In One, Find All?

About a week ago, I was featured on iamkoreanamerican.com.  It’s a cool project that features various korean-americans that submit a mini-profile from all over the country (and a number of those overseas).  In writing my little blurb, I was reminded of a few things I experienced while living in Chicago, the Austin neighborhood of the west side.  According to those wonderfully horrid urban planning fact sheets, it was a predominantly black, low-income community where most were on some form of state welfare.  Stereotypes, now enter.  Negative images of black folks, on.  Not trying to point the finger though.  I mean, you should’ve seen my face when I first moved into my neighborhood.

On an honest note, the neighborhood was aesthetically discouraging.  Broken glass on sidewalks, park fields… trash left on the streets… and unhealthy amounts of noise.  The toughest thing to stomach was thinking about the kids who had to grow up in such circumstances.  But you know, ponder a step deeper and you start to ask those peculiar questions.  Broken glass, why are folks drinking so much?  Trash, why hasn’t the city’s garbage trucks rolled through yet?  Noise, what are people really trying to say?

An old pastor of mine once said to me, asking questions gets in the way of faith.  What a tragic thing to say.  But I guess that’s what makes heaven so appealing… you don’t have to consciously walk through hell on Central Avenue.  Life is cool when you cruise on by.  You just glance, and drive on.

I walked into church one morning.  There was a seminar of some sort.  Black man sitting on his piano bench, shoulders rested, hands fluid.  He sang, he sang, he sang.  Thrusts from the throat, diaphragmic vibrations, vocal trills.  Take a step back.  Praises, cries, wails, yearnings… silence.  Perhaps it was a step deeper.

“Did you feel that?”

Nods, all at their own tempos.

“What you feel… is the struggle.”

Never got to play music much growing up.  We were one of those families struck with the immigrant dream, yet flailed with its american backhand.  Call it bad economic timing, poor planning, lack of ingenuity… But I’ll call it the woes of unrestrained capitalism.  When you look at those U.S. income level sheets, we were what society would call “poor”.  It’s unfortunate, that same society should also have a subjective happiness meter, we would be what you call “fuck this game, we know joy”.

Mama loved to sing.  She had a song for each situation I was in.  When happy, when sad, when frustrated… and my favorite, “mommy sohn-eun yahk-sohn” for when my stomach hurt.  Even though she could only sleep two, maybe three hours… she sang.  She sang because she needed to, we needed her to.  You should’ve been there.  They say music most closely resembles spirit because sound is merely compressed air.  It quite literally passes through you.  And after it does, it dissipates.  My home was a sanctuary.  Saturated, drenched.  My dad may have been the priest, and a powerful, soulful one at that.  But my mom was the curator.

The green line train runs from downtown Chicago to the west suburb, Oak Park.  My stop, Central Avenue, is about 2 stops before that.  In other words, I lived in one of the most heavily policed areas of the chi.  The barbed fence of handcuffs, batons and flashing lights, I like to call it.  One day, as I was spending extra time riding the trains so to avoid swimming in the humidity, I looked out and saw something … something ecstatic.

Children dancing.
Meat grilling.
Elders sitting.

I got off and walked over.  Before I knew it, I was pelted with water balloons.  Better drenched in cold water then humidity i guess.   What was really beautiful was that an urban geyser had been created.  Folks had shoved a wood board up on a fire hydrant, held it there by wrapping an old tire around it, and cranked it full blast.  In my mind, it was as if God had sent a special cloud full of water and showered the street corner.

Three cars parked, all amping the same radio station.  And yes, we were dancing in the streets.

.

I am korean-american.  But I figured that out while dancing on Central Avenue.  I realized why my mom needed to sing, why my neighbors had to dance, why that black man sat at the piano.

I discovered something profound, or perhaps peculiar.  The more I was myself… the more I owned up to my own narrative, my family’s history, my parents struggles, my community’s well-being… the more I was able to relate to those Central Avenue dancers.  The more I had reason to dance.

In essence: the more particular I am, the more universally human I become.

So you know what… fuck this whole conceding who you are because others don’t want to be uncomfortable.  Be who you are.  And make others respect that.

Dance, so others may dance.
Sing, so others might sing.
Feel, so others can feel.

Defamiliarizing the Familiar.

The Cipher.

The cipher is a circle.  The circle signifies continuity, motion and infinity.  A point on the borders of the  circle only makes sense in relation to the others that are in flow with each other.  A circle contains and frames something that is within.  In other words, a cipher creates another world.

The act of creation seems to be popularly viewed as something that arrives out of nothing.  Something that just drops down from heaven into the hands of a lowly recipient.  Perhaps this is true.  But if there’s anything that a picture can teach us, it’s that a photo merely places a frame around that which already is.  Thus creation is an act of bringing order to chaos.  However, when borders are loose enough to allow fluctuation and movement… when the form is dynamic enough to evolve along with that which is contained… you create a world within a world.  It’s almost as if you’re capturing air in a balloon, but the air keeps getting hotter, causing the balloon to expand.  It explodes.  More balloons must then be formed.

The cipher contains voice.  It enhances the poetic spewings of an ordinary subject.  The voice travels, bounces within the circle.  And the beautiful thing is… all are on rhythm.  The circle is constantly in movement.  Power is contained, bounced around and re-versed for the uplift of the whole.

The Familiar.

Some friends were in town for the weekend.  Did our whole going-out, drinking thing.  And unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for us, we were stuck outside the bar since all Boston joints must close at 2am.  Drunk people of all colors standing around.  Some are organizing folks for house parties, others waving down cabs, many spewing forth their dinner.  And us, mentally silent.

Defamiliarize.

Any stillness is an opportunity for explosion.  A friend drops a beat.  T.Vu spits a rhyme.  A circle forms.  Just like that, people are vibing, dancing, feeling.  Random folks are jumping in.  People coming and going.  The cipher disperses.

We walk down the street.  T-Vu feels like Moses, John like Aaron…  She parts the oncoming pedestrians like the red sea… the people heed her poetic rhymes.  The march down Harvard Ave stops for a moment.  The following forms another circle, half of which bleeds out onto the intersection.  New people join the flock.  Cars irritatingly curve around.  Cops drive by glaring.

The beauty of such a scene is not what is said, nor the visual.  It is what is felt.  For a moment, we were agents… grabbing the world we saw, rearranging it and displaying what it ought to be.  We created a world by means not of nationality, ethnicity, class, gender… but of community.  We were family for that moment.

The loving hugs.  The affirming words.  The grateful looks.

We were family.  We created home.

Home was whatever ground we stood upon.
The movement of poetic nomads, that is what we were for that moment.

Vierundzwanzig.

Upright bass.
Two hostess cupcakes with 2 candles lit.
Cuban cigars on the rooftop.
Facebook explosion.
Mother nagging (lovingly) that i need a girlfriend at this age.
Father telling me not to drink too much.
Brother’s “hyung!!” text.
Running on the charles river.
Biggest bottle of grey goose that i’ve ever seen.
2 slices of mushroom pizza.
Black dude interrogating white dude for the crimes of white supremicism.
Drinks, thanks eddie.
Dancing.
White homeless dude cursing the world with a 40 in his hand.
Drinks, thanks q.
Dancing.
Throwing up (just kidding).
Special can of chinese tea from dave’s mom.
Salted fish, chicken fried rice.
Salt and pepper beef.
Garlic snow pea leaves.
Scallion pancake.
Seafood/mushroom fried tofu.
Ciphering up the avenue of the masses.
The epic ode to chuck, thanks dave.
The rooftop.
Sleep.
Dreams.
Why.
Is.
Life.
So.
Dope.
Sometimes?

The Embodied Will.

A few days ago, archeologists announced that they have found a flute in a German cave.  This flute is approximately 35,000 years old.  The significance of such a find is that it is from the prehistoric era.  It blows my mind that in a time where basic survival was the daily goal, people found a reason to create things that would aid in expression.  Or in other words, people sought to create an aesthetic means in order to reach the sublime.  Now of course, art (as we understand and experience it today) and language weren’t as dichotomized back then.  Art was not seen as “art” but rather an expression of what is.  People drew in order to record their stories/histories, not because they wanted to hang it in some gallery.

The profundity, then, of this archeological find is that it hints at something I’ve been feeling for a while.  That art, or creative expression, is just as necessary as the basic necessities of survival: food, water, etc.  I can imagine the guy/girl who made that flute going off to gather some food, maybe hunt down a swine.  Then come back, roast it and eat with fellow tribesman.  After they’re all full and merry, I imagine some dancing to happen, some percussive instruments laying down a groove, and this guy to get up and just play.  Maybe he’ll express something happy, maybe something sad.  I mean, just take a listen to the clip of someone playing a reconstructed model of the flute.  It sounds beautiful and sophisticated.  I was nearly brought to tears just listening to it.

The point is: we humans aren’t just about survival, we are about creation.

To see this early in the archeological record suggests it might be a fundamental aspect of human nature… It does at least hint that music lies close to our foundation of common humanity.

What is it about this incessant need we have to express?  And what is it about our insatiable drive to constantly create new means that enable us to do so?

Now I’ll be honest with you… the fact that it’s a flute excites me.  I’m a musician, so the bias is obvious.  Personally, music profoundly embodies the human will more so than other art forms.  My reasoning you ask?  Sound most resembles spirit.  After all, sound is nothing more than compressed air.  When it is projected at you, it quite literally passes through you.  And perhaps the most amazing thing of all, it dissipates thereafter.  It comes and it goes.  It is felt, but also invisible.

So to realize that music was and still is that powerful, even to a prehistoric man, elates me.  Actually, it’s sublime.  Luckily enough, I read a beautiful passage from Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy that helped contextualize this whole discovery for me.  Hope you enjoy:

Music, therefore, if regarded as an expression of the world, is in the highest degree a universal language, which is related indeed to the universality of concepts, much as these are related to the particular things.  Its universality, however, is by no means the empty universality of abstraction, but is of quite a different kind, and is united with thorough and distinct definiteness.  In this respect it resembles geometrical figures and numbers, which are the universal forms of all possible objects of experience and applicable to them all a priori, and yet are not abstract but perceptible and thoroughly determinate.  All possible efforts, excitements and manifestations of will, all that goes on in the heart of man and that reason includes in the wide, negative concept of feeling, may be expressed by the infinite number of possible melodies, but always in the universality of mere form, without the material; always according to the thing-in-itself, not the phenomenon – of which melodies reproduce the very soul and essence as it were, without the body.

This deep relation which music bears to the true nature of all things also explains the fact that suitable music played to any event or surrounding seems to disclose to us its most secret meaning and appears as the most accurate and distinct commentary upon it; as also the fact that whoever gives himself up entirely to the impression of a symphony seems to see all the possible events of life and the world take place in himself.

. . . .

We might, therefore, just as well call the world embodied music as embodied will: and this is the reason why music makes every picture, and indeed every scene of real life and the of the world, at once appear with higher significance; all the more so, to be sure, in proportion as its melody is analagous to the inner spirit of the given phenomenon.  It rests upon this that we are able to set a poem to music as a song, or a perceptible representation as a pantomime, or both as an opera.

. . . .

Music . . . gives the inmost kernel which precedes all forms, or the heart of things.

-Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy

Learn How to Laugh!

Lift up your hearts, my fellows, higher and higher!
And the legs – you mustn’t forget those!
Lift up your legs too, accomplished dancers;
or, to top it all, stand on your heads!

This crown of the man who knows laughter,
this rose-chaplet crown: I have placed it on my head,
I have consecrated laughter.
But not a single soul have I found strong enough to join me.

Zarathustra the dancer, the fleet Zarathustra,
waving his wings, beckoning with his wings to all birds around him,
poised for flight, casual and cavalier-

Zarathustra the soothsayer, Zarathustra the laughing truthsayer,
never out of sorts, never insisting, lover of leaps and tangents:
I myself have put on this crown!

This crown of the laughter-loving, this rose-chaplet crown:
to you, my fellows, do I fling this crown!  Laughter I declare to be blessed;
you who aspire to greatness, learn how to laugh!

Zarathustra
Part IV, “Of Greater Men”

The Holiness of Laughter.

I’ve been reading this book by the French philosopher Henri Bergson, courtesy of Becky.  It’s titled, “Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic.”  Never have I smiled/laughed so much reading a philosophical text.  The book is a great reflection on why people laugh.  Superficially speaking, it seems a bit esoteric to philosophically reflect on such an ordinary and simple action (and perhaps it is).  But the way Bergson analyzed the role of the comic remains quite profound on how we might come to view the movement that is life.

Bergson writes, “The attitudes, gestures and movements of the human body are laughable in exact proportion as that body reminds us of a mere machine.”  A popular form of the comic is imitation.  Try getting on your hands and knees in front of a mirror and bark like a dog (not that I’ve done this before or anything)… it’s funny!  And it induces laughter from those around you as well.  This action is humorous because a living being is mechanically acting like something else.  The comic is essentially “something mechanical encrusted upon the living.”  Or even further, “We laugh everytime a person gives us the impression of a thing.”

Why is this funny?  Because we are living, breathing beings.  Life, by its very virtue, is fluid.  We change, we shape, we mold… in other words, life is not static.  “[Life] must be changing every moment, for to cease to change would be to cease to live,” he writes.  Laughter is thus the corrective to this mechanical arrangement.  We laugh to remind ourselves that we are living beings, that we are not machines.

As I read through his text, I cannot help but unravel the tragic thread woven into Bergson’s tapestry, which remains undeniably applicable to our present reality.  In our globalized world of neo-liberal capitalism, we are constantly being homogenized and commodified.  In short, we are becoming machines.  Furthermore, our own cultural values have made it ethically sound to fully participate in its mechanizing processes.  And the tragedy is: We don’t find it funny.  It’s a sad thing to realize that we are practicing the comic… yet not laughing.

To Bergson, the comic is a disguise, an illusion that one wears like a garment.  It is meant to be temporary.  Thus the call of all things living is to shed the garments that we have mistaken as our flesh.  We must learn to laugh again.  Laugh at the tragicomic clenching our world, our minds and our hearts.  Perhaps then we will learn how to live and breathe again… not just individually, but collectively.

I once heard someone say, “Laughter is carbonated holiness.”  To laugh is to be holy.  And to be holy is to be set apart.  Laughter is our very protest against a tragic world that is set on taking the comically mechanical and normalizing it.

So be holy… and lol.

The End of Capitalism…?

Obviously… by virtue of the title… I’m referring to our current economic crisis.  Now, I admit: I have Marxist sentiments.  I even consider myself a Marxist (although I’m a bit wary of it because of the widely misunderstood notions of what that means).  The major reason why I would attribute that to myself is because frankly, I feel that his analysis of capitalism was right.  Contrary to common perceptions of the man, he was a scholar of capitalism.  By deeply understanding its processes, he eventually concluded that capitalism would rationally have to come to an end.  I do not have the time nor place (and I wouldn’t be able to do him justice) to discuss his theories in full.  But I would like to reflect on a lecture I attended.

Robert Brenner, UCLA professor and one of the world’s premiere Marxist historians, gave a lecture at Harvard today.  His research analyzes the current state of the market as a reflection of the exhaustion of capitalistic processes.  Contrary to the popular perceptions of technological advancement and growing “wealth” of the western economy, we have come to a dead end.  We have over-capacitated our manufacturing processes and sacrificed production in the name of profit.  Since the post-war epoch, we have consistently cut costs, which has gradually stifled the return of capital.  By crunching credit and inflating interest, our economy has stood helpless while watching brief economic “booms,” which essentially were momentary returns, undercut our own ability to break from sub-prime assets.

There are five insights a fellow lecturer gave:

First, this is no ordinary recession.  Its effects are saturating every sector of the economy.

Second, there is no exit from this crisis.  Why?  During the Clinton administration, there was a move known as “Global Market Integration”.  Or in other words, allowing neo-liberal economic practices to dictate the market.  Thus by fully integrating the market into a single ideological practice with no balancing alternative, we have undercut our own abilities to be rescued from the crisis.

Third, there is no evidence that there is any control of this crisis.  Newspapers gradually keep indicating that “this is a lot worse than we expected”.  This is obviously not a very academic way of stating a condition, but we must be mindful that it will only get worse.  Sub-prime assets, propelled by short-term lending practices in the housing market, essentially centralized the very health of our economy into the hands of estimated returns.  This helps explain why Wall Street tanked (or is tanking) because of the failure of the housing market.

Fourth, everything (globally speaking) resides on the U.S. nation-state.  We are the biggest borrower and spender of global capital.  This inherently places us at the very center of the global market.  This means… if we tank… so does everyone else.

And lastly, we have to ask ourselves: Can our environment endure what capitalism asks of us in order to move beyond our crisis?

Robert Brenner’s answer, and I agree with him, is no.  Not necessarily that it is impossible… but rather, the costs are not worth it.  “Worth it” relative to what?  Let me explain…

Our current crisis puts our economy, and by virtue us as well, in a mode of survival.  This can easily move us into an economic climate where moves are made at the cost of even more significant portions of the country… or the world for that matter.  By continuing down the road of over-capacity and underproduction, we jeopardize the global economy.  But there can be something else…

We can take this as an opportunity to rethink and critically question the practice of capitalism on the micro-level.  Examining things such as social relations, production as meaningful-rather-than-numbing, and competition as the fundamental motivator of innovation can help us rethink the way economics, business, and production is done.  In other words, we can see the “collapse” of capitalism as liberating.  The issues, then, aren’t necessarily technical… it is also cultural.

A professor from Detroit once told me that when he takes people on a tour of the deteriorating-yet beloved Motown, he says, “This is what the soul of a dying empire looks like.”  However, there is a lesson to be learned from this city if one studies what is happening on the ground.  There are grassroots activists that are modeling a community of new social relations… in the midst of economic depression.  They are practicing what is called: solidarity economics.  Work and production, as well as innovation, for the sake and empowerment of the community.

This leads me to a final thought… perhaps the least thoughtful of this rambling post.  Our current crisis, built upon credit, debt and competitive-but-over-capacitated production, begs me to ponder: What is it about competition that seems so necessary to fuel innovation and production?  This implies that people won’t work hard or innovate because profit is no longer the driving factor.  I realize that this is highly idealistic questioning.  But is competitive profit the sole motivator for innovation and production?  What about advancing the quality of life for all?  What if our economy was structured so that production would be in the name of communal advancement?  Setting aside examples of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (which are different subjects in themselves), I believe it has to be tried and tested.

I’m guessing I’ve lost most of you already.  But if you’ve read this far, thank you.  Hopefully, this financial crisis brings some fruitful critical thinking.

A Two-Fold Movement

There was a little man in Peru, a man without any power,
who lives in a barrio with poor people and who wrote a book.
In this book he simply reclaimed the basic Christian truth that
God became human to bring good news to the poor,
new light to the blind, and liberty to the captives.

Ten years later this book and the movement it started
is considered a danger by [the United States of America],
the greatest power on earth.

When I look at this little man, Gustavo,
and think about the tall Ronald Reagan,
I see David standing before Goliath,
again with no more weapon than
a little stone called A Theology of Liberation.

-Henri Nouwen,  ¡Gracias!

Liberation theology, as articulated by Gustavo Gutierrez, is a two-fold movement: the humanizing of God and the humanizing of the other.  It situates God in the person of Jesus.  God thus becomes that very being you can touch, listen to, and ultimately follow.  You can visualize whom he’s with: the poor man with nothing to eat, the leper with no community, and the woman who is about to be stoned.  You can further see the masses that have gathered to hear him speak . . . those poor Mediterranean peasants listening intently to what he had to say about their lives.

Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Love your enemies.

You can now begin to sense how strange these words are to a people who are living under imperial Roman rule, coerced into submission in a land that is their own.  You may also begin to sense the awkwardness arising around you . . . the frustrated and shocking musings of a man whose ethics radicalize your own.

What does it mean to follow a man who died on a Roman cross . . . a political death used to strike fear into potential usurpers?  And what does this mean living in the greatest power on earth today?

What is your ethic?  What is your religious conviction?

The Mystery at the End of the Universe

The central theme that I have explored in this book is that, through science, we human beings are able to grasp at least some of nature’s secrets. We have cracked part of the cosmic code. Why this should be, just why Homo sapiens should carry the spark of rationality that provides the key to the universe, is a deep enigma. We, who are children of the universe — animated stardust — can nevertheless reflect on the nature of that same universe, even to the extent of glimpsing the rules on which it runs. How we have become linked into this cosmic dimension is a mystery. Yet the linkage cannot be denied.

What does it mean? What is Man that we might be party to such privilege? I cannot believe that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate . . . an incidental blip in the great cosmic drama. Our involvement is too intimate. The physical species Homo may count for nothing, but the existence of mind in some organism on some planet in the universe is surely a fact of fundamental significance. Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor byproduct of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here.

-Paul Davies, The Mind of God

A Piano, a Bass, and a Bowtie

A friend of mine came into town this weekend.  It was nice and sobering to have him here.  Nice because it’s comforting to have a friend visit you in your new setting.  But also sobering because it means that you’re actually here to stay.  Anyways, we had a good time.

On Friday, we were walking down Mass Ave near Newbury St (downtown Boston).  It’s a really nice area.  Boutique stores everywhere, musicians and painters on the street, great food…  I personally love it because it’s where the Berklee School of Music is housed.  When the pretentious halls of Hah-vuhd get a bit dreary, Berklee is my fantasyland where I get to roam around and find young cats testing out their chops.

We walk into this music store called Daddy’s.  It’s right across the street from Berklee.  So by virtue of the area, you’ll generally find the next studio ace messing around in there.  As we headed over to the bass and keyboard section, we couldn’t help but vibe to the soulful rhythms and chords we started to hear.  Just one bassist and one keyboardist exchanging solos… with about 6 others bobbing their heads like pigeons.

Then something all-too-familiar happens.  We hear two over-driven amps blasting to the left and to the right of us.  Another bassist… another keyboardist.  One is playing Red Hot Chili Peppers licks… and the other is playing jazz.  Unfortunately, we were stuck in the middle.  This goes on for about another 5 minutes before we have to ask the bass player to turn down… which he does grudgingly.  The keyboardist, however, just leaves after banging on the keyboard.  Not a word.  Just struts off with that I’m-a-badass kind of thing goin’ on.

I’m guessing a lot of you are visual people.  And I’m guessing you already have an idea of what these two musicians look like.  If not… I’ll help you a bit… white people.

Now, in all fairness, not all white people are like that.  I’ve gigged and hung out with a lot of respectful and sensitive white people.  But white privilege is too pervasive of a reality to ignore it.

My academic advisor (who is white and conscious of her racial privilege) told me that the biggest shift that I, a KoreAm SoCal-ian, would have to make would be cultural.  New England is a climate that is heavily dominated by white culture, she says (although, where is it not?).  It is a completely normal thing to see men walking around in full blown suits with bowties in the middle of the day.  Not to say that bowties is linked to racial hierarchy, but hopefully, you get the image.

The longer I’m here, the more I realize that I have moved to a foreign country.  I do enjoy it here.  But it is New England… perhaps the cultural bastion of whiteness.  Or rather, liberal northern whiteness.  For many of you that know what I’m talking about, it’s not necessarily anything that is said, or explicitly revealed… but rather, it is the vibe of the area.  It is what you have to be aware of.  It is what you aren’t “allowed” to say… or express.  It is the pressure to distance yourself from your history, your culture.  It is that something in the air that you just have to deal with.  It is what W.E.B. DuBois called “Double-Consciousness”.  That one must learn to act in one’s own cultural setting… as well as the dominant white cultural context.  White people don’t have to do that.  They can live their whole lives without having to learn about another culture and still do fine.  For the social system in which we live plays by their rules… or rather, it is defined by their rules.

But… I did choose my cup of tea.  I did leave home to come here.  And it is what I must learn to deal with… as well as undo… during my time here.

On a lighter note, this post is probably a subconscious attempt to voice my homesickness.  =P