AIAI-assisted translation·Read the source version
Recently I have felt as though I have recovered some control over my life. The things around me can once again be influenced by what I do. That has given me confidence and helped me climb a little way out of the pit of passivity.
After night fell, thoughts arrived in a rush. “Inspiration” is not quite the right word; I simply could not settle down, and sentences emerged one after another, perhaps through the action of the parasympathetic nervous system. Experiencing them as they appeared and knowing that time would soon bury them in the depths of memory seemed a pity, so I decided to record them.
That is how this article began: as a place for thoughts that occasionally surface, and for small events in life.
The guitar from my childhood has returned home. My mother gave it to me for a birthday when I was young. At the time, children around me were all learning an instrument to cultivate themselves; swept along by that fashion, I too received an instrument of my own, an acoustic guitar.
It has a simple appearance, like a conventional novel, and gives an impression of plainness. That suits me now, but I disliked it as a child. Once the guitar arrived, I had to make the journey through the summer heat to a teacher’s house for lessons. At the time it seemed a miserable chore.
My teacher loved rock music and was filled with enthusiasm for the guitar, which also made him particularly strict with his students. I had little patience. Music held no interest for me then; plucking strings and playing pieces seemed no different from housework—simply dull.
During lessons, the teacher usually spoke while his voice passed by my ears. My attention was fixed entirely on the hands of the clock, willing them to turn faster so the lesson would end sooner. The awareness of time wrapped tightly around me and dragged everything into slowness. In those days, time was always difficult to exhaust.
With that attitude, naturally, I learned very little. When the summer course ended, I left the guitar casually in a corner of the house to gather dust.
Perhaps watching Bocchi the Rock! last year encouraged me through its characters and story. Perhaps I had also acquired a rough but better understanding of music and the humanities. Whatever the reason, some interest returned and I went to find the guitar again. The instrument abandoned after that long-ago summer was covered in dust, and all six strings had rusted.
I bought new strings and began replacing them. Changing strings and tuning had once frightened me terribly: I was always afraid that some mistake would make a string snap against me. Turning the tuning pegs felt like handling the trigger wire of an explosive. I understood that even if a string struck me it would not hurt very much, but fear is not so quickly persuaded. Fortunately, I completed the replacement without incident.
I plucked a string. It sounded good. Yet after so many years away, every technique I had learned was gone. I could only find tutorials and imitate them mechanically. My fingers were no longer as agile as before; they moved clumsily from string to string, often producing unwanted noise.
Listening to the broken sequence of notes and feeling my fingers continue to move, my thoughts became a little quieter.