Memoirs of a Gaijin II: Teacup of Melancholy
I often lay on my bed at dusk, looking up in my dimly lit room to watch the fading light stream through my curtains while listening to city pop. It's like therapy in a way. It teaches me that no matter what happens during the day, the sun is sure to set again, and I'm forever bound to this celestial movement that governs the cycles of night and day. I find some kind of comfort in this trivial yet profound phenomenon. Twilight especially feels like home, as the mixing of the darkness and light creates a spectrum of colours not found at any other time during the Earth's constant rotation. When I'm laying there, half underneath the covers, I breathe slower to try and feel the spin of the planet, but as many times I try I never really do. I’m not even sure it’s possible really, though the realization that it is indeed happening gives me pause nonetheless. The music plays quietly, but my mind listens intently for the subtle shifts in chords, melody, tempo. These small moments of nuance have always inspired my creative mechanisms. Though lately things just don’t feel the same.
The tea kettle whistles across the hallway covered in half-light. Chamomile with honey. They say it’s good for anxiety, though it only works half the time for me. I suppose the stress of daily life in the city can easily brush off such a soft attempt at quelling the storm of the mind. I try anyway. If nothing the ritual creates a mental space of fleeting serenity, a temporary shelter from the fervor of the psychic winds trying to flatten my peace. The window pane reflects the streetlights below, and the neon signs above. Another artefact of comfort, if only just artificial. So many things in life are artificial yet still we’re drawn to them regardless, and once absorbed with our gaze they become part of us as if by nature, imbuing them with spark from our own ephemeral existence. The music ebbs and flows through the space, bouncing off the walls, coming in waves. I sit down on the floor to ‘ground’, I tell myself.
Looking up I see photos on the wall, many in need of serious dusting. For so long I’ve tried to make a name for myself to honor the spirit of my ancestors, or whatever. I’ve always been kind of pseudo-spiritual in that way. It’d only be a half-truth if I’d had told you I just wanted to end up doing something good for the world, because in reality I wanted to ‘become’ that good in the world more precisely. Though how impossible that would be, and how crazy would I be, and how misleading to present ourselves as a force of light when we make so many shadows on the way. We can only ever grasp at the silhouette of perfection, because no matter how hard we try to reach it and make it real, it always eludes us. To pretend we are fully realized, whole beings, that don’t err is a divine tragedy. Everyone is missing something, and no one is free from the flipping coin of duality—the Yin and Yang that propels us through our lives. Even still, we cling to the belief that there should only be one way forward, while disregarding the shadow in us that the light is forced to create. In some Nietzsche-ish way, I sometimes think I’m bound for the same financial collapse as the Japanese economy in the 90s, having peered too long into City Pop maybe I am becoming more like it, with all its ups and downs.
I slowly slide backwards onto the wooden floor, knees up, with a hand held up to the dull glow of a lamp on the countertop. I can hear the music still playing, though now mixing with my thoughts, causing me to feel as if I'm in a chamber of reflection. Words become animated figures, like wisps forming sigils that at once mean nothing and anything. Clouds of sound moving along to create an atlas above my head. I’ve felt the cold hand of disenchantment on my forehead these past few weeks, even with what successes I’ve seemingly achieved. A bitter kiss of disillusionment leaves a faint glimmer on my lips that never quite rubs off anymore. Was it all for nothing. My every effort, staggering struggle, and battle against the greatest of odds to try and make some kind of change in the world through music was for nothing. A road that I’ve spent years treading, often alone, without kin or clan, tirelessly wandering not knowing where it would lead has found me here, staring at the ceiling, penniless, alone, and without purpose. What could I have done differently, for even with all the fanfare and congratulations, I have failed in ways that baffle me. I rest the palm of my hand over my right eye, not to pity myself but to quiet the pain of disclosure. How have I lied to myself for so long, and when will I finally be redeemed.
I pick myself up from the floor and sit at the table, winding my arm up to have a sip of tea now lukewarm. What did I do wrong, what mistake did I make that was so unforgivable as to make me a pariah. I put my heart and soul into what I do, though I’m hardly ever considered to get the chance to do what I love. It’s been incredibly hard. Have the Fates spun this destiny for me because I intruded on some grand order of things without permission, or am I just that unlikable. Was my punishment for trying to bring City Pop to the world a face slap and a life of exclusion from even just a basic means of living. Here I am, devalued, unemployable, and wholly misunderstood in my intentions. Too far removed yet not enough to have truly reached the potential for becoming what I thought I could have been. I know that no one is to blame for these misfortunes but myself, but damn if it doesn’t seem like every hand I’m dealt is rigged against me. Though I’m not the first to deal with the tides rising over me faster than I can swim, it never really makes the water recede. This is something everyone has to risk when making the decision to jump into the sea of chance, with just our hopes and dreams to keep us afloat. Hopes and dreams unfortunately cannot pay bills, and the sandman is definitely not taking shifts at the currency exchange.
The teacup sits in front of me empty, the music now silent. I head over to change the playlist, but the battery has ran dead. I suppose it’s a coordinated effort by the universe to tell me something deep and meaningful, maybe, but I can’t tell for sure. I know for certain that nothing is by coincidence, though the consequences of that make me slightly uncomfortable. The blinds on the window drop long shadows that reach like tendrils into my room, in the dead of stillness, with only the passing hum of the cars along the avenue, and the creaking wood beneath my feet. I lay back down, half covered. Sometimes I wonder why we make the choices we make, and why we always seem to fall back into the same traps that we set for ourselves. Are we just echoes of another life lived, one that led a similar course in some distant reality. Could everything be a mirage in the desert of an infinite multiverse that has us repeating the same lives ad-nauseam with only tiny differences in each one. Where will this life continue to lead when everything that can go so wrong and unfair. All we can do is keep walking, I suppose. In hopes that the music will once again return, and that another morning comes.
AUTHOR
Van Paugam is an Internationally-Acclaimed DJ and leading figure specializing in 70s and 80s Japanese Music, dubbed City Pop. He has organized and hosted over 100 events dedicated to the style, and actively promotes Japanese culture while on the board of the Japanese Arts Foundation of Chicago. He has been featured on CNN, NHK, and many other publications for his dedication to City Pop. Van is credited with being the first person to begin popularizing City Pop online through his mixes on YouTube in 2016, and subsequently through live events. Learn More…