Chika Takami is like the sun.
No, rather... She's... Well, that's not actually entirely inaccurate, but I feel a bit embarrassed opening up with something so bold without the proper context. When I was reading through the essay prompts again and saw "describe someone who has helped you grow as an artist," then I must have gotten a bit ahead of myself. Is it improper to refer to the essay prompt in the essay itself? This is supposed to be stylized like a cover letter to the college, so I suppose not. Chika and another friend were the ones who said my first few attempts were too stuffy and said to write it in a more improvisational tone - or rather 'off the top of my head' and 'more artisterly-like' were the exact words they used. Although, by this point, I'm sure I've overdone it.
Let me start over. At the very least, I know that it's proper form to begin by introducing myself first.
My name is Riko Sakurauchi. I am currently eighteen years old and a recent graduate of Uranohoshi Girls' Academy in Uchiura. I am looking forward to hearing your prompt response in regards to my application to study abroad at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. I have been rewarded several awards for youth musical composition, dance, piano, and vocal performance here in my home country of Japan, and I feel like my devotion to music and desire to pursue new avenues of creativity resonates well with the values of your school.
I would be lying if I said that wasn't copied directly from my first draft. Once again, Chika and her silly ideas are pushing me out of my comfort zone, which I believe is a perfect example of why she is the topic of this letter. She has done more for me as an artist than anyone else, and if I had to be honest, I'm not sure I would be applying for this school at all if I had not met her. On your school's website, I read a quote from your dean that stated, "Anyone considering Juilliard needs to be open to [the] potential for growth, because you never know when that miracle is going to happen and how it's going to strike." To put it in simple terms, Chika Takami was my first miracle. Before that, however, she was my classmate.
I transferred to Uranohoshi from a high school in Tokyo during my second year. At the time, I was having a hard time connecting with music. I didn't know what I wanted as an artist, and I was scared to put myself out there and be judged for not being able to capture the sound I wanted or for messing up. I was afraid of failure, and more than that, I was afraid that all of the passion I had at the start was withering away. Part of why I moved was because I felt that a change of scenery would inspire something in me that I had lost, but it felt for a while that that wasn't going to be the case either.
This was the time when I met Chika. She was pushy and impulsive and she had a lot of crazy ideas - not the least of which was that she wanted me to join her new song and dance group and compose for them. She didn't have a group name. She didn't have a songwriter. She had two girls, including herself, and a poster of a band I never heard of who she just loved. Above all, she had passion, which was something that scared me. I felt like I had nothing and that having me in my current state would do nothing but hold them back.
Chika Takami insisted, though. She insisted a lot. She told me that the passion I was looking for was hopefully buried inside of me and that if I joined them, she could help me find it. It seemed silly to me. It felt like she was some prince out of a fairy tale who showed up and had all the answers to my problems and a rose in hand, and the sensible part of my brain didn't believe it. Luckily for me, some part of me did end up believing it, at least a little, and so I eventually joined the group anyway. (We also eventually chose a name - Aqours.)
It's hard to say when I started to find the fun in it again. At first, I joined on a whim, simply because she had begged me to and sounded so enthusiastic about it. Over time, we got more and more members to join, and I started to realize that these sorts of doubts and insecurities were shared. I learned that a lot of people felt the same as me.
As a concert pianist, I was always the lead performer or the only performer. When something went wrong, it was like the whole world was looking at me. It was an incredible weight on my shoulders. Now, with Aqours, the fear of failure never went away, and neither did the failures themselves. There were times when we hit a wall, when people were on the verge of giving up, or when we had bad news that we just couldn't fight. Even Chika, who seemed to have all the answers and to be such a beacon of positivity, had to rely on the rest of us sometimes. We all felt powerless, but we were together. In my search for my missing passions, I found something else that I never even realized I didn't have - a home in music.
Once that sank in, everything sort of became easier for me. The trials that seemed so easy and the rock bottoms that felt so impossibly hard; we were able to get through it all with each other by our side. They were the same things I faced when I was alone, but now, they were feasible. They weren't the crushing, horrible threats I always dreamed they were. They were things that people conquered all the time, and I learned that I was just as able to do it myself.
One of my first concert awards in years came during this time, when I was still struggling to learn what it meant to fight by myself. Once again, that push came from the hand of Chika Takami. It was the first recital I was invited to perform since my move to the countryside and joining the group. It also happened to be on the same day as an important concert for Aqours.
At first, I actually felt content in this supposed conflict of interests. A part of me was still afraid of being alone again - I had my friends by my side in Aqours, after all, so why would I have had to face a recital when I could stay with my new family in my new home? It's hard to tell how much of this decision was about denying my own desires in order to avoid being alone again versus how much of it was about how much I enjoyed being a part of this new family, but the end result was the same.
Chika, however, found out about the recital and encouraged me once again to take a chance and try something I feared. She told me that even if I was performing by myself, and they were performing by themselves, we were still together. It was sappy and silly and it was every bit of sentimentality that I would have been scared away by earlier that same year, but at the time, after all we had been through, it made me cry. It was, once again, an encouragement to push me out of my comfort zone and to find comfort in the hope that I would be better for it.
In a lot of ways, right now feels a lot like that time two years ago. I feel like the me back then would never have applied to a school like this - the expectations put on me would be daunting, the threat of failure would be absolutely terrifying, and I would have to face the world without my friends again. Now, I'm prepared. Now, I can say "I look forward to your prompt response" and feel like I mean it rather than that I'm copying a formality.
So, that is to say, Chika Takami is like the sun.
When the sun sets in the evening, the world seems to become dark and frightening. It feels like it's disappearing from us, just like the passion of a scared heart. The sun, however, never truly goes anywhere. The world is moving around it, making its own path and living and breathing every day. In the night, grass grows and sometimes rain falls and everyone is resting for the next day. The sun always rises again.
As frightening as it will be taking the next step and waiting for my new miracle, I know that my first will always be here in Uchiura, Japan. As frightening and dark as the dark may be, it won't last forever, and I will grow during it. Whether the distance between us is the bus ride between Tokyo and a small beachside town, the half a world between Japan and America, or the ninety-three-million miles between the Earth and the Sun, I know that I'm not going to be facing anything alone anymore.
Even with the proper context, it's still a bit embarrassing, isn't it? I probably won't show her and the others this draft, after all.