{"id":3655,"date":"2026-06-18T12:20:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T19:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musicalmakiko.com\/en\/?p=3655"},"modified":"2026-07-29T11:04:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T18:04:11","slug":"mermaids-soul-intro-to-my-memoir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musicalmakiko.com\/en\/healing-power-of-music\/3655","title":{"rendered":"The Intro to my Memoir"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I have access to this magic that can turn time into timing, encounter into fate, and the mundane into practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had an inkling of this magic from a very early age. Because it came more naturally to me as a child, I grew up taking it for granted. My access to it became inconsistent when I hit puberty, when I started being told that I was somehow exceptional for it. At one point in my life, I thought I had lost it. Having experienced it, knowing to want it, and wondering if it\u2019s gone felt like a curse and a burden.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My access could not have come only from my training in the so-called art of time to become a professional pianist. Through a somewhat unusual series of events I was lucky to survive, I learned to recognize it as something you must protect, appreciate and cultivate. Eventually, I realized my access to it as a gift and my stewardship as my mission and duty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is my story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PROLOGUE: Lost Voice<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Backstage feels like the bottom of the sea. Dark. Silent. Still. Walls, wires and chains all painted in matte black, shooting up like kelp forest to the invisible ceiling. The anticipation of what is to come creates an alarming void of sound and air. No one talks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I walk out to the stage, tall in my floating gait, rhythmic in my clicking heels, away from the vacuum into the blinding stage light. The applause hits me like sea spray, then swallows me whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            On the bright stage behind me are several dozen Hungarian musicians in concert black, seated with their instruments, facing the podium center stage. Out in the hall, the audience sits masked in the shadow of the stage light. They put their hands together for this young unknown Asian pianist approaching the piano. It is January 2001, my European debut in P\u00e9cs, Hungary. I am twenty-five.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            To be the featured soloist for a symphonic concert is like being served as the main dish in a multi-course meal or cast as Juliet in Shakespeare. Sir Donald Francis Tovey (1875-1940) attributed the thrill of concerto to its ability to capture the universal antithesis between an individual and crowd in the musical dynamic between the soloist and the orchestra. How am I the one here?<\/em> I hear my mind as the audience follows my walk to the piano with their eyes. What do they want from me?<\/em> Among them could very well have been the people who refused to meet my eyes a few hours earlier, rejecting my request for the direction to the hall with their palms quickly flashed to my face. They pulled their children away from me like my otherness might be contagious. They stared at me everywhere I went in this town, like a dead body drifting between the waves. The provincial town was under the communist regime until the end of the Cold War in 1989. Western tourists were allowed to see only things that the government wanted you to see until twelve years earlier, I\u2019ve been told. These people in the countryside are still not used to foreign visitors, especially the blatant \u201cothers\u201d like me, but an understanding does not help my feeling of alienation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I extend my left arm to hold the corner of the 9-foot concert grand to do a 45-degree spin around to face the audience. I see the TV camera pointed at me from the balcony. It\u2019s a sold-out house with people standing at the end of the hall. I am the only person of color! <\/em>My realization seizes a chokehold around my neck. Music should serve as the universal language to bridge our difference, I know, but the task at hand feels like a tall order. The show must go on, regardless. I count to three, three times. Bow down: 1-2-3, stay down: 1-2-3, come back up: 1-2-3<\/em>. Just like Ito-sensei, my childhood teacher, told me to for my first concert when I was five. As I have done since then, hundreds of times, maybe more. As the applause dies down, I start to adjust the piano bench, sit, and look up to channel the composer. The moment of silence collects the audience\u2019s attention to the stage. I hear the decaying hum in the hall. Then, perfect stillness. I feel my heart pounding, fast. I look at the conductor and give a nod. I will begin.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            —<\/p>\n\n\n\n

              Chopin\u2019s Piano Concerto No. 2 opens with an orchestral introduction that lasts about two minutes and a half. I try to steady my shallow breath to prepare myself for that long haul. I want to channel the nineteen-year-old Frederic Chopin in Poland, 1829. Written in his last year as a student, the piece was inspired by his \u201ctender feelings\u201d toward his schoolmate, a voice major Constantia Gladkowska. In a letter to a friend, he confessed how he could \u201cnot exchange a syllable with her of whom I dream every night.\u201d I recognize his yearning in the opening melody, stated in a sigh from the first violins, then joined by the descending chromatic scale from the second violins and the violas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My heart beats loudly in my ears, and noticing that makes my breath even quicker. I try to give myself a pep talk. I\u2019ve done this before<\/em>. I tell myself how I have performed as a featured soloist with various orchestras in cities of New Jersey, New York, and Bolivia. How I have performed numerous works for piano and orchestra by the masters: Mozart, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Barber, Gershwin, Debussy, Godard, Tovey…Fourteen months earlier, my performance of the same Chopin received a standing ovation, I remind myself. After noting the impossible odds for young aspiring musicians, the reviewer assured the readers \u201c\u2026but this one will make it!\u201d Just then, however, a story I heard somewhere from someone about a pianist from long ago disrupts my self-soothing: he would wait backstage during these long orchestral introductions, to run to the piano just in time to play the solo entrance in a desperate attempt to mitigate his stage fright. Was it Henselt? Was it Sofronitsky? Anyway, he was white and male and old and famous. I cannot afford to do such a thing.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I sit up. I breathe in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Follow the music. Follow the music.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, the orchestra finishes setting the scene, dissipating into silence, clearing the way for my solo entrance. I reach for the highest D-flat octave and strike the two black keys with both hands. SPLASH!! <\/em>It pierces through the hall. This first note, to me, is the sound of Little Mermaid\u2019s body hitting the ocean. She\u2019d made the choice to disappear as a foam in the ocean, the morning after her Prince married someone else. With the dagger from the witch, she could have killed the Prince to go back to being the mermaid she once was, but she chose otherwise. The descending arpeggio follows her sinking body twisting and turning down to the ocean floor. The sea witch did tell her \u2013 she could never go back to being a mermaid once she gained a human form. The weight of the human corporeal condition drags her down, heavy, heavy, heavy\u2026I play the lowest B-flat trill like a death rattle, before her body sinks even lower to the bottom F. The piece has just begun, but it feels like the end. Time halts. Then, a single sorrowful F minor arpeggio faintly ascends like a ghost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The melody that emerges is her soliloquy telling her story in retrospect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYour tail will part and open into what men call pretty legs. But it’ll hurt, it’ll be like a sharp sword going through you.\u201d The witch warned her. The \u201clegs\u201d is a euphemism for sex organs in Hans Christian Andersen\u2019s Little Mermaid<\/em>, written eight years after Chopin\u2019s concerto.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andersen left it ambiguous. For what<\/em> did he have his protagonist give up her carefree three hundred years under the sea? For the Prince, or the chance of attaining an immortal soul<\/em>? When the price of the \u201clegs\u201d was revealed to be her voice, she asked: \u201cBut if you take away my voice, what have I left?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYour beautiful form, and your floating gait, and your speaking eyes: with them you can easily delude a human heart<\/a>,\u201d the witch replied. And with that, her tongue was cut off, and she lost her voice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the tragic first movement in F-minor ends, the piece switches gears. The languid second movement is in the relative major of A-flat. Just as Andersen\u2019s Little Mermaid spends a third of the story under the sea swimming with her fishtail, singing and asking questions, Chopin dedicates the middle movement to carefree soaring melodies with sparkling notes cascading like countless pearls. And why not? At the time of this composition in 1829, the still-teenage Chopin was more concerned about his muteness in front of Constantia than about Poland\u2019s voiceless rage building up against the oppressive Russian rule. And just as it was a matter of months before the nameless Little Mermaid transformed herself into a nameless and voiceless \u201cpretty legs,\u201d it was also a matter of months before the Cadet Revolution transformed Chopin\u2019s life, identity, and musicianship. As for me, the moment that divided my life between the before and the after was upon me, just then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suddenly, noticing my own trembling fingers jolts me back from under the sea to the on-going reality. Not good!<\/em> I swallow my breath. My finger joints feel like pudding. I cannot feel the bottom of the keys I am playing. With each realization, my breathing gets shallower and quicker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The audience might think that the fewer the notes, the easier it would be for the player. But the sparse notes in the second movement are too slippery to hang onto to keep my focus, and sanity. Imagine having to recite a poem slowly, one syllable per each agonizing second, knowing that your life depends on its delivery. You, too, would wish that you could just blurt out the whole poem in one single breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sing the melody<\/em>, I tell myself. But another voice shouts back in panic: I don\u2019t remember the next phrase!<\/em> My knees start shaking. I cannot feel the pedal underneath my foot. Calm down and concentrate! <\/em>I tell myself. Yes, but what is the next bass note!!??<\/em>  I scream back at myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

             The hall has no resonance. It is dry with no feedback to comfort me. Inside my mouth is equally dry with leather-like, paper-like membranes. I can\u2019t help slipping into an autopilot, my fingers reenacting the hundreds of hours of rote practicing, while my mind struggles to subdue the inner chatter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The orchestra is oblivious. It plays its short interlude. They sound muted. My heart is pounding louder in my ears. The packed hall feels distant, too quiet. The air is oppressive, tight with tension. What is the audience thinking \u2013 I cannot not tell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I lose my place in the middle of the second movement, my fingers too wobbly to find the right notes. The incessant pounding in my head. The ringing in my ears. I didn\u2019t know how to continue. The orchestra is now playing without me. I don\u2019t know what else to do. I get up from my piano bench. The conductor stops the orchestra. He reaches to touch my back lightly as I approach the podium: \u201cYes? Yes?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cI am sorry, but I don\u2019t think I can go on.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cYes. Yes, you can. You must.\u201d In front of a silent audience and an equally silent orchestra, we exchange words in a hushed whisper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cI would play only if we can start over from the very beginning of the first movement.\u201d Maybe if I can do over all the mistakes I\u2019ve already made, I may be able to save this performance. I am still hopeful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cThat would take too long,\u201d he argues. It is true \u2013 doing that would add another fifteen, twenty minutes to the piece, already over thirty minutes from the beginning to the end. He points to different parts of the score suggesting places in the music I can maybe start from. I am scared to start mid-piece, harder on the autopilot, the series of reactive reflexes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, we reach an agreement to start from the beginning of the second movement. I look at the audience. They are silent. Not even a cough. I cannot tell if they are stunned in dismay, totally indifferent, or clueless. I want to explain. Or apologize. To connect. To plead. To be human. But instead, I take a bow. Bow down: 1-2-3, stay down: 1-2-3, come back up: 1-2-3<\/em>. They respond by applauding. This is the only form of communication permissible in this traditional concert format. I bow. They applaud. What message is to be discerned from their applause? Encouragement? Silent request, or command, to go on? Or maybe the applause is not a message at all, but reflexive adherence to the protocols of centuries-old concert format. How archaic!<\/em> It would have been comedic in any other 21st<\/sup> century context, but no one laughs. Then, I have a thought. I stretch my arms out to both sides. The white dress with a hint of pink is elaborate with cape-like lace all around my upper body that becomes visible only when I do that. At least, enjoy the dress<\/em>. I have never cared about dresses, wanting concerts to be for and about something beyond that kind of superficiality. But at that moment, I too resort to my form, gait and speaking eyes, like the mute little mermaid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2001 was a catalytic year for me, and the world around me. Stopping midpiece on the stage of my European debut started my battle with stage fright, and chased me down the rabbit hole with fundamental questions about my musicianship: Why do I play? For whom do I play? How can music make me feel as though my life is at stake? What is music?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My memoir is in three parts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first part explores the contextual background that led to what happened. There is a history of marginalized population seeing musicianship as a way to assert that we, too, are humans, with the ideal of \u201cmusic as a universal language.\u201d Western cultural imperialism determined how that universal language had to be Bach, Mozart and Beethoven for the Japanese girls of my generation. Then, the music conservatories trained us to serve the canonized dead, white, male composers as scrupulous recreators of their notations. We internalized the white patriarchy as we learned to become self-effacing conduits, losing our sense of agency in the process. Lastly, there was the industry that commodified music and musicians as products to be consumed, leaving young musicians at the mercy of the market economy and its dealers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second part of the memoir examines what happened to me on the stage of my European debut with events immediately before and after. Considering music as a spiritual pursuit, and ourselves as unworthy of that privilege, meant masochistic sabotage of well-being, comfort, and confidence for many musicians like myself. Deprivation of the essentials like proper sleep, sustenance, and the idea of home as an expression of our devotion was common. Pervasive anti-intellectualism as a reflection of our blind faith to the notion of music as beyond words led to mindless and repetitive practice without reason or strategy, leading many conservatory trained musicians to fail under pressure. It was all in pursuit of abstract beauty as an avenue to transcend the chasm between how we perceived the world and how the world actually was, posited by Kant and post-Kantian philosophers as our ultimate goal. And with my internalized white patriarchy, I had also adapted the belief that our only chance of attaining it<\/em> was through winning the hearts of white men. After my disastrous concert in Hungary, looking for salvation, I initiated a one-night stand that blew up to talks of eloping to Paris.     <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The third part of the memoir follows my journey to rediscover the power of music and reestablish my own sense of agency and musicianship. 2001 was also the year of my debut in Japan. In a collectivist society I had chosen to leave as a teen, I found devoted art administrators and supporters who believed in the power of the arts and music as essential to cultivating human connections. My successful debut in Japan strengthened my ties to my family and roots, encouraging me to continue my Way of the Musician when 9.11 struck. I went back to NY and played for the rescue workers as one of the \u201cmusic givers.\u201d I reestablished my sense of agency when I organized a fundraising holiday concert for the families of those lost at the World Trade Center a year later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Music is powerful. It has become disempowered. By recognizing the forces that disconnect us from each other and from our own creativity and compassion, we can find ways to improve our lives, society and the future of our humanity. Let the power of music heal us all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Music is a practice to celebrate our interconnectedness by reinforcing our nature as social animals in a communal harmonic resonance. 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