>>1914111521525 (OP) #4

One night a storm disrupted my wifi. I had just retired after microwave dinner for my nightly prayer—my me time with IU— only for my faith to be tested with a buffering 240p. It took extended effort to read her face, though I had my memories. I’d watch until it stopped loading before starting over like Sisyphus. Was this a curse? On the contrary, I was grinning like a kid. IU! Immutable IU! Paradoxically, an impoverished resolution polishes the stimulus. There is a drop in audio quality that mimics overhearing the radio from another room, but here I’m more interested in the image’s fidelity under such constraints.

For example, you can copy a photograph to MS paint (or pAInTbrUsH) and shrink the image so that the software esti­mates within the pixel. Nowhere is this more apparent than the eyes themselves—given the proportion of sclera to iris to pupil, an assumption is compiled which reduces these expressive candles to darkness. How fitting to the present themes.

Was this lag a challenge or invocation? You, dear reader, may have inferred my addiction as unchanging, but that’s not the case. Those earlier dreams influenced me. I found it increasingly diffi­cult to enjoy her videos when they contrasted with the memory of being there. Strange to find that the contronym of resolution served to reduce ambiguity.

I believe they call this epiphany (or what was then happening to me) the ‘Kundalini event,’ a spiritual awakening or un-suppres­sion, i.e., the uncoiling of chakratic enlightenment, taken from Sanskrit to mean ‘coiled snake.’ Things became reckonable (again,

as if for the first time), and it was attached psychosomatically through the spine to that which is urgent and suddenly clear about, well, me. The thusness of the I from you.

Otherwise otherwise known as another perspective. You forget that even 144p is a miracle, even slow and with innumerable false starts. Remind yourself that we get free instantaneous access to virtually all recorded cognition. How trite. This Alexandria is unburnable and would be abstracted as a network of neurons if it were not already visualized by mapping the peopled world. The largest language model. Have you forgotten again? The fact that you know more people who don’t know you than people who do. Maybe I’m too paranoid, even so, you’re not grateful enough.

An aside, for what it’s worth, I’m glad we have this chance to communicate. I’m happy—I feel close to you, or this idea of being read, existing in these zones with you. I hope you feel the same way.

So, as I waited for her video to load, I replayed it and felt the love bytes. These moments were incantatory, a disciplined atten­tiveness. When I’m certain of something is the moment when I can’t know it; it becomes dead to me.

I used to endorse the theory that music—or like the philo­sophical worth of music—was in its repetitive penetrance. The best lyrics are simple things that bear clichifying: how heavenly it is to love and hellish to miss someone. Which for me in IU is incarnated one and the same, in human, voice, lyrics. My angel falling into a black hole, condemned forever to represent herself on the event horizon of all that she’s made. How impossible it is to appreciate someone before they’re gone.

Recently I encountered Schopenhauer’s metaphysical aesthet­ics, which I’m content to butcher: music is the expression of emo­tion as such in itself. Music is the raising of representation beyond ideas. Rhetoric stripped away. Music is the most accessible lan­guage and philosophy, one requiring no interpretation because it precedes knowing. It only is. Or said by another great German Mann, “Music awakens time.” Regarding IU, regarding dreams, the rotation of melodies of songs of videos of playlists of days and weeks and months and years provided space for my spirit as his­tory to iterate through me. It’s very mysterious stuff.

However, I think that what they (Schopenhauer, critics, any­one with so-called ‘taste’) have long gotten wrong is that there’s no truly great music; there’s only that which moves us. Who am I to say this? It’s precisely the ordinary people of the world who prove this insight. No one should tell you not to love what brings you real joy. I feel very strongly about this. And celebrities like IU are conduits; celebrities are our souls in action. When I’m listen­ing to her, I’m listening to myself. The twists and turns of melody are not revelatory but anaphoric. It’s the light-comprehending refraction of art in life in art in transparent mirrored singularity… Like some non-Euclidean mirror, if you can imagine the unimaginable, a hyperbolic space, a tesseract of glorious, emotive, polyvocal, ugh, AH, thingies?!?

There are melodies, and then you, and then there are the songs played in order with your day—you know like greater symphonies, so you wake up with your historicity of temperament and queue up some songs or follow a path of suggestions or sometimes it’s pinned to shuffle. We get so caught up in this idea of ‘songs,’ of

playing a 3 minute ‘song,’ but that’s not what’s happening on the inside, right? Do you understand what I’m getting at? There’s a phenomenon at work here, and it’s not reducible to albums or an artist’s oeuvre. It’s how you engage—that’s the great question of our whole generation.

What does it mean to engage?

When her face alone is an argument—there’s nothing keeping us from obedience. From surfing dopaminergic peaks or getting sick with serotonin syndrome. Yet there’s a diminutive triumph in sustained attention, especially when we’re confronted with such relentless velocity of data. We have a choice to attend to the reality induced from simulations; it’s signaled as interoception. On. Off. Additional tabs. Split screen. And autopilot. Finding yourself at the ever-opening vigor of dead ends. Ripping off the cosmic opiodic bandage lest we stiff to rigor mortis. To dream and somehow still remember to be roused conscious, watching. To awake in sleep.

She and I were walking under the stars. Whenever I’m calm around her, I fear I’m not loving her enough. She was walking next to me, once more reminding me of her real beauty. If you found her out in the world, it’d stop you. You would gasp without intending. This isn’t exaggeration, she really is that remarkable. You would believe that God has a hand in nature; if I wasn’t asleep, she’d take my breath away.

We were walking under the stars in the park of a lacustrian­port city. A river was surreptitiously awake to our right, and she was to my left. How we started walking, I don’t know. Skyscrapers heaved beyond, brilliant and synthetic mountain ranges that cast

their knowing all-eyed glow. A global city, an amalgamed stadium synecdoche, we three cliches existing just like that for you to replace us. Walking in the city, we tried to see the whole of our world. We felt our memories in the path. We were taking a pedestrian detour to signify ourselves as urban, to construct our civic selves.

She said, “I like the way things look at night. The city doesn’t sleep, but it whispers things it wouldn’t under light. Everyone is pleased to share space. There are untaught rules broken only in emergency.”

“You smile on the bus when the driver curses at the road.”

“When walking, we can stare in the direction we’re going.”

“Though you never say words.”

“Yes, people tend to speak only if spoken to,”

“However, no one speaks to you if you wear headphones, which talk for you.”

“Who starts the conversation?”

“That is the taboo,”

“I speak if I need something and can’t look it up. I often ask for help.

“It’s an emergency when you can’t Google the answer. Lost time is the emergency. You find the least threatening person and try to catch their eyes before speaking.”

“Only if they’re without headphones! Alternatively, you show your face and look frantic until someone notices. The people who notice will always care.”

“This is an unconscious thing, the franticness. You’re too pan­icked about missing the next rail to think to look panicked. A

whimper for help.”

“I’m scared of being alone,” she said.

“In fact, the panicking makes you panic. The people who help have been there before. They identify with panic. You pay it for­ward if you have the time.”

“If you have time,” she said.

I looked at her the way one might watch the news. “You never have time, do you?”

“I can’t remember the last time I rode the bus. I’m not allowed to get lost.”

“What does it mean to get lost?” I said. “I seem to have permission for nothing else. Where are we now?” I gestured vaguely around.

We were leaving the darkness of the park, following a street-lit path interlaced with silvered vespertine flowers; okay, I couldn’t know for sure if they conditionally bloomed at night, though they were the color of the moon and unlike lilies or anything I’d seen before. Like little monoliths, strange as dahlias, furtive shadows under coned fragments, thousand lipped and slimy with dew. They simply bowed there, planted in a double helix save the inter­section of brickwork paved before us. A lonely cornered beautiful tragic thing, because they were real and liable to dream decay (a timed eradication), necessarily grown for our moment.

“Did you say, earlier, that you’re scared of being alone?”

She said nothing and nodded. This was IU. She was older than me, more beautiful, talented, wealthier, useful, adored by every­one living, or anyone who knew of her adored her. The idols’ idol.

So she feared being alone. This was a thing I had tried not to con­sider. Not because I couldn’t believe her, but what?

“I’m lonely,” she said.

“Me too.”

This loneliness does take some explaining—for her—my lone­liness is given. It made me recall Ariana Grande’s past: the shoot­ing at her concert and then the overdose of the boy she loved. These things happen. They’re used to defend or sympathize, as if they explain something beyond the natal tragedy. We’ve all read the pageless biography; theirs has become a different sort of art, hasn’t it? Their character and career are indistinguishable, and so we’re granted a valid window for speculation.

An aside real fucking quick—these people don’t get to say every thought that comes through their heads, post 10 pictures of themselves every day, go on talk shows extolling their most trivial daily-life shit, and then turn around and complain that we don’t see everything so we can’t interpret or criticize or comment on their lives. Who do you think gave us the impression? They signed up for it, they profit from the gruel they feed us, now accept the consequences. Sorry, really, but the stink needed airing.

Alright one more little story tangent, because you deserve it. I stumbled upon this Iconic Moments in Pop-Culture Compilation # 6 or something, and towards the end is this clip of Maisie Williams and Jimmy Fallon. Evidently this made the rounds during the Game of Thrones obsession like right before the final season, though it washed ashore dislodged from context.

Maisie’s talking and saying nothing, and Jimmy’s pushing for spoilers about the show, and she’s like I could lose my job without

actually saying that, but she goes, ‘Okay, I’ll give you this tiny fun detail little insight-into-my-life crumb,’ and in the middle of the story she has a brain fart because it’s a live studio audience, and anything you say will be broadcasted to the multiverse that is humanity. It’s a herculean task to even remain collected—in fact she’s actually shaking while speaking, she’s so petrified, and so she has a slip and says or remembers how she found out Arya died in the second episode—like spoils that Arya Stark died in the second episode of the final season, and pauses, and you can hear the audience’s polyphonic gasp as she shields her mouth with her hand, eyes bulging like a bunny popped in a bear trap. She glances off-screen to her presumed manager, and now it’s not a shake but a full body shivering, endless career-death-is-nigh convulsion, and Jimmy’s reptilian façade clatters to the floor, and he’s incredulous with her, sympathetic almost, breaks and giggles helplessly, actu­ally nurturing in a way I’ve never seen a tonight show host, and even he thinks she’s joking, because apparently Game of Thrones was the set piece people seemed ready to build their lives around back before YKW. She asks horribly if he can edit it out, which he can because it’s a pre-shoot exactly for moments like these, except the audience is there and now they’re in on it since they’ve got a moral choice between tweeting the news to unspeakable infamy, but fame all the same, or they could protect this young, bright­eyed woman who they’ve all known as a literal child since her start on the show, and as such probably feel a familial affection as to a daughter. Jimmy assures her more, asks if it’s a joke again, consoles again and gives an off-camera death-glare to the audience before resetting things.

At this point you’re thinking, or I was thinking, that Jimmy’s stuck in a killer host quintuple-bind: to calm everyone by convinc­ing her that it’s actually not a big deal and by proof let’s just pre­tend it never happened and move along, or that maybe he should stop the show and give her a chance to rest, but maybe that’s patronizing and Maisie’s a woman now and a professional so to truly respect her he should just plow through and mention noth­ing of the past, yet also he’s got to give the audience a good time, and nothing would be better for his ratings than if this disaster aired, what’s her fate to the amusement of millions? but no also and more importantly the show must go on—like literally, there is a time-slot, things are scheduled, and not even God can stop the content’s flow.

The show does go on, and to her credit she seems able to dredge what little composure she can from the coprophagic sur­vival instincts of the talk-show guest. And it’s fascinating to watch Jimmy regress to his comfort (I’m not being facetious, it really was very lizard-like), though this proves too much for Maisie. She has a panic attack, barely getting out an “I’m sorry,” before trotting as fast as her heels will take her, leaving Jimmy alone with the audi­ence, leaving my neck hair glacially erect, empathizing completely given my own GAD but more so wondering just what terrible post-cultural iniquity (and evident sadism from the poster) I had just stumbled into, and on such an otherwise hilarious video, and just what was this thing we were all doing here, and distantly, in the far-back of my mind, a why and how was this even released (except plausibly as some spoiler-free retrospective).

Fallon finally goes after her as if he didn’t cause the whole scene in the first place. He pulls back the mysterious Lynchian curtain off to Big City nowhere, and there’s Maisie waiting with a smile, and they both yell, “April Fools!”

What, the, fuck. I couldn’t have written it better myself; there I was believing myself to be witnessing something unproctored and unrehearsed, a rare moment in real sad subtle intimate live human transparency. What if she had been scarred forever? What if I told you she had reoccurring nightmares about going on live TV and spilling the beans and ruining her colleagues’ life work, and that this was actually a way to get ahead of things and reclaim, by joking, what was in reality a real shivering motion, that the best jokes of all are recursive and freeing and here give her the space to laugh at the trauma of fame? And now I wish I hadn’t written it, and you’d experience it from just the same impossible rootless way. I’d like to read your comments. No doubt you’d weigh insights blind to me. And what’s more? I genuinely don’t know if that was the first time I’d seen it.

IU lost three friends to suicide. All three idols—Sulli, Goo Hara, and Jonghyun. I don’t feel at all comfortable offering com­mentary on the causes of their suicide, or what they meant to IU, but I also don’t want you to leave this thing with the impression that her world is some fetishized fever-dream where the successful have found, you know, happiness.

IU wrote a song for Sulli called ‘Peach.’ I’ve read that Goo Hara was very close to Sulli, and her death followed a month after the latter’s. The K-pop industry is, beyond their extortionist prac­tices, severely stringent in the PR department. Celebrities are

given no space for mistakes, are bullied relentlessly for their deci­sions, and held on the tautest Dobermann’s leash—this is done mostly by their company—in Korea, celebrities are employees. Take for one unsinkable example the fact that idols are contractu­ally obligated not to date. Dating would disturb the illusion of our wish-fulfillment, eroding pleasure and profit. They do so under the cover of friendship, enacting a certain ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy famous for breeding resentment all the way round. Sulli lost her fans when her dating life with a rapper went public. Goo’s ex-boyfriend was reportedly an abuser, assaulter, and threatened to release an illicit video, which threat itself further tanked her career.

Jonghyun left a suicide note. Parsing for the gist, it seems he died with a hopeful sense of inadequacy—the worst kind, all the more ironic since he was among the greatest performers alive.

At an awards ceremony soon after this event, Ji-eun said, “To be honest, I’m still very sad. I sent off someone that was very pre­cious to me as a person, as a friend, and as an artist to a very far­away place. I think I partly understand why he was in such pain and suffered so much—it’s not an emotion that I’m completely unfamiliar with. I’m still very sad and I feel apologetic to him a lot. I’m sure I’m not the only one feeling this sadness. It’s a shame and [even] sadder that we’re people whose daily lives are so busy and we have to plan for our next month, next year.

It’s sad and frustrating that our reality will not allow us to dwell in that sadness for as long as we need. Cheering when you’re happy, and the same goes for crying when you’re sad, being weak and not being at your best when you’re sick, I hope these natural

things can be expressed without concern by artists and those who see them [in this condition] don’t think much of it either.

Artists are people who are supposed to console others, and I get that they’re professionals, but I hope they will take care of themselves first as they’re people too and console themselves, so they don’t get sicker while trying to hide these things. I truly, sin­cerely hope this doesn’t happen.

I’m sure everyone is busy today and they’ll have things to do tomorrow, but I hope that all those who have won today can enjoy and celebrate before they get a good night’s sleep. That is what I’ll do as well. Thank you!”

Later, in an interview on Korea’s Newsroom, she added, “He debuted in the same year as me. He was a colleague who dreamed the same dreams and had similar thoughts, worries, and growth. So I had a lot of regret that I wasn’t able to be a bigger source of strength for him… I was worried for my other colleagues who had to go on stage with a heavy heart. I sincerely wished that there were no people in pain. I hope that sincerity was conveyed well.” If you couldn’t tell by listening to her sing, it’s all real. A charity for young artists continues in his name.

Not enough is made of the precursors to fame, the sweet flypa­per which maybe only succeeds in trapping the most gluttonous strokers of fortune. It’s reasonable to assume that these people sought out the industry because they needed love desperately. Exorbitance in achievement, like pleasures, is almost always a sign of unhappiness—what is perfection-seeking if not endless self­doubt? I can’t imagine the psychic pain symbiotically motivating these entertainers. One can get all the love in the world, but

they’ve got to believe it’s self-evident, otherwise—have you heard of a nocebo?

What, do you think I make too much of their privilege? Perhaps consider how seeking affection could be a sort of addiction.

Let’s imagine that you’re a thief. You steal from everyone, rich, poor, anyone who has money. The joy is rooted in kleptomania, and the money is empowering; it buys you comfort and pleasure. You’ve never been caught. Indeed, to ensure you’ll never get caught, you make public donations to convince everyone that you are what you say you are. After all, why would a thief give away their bounty? Here’s where it gets interesting: you start to find out, after a while, that the donations are now giving you more pleasure than the thefts. But you’re not made of money, to give you first must take. So you keep taking, you take so you can give, you’ve become adept at taking and giving until you’ve convinced even yourself of a layered, white-gloved homeostasis. No, I’m not talking about billionaires (their delusions are too grandiose). This is a simple thing all of us are familiar with. Say it with me, “self­hatred.” You have manufactured your own trap. The answer was never the answer, yet everyone believes you have the answer, and only you from the inside can see how the reward leaves you poi­soned without the strength to admit you need an antidote. Nor can you tell anyone that they don’t want what you have, because it’s all they can see, this sublimated narcissism is literally all they could’ve known, and they’d never believe you anyways. When you were in their place, you didn’t—that’s why you’re here.

Theft as a gift is what you do now. You’re backed into a cor­ner, everyone expects this of you, and the paradox is you’re actu­ally finally giving them what they were supposed to be giving to you, that actually now the part of you that hates yourself and is selfless and pure and giving away—the part that’s killing you—is the one thing saving everyone else, maybe, but it’s stolen, it was someone else’s before you, that their very same crime which con­vinced you and brought you salvation in career has now, you see where I’m going with this, has actually, see the loneliness is your fault for even believing that it was possible, and now you’re per­petuating this pyramid-scheme of goodness to everyone you’re trying to save. Of course, I’m talking crudely about IU—I was telling this very thing to IU when she, well really she was telling this to me when she said the words, “I’m lonely,” when she looked at me alone. And I’m probably the worst person in the world to be standing next to her in this dream. I’m in love with her, which only proves how lonely she is, what with her barely, do I really have to say it? Because I loved her and she barely vaguely even in my own head recognized me. It’s probably an appropriate time now to mention that in this dream I didn’t know that I was dreaming. A shameful, ordinary dream.

“It’s so warm standing next to you,” I said. How long had we been walking?

She frowned, “That can’t be, because I’m very cold.”

We couldn’t have traveled for long. Did I say before that the flowers were a helix? They were logarithmically intertwined, asymptotic, we hadn’t noticed until they penetrated the brick and we trampled them. They seemed to grow out in a hyrdratic regen‐

eration. Were we doing them a favor to proliferate, like the way pyrophytic seeds require distress? How dislikes fuel the algorithm just the same? Funny the impossible things one remembers from dreams.

I tried to offer her the proverbial mechanism of conduction, of why metal feels cool to the touch.

I remember worrying that I was talking to myself, which in the daze of secret night, a night folded into night, the intuition took on a sideways somehow romantic lilt. There were so many ques­tions waiting to be asked. My offerings were like those of a Shōnen hero cascading through a thousand flurried blows (e.g., animated Dragon Ball-Z frames withholding action to represent mortal imperceptions, divinifying power-creep). There is an otherwise hysterical excess of strength represented in postmodern art, and we viewers are compelled to integrate the power-fantasy into our chosen pursuits: the coder who plugs into the world, the savant scientist who ‘discovers’ the intangible as inexplicably as God cre­ated it, the manic-morose guitarist who’s allure sets femme fatales to weeping, or the businessman who sells you expressions of your­self. Our culmination of that strength is (un)deceivingly simple. I was to show her my overwhelming worth by asking one question sure to be revelatory, thereby proving my absolute understanding of her world. It’s not quite what you’re thinking, at least not yet —you’re getting ahead of me.

“Can you believe it?” I asked. Love is repetition.

The following idea arrived fully formed, and I handled all per­mutations in the way only accessible during dreams, that is, expe‐

riencing everything at once. There was no other answer, no choice; I followed the one.

“Deep down,” I said, “you and I both know it’s true—that you’re nothing more than anyone else. This is why you work so hard. You may be more beautiful, talented, maybe even more gen­erous, but what’s that matter? It’s ridiculous.” She nodded in assent. “You’ve surely cried about this to friends. I suspect as much. Why does anyone watch you? Why does everyone insist upon believing? What dumb luck tricked them all? How is it that everyone knows you, yet all are unfathomable to you? You’ve attempted to communicate this feeling while cradling the illusion, as if by sheer love they could become harmonious, a conviction gifted from the blood-clotting sanguinity of your heart, but any­time it comes out—this you’ve never put into words—that the truth, as you avoid it, seems to deny all else. It’s either everything you’ve observed about the world is true, or this is, and if this is true… Because nothing is more shameful than being loved, and nothing is more presumptuous than overlooking another. You create and represent to enchant; you suppress and perform and reflect and provide everything as validation! However, you’ve never been able to fully deny it. Am I getting this right?” She made no response. “And each time you cry, you know.” I looked at her. It’s our teardrops’ mirrored proof, she thought. One great act is all about the other. “And so when are you going to own up to this lie?”

A change was in the pause of occurring on her face, a glimmer­ing half-malice collapsing inward. Each word breathed conscious­ness in her eyes, like a more penetrating sight was reaching the sur‐

face rounded glow of sclera. Each word brought her vision to the image of me, until she stood only blinking. It was the same as that first major lucid dream at her blue concert, where for once I wasn’t looking at artifice but her authentic soul—yes, these things you just feel, they make your body quake. I wasn’t alone anymore.

I said, “You’re here now.”

She said, “I’m here.”

“The dread is gone. You’re here.” And I looked her in the eyes with my whole being and said, “It’s always been a lie,” I couldn’t know what I was saying. “It’s a beautiful and awful lie, and I’m so sorry.” She knew it and studied my face and wept the way you do when someone you’re with is there to believe you and doesn’t need to understand.

She said, “When I go back, will I forget this?”

“Whatever happens,”

“Was I being greedy?”

“I would’ve done the same thing.”

“How could I know?”

“How could you know,”

She reached out for my hand. I swear to God. I’m not making this thing up; I wouldn’t for anything. I know how this looks to you. Believe me this one thing. Forget anything I’ve said before this: Never in my life has something so intimate happened. I could feel her heartbeat in her palm. She reached out to me; you’ll never believe this, but you have to.

I’ve been good for nothing my whole life. If this was all I’m ever to do—stranger sorts of miracles have happened. There are things in this world more mystically alive than language or video.

That we spoke a different language was nothing. All words are dead metaphors. Space and time are permeable, flexible. And I’d give everything to do it again.

“Wealth is a consolation prize for fame,” she said. “It’s terrible to say, but it’s true.”

“No, I think I understand.”

We walked for what felt like a very long time.

“It isn’t normal,” she said to herself. “I want what works.”

I wanted to say, ‘What works?’ As if that wasn’t the answer.

The sidewalk of the city had a crystallographic structure. It seemed that each block had exactly two trash cans, one with green, another with blue liner. The ground was peppered in pointillist discardings, cigarette buds mostly, also soggy food and receipts, actual newspapers and magazines, tickets, bottlecaps, grocery bags marionetting in the wind. There was mud, dust, and things of value, of metals and coins and buttons and miniscule bits of chipped gold. Up close, these structures looked only like chaos. Yet walking has a way, in dreams exponentially, of sorting memo­ries until the natural fractalization exceeds symbolism. It was pur­poseful, this pattern, though that purpose is sensed only by a rev­erential intuition. I’m asking you again to pay attention, and the rewards will be your own.

All the while, Ji-eun opened up to me about her life.

It haunts me now that I’ve barely shared her words. She’s ubiquitous in my head, the deepness of her speaking voice con­trasts with the shining highness when she sings. She has manner­isms like everyone, and what’s interesting is maybe less the man­nerisms than that they’re hers. And the inflections are wonder‐

fully hers, a manifestation of the Godhead; close your eyes and imagine it—not her, not my her, but yours. Your him or her or them. You must have a person, it could be an ex-person, it could be a person that was never real. Think of them. Triangulate that moment when you first discovered your affection and were impelled to abide.

“Of course, when I was young, I never had those thoughts. Well, oh, I’m sorry. I’m just complaining to you. You can’t want to listen to this,” Can you hear their voice in her? “Is this okay?”

“I’m happy to listen.”

“I haven’t put any of this into words, or not like this—maybe only written around it.”

“Which song?”

She laughed at the naiveness of the question. “I’m not blam­ing them. They did the best they could with me, though…”

I know, I know, get to the good stuff. However, I was won­dering if it’s right to be broadcasting the things she shared in confidence. If you really want to know her, please don’t take it from me. You hear what she wants you to know in interviews and the rest.

Fine, here was my response: “You don’t get to choose, but so what you don’t? You’re asked to be a part of that family, of that fame, amor fati. And who could’ve known? And what can you do? You want to know something?” She did. “My parents never hit me. Nothing like that. Once my dad, back when he was—we’d been eating the same thing for dinner the past three days. They were sausages, hotdogs, they got on sale, a big pack that was sup­posedly safe despite being past their best-buy date. With ketchup

only, and we’d already run out of buns. I must’ve been upset about the offense, and I was a kid and couldn’t eat another bite. I never wanted to eat again.”

“I said, ‘I’m not hungry,’ and I thought it wasn’t a big deal, you know, I’d maybe be a little hungry later. Except I wasn’t allowed to leave the table until I finished the hotdog. I ate a bite, or tried and then gagged. I wasn’t being dramatic, it was a gen­uinely autonomic reaction after only hotdogs for a week, and you’re laughing now—” she was laughing. “I don’t need this from you. Well, it’s stupid, and I wasn’t going to starve, he was just so adamant. He said I was melodramatic, and for a second because I was young and stupid, and the way he said it, I thought the phrase was meant to be validating or something. In my world it was valid.

The ordeal became somehow this big thing about me not appreciating all that he did for the family, and it’s only a hotdog, and I could just eat it. He was totally right, but I couldn’t finish it, and eventually he yelled at me to swallow. He kept yelling.”

“My attempts were thwarted—I was well on the road to vom­iting—this is gross, if you don’t want to hear it. Okay. So, I regur­gitated the half-chewed liquidized thing back onto the plate. I heard my mom let out a yelp, a sort of scared cry, and you know how these things go. When you’re a part of a family, everyone’s in tune; her yelp is a canary call. My older sister scoffed as much as she could get away with, and these two reactions were about me, I knew that, and they knew that, but my father’s reality was ungenerous—it was about him and not me—this is what must’ve happened, because I can’t justify it otherwise.”

Ji-eun was very quiet while letting me finish, knowing she knew already.

“So he towers over me, and I give this stupid naïve goblinoid gape looking so ugly I could only hope it doubled back to pug­cuteness. I was just a kid. So the father hears his wife’s cry and his daughter’s snort and sees this homunculus made in his image. This jerkwad kid is now seemingly acting like he doesn’t know what happened and clearly doesn’t respect his father enough to listen.”

“Oh no,”

“It happened then with the same tension-release of a sad and like pretentious arthouse movie. The ones where everyone is both horrendously honest and pitiable and the camera shakes during the quiet. He grabbed my plate and slammed it down on the floor. He did this with unthinking speed, yet the crash was extraordinar­ily slow. It was a miracle honestly, the sound of one exhausted wave, or like a bleeding cymbal. That was just his way.”

It was strange to notice so deep in telling my story, but there were many cosmopolites roaming around us. Shops had faded signs that were general though not generic, potentiality yet realized.

“I remember looking at my mom helplessly, which now I feel guilt for, like I was dragging her into culpability with that look, like I was begging her for help. I wonder if she thinks about that. I hope she doesn’t.”

The signs were mixes of things I’d seen before, or pastiches of word combinations with on-theme animals. A Kluckin’ Deluxe with a chicken in a suit, for example, the neon tagline underneath

was generated in a blur to mimic cursive script like those shitty old AIs. A salon Aphrodite’s something or other, variations of Irish pub-bar-bistro-taverns adjacent to nightclubs with disco-trap and lights that wrist-scanned your ennui.

There were NPCs that I swear were primed before doors or corners, literally waiting for us. When I reached a checkpoint, a cutscene would trigger, loading them into life. Meanwhile, and exactly like in an MMO, there were others that seemed to have an external existence from the game. They developed themselves by interaction, walking just ahead of Ji-eun and me. One joked that I’d be perfectly cast as a simp for Soylent—I think they were hit­ting on her by calling me a soyboy? I’m blathering and this was no Frankenstein’s monster learning to feel, and it’s all probably a manifestation of my meager impression within the representation of a dream as text, and yeah.

“He made me eat if off the floor. That’s what I really remem­ber. Not even eating it. I remember the weight of crying with food in my mouth, sitting on the floor around my family, and no one was looking at my father, and I was looking at no one while feeling everyone’s eyes on me. And the saline of tears does not mix well with a bunless hot dog. After, I went to my room and didn’t even cry.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not a victim in this. The past was, but we’re here now. I can sense my father’s pain—he’s told stories far worse—and his father’s, and his grandfather’s, and I can trace it all the way back in meaningless forgiveness. Or I can look ahead. Next to you it sounds like nothing.”

“I disagree,” she said. “Regardless, your wounds are bound to feel overwhelming if you’ve never known worse. It’s a mistake to turn our sorrows into a competition. Rather, the pains of life have a way of preparing us for greater challenges. We may eventually learn that we’d been lucky. Though to experience this is a great privilege. And in the case that we don’t, that may be a different sort of luck.”

“It used to hurt more when I thought of him as my father. Now I see him as a person, which is freeing because I can be mad at him without feeling deep down that it was all my fault. You know, it’s possible that he wronged me, and I don’t have to feel guilty for thinking that.”

“Yes, you’re very mature for your age.” I think she was teasing me here. “But he is your father.”

She taught me how to be gentle to myself. We are adaptable people, retrieving factoids from the cyber-index of our search lives. I don’t know where they come from, though they appear and beg to make themselves known. Did you know, for example, that according to a 2008 study, 61% of children experience significant emotional neglect, with some estimates as high as 100%. Yes, really.

“Do you think it’s possible to fall in love with someone you’ve never met?” I asked. “No reason.”

“Hmm. The world is so big and old that the odds of finding your soulmate go up if you’re willing to consider those not acces­sible by space or time.” She sounds here like my guru. Ji-eun, if you’re out there, apologies for any misquotations. I’m trying my best, but the sins of memory fight against eidetic pursuits.

I said, “I hate the term ‘in love with you.’ It’s presumptuous.”

“We’re almost there,” she said. So we’d been going somewhere.

We entered an ivory structure, and then into an elevator that stood alone in the center of the room. The walls were made of a partially translucent fiber that diffused the light of the city into a bright sinew, blurring or closing the distance. I glanced at her, and she nodded.

She did it again! She breaks off into confidence—that’s her mannerism: she does everything with assurance. This is what I’ve been failing to describe in her. There’s no doubt in her doubt, or if there is, it’s absolute doubt. There’s no other space left to believe, so you believe her. I know I’m right because when I get excited to tell the truth, my nose starts running. It’s adrenergically alight only from my memory. ‘Honeymoon nose,’ only the arousal here is like logocentric.

“Where are we going?”

“To the top.” Ji-eun actually lives in a penthouse in Seoul; maybe I was incorporating or conflating this knowledge, though the structure we sought was more obelisk than apartment com­plex. Only the roof of the elevator was opaque. Our traversed path was gilded in a waypoint shadow, a savestate the font of matutinal gray. There were the streets we’d spoken, the helix flowers now a conflagration, the smoke and shops and insectoid frames of peo­ple. Our path drew all the way out to the river with a gamified glow, and the river’s reflection dissolved everything, apprehended the nightlife and carried it out into a floating-point sea.

The elevator vibrated with an apian hum. One sound hitting a note of all things. The sound united the image before us, both the

empty air and the ever-incorporating detail of a birds-eye, if only you focus. Like the color-wheel. The omega point recycled the aleph, and I was powerless to heed these data, because my perspec­tive was only one of an infinite variance of angles. Also, the eleva­tor was speeding up. We had so little time and so much to do. I wasn’t sure where to look—at the world or Ji-eun, IU, or my reflection even, my image lost against that living folding glass.

What did I see up there? May I invoke your favorite music video? Think of the ardent watercolors or tepid pastels of your love song. Or what, do you prefer an acoustic ballad held tenderly in one take? Garish hyperpop? Chet Baker’s black and white? Grainy Teresa Teng? Miriam Makeba’s jubilant Earth? The more you looked, the more I saw. Too much.

The glass was a screen to globalization.

Answer me, leave comments and send me emails (sn8keboy2008[at]gmail.com). What, dear reader, could any of this mean? That you were already there to see it all! Meanwhile my sight was underlaid by the streets, park, and city.

I asked myself, ‘Which life is the distortion?’ Such was the ter­minus of aesthetics, the most beautiful nightmare. Only it was real, and I knew I would cease the moment we reached the top.

“When I go back, will you forget this?”

“Whatever happens,”

“Was I being greedy?”

“I would’ve done the same thing.”

“How could you know?”

“How could I know.”

And that’s all I remember. The river in the distance, reflecting us watching, water ravaging, healing water, replacing, mystical­mystical enchanting holy forms mending, and then taking us out to sea.