08/06
I shouldn’t take myself too seriously. After all, I’m only acting. I can be inspired by the boldness of a lie or a reserved truth. Sometimes, I get ideas about how to play a character by catching a glimpse of the right women at the wrong time, or maybe by calling upon a dream I’ve forgotten and must piece together out of order. Other times, I become the character so completely that it’s their worries, not my own, that I find myself contemplating while I fall asleep. One aspect of my insomnia manifests similar to this, with the inability to separate two parts of me. The former includes the world as it knows me, while the latter is a doppelganger to the memory of myself, or a protective shell which I use to gaze upon the world. My true identity is like a clear glass of water.
To really get to know me, one must intuit what is underneath my mask. I’m aware of how I look and manage how I sound. My face is read as a naïve, kind beauty. Maybe this is part of my choice in roles, which as of late have coalesced into characters that are neither evil nor perfect but tend towards a fatalism that opposes the sound of my music. Was this the genius of what my directors looked for in me? Honestly, this transition has been easier than expected. I’m releasing the angry, lost, and vindictive parts of myself that in normal work I’m not permitted to have. One can imagine how this may be part of the problem.
Some nights after shooting that lonely show, I would wear a black baseball cap and mask and go on long walks in the brighter
parts of the city, swept up in anonymity, both to behave as my character and to revel within the seductive alternative reality of becoming a neglected person with none of the eyes on her. It was alluring because it represented a fantasy of mine to release the responsibility of being known. At moments, I felt as though I was hallucinating because my mind was having trouble contextualizing the situation. In the past few years, I haven’t been able to enter the public sphere in Korea with much anonymity, instead remaining alert to the gracious yet needy eyes of my fans.
I’d forgotten the way one can concentrate on things in this quiet. The depths of colors reveal something about the city. I adore how puddles and lampposts interact with the uneven patterns of streets. Of equal importance, I enjoy participating in the dance of Seoul’s citizens, like we’re all part of a nocturama, or bugs busily working on the hive. How we all fit together is a boundless puzzle, though the weight of it is undeniable. And, strangely, despite being reduced almost to nothing on these long walks into lit darkness, I often feel as though I’m fulfilling an important purpose.
That I’m a grand cog in a mechanical contraption with many surprising uses, and eventually by chance or fate my day will come. I will slot into place, and those unique things about me, maybe even the way I walk, will contribute to a greater project.
That I, a flame, have burned through the wick and released my essence to coat the world. It could be a lyric.
Or that I was nothing more than a reminder to someone. Perhaps that you’re on a train alone, and at the next stop I’m an old widow who sits a few chairs down from you. Maybe we don’t
share a word and only exchange a glance. It’s the context of our sincere sharing of space that raises the streets to greater meaning while we’re together. And when I’ve limped off at the last stop and you’re alone again, the quiet gives you the space to see not just what’s there, but what you’re missing. In that moment, it may appear that everything is possible, and fears and insecurities are reversed, as if they offer the secret to correcting one another. I haven’t been on the train in so long…