The Worst

I have a confession to make out of all my friends I'm the least talented.

I can't stay in tune and my sense of rhythm fluctuates with my feelings. I can't draw very well and my writing is full of grammatical liberties.

"How do you know?"

My fourth grade teacher relentlessly questioned me after I rose my hand answering a multiplication problem correctly before we learned her method to solve the equation. I knew the answer was correct. But I didn't understand why she asked us what the answer was if she didn't expect an answer from a student. Her face was full of shock and surprise, but it didn't feel good at all. It was the first and last time I rose my hand in class.

From that day, a little seed of doubt has always been in the back of my mind. How do I know? Even when I'm certain that I'm right and everyone else knows that I'm right. I always feel like I never really know.

When I was in the seventh grade, I started taking guitar lessons in the old record shop by West Portal from an old hippie with long hair. He gave me a book to write out chord charts and diagrams. I remember sitting in our cabin during the class retreat and filling in the diagrams trying my best to understand why he loved "House of the Rising Sun" and how it felt like I was trying to move somewhere.

He was a good teacher, I think his name was Dave. Later my dad got into an argument with him and I stopped going to him. I was using a classical guitar for my lessons that was too small. I had taken lessons before with a child guitar when I was eight from Curtis, who used to eat potato chips during my lessons and told me I didn't need to count no matter how many questions I asked about the sheet music.

Dave was good though, all he did was ask my dad to get me a new guitar. He was right too. I can't even play that classical guitar today. My dad was furious. Later that night I heard him arguing with my mom.

"He's not going to do anything with music anyway. It's a waste of money. There's no point"

I don't think he knows I heard them arguing. But all they did was argue at that time. I think they're the only two who were surprised by the divorce.

I stopped going to Dave after that. And my neighbor started going instead on my mom's recommendation. He was a year older than me and now he's a music major. I'm not.

I kept playing music though. My mom found me a piano teacher by my house. An old guy named Ed who kept harping on the blues and gave me songs like "Boogie Woogie" and "Old Train." He taught me how to do a piano slide with my thumb. He told my mom he would teach me to play by ear, but whenever I showed him songs he never wanted to help me learn them. I was really excited one day finding a song that I learned most of it by following tutorials on YouTube and asking to go over it with him. And he replied, "What's the point? You already learned it."

He wasn't a bad guy. He was a good mentor and the closest thing to a father figure I had. He taught me a lot about religion and philosophy. He also had a ton of stories from his days protesting in San Francisco during the 1960's. I liked him a lot. I learned a lot less about music than with Dave, but I learned a lot more about life from Ed. His passion for music really kept me going and I think one of my best memories is after I composed my first song he just sat there, pulled his chair back, and really listened to what I played.

During this time, I also started taking guitar lessons from Richard. He was a really young guy that now has 200,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. I'm not sure what happened but this time my parents agreed to get me a new guitar from the store I was learning in. I played the guitar so much that I broke the tuning pegs on it. I remember having to use pliers to tune the guitar. I would often fall asleep with the guitar in my bed.

Richard helped me a lot with my expression. We used to sit in the tiny sunny bungalows off of Taraval and just jam with our guitars. He was really fun. No matter what song I brought in to him, he would immediately break down the chords and teach me a simplified version. I always wanted to do that too, but I would get stuck. I never knew how to ask for help.

I started to think that Richard and Ed had pretty good lives. They could set their own hours and they were able to make money playing music. I told my mom once that I wanted to teach music and she replied.

"Teach? Who would want to learn from you?"

After that I knew that I had to leave San Francisco and my family.

My life continued like this until I went to college. All throughout school, everyone knew me as the music kid. During high school, my program director even let me have a special seat in our video class full of music programs. He basically let me compose the entire class period and he gave me an encyclopedia of musicians. It was pretty cool.

He helped me get into a music production program too with an internship. I was put into a class with other beat makers when I was sixteen. They were all amazing. Other kids who turned me on to Nujabes and DJ Shadow. I was making pop beats that sounded like Coldplay. I was completely out of my element and outclassed by everyone. It was frustrating, but fun. It was really fun. I didn't get a music internship, but one at an audio post production studio.

Over there, I worked under two guys — one they called the white Jay-Z, an aspiring rapper in his late 20's, and the other a Kangol wearing beat maker who looked like a Filipino Chester Bennington. They told me there was no future in audio post production. I saw Chester after university at my part-time job a few years later. He had already switched careers, I think he became a programmer. I'm not too sure what happened to Jay, but it sounded like there was a massive lay-off at the company.

By the time I went to university, I had already seen and met many great musicians. I always wanted to pursue music, but I didn't know where to go.

During this time I met Andrew and he was the most talented artist I ever met. He could sing, play, guitar, and paint. He was a fine art major and he even designed a sculpture that went on our school campus. We started to play in a band together. I played bass and he sang and played the guitar. One time, during a show I remember he played the guitar so hard until his fingers bled.

We also had John in our band. He was so talented. He was a bit sloppy sometimes, but his knowledge of the guitar neck was immaculate. We got into a topic one time about what he would do if a string broke and he said he'd just play a different inversion somewhere else. Then there was Dave, a different Dave, he was always on the beat. He developed his sense of rhythm by using the Indian counting system. And they're old bassist who came back Ace, who somehow could always make the third guitar fit with his effectors. I was always out of my element and felt like I was just in the band because I was really good friends with Andrew. Despite that, looking back I think some of my bass lines weren't that bad and as a whole we were a lot better than you would've expected.

"How do you know?"

"He'll never do anything with music"

I heard the same voices in my head from my past. So, I eventually I gave up on music. I studied something completely unrelated. I decided to do something completely unrelated to music. Being Asian American, I never felt Asian enough and the only Asian musicians I saw seemed to reach a glass ceiling unless they were in a band full of white people.

So, I gave up on all my dreams and decided then that I needed to move to Asia to finally become whole. I took on three different internships all to bolster my application for one of the most prestigious teaching programs in my ancestral country. I even graduated a year early and broke up with a girlfriend to achieve my more "realistic" dream. I failed the first year and was waitlisted the second, but I did get in a few months later.

While I was there, I lingered in the country for years never quite fitting in and always feeling kind of bitter for never really trying to go for music. But I met many other musicians there in bars and at concerts. All my friends were musicians and all of them were much more talented than me. I met Kuro at a tiny bar in the middle of nowhere. He grew up with The Rolling Stones and he could play. He could play guitar, sing, and drum like nobodies business. I remember he sang "Wild Horses" once dedicated to his friend that committed suicide during an open mic and it was one of the most heartfelt performances I've ever seen. He worked at the post office and now he works at Amazon in the shipping department.

I met Sakura and Gunji the same night. They do eclectic pop music and her lyrics delve into human consciousness and AI. She kind of sounds like Bjork mixed with Yasutaka Nakata if he grew up listening to tribal music. She was vocal teacher and he works as a producer. But their music has less plays on Spotify than my guitar teacher, not that it matters, but somehow it feels like it does in the world we live in.

I also met Naoki at one of their shows. He was their touring guitarist and he was amazing. His real band sounded like Bloc Party but more psychedelic. He was the first person I met in the country that talked about St. Vincent, Love Live, and Kendrick Lamar with the same type of excitement. He was really quiet, but incredibly smart. He dropped out of one of the top universities in the country and spoke fluent English. Despite how talented he was, he worked in tech support commuting over an hour a day into the city for pittance.

I worked at a teacher and at each school there was a light music club. This club was full of musicians too. A lot of them were way better than me. I would see them practicing every day and at one point I was in charge of the club too. The music teacher, the real music teacher, was a bit of a control freak and would make me beg for the keys each time. I remember them all from Ryo who sang and played bass oozing rock and roll, to Masa with his groovy bass lines, and Gen with the passion of someone who truly loved music with every breath he sang.

There was also Aya who barely went to school, but would always come into the room and ask me to teach her guitar and drums. I remember when I left the job after my contract ending she said she would quit school. At my farewell speech, I wish I had more words to say. The most I could muster was to just be content with yourself. I wanted to tell them all to go for their dreams. If they liked music or English or programing or whatever that they shouldn't doubt themselves like I did. They were all so young and full of promise that they could do anything if they really focused and kept at it. I wanted to believe that, but as someone who gave up early too I knew what it was like to stand among greats and know that no matter how much you tried it still felt like you were moving nowhere.

I never stopped playing or practicing. I would lock myself in my room playing guitar and when my friends messaged me. I would usually go out to sing karaoke even though I always missed the cues and the notes. I would sing a lot with Daniel who was a great performer. He put everything into all the songs he sang moving his body and using a slight rasp with an edge. Even when he drank he would get better, he used to sing this one song by Jay Chou called "Tornado" it was beautiful. But he told me later he didn't really like singing it, because he always felt like he couldn't do the song justice. Every one of our friends thought he was great. I would receive a lot of messages on Facebook after our sessions with people complimenting his voice. He works at a sushi restaurant now.

I started a small band with Kevin then too. We would practice a lot of the songs I wrote. He played the bass, but he could really play everything. He couldn't sing at all though. But one year he decided to follow some online tutorials and practiced a ton. Then all of a sudden he could sing. He would sing "Kiseki" by Greeeen every time we went and he would kill it. It's kind of funny no one knows who Greeeen is and they're actually full-time dentists despite having chart-topping hits available on any LiveDam system. Kevin's still trying to be a teacher.

One of Kevin's best friends was Kieran. He was a British version of Elliot Smith that looked like Sufjhan Stevens. His rendition of "Say Yes" would make everyone tear up during open mics. He had a very precise sharp tenor voice that would always accompany Kevin's wandering hands during "Kiseki." He's a teacher now as well and despite being a maths guy and one of the smartest people I've met he says he lacks the creativity to make his own music.

Before I left I would sing karaoke a lot with Miyu. Her family was full of musicians and she could sing even though she did it through the throat. She could scream and sing anything from Utada Hikaru to My Chemical Romance. She would do anything and out of all the voices hers was my favorite even if it may have seemed unpolished to others. She could play multiple instruments too and her mom even works as a guitar teacher. She works in design now too and only sings for fun on the side.

After I left my teaching job, I wandered around aimlessly and even started to work for a design agency. During this time, I missed out on a full-time position and they hired the person who came after me. Before this I would spend long nights at the office trying to learn how to code to better help the company. I would cold-call and walk into stores asking if they needed a website to generate business. I went to a ton of meet-ups and events to try and help foster relationships within the industry. After this happened, I felt betrayed. Throughout the next few months, I kept thinking of a quote that Jim Carrey once said.

"You can fail at what you don't want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love"

At that point, I decided to stop carrying about talent or what is realistic. I was struggling so much to do everything to fit into a mold. One that just doesn't fit everyone. I see all my friends around me, much more talented than me being forced to do work they're not passionate about. I didn't even get into Stanley, who helped me get the job at the coffee shop, one of the best guitarists I've ever met, who sounds like a mix between John Frusciante and Hendrix. Or Steven who sounds like Hyde from L'arc en ciel and can scream and sing metal music just as well as ballads in English and Japanese. I never mentioned Max who became a pothead after high school despite being a piano prodigy or Tim who was able to play piano so proficiently that he received trauma from his teacher making him give up music.

"How do you know?"

This seed of doubt that started in the fourth grade made me think a lot about life. I think that teacher was wrong to question. Some things in life you just know and you can't give a reason for why it is so. And even if you did it wouldn't have the same importance or even matter. I think that most things in life that are worth doing can't be explained and it is by facing the unknown parts that you can truly grow and find something worthwhile. I don't know if my music is worth making or if it will ever reach an audience. I don't know if it's because my lack of talent, hard work or financial status. It cost $100,000 to train one BTS member for one year. Even if you were to support me and by some miracle I won $20,000 for this writing contest. Without the proper support, I'll still only be one-fifth of my way towards the preliminary steps toward my dream. Despite knowing all of this, I still have to try and even though 90% of my paycheck goes to my vocal lessons and the rest I have to save for promotions and other music related expenses. I don't know what the point of this all is and I don't really know how I got here, but I know that I have to keep going. I have to do it for everyone else I've met who already gave up despite being on a much farther starting line. If I don't do this then it just proves that all the practice that we spent is meaningless. I don't want to stand in front of 1,000 students again and be unable to tell them to go for their dreams, because I haven't.

"How do you know?"

I don't. But I think I understand the why.