A Note from Tonight

On Writing Honestly

Lately, I have been thinking about what it means to write honestly.

Not emotionally.
Not dramatically.

Honestly.

There is a difference.

For more than five years, I have shared a small musical journey with Yaeyama musicians here on Ishigaki Island. We do not talk very much about what we are doing.

We simply gather.

The waves arrive.
The wind changes.
The moon appears—or sometimes it doesn’t.

And then the music begins.

Last night was a New Moon. The sky was covered with clouds, and yet one of the musicians quietly said:

“Even a cloudy New Moon has its own beauty.”

Another spoke about the sound of the waves and how rare it is to sing in a place where nature feels so present. Listening to them, I realized once again that music is not an explanation.

It is a form of experience.

For the resort’s official channels (as the organizer), I often write simple phrases:

The sound of waves and music.

Waiting for the moon.

An evening on Ishigaki Island.

These words are true.

But they are not the whole truth.

The deeper truth is harder to write about.

Because sometimes a song reaches a place inside a person that words never can.

I know this because it happened to me once. There have been moments in my life when hearing a song changed something permanently.

Not dramatically.

Not all at once.

But enough that I could never return to who I was before.

Yesterday reminded me of a quote by the Japanese writer Masaoka Shiki:

“I once thought enlightenment meant being able to die peacefully under any circumstance. I was mistaken. Enlightenment is being able to live peacefully under any circumstance.”

Perhaps that is what music sometimes offers us.

Not escape.

No answers.

But a way to remain present with life exactly as it is.

The sadness.
The memories.
The beauty.
The uncertainty.

All of it.

When the voices, the waves, the darkness, and the New Moon gathered together last night, I felt something I still cannot fully describe.

And perhaps that is the point.

The most important things are often the hardest to explain.

Music does not explain.

It simply opens a door.

And for a brief moment, we remember the rhythm that was already inside us.