night went by both too slowly and too quickly, and when we left and met outside, Vivi and I compared the bruises on our hips and the scratches from nails on our arms, how wet our shirts were, how hoarse our voices and how messy our hair. The train ride back was full of our giggles as she scolded me for stealing one of his flyers off the outside of the venue walls, but I insisted that they would have just been taken down and thrown away anyways. Once in our hotel room, I showered, changed, and then got back onto the too-hard mattress of our bed. I turned by back to Vivi and did not fall asleep. I just wanted to once again be alone inside that venue, not able to breathe, not able to think, not able to register that I was actually surrounded by a few thousand.
July 8, 2010
I stood in the back of the venue, leaning on the far left of the very last barrier. I had made the decision weeks before, upon seeing my ticket number. Well over a thousand people had entered the venue before me, walking as fast as they could without running, but just for the first minute. That restraint never held through. They all would break into a sprint as soon as they had passed through the double doors of the Zepp Osaka, having paid their five hundred yen drink fee, intent only on getting the closest spot to the stage. Just like I had two nights before.
When the staff member finally checked my ticket and nodded me through, I walked calmly, tucking my ticket into my pocket. Two middle-aged women dashed past me, giggling with each other in a language that my ears recognized, but my brain had not yet been trained to translate. Once again, Vivi and I had separated. I told her that I would stand in the back to “just enjoy the music.”
I latched onto that piece of barrier when I found it, glancing around the venue. Women near me were chatting amicably with one another, but I couldn’t understand them. In front of the barrier was a couple, the girl dabbing a towel over the back of her boyfriend’s neck. Behind me on the balconies above, I recognized a couple western faces, pretty European girls I had met at the first concert but had not said much to. Even up at the very front of the venue, a group of men had clustered themselves together, shouting out, “Aniki!” to the empty stage every few minutes. Briefly, I wondered if I should try to go up on the balcony to join the girls or if I should try to locate Vivi. But I stayed, isolated.
When the lights dimmed, my body rocked in sync with everyone’s at the opening number. When the shouts for “onna” carried from the stage, I cheered with the women, and when the shouts for “otoko” came, I was silent with them, listening to the deep male voices respond. When the front of the stage and the audience close to it was covered in a mist of white, my lips managed to curl up at the corners. Because I knew that the gush of carbon dioxide from the fire extinguisher that he wielded was more than welcomed by all those close to it, as two nights before I too had held my breath and tilted my face up into the undoubtfully unhealthy mix of compressed gases.
When that fire extinguisher was emptied and when those crimson lights faded into blue, that silence settled. It could not have lasted more than a minute, shattered when his lone voice resonated.
The shivers started from the backs of my ears and then trickled down the vertebrate of my neck. They spread halfway through my shoulder blades in each direction before surging down my spine, millions of nerves firing off all the way to the V of my hips and the insides of my full thighs, tickling at the backs of my kneecaps and making my toes curl in the flat shoes I had worn, only because he had asked the women to forgo heels, lest we accidentally step on someone else inside that crowded venue.
The first time I had heard him, I had been running from a friend’s brother through their house. Whether it was some game of chase or something else, I cannot recall. Once my giggles had faded and I had lain on the bed, trying to catch my breath as I had won whatever game we had been playing, the music that was flowing from the cassette player whispered against my eardrums. There was no description apt for that ballroom masquerade-like melody and my memories of my exact impressions have long become muddled. But when that voice filled the room, it would never leave my mind again. From the very first note, that voice caused me to forget every sense but one as I listened to it sing lyrics I could not understand and had yet never found more meaning behind.
It was eight and half years before I could finally stand in a crowd of people whom I had always envied, clutching my hands to my chest, right above my heart, because there was no other place for them. Even when most of the venue had cleared out, I stood still. My fingers were curled around the barrier and the tissue which had been offered silently to me by a woman beside me, after those a cappella notes had sunk into my body.
“Ally. Ally, hey.” Vivi’s French accent had pulled me back to the venue. “We have to go, the staff is clearing people out,” she said. Or something along those lines.
I believe I nodded, then pulled away from the barrier I had not let go of for the last two hours, careful as I ducked under it to join her. All those that had stood near me were already gone, but the other European girls that had been up on the balcony earlier were with her. When we had all waited outside the venue before the show, we had not spoken to each other. If I am honest, I had harbored envy for them, as they had mentioned being there the night of his birthday live, and traveling out for the tour the year before. Unlike Vivi and I, they did not seem to leave each other’s sides for more than a minute.
“It’s okay,” one of the girls said to me. “I cried the first time too.” Until then, I had not noticed the droplets clinging to my eyelashes, explaining the blur to my vision for the last three songs and the tissue which was still between my clenched fingers.
The train ride back, although just as crowded as the one on the first night, insists in holding to my memory as a silent one. I am certain there had been Japanese chatter all around me and Vivi’s French accent in my ear as she suggested we get a dinner I don’t remember eating. Yet the only voice I could hear was my own, questioning whether a trip to a foreign country had really been worth it because the next time I heard that voice, it would be back on a prerecorded and studio edited compact disc. It would not capture how heavy his breathing was between each line, or how painfully the notes had faltered only once despite the fact only a couple days before he had been back in the hospital, treated for a throat that bled when he strained it too much in his endless efforts to seem infallible.
“Thanks for being here with me.” It’s the only thing I remember her saying that night, before I had rolled into the corner of the impossibly uncomfortable hotel bed with the too-hard mattress and forced myself to sleep, believing it would be almost another decade before I had this chance again.
August 1, 2011
I had bought my plane tickets without hesitation, as soon as I had received the message from Iris, one of the girls that I had spent all of ten minutes talking to cautiously in Japan. “Why don’t you come to Europe?” The few messages we exchanged after we had returned from our mutual vacations were enough for her to invite me to Europe over a year later, to spend time with her and her father, to be my tour guide, to introduce me to friends and to help me with understanding the German menus that I would constantly misread during my two weeks in the foreign country.
I did not understand the meaning behind the invitation until long after I had arrived alone shortly after seven in the morning outside the Munich venue, where a few girls were already sitting and laying, wrapped in blankets and sleeping bags. One of them greeted me in a sleep-deprived voice, and then blinked in surprise when I had replied.
“Where are you from?”
The two who had been lying down, seemingly asleep, glanced up when I said America, giving me the look like I was crazy when they were the ones who had slept outside all night. I settled down on the mats they had spread over the concrete, after a few minutes in a relative quiet, I spoke. “So how did everyone become fans?”
There were gazes exchanged and a bit of murmuring before one of the girls spoke up. Her English was clear and proper, but accented. “That’s a long story.”
“We have twelve hours before the live,” I pointed out. “Is it better just to sit in silence?” They each laughed and nodded, starting off in an organized circle after a little more prompting. Someone had seen a magazine. Someone else had a friend lend them a CD. Someone had played the Final Fantasy Dirge of Cerberus game and had looked up the song used for the opening animation sequence. Another had stumbled upon a news article highlighting strange foreign musicians.
Twelve hours later, having recorded mixed-language comments into the cameras of the film crew, having played word games and card games, debated favorite songs and interviews, taken short runs out to the gas station four blocks away to use the restrooms, caused much laughter at my failed attempts to recite German swear words, and checked watches countless times, we were ushered toward the doors. No ticket numbers like in Japan. Here, I had been only the eighth to arrive that morning, but one of the girls squeezed my hand, pushing me to the front of the line, saying I deserved it even though she had been waiting there since the previous day. None of the others protested.
August 3, 2011
I swear that Iris and I leaned on each other for the entire show in Berlin, whether we were bouncing on our heels to the rhythm of the brand new song with insanely dirty lyrics, or grabbing onto each other in laughter because the lacy red bras we had thrown onstage were not just picked up but put on, or clutching onto each other’s hands as all fifteen hundred voices in that venue sang the refrain to the ballad most of them were only hearing for the first time but all could grasp the message behind.
Vivi was barely ten feet from my left, but this time we were separated by friends. She was the real reason I had ever gathered enough courage to do something this crazy. She was the reason I had gone to Japan and seen him there, having emailed me months before her trip to say, “Ally, come with me.” As simple as that. One line that could have just been seen as a whim or a joke or hopeful wish and not a serious invitation to spend a month with her in Japan. Exactly like the one line from Iris that had invited me to Germany.
And then, it wasn’t about hearing the silence. It was about the moment after, when his voice faded and ours replaced it in screams, in laughter and in the chants of “Aniki, Aniki, Aniki” which when translated to English, “big brother,” does not quite hold the same meaning. It was about that night, when I looked around at the girls I was sharing my hotel room with and pointed out that we had a Brit, an Italian, a Swiss and an American all in a German hotel to see a Japanese musician, and yet for some reason, that did not seem preposterous. Because, just like he had shouted that night and every night during the tour, “We are all different. Different cultures. Different colors. But… we are all family, right?”
That was why, wasn’t it? That was why those girls had pushed me in front of them in line. That was why Vivi had invited me to Japan, and then a year later had flown out from Geneva to Berlin for only one day, saying she would not have done it for him if I had not come. That was why the woman in Japan handed me a tissue. And that was why, after the live that final night, Iris threw her arms around me as the tears left glistening trails down her cheeks while she swore at him, cursed him for bringing us together and for separating us, calling me her little sister all at the same time.
I could and have listened to each song a hundred times over, but somehow I will still close my eyes at a stoplight when driving to work or pause mid-step while walking to class just to listen, to take in the complexity of each composition, depth of the lyrics I can now understand, the power of his voice. It does not matter if it is one of his orchestral-structured rock songs which uses the sound of a beating heart as the backdrop, or if it is one of his ballads which layers demanding violins over a melancholy piano, or if it is one of his experimental tracks which creates music from the sound of marching military, machines guns emptying their belts and the static-muddled recording of a World War II era German speech interlacing with his falsetto, or if it is his infamous “Vanilla” which never fails to make me want to thrust my hips in imitation of his playful onstage choreography.
Somewhere along the past ten years, his influence progressed beyond my love for his music. Each day, I wake up and recite words from him on a poster above my bed, “Stress is a wonderful source of energy... turn it into a source of action.” He’s the reason I speak four languages. He’s the reason I can take nine classes per semester, work two part-time jobs an hour’s drive apart, travel, lead an annual convention, play tennis, and still find time to date and attempt to translate his ridiculously complicated concepts and promotional projects whenever news regarding them is published. He’s the reason I’ve found my career path, set my goals so high and yet have never doubted my ability to reach them.
He can make me cry with blog posts about his band’s trip to Sendai, with photos and reflections on the aftermath of the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami, the countryside still destroyed eight months later. He can make me laugh with interview stories about how in high school he and classmates hoisted up a strict teacher’s car and set it vertically against a wall. He can frustrate me when there are mentions saying he’s in the hospital yet again, collapsed from overwork, but at least it means he’s sleeping for the first time in a week. And he can make a blush dust and burn itself across my cheeks as I remember how sinfully beautiful he looked in front of me in Munich, droplets of stage-lit sweat gliding down his bare chest and toned abdominals, disappearing under the black uniform capris that were pushed dangerously low on his hips.
That night in Berlin, it was not about standing in the back and clinging to the silence and isolation. It was about breaking it, about standing with a family that I had met only five years before, a year before, two days before and some only a few hours before. It was about singing with them, my flawed and off-key voice blending in beautifully with over a thousand others. It was about clutching onto Iris’ hand, who sent me a birthday card from her hometown in Holland months later and signed it, “your oneechan,” your sister. It was about spending even just one full day with Vivi, being able to share our endless list of inside jokes face-to-face. It was about the almost hundred messages I received when I returned to the US, from people I had met outside and inside the German venues, people who had come from Thailand, Russia, Brazil, and even from his home country of Japan, people who had talked and laughed with me without seemingly a single barrier.
It was about the moments between those brief silences, in which we could all truly, genuinely and wholeheartedly live.