Childhoods, Creativity and Country Roads
This year, I made it one of my resolutions to watch all the Studio Ghibli movies. The movie studio is famous for its magical hand-drawn animation featuring rich worlds and stories that often have deeper themes running throughout. It seemed like a fun and manageable goal to reach in a year that seemed so daunting and filled with stress. The first movie on my list was the Oscar-Award-winning movie, Spirited Away, which quite literally spirited me away to a whole other universe through the movie's 3-hour runtime. After that, I was worried I might have started too strong because I had no idea how they would top this.
But then I watched Whisper of the Heart.
Whisper of the Heart is a movie released ten years before I was born, set in a place I have never visited, with characters who all look nothing like me. It’s a relatively small movie - there is no grand adventure, there is no quest to save the world, and there are no lives at stake, and yet it moved me in a way that I wonder if I will ever be able to replicate with any other piece of media.
And it’s because of one song: Country Roads.
When I was younger, I was the only person in my friend group who could play the guitar, which, in a small Christian private school, meant that I’d be playing the guitar for our morning worship almost every day. I’d usually reach school early, partially because I needed to practise before prayer, but mostly because my mom needed to send me early to make sure she’d make it to work on time. It was during these early-morning worship sessions that worship songs would morph into secular songs - was it really my fault two songs had the same chord progressions?
Of all the songs we’d sing, for some reason, Country Roads sticks with me the most. Maybe it was because we had to sing it for Awards Night one year, or maybe it was just because it was the one song we all somehow knew the lyrics to (at least, during the chorus we all did). I think it was because, with any other song, we’d have to stop singing as soon as one of the teachers popped in to check on our “worship practice”, but with Country Roads, sometimes they’d just smile and watch. Either way, after all this time, when I think back to those early-morning karaoke sessions, Country Roads is the first to come to mind.
So when the movie opened with that very song, already I was tearing up, unexpectedly transported to those memories. The main character, Shizuku, is trying to translate the song into Japanese so her friends from the school choir can sing it for a performance. It’s funny because songwriting (or song-rewriting) was one of the ways my friends and I used to spend time together, and it was also one of the first ways I put my writing out into the world. Regretfully so, considering I can’t look back on most of those songs without cringing internally. Can you believe I used to think one day I’d be a famous singer-songwriter a la Taylor Swift?
Whisper of the Heart is a movie that speaks personally to me in a way that I didn’t expect. I’d only heard that this was a cute love story (which I’m only slightly ashamed to admit was the main reason I watched it initially), but then it surprised me by really being the story of a young writer, one whom I saw many traits of myself in. This movie understood something about writing that I don’t think other movies about writers do - it’s hard work. Writing is not just a free flow of words running out of your brain - writing a story takes planning, editing, and pacing, it takes skill, it takes energy, and gosh it takes time. I can’t remember the number of times I had to run and grab a thesaurus because I didn’t want to use the word “said” again in a sentence, the number of times I’d write something I was happy with, only to come back a day later and decide that I hated it. For every article, story, or essay I’ve ever put out into the world, there are ten more that stayed hidden in old notebooks, abandoned Word documents, jumbled text notes and distorted voice recordings.
It’s never easy to start. It’s difficult to know how to end, and God help us all in the middle. Every sentence, every chapter, every word is a mountain, every character a challenge. As humans, communication is something essential to our well-being - but we find it so hard, don’t we? Words are rarely sufficient, I feel. Sometimes I come across a drawing on Pinterest and see a hundred stories stored within twenty brush strokes, and I wish I had been born with the ability to paint instead of writing; there are so many things I want to say, and so very few words I know to express them. Artists always somehow manage to capture that unexplainable feeling, the thing that no one knows how to explain.
This movie is about how people you love can inspire you to do great things. Shizuku might have never gotten the courage or determination to write her story without meeting Seiji, without being inspired by his determination to pursue what he loved even if it went against his parent’s wishes. It made me think of the people who inspired me - the writers I looked up to, the family members who’d buy me books, the friends who’d listen to me blabber about my stories for hours, the classmates who’d sing Country Roads with me on early mornings of miserable Mondays, stuck somewhere I wished I could escape. I hope they know they are in all my stories, each one of them. A little bit of all of you lives on, in ink put to paper, in text saved in documents, in blog posts hidden in corners of the internet. And the movie gets that too - inspiration is not just naming a character after a favourite cousin, or basing a story after something that happened to your childhood best friend, but it can be writing a story about a beloved item that belonged to your grandfather figure, or trying to finish your first draft in two months so you can show it to the boy you like when he returns from his overseas studies.
The movie is overcome with a permeating sense of nostalgia, especially for a watcher this far away from the movie's period. 1980s Japan was an era I never experienced, but this movie makes me feel like I lived there as a teenager. Long train journeys to and from school spent staring out the window, lost in your thoughts, school lunches while laughing and chatting with your friends, your classmates whistling every time a boy from a different class came over to talk “privately” to a girl… Shizuku and I are separated for nearly forty years, but our high school experiences share some similarities in unexpected places. I do envy Shizuku’s peaceful world, how she can safely wander around and follow stray cats into unknown neighbourhoods, and how she can meet her best friend late at night at their childhood playground, how quiet her world seems compared to mine; the world has changed, but at times I think it only got worse.
I think that’s why, when the credits rolled and Country Roads started playing, I felt tears streaming down my face. It was a reminder of a time that had slipped far out of my grasp, a time I could never go back to, a time that I’d always miss, deep down inside. A childhood where things were as simple as singing Country Roads with your friends, hoping that a teacher wouldn’t walk in and stop you all from having fun. I had to grow up - it was unstoppable. I had to change, had to make mistakes because that’s the way time works. But I don’t believe she’s entirely gone; I think we all carry a little part of our childhood selves inside of us. She’s the person who gasps when I see dinosaur toys on display, the girl who refuses to give away her old soft toys, the girl who looks at pictures of old friends and wonders if they’ll ever meet again.
At the same time, I’m hopeful. Maybe one day I’ll finally get that dreaded first draft of my book finished. Maybe one day I’ll get to take a bike ride with my best friend to see the sunrise. Maybe one day I’ll follow a stray cat that would lead me to an antique shop run by an eccentric old man whose grandson just so happens to be the boy I like - well, that one’s a little far-fetched, but a girl can dream, right? Maybe one day I’ll be able to sing Country Roads again without feeling like there’s a lump in my throat. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll find the place where I belong.
If you ever have a few hours to kill on a Saturday afternoon, I’d highly recommend watching Whisper of the Heart. It’s a little slow in some places but overall has a powerful message about pursuing your dreams. You can watch it on Netflix, or pirate if you can’t leech off your aunt’s account like I do. And, if you have a few minutes to spare right now, you can listen to the version of Country Roads that Shizuku ends up writing, though forgive me because I could only find a scene with subtitles on TikTok.
Talk to you later, world.
Yours Truly, Joy.
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