{"id":3655,"date":"2026-06-18T12:20:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T19:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musicalmakiko.com\/en\/?p=3655"},"modified":"2026-06-18T12:20:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T19:20:14","slug":"mermaids-soul-intro-to-my-memoir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musicalmakiko.com\/en\/healing-power-of-music\/3655","title":{"rendered":"Mermaid&#8217;s Soul: Intro to my Memoir"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Backstage is dark. Walls and floors painted black. Wires and chains erect, like countless pillars shooting up all the way up to the high ceiling. The anticipation of the concert creates a void in sound and air. No one talks. I walk out to the stage tall, rhythmical in my clicking heels, away from the vacuum into the blinding stage light. The applause reverberates like a shower on my skin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; On the 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 with their countless faces masked in the shadow of the stage light. They put their hands together for this young unknown Asian pianist. It is January 2001, my European debut in P\u00e9cs, Hungary. I am twenty-five.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To be featured as a soloist for a symphonic concert is a singular honor for a musician. I have performed works for piano and orchestra by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Frederic Chopin, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Samuel Barber, George Gershwin, Claude Debussy, Benjamin Godard, Donald Francis Tovey and others with various orchestras in cities of New Jersey, New York, and Bolivia. A prolific essayist on music as well as a formidable composer, 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; How am I the one here?<\/em> I hear my mind.Brown, blue, green eyes from the audience follow my walk to the piano. <em>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. Among those applauding me now were some of the people staring at me everywhere I went in this town, like I had a hatchet planted atop my head. The provincial town was under the communist regime until the end of the Cold War just twelve years ago, in 1989. These people are not used to foreign visitors, especially the blatant \u201cothers\u201d like me, but understanding does not help my feeling of alienation. The realization that I am the only person of color in the sold-out house 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 daunting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I extend my left arm to the side of the 9-foot grand piano and turn to face the audience. Left hand on the piano, right hand fixed to my side, smile, and count to three, three times. <em>Bow down: 1-2-3, stay down: 1-2-3, come back up: 1-2-3<\/em>. Then, I adjust the piano bench, sit, and focus on the keyboard. Just like my teacher told me for my first concert when I was five. As I have done since then, hundreds of times, maybe more. I look up to channel the composer and his music, then slowly lower my head. That minute is also meant to collect the audience\u2019 attention to the stage with suspension. I hear the decaying hum in the hall. Then, perfect stillness. I feel my heart pounding, fast. I look up at the conductor and give a nod. <em>I will begin.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &#8212;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Chopin\u2019s Piano Concerto No. 2 begins 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. <em>I\u2019ve been here. I\u2019ve done this before. <\/em>I remind myself how fourteen months earlier, my performance of the same piece received a standing ovation in a town not far from where I went to high school in New Jersey. After noting the impossible odds for young aspiring musicians, the reviewer assured readers \u201c\u2026but this one will make it!\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn1\" id=\"_ftnref1\"><sup>[1]<\/sup><\/a>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I want to channel the nineteen-year-old 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. But just then, a story I heard somewhere from someone about a pianist from long ago disrupts my channel: he would wait backstage during these long orchestral introductions, to run to the piano just in time to play the solo entrance in his desperate attempt to mitigate his stage fright. <em>Was it Hensel<sup>?<\/sup> Was it Sofronitsky? Anyway, he was white and male and old and famous. I cannot afford to do such a thing.<\/em> I sit up. I breathe in. <em>Follow the music. Follow the music.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>        And finally, the orchestra is finished setting the scene for me, 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. <em>SPLASH!! <\/em>It pierces through the hall. This first note, to me, is the sound of Little Mermaid\u2019s body hitting the ocean. Then, 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. The orchestra is still. The air is taut. Then, a single sorrowful F minor arpeggio faintly ascends like a ghost. The melody that emerges is her soliloquy telling her story in retrospect.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>        \u201cYour tail will part and open into what men call pretty legs. But it&#8217;ll hurt, it&#8217;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 (1837).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>        Andersen left it ambiguous. For <em>what<\/em> was she giving up her carefree three hundred years under the sea? Was it the Prince, or the chance of attaining an <em>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<p>        \u201cYour beautiful form, and your floating gait, and your speaking eyes: with them you can easily delude a human heart,\u201d the witch replied. And with that, her tongue was cut off, and she became dumb.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>        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, he 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<p>        Suddenly, noticing my own trembling fingers jolts me back from under the sea to the on-going reality. <em>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<p>        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<p><em>          Sing the melody<\/em>, I tell myself. But another voice shouts back in panic: <em>I don\u2019t remember the next phrase!<\/em> My knees start shaking. I cannot feel the pedal underneath my foot. <em>Calm down and concentrate! <\/em>I tell myself. <em>Yes, but what is the next bass note!!??<\/em>\u00a0 I scream back at myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;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<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 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<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 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<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; \u201cI am sorry, but I don\u2019t think I can go on.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; \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<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; \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<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; \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<p>        Finally, an agreement is reached 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. <em>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 we are allowed to exchange 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. <em>How archaic!<\/em> It would have been comedic in any other 21<sup>st<\/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. <em>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>&#8212;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>        2001 was a catalytic year. Stopping midpiece on the stage of my European debut started my battle with stage fright, and forced me to face the most fundamental questions about my musicianship and sense of self: Why do I play? For whom do I play? How can music-making feel so life-threatening? What is music?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>        My research memoir, <em>Mermaid\u2019s Soul: Reclaiming My Voice as an Asian Pianist<\/em> first explores the contextual background that led to what happened. With the ideal of \u201cmusic as a universal language,\u201d the marginalized people strove to musicianship as a way to assert that they too are humans. Western cultural imperialism determined how that universal language had to be Bach, Mozart and Beethoven for Japanese girls of my generation. Then, the music conservatories trained me and my peers to serve the canonized dead, white, male composers as scrupulous recreators of their notations. Lastly, there was the industry that commodified music and musicians as products to be consumed, leaving musicians to be at the mercy of the market economy and its dealers. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>        The second 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 helped me reframe music making as an essential part of Joseph Beuys\u2019 \u201csocial sculpture,\u201d viewing society as artwork its citizens co-create. 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>        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. Music is a practice to celebrate our interconnectedness by reinforcing our nature as social animals in a communal harmonic resonance. Let the power of music heal us all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Music is a practice to celebrate our interconnectedness by reinforcing our nature as social animals in a communal harmonic resonance. Let the power of music heal us all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3656,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[860,1064,920,105,104],"tags":[1308,1306,152,1309,106,1307],"class_list":["post-3655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-healing-power-of-music","category-music-history","category-musical-activism","category-stage-fright","category-writing-a-book","tag-intro-to-my-memoir","tag-mermaids-soul","tag-music-industry","tag-research-memoir","tag-stage-fright","tag-vcca"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Mermaid&#039;s Soul: Intro to my Memoir - &quot;Dr. Pianist&quot; 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