Hi! It’s me! Lily!!!
It’s Wednesday!!!
A pretty boring Wednesday, I guess.
At least it’s not hailing!!!
Yuki’s over tonight. Liz has a lesson or something, so it’s just me and Yuki. She seems to like coming over, I think she gets lonely. Her host family is nice but they don’t do a lot of things with her, they’re older so they just kind of keep to themselves. I think they like that she’s going out more. We watched some anime, and played some youtubes of her performing and I asked her what she was thinking about when she was on stage. She said that she really doesn’t think about anything other than just doing her performance and not messing up too much.
“Too much?”, I asked.
She sighed. “Being an idol is weird, if you make a mistake, it just makes them like you more. Sometimes I made a minor mistake on purpose just to be cute.” she sighed. “You know idols where special innerwear so that they don’t show their pantsu, right?” She blushed. “I forgot mine once. That wasn’t intentional.”
I giggled. “Well that’s fanservice.”
“I guess”, she said. “Now twenty thousand of my closest friends know what my pantsu look like. At least it was clean.”
I giggled a little. Then I told her how I lost my top at the waterpark. It was her turn to giggle. “You didn’t have as much of an audience, but… I can imagine the look on those boys’ face…” she fell over giggling. “And you’ve got so much… more…” She squealed with laughter for a few moments, then recovered and sat up again. “I guess everyone has those moments.”
She was quiet for a moment.
“You know, I really would have liked to perform actual music… I mean, idol music is music, but… not… music.” She said this wistfully.
‘”Like this?”, I asked, and showed her the video of when I performed that Schumann concerto with an orchestra.
She watched it carefully, then when it was over, said “I am so jealous!”
“You’re jealous of me?” I asked incredulously. “You’ve got an entire country full of fans. You’ve sold out Tokyo Dome and Budokan. You’re… jealous of me??”
She actually sniffled. “I did all those things,” she said quietly. “But none of them really meant anything. I just sang silly songs and danced around and acted cute, and people ate it up. But did that really require talent? What you did requires talent”, she said sadly.
I guess so. I’d never thought of it that way. Maybe I didn’t sell out HEB Center, or anything like that, but it took a lot of work and it was really fun and not everyone can do it. She can’t do it. She’s a little more talented than some idols, she had some training, but… she can’t do what I did.
Awww.
That actually makes me a little sad, if I’m being honest about it. I guess everyone has a dream, and sometimes even the people who look like they’re living their dream really aren’t. Or maybe they are but somewhere along the line they got another dream.
“So… what do you really want to do?”, I asked.
She… just kind of froze and looked lost. “I thought… I wanted to be an idol. And now I was… and then I hated it. Would I hate doing anything else I wanted to do?”
“Maybe… or maybe you haven’t found what gives you life yet.”
Maybe… maybe I haven’t either, if I’m being honest. I like the stuff I do… but… how will that turn out?
Is life about doing what you love? Or loving what you do?
“Why don’t you take some music lessons then?” I asked. “I know you took some training as an idol. Is there anything you’d want to do, like that?”
“I wish I could sing,” she said. “Like… really sing. You know, like the singers who do the anime openings. They’re so good,” she gushed. “I was never that good.”
Then she played an anime opening for me, and… she’s right. That lady can really, really sing.
“Beth’s taking voice lessons,” I said. “Maybe you can see if you can work with her teacher?”
I guess she’s going to think about it.
An idol. Jealous of me.
Amazing.
Anyway, I guess it’s bedtime.