SNL Korea: What the Hero Korean Adoptee Community Accomplished

In my last post, posted at 2am yesterday, I talked about an SNL Korea skit that mocked the airport adoptee reunion situation. What happened in the hours following was kind of amazing. For today, tomorrow, and maybe even most of next week, the authors of these two blogs, and the groups mobilized through the efforts of them and others, are kind of my heroes:

I'm connected with these two people on Facebook, but I'm only going to write about them using information available on their public blogs. Because internet.

"Tales of Wonderlost" - a tumblr blog by a Korean adoptee living in Korea.
"TRACK - Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community of Korea" - a website where contributor JJTrenka posted most of the articles related to the SNL video, and was very active on different Facebook groups.

Credit should also go to GOAL - Global Overseas Adoptees' Link, and a lot of others I'm sure I missed.


Word came to a couple of activist adoptee bloggers sometime yesterday about the SNL Korea skit. You can see it here, unless SNL Korea has pulled it. Which they might.

Here are the things these writers and their community accomplished:

• 1. Translated it, and numerous other pertinent releases and comments, from Korean to English or English to Korean, for dissemination.
• 2. Launched a twitter campaign by sharing SNL Korea's twitter address.
• 3. Mobilized adoptee communities on Facebook and other social media, and allies, to protest. Groups like Land of a Gazillion Adoptees and GOAL (Global Overseas Adoptee Link - who issued an open letter) and website I Am KoreaAm. Twitter also went kinda crazy - this single tweet got 246 retweets as of this writing, and the hashtag "#AdopteeDignity" became a focus point.
• 4. Prompted, either directly or because the backlash was big and noisy, numerous media articles in both English and Korean about the issue.
• 5. Earned, within a day, a full-on apology from SNL Korea. The apology. With English translation at the bottom of this article.

HOLY CRAP, EVERYBODY THAT WAS AMAZING!


We must celebrate in the way of the internet:
With gifs.

source

source

Yaaay!

You want to dance too. Admit it. Source

Bask. Bask in the joy of success.

Source

So, great job, everyone who contributed.

The reading I've done about overseas adoptees -- on blogs, academic publications, SNS and personal correspondence, has frequently come back to the point that adoptees and birth parents are too often discussed and talked about, but not nearly often enough consulted, or listened to. Which makes it all the more satisfying to see adoptees take control of their own narrative in this case, through good communication and activation of the human networks they've been developing on their own, use their voice, and get heard!

Awesome.

There were a few comments made on this blog and other places that I'd like to address or answer, before we go.


1. "Jeez you PC police are just a bunch of white knights going around looking for things to be offended by!"

Um... actually it was adoptees -- the group represented in the skit -- who were hurt most by this one. No need to manufacture outrage on somebody's behalf. Go read some of the responses linked above. If you're not an adoptee, you don't get to decide what does and doesn't offend adoptees. And even if you are an adoptee, you get to decide what offends you  as an adoptee, and not other, or all adoptees. And I checked the response among the adoptee communities and blogs I follow, before writing my piece in support. There wasn't a lively discussion about whether this was offensive or not. There was mostly outrage, disgust, and hurt.

But when, like, almost every single adoptee in your social circle, and almost every adoptee community Facebook page and website has a hurt or offended or angry response to it.... well why don't we listen to them, instead of undermining their right to take offense. Adoptees have been silenced and ignored often enough.


2. Lighten up!

If you told somebody to lighten up or get a sense of humour, you are gas-lighting. Gas lighting is a term popularized in feminist discussion groups, where people kept saying things like "You're getting all emotional" or "Get a sense of humour" to try and make the person doubt themselves - shifting the focus of the conversation from the issue to the person. Go educate yourself on it. Try here and here and here to start. Not all gas-lighting is on the level of domestic abuse (which is where the term originates) -- it's used much more loosely on the internet than in clinics, but the fact is, if you're focusing on someone's lack of a sense of humour: "It was funny to me," then you're side-stepping the actual issues in play here, and also dismissing someone's response, which is just as legitimate as yours in finding it funny.


3. But look: here's a video from America that makes fun of adoptees. Here's a video from America that makes fun of asians.

Umm... those videos aren't cool either. And their existence doesn't cancels out the fact this video is offensive too. Clearly, there are lots of issues to be worked out, in lots of places. And this is one of them. Classic tu quoque.


4. "So we're just going to have a committee to censor everything? You're spoiling the fun."

Ahh the C word.

First: if you are saying this, and you also answer "Of course, naturally!" or even just "yes" to a majority of the 26 statements in this article, it might be time for some soul searching, or some thought about the power of language and media to marginalize groups.

It's not censorship to ask for an apology. It's not censorship to say "this kind of a skit shouldn't have been made in this way."  It's censorship to demand SNL Korea be taken off the air. Which didn't happen.

Freedom of speech means that people have the freedom to say something that offends people. But the offended people who say "This offended me" and make a big stink are protected by that same freedom. Nobody should have the right to take freedom of speech away from EITHER of those groups. The word censorship is overused in discussions about what is and isn't in good taste. On the individual level, this isn't a conversation about free speech and censorship. It's a conversation about not being an asshole to people. And if, thanks to a conversation about what an asshole they're being, someone (or a media outlet) decides to change their behaviour, that's not censorship, either. It's just a decision based on new information someone didn't have before, or hadn't thought of, that they've calculated to be in their best interest. And good for them, being so open to new ideas!

That said... there's a difference between an individual saying some stupid offensive shit, and getting the response they deserve... and a major media outlet saying some stupid offensive shit. Because when a major media outlet makes light of the pain an adoptee feels, and there's no response, that normalizes the act of dismissing, marginalizing or putting down adoptees. Even if you're allowed to do something, it may still not be the right thing to do. A kid who saw adoptees get mocked and humiliated without consequences on TV will be more likely to bully my adopted kid (if I have one), and I'm not cool with that. So it's my right and prerogative and maybe my duty to make sure there are consequences if that goes on TV.

Censorship isn't necessarily the answer ... because every time adoptees appear in the media, we get to have a conversation about the issues involved, which helps everyone become better informed and more accepting: that's good! Censoring things prevents that opportunity for conversation. But a clip like this starts the conversation off on the wrong foot, so a backlash like this one is a grassroots way to steer the narrative back along more productive lines. This is a good, healthy process, and the recent incident is an example of redirecting the narrative gone right. Major media outlets do have a responsibility toward their audience, and especially the marginalized among their audience, in the things they publish, and reminding them of that is something that happens in a healthy civil society.


4. So we're not allowed to joke about this topic? That's bullshit! Humour comes from pain! If you're not offending someone, it's probably not funny.

You are allowed to joke about any topic. But there are certain ways to joke about topics, that will cause you to be called and considered an asshole. And you will deserve to be called an asshole. That's not censorship. It's cause and effect. Don't be an asshole. Simple.

And there are ways of joking about any topic that is funny and not hurtful. Adoption included. Sure, humour comes from pain, but comedy is funny because it's audacious, because it's shocking, because it challenges norms and assumptions we take for granted. It's culturally important because it speaks truth to power, taking the bigwigs down a notch by hiding darts under a layer of humour. What's shocking or audacious about kicking someone who's already down? Where's the sport in shooting sitting ducks? That reinforces the norms and entrenches power imbalances, instead of challenging them.

[Trigger warning: the following paragraph briefly discusses rape jokes]

The idea that humour comes from pain was an important part of a recent conversation on a different topic: that of rape jokes. Rape is a different issue, and I have so much respect for survivors of all kinds of sexual assault, and for those fighting for justice in that area. I'm nervous about bringing such a big and important thing into a post on a different topic, because I would never want to give the impression that I'm demeaning, dismissing, or minimizing sexual violence. That said, some of the articles written during that discourse about rape jokes include useful principles for other jokes based on painful experiences as well. If you're interested, read this one. Read and watch 15 rape jokes that work without marginalizing women or rape victims. Read "Anatomy of a successful rape joke." "When Rape Jokes are Never Funny" Basically, the rape jokes that work, do because they attack the structures and people in power: rape culture, or the rapists, or those who bully victims into silence. They point out how hypocritical or vile they are, in such a way that they look ridiculous instead of frightening. This pushes against a norm of silencing or shaming rape victims, who really don't deserve to be kicked around more after what they've been through. A rape joke doesn't have to silence, shame, or blame victims. See the examples in the link above if you don't believe me.

The ones holding the power in international adoption are not the adoptees. The adoptees are the ones who get silenced, or lectured, or infantilized, or put on display. The birth parents get blamed and demonized and disparaged. Silencing, lecturing, infantilizing or putting adoptees on display isn't anything new, so it lacks the surprise that makes good comedy funny.  Make fun of the agencies that profit from separating kids from their parents, or the social, economic and cultural institutions that put women at such a disadvantage that they feel they can't support a child. Or the policy-makers who found it easier to smooth the road for adoption agencies than to develop functional social safety net for families in less-than-ideal situations. Mock the media which turns adoptees' search for their families into a tawdry, humiliating, televised spectacle. Or the associations that beatify adoptive parents while demonizing birth parents as unfit or immoral. They deserve all the mockery they get. But not the adoptees or the parents. They have few enough notches already, that it's mean-spirited to take them down another.

"If you're not offending somebody, you're probably not funny"

Horseshit.

Find me someone offended by this. It is perfectly possible to be funny without offending people, and being offensive does not automatically mean you are funny. You can make a comedy show about a vulnerable group, that is actually funny, while also respecting the group. South Park's episode about Tourette's Syndrome checks all those boxes, and was even recognized by the Tourette Syndrome Association: while it focused too much on swearing outbursts (a not-that-common version of Tourette's), they conceded the show was "surprisingly well-researched" with "a surprising amount of accurate information conveyed" and parts of its plot serving as "a clever device for providing ... facts [about Tourette's] to the public." It can be done... people who do it (Louis CK or Sarah Silverman for example) amaze me, because tackling a sensitive topic while being respectful and also funny is a praiseworthy display of virtuousity. Any clumsy jackass can go for the cheap shot. So let's just throw that offensive/funny canard out the window.


5. But this skit was trying to satirize Korean adoptee shows, which create situations like this reunion. And it's a step forward that a comedy show is talking about adoption, rather than continuing the conspiracy of ashamed silence.

This is based on a facebook comment by the Metropolitician, Michael Hurt, a long-time resident, with kickass knowledge of the culture and language. It was far and away the most thoughtful critique of the SNL backlash. He argues that this skit mocks other adoptee reunion shows -- even the name of the program at the beginning (here's the actual program of the same name) -- references them. He argues that this mockery of a reunion scene will make it harder for the actual TV shows that trade on adoptee reunions, to continue putting adoptees on display and making their most personal moments into a schmaltzy scene, kind of the way Austin Powers mocked the conventions of the James Bond franchise so accurately that the franchise had to completely reinvent itself with a reboot to avoid self-parody and irrelevance, I think.

He finishes his long facebook comment with this:

Food for thought -- I think that staging the skit as a replay of an actual television show first meeting, which they often were, would be a bit too direct for the defamation-suit-minded media outlets here, especially given the fact that the title of the skit references a show South Koreans all know, and that staging it as a true first meeting in the airport, without the cameras and onlookers allowed for a chance to let the audience "off the hook" dramatically, since the parody of the melodramatic meeting slips into actual melodrama at the end, where you can hear real "awws" and such from the stdio audience. Works well and is perfectly crafted to the Korean audience that is indeed sick of this beaten-to-death trope as well, but still would like the comedy to feel "kind" and not mean, as is the wont (and want) of Korean audiences, methinks.

Personally, I think if that was the purpose of the skit, it fails to deliver, but I respect the argument and the way it was made, and the knowledge of the context out of which it comes. I don't think it's clear enough to viewers that those programs, and not adoptees themselves, were the target of the laughter, especially Jason Anderson speaks Korean in such a way that it sure comes across as "lol badly spoken Korean is SO funny!" If that was their goal, they probably should have thought about how the skit would "read" to adoptees who weren't fluent in the cultural idioms they were referencing, or added enough clues for them to be in on the joke. It wouldn't be the first time comedy has failed to cross cultural lines... but it becomes more confusing and fraught because adoptees were part of Korea's culture and society... until they got sent overseas. Ultimately, though, I'm not convinced that the skit has done enough work to deflect the mockery away from Jason Dooyoung Anderson, and onto the proper targets. Which might be a question of taste... but I think if that was the intention of the skit, it was poorly executed. Which is better than being purely ignorant or spiteful, but still troublesome.

That's the end of the commentary I want to make, so with one more mention that... holy cow it's awesome that adoptees took control of their own narrative with this incident, and all credit and praise go to them! I'm wrapping up this post.

Have a great one, friends.

Bitter, Sweet Seoul: my Two Favourite Videos about Korea

When I saw this video, just made by some guy, it struck me as doing a better job, and making Korea seem more attractive, than almost every official tourism promotion I'd seen.

Other than a few seconds of footage taken in Japan, I think it's pretty much perfect. And wouldn't it be nice if some percentage of the Korea Promotion budget were simply set aside to find people who make beautiful videos like this, and to offer them free, all-expenses one or three-month trips to Korea, in order to make one really really great Youtube video. Or four.

What we have next, coming out just recently, is as good.

Famous filmmakers Park Chan-wook (Oldboy) and Park Chan-gyong, have done something lovely.

They took crowd-sourced footage -- anyone could submit -- and hammered together a one-hour (plus change) video that I actually recognize as the Seoul I live in: the ones that's beautiful and ugly and funny and wild and loaded, loaded, loaded with life.

It's probably too long to grab casual viewers, but for anybody who lives in Seoul, who loves Seoul, they will deeply appreciate this video, which ultimately amounts to a gentle, knowing love-letter to one of Asia's most interesting cities.

Garbage collectors, crosswalks, breakneck motorbike delivery boys, urban gardeners, and yogurt ladies in yellow, runaways and street food vendors, mountains and crowded streets. I love this video, because the decision-making mucky-mucks who come up with junk like this appear to have finally stepped aside and deferred to the ones who have, you know, actual artistic talent. Now, perhaps that's because the makers of this video are award-winners and such... but it's a start.

I wish the video the greatest of success.

Read more about it here. And at the Wall Street Journal's Korea blog, "Korea Realtime." And of course, watch it, silly!

High Street Low Street: Seoul Photography by Dayv Mattt

Dayv Mattt, also known as Chiam, is a photographer I've admired for quite a while now- he's had a handful of different blogs, and can currently be found at http://www.dayvmattt.com/dm/

Disclosure: he contacted me and offered to send me a copy of his book for free, in exchange for a review. I insisted on paying for it, because I admire his photography and want to support it, and because I still don't want my readers to feel like they have to doubt my writing because I've used my blog to get free stuff.



But more to the point... I simply love his photography. The man seems to wander around the same parts of Seoul that I do -- not to say the same parts geographically, but the same types of corners and  neighborhoods seem to attract his camera's eye. The search for a good subject leads him up hillsides and into alleyways instead of down the main streets - the grittier and more crumbled, the better, so his photos end up showing a Seoul that City Officials and Official Guidebooks rarely highlight in their urgent attempt to dazzle visitors with shiny lights and huge displays of pointless technology: places that pretend war in the long past, dictators in the nearer past, and poverty and class strife right goddamn now have never touched Seoul, which is a well-meant, but an outright lie.

Mattt's camera's eye also gives clear evidence that he has lived in Seoul for a long time, paid his dues: the tourist would not notice from their hotel room, or not realize how important and common an element of Seoul life they are, to include uniformed school kids swarming into the streets when the hogwans close, or the way people react when a pigeon explodes into flight. It takes a long time living here, and an observant eye, to know that some of the things documented in his book, actually are important parts of living in Seoul: more so, even, than touchscreen thingies on streetsides in Kangnam, or the ornate corners of austere hanok buildings against blue skies - which you have to go looking for, rather than walking by them on the way to the subway stop every day, and which even tourists can  catch in a point-and-click, and feel like they've captured something about Seoul that matters.

The crumbling stoop where somebody's grandmother is husking garlic cloves, the side-alley where middle-school kids linger between hogwan classes, or taxi drivers pull over for a smoke and a piss, where even the chicken delivery guy gets lost; random stoops decorated with drunken salarymen and graffiti-covered police buses get perceptive, and even loving treatment here, and this is why High Street Low Street is a new favorite book of Seoul photography.

The book is huge - A3 size, for those of you who feed paper into photocopiers, and beautiful, glossy and rich in color, with around a hundred full color, heavy paper pages. Mattt has self-published these beautiful editions, and is selling them independently, to help himself buy a replacement for his old camera.

Maybe the best thing I can say about the book is this: after spending some time with it, I feel like DayvMattt lives in the same Seoul I live in, and I bow to him for capturing in images the feelings of the Seoul I've lived in, and loved, cracks, uneven cobblestones, blind corners with sudden night views, pig faces and foul-mouthed middle-schoolers and night streetlights making old houses magical, and all.

I highly recommend this beautiful book of Seoul street photography. I will protect it from my baby for as long as I can, and I recommend you buy a copy at his website, through bank transfer or paypal, to support an artist trying to make something beautiful on his own terms.

The "buy my book" link. You won't regret it. I might order two more copies for my dad and step-mom when they come to Seoul.

Comfort Women with Words of Encouragement for Japan; Rob with words of encouragement about Korea

Soundtrack: Bobby Kim.
Wifeoseyo LOVES Bobby Kim, and once took me to a concert of his.  I actually like him quite a bit too... this is one of the songs on his latest; not my favorite, but I couldn't find that one on youtube.



Well, others have discussed the idiots claiming Japan deserved this disaster. To sum up... natural disasters aren't personal, and it might happen in your home state next month, and that's enough about that.  By the way: http://godhatesjapan.com/ don't judge the URL till you click on it.

However, here's something really cool that I wanted to share: Wifeoseyo first mentioned it - a news story that brought tears to her eyes.

Many of my readers already know who the "Comfort women" are -- during the colonial period, and through World War II, young Korean women (and women from other Asian nations) were brought along with Japanese armies, to provide sexual services to Japanese soldiers.  It is alleged that some, maybe all, of them, were kidnapped from their homes.  They were called "comfort women" - which is the gentlest way you can say "sex slave."  More at Wikipedia.  (Warning: don't take the Wikipedia as gospel truth: Wikipedia has become a battleground for competing national narratives in Asian historical controversies... but it should give you the broad strokes well enough.)

The days, a few of Korea's former sex-slaves are still alive, some of them living in a group home in Hyehwa.  Many lived tough lives, as their history as sex slaves left a mark on them that made it hard for their families, or society at large, to accept them, and what had happened to them.

Every Wednesday, these women stage a small demonstration in downtown Seoul, demanding Japan's leaders apologize, take full responsibility for the things done to them when they were young, and pay reparations to them -- a kind of blood money for the shitty lives some of them have lived.

The Comfort Women were out again on Wednesday... but instead of spouting some ass-hattery about Japan deserving what it got, (The head pastor of Yeouido Full Gospel Church, one of the largest Protestant churches the world, made an ass of himself that way), they came out strong in sympathy and support of the innocent people afflicted in this disaster.

This lady's holding a sign that says "Koreans in Japan, and Japanese citizens: All of you be strong!" (image from here)

If anyone had the right to talk shit about Japan, it was these women -- not the nationalist demagogues who like playing historical guilt cards to gain political points -- but rather than come out in bitterness at the things done to them, these women had grace and class.


Talking about Japan, here in Korea, can be tricky, and I'll share two reasons why today:

1. Even as Koreans love Japanese comic books and cartoons and cute toys, there are a few historical grievances, which translate into modern-day controversies and problems involving a few territories and history textbooks.  These topics can be really emotional - I even once wrote a blog post (way back when nobody read me) titled, "Do not talk about Dokdo"

Many of us expats have stories about a student, or a friend, taking a few minutes to tell us how much all Koreans hate all Japanese... and sometimes something really sad pops up, like these "hate Japan" pictures that were drawn by elementary school kids, and posted in a Korean subway station, during a wave of particularly strong Anti-Japanese sentiment... I also once had a student write "When I grow up, I want to be a general like Lee Sunshin and kill Japanese like him."  Editorials like this cast Korea in an ugly, vengeful, ungracious light.

And it can be hard to have an honest discussion about these topics, when there are so many emotions on a hair-trigger.  I've had conversations before where midway in, I figured out that the person I was talking with didn't really want to hear my opinions.  He wanted to hear his opinions about Japan (which were disappointingly, stereotypically negative) coming out of a foreigner's mouth. I don't see the point in getting involved in conversations where my actual thoughts aren't welcome, and the purpose for starting into the topic is not communication but validation.

2. The other reason it's hard to talk about Japan (as an expat, with other expats) is the echo chamber effect.

Lately, I've been looking at a lot of the memes that have been circulating in the K-blogosphere for a while... (most of which were thoughtfully collected by Kushibo here -- in a post that made an impression on me when it was satirized at Dokdo Is Ours)...

and at DIO, the phrase "echo chamber" comes up -- see, I've been noticing lately that a lot of K-blogs go over similar territory.  Nothing wrong with that, especially as many of them are documenting similar experiences (what percentage of the Korea Blog List do you think is comprised of blogs about the first two years of teaching English in Korea? At least a quarter.  Maybe more than half).  Nothing wrong with that at all... but anybody who doesn't think it gets a little self-referential from time to time is fooling themselves, especially when these bloggers start addressing each other, or an expat audience, rather than their folks back home.

And when people are gathering their information from other blogs, and when those blogs are getting their information from older sources, and especially when commenters come in and bring out the same set talking points whenever a particular topic comes up... impressions and ideas tend to crystallize... and as you and I both know, comment boards aren't conducive to nuance.

Mix in a little confirmation bias...

And you get some crystallized stereotypes and ideas about Korea and Koreans that either aren't accurate, or that used to be accurate, but are no longer... or that might still be partly true, but to a much lesser degree, or true of a much smaller proportion of Koreans, than they used to be.

A perfect example of this is the stereotype of the Dokdo finger-chopper -- that happened ONE time, but how often does the finger-chopper, or bee man, or the pheasant chuckers (all of which date back to 2005), come up, when Dokdo is on the blogs?  Pretty much every time, right? What happened outside the Japanese embassy, regarding Dokdo, last month, or the month before? Finger chopping makes a great story, but it doesn't reflect on the current state of a country that changes as quickly as Korea does, to dredge up something that happened in 2005.

All that to say sometimes the echo chamber needs to revisit some of these tropes, and update them, and some people commenting within the echo chamber, when their own information sources are mostly hearsay, and they don't have the language chops to get across the barrier themselves... they'd do well to qualify a bit.

I haven't heard somebody actually try to tell me there are no gays in Korea since 2004.  Why are people still bringing that up?  And there are lots of Koreans who can think creatively, too.

And another big one?  In my own experience, attitudes toward Japan over the last few years have become a lot more thoughtful, balanced, rational, and positive.  I don't doubt public opinion surveys would bear that out.  Koreans still think Dokdo's an important issue, but there's less "let's cut off the heads of pigeons" and more "let's be strategic about this," and I've heard less open, unqualified hostility toward Japan lately than I used to.  Hopefully this means fewer people are teaching their children to hate Japan, too.

And now, Koreans have come out overwhelmingly on the generous, gracious, sympathetic, and supportive side in this earthquake tragedy, and I'm happy, thrilled to see that. (how about this article, and this one, and this one.  Yep. Korea's treating Japan as a friend, folks.)

I'm just one dude, but this gives me hope.  This post is just one snapshot... but it's a heartening one, so put that in your pipe and smoke it, and if you're one of the ones making blanket statements about all Koreans hating Japan... maybe revisit that. Sure, there are some Koreans whose minds remain closed, and always will.  The same can be said of expats.

Prayers for Japan, and everyone connected to those struggling with this unimaginable tragedy.

Sure, why not? Ten Books that Rocked My World

The Korean, and my buddy Danielle posted on this. May as well weigh in, because I like books. I notice with dismay that none of these books made it onto my radar more recently than my first year in Korea - six years ago. That's too long no not have my mind totally blown by a book. Don't know what's happening. The ones that came closest in the last five years were probably... Dune (Frank Herbert), Coraline (Neil Gaiman), "The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking" (Dale Carnegie another great teacher in writing), and the Tao Te Ching.

1. Ahead of All Parting: The Collected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke, Translated by Stephen Mitchell - This was the book I carried with me everywhere for about three years. I first read The Duino Eulogies and the Sonnets To Orpheus before I had any idea what they were really about, but they reached a deep part of me that hadn't been awakened yet. When my mom died, that part of me woke up into grief, and Rilke was my counsellor: while other friends saw me though my grief, Rilke taught me how to grieve.

2. The Catcher in the Rye/Franny and Zooey - JD Salinger: catcher in the rye is an amazing portrait of a person who hasn't quite figured out yet how to take his sensitivity and perceptiveness, and use it to fall hopelessly in love with the world... but he's on the cusp. Franny and Zooey's last five pages make me happy for a week, and have put me to rights a number of times when I've been depressed. But you have to read the whole book for the last five pages to mean anything.

3. The Art of Happiness - The Dalai Lama - this book is not only applicable to Buddhists; the Dalai Lama makes sure to teach only principles that are universally applicable in this one, and does it in style. He's the best teacher in writing, that I've ever read.

4. The Book of Job - The Bible - stark, harsh, this is the most difficult book in the bible, and the one that lays bare the lonely, starkness of grief and tragedy most powerfully.

5. The Annie Dillard Reader - Annie Dillard - whenever I open this book, I look a little more closely, live a little more mindfully, for about a week.

6. Ender's Game/Speaker For The Dead - Orson Scott Card - Dune was the best written, Asimov's Foundation books were the most thought provoking, but Ender's first two books were the most compelling to me, personally: Ender is an everyman portrayed with compassion and sympathy, and Orson Scott Card creates a world that resembles the real world: one where people don't do bad things because they're fundamentally evil, but because they think they're doing what's right, and they happen to be incorrect, or misinformed, or lacking perspective.

7. Where the Wild Things Are - Maurice Sendak - The movie was OK, but nothing will ever take the place of the book. I remember being fascinated and haunted by this book when I found it in the library as a kid, and then fifteen years later, in university, a friend had it on his shelf, and before I even picked it up, I knew this was the book that had stuck in my head for a decade. Only had two or three other "aha!" moments like it in my life.

8. Haroun and the Sea of Stories - Salman Rushdie - One of the very few books I'd recommend just as enthusiastically to a university professor as to a twelve-year-old bookworm. Witty, charming, fantastical, and full of the life Rushdie infuses his other books with, but without the sometime pretension.

9. Mirrored Minds: A Thousand Years of Korean Verse - trans. by Kevin O'Rourke - Kevin O'Rourke translates a group of Korean poems from a huge variety of different poets. Some are shockingly beautiful, and the spareness of these poems - putting so much philosophy, or sensuality, into three or five lines -- cured me of the wordiness of many English poets.

10. The Harry Potter Series - My enjoyment of these books peaked at about book 4, and bottomed out in the last fifty pages of book 7 (see here for the rundown of why); after that, I kind of started hating Harry, and thinking he was a sort of a dick of a role model for kids. But the first four books especially are absolutely awesome.

The TED Talk that Would Change Korea

I wrote in my "Five things I'd Change" post about something similar to this concept, back when nobody read my blog, but I'd like to share this one with you. Everybody, seriously, everybody should see this one.

Plus, my dear Korean readers: you can ever read it with Korean subtitles on the bottom! I learned a ton in this talk. Watch it. Seriously: watch it. Tell everyone you know!

I believe it was Jason from Kimchi Ice Cream that first put this on his facebook wall. Thanks, man.

KIm Yuna (김 연아) - sit back and soak it in

Sit back, dear readers, and enjoy what you are seeing: Kim Yuna, right now, is Tiger Woods in 2001, Michael Jordan in 1991, Wayne Gretzky in 1985, Babe Ruth in 1927. She's good. She's real good. She just treated her competition about the way a zamboni treats an ice rink: she steamed it, soaked it, flattened it, and moved on without taking names, and we get to watch~!

I've written about Kim Yuna before, and probably will again. I'm mad about this lady.

First of all, as a sportwriter once wrote about Tiger Woods: "You will never be as good at anything, as Tiger Woods is at golfing" - you will never be as good at anything you do, as Kim Yuna is at figure skating right now.

Image

The Korean internet is crashing right now, because everybody wants to watch Kim Yuna's skating video. Do you know how hard it is to make the Korean internet crash? (Not hard, if you mean Korean web browsers [IE6, baby!]... but I mean the Korean INTERNET) is not responding to my requests for anything Yuna. So I want to give you a video clip, but the clip won't play, because 50 000 000 other people are trying to watch it right now.

I did, however, get to watch it on TV, live. It'll be replayed a lot, but seeing fresh, that first time, with everything still up in the air, was a thrill. And dear readers, Kim Yuna NAILED THE HELL out of that program. I watched a few other skaters before her, and it was like watching a different sport entirely-- except Asada, who is also amazing. Her movements were so clean, her jumps were technically perfect. So Yuna rocks.

(I missed the performance of Joannie Rochette, the bronze medalist, and a Canadian. Good for her, especially after losing her mother this week. Sorry Canada, but this time I'm rooting for Yuna... and here's why)

(see more pictures like this one) - this photo via The Blogger Formerly Known As Korea Beat

Dear readers, Korea needs Kim Yuna. Actually... Korea doesn't need Kim Yuna. Korea has other heroes and such. But young Korean women need Kim Yuna. In particular, young Korean girls need Kim Yuna, because here is a woman who is famous for being really excellent at something, for working hard at something spectacular and beautiful, and achieving it. The heroes Korean girls have to work with are pretty slim pickings. There's the girl who was tortured to death for protesting Japanese colonialism. (with the hate Japan subtext) there's the woman who was an amazing accomplished poet, painter, and thinker... whose image has been manipulated into that of a good mother and dutiful wife (with the mother/wife/get in the kitchen subtext). There are a few more modern female heroes who are getting in the mix - I'm fond of Yi Soyeon, the first Korean in space, and a female, but she's been mostly out of the public eye since then.

But here's where Yuna shines:

First, she's AS cute and charming as the pop starlets that everybody idolizes , and that young girls want to be like (unfortunately, this is still a requirement for Korean female role models: Ye Soyeon and gold medal powerlifter Jang Miran are cool, but not conventionally beautiful, and I doubt a lot of little girls say they want to be like them when they grow up, and I bet parents would discourage their daughters from becoming powerlifters). The Wondergirls, Girls Generation, and the like, are cute, charming, whatever, but the fact is, they're famous more for shaking their lovely asses (and singing and making asian poses at cameras) than anything else. Yuna's telegenic enough to totally run with that crowd.

But then on top of that, she set a goal, to be the best in the world at something, and NAILED it. She did what she had to do, including living in Canada and sequestering herself from her own fans, withdrawing from competitions to focus on Olympic gold... and then when the day arrived, she didn't just rise to the occasion, she vaulted 23 points ahead of her nearest competitor (who also set personal bests), and 15 points ahead of her own personal best. She looks cute making heart fingers... but she's also got the eye of the tiger, as surely as Michael Jordan did.

And she's been chasing excellence, not fame, not beauty, not a rich heir boyfriend, not praise for her domestic skills, and she did it. Really did it. And every little girl in Korea should dream of becoming excellent at something, and stopping at nothing to reach her goal, and that would be great.

So today's a happy day for Korea. And for me. Watching her long program (short one too) approached the sublime, and the mounting jubilation of the people around me as she nailed jump after jump, heightened the experience that much more. It's a great day for Korea.

That's all for now. Way to go Yuna.

Two Great Blog Posts from Non-K-Bloggers

My dear friend Tamie writes one of the most thoughtful blogs I've every come across. Today, a guy named Jonathan contributed a guest-post about what it is like to work in a prison, even just for two hours a day, coaching inmates in a writing workshop.

You should read it. It will make you think about freedom and hope and awareness and, uh, good stuff.

Also: my sister wrote a sweet and touching reflection on the hard parts and the wonderful parts of being mom to a toddler during a heatwave. Go read it.

One of the strongest impressions I came home with after my vacation to Canada was how sweetly parenthood changed my siblings. Hearing my brother talk about wanting a better life for his son was... a side of my brother I'd never seen before, in a really neat way.

Hey Remember Before You Got Jaded About Korea?

It's good to be reminded.

from Dave's, HT to Brian


These folks have put together a flippin' awesome trio of videos that pretty much upstages everything the Korean Tourism Organization has done in the last year.

Watch them. They catch the variety and fun of life here.

(this one includes a bit of footage from Tokyo though)


Dang! It makes me want to travel!

Kim Yu-na, Yu-na Kim: Plato's Perfect Skate: 김연아 Rocks!

Proud uncle side-note: my sister-in-law caught my nephew's first steps on video. Yeh.


Now in other "Videos of awesome things" news: Kim Yu-na.
As you know, somewhere in every philosopher's mind is a little cave carved out by a cat named Plato, where the most perfect, flawless form of everything in the universe exists in its unsullied state.

Somewhere in there, there's a little, perfect TV playing this Figure Skating women's short program:

Watch it once: just watch it. Even the TV announcers realize they're watching something flippin' awesome, and shut up, about halfway through the program.

Kim Yu-na (the Korean way, with the family name first) or Yu-na Kim (the western way, with the family name last), is a teen-aged figure skating phenomenon out of Seoul. She's only eighteen years old now, and she's been kicking the crap out of the ladies' singles category for a few years already. She's telegenic and cute: she appears in TV commercials here in Korea and sells, better than most of Korea's other "Best in the world/Korea at X" stars, for example Park Ji-sung (family name Park), the Soccer (that's Football to the rest of the world) star who is holding his own impressively on Manchester United, but who's so ugly, and un-charismatic in front of the camera, that they can only make commercials like this: keep the camera at a distance, and show him kicking stuff, because that's the only time he looks impressive. (Notice at the end of the ad, when the close-up is as short as they can make it and still have him be recongnizable, as if the camera's afraid to get close to his face)



(Mind you, as a soccer player who DOESN'T have a face for advertising, he's certainly not alone.)

But Yu-na Kim is cute, holds the camera, and is carrying herself quite well for a young star under the microscope that is Korean celebrity-worship. She even sings pretty well.



Drink your milk.


For Nike Women


However, the thing she does best is skate. She traveled to Toronto a few years ago, and she and her mother camped out on Brian Orser's front door until he agreed to train her, they got themselves a really good choreographer, and little Yu-na's natural athleticism blossomed. The other best skater in the world is a Japanese lady named Mao Asada, who is the same age as Yu-na, and they've been vying with each other for world number one ranking, and despite the bitter, WWE-type rivalry some nationalist Korean netizens would probably love them to have, all reports say they're friends.

Yu-na Kim has won other world championships and major international competitions before - read more on her wikipedia page; I'm too lazy to copy it out here -- and this is a short program she's used before in competition, but this time, she comes in at full health, in Canada (she really likes Canada, girlfriendoseyo told me), in Vancouver -- on the rink where the Olympic skates will be next winter == and her first triple is absolutely perfect; from there, she gets more confidence, and lands her other two jumps perfectly as well, and ultimately sets a world record for the highest score ever in a women's short program (72.24). Her technical score is off the charts, because she got bonus points for each perfect jump, Girlfriendoseyo explained to me. Watch the video again, and let that sink in, and pay special attention to the look on her face at 3.29 in the video, just as she completes her skate: it's the pure bliss of someone who knows she just did something really, really special.



There it is.
And in a nice change, even the Korean announcers' heads do not explode when her world record is announced (unlike certain races during last year's Summer games, when you might have thought the Korean announcers were on speed. Follow this link, skip to 5.00 in, and watch the excitement build until the end of the race, or skip to 7.00 to just hear the announcers orgasm over their guy winning... yah At least some people realize it sounds a bit silly).

Way to go, Yuna! I haven't watched figure skating regularly since my sisters used to make me sit through it when I was a kid, back in the days when Elvis Stojko was turning the men's skating world on its ear by doing routines with songs that had beats, instead of all snoozers and string quartets, but even a rube like myself knows when something amazing just happened. The other reason I'm happy about Yuna's success is because she's an awesome role-model for all the young Korean girls who don't want to be popstars.

(Speaking of popstars, listen for the WonderGirls' "Nobody" playing in the background as the arena waits for her scores.)

Congrats, lady.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Here is a post I wrote last year for advent.

Back then, almost nobody read my blog; it's a long post, but I'm also more proud of this one than most of the other writing on this blog. Thought I'd draw attention to it, now that I have readers other than my grandma.

It was written for a friend's blog, for advent, and it's a bit more personal than the expat musings and pictures of my awesome weekend. . . but it is what it is, and during the holidays, it seems like a good time for reflection. It's about my search for meaning during one of the most difficult times of my life.

Part one:
http://roboseyo.blogspot.com/2007/12/i-wrote-this-for-tamies-blog-but-ill.html

Part two:
http://roboseyo.blogspot.com/2007/12/part-two-advent-of-meaning-at-least-for.html

Advent Post: How I Almost Decided to Hate God, Authenticity, and why One Sufjan Stevens does More Good Than The Entire CCM Industry... Part 2

(and that's just the title!)


OK. They say well begun is half-done, so what does it mean that I’ve started this post five times now?

You can hit play and start reading...but I almost want to encourage you to just listen to the song without any interruptions once, and be moved by it before you hit replay, and THEN start reading. The song deserves it.

Holy Holy Holy, by Sufjan Stevens.


Sufjan Stevens is an artist. He makes music. He writes songs with a delicacy and creativity that stays constantly intriguing. He tells stories that are easy to care about. Whether the events he sings about are true or fiction, I don’t know, but he sings about them honestly. And I would, in a heartbeat, will the entire Christian Contemporary Music industry out of existence, in order for one other artist like him to come into being.

While I have other issues with the Christian Contemporary Music industry that I won’t get into here, one of the fatal flaws in it is, in my opinion, that it exists at all. See, by the sheer existence of a genre, a label, and even separate shops to sell Christian music, a very clear line has been drawn between Music For God and Music For Everything Else.

I have seen this same false binary drawn in the characters and philosophies of a number of religious people I’ve known. They seem to delineate the parts of their life into Things Of God and Things Of The World. Here: I’ll give you some examples: yeah, it’s a bit of a caricature, but what ya gonna do?

How Roboseyo Lived His Life Until 2002:

Things of God
Church
Bible Study
My mind/spirit/soul
My friendship with John (who’s a good Christian)
My friendship with Janice (I’m trying to get her to come to Church with me)
1/3 of my music collection (the CCM stuff and the classical stuff by Bach, because he wrote “to the glory of God” at the end of his compositions)

Things of The World
The R-Rated Movies I own, including three with nudity
My coworker Jeff (who swears, and doesn’t believe in God)
My body (especially the parts that excrete things)
2/3 of my music collection (the devil music)
My job (money is Of This World, but you gotta eat)
The “dirty” pictures on my hard drive, which I periodically delete because I feel guilty, but then find more
My favorite restaurant (I should give that money to the poor, and it’s a fleshly indulgence, and I should fix my mind on higher things, not animal pleasures like food, but it’s just so darn good)

and the thing is, by drawing a circle around Things of God, and keeping them separate, Things of God are slowly painting themselves into a corner, a little niche so specific that it’s no longer relevant to anybody’s life. I wrote a poem once that described it as a leviathan trapped in a well. I mean, come on. Who except Christians listens to Christian Contemporary Music? And why do THEY listen to it? Because it’s comforting and comfortable, (usually) not because it’s making them think about new things or pushing the envelope, either musically or lyrically. Most praise songs are written to be easy for a near-novice to learn how to play on guitar, so that church bands can sing them without throwing the amateur praise leaders for a loop. The lyrics? Don’t get me started.

sidenote: please do not confuse Christian Contemporary Music with Sacred Music.

For a simple explanation:
Christian Contemporary Music, or my personal (un)favorite: "I could repeat this line forever"
Sacred Music:

(Ave Maria, by Shubert)


But the problem is this: the more I think about it, the more I reject this kind of reductionist view of the world. Compartmentalizing things might make them easier to manage, but it’s just not true to life. (and yeah, I know this is a bit of a straw man argument, and I’ve unfairly characterized/simplified the binary here. You don’t have to tell me that. There may even be some CCM artists worth their salt, but I’m just not ready to wade through the rest to find them. Sorry.)

Back to Sufjan Stevens. He sings about God. He drops a reference to bible study into his song, he met the girl after church one day. He also sings about serial killers, ex-presidents, leukemia, Santa Claus, and cities he’s visited, and lakes, and it’s all one. It’s all Sufjan, and the spiritual stuff is in contact with all the other topics he sings about, and when it does come into play, it’s all the more surprising for its appearance, like a flashbulb at midnight, or an unexpected hint of lemongrass in a stirfry, BECAUSE it’s in the mix with everything else, and not segregated, the way Elvis made Gospel Albums, and Rock Albums, and nary the two should mix. This means all Sufjan’s work shimmers with this sensitivity, everything is enhanced by his spirituality, and we end up with this feeling that the guy down the street is sacred, is just as sacred as the altar at the front of the church, even.  And it's not affected, there are no strings attached: he never stops singing and says, "Well, now that I've got your attention, I'd like to tell you a story about a man who lived a long time ago..." with that "I know what's best for you" tone that's so off-putting.

This is what Franny wanted to realize when she tried to Pray Without Ceasing in Franny and Zooey. It’s what Zooey was driving at when he said, “There isn’t anybody out there who isn’t the fat lady” and later, “Don’t you know who that fat lady is?. . . It’s Christ himself.”

And that’s what spirituality is like. Or should be like, I think: if I have to draw a line around what’s spiritual and what isn’t, then the sacred, the holy, well, yeah, it has a pretty space, when I go there, but for the rest, it kind of doesn’t affect my life, does it?

So I haven’t been to church in a year. I’ve been in churches. Some beautiful churches, churches built for God’s Glory, and been moved by the way the architect did his work as an act of worship. But not during a 9 a.m. church service, not with hymns, organs, announcements, a sermon, handshakes with strangers, and a closing song. Not where we orally read bible passages or creeds in call and response.

And saying this will cause a great deal of concern for some of my family back home. They might think I’m falling away from God, but they’d be wrong.

You see, I have met God this year, and spent time with her in a zillion places. In Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry and JD Salinger's books. In the laugh I unintentionally got out of an old lady while goofing off for girlfriendoseyo, in the mountainsides of Gyungsan province on the train to Andong, in the Korean fireworks and the jjim dalk. In the bamboo forest. In a Korean Traditional performance, and in Blue, by Joni Mitchell. In me and my best friend finishing each-other’s sentences, or making the same wise-crack at the same time, while our significant others watch, bemused. In this incredible meal at a two-person restaurant near Dongguk University. In a musical bliss-out, and a lot of caramel macchiatos. In cherry blossoms and fall colors and pigeons scattering as the kid runs out to catch them. In telling stories with a few old Canadian boys over beers. In a coffee shop near Inwang Mountain, in sunlight waking me up through my curtains, in a brilliant witticism from a level one student, in a little girl on the subway who became my friend in five seconds, in smooching with girlfriendoseyo.

I have found the community of God’s people and the exhilaration of minds meeting in truth in conversations with pastors’ wives, atheists, muslims, Christians (with a big c), christians (with a small c) pantheists and buddhists, in the bible, in books of poetry, in the Dalai Lama’s teaching, and in some photography that moved me. In watching a person make the friends she needed to survive in Korea, in seeing my best friend be goofy-in-love with his wife. And you can’t discount that. You can’t discount any of that: if that stuff’s not sacred, then nothing is, and if I’m not allowed to appreciate its sacredness, I don’t want to hear what else you have to say about what is and isn't holy and worthy of my startled wonder. Again, from JD Salinger’s “Seymour, An Introduction,” “Seymour once said that all we do our whole lives is go from one piece of holy ground to the next. Is he NEVER wrong?”

This is the world, this is life, and God made all of it, and it is wonderful, and seeing that and appreciating it is an act of worship, and an act of thanks, if ever there was one, and if you tell me it’s not, if you tell me I’m not as close to God as I once was, because I haven’t gone to Church, or if you ask me about my journey not to hear about it, but to evaluate it, and judge whether I'm checking the right boxes and will still get to heaven...

I’ll change the topic, dodge the questions, or say what you want to hear and move on, because frankly, you’re not God, and I don’t need anybody but her to approve my journey before I can be sure that me and the hep-cat upstairs are square.

So when I wanted to pray for Sally, instead of rejecting God altogether, sure, you can call that the Holy Spirit calling... I’ll accept that. And yeah, when people tell their stories in Church, about how God pulled them back to The Fold after they’d wandered far, they invoke the Holy Spirit too, but somehow, the Holy Spirit isn’t leading me to the place everyone expects, when somebody tells a story like that, and I'm not going to retroactively revise the story in order to fit the normal testimony arc.  Starting my spiritual narrative on a half-truth is pretty shaky, if you ask me.  I still don’t know just where I'm going, except that one: God ain't through with me yet, and I'm not through with God, and two: I’m still moving, and listening, and trying to become Who I Really Am (which is another way of saying Who God Created Me To Be, for those of you who prefer blogs to be written in Christianese). Honestly, if the journey keeps going like this, full of learning, growth, change, and spackles of beauty all over the place, I'd even argue that Getting Home is overrated.

So I was tempted to say I’m taking the long way home... and that phrase gives me an excuse to put this lovely, lovely Tom Waits song, which had a lot of meaning for me in 2006, into the post. (Soundtrack: hit play and keep reading: The Long Way Home, by Tom Waits [later covered by Norah Jones. He did it first.])


but I don’t think it’s about getting home anymore: as I said in last year's advent post, when I wrote about recovering from grief:  

Maybe some honest stumbling about in the woods IS an act of worship, and by being OK with that, or even celebrating that, it might even become a celebration of the fact we need never cease our search for meaning, that every part of our life can continue being deepened and enriched, long after we stop feeling sad.

So, you know, I haven’t turned my back on God. I just don’t think that’s how things work. See, saying I’ve switched from Christianity to Buddhism (as I did on April Fools’ Day) doesn’t really wash to me either, because that’s just a label, and my label can’t change the way my mind has been wired for 29 years now, how my character has been put together. It seems to me, switching which book I read for my morning meditation and which building I visit to worship, balanced against the sheer mass and inertia of my 29 years of life and thought and choice-making, is about as fundamental a change as painting my black car red, and saying it’s a new one. I’ll still be the same guy, either way, I’ll still treat strangers the same way, and follow the same steps to solve a problem, and be moved to a place of sacredness, meditation, or elevation by the same things. I don’t even think it’s possible to turn my back on God: she’s been woven into my cloth too intricately, and I wouldn’t want her out anyway. Instead, I think it’s more accurate to say that God has spilled out of The Church Space, and started making every part of my life shine, exalted and transubstantiated entire tracts of what used to be The World, and soaked them with holiness. Jeez, guys, God is way bigger now than she used to be...and quite a bit awesomer, too, to be honest.

This song was also on Sufjan Stevens' Christmas album.  (Seriously, go and buy it.  You can download it for free, but you should buy it, so that you're supporting the artist.)  I'd listened through the album a few times, but then one night I was walking around Gyungbok Palace with girlfriendoseyo, and we were sharing the MP3 player in that cheesy way couples do in Korea, and this song came on, and in the dark and cold, walking with my lady, the gentle beauty of Sufjan Stevens' songs, about all kinds of holiday topics, led us to a point where I was finally ready to be moved by this song again.

Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing


And the a cappella verse moved me to tears that night: somehow the bottom dropped out of this Christmas album, and it went from some very nice Christmas music to a moving experience.  It has stayed in that wonderful place since, and I've been listening to it like an addict.

O to grace how great a debtor
daily I'm constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love;
here's my heart, O take and seal it,
seal it for thy courts above.

I went home after that night, and watched the Youtube video of "Holy Holy Holy" before bed (the same one that started out this post), and again, was moved right to tears, and God was absolutely in the room, saying, "Our story's not finished yet, pal." There's no way I can walk away from that. Absolutely no way. Yeah, the way I worship now looks way different from how it looked five or seven years ago, but more places shine now than then, more of the world is sacred and beautiful now than then, and God is way, way bigger now. Where we go from here, I don't know. Whether I talk about it with a single soul in the universe remains to be seen...though I wouldn't be surprised if God and I saw fit to keep it mum, it being only between us anyway.

To the people who are missing me and thinking of me this Christmas: merry Christmas. I miss you too.

To everybody else who was patient enough to read this whole thing. . . wow. Good on ya. And merry Christmas to you, too.

love
Roboseyo

Advent Post: How I Almost Decided to Hate God, Authenticity, and why One Sufjan Stevens does More Good Than The Entire CCM Industry... Part 1

Lately, the cause of consternation back home has been the condition of Roboseyo's faith. The last things I wrote here about faith were worrisome enough, (April Fools, when I claimed to have converted to Buddhism, and the provocative title, "Why Modern Religion Deserves Richard Dawkins") but the eight month ABSENCE of writing on the subject seems to be even WORSE, and has been the topic of a handful of phone calls and e-mails.

Fair enough. I steered away from Faith topics here, at about the same time as I started commenting on some of the other Korea blogs, and putting my name out in that community -- I decided to try and get involved in those dialogues, and in doing so, adapted my blog for my new, hoped-for audience. I stayed away from the intensely personal subject of faith for the same reason I put on pants before I answer a knock at my door, and close the blinds when I change: impressive as it may be...don't everybody need to see that business, yah?

But last Christmas, for Advent, I contributed a guest post for my dear friend Tamie's blog, and honestly, it's one of the pieces of writing I'm most proud of. It being advent again, it seems like a good time to add another year's worth of reflection.

And this year, I have a story for you, titled, "How I Almost Decided to Hate God" about, um, just that.

As my long-time readers know, in September 2005, my mother lost her year-long battle with stomach cancer. The family was all at her bedside, and singing a church hymn, when she stopped breathing, and in a nutshell, that's the religious heritage I grew up in. After I returned to Korea, following my Mother's death, a certain, lovely young lady was a large part of my reason to return, as well as a big part of what helped me keep my bearings while watching the tumor in my mother's stomach crowd out the space where food should go. Whatever it was we had certainly had not been built to bear the weight of a giant black obelisk of grief, and fell apart, predictably, but startlingly quickly, at the same time as my best friend was preparing to marry her twin sister.

While my best friend's wedding was a little spark of joy, the few weeks leading up to it were pretty damn bleak, and I had a lot of fingers pointed in anger at God during that time. Quietly, she bore my accusations of her hating me, and even my claims that maybe she didn't exist after all, and certainly didn't give a rip about me (among other things, I have learned since then that God and religion and spirituality are not All About Me. More on that some other time.) As with my relationship with the lovely exgirlfriendoseyo, the faith I'd kept until then, too, didn't seem built to bear the weight of that giant black obelisk of grief, which turned out to pretty much be a wrecking ball.

And so that first year passed by. For a few months, I went to the dance clubs every weekend, not to meet girls or hang out, or have fun drinking, but to dance until I was a sweating, exhausted rag doll, to try and vent at least a bit of my grief and anger. My dad came and visited me, and we shared the kinds of silences that only we two could have shared, having been the two living in the house day by day, watching mom turn away more and more of the meals we set before her, blander in taste and smaller in portion as time went by, until she finally rejected food altogether.

The one-year anniversary of mom's death came and went, and a couple of coworkers took me out for beer so I didn't have to spend it alone in my apartment, staring at a wall and reliving the death-rattle (three years later, I can still conjure exactly the sound, and even the smell of that room. Sour milk and unwashed hair.) We didn't find out until shortly later that one of the two was totally batshit insane.

And one of my coworkers introduced me to a friend of hers: a former student whose family she had met and befriended. I'd heard her talking about them a few times, and asked if I could meet them before she left. Fortunately, she complied, and I was lucky enough to meet a really nice family that included two wonderful young ladies, aged ten and seven at the time. The ten year-old was just ridiculously smart: she showed me a story she wrote, and it was about what I'd expect from a very bright fourteen-year-old Canadian girl, not a ten-year-old Korean kid who'd never been out of the country.

Sally


Lisa

circa November 2006

The younger one quickly earned the nickname Giggles, because she was the funniest little thing you've ever met, and the two sisters loved each other fiercely: the younger one, Lisa, had taught herself to speak English nearly as well as her older sister, mostly out of sheer adulation as far as I can tell, and the older one took care of Lisa like a mother bear. Mom was a bit serious, pushing high expectations on her brilliant eldest, and Dad was a pretty quiet background presence all the way through, but Lisa was without a doubt, the joy in that household, and any time I spent time with that family, she made sure there were bubbles and sloshes of laughter spilling all over the place.

One day I got a phone call from the older sister. "Guess where Lisa went."
As usual, I started off silly. "Um, to Thailand? To Italy?"
"Rob. This is serious." And her voice stopped me in my tracks.
"Lisa went to heaven. She was in an accident and she went to heaven."




Yeah.




It feels impossibly narcissistic to talk about how I felt, in the face of a family losing their youngest sister and daughter. Even now, two years after, I can only type about three words at a time before taking a break to think about what it would be like to have something like that happen in my family, and pause, staggered all over again, and in the face of a tragedy like that, I have half a mind to end the post altogether...

but here's the thing.

That June, if you'd asked me point blank, I would have told you I wasn't a Christian (the label I'd had for myself all my life).  I'd have told you I didn't believe in God at all.  I'd have told you it hurt too much to believe in God, because then somebody must have LET all those life-changing, soul-scouring things happen to me, that it hurt less to believe it was total, random shit-happens chance, than to believe something out there had some kind of PLAN that REQUIRED me to go through what I did.

(by the way, I'm fully aware, and you don't have to remind me, that people have gone through much worse than I did: I've met some of them, and they broke my heart...but they can write their own stories on their own blogs)

But that's where I was at that time. It would have been easier to abandon the idea of meaning, than to have to hash through all the shit that happens to people, and try to keep looking for it, to insist that there IS a meaning, when faced with Erin, who lost her two brothers to malaria at age ten, and her parents to a plane crash at age twenty, and if you'd asked me what I thought about God, I would probably have had a few choice words for you. One of them starts with F.

But a funny thing happened when I got that phone call from Sally, and I still can't explain it. See, as soon as I finished talking to Sally (during which I was very intently focused on talking to this wonderful young lady who looked at me like some kind of big brother or kindly uncle, who'd lent me her Animorphs books), my mind went in two directions simultaneously. One part of me said "Well, fuck. That's it. In case I doubted before, God has very conveniently shown me she doesn't give a flying fuck about any of us here earthside, so fuck her too," and registered that this, if there ever had been, was a perfect moment to abandon God, purpose, pattern, and the search for meaning entirely. That door was hanging wide open, and I don't think anybody could have blamed me for stepping through it, and slamming it shut as hard as I goddamn pleased.

But you see...

at the same time, another part, somewhere in the deeper, vaguer parts of my mind, where thoughts come out as shapes and half-formed pictures and gestures instead of in neat words and phrases, this urgent need to pray for Sally and her family pulled me away from that gaping doorway, before I could make a single motion toward the door, before I could even ponder a post-God life, even though I had practically forgotten the language people use when they pray.

To this day, it remains one of the more mysterious moments in my life, and frankly, I'm still trying to make sense of it.

So where does Sufjan Stevens figure in?

Hang in there, and I'll tell you in part two.

A bit more on Christmas Music, and How it SHOULD be done.

I've already pointed you to my previous rant about Christmas:
If you don't care to hear more ranting, skip the stuff about "Oh Holy Night" and start reading where it says, "Now I want to tell you about Sufjan Stevens".

As you may have gathered, O Holy Night can be a symbol of everything wrong with Christmas music:

It might just be the second prettiest Christmas song (nothing touches Silent Night) but it certainly IS the Star Spangled Banner of Christmas songs: that is, the one that can be mangled the most horribly by a showoff singer. It seems like this song is the subject of an unspoken contest, for which singer can sing it the loudest, accompanied by the largest orchestra (see also: Josh Groban, David Phelps (yuck) Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood Sarah Brightman, Martina McBride, and even Pavarotti).
(ps: this one's so bad it's hilarious, and we can't forget the South Park version.)

However, it is such a jaw-droppingly gorgeous song, that it sometimes even survives those munch-downs (being chewed up and spit out by so many octave-skippers), and stays good -- but I'll swear to you, that it's best when done in a stripped-down, simple way -- take away everything but the essential, and let the melody speak for itself.

For comparison, I'll give you some examples of how the song works, given a few different artists' treatments: here is Tracy Chapman's version, followed by Mariah Carey's version (the most overplayed one in Korea). I have put together these videos to provide a totally objective contrast, so that the photos selected for the slide shows in no way show which of these versions I like better.

Seriously.

By Tracy Chapman


and...
By Mariah Carey


Here's Celine Dion's version -- which actually surprised me by knowing when to quit, and how many backup singers was enough (not her strong point)


Now, I'm not calling Mariah's version the worst (I'd put David Phelps and Sarah Brightman a full three levels of Hell lower than her for their versions), but let's just say 1. we've heard the overdone version already, and 2. it's the most overplayed version in Korea, and 3. this is Christmas, not a contest. Give me something I haven't heard before, that respects the song again.

So, my new favourite (or at least second, after dear Tracy), is Sufjan Stevens, who makes the song sound --gasp! Like a celebration. I've added a slide show of pictures from a few recent parties I've been to, to add to the festive feel.


Now I want to tell you about Sufjan Stevens


See, Sufjan Stevens is this quiet little indie folk-singer/songwriter from the United States, who sings touching, whispery songs about touching, whispery topics, and has won himself quite a loyal following doing so, because he just doesn't sound like anybody else, and he brings something unique to his music.

He sings about things he cares about, or at least sings as if he cares about them, and he always has an interesting story or something.  Well, in the early oughties, Sufjan recorded little do-it-yourself Christmas albums each year for his friends and family, and handed them out, and then his label put them all together into a collection called "Songs For Christmas" which is what Christmas should be.   I first heard this last year, and I wasn't quite ready for all the lovely packed into a double cd, so I listened through it twice and moved on, after picking a song for my Christmas Mix, but on more listens, it grows on me more: this is Christmas Music as it should be, and these are the kinds of artists who SHOULD be making Christmas Music.

He never goes over the top, many of the tracks are short little arrangements with bouncing glockenspiels or strumming banjos that just SOUND like walking in fresh snow or watching flashing Christmas lights.  The music is delicate and pleasant, but never quite cheesy, because there's always something you've never heard before, in each song.  He mixes sacred music with songs about Santa Claus and reindeer (because that's what Christmas is really like) and treats every song with a bit of respect, or a bit of fun, as it needs.  Frankly, if you grew up in the church at all, as I did, the tender beauty with which he delivers the sacred music is really moving.

Here are three of his songs: Hark The Herald Angels Sing, sounding like flashing christmas light, a simple, harmonized version of the beautiful, sacred hymn, "Lo, How A Rose E'er Blooming" and then "Sister Winter," which starts as a warm recollection of his friends, and builds to a blissful celebration of friendship and love on the holidays, an original composition that, because of its joyful spirit, fits right in alongside the classics.

This is how Christmas should sound.  Last night I walked around with Girlfriendoseyo, sharing this music in the MP3 player, and let me just leave it at this: get out and buy this CD set.  Get it. 

More about Sufjan later.

Happy Holidays, all! 

Happy Baby Jesus day, and happy winter gift-giving shopping festival, too!