8: Over The Rainbow
The third day—the last day—of the Second Round.
Masami had stayed up all night organizing the footage she’d gathered so far. She had tried to tag and trim her footage along the way, knowing that one sleepless night would insure against a week of headache during editing.
She had plenty of footage of Akashi, she’d realized. Of course, if he made it to the Third Round, she would have more, but she had a decent narrative about his passing the First Round. If he hadn’t, well … she didn’t need to worry about that, so she didn’t.
The other contestants she had been filming—the Russian, the two Ukrainians—hadn’t made it past the First Round. One of the hosts had discreetly and somewhat embarrassedly said to her, “We’ve never had someone staying with us not make it past the First Round. I really thought he would have, but.” He had seemed even more disappointed than the contestant he had been hosting. Anyhow, she also had footage of the three of them and some other eliminated contestants joining a mini music festival hosted by the city and giving free piano lessons to elementary schoolchildren—a bright, human touch amidst their losses.
The results would be out in the evening, so her schedule for the day was light; she decided to talk with some of the volunteers with whom she had become friendly. She felt a kinship toward those toiling behind the scenes, whose quality of work was assessed by how little you noticed it. And most of the volunteers were residents of the city with plenty busy lives of their own; they seemed to regard volunteering for the competition almost as a civic duty. Some of the volunteers had been with the competition since its inception, and all seemed both competent and thoroughly happy with their tasks. They picked their favorites, they traded gossip, and they cheered for the winners as though they were their own. And if they happened to get news that the winners were surviving the open waters of classical music, they would throw the newspaper at their companion and say, “I checked him in on the first day of his big break, you know?”
Like all competitions, there are moments here where joy and grief commingle. Masami understood the stakes—was drawn to capturing their feeling.
And those stakes feel even higher when the talent all seem overwhelming. No matter how tight a race or precise an arrow, there is an objective, foolproof method of calculating rank. Especially when popular and adjudicating opinions diverge, musical competitions can feel almost farcical.
On the other hand, it may be even more remarkable when the two opinions align. Perhaps it’s humans’ innate ability to discern the beautiful in all things. Perhaps it’s an overwhelming charisma. Perhaps it’s something else. Either way, amateurs and professionals can be alike in some important ways.
Asking the volunteers whom they had their eyes on, Masami got the names of a Russian, a Korean, and two Japanese contestants.
Jin Kazama and Aya Eiden. The former, a perfect anonymity who emerged from the Paris auditions, a cute little boy by the looks of the program. (Akashi, hearing her describe him as such, scolded her for “being so middle-aged.”) The latter, a genius girl who retired with zero warning: she had heard that this competition was her return to the stage. Both fertile story-fodder.
She remembered hearing from Akashi that he had been a fan. She understood it now, too: a small girl, bird-stepping onstage, with an ocean of talent, character, and passion flooding forth the moment her hands touched the keys.
When Masami asked the volunteers whom they thought would win, they became both excited and cagey. They clearly had their opinions—but didn’t want to go first.
Someone Masami didn’t recognize mentioned Masaru Carlos Levi Anatol—who had floored Akashi, she remembered—and there was a round of nods. Someone else mentioned his classmate, Jennifer Chan. A fiery playing style; a grandness of scale. With the latter already having had her solo debut outside the U.S., it was hard to imagine her talent not being acknowledged here as well.
Now that she thought about it, even if they bore the flags of other countries, many of the top contestants were ethnically Asian. The Asian fierceness for education of course went without saying, but Masami had heard that there were more Asians than even whites at Juilliard.
Jennifer Chan, Chinese; Masaru Carlos Levi Anatol, Japanese and Latin and even French. Their talent and charm had certainly captured people’s hearts and imaginations. Their stardom was apparent even to the untrained eye, and God were they pretty.
Pianism is to some degree branding, after all, and a decent—or just memorable (Kissin, for just one example)—appearance is an underappreciated asset.
Anyhow, Masami had also learned in the last week that Levi Anatol’s instructor, a judge at this competition—such a ridiculous conflict of interest, she thought—had kept him in the wings until this competition, and that he would send his star pupil to some as-yet-undetermined, even more prestigious competition if he did well here. The blessing of Yoshigaë, the volunteers tittered.
So many steps to become a musician. Masami couldn’t believe she’d even think the thought, but there were paths even more daunting than filmmaking. So many competitions, of such diverse scales, prestige, finance. Such diverse requirements, locations, cultures, judges. How to appeal to all of them?
Well. One can collect them—trophies by the dozen—or just make it big at one. And no matter what your strategy, the fundamental process—practicing, studying, thinking, growing—remains the same. And all that practicing, only to be eliminated in the First Round. Twenty minutes, and that’s it. Gosh.
She’s learned how marrow-draining a business music can be, just from watching Akashi preparing part-time; certainly, except for a select few, performing itself is a business deeply in the red. She had no idea how others Akashi’s age in the competition were supporting themselves; she was sure it wasn’t through performance.
But they all dream of being musicians, of being onstage. They shop bargain aisles and clip coupons and walk the road toward music without complaint. For the stage, they bring out their best—dresses and tuxes—and onstage, they play their best. But perhaps, the joke goes, there’s a reason tuxes and dresses don’t have pockets: musicians don’t have anything to put there anyway.
Watching Akashi scrimp on sleep to practice, she was at first somewhat in disbelief: he had a respectable job, and a family—so why?
That “why” was answered for her when she saw his face after his First Round performance. It might have been the happiest face on a human being she’d ever seen in her life.
Had she ever been that happy?
She smiled bitterly. She’d never thought of her calling as much more than a job—a good job, but a job.
Masami looked at the array of contestant photos in the hall. The ones in the Second Round were adorned with a ribbon; the vast majority had no ribbons.
Her eyes drifted to Akashi’s photo. There he was, with a very Akashi-esque, gentle smile. The ribbon on his photo, and the thought of what he had gone through to get one—
She felt tears welling up.
Has there ever been so absurd, so cruel a spectacle?
Masami sighed as she looked at the photo. But she flipped the question: has there ever been such an exciting, captivating spectacle?
Can you even rank art, measure art, score art? Any sane person would say no. But everyone wants to see art ranked, measured, scored. They want to know the chosen, the victorious, the best. And the greater the struggle, the greater the joy of meeting—and of course becoming—the winner.
It is this struggle which people crave, Masami has now realized. They want the human drama. They want to see the spotlight dance and then fall on someone—and therefore not on someone else. They want to see the joy of being illuminated, and the sorrow of falling into the shadows.
She looked at the posters framed in the lobby of the hall—posters from previous iterations of the competition. Each poster—just a sheet of paper—contained thousands of hours of organization and millions of hours of practicing.
Should I come next time?
She wanted to sit in the hall and be awed—no camera, no script, no schedule, just another audience member. And she wanted to come with someone—someone who could enjoy the music, gossip about the contestants, rejoice and weep at the drama.
Her daydreaming was interrupted by the opening of the hall’s doors. The audience poured out.
In three years, maybe she’d come. But today: work.
She rubbed her eyes and entered the hall, camera at the ready.