The Diary

07/12

Once, I was very excited about this show, because our team had designed a bright blue motif, and at the time I was exploring the idea of purity. I wanted to see if I could embody this aesthetic and share the feeling with everyone. It helped me with putting on the show, because I could leave myself and tune into a frequency that I’d been approaching for a long time, as if to clean people, if that makes sense. I didn’t feel like myself, which was refreshing. I was going through a difficult time and wanted to disappear. I was wor­ried I would lack energy, however, when you start singing that all goes away.

It becomes like a dream. When you finally step on the stage, even after all the rehearsals, something changes inside of you, as if for the first time. I’ve been wondering, ‘How does it feel?’ Singing becomes impossibly natural, as forgettable as breathing. There’s no strain required, and I can hear my voice across the whole song, all at once.

I don’t know if I’ve expressed the rich longing which warmed my blood then, though I remember during that performance feel­ing extremely light and relieved at letting it out. I forgot about everything worrying in my life. The crowd was responsive and knew all of my songs, which always helps. When I first became an

idol, I felt very embarrassed because no one knew who I was, so I had to prove myself each time. I wasn’t upset when they talked during my performance, I was just very embarrassed and then determined to make them want to watch the next time.

At this performance, everyone came to see me. I recall headlin­ing with only one other singer. I imagined that there were fans who’d attended past concerts, and I wanted to make a more pre­cise memory than their last. Indeed, it also seems likely that many will only encounter me once, which is even more of a reason to do my best. It sounds like I was competing with myself. Maybe I was, it’s hard to say. I’ve always been competitive. As a reminder, this was over five years ago. Five years? I would’ve had a different moti­vation then. I was going to say that this concert was recent, but five years is such a long time! Forget that I said anything!

My stylist helped me find clothes that matched the feeling of purity. We sought the color of winter with an airy shape. The idea was ice thawing as we moved towards a windy spring. My baby blue sweater was the color of snow reflecting a cloudless sky, and now that I think about it, the only thing more transparent than ice is air. I like to believe that all of the smallest details add up to something very meaningful, because you don’t know what anyone could notice. If there’s just one person, you know, just one child who thinks that my skirt is beautiful, and it becomes a memory for her, then it was worth dressing up.

It’s too difficult to think about the audience as a large crowd. It’s why I make eye contact with individuals when on stage. It might not mean a lot to me then, yet later those glances are what I think fondly of.

At night, I wore a white blouse with a cute black beret, though the day’s performance resides more in my head. While during the night it was only me and the band, during the day my team of dancers gave support, and we created a show that was at once invigorating and restful. Now that I’m reminiscing, the night show was great too. It was a very successful day! This festival was in the old Olympic stadium. I remember wondering, ‘I’m too lucky to perform here twice in one day.’ I made sure to have another concert there later, which has unearthed these memories and made them obedient.

I started by singing Friday. Should I say? Oh, I felt confident and honestly quite attractive. I was encouraged to be dramatic by my fans’ support. Then Good Day started, and that was the begin­ning of a strange, dissolving feeling. I can relive it vividly even now. We had choreographed everything, and even if no one in the audience could see or feel it, there was something terrifyingly new about this performance.

I’ve stopped being anxious before shows, though sometimes without warning my limbs quiver with agitation. That day, my heartbeat sped up and refused to reach equilibrium. Later I watched a recording of myself and could see the tenseness in my legs changing how I moved, so this is true. You can see phases in a performer’s face like the moon confronted from our perspective, that is, with a sort of natural deference that is only legible from the audience. I tried to reach a state of total commitment for most of the song, nonetheless, there are moments where you can see in my eyes that I was lost. It’s probably clearest when I performed You & I.

I’ve spoken of this feeling to friends inside the profession, and to my embarrassment, it’s unlike anything they know. I thought that I may be hallucinating, though maybe I should welcome it. I was filled with an unbearable awe. Firstly, there was a noise that I’d never witnessed during practice. Nonetheless, the sound triggered a nostalgic feeling of déjà vu that confused me.

By that point in the show, I was splitting into two selves. One of me knew each movement to make with my feet and hands. In fact, I had a sort of robotically alive, Frankensteinian way of singing. However, the other could see the first from a distance. It was as if I’d relearned how to behave by managing the relations between how an idol acts and how I naively might choose for myself. The impression was that everything made too much sense, like it was preordained, and I could see the miniscule space between things where I would have room to mature.

I love the story Frankenstein because I can empathize with learning how to be from watching others, like a performance, as well as the conception that one won’t ever belong despite proving with such a feeling that they do. Rather, the performer or monster must distance themselves from the world while being created in its image. In this way, we walk a thin rope of wide-eyed naivety and measured sophistication. It adequately mirrors this performance about purity. For both, one is engaged in a violent sort of act. And then there’s the monstrous truth that the closer we come to you, the more afraid you become. Your fear is not directed at who I am, of course, but for the overreaching burden we share.

At some point during the performance, I stopped recognizing myself, sometimes adding things I hadn’t rehearsed for, or even

shaking parts of myself that I considered inappropriate. We seem completely able to surpass ourselves, in directions we can’t recog­nize, whenever given the space. Yet this couldn’t be my choice, either. I sensed the world so much in these moments that I could melt into it, and the lines between myself, my fans, and the music communicated loudly until they merged.

However, there was the other part of me chasing and worrying about this déjà vu feeling. You could still see the change in my face during these songs, dripping and mixing into my expressions like I was molten lava reclaiming the earth, at one moment absorbing nature, and in another so taken by myself that my eyes glazed over to visit memories.

Because one half of me was worried that I’d done this before, the other worried about the audience. People can have brief moments of severe confusion for many reasons such as dissociation, though this felt like reality was slowing rather than separating me from our world.

I’m wondering if my memory is trying to convince myself of things that never happened? No, I’m sure that this did occur, though hesitant to say why as it may strike nerves.

An old childhood fear is that I would behave very strangely at an inopportune moment. I’ve seen it happen before. Some people have great, invisible struggles in their life which explode before perceptive eyes. I don’t have to name these moments, it’s best if we can all forget. My friends in our industry share recurring night­mares of being publicly shamed. We pass around forgotten movie scripts that are too dark to be made. They depict mental health problems with traumas, subsequent dissociations, and supposed

multiple identities. For example, Perfect Blue is mandatory viewing. We’ve whispered about ways to cope. Truth be told, no one has even outlined the real truth of things to the public, let alone themselves…

Maybe when I retire, I’ll publish my thoughts on the matter. For now, I hope you can be content with the recognition of my avoidance. In many nightmares, our secrets are revealed, or we find ourselves with a bad wardrobe malfunction, or we say some­thing that we didn’t mean and hurt those we love. The damage is always irreparable, and we wake up believing that it will follow us for the rest of our lives, like a vengeful killer or maybe a bored mob. It’s in our career to worry because these are possibilities that do happen and affect the whole company as well as innocent fans. I can never apologize enough for bringing my team into this. I hope we’ll continue to take care of ourselves, because all it takes is a mistaken moment for me to harm many lives.