07/18

These days I’ve been craving more than successes. I want to expe­rience every challenge and setback in my short time here. It would only help my songs to demonstrate these things that my listeners collectively know.

I cherish the movie I’m Not There about Bob Dylan, who was played by many actors because he could be anyone. There will never be another person like him, though there won’t be another you or me either.

I’m sorry for getting philosophical, but we all have these brains which are the most complicated things in the universe, and inside each person is a world within a world. I think when we sing love songs, this is really what we’re singing about. I’ve read that in English there’s a word that means, ‘I’m unable to put this into words.’ Maybe it’s best that we don’t have a word for this mysteri­ous feeling. When we recognize the impossibility of another per­son, that’s what it means to finally see them, or maybe more accu­rately, to accept that we never will. In the past, we’re a cast shadow, while in the future we’re boundless. I do believe this.

I wrote a screenplay of my fan after that concert and those dreams, but I was too embarrassed to send it to even a close friend. It was really only the beginning of a screenplay, yet the process surprised me by feeling oddly collaborative, like I was sharing someone’s mind without conscious awareness. Chinese folk reli­gion has a practice called fuji, or automatic writing, perhaps it was this. I don’t mean to suggest that it was mystical in anyway, only a

channel to coax deeper art. Out of the process came scenes jum­bled in time and diffracted in my memory. I wonder if I can will myself back to this headspace?

But where to start? I imagine that if I’d ground my teeth in a time before the internet, my career would’ve been different by necessity. I once read a biography about a singer from the early seventies and found their prolonged fleeting presence to be darkly alluring. I enjoy very long things, long novels, long walks, and long albums. A long career proving myself from complete obscu­rity, working hard from the margins to relative knowledge in my city of Seoul and carrying the weight alone, just like those old sto­ries of sacrificial artists who slow down enough to give each fan their due. How would I have lived without luck, my greatest asset?

I’m picturing this now with great detail. I would’ve worked in an old jazz bar, an otherwise quiet street with dirty floors yet won­derful arching ceilings for the acoustics, with the smell of beer, and noise and music made by strangers. All of this floated around the room with cigarette smoke. It would not be about the place or the music, rather, the people you share the space with. Curtains would cover the ceiling, because if they weren’t there and you looked too closely, all you would see were leaks and brown stains from pipes. This is me developing a metaphor about what is truly valuable. It would have a smell that’s old and charmingly stinky. And the audience would consist more of empty chairs than those taken, and at first, and for a long time, I might’ve been a support­ing act though never the main one.

I actually dreamed about it! If you can believe me. It was a younger version of me in a world with a different logic than our

own. I was learning how to move up in my career. I remember there was an aging man who owned the place. Once handsome, he was old and round with a temper most days, which dissipated as more beer went into his large stomach. He could be very sweet to me without ever crossing a line, though I saw how he treated the other singers. He told me I was like his daughter or little sister. The others said he favored me. I felt some guilt for doing nothing about this. However, in this world my actions lacked any mean­ingful power.

On this particular night, he surprised me by moving my billing earlier to increase my audience. He wasn’t drunk yet, so he told me this threateningly, still he had a wry smile at the edges. See me spinning out? Dreams come fully formed like encountering a stranger. How much could I accept from him and how would I accept it? The owner pulled me aside and whispered ultimatums.

He said, “If you can’t prove yourself tonight, maybe you should find a new place to sing.” And he winked before drawing the pianist over to us. “If she’s missing any notes I can’t hear, you’ll tell me.”

He drank from a fresh bottle, then walked the pianist out of earshot. I was standing there, my legs crossed, leaning my left leg over my right and anxiously scratching my ankle with my heel. If someone so much as blew in my direction, I might’ve fallen.

The fear was wonderful. I miss the way my heart used to race before stepping on stage, like it was a new romance. Nowadays, I’m happy when not much of anything is happening, only this realization has become a source of sadness. I should like to be chasing hope alongside fear.

I worriedly went to the dressing room to check my makeup and warm my voice. Everyone was whispering about me, because the old woman who’s place I’d taken wasn’t sick. I didn’t feel sorry for her then, though now I do, or I would if she were real.

The audience seemed upset when I appeared in the lights. For a moment, I was angry with the owner for putting me in a posi­tion to fail. My natural shyness overtook me, and for the first few songs I struggled to temper myself. Without looking at me, a young man pretended their glass was a microphone and lip-synced as if it were his ballad, and his friends all laughed. I realized that no one was listening with attention. Eventually I settled in with the thought that I’d become invisible, a record spinning unattended.

Then I noticed that my friend, the boy, was crying in the front row. Of course, in my dream’s world, he was a stranger who’d wandered into the wrong side of town. He was too young to drink and wore a large coat like two stacked children. I thought his tears were very moving. No one seemed to notice us.

After my performance, the pianist approached me. He said, “It’s no surprise that you aren’t there yet. If this came easily, then there would be no need for singers. Everyone would simply say what they mean. I’m not referring to your performance. The real mystery is over there in the crowd. At a given point in time, maybe one or two people are ready to listen. It has nothing to do with how you sing. The real talent is in making the most of those rare moments when you’re aligned. When they’re truly open, you have to be present, as if your song were their dying wish.”

Instead of his words, I wanted my colleague to praise me for my singing and, honestly, for how pretty I looked. My face

would’ve fit well in any catalog back in those days. I can imagine it in dark smoky rooms or while holding expensive bags in front of nothing. There’s a vulnerability to precocious beauty that makes a girl more enchanting. I look back at myself and am startled by it, how everyone knew this except me. What was I to do but remain ignorant when your pleasure was at stake? I only joke, unless it’s in a song, then I’m playing pretend.

You know, being called pretty in one’s dreams may be even better than in real life. I can’t say why that is, unless it has to do with the expression of self-love. That is, if I believe it enough for someone to say it to myself in a dream, then I won’t have to keep asking the question.

“I know you saw the kid crying over there,” the pianist said. “He found something in you. Now’s your chance to do some­thing good, so that you both will remember it forever.”

I think I merely faced the floor.

He spoke again while staring into the crowd like it was danger­ous. “There’s nothing comparable to that moment when they’ve built you up for themselves, then the illusion may shatter. For that split second, as the glass breaks, you can sample who you really are, when you’re as pure as an idea splintered across so many shards. Because in our line of work, their eyes become your pri­mary existence.”

I was already moving towards the boy when I heard the pianist finally say, “And would you even recognize yourself from someone else’s mind?”

When I placed my wine glass onto the table, I noticed that my dress was hiking up and tried to correct it. I didn’t want to

give him any ideas. His face lay on the border of awe and disbelief. At the time, he awoke no memories in me. Still, I don’t want to suggest that I didn’t recognize him.

I asked, and he said he was a fan, further increasing my suspi­cion that he was somehow from my imagination, like another part of me that I’d lost.

He told me about his life and how it was to be a fan. He also told me a strange story about that same concert that’s held in my mind, except this time he described us dancing together. His story is not in my memories, though everything he described could’ve happened in a different world with me. I was beginning to understand what the pianist meant, because I saw that the boy was telling the truth about our ‘shared space.’ He described things with a fervor that made me feel I was reliving his life, which is an interesting thought.

I worry that this only makes sense in dreams. I worry about a lot of things, like if my diary is better off in others’ hands, which may release me. If this is making any sense to you, or if you won’t take it all as a joke, or worse, if you all begin to worry that I’m unwell because for once in my life I’m willing to speak about something that is considered too intimate or dangerous to share.

Strange thoughts cross my mind too, and I no longer think it’s my job to be quiet and provide only comfort when I know that these ideas are certainly crossing your own mind! Maybe you’ll dream of it and find the solution, where I can’t see the problem. Maybe my songs can be spells which cast you towards an understanding.

I said to him, “You were here when I started.” We believed me. I came to believe that he fell into me, so to speak. So what if he found me by accident?

And then he said something that sent shivers down my spine. It must’ve woken me up, what he said, because I don’t remember anything else.

“More people will have thought of you than you will ever think.”

I don’t know why he said that, like it was a threat. Next time, I’ll remember to ask him more about himself as I’m still wonder­ing about him. Is it my place to decide when we meet, or will I find out more about who he is from going about my life?