Furu Anime Panikku

For those of you who have watched or read Nodame Cantabile, do you remember when Chiaki criticised Mine, that punky rocker violinist, regarding the way he plays? Chiaki used the words “Onani play”, which translates to masturbation play. In other words, self pleasure. I still remember how I laughed at that. The phrase was simply hilarious.

Nodame’s expression while she says - Priceless

Yet, I think that the phrase can now be applied towards me. Yes, I think I’m guilty of that.

While Mine was trying to create his own style of playing the violin for his own pleasure and ego, my situation differs. I began guitar lessons earlier this year as I had no music background apart from the mandatory recorder sessions back in secondary school. I wasn’t sure of abilities to learn the guitar, and this uncertainty made me sign up for the lesson.

The lessons are conducted using English and Chinese pop songs, but I’ve been listening to only Japanese music for years, with the exception of Weezer. Hence, I didn’t have much of an interest in playing the songs taught in the lessons, but stuck with the music school as I wasn’t sure how I could get another teacher. Good teachers are hard to find.

That was 7 months ago when I was still struggling to change between the 4 basic chords; C, Am, F and G. I couldn’t play anything else anyway, so I might as stick with the syllabus. However, as I saw some improvement, I began to stray from the syllabus. Instead of practicing the lesson songs, I spent my time trying to learn Radwimps and Bump of Chicken songs. Eventually, I totally gave up on preparing for lessons, since I would rather spend all of the time I could with the guitar playing the songs I love instead.

For quite some time, I’ve been going to lessons only for 1 purpose. I would pass some of the songs that I want to learn to the teacher, and he would come back to me a week or 2 later to teach me these songs after lesson. I wasn’t looking forward to the lesson anymore. I was looking for the lesson to end so that I can learn the songs that I truly wanted to.

A classmate of mine was asking me why I kept handing the teacher song requests. I replied that I wasn’t exactly interested in whatever we were learning, but rather, I wanted to play the songs that I listened to. He dropped a comment about how no one would know those songs if I played them in Singapore. I didn’t think much of that, since I wasn’t interested in performing at my level of skill. I just wanted enjoy listening to myself playing the guitar and don’t really give a damn if anyone knows the song. I’ve already gotten used to it anyway, since no one I know really shares the same interest in the music I enjoy.

It was until recently, when my friend and I were commenting on another guy who learned the piano because girls will find him attractive. I realised that I wasn’t too much different from the guy. He wanted to please himself by playing the piano and appearing attractive to the opposite sex, while I want to play the guitar so that I can make myself feel good about playing whatever my favourite artistes are playing.

There you have it, this might just be one of the forms of the onani play that Chiaki spoke of. It’s all about self pleasuring.

I’m actually planning to quit the lesson soon, since it’s a waste of time and money for me to attend it just for the 10-15 minute after lesson sessions to learn the songs I’ve requested.