Quote:
Originally Posted by orbitalaspect
So, this is 'Ayu' -- which is expected -- but it's like getting more of the same thing when you're fivehead deep in a pool filled with that thing already, and you've spent so long in that pool wading around -- fivehead deep -- believing that initial feel-good experience will come back once more while increasingly pendulous with frustration and apathy over it, you being it, and you wanting to want to be in it but not getting any closer to that ideal.
I'm mostly disappointed with Ayu not writing about this to her fans. I know it's not typical, but Ayu's entire career has emphasized shared loneliness between her and her fans -- that's the point of songs like "curtain call," which was Ayu acknowledging that even as we move on, she has never stopped listening just in case we needed her to let us know so.
I'd really appreciate a letter about this. Even if it reads, "I'm really bored with all of this, and I just want to do tours until I'm completely done." Because again, her commitment in 2007-2008 was that "as a professional" she would never just let things go. If that's changed for one reason or another, from one human being to another, I'd just like to know that I shouldn't wait or come back and check every now and then.
A part of me sees A BALLADS II and thinks, maaaaybe she'll pick it up again?... maybe??. And I can't help that as a fan going back to 2005-2006. But if she's ready to go forward like Amuro was in 2018, I'd just like to see a full finale, a thank you, best wishes, and a final curtain call on the legendary 'A' symbol. I feel like 20+ years deserves a formal farewell. And then she can do her Fukushima residency and spend her days off in rubber boots fishing at the nearest wharf. She can do her own Ayu tees, like, "Ayu-ready A-hole?!!" and "I sold 70 million records and all I got left is a bunch of leftover boxes of these t-shirts."
Anyway, it's OK. But I'd rather not hear stuff like this personally, as it feels like she's "playing" Ayu in a song now. And the whole Ayu brand runs far deeper for most of us than this is willing to acknowledge with effort.
That sounds rude, but it does sound really like the last saltine of a box of saltines for me, personally. If everyone likes it, that's great. I just know that if I were Ayu, I'd have spent the last 9 months revisiting what all of this meant 15-20 years ago -- for all of us, including Ayu -- and I'd be up day and night, exhausted and worked to the bone, to get something like that again given how easily we forgot that it could all so quickly be swept away with no possibility of ever even having the means to do it if we ever wanted to do it again.
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I can understand from where you're coming from, but you said something interesting: "if I were Ayu".
The thing is, while we would all do stuff if we were in someone's shoes (I could sing better, I could work better, I could draw better, etc. etc.), we can't actually know what's going on through a person's mind to even say that. No, you cannot know what you would do if you were Ayu, you can only imagine and that would still be one of 48728573845 possibilities.
I understand, people are tired, we are all tired, but this pandemic affects people in different ways! She may be hurting, and we cannot know for sure how and how much and she doesn't have to tell us. She has so many things going on in her life, so there's no way she would deliver at the same pace. BUT from this, to thinking that she is on a retiring path and that's that, is sad to think...
People can be inconsistent, people can get tired...this doesn't mean that she will stop. In this era, she felt the need to give us a soothing present in the form of a very "Ayu" ballad and a compilation of ballads to heal our souls and this can be more powerful than anything new she would release because it channels the spirit of familiarity, it channels that feeling that you are home.
I hope this can be heard in her new ballad, and I hope people can see that even if she referred to her artist persona as a product, this doesn't give us the right to treat her that way or to expect that she should be in a certain way for us to feel connected to her.
The truth is, things have changed, she's a mother now, has many other priorities - but please don't dismiss her only because of that! She can still work and deliver powerful music, just that this is at her own pace, and I respect that.
Looking forward to this new song and I am certain her feelings will be delivered in full, because it's her song and her lyrics - those things that redefined an era and a genre.