Media Diaries 5/23/2023
Milk Inside A Bag Of Milk Inside A Bag Of (2020)
“Looks like Still in LCL doesn’t help me at all…”
I do remember vaguely hearing about this game while perusing through the interwebs, but the first time I was properly introduced to Milk Inside was through Schnoz Meister’s video on short visual novels you should check out.
By the way, he’s a super nice guy. I commented on his QnA post asking if he sucked toes and for some reason he decided to reach out after seeing my god awful Mori Calliope video. We had wholesome convos about each others’ videos. The world needs more wholesome Tuber moments.
Unlike all of the other things I put on my backlog, I actually got to experience the game with my buddies not long after.
Considering it’s literally 1 euro, my friend Waislander could actually afford it. We gathered another friend and played through the entire game in vc, while recording everything through OBS because I thought it would be cool 15 seconds before we started. We had a blast coming up with stupid voices and doing every cringey Youtube let’s play cliché that made me kind of sad to think I’m eternally associated with now. Unfortunately I still had no idea how OBS worked so the recording was very scuffed, thus the Russian Gamer Boys™ (and no none of us are even Russian) will never see the light of day.
The game is about a girl who needs your help to buy milk. Along the way, you meet some peculiar non-human looking dudes, discover a bit more about why everything looks like a Game Boy drenched in purple (stole that one from Schnoz), and finish the game with you successfully buying the milk and returning to bed. A search on Youtube reveals that you can experience the entirety of Milk Inside in 20 minutes, after which I must have left out a few “Is that it” and “Ok I guess”. The game ends just as abruptly as it begins, which definitely gave me more space to ponder about it once its over. Like other short media, the appeal of Milk Inside lies in the experience of being inside the head of a girl with special afflictions, instead of the destination, but since the experience is so short, every moment stands out so much more. Every scare, of which the game doesn’t have much, every turn of phrase, every piece of information we get about Milk Girl’s past and mental illness, as well as the meta aspect of the game, all stay incredibly vivid. As a psychological horror experience, it succeeds in its selective vagueness. The bareness of the graphics and mechanics way also makes you feel like you’re picking up some random piece of cursed software, adding to uncanny nature of it.
I can’t come to any conclusions when talking about this game, because the game speaks for itself so loudly already, and any thesis I try to draw will just fall flat in front of the actual experience, so I’ll just say I definitely didn’t regret taking on this journey.
Note to self: Next time, actually try to write down the topics you’re gonna talk about. I’m now scrolling through all of my electronic devices to find things to write about.
T H E (2013) by tricot
“Tobe” might just be top 10 songs of all time for me.
A full 10 years after prolific Japanese math rock band tricot’s debut was released, a Chinese teenager living in Latvia decided to check it out because after switching schools and the transit time significantly increasing, he needed something to fill the time. 13 songs and 50 minutes in length, it just about lasts the entire bus ride, perfect for distracting himself from how unbelievably uncomfortable these bus seats are if another person is sitting next to you. Unfortunately, since he had to wake up at 6 am exact to get on this bus, he usually falls into involuntary slumber after staying still for longer than 10 minutes, only awoken by the searing neck/back pain or other kind passengers.
The point is for like 5 days I only digested this album while half-asleep.
Fortunately, somewhere along the line I realized how good it actually was.
Tricot masterfully weaves elements of J-rock, power pop and math rock to create one of the best albums I’ve ever heard in their respective genres. The instrumentals blast right into your eardrums and either pumps you with adrenaline or sits you contemplating in an ocean of sound, the youthful J-pop vocals mesmerize with incredibly energetic, passionate performances (that falsetto ARGH), and the songwriting combines math rock’s intricate riffs and rhythms with powerful driving choruses and chord progressions. Annd that’s about the most colorful language I can come up with to describe these funny beeps and boops.
What’s great about “beautifully explosive” albums like T H E or my top 1 of all time, Animals by This Town Needs Guns, is that they convey intense emotions, but don’t sway towards any extreme like depression, hate or anger. Instead, they’re drenched in the inherent beauty of music and lets the listener project their own strong feelings through the wall of sound. If this was Ed Sheeran or some other soulless pop act, I would lament the ability to project anything onto the music, but the songs on T H E and Animals are so clearly carefully crafted, any suggestion of pandering is an insult to the very concept of music. Rather, the open-ended mood of these albums only enhance the connection I form with it. I can blast T H E anywhere, at any time and bring out intense feelings — while depressed, while having the best time of my life, while staring into the Daugava river and appreciating existence, and of course, while being half-asleep on a bus not too crowded, but just crowded enough to be actually annoying. T H E might not be the most profound or technical album, but it has cemented itself as a soundtrack to my memories.
Top 5 tracks:Tobe (holy fuck how can such perfection exist in our wretched world)
Oyasumi (2nd best thing with Oyasumi in its name)
Tarattaratta (that riff bro, STUCK IN MY HEAD)
CGPP (wtf does this mean)
C&C (wtf does this mean as well)
tricot “よそいき” Official Live Video
Persona 5 Royal (2019) [1/2]
I BELIIIIEEEEVE YOU CAN FALL FROM THE SKY OR STH IDK LYRICS
Fuck this game for taking over 150 hours away from me.
Instead of working on my Oshi no Ko video, I impulsively decided to replay this gigantic JRPG for the sake of true completion, only to get merely 92% because I misclicked while skipping all the dialogue. I’m never playing video games again.
On the 2nd playthrough, for some reason, I started conceptualizing what an Action Button review of Persona 5 Royal would look like, until I just had Tim Rogers’ voice waxing poetically about RPG mechanics in my head every time I booted up the game to brainlessly run through the calendar. I don’t even remember anything my schizo version of Tim Rogers said, I just remember often feeling his presence late at night.
That thought probably occurred to me because the amount of times I’ve replayed this game reminded me of the fervent research process of Tim Rogers’ game reviews. But on that same note, for a game I’ve spent more than 400 hours on, combining both Royal and the original, I still don’t really have a definitive answer to whether I even like it.
The reason I returned to P5 so often wasn’t really because I wanted to experience something incredibly again, but because such a lengthy, DRIPPY JRPG with one of the most addicting progression systems of all time tickled the part of my brain that desired big number go up better than anything else I’d played before. It’s not like other aspects of P5 were forgettable or bad. More like the rest of the game, including my criticisms of it, for better and worse, has been ingrained in my head for so long I can’t even muster up the energy to convey it, not helped by how the game has been discussed from hell and back by every youtuber on the planet.
But the new additions in Royal, most prominently the 3rd semester story content, have given me another chance to find merit in the revamped base game. Unfortunately, all I came back with is disappointment.
Modern Persona always starred teenagers in a precarious time of their lives trying to become better people, and every game found a way to portray it differently. Persona 3 discussed the inevitability of death and the importance of bonds as we march towards that fate, Persona 4, perhaps the most obvious, showed us characters blinded from their true selves by societal preconceptions and pressures, and how they ultimately overcome that to reach for true happiness. Persona 5 tries to stay in the same lane, but unfortunately, instead of teenagers moping about themselves, the writers decided to bring society into the mix.
I think the game’s portrayal of society is, albeit simplistic, still quite believable — people in power abuse it to fuel their huge egos, to the point one man literally thinks he’s humanity’s savior, and everyday people who are unlucky enough to be swept up in their tyranny and have a sense of morality get tossed away, like our protagonist and characters like Ryuji. But that’s exactly the issue.
P5 is extensively about people standing up to injustice in society and grasping their own destiny, but the problem is, the only way these injustices ever get challenged is through magic that only, like, 8 high schoolers have access to, and, as seen from the rest of the game, if people without superpowers were to try to do the same, they’d just get more fucked over in an unjust system. I… actually still can’t process this is the way Persona 5 chose to tell this story. I understand using Persona magic as metaphors to make the narrative more vivid, I mean, that’s what the previous 2 Persona games did as well. But the difference between P5 and its predecessors, is that the supernatural element complemented the message in P3 and 4, while in P5, that is the message. Imagine if in Persona 4, a game about accepting your insecurities, the characters just fight a boss and instantly become better instead of developing as people, and you have Persona 5. The value of free will, the spirit of rebellion and the inherent good of humanity are all good messages to send out to ATLUS’ teenage audience, and I’m sure those points did get across in the game series where the point is bashed into your skull at least 4 times per hour, but the execution of that message is just dreadful.
To sum it up, Persona 5 is a story that only works in abstraction, in a society that is restricted to what the game is willing to discuss, instead of the actual realistic one we live in, or the game supposedly portrays. So it’s pretty baffling to know that the third semester of Royal not only continues this trend, but actively makes it worse.
But I’ll talk about that another time, this post is dragging out for way too long.
DOKU-EN-KAI by toe
This one’s about to get personal and weird. Strap in I guess.
An amazing performance by one of my favorite bands, toe, which only fully comes to life with the video footage, where the toxicating passion of each member becomes palpable. And yes, I will be sending this to every one of my friends who even slightly care about music.
When I see Japanese guitarists absolutely jamming, I can’t help but be reminded of my first guitar teacher.
After seeing finalist Liang Bo on the first ever season of the Chinese version of Voice sing and play his heart out, my 7 year old brain decided that guitar was the coolest thing in the universe, and that I needed to learn it. My dad, who’s always wanted to play guitar, but couldn’t because of life circumstances, was elated and immediately sought after teachers.
A young man from Lanzhou who came to Tianjin for better opportunities, I called him Mr. Wang, both out of respect, but also because his full name is so generic it always escaped my memory or mixed in with 10 other people I know with slightly different names. I was his first guitar student. At the time, he lived in a dingy apartment that was barely as big as my room. I don’t know how my parents found him, and he seemed just as baffled that we did. He was inexperienced but tried his hardest to teach me the fundementals of guitar (his words, obviously — 7 year old me couldn’t exactly judge an adult’s music teaching ability). I studied under him for about two and a half years, before an incident happened in my district that made me move to Latvia, which I’ll probably diverge at a later date. Those 2 years weren’t all sunshine and rainbows, though, as I realized simply wanting looking cool is not gonna carry this passion for long. In hindsight, if back then I was about a fraction passionate about, you know, the actual music part as I am now, I would have had a much better time. Instead, I only learned to strum a few chords and play songs I did not care about one bit, to show off to all of my relatives. I wasn’t old enough to grow a brain, but I was old enough to realize that wasn’t fun. So I started despising lessons with Wang, often wanting to come up with excuses to not go. I don’t remember much of the lessons at that time, but I am pretty sure Wang also noticed. Before that could lead to anything, though, I peaced out and promptly became “the guy who went to Europe” to everyone I knew in China.
I still visited Tianjin every year before the pandemic hit, during which both I and Wang changed a lot. He became quite successful both as a musician, but also as a teacher. He came 2nd place in Tianjin’s acoustic guitar tournament, started organizing events with all kinds of local musicians and students, and his lesson rates skyrocketed. Whereas I, despite my parents still trying to find teachers in Latvia, started really falling out with guitar. By a certain point, it was clear to me I was just doing this to satisfy my dad. He always told me how precious it was for me to get the opportunity to learn guitar from such a young age, and how giving up now is not only a huge shame, but will also make you not willing to continue anything else afterwards (?). I also didn’t want to be a quitter, so I chugged along as well as I could, which is to say, not that much. Soon my disdain for guitar became indifference, as I tried to do as little work in the lessons and waste as much time as I could. That all kind of came crashing down after a while though.
Going through the details would be way out of the range of this segment. In summary, the pressures from the new school I went to a year before I was supposed to, family, and the realization that there existed other people who played guitar way better than me in way less time, culminating in me completely embarrassing myself at the first tournament I ever went to with a horrible rendition of Alan Walker’s “Faded”, has made guitar practice from something I couldn’t care less about, to something I actively dreaded, for how many unpleasant memories it evoked in 13 year old me, who was definitely more depressed than he liked to admit.
Is is then when I came back to China for the yearly visit. I don’t remember the details, but we ended up meeting Mr. Wang again. We caught up with our lives, and he invited me to join a local event he was organizing for young guitarists. I agreed. It was the first time I saw his other students — they were young, socially active, attractive, and most importantly, way better at guitar than I ever was. One girl did a cover of one of my favorite songs at the time, “Nocturne” by Jay Chou, which is still stuck in my head. Right then and there, something clicked in my young brain, and I internalized the feeling that besides the novelty I possessed, Mr. Wang had left me behind long ago.
Then, before I went back home, we met up for one last time, at a “Western Style” (I cannot emphasize the quotation marks enough) family restaurant. Mr. Wang started regaling his recent trip to Japan, and his involvement in some underground shows there. Although I don’t remember the exact wording, he said something along the lines of:
“When I see Japanese guitarists, I realize how small of a kiddie-pool we’ve been playing in over here. I realize what genuine passion, dedication, and art looked like. I’m going back someday. I want to be like them. I need to be like them.”
Needless to say my interest in guitar, like my self esteem, has been declining for quite a while, but I think this was the line that truly broke me. I didn’t start crying in front of him or anything, but it was then my image of “playing guitar” utterly shattered. I realized the reason Wang made it so far, despite not even finishing college, practically a death sentence in Chinese society, wasn’t because of anything but his love for music. I realized how much of a poser I’d been to actual, passionate devoters of the instrument. I felt, and might as well had feared my distance between me and him, and the power of passion.
By then, it wasn’t even a question of skill or laziness that stopped me from playing entirely. I was ashamed. I felt like I’d wasted by that point, almost 7 years of my life, trying to be something I wasn’t, and couldn’t be. I suppose that explains my fascination with passion since that point — I had thought the lack of one was the reason I disappointed both myself and my loved ones. That’s why when I discovered Youtube, something I was sort of okay at and liked, it developed soon into an unhealthy mindset. I had been depressed for so long and searching for any purpose for so long, I immediately put all of my self-worth on this one thing, and was dead-set on doing this for the rest of my life. Because of that, I made stupid decisions. A lot of them. I still thank my parents and few friends for putting up with everything. Finally, I realized that “passion” as I perceived did not exist (something Ashita no Joe brilliantly points out, to bring this blog post vaguely back to media). Humans in general, don’t chase passions. They chase the feeling of a job well-done. That sense of accomplishment, although incredibly hard to reach in the internet age, where you can compare with the best of the world at all times, is something that doesn’t have to be limited to any field, or any arbituary goal. I guess you could also say I just stopped putting all of my self worth onto outside things, and focused on making myself happy, which was probably the problem since the very start. All of that, I can elaborate on another date (sorry for repeating this phrase so many times, but it’s true).
The guitar story itself doesn’t have a pretty ending. I sometimes pick it back up, but usually after wiping the dust off the surface. I get reminded of my failures when I see passionate guitar performances, like the one this post is supposedly about, way more than I would like. Sometimes I reflect back and wonder what I learned from that experience. I don’t have definitive answers, and might only have them once I decide what to do with these instruments hanging on my wall, or just never have them. But, as cliché as it sounds, I wouldn’t be here without having picked up guitar at age 7. In fact, I would go a step further and say my journey with it embodies everything that’s happened in my life so far — memories of all the failures, misconceptions, and eventual growth, are all contained within these instruments. Thankfully, my story is not over yet, and I can take those fragments of nostalgia to hopefully greater heights than ever before. To be honest, the story I’ve been telling hasn’t been over yet either, as the one I’ve told here is the abridged version of the abridged version. I still have so much to talk about — like how that one time I went to a guitar summer camp changed my life, etc. But for now, I think it’s time to end it. I had a pretty good time getting all of those thoughts out of my system, and if you’re one of the 3 people I’ll likely send this shit to, I hope you managed to sit through all, or any of this. I sincerely thank you either way. Until next time we encounter in the chasm of LCL again, stay curious.
There is no one can understand me truly
I do not go out and I will keep silence
Everyone is mania in general
You don’t have time to sleep for to know others
It’s more complex than how I used to thought
But already I know the start is the end
Everyone is mania in general
You don’t have time to sleep for to know others
Goodbye — toe
I do remember vaguely hearing about this game while perusing through the interwebs, but the first time I was properly introduced to Milk Inside was through Schnoz Meister’s video on short visual novels you should check out.
By the way, he’s a super nice guy. I commented on his QnA post asking if he sucked toes and for some reason he decided to reach out after seeing my god awful Mori Calliope video. We had wholesome convos about each others’ videos. The world needs more wholesome Tuber moments.
Unlike all of the other things I put on my backlog, I actually got to experience the game with my buddies not long after.
Considering it’s literally 1 euro, my friend Waislander could actually afford it. We gathered another friend and played through the entire game in vc, while recording everything through OBS because I thought it would be cool 15 seconds before we started. We had a blast coming up with stupid voices and doing every cringey Youtube let’s play cliché that made me kind of sad to think I’m eternally associated with now. Unfortunately I still had no idea how OBS worked so the recording was very scuffed, thus the Russian Gamer Boys™ (and no none of us are even Russian) will never see the light of day.
The game is about a girl who needs your help to buy milk. Along the way, you meet some peculiar non-human looking dudes, discover a bit more about why everything looks like a Game Boy drenched in purple (stole that one from Schnoz), and finish the game with you successfully buying the milk and returning to bed. A search on Youtube reveals that you can experience the entirety of Milk Inside in 20 minutes, after which I must have left out a few “Is that it” and “Ok I guess”. The game ends just as abruptly as it begins, which definitely gave me more space to ponder about it once its over. Like other short media, the appeal of Milk Inside lies in the experience of being inside the head of a girl with special afflictions, instead of the destination, but since the experience is so short, every moment stands out so much more. Every scare, of which the game doesn’t have much, every turn of phrase, every piece of information we get about Milk Girl’s past and mental illness, as well as the meta aspect of the game, all stay incredibly vivid. As a psychological horror experience, it succeeds in its selective vagueness. The bareness of the graphics and mechanics way also makes you feel like you’re picking up some random piece of cursed software, adding to uncanny nature of it.
I can’t come to any conclusions when talking about this game, because the game speaks for itself so loudly already, and any thesis I try to draw will just fall flat in front of the actual experience, so I’ll just say I definitely didn’t regret taking on this journey.
Note to self: Next time, actually try to write down the topics you’re gonna talk about. I’m now scrolling through all of my electronic devices to find things to write about.
T H E (2013) by tricot
“Tobe” might just be top 10 songs of all time for me.A full 10 years after prolific Japanese math rock band tricot’s debut was released, a Chinese teenager living in Latvia decided to check it out because after switching schools and the transit time significantly increasing, he needed something to fill the time. 13 songs and 50 minutes in length, it just about lasts the entire bus ride, perfect for distracting himself from how unbelievably uncomfortable these bus seats are if another person is sitting next to you. Unfortunately, since he had to wake up at 6 am exact to get on this bus, he usually falls into involuntary slumber after staying still for longer than 10 minutes, only awoken by the searing neck/back pain or other kind passengers.
The point is for like 5 days I only digested this album while half-asleep.
Fortunately, somewhere along the line I realized how good it actually was.
Tricot masterfully weaves elements of J-rock, power pop and math rock to create one of the best albums I’ve ever heard in their respective genres. The instrumentals blast right into your eardrums and either pumps you with adrenaline or sits you contemplating in an ocean of sound, the youthful J-pop vocals mesmerize with incredibly energetic, passionate performances (that falsetto ARGH), and the songwriting combines math rock’s intricate riffs and rhythms with powerful driving choruses and chord progressions. Annd that’s about the most colorful language I can come up with to describe these funny beeps and boops.
What’s great about “beautifully explosive” albums like T H E or my top 1 of all time, Animals by This Town Needs Guns, is that they convey intense emotions, but don’t sway towards any extreme like depression, hate or anger. Instead, they’re drenched in the inherent beauty of music and lets the listener project their own strong feelings through the wall of sound. If this was Ed Sheeran or some other soulless pop act, I would lament the ability to project anything onto the music, but the songs on T H E and Animals are so clearly carefully crafted, any suggestion of pandering is an insult to the very concept of music. Rather, the open-ended mood of these albums only enhance the connection I form with it. I can blast T H E anywhere, at any time and bring out intense feelings — while depressed, while having the best time of my life, while staring into the Daugava river and appreciating existence, and of course, while being half-asleep on a bus not too crowded, but just crowded enough to be actually annoying. T H E might not be the most profound or technical album, but it has cemented itself as a soundtrack to my memories.
Top 5 tracks:Tobe (holy fuck how can such perfection exist in our wretched world)
Oyasumi (2nd best thing with Oyasumi in its name)
Tarattaratta (that riff bro, STUCK IN MY HEAD)
CGPP (wtf does this mean)
C&C (wtf does this mean as well)
tricot “よそいき” Official Live VideoPersona 5 Royal (2019) [1/2]
I BELIIIIEEEEVE YOU CAN FALL FROM THE SKY OR STH IDK LYRICSFuck this game for taking over 150 hours away from me.
Instead of working on my Oshi no Ko video, I impulsively decided to replay this gigantic JRPG for the sake of true completion, only to get merely 92% because I misclicked while skipping all the dialogue. I’m never playing video games again.
On the 2nd playthrough, for some reason, I started conceptualizing what an Action Button review of Persona 5 Royal would look like, until I just had Tim Rogers’ voice waxing poetically about RPG mechanics in my head every time I booted up the game to brainlessly run through the calendar. I don’t even remember anything my schizo version of Tim Rogers said, I just remember often feeling his presence late at night.
That thought probably occurred to me because the amount of times I’ve replayed this game reminded me of the fervent research process of Tim Rogers’ game reviews. But on that same note, for a game I’ve spent more than 400 hours on, combining both Royal and the original, I still don’t really have a definitive answer to whether I even like it.
The reason I returned to P5 so often wasn’t really because I wanted to experience something incredibly again, but because such a lengthy, DRIPPY JRPG with one of the most addicting progression systems of all time tickled the part of my brain that desired big number go up better than anything else I’d played before. It’s not like other aspects of P5 were forgettable or bad. More like the rest of the game, including my criticisms of it, for better and worse, has been ingrained in my head for so long I can’t even muster up the energy to convey it, not helped by how the game has been discussed from hell and back by every youtuber on the planet.
But the new additions in Royal, most prominently the 3rd semester story content, have given me another chance to find merit in the revamped base game. Unfortunately, all I came back with is disappointment.
Modern Persona always starred teenagers in a precarious time of their lives trying to become better people, and every game found a way to portray it differently. Persona 3 discussed the inevitability of death and the importance of bonds as we march towards that fate, Persona 4, perhaps the most obvious, showed us characters blinded from their true selves by societal preconceptions and pressures, and how they ultimately overcome that to reach for true happiness. Persona 5 tries to stay in the same lane, but unfortunately, instead of teenagers moping about themselves, the writers decided to bring society into the mix.
I think the game’s portrayal of society is, albeit simplistic, still quite believable — people in power abuse it to fuel their huge egos, to the point one man literally thinks he’s humanity’s savior, and everyday people who are unlucky enough to be swept up in their tyranny and have a sense of morality get tossed away, like our protagonist and characters like Ryuji. But that’s exactly the issue.
P5 is extensively about people standing up to injustice in society and grasping their own destiny, but the problem is, the only way these injustices ever get challenged is through magic that only, like, 8 high schoolers have access to, and, as seen from the rest of the game, if people without superpowers were to try to do the same, they’d just get more fucked over in an unjust system. I… actually still can’t process this is the way Persona 5 chose to tell this story. I understand using Persona magic as metaphors to make the narrative more vivid, I mean, that’s what the previous 2 Persona games did as well. But the difference between P5 and its predecessors, is that the supernatural element complemented the message in P3 and 4, while in P5, that is the message. Imagine if in Persona 4, a game about accepting your insecurities, the characters just fight a boss and instantly become better instead of developing as people, and you have Persona 5. The value of free will, the spirit of rebellion and the inherent good of humanity are all good messages to send out to ATLUS’ teenage audience, and I’m sure those points did get across in the game series where the point is bashed into your skull at least 4 times per hour, but the execution of that message is just dreadful.
To sum it up, Persona 5 is a story that only works in abstraction, in a society that is restricted to what the game is willing to discuss, instead of the actual realistic one we live in, or the game supposedly portrays. So it’s pretty baffling to know that the third semester of Royal not only continues this trend, but actively makes it worse.
But I’ll talk about that another time, this post is dragging out for way too long.
DOKU-EN-KAI by toe
This one’s about to get personal and weird. Strap in I guess.An amazing performance by one of my favorite bands, toe, which only fully comes to life with the video footage, where the toxicating passion of each member becomes palpable. And yes, I will be sending this to every one of my friends who even slightly care about music.
When I see Japanese guitarists absolutely jamming, I can’t help but be reminded of my first guitar teacher.
After seeing finalist Liang Bo on the first ever season of the Chinese version of Voice sing and play his heart out, my 7 year old brain decided that guitar was the coolest thing in the universe, and that I needed to learn it. My dad, who’s always wanted to play guitar, but couldn’t because of life circumstances, was elated and immediately sought after teachers.
A young man from Lanzhou who came to Tianjin for better opportunities, I called him Mr. Wang, both out of respect, but also because his full name is so generic it always escaped my memory or mixed in with 10 other people I know with slightly different names. I was his first guitar student. At the time, he lived in a dingy apartment that was barely as big as my room. I don’t know how my parents found him, and he seemed just as baffled that we did. He was inexperienced but tried his hardest to teach me the fundementals of guitar (his words, obviously — 7 year old me couldn’t exactly judge an adult’s music teaching ability). I studied under him for about two and a half years, before an incident happened in my district that made me move to Latvia, which I’ll probably diverge at a later date. Those 2 years weren’t all sunshine and rainbows, though, as I realized simply wanting looking cool is not gonna carry this passion for long. In hindsight, if back then I was about a fraction passionate about, you know, the actual music part as I am now, I would have had a much better time. Instead, I only learned to strum a few chords and play songs I did not care about one bit, to show off to all of my relatives. I wasn’t old enough to grow a brain, but I was old enough to realize that wasn’t fun. So I started despising lessons with Wang, often wanting to come up with excuses to not go. I don’t remember much of the lessons at that time, but I am pretty sure Wang also noticed. Before that could lead to anything, though, I peaced out and promptly became “the guy who went to Europe” to everyone I knew in China.
I still visited Tianjin every year before the pandemic hit, during which both I and Wang changed a lot. He became quite successful both as a musician, but also as a teacher. He came 2nd place in Tianjin’s acoustic guitar tournament, started organizing events with all kinds of local musicians and students, and his lesson rates skyrocketed. Whereas I, despite my parents still trying to find teachers in Latvia, started really falling out with guitar. By a certain point, it was clear to me I was just doing this to satisfy my dad. He always told me how precious it was for me to get the opportunity to learn guitar from such a young age, and how giving up now is not only a huge shame, but will also make you not willing to continue anything else afterwards (?). I also didn’t want to be a quitter, so I chugged along as well as I could, which is to say, not that much. Soon my disdain for guitar became indifference, as I tried to do as little work in the lessons and waste as much time as I could. That all kind of came crashing down after a while though.
Going through the details would be way out of the range of this segment. In summary, the pressures from the new school I went to a year before I was supposed to, family, and the realization that there existed other people who played guitar way better than me in way less time, culminating in me completely embarrassing myself at the first tournament I ever went to with a horrible rendition of Alan Walker’s “Faded”, has made guitar practice from something I couldn’t care less about, to something I actively dreaded, for how many unpleasant memories it evoked in 13 year old me, who was definitely more depressed than he liked to admit.
Is is then when I came back to China for the yearly visit. I don’t remember the details, but we ended up meeting Mr. Wang again. We caught up with our lives, and he invited me to join a local event he was organizing for young guitarists. I agreed. It was the first time I saw his other students — they were young, socially active, attractive, and most importantly, way better at guitar than I ever was. One girl did a cover of one of my favorite songs at the time, “Nocturne” by Jay Chou, which is still stuck in my head. Right then and there, something clicked in my young brain, and I internalized the feeling that besides the novelty I possessed, Mr. Wang had left me behind long ago.
Then, before I went back home, we met up for one last time, at a “Western Style” (I cannot emphasize the quotation marks enough) family restaurant. Mr. Wang started regaling his recent trip to Japan, and his involvement in some underground shows there. Although I don’t remember the exact wording, he said something along the lines of:
“When I see Japanese guitarists, I realize how small of a kiddie-pool we’ve been playing in over here. I realize what genuine passion, dedication, and art looked like. I’m going back someday. I want to be like them. I need to be like them.”
Needless to say my interest in guitar, like my self esteem, has been declining for quite a while, but I think this was the line that truly broke me. I didn’t start crying in front of him or anything, but it was then my image of “playing guitar” utterly shattered. I realized the reason Wang made it so far, despite not even finishing college, practically a death sentence in Chinese society, wasn’t because of anything but his love for music. I realized how much of a poser I’d been to actual, passionate devoters of the instrument. I felt, and might as well had feared my distance between me and him, and the power of passion.
By then, it wasn’t even a question of skill or laziness that stopped me from playing entirely. I was ashamed. I felt like I’d wasted by that point, almost 7 years of my life, trying to be something I wasn’t, and couldn’t be. I suppose that explains my fascination with passion since that point — I had thought the lack of one was the reason I disappointed both myself and my loved ones. That’s why when I discovered Youtube, something I was sort of okay at and liked, it developed soon into an unhealthy mindset. I had been depressed for so long and searching for any purpose for so long, I immediately put all of my self-worth on this one thing, and was dead-set on doing this for the rest of my life. Because of that, I made stupid decisions. A lot of them. I still thank my parents and few friends for putting up with everything. Finally, I realized that “passion” as I perceived did not exist (something Ashita no Joe brilliantly points out, to bring this blog post vaguely back to media). Humans in general, don’t chase passions. They chase the feeling of a job well-done. That sense of accomplishment, although incredibly hard to reach in the internet age, where you can compare with the best of the world at all times, is something that doesn’t have to be limited to any field, or any arbituary goal. I guess you could also say I just stopped putting all of my self worth onto outside things, and focused on making myself happy, which was probably the problem since the very start. All of that, I can elaborate on another date (sorry for repeating this phrase so many times, but it’s true).
The guitar story itself doesn’t have a pretty ending. I sometimes pick it back up, but usually after wiping the dust off the surface. I get reminded of my failures when I see passionate guitar performances, like the one this post is supposedly about, way more than I would like. Sometimes I reflect back and wonder what I learned from that experience. I don’t have definitive answers, and might only have them once I decide what to do with these instruments hanging on my wall, or just never have them. But, as cliché as it sounds, I wouldn’t be here without having picked up guitar at age 7. In fact, I would go a step further and say my journey with it embodies everything that’s happened in my life so far — memories of all the failures, misconceptions, and eventual growth, are all contained within these instruments. Thankfully, my story is not over yet, and I can take those fragments of nostalgia to hopefully greater heights than ever before. To be honest, the story I’ve been telling hasn’t been over yet either, as the one I’ve told here is the abridged version of the abridged version. I still have so much to talk about — like how that one time I went to a guitar summer camp changed my life, etc. But for now, I think it’s time to end it. I had a pretty good time getting all of those thoughts out of my system, and if you’re one of the 3 people I’ll likely send this shit to, I hope you managed to sit through all, or any of this. I sincerely thank you either way. Until next time we encounter in the chasm of LCL again, stay curious.
There is no one can understand me truly
I do not go out and I will keep silence
Everyone is mania in general
You don’t have time to sleep for to know others
It’s more complex than how I used to thought
But already I know the start is the end
Everyone is mania in general
You don’t have time to sleep for to know others
Goodbye — toe
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