The Magic

Change always brings something new, or transforms what already exists. Nothing remains in the same form forever.

Now, during the interlude following the production of the previous work, an interesting event occurred. That woman, who had been subjected to violence by her husband, happened to meet me again by chance to offer her apologies.

She revealed to me that she had been seeing a psychologist. After many sessions, she said that her psychologist had advised her to resume contact with me. I tried to help her once again. One day, we met for just five minutes and even shared an embrace upon reuniting.

However, her attitude fluctuated between progress and regression. At times she would disappear again, and at others, she would only appear at the exact moment she felt she needed to talk to me. To me, it began to feel unfair. I was starting to realize the reality that while I was there whenever she needed me, I could never rely on her.

She was still with her violent husband, and they now had a daughter. Although she had kicked him out of the house once, they later reconciled. It was an incomprehensible situation, and amidst these twists and turns, she repeatedly blocked and then re-added me on all social media.

Exhausted, I confronted her, but it only incurred her displeasure, and that became our last conversation. She blocked me permanently. Even so, I waited for the block to be lifted. I thought that since we had reunited after several years, she might return again after a few months, so I waited for a while. However, that was not to be.

But instead, something else happened. From those five minutes of embracing—from that reunion—I was able to write new lyrics for the band's final song. In parallel with all of this, I also heard from the woman who had been the inspiration for the band's very first song (an almost overwhelming coincidence).

When she contacted me, sounding upbeat and saying, "I broke up with my husband," I believed she had come back for me. I thought she would take me out of that "Nowhere" and remember the gaze we once shared. Unable to suppress my surging emotions, I replied that I wanted to see her. However, her answer was this: "I can't see you. I have a new boyfriend now". It was an incredibly merciless blow.

At that moment, I realized that the "Correct Man" from the first work was perhaps destined to live in "Nowhere," or at least placed within a story that would never find resolution. I had a heated argument with her, and we stopped speaking to each other forever.

At that time, my mother was going through a menopausal crisis, and we clashed violently and repeatedly. Imagine it: in addition to that conflict, I had been prescribed sedatives by a doctor to suppress the anxiety that had begun to affect my health. That day, I reached my limit. I got an eyebrow piercing and cut off my long hair—which had been my icon and a symbol of my rebellion for ten years. The time for transformation had come. "Iki" had to be reborn.

Also, as I mentioned before, while the guitarist was skilled in performance technique, he lacked composition ability. Therefore, I ended up taking on everything: composition, recording, track production, programming drums and other instruments, songwriting, direction, and even the vocals.

Regarding this song we planned to produce, I had already finished writing the lyrics, but the guitarist didn't come up with any ideas. Then one night, while strumming the guitar in my room, a melody suddenly came to me. I played it and recorded a video with the fingerings so that he could learn it.

This is how the song "The Magic" (La Magia) was born. Below is an analysis of its content:

I never believed in magic / Until I met you. / The universe transforms into its perfect form / Just by looking at you.
This is, so to speak, a somewhat poetic expression of how love is like magic.

If I could pause / This timeline, / I would lose myself in your arms / And freeze this moment.
This describes the moment of reunion—the embrace. Because an abyss lies ahead in the timeline, the character wishes to make that moment eternal.

While atomic bombs / Explode all around us, / We stay embraced / Knowing the taste... / The taste of something called love.
This implies that even in a situation where "the world is exploding around us"—in other words, even while the environment is overflowing with problems seeking to swallow us up—we remain invincible to everything, holding each other within the love that binds us.

I added background instruments and piano to the track. This was because I had purchased an electronic piano to experiment with various ideas in my DAW. While I was satisfied with how the song turned out, it required an immense amount of effort to complete. The band's guitarist had found a partner and began putting music second. Rehearsals were canceled one after another, eventually reaching a point where meeting even once a month was the best we could do.

By the time we finished recording this song, I was exhausted. I could no longer endure the situation where I was pouring 90% of the energy into the band. Although I highly valued the guitarist's talent, I had reached my limit of chasing after someone else or begging for their involvement. Thus, we naturally stopped gathering, and at the end of 2019, the band brought its activities to a close.

It was not a tragic ending. His interest was completely directed toward his partner, and his heart was no longer with the band. As for me, I was also trying to unravel where life was leading me and where I should go. I loved music, but I lacked certainty about what life was asking of me and needed to find that answer.

Did my musical life end there? Absolutely not. Rather, it was the opposite. It was the beginning of my rebirth, a step toward maturity, and the prologue to new creations.