Twelve Thingies: That’s us, man.
Part of the 12 Moments in Anime 2009, and probably the only one of mine that gets this personal.
Solanin covers the same post-college years as Honey & Clover II that I sometimes get nostalgic for (I call them the “adulthood isn’t really gonna be so bad after all” years). It’s the time when you’re unburdened of the responsibility of school, and the current burdens of work-life don’t seem so bad yet. Doesn’t take long for that to change. But I digress.
Solanin is an empowering, uplifting story that makes following your dreams seem like a realistic and manageable proposition. A small chunk of your dream is still your dream, after all. It’s a feel-good story with lovably flawed characters, and a live performance scene that really makes you feel like you’re in a club watching a band give it their all (which, let’s face it, many bands don’t always do).
But there is a moment. it’s the moment when drummer Billy decides that playing a show is the right thing to do. It’s a mixed bag because he’s also come to the realization that he’s done. The “dream” is over, he’s become that guy who gave up on it. And his only choice left is to reclaim that tiny slice.
This moment haunts me. Dead serious. As a musician, I’ve never planned for huge success — in fact, the types of music I’ve played have never enjoyed widespread notoriety at all — but I always hoped I could get some albums out on real labels, travel around in a van playing music, and hopefully meet some people in other places who’d heard me and were into the same kinds of things. I still don’t know if I’ve given up on that. But that one page of Solanin made me realize that I was Billy too.
I suppose if I lived in a manga it’d be easy to claim that slice of a dream, but my band (who play the most accessible, potentially-successful music I’ve ever done) lives the reality of the situation weekly. We’re no longer the bums that Solanin’s characters are, and jobs, spouses, children, and other commitments threaten at every turn to strike even that small chump-change dream down. But in those moments, I suppose I can always think of Meiko, Katou, and Billy living their moment.
Oh, a Solanin post! I’ve a few musician friends of my own, and while they’re still all young, I can’t help but think about them while reading this page. Powerful stuff, I can say.
Music was probably the first of my big dreams that died early. By the time I was in college, even though I still practiced with a band I already mentally tuned out of my dream. It wasn’t really as sharply defined as yours, but I wasn’t obsessed with stardom either. I just wanted to play rock in front of people.
But since I’ve had many dreams crushed after musicianship was reduced to dust, Billy’s words didn’t affect me as much. It was a little like the whole of Solanin as well: a kind of dull pain, a cocktail of despair and resignation spiked with false hopes.