はじめての
おとが胸打つ
なつかしさ
The first sound echoes—
striking something deep inside,
a homesickness new.
When I was young, music didn’t come in genres. It came in waves. In moments. It came through open windows and distant car radios, from cassette tapes passed hand to hand on school buses, from the glow of music television late at night when you were supposed to be asleep but weren’t. It came like weather, sudden and unprovoked—one minute you were just brushing your teeth, the next you were fully inside the rhythm, feet moving, eyes wide, something pulsing in your chest you didn’t yet know the name of.
There was a track—I don’t remember the name—some ridiculous Eurodance hit, probably played on a cheap boombox or Nokia ringtone speaker. It wasn’t art. It wasn’t even particularly good. But when the bass dropped, it felt like someone had cracked open a secret compartment inside my brain and poured electric syrup on all the dusty corners. My legs twitched. My heart sped up. Everything felt new and slippery and possible. I was maybe nine years old. I played it again and again until the batteries died.
It didn’t matter what the lyrics were about. I didn’t speak English well enough to understand them anyway. It didn’t matter who made the song, or whether it was cool. The only thing that mattered was how it made me feel: invincible, in motion, like maybe the universe was clapping along with me in some unseen way. I didn’t yet understand art, or effort, or the intimacy of sound creation. Back then, music wasn’t something I respected. It was something I devoured. Like sugar. Like noise I needed in my blood.
It was only much later—years later—that I began to actually listen.
I think it happened quietly. Maybe I was seventeen, maybe twenty. I remember sitting in my room one night, the walls still the same, but something in me different. The song playing was slower than what I used to like—jazzy, maybe. There was a breath at the start, then a pause, then a piano note that felt like a question. I listened again, this time not for the dopamine hit but for the story. For the space between the sounds.
And I found something I hadn’t known I was looking for: the musician.
Not the finished track, not the studio polish—but the human. I could feel the hands on the strings. I could hear the weariness in the tempo, the joy just barely contained in the background laughter at the end of the take. These weren’t just songs anymore—they were confessions. Openings. Letters written in a language you couldn’t translate but could still understand.
From then on, music began to mean something else. Not better. Just deeper.
I started wandering through record shops the way people walk through forests—quiet, curious, ready to stumble upon something sacred. Sometimes I’d find a live recording from the 70s, the kind where you can hear people coughing in the crowd, chairs creaking, a glass breaking somewhere behind the mic. And that imperfection made it real. Made it matter. It was proof of life.
I started loving music that didn’t need to impress me. Music that didn’t shout. That had nothing to prove. Japanese ambient. Sad Brazilian guitar. Polish jazz with too much echo. I liked tracks where nothing happened for long stretches, where the feeling crept in slowly, like a fog rolling through familiar streets. I liked to imagine the person playing it—alone in a room, tired, maybe hopeful—just trying to get one part of themselves outside of themselves.
Now, when someone asks what my favorite genre is, I hesitate. It feels like being asked what kind of sky you prefer. Blue? Overcast? A thunderstorm at 3 a.m.? It depends. On what? On who I am that day. On whether I need to remember or forget.
Sometimes, I’ll hear a song that sounds like a place I’ve never been, but somehow miss. That’s when I know I’m in the right one.
Sometimes, the best part of the song isn’t even the chorus—it’s the pause right before it, when the entire track is holding its breath, and I’m holding mine too, and for a moment we’re both waiting to see what will happen next.
Wabi-sabi lesson:
What begins as noise can become prayer.
What you once consumed blindly, you may one day bow to.
Music is not about liking or ranking or even understanding.
It’s about showing up—to the sound, to the silence, to yourself.
The crack in the singer’s voice is not a flaw. It’s the reason you believe them.
Every song you’ve ever loved lived inside someone first.
And when it reaches you, when you really hear it—it’s no longer theirs.
It becomes part of the invisible architecture of your life.
Even after it fades.
Even after you do.
So no, I don’t have a favorite genre.
But I have dozens of memories where the music found me—
caught me mid-thought, mid-heartache, mid-summer breeze—
and said, here, this is what you need now.
And for a moment, I believed it.
life 