tonight, the moon shines for you

 tonight i found out that loss is relative. when my uncle died, everyone around me cried and the mood was dense, but all i could think about were my own insecurities. i wasn't close to him, but i knew him all my life. i let out a couple of tears at his funeral but that was about it. i don't think about him. it didn't affect me.

it's strange to me, but also natural, that tonight i feel grief for someone i never knew. i was a huge fan of daniel johnston as a 13 year old, when he died, i felt sad. when tohru okada died, i felt shaken. when sakamoto and takahashi died, i felt sorry. when i found out sayuri died, my brain refused to believe it. i went on to do other things, had a meal, talked to my friend, while that information was waiting for me to pick it up from the ground. when i did, i looked into it, and i'm confident in saying that a part of me died.

i'm not the biggest fan of sayuri you'll meet, i didn't even know much about her to begin with, but she's been there for me my whole life. my life as i know it today began when i was 12 years old. that's when, one day, i decided to re-listen to the ending song of an anime i liked when i was 11, and i thought it sounded pretty good. i think that song is somewhat responsible for who i am today.

i was obssessed with sayuri. my friends knew about her. my parents knew about her. i knew her lyrics from memory. i was part of fan-groups online. i watched her music videos and performances. i cried to her songs countless times. some of my most cherised memories from that period have her music backing them up. my "favorites" playlist on youtube has one of her live performances as its thumbnail, because it was the video that made me create it. she was the one reason i started playing guitar, and look where that got me. my goal was to be able to play Mikazuki, which i still remember how to. because of her, i went from a child keyboard player to a musician.

i lost respect for almost every artist or song i liked when i was 11 to 12 but sayuri was never one of them. i always went back to her music surprised that it was as good as i thought it was when i didn't know what good music meant. it's perfect. there's almost no music out there that i feel unable to rate or quantify my love for and sayuri's is one of those. i can't put her on my topster, make a ranking, review her songs in length, because it's too special to me. i had her on the back of my music palette this entire time and didn't talk about her for the same reason i don't talk about my favorite movie. you can hear hints of her throughout my music, too. my favorite chord is Fmaj7(#¹¹), which is the first chord in Hikari To Yami (my favorite song by her). it can be heard in songs like créditos finais and lumps as well as some that i've never recorded.

i feel wrong for only finding out about her death now, months after it happened, and that all i could do was open my blog and start writing about it, but i can't worry about these things. i think when i saw those words, i thought this was the most absurd thing possible. sayuri? dead? for months? i threw it on the trash can until i remembered it and stared at it thoroughly. i stared at that. she's dead. we lost her. the world lost her. her fans are the most passionate i've ever known. i found this out from a discord server and those people seem very genuine and honest. i completely understand them. i wasn't that close to her, i didn't even know her real name, yet, she had a huge impact on my life.

i think that, after growing up, i didn't look more into her because i always thought for certain i'd meet her in real life in the streets of tokyo. we'd talk, sing, play guitar, and i'd thank her for existing. the fact that i could never express to her how important she was to me and so many people leaves me with tremendous unease.

when i read through those messages on discord the image of lily chou chou came to mind. i had started writing a story about a beloved artist like lily chou chou and i always imagined who that person might be in the real world, and i think that's her. it's hard to explain why but i do.

she was magical. 

lively. 

she was as big and bright as the moon.

i don't believe in the afterlife, i don't know what happens to us when we die, but tonight, i just hope so much that there is a heaven, and i hope she's there.