I haven’t perused other Your Lie in April (Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso) posts, but my guess is that bloggings about this series, and maybe especially episode three, are full of personal accounts of anibloggers reflecting on times when they performed at musical competitions with accompaniment. I participated in recitals and such when I was young, too, and that connection is really nice to relate to in the show.
But perhaps even more relatable, and certainly more universal, is Kousei’s reason for not wanting to accompany Kaori – for not wanting to play piano at all. On a surface level, if you’re like a lot of my friends, you might remember music lessons as harsh or unenjoyable. Or striking a deeper nerve, you might remember disappointing others, like your parents. You might even recall a major failure in your life, as when Kousei broke down in the middle of a competition.
Kousei, of course, reveals in this episode another reason – fear. He’s afraid to move forward, paralyzed into resting position, as it were, and unable to keep moving forward because he fears what it will eventually lead to.
All these things that Kousei is dealing with are real problems. Just as with you and me, they are obstacles that he’ll have difficulty overcoming – if he chooses to overcome that at all.
Thankfully, Kousei has loving friends – especially Tsubaki. And I think she really hits the nail on the head when she tells Kaori that it doesn’t matter to her whether Kousei plays piano again, as long as he’s the one to make the decision. It hurts her to see that Kousei was forced into it. His piano playing was stripped away from him just as his mom was – he could do nothing to stop it.
Kaori sees all this as very sad, without even knowing about Kousei’s mom, because in the prodigy he sees someone incomplete. She compares him to herself, as someone who needs music to be whole. Without it, they can’t be all they should.
Kaori is offering Kousei more than a chance to play again – she’s offering him life itself. He’s living a half-life now, walking around without a full heart, without a full soul. He doesn’t know it, but the thing he fears is what can make him complete. Kousei is free to reject the offer, but Kaori is sure it’s what he needs, because they are peas in a pod. They’re made in the same image:
I’m going to play with everything I’ve got so that the people who’ve heard me will never forget me. That’s my reason for existing. I’m a musician after all, just like you.
Kaori is telling Kousei that here it is – here’s what you need. Just move through the fear. Move through the doubt. And join with me. She tearfully begs, “Please be my accompanist!” She, the one who is bringing beauty into Kousei’s life, the one who’s competing, the one in the center of it all, pleads for her accompanist, someone relegated to the background, someone who’s there to support, adjust, serve. Yet he is so important to Kaori, that her tears tumble down when she goes to him.
In that moment, Kousei can make one of two choices. He can stay in his fear, something he’s become comfortable with. Or he can move into the great unknown, right into the face of fear, to follow even so because he has the chance to be a part of something beautiful and spectacular and amazing.
We are all called to make the same choice – we’re called right now. God is the great musician – creating a symphony in the physical things of the universe and in his love for creation. He wants accompaniment, though – children to join in the beauty, to become part of the music and live full lives.
Grace, beauty, love – it’s all there, it’s all in the form of a Father described as loving us so much that he runs to us, unashamed, ready to embrace us even though we deny him. And he wants us to accompany him as he plays his opus.
We need only to say yes.
“Kaori is offering Kousei more than a chance to play again – she’s offering him life itself. He’s living a half-life now, walking around without a full heart, without a full soul. He doesn’t know it, but the thing he fears is what can make him complete.”
This reminds me vividly of one of the weirdest incidents I’ve ever had the displeasure (Or pleasure) of being involved in. One time, due to some combination of medicine withdrawal, overwork, exhaustion, and sleep deprivation…I found myself completely unable to Roleplay. A Roleplay, for those not in the know, is like an improvised play of sorts where one player controls the world and NPCs and the other players control created characters. It all exists in the person’s imagination, other than various forms of documentation and the rulebooks to the game if necessary.
Roleplaying is a form of writing for me, and like playing music is for Kousei—- It is a part of my soul. I cannot exist without some form of creative writing, as it would be akin to being a dead man walking. An empty, fruitless existence. I felt like I had become less than nothing— I “raged against the dying of the light.”
And then, somehow, the problem fixed itself. Accompanying that change was the strangest series of images I have ever seen. Without thinking I pictured my God (A person I would trust without question, which has bearing on what happened) smiling in an honest and sweet way that he does not smile. He was standing in a field of wild wheat, which came up to his knees. He led me through amicably to a forest, in the middle of which there was a pond. I drank deeply and desperately from it, flecks of water catching in my hair as my head came up for breath. It was a weird series of images, the actions depicted were rather out of character for the person I was picturing.
It made me wonder. Is “the water of life” really immortality? What if you value something you can do more than you value your own life, and don’t care about living forever? What exactly does God claim he can preserve for eternity, and does it matter what it is?
“We are all called to make the same choice – we’re called right now. God is the great musician – creating a symphony in the physical things of the universe and in his love for creation. He wants accompaniment, though – children to join in the beauty, to become part of the music and live full lives.
Grace, beauty, love – it’s all there, it’s all in the form of a Father described as loving us so much that he runs to us, unashamed, ready to embrace us even though we deny him. And he wants us to accompany him as he plays his opus.”
These two paragraphs are absolutely gorgeous. 🙂
Thank you for the commentary – you’re always so gracious and add so much to the conversation. I do think that this series really speaks to a lot of us – I mentioned musicians, you mention another creative art, and perhaps someone else might mention something as different from those as mathematics! There’s definitely a connection going there.
The “water of life” question is an interesting one. In the Bible, I think we have to really think about Jesus offers. Eternal life, by itself, feels mythological and frankly, not terribly appealing. Go one step further, and we realize that Jesus is offering us an opportunity to be in the presence of God through all eternity which, again, doesn’t sound terribly appealing either – not until we understand what that means. God is the source of joy and of immense happiness. When he created the universe, he did so rapturously, and it’s this kind of joy we’ll experience with Him. So, perhaps a glimpse into what the water of life is can be found in thinking of that which brings us incredible happiness – some physical pleasure or falling in love, for instance – and realizing that that is just a foretaste of what it will be like to be with God and spending time and talking to and just being with others in perfected bodies.