The path of playing Taiko has interested me for a long time.
When I started out playing in middle school, I never thought about the path– I didn’t even know if I would continue playing Taiko or music after high school! It was simply something that i did.
When I started playing Taiko in college, I thought a lot about different ways that I could improve myself and the performance group I was a part of. “Ah, this must be the path toward getting better”. Finding ways in which I could improve things and stretch in every way was so important to me. I wanted to find the path toward being a great player.
As I left college and played while in graduate school, my perspective changed yet again. I really began to think that the journey toward getting ‘better’ is not really a path I could sustain. There were too many things to improve on: musicality, performance, choreography, form, technique, composition, etc. for one to get better at all of them at the same time. Here, I felt saved by Yuta Kato’s advice: to do what interests you the most and allow the “you” and your interests change over years. We, then, give up on getting generically ‘better’, and now venture out and have exact items that we want to get ‘better’ at.
But even that perspective felt stale after a bit. I found myself listing all the things I wanted to specifically improve on. But as I improved in these things, I never felt much satisfaction nor really felt like I ever ‘mastered’ or could move on to other things to work on.
Even the idea of being on a path toward something is a little silly. Such a journey has a clear, emboldened destination. Not only is such a path hard to continue sustaining, but it also is hard to imagine enjoying such a journey. It felt restricting and I felt I didn’t have the ability to ‘play’ to stretch and find new things that I wanted to go deeper into.
When I sat down as a 12-year-old kid and heard the story of Eitetsu’s path towards where he was, I couldn’tstop thinking about how cool that would be. To live that life and to create such aamazing projects would be cool, right? But, the older I got, the more I wanted my own life. It was no longer enough to imagine a life where I did everything Eitetsu did. Because, simply, he wasn’t me.
Now, I’ve settled into thinking that the only path is sticking around. Stick around long enough that you figure out what you like and then you’re inspired and then you try something new to you and then you try again and then you keep moving. And if that path takes you away from your original intent and away from Taiko or music, that’s awesome.
I want to paint this blank canvas of possibilities and fill it in with the colors I pick up that day. I don’t want to follow other people’s journeys but to be inspired and grasp for the things that I love and pursue them further. Maybe, this journey will not be as accomplished as others. Or maybe it will be more accomplished and crazy. But this, to me, feels like the right path to stick with.
Who knows what I will think tomorrow.