In Search of the Korean Fantastique: Part 4 (Final)

(Photo by Bad Comrade)

Sorry for the five days since my last post, a long time for me. First up, some quick admin:

• My job situation is a bit up in the air at the moment. Naturally I can’t say much more than that online, just that if all goes well I’ll be working at another branch of my present company come April, but unfortunately have a lot less freetime available for the blog. If so, that won’t be disastrous, but it will mean less frequent, but hopefully higher quality posts. I’ll keep you posted (no pun intended).
• They may not sound or look like much, but I’ve followed some blogging advice and decluttered and made many small changes to the blog, mostly to my sidebar. I won’t bore you with the tedious and very very time-consuming mechanics of them, which I’m still in the process of, but the biggest changes are that I’ve renamed and reduced the number of post categories to 20, and also have only assigned posts to categories if they directly discuss those subjects, rather than just being vaguely related like before. After all, some of my earlier posts weren’t that bad, and the world would be a better place if more people read them, but the previous alphabet soup of categories was making them difficult for even me to find them.

And now for the 4th and final part of this series, easily the shortest but ironically probably more popular than the other three combined!

To quickly recap: part one was first about some Japan-themed art I liked, the inspiration for the series, then discussions of cyperpunk and its relationship to how Westerners view Japan and Korea; part two was about trance music – with many free samples for you to listen to – and the thoughts and feelings it induced in me; and finally the first part of three was very academic, dealing with popular culture, McDonaldization, and the dance party industry, but then it turned highly personal, discussing the cynicism that came with realising how base, capitalist, and manipulative were those things, like the vibes at dance parties, that I’d previously held so dear. In hindsight, that was a very depressing and misleading note to end on, because the whole point of the series, after all, was to show how I plan to overcome that cynicism and rediscover some of my youthful passion for life, and for living in Korea. Better late than never.

(Photo by Full Frame Chris) 

To warm up, let me quote one of my favourite books, a short-story collection called Personals: Dreams and Nightmares from the Lives of 20 Young Writers (1998). Sorry to keep referring to it, but then so few people have read all of the previous posts in the series that most people wouldn’t have noticed. I’m using the book again here because, without readers knowing what the writing of this series has meant to me personally, then the solution to my above “problem” might make less sense, and editor Thomas Beller puts it so much better than I could:

Some of these essays function as an elaborate mechanism by which the author removes, or at least scratches at, a particular thorn in his or her side. (p. ix)

With 12,000+ words already spent on the topic, I certainly do have something to get off my chest! He goes on:

Part of growing up, beyond finding your life’s career or the ideal relationship, is understanding that the forces that shape you and the forces that compel you are not always within your control. Sometimes you cling to control as tightly as possible, and sometimes you casually fling it away (p. xi)

Realising that is precisely what my whole epiphany described in part three was about. And although it meant a lot to me at the time, and still is, fortunately I’ve come to terms with the fact that on one level it was just a normal part of growing up like he says. Strictly speaking though, with that quote he’s introducing the stories in the collection about drug addiction, one of the authors of which:

…is particularly good at describing that uncomfortable moment when the complex, private, and at times contradictory truths of one’s own inner life smash up against forces that have no facility for ambiguity…(p. xi)

I’ll come back to that later. He concludes the whole introduction by saying:

Reading these essays, you will want to get to know their authors well, sometimes more than you might want. If in some cases you draw back, surprised by the odd turns someone’s life may have taken and the sense that they have made of it, so in others you might lean in closer, sensing a kinship with the conscious being unfurling on the page and wanting to know more. (p. xiii)

Okay…at least I wanted to know more. I am indeed surprised that at 32 (today!) I’ve ended up…ahem…a sad, cynical, miserable bastard, and find it difficult to get passionate and interested about things as much as I did in my early twenties. That’s not unusual for 30-somethings, but living in Korea has compounded things, as living as an expat for a long time in any country, particularly one in which you don’t speak the language, ultimately makes even the bubbliest and most vivacious of us prone to cynicism and negativity all by itself. By coincidence, to me my Korean ability epitomises all of that, as on the one hand I so desperately want to acheive fluency, but on the other find it so difficult to get motivated enough to put in the time required. How to change?

At this point, I invite readers to pause for a moment, and think: what would you do? Remember that I have a wife, child, and 8 week-old foetus to support – suddenly dropping everything and moving jobs and or cities is out of the question. Despite those constraints, I think anyone can relate to my solution, which hopefully makes this post more than being just about me.

A Manifesto for A Korean Fantastique

After that build-up, readers may justifiably expect something inspiring and revolutionary, but actually it’ll be quite the opposite. Which is kind of the whole point.

(Photo by Digitalnut)

Again letting more gifted writers do my speaking for me, two years ago, in my never-ending quest to get out of ESL, I bought my first-ever self-help book, the What Should I Do With My Life? The True Story of People Who Answered The Ultimate Question (2003), a US Bestseller by Po Bronson. As you’d expect, the 55 or so chapters in that book are each about people who’ve attempted to change their circumstances and surroundings, although not all how they intended and/or successfully. In the conclusion, Bronson acknowledges that the success stories paradoxically look both exceptional and easy in hindsight, and that ordinary people often feel that they don’t have enough money or time to do the same. To which he responds: 

Never enough time? On the contrary – the saving grace is time. The people in this book didn’t fix their situation overnight. For most, it took many attempts over many years. When I began my research, I thought this was a weakness in their stories; I wished they had exhibited more commanding control over their changes. Now, I admire their patience, and I find it more interesting that they’ve made their changes despite lacking control.

Now I wonder – why was it supposedly more admirable for someone to have made their change cleanly and overnight? Why did I ever want stores that weren’t clouded by luck, pain, and ghosts? Why was that the kind of story I thought I wanted to hear? Answer: Because that’s the story-telling convention. The Self-Made Person. We’ve been boxed in by that myth. We’ve edited our lives to sound more like that myth. We’ve judged ourselves negatively because we haven’t measured up to that myth. We’ve stopped trying because we know we don’t have mythic strength. (p. 390)

Reading that reminded me of myself nearly a decade ago, making excuses for a late paper to a demanding but inspirational lecturer, to which he responded along the lines of: ”The world is full of smart guys, but there are very few disciplined ones.” He was right, and I wish I’d realised that much closer to when he said that rather than years later, when I began to suffer the consequences of my (in)actions. That is another reason why I want to become fluent in Korean, because it is a symbol to me – unless I’m speaking it 24/7 then there’s no other way to achieve that other than by the hard slog and discipline of daily, often tedious study that he describes, and if I do, then I would seriously feel that there’s little else I couldn’t achieve.

(Photo by theturninggate)

Hence, although I woke up 32 today, and…ahem…cut out all the pages in my diary up to today (March birthdays are good for re-resolutions!), I’m not going to pretend for an instant that I’m not the same, cynical, jaded, lazy person that I was last night. And unless I nearly die in a car accident say, albeit entirely possible in Korea, then indeed my personality never will change so soon. Hmmm…no, it has changed quickly before, so to be more precise, I can’t force yourself to become a different person overnight, I can certainly do things to help, but like Po Bronson demonstrated, the change will still probably be a slow gradual process, and all I can do is begin it and stick to it. At least, I’ve already come to terms with this reality for getting out of the ESL industry, which is why I quoted Thomas Beller earlier, as my job pretensions certainly do ”smash up against forces that have no facility for ambiguity,” a more poetic way of describing the bizarre lack of demand here for BA graduates that can’t speak Korean. But as for my 30-something angst? Finishing this series of posts marks my beginning to seek out the interesting, inspirational, original, creative and wonderful in Korea, or at least trying to look at what was previously ordinary and mundane in a new light. If you didn’t “get” the photos in this post, that was their theme, and hence the title of this series.

(Photo by june1777)

And that’s that. Frustrating, anti-climatic…but a lot like real life? I did actually intend to finish on a more positive, active, carpe diem note through giving some examples, I have a good 20 to go through as I type this, but now I realise that those would fit ackwardly onto the end of this 1800 word post. Instead, I’ll do that in the next post, probably up on Sunday. Fortuitously, this new project of mine will mean a lot of very short posts drawing people’s attention to them – maybe only 200 words long, I kid you not – and these will hopefully be a nice balance to the rather academic subjects I’ll be covering soon.

On that note, off to VIPS now…no luxury spared for this blogger on his birthday!

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::