Category: Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)

Caveat: Let’s put a moratorium on fun

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online / Kids / Life in Korea / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / The Wonders of Work

"Let's put a moratorium on fun."  – my timid student Sarah, when asked to use the word "moratorium" in a sentence in a workbook.

And Ellen, summarizing an article, had some problems with a certain homonym:  "Ulsan asked the International Wailing Commission to allow wailing on a limited basis."

Meanwhile, I was surfing around earlier today and found reference to something I'd explored a while back but never got around to posting (I don't think, anyway… I've been blogging long enough that I don't actually know everything I've posted, but a cursory autogoogle says "no").   I've always been into abstract art that looks like writing or maps (but isn't actually writing or maps).  This is sometimes called "asemic writing" apparently, and I found an interesting commentary on "asemic art" recently at a blogger named The Nonist.

If I ever ventured to be a "real artist" in the field of visual arts, that's one sort of aesthetic I'd try to pursue, I'm pretty sure.

Caveat: Thanks for the moe

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

"Moe" is a Japanese term for a kind of romantic cuteness.   Sometime back, I watched a Japanese anime series called "Ouran High School Host Club."  I think one of the episodes was titled, "Thanks for the moe," which is kind of a tongue-in-cheek ironical remark, I suspect.  Moe is really a flipside of otaku-ness (otaku being Japanese nerdy-geeky-fandom).   I guess you could think of moe as the cuteness that gets the anime fans all excited.

The series is kind of silly, but it's actually rather complex, too, as it deals, in a cartoon setting, wtih some rather deep issues around gender roles and sexuality in contemporary Japan.  As anime series go, I would rank it only middling for visual style and character interest, but for depth and philosophy (and lots of irony), it's near the top.  Certainly, it seems unlikely that its themes would be dealt with in anything like the same way in either more salacious America or more prudish Korea.

Anyway, I thought of it because yesterday listening to my mp3, I heard the series' closing theme song, "Shissou," by Last Alliance, a Japanese alt-indie-sounding rock band.  And now that damn song is stuck in my head.

[Youtube embed added later as part of background noise project.]

Caveat: მონანიება

Banalities & Journaling / Language & Linguistics / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)

I watched a movie called მონანიება /monanieba/, which means “repentance” in the Georgian Language (Kartuli is the endonym, i.e. what the speakers call their own language).  I really like this movie… for a long time I was unable to find it, but I recently found it and downloaded it.  I first saw it shortly after it was originally released, a product of the lead-in to Gorbochev’s perestroika period, mid 80’s.  Very intense, symbolic movie about that most famous of Georgians:  Stalin.
I actually tried studying Kartuli, once.  I got as far as memorizing the alphabet and learning some basic verb and noun forms.  Maybe someday I’ll go there.  I could continue my career as a professional cultural imperialist (i.e. EFL teacher).

Caveat: Language Soup

Banalities & Journaling / Language & Linguistics / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)

I went to see a movie called "Shinjuku Incident."  It's a project of Jackie Chan's, but it's not so much an action movie per se, more of a noir, violent drama.  It's set among the Chinese illegal immigrant communities in Japan in the 1990's, and the dialogue is about 75% Chinese, 25% Japanese.  Watching it with Korean subtitles made it into an Asian language soup.   I obviously didn't understand a great deal, but as is my tendency, I enjoyed trying to sort out the languages.  The ending was funny:  the Jackie Chan Chinese immigrant-gangster character is dying, floating away in a storm sewer, and says something profound — last words and all that.   The Japanese policeman character says something to the effect of, "what?!  I can't understand what you're saying!"  So the last words are unknown to the one witness of them.  My sentiments, exactly.

Caveat: El Túnel

Banalities & Journaling / Español Aleatorio (Random Spanish) / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)

pictureHe estado leyendo la novela de Sabato, El Túnel. Encontré el libro hace medio año en un estante mal mantenido el librería 교보문고.  Hace mucho tiempo que me dedico a leer una novela en español, y me está gustando. De estilo policiaco, tiene un sabor kafkaesco, o tal vez me hace recordar los excelentes del polacoargentino, Gombrowicz.
El viernes pasado, habiendo podido salir del trabajo temprano a causa de que fuera el fin del trimestre, fui a Seul para devagar, como es mi hábito. Y de repente sentí que había perdido el librito. Me gusta leer libros en español cuando me meto en el metro, por el gusto de confundir a los locales en cuanto se den cuenta de que no es el inglés que esté leyendo. Tantos coreanos padecen una miopía respecto los idiomas occidentales: que sólo existe una lengua del ”alfabeto inglés.”
No podía encontrar el librito en ningún lado. Me puse triste. Pero hoy, preparando otra salida, para ir a algún Starbucks con la intencionada de estudiar, de repente ahí estaba el libro. Me alegró. Acabé con casi 20 páginas en el metro, esta tarde.
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Caveat: Evocations

Banalities & Journaling / Life is a Dream / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)

It's weird how bits of music get attached to particular memories, and most significantly, for me, to specific texts.  It's not always a matter of, "that's what I was listening to when I read X."  Of course, sometimes it is, too.  Peter Gabriel's track "Mercy Street" was playing as I read the concluding paragraphs of Cien Años de Soledad, and whenever I hear that song, I inevitably think of that book.  More broadly, Cat Stevens' Tea for the Tillerman album will always, strangely, connect with LeGuin's Earthsea novels, because that album was on heavy rotation when I read those novels way back in junior high.  Tracks of New Order and Depeche Mode moodily — appropriately, perhaps — evoke Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche, as I had those on my playlist (at that time a cassette-playing walkman clone of some kind) when I was reading those very "heavy" books during my complex, often very depressed time serving in the US Army, and stationed at Camp Edwards in Paju, Korea.

Perhaps more peculiar are the connections between Kraftwerk or the Psychadelic Furs and Shakespeare and Melville.  But such connections are really solid, because altogether they represent my second year in college, when I was flirting with being an English major.  Still other evocations are downright bizarre, and less direct.  I almost always think of Jose Donoso when I hear Silvio Rodriguez's Playa Giron album, but the connection is basically because of the song "Santiago," which connects on subject matter to my 1994 visit (a winter week in August — Southern Hemisphere, remember?) in Santiago.  I was reading Donoso, despite the fact that I didn't have any kind of sound track with me at the time.

Perhaps the strangest evocation hit me today, as I was walking to work in the pouring rain.  Arlo Guthrie's "City of New Orleans" played on my MP3, and I thought of Ayn Rand.  That's just plain crazy… but it happens every single time.  I also tend to think about the murals of Diego Rivera.  The connection is actually rather abstract – it's not like I was listening to Arlo Guthrie as I read Atlas Shrugged, all those years ago when I was living in Mexico City.  I think it's got to do with the sort of populist (anti-intellectualist?) "exaltation of the hard-working craftsman" that thematically unifies those artists, despite their stunning ideological differences.

Caveat: Byron

Banalities & Journaling / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Quotable
"She walks in beauty" (first stanza)

She walks in beauty—like the night
  Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
And all that's best of dark and bright
  Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to the tender light
  Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
— Lord Byron, 1814.

I can't sleep.  I'm listening to "The Stone Dance of the Cameleon" by Celtic harpist Phamie Gow (whose wikipedia entry was deleted for being "insignificant").  

 

Caveat: Glish

Español Aleatorio (Random Spanish) / Language & Linguistics / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

I was websurfing and found an interesting thing:  Ilan Stavans has translated the first chapter of Don Quixote into a very entertaining Spanglish version.  Here are the first few sentences:

In un placete de La Mancha of which nombre no quiero remembrearme, vivía, not so long ago, uno de esos gentlemen who always tienen una lanza in the rack, una buckler antigua, a skinny caballo y un grayhound para el chase. A cazuela with más beef than mutón, carne choppeada para la dinner, un omelet pa’ los Sábados, lentil pa’ los Viernes, y algún pigeon como delicacy especial pa’ los Domingos, consumían tres cuarers de su income. El resto lo employaba en una coat de broadcloth y en soketes de velvetín pa’ los holidays, with sus slippers pa’ combinar, while los otros días de la semana él cut a figura de los más finos cloths. Livin with él eran una housekeeper en sus forties, una sobrina not yet twenty y un ladino del field y la marketa que le saddleaba el caballo al gentleman y wieldeaba un hookete pa’ podear.

I've always been fascinated by the way that languages mix together.  I have been hyperaware, lately, of the immense amount of Konglish found in my current South Korean environment.  I spend a lot of time reading random signs, websites, and bits of advertising, just to practice, and when I do that, I am stunned by how much of it turns out simply to be English written in Korean hangul.  Some examples from just the other day on the MSN homepage, Korean version:

스페셜 이벤트 = seupesyeul ibenteu (i.e. special event)
스타홀릭 = seutahollik (star-holic i.e. "addicted to celebrities," roughly)

As a language learner, I find all this easy-to-parse verbiage reassuring.  As a student of linguistics more generally, as I already mentioned, I find it fascinating.  But as a sometime critic of neocolonial processes, I sometimes find myself disturbed about it, too.

Anyway, I'm going to try to coin yet another neologism.  "Glish" is the generic name for all the hybrids the globalized neo-colonial enterprise called America is engendering:  Spanglish, Konglish, Franglais, etc. 

Caveat: En la verde orilla

Español Aleatorio (Random Spanish) / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)

Los rayos le cuenta al Sol
Con un peine de marfil
La bella Jacinta un día
Que por mi dicha la vi
En la verde orilla
De Guadalquivir.

La mano oscurece al peine;
Mas qué mucho, si el abril
La vio oscurecer los lilios
Que blancos suelen salir
En la verde orilla
De Guadalquivir.

Los pájaros la saludan,
Porque piensa (y es así)
Que el Sol que sale en oriente
Vuelve otra vez a salir
En la verde orilla
De Guadalquivir.

Por sólo un cabello el Sol
De sus rayos diera mil,
Solicitando invidioso
El que se quedaba allí
En la verde orilla
De Guadalquivir.

— Luis de Góngora, 1580

Caveat: Dead Like Me

Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to catch a few episodes of a rather peculiar tv show called "Dead Like Me."  I'd forgotten about it, until recently seeing it referenced on some website.  So I torrented a copy of the pilot episode and watched it this evening.   The dead girl is played by Ellen Muth, a very understated actress.

Eerie.  Funny.  Strange.

Caveat: Books-embedded-in-memories

Banalities & Journaling / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / My Drawings & Paintings

A couple books that I read long ago, that have been on my mind for some reason.
When the Legends Die by Hal Borland: described as a “young adult classic,” but it’s a just plain good novel, in my opinion. We’re reading a couple of stories about the American West in my Violet 2 class, recently, and whenever I think of the American West, I think of this book. It’s definitely in my top 100 books. It’s not really a western, although that’s probably the closest genre.  It’s a very spare book, with a strong, unreachable but sympathetic character. Alienation. Perhaps most striking: it’s got loneliness without the pain that goes with it. Loneliness as refuge. As salvation, even. That’s a loneliness I understand, sometimes.
The Chosen (part of the unfinished “The Stone Dance of the Chameleon” trilogy) by Ricardo Pinto: a weird novel. The sort of thing a secret love-child of JRR Tolkien and William S Burroughs might produce, if he were raised in the Guatemalan jungle.  But well-written, and very complex. Amazing characters, descriptions, a very alien universe, but peopled by multi-dimensional humans. I was thinking of this because I read somewhere recently that Pinto (from Scotland – can’t you tell by his name?) is finally planning on completing his trilogy. I’ll need to get the book.
The Friday attitude barometer, episode 3:
* Number of times I’ve opened my resignation letter and edited it:  0
* Barrier-surpassing moments of Korean-language usage (outside of work only):  1
* Spirit-destroying moments of Korean-language communication breakdown (outside of work only):  0
* Number of students that have said something to the effect of “teacher, you’re so funny” while fighting off an apoplectic fit of giggles:  0
* Number of times I’ve told someone that I am “much happier than when I was in L.A.”:  1
* Number of times I really meant it (as opposed to the “fake it till I make it” approach I’m fond of): 0
* Days I was late to work this week:  2
* Total number of minutes I was late, minus total number of minutes I showed up early:  45
Current Soundtrack (as-I-write-this):

Zeromancer – “Fractured” from album Eurotrash
Linkin Park with Jay-Z – Dirt off your shoulder / Lying from you
Garbage – The Trick is to Keep Breathing
I drew this.

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Caveat: Love with no need to preempt grievance

Banalities & Journaling / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

Elizabeth Alexander's poem that she read at the Space Emperor's inauguration has received some unkind reviews.  But I found the text of it, and despite its reception, I think I rather like it.  At the risk of annoying a copyright god somewhere, I will reproduce it.

Writing a poem for such an event, in an era when poetry, especially poetry for public reading, is largely moribund, and for such a diverse audience as "all of America"… well, this is no small challenge.  She could have done much worse.

"Praise song for the day."
by Elizabeth Alexander
[2009 Obama Inauguration]

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others' eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky. A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, "I need to see what's on the other side; I know there's something better down the road."

We need to find a place where we are safe; we walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign, the figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by "Love thy neighbor as thy self." Others by "First do no harm," or "Take no more than you need."

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp — praise song for walking forward in that light.

 

Caveat: Industria del deseo

Banalities & Journaling / Español Aleatorio (Random Spanish) / Found Online / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

Leía en Mileno.com una reseña de un nuevo libro por Joan Ferrés entitulado La educación como industria del deseo.   Los conceptos, tales como resumidos por el reseñador, me intriguían, aunque el valor de la reseña no me parecía mucho, porque no ofrecía ninguna opinión propia acerca de la obra.  Era más bien un resumen. 

Pero, siendo yo educador con tendencias posmodernas, cierto que me llamó la temática.  Tal vez intentaré conseguir el libro, aunque hacerlo desde acá en Corea no será muy conveniente.  Saldrá o caro o imposible. 

Caveat: Serial Non-serialist Ceases Seriality!

Banalities & Journaling / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

Per my usual habits, I'm reading more than one book at once.  I tend to read non-fiction books non-serially, for the most part — by which I mean that I don't just start at the introduction and read chapter by chapter until I get to the end, but instead kind of browse my way through the book, eventually covering almost all of it, but in my own discovered order.  I have read non-fiction that way most of my life, but it occurred to me recently that mostly I read non-serially, serially.  Meaning I do it with one non-fiction book after another… since most books I have going at any given time are generally fiction, which is less forgiving of the non-serial approach.   Lately, though, I haven't been enjoying fiction as much.  So, it turns out, I'm not only reading non-serially, but I'm doing so simultaneously with multiple books.

Currently, those books are:  John Horgan's Rational Mysticism, Alan Weisman's The World Without Us, Obama's Audacity of Hope, and Chomsky's Chomsky on Anarchism (which is actually a collection of essays, therefore exceptionally forgiving of the non-serial approach).  

Caveat: “헨젤과 그레텔” 영화를 촣아헸어요

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

pictureI watched a really good movie yesterday. A 2007 Korean release, titled 헨젤과 그레텔 (hen-jel-gwa geu-re-tel = Hansel and Gretel) is considered a horror film in genre terms, but it’s really a bit more (and less) than that.

Most of the amateur reviews of the movie (written in English, anyway) that I saw online seemed to harbor a fundamental misunderstanding of the film, stating either overtly or implicitly that it was an unfaithful adaptation of the fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel.”

The fact is, it’s not an adaptation at all.  Rather, the fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel” might best be viewed as a protagonist (or antagonist) of the film.  The film doesn’t tell the story “Hansel and Gretel” but instead tells a story about the story “Hansel and Gretel.” That makes it a sort of metafairytale.  And everyone knows how I love all things meta. It’s not a reading of that story, but a completely new narrative about the reception of the text, in a postwar Korean cultural context.

I’ll leave plot summaries and all that to others. See imdb, for example. But I enjoyed the movie partly because it had me constantly wondering about to what extent the dreamlike (nightmarelike) events of the film could be read as a metaphor for some aspects of Korea’s relationship to the West and to its own history.

As an example, consider the fact that the physical book “Hansel and Gretel,” that wreaks such psychic havoc in the film, is brought to the children by a very western Santa Claus (santa haraboji) in the 1960’s, the era of the quasi-fascist westernizing dictatorship. He is clearly, in fact, just a Korean in a Santa suit. And decades later, the children, psychically wounded beyond belief when young (by the Korean War?  by the dictatorship?) are living in a sort of self-regenerating fantasyland of material plenty and affective vacuum. “Adults” come and go, but the kids simply can’t move on.

These are just some notes, not meant to be pat answers or allegorical readings of the movie. And there are some things I don’t like about it – I’d have preferred, personally, if the causative links between their childhood abuse and current situation (established with flashbacks) had retained more of the antirationalist (surreal) character of the first half of the film.  But perhaps that serves an important purpose, too.

Overall, it’s a coherent movie, perhaps a bit pat, psychologically, but full of the sort of small, spine-shuddering moments that good “scary movies” require but with very little gratuitous gore or meaningless jacks-in-the-boxes. The actors are amazing, especially the kids, and also that creepy born-again serial killer. Alleged serial killer, that is… he never gets to kill any serial in the movie – don’t worry, it’s not a slasher show.  Although… several adults do die, including the nasty abusing guy that gets shoved in the oven, and several dysfunctional mother-figures. And what’s that about, anyway?

The cinematography is spectacular.  All kinds of inanimate things become full participating characters: the forest, the house, the book, food, a television set. Like some novel full of oversignifiers by Gombrowicz.
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Caveat: Alien Nation

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)

I went to my work Xmas party this afternoon/evening.  I felt very alienated and lonely, there.  Frustrated with my linguistic inabilities.  Isolated because I simply don't have a basis to relate to my coworkers. 

Actually, I've been feeling alienated a lot, lately.  I'm very conscious of being "older," here.  More than I have been.  Korea is a very ageist society, in some ways, and the majority of my coworkers are clearly unsure what to make of my being an "older" person without a clearly wrought space in the complex social hierarchies here.  It's perhaps easier to be a younger foreigner in Korea, because youth in general have more freedom in some ways to behave as they wish, and are more forgiven for failing to meet social expectations.  Perhaps.

Then again, as I sat watching the very alien proceedings of the Xmas party, I reflected that I'd likely have felt almost equally alone and isolated and alienated in a work-related holiday function if it were in the U.S.  Or anywhere.  So the fact that I'm here is no excuse.  In general, the fact that I'm here (here in Korea… here at hellbridge working…) offers no real justification for my feelings.  These are endogenous, right?

I've always been an alien.

Yesterday I got very lazy and decadent.  I'd downloaded some movies.  I watched Apocalypse Now Redux (the 2000 re-cut of the 1979 movie).  Then, just to make sure I got plenty of perspective on the whole Southeast Asian nightmare, I watched The Killing Fields.

Both profoundly uplifting fare.  In compensation, I also watched a few more episodes of 옥탑방고양이 (rooftop cat), although I must say that although I enjoy the show, I've decided the theme music that they play is incredibly annoying.  I actually will watch it with the sound turned off when they play that theme music (no big deal, since I mostly rely on subtitles anyhow). 

Then I took a long walk, in the wintery.

Sigh.

Caveat: 도둑고양이 및 컵라면

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

I think watching old Korean TV dramedies is good for me.  It helps me build my confidence with Korean – if not actually doing much to improve my proficiency, probably.  I learn to recognize little bits of conversational Korean, and pick up intriguing bits of vocabulary.  Plus, they’re mindlessly entertaining and occasionally quite funny, and provide good cultural insights too, keeping me positively engaged in the culture, in a way that working at hellbridge certainly fails me.
They’re probably a better way to kill time than to sit around feeling gloomy or depressed about my work, due to how overwhelming it feels.  Or beating myself up over not actually spending time studying Korean intensively with all those Korean textbooks I’ve bought.
Anyway, the series I’m watching right now (옥탑방 고양이= oktappang goyangi =”Rooftop-room Cat”) is nothing spectacular.  I downloaded it originally based strictly on the cute name – I like cats and I like the Korean word for cat (고양이, besides which I live in the near-homonymous city 고양).
So I went off looking for the script because there was a word I wanted to figure out, and learned that the lead actress is one of the seemingly many Korean pop-culture types that have committed suicide in the last several years.  There seems to be an epidemic of it, at least based on how people talk about it.  It’s kind of sad.
On the website about the series, I saw the following notice:  “故 정다빈양의 명복을 빕니다.”  It was strikingly somber, in black and white, unlike the garish colors normally employed on Korean websites.  And it had a hanja (故).  Hanja is the use of Chinese characters in Korean writing, which is quite rare except in higher-register news articles, and it clearly wasn’t a name, since it was directly followed by the name of the actress (정다빈).  That made me think, too, that the content was more “formal” than is normally found on Korean entertainment websites.  So I intuited it’s meaning, and went off a-googling.
And sure enough, imdb told me she had committed suicide.  The language of the notice is roughly, “lamented Jeong Da Bin -[some kind of ending, genitive?] pray for the repose of the deceased (i.e. RIP).”
I never found the script.  MBC (the network that made the series) doesn’t make the scripts easy to find, at least for someone with limited Korean language proficiency like myself.  That’s why I like KBC shows better — their website makes it easy to see the scripts of the old shows.  But I figured out the phrase I was wondering about, anyway, by playing it over a few times and typing what I heard into naver’s online dictionary:  도둑고양이= dodukgoyangi =”burglar-cat” i.e. stray cat.
The other thing that I caught was the term 컵라면(= keopramyeon =”Cup Ramen”). Instant ramen noodles in little cups (just add hot water) are endemic, here.  And there’s nothing novel about the term.  What I noticed for the first time was the pronunciation of the term in rapid speech.  Despite being a hybrid of English (컵 keop cup) and Japanese (라면 ramyeon ramen) borrowings, it still undergoes the very native allophonic convergence at the intersection of the first and second syllables, so that it is pronounced not /keop-ra-myeon/ but rather /keom-na-myeon/.  The terminal /p/ and inital /r/ shift to nasal versions, but retain their points of articulation.  It’s entirely regular in Korean, but as can be seen, it makes recognizing borrowings from other languages a bit difficult in spoken form.  Now, there’s a sort of coolness only a truly geeky linguist-type could appreciate.
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Caveat: 행복하길바래

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online / Life in Korea / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)

I keep trying to learn songs I don’t particularly like. It doesn’t progress well.
Here is a youtube of a popular song I genuinely like a lot. But there’s no way I can imagine singing it… it’s very operatic in its original presentation, not the sort of thing suited by my untrained and lousy singing voice.  But I’m working on the lyrics simply because it’s on heavy rotation on my MP3 player, so I like to try to follow along.
The singer, 임형주, is what’s called a “popera star.”  So I assume the style is Korean popera. Which is sort of what it sounds like. I’m not sure if it’s really a seperate genre.  I found the song attached to a drama I watched.
Here are the lyrics, with translation, that I fished off the interwebs.
Title: 행복하길 바래
Singer: 임형주
그 눈속에서 너는 또 다른 곳을 보며 울었어..
그러는 니가 너무 미워서 나도 따라 울었어..
그리워 난 니가 너무 찢기도록 나 아파도
나 죽어서도 내 사랑으로 너 행복하길 바래..
힘이들어 돌아보면 나 거기에 늘 있는걸
그 곳에다 남겨두고 온 니 눈물 때문에..
나 떠난 자리에 너 혼자 둘수 없어..
있었던게.. 이제는 널 너무 사랑해..
갈수 없는 이율 댔어..
그리워 난 니가 너무 찢기도록 나 아파도..
나 죽어서도 내 사랑으로 너 행복하길 바래..
너 행복하길 바래.. 행복하길 바래..
Translation:
You turn your head and crying
I hate you being like this, that’s why I’m crying too
I’m missing you, missing you so much that I’m hurt
Hope you’ll be happy with my love even if I’m dead
Haaa…..
Turn your head if you’re tired, I’ll be there
Because I left your tears behind
I left you first because I don’t want to see you alone…
Since now I can’t love you anymore
I’m missing you so much that I’m hurt
I hope you’ll be happy with my love even if I’m dead
I Hope you’ll be happy….hope you’ll be happy

Caveat: Minor Chords

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling / Found Online / Life in Korea / Life is a Dream / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / The Wonders of Work

pictureSometimes I log into Second Life and mindlessly drift around.  It’s a virtual universe, often mistakenly called a “game” but in fact more like a shopping mall for everyone’s id–there’s no plot, no objective, no theme.  Just everyone’s craziness touching up against one another, kind of like in real life, but without the social risk, maybe.
I’ve adopted a “skeleton” avatar.  See picture.  I go to virtual nightclubs and learn about new Industrial / Gothic music, which perhaps appeals to me because of the predominance of minor chords.  My skeleton dances to the music.  See picture.   Sometimes I take note of music I like, and go searching for it in a torrent (the latest way to download things for free, basically).  I’ve found a new band I like, with the stunningly fabulous name of Apoptygma Berzerk.   I’m stuck on a song called “Kathy’s Song.”  I’ve embedded a youtube of it, below.
A lot of gothic/industrial stuff is European–especially German and Nordic.  One group I rather like is Cephalgy, and their song “Hass Mich” (I couldn’t find a youtube of it).  I’ve never quite puzzled out the relationship between Goth/House music and German culture, though I suppose the overlap is related to the Weltschmerz they share.   Then again, I’ve got my own dukkha going, at the moment.  The Koreans call it 고 (苦).
Then you hear something old, like Joy Division’s “Love will tear us apart.”
I’m hating work, but I really feel that quitting short of contract would leave me feeling more depressed than just putting up with it.  I don’t deal well with feelings of failure.   The weather has turned deliciously cool and fall-like.  Leaves are turning color and swimming around in clear air.  The clouds are no longer hazy, but fractally bounded complex objects adrift in simpsonian skies.   So, at least walking to work is pleasant.
I’m gaining weight–probably related to how cortisol (stress hormone) alters my metabolism, as I’ve not changed my eating habits at all.
My stock portfolio is now officially down more than 50%.   Yay capitalism!
The Korean won is now down 50% relative to where it was when I came here.  Yay capitalism!

picture

Caveat: Anna’s Dream

Banalities & Journaling / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Teaching & Methodology / The Wonders of Work

I received a fabulously well-written essay recently. And because we're focusing so much on revising and editing of work, I could see that it was a genuinely evolved bit of good writing – meaning the student wasn't just expressing natural talent and/or a strong and advantageous background (e.g. a past opportunity to have lived abroad). Instead, I could see how she developed her idea and then successively refined the ideas and grammar to make the final essay nearly flawless English. I penned in exactly 5 corrections – essentially zero compared to her peers. I've incorporated those corrections here. I admit I liked the essay, also, because of the more creative approach to the topic than most of the students had taken.

About 3 months ago, I had a funny and interesting dream.  I'll never forget it.  I was sleeping in my bedroom after I finished my school homework.  In my dream, I was in a desert.  I looked around and I saw a bear standing next to me.  It was a polar bear wearing a cowboy suit.  The polar bear turned and asked me if I wanted to try a red spotted dried snake.  I ate it and it tasted really good.  We started punching up all the cactuses in the desert and chased desert foxes.  The time went by.  Suddenly, the polar bear stopped running.  I asked him why and he said this instead of answering, "It's cold, I should go home."  I was surprised so much.  The polar bear says it's cold in the hot desert?  I knew it was a dream but it still didn't make sense.  I jumped off the bed, and got out of the dream.  And I saw my mom saying to me, "it's cold!  So you should put your sweater on!"  The polar bear wasn't the one who said it's cold.  I just connected my dream and mom's talking.  My family all laughed when I told them what was happening in my dream.  I think I will never forget this dream.

Caveat: Sparrow

Banalities & Journaling / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Science & SciFi

I picked up a novel while visiting my mother's house (always a good place to pick up novels).  The book was The Sparrow, which I finished a week or so ago.  It was a very intense novel, both fascinating and ultimately disappointing, for me.  I won't go into the details or make an effort at a review–better discussions and reviews can be found many places on the web, including the Amazon spot linked above. I will only say that basically I concur with the Publisher's Weekly reviewer who states "The final revelation of the tragic human mistake that ends in Sandoz's degradation isn't the event for which readers have been set up."

I enjoyed the anthropology/linguist themes, and they are developed quite well (as to be expected given the author's background). I had less fun with the religious/sociological aspect, as for the most part it seemed a rather pat re-hash of the 1492 encounter, and excessively and unnecessarily sympathetic to the Eurocentric viewpoint. Those aliens are real savages!  How can we possibly interact with them, ultimately, except to end up murdering them or exploiting them? It's us vs 'the Other.'

It was a rather dark novel, but I won't blame it for the darkness of my overall mood lately.  More just a curious synchrony than any kind of cause-effect. 

 

Caveat: It takes a million years for people to meet

Banalities & Journaling / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

I watched two movies.
The first was 時をかける少女(toki o kakeru shoujo, The girl who traveled through time), a Japanese film from 1983 about a girl who starts spontaneously hopping back and forth through time – as the title suggests.  It’s a rather stark, haunting work, but beautifully filmed and with memorable actors in the key roles, and a silly 1980’s JPop music video at the end, almost completely at odds with the tone of the rest of the film.
It’s interesting listening to Japanese after all my hard work in Korean – as I’ve read many times, knowing some Korean seems to make Japanese more “accessible,” even though my passive Japanase vocabulary is probably limited to at most 30 or so words and phrases (and my active vocab includes 2-3 fixed phrases, no more).  This weird accessibility comes about despite the fact that Japanese and Korean actually seem share very little mutually comprehensible vocabulary.  I think it must have to do with the similarities in grammar, word order, and pragmatics (i.e. how the language is deployed conversationally). One line in that movie that I liked: “It takes millions of years for people to meet,” from a recurring song sung by the character Fukushima.
pictureThe other movie was a bit of decadance. Or regression. A movie may qualify as being only great in its transcendent badness: Flash Gordon, Saviour of the Universe. This is the 1980 remake of the original 1930s series, and is one of those movies that was so bad it has since been elevated to high camp. But, with its Queen soundtrack and retro special effects, I have harbored an inordinate fondness for it, and it’s been so long since I’ve seen it. It came up in conversation with Basil yesterday, and last night I found it on a torrent and downloaded it. It was awesome. One memorable line, of many: “Are your men on the right pills?!” says Emperor Ming to his creepy number two, Clytus.
-Notes for Korean-
context:  here and there… going through some old scraps of paper I wrote things down on
싸려 = 아닥 = shut up
곤란 difficulty, suffering, distress, hardship (and with ―하다 )
당황 confusion, consternation (and with ―하다 )
방언 dialect, slang
재촉하다 press, urge, request, command
서두르다 hurry up, get a move on,
website says:  깝치다 = 서두르다
꼭 tightly, securely
깝치다 = to put on airs
달팽이=snail
기다릴게요=[I] will wait for [you]
진짜 스님 될려고 그러세요?=(really monk become-INTENTIVE is-true-DEFERENTIAL-POLITE)=”do you really want to become a monk?”
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Caveat: 오블리비어스

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

If only the real world had hyperlinks in it.

Today was a day off from work. I spent time hanging out with my neighbor in my building, Basil. A Palestinian-Canadian-American, he’s an interesting character. And, as of last week, a coworker – one of those “small world” things, I guess. I’d been a passing acquaintance of his since we had met each other walking around one time, and realized we were next door neighbors in our building.  But now that we’re coworkers and nearby deskmates, we have more in common. So we talked for a while and hung out, and went into Seoul together, and had lunch/dinner at a middle eastern restaurant in Itaewon called Dubai. It was pretty good food, too.

But actually what I wanted to write about was the odd subway ride home. The subway was crowded, and so I stood in a corner of the subway car, and, per my usual habit, my eyes tried to find fragments of Korean to attempt to decipher. Obviously, I realize it’s impolite to read over one’s shoulder, but sometimes I can’t resist, especially when I catch something in Korean that I can actually understand.

This one woman was sending and receiving rapid-fire text messages in Korean on her cell phone (all the while reading a Japanese novel), and I read several words that I recognized, and I began to follow little isolated chunks of the conversation. One word she used that caused me to wonder, was when I read, clearly, 외국인 (foreigner), and then, a few words on, some form of 있다 (there is). Which made me wonder, intertextually, if she was perhaps texting her friend about the fact that a foreigner was reading over her shoulder. This seems unlikely, in retrospect, but it was one of those coincidences that piqued my interest, I guess. So I kept watching, circumspectly.

And then I saw the word 오블리비어스. What is that?  Hm…. obeullibieoseu.  Aha!  Oblivious!  Konglish, I thought. I don’t know what it is.  I don’t think “oblivious” is a common Konglish term.  So I googled it.  Not right then, of course – although if I’d truly wanted to, I could have: my cellphone can surf the internet, if I pay exhorbitant rates. But the day is not far off when everyone will be able to google (or naver, or whatever comes next) anything they see, right as they see it. And then the real world will begin to grow hyperlinks.

But, meanwhile… I filed it away in my brain, and as soon as I got home, I googled it. And lo and behold, “Oblivious” is the title of a song by a Japanese musical  artist named Kalafina, who appears to be popular in Korea, at least as far as I can tell. So, “oblivious” is not so much Konglish as Japanglish-borrowed-to-Korean. This made sense, given the fact she was also reading a Japanese novel at the time. She was probably reporting to her friend via text message as to what she was listening to on her MP3 player.

pictureAnyway, I found this website/blog [UPDATE 2021-12-08: this link has rotted and I can find no replacement – sorry] dedicated to posting the lyrics of Japanese pop songs in both Japanese and Korean, and found something else intriguing that I’d never seen before – the use of hangeul (Korean writing system) to represent the Japenese language, somewhat like Konglish, of course. I wonder what this is called? Nihongeul?

Here on the left is a sample (the website was in “Flash,” which made cut-n-paste difficult, so this is a screenshot instead). Each lyric line is given 3 times.  The first line (purple) is Japanese.  The second line (grey) is Japanese-in-hangeul. The third is a Korean translation. Isn’t that cool?  Hmm… most of you are shaking your heads–what a language-geek!

In any event, it turns out that I really like that song by Kalafina, “Oblivious” – I’m listening to it for the third time since I discovered it. Kind of chanty and new-agey, maybe, but not bad, for JPop. And I discovered it solely because I “clicked a random hyperlink” that I happened to see while looking over a woman’s shoulder in the subway. It feels like the future, today.

[UPDATE 2021-12-08: I’ve noticed this is a very popular post for random visitors from the wider internet – probably being found via google or some other search engine. For 2021, it’s my single most visited page in this blog. So, for my visitors’ convenience, here is a link to the actual song: カラフィナ – Oblivious.]

-Notes for Korean-
너무=too much, excessively
냉채=cold mixed vegetables (basically, korean salad?)
냉-=iced, chilled, cold
쓰디쓰다=extremely bitter
뭔데?=”what is it?” (…more of that problematic -ㄴ데 ending thingy that the grammar books are so unhelpful on–perhaps it’s highly informal/idiomatic?)
오피스텔=apartment (this is actually from English, but via Japanese, I think.  literally office-tel… as in office-hotel.  cf. 아파트=apateu:  The semantic fields work differently, 오피스텔 is the name of the individual unit in the building, 아파트 is the name of the entire building, if it’s strictly residential.  To the extent the former is used at all in English, the semantic fields are exactly reversed)
사실은 나 그 애를 많이 좋아했었거든=”actually, I liked her alot” (truth-TOPIC I that kid-OBJECT much like-do-PASTPERFECT-SUPPOSITION)
context:  movie titles (burning CDs to make room on my harddrive)
장화, 홍련 = rose flower, red lotus = “A Tale of two sisters”
광식이 동생 광태 = Gwangshik’s Little Brother Gwangtae=”When Romance Meets Destiny”
간큰 가족 = “A bold family”
context:  words
가족=family
가장=extremely, most
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Caveat: Sandinistas and Mad Scientist Girls

Banalities & Journaling / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / 아동 도서 (Children's Books) / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

pictureI found an unexpected treasure of a book yesterday.  A book I’d meant to buy, once, some time ago, but then upon coming to Korea, I  had postponed it indefinitely and forgotten.  In the several shelves of Spanish language books at Kyobo, yesterday, there was sitting the first volume of Ernesto Cardenal‘s autobiography, Vida Perdida.
I was profoundly affected by the work of another Nicaraguan author, 20-something years ago:  La montaña es algo más que una inmensa estepa verde, by Omar Cabezas.  One of my “top 50” books, I would guess – though that list is always changing, isn’t it?  That was an autobiographical bildungsroman, covering Cabezas’ life as a Sandinista rebel in the epoch before the Nicaraguan revolution of 79 and the overthrow of Somoza.
So…
I had always struggled to appreciate the poetry of Cardenal (the poet-politician-priest, who was also a Sandinista, and in fact was later a minister in Ortega’s revolutionary government), and I have thought I would get more out of his prose, but had never had the opportunity to read it.
And there it was, published in Mexico, waiting forlornly to be purchased for only 22,000 원, in a Seoul bookstore. So, of course, I bought it. Vida Perdida, por Ernesto Cardenal. And started reading it.  It begins, not chronologially, but instead with his departure for a Trappist Monastery in Kentucky, having decided to become a priest. I’d forgotten about that – he went off to the same monastery that hosted Thomas Merton for so long.  Such a divergent life from Merton’s, though, despite the latter’s mentorship.
pictureIn other news, I finished the drama Delightful Girl.
Check out the girl with purple hair. A kid sat next to me on the subway and was reading this book, 프래니 (peuraeni = Frannie), about a Mad Scientist Girl. I remembered the title, I and navered it when I got home – it’s a translation of an English-language children’s book by Jim Benton, but the illustrations looked so extremely wonderful and entertaining.  Perhaps next time I hit a bookstore, I should buy this book and use it to try to work on my Korean some more – a children’s book would be about the right level, right?
-Notes for Korean-
context: Now I’ve started watching another drama, called 풀하우스 (pulhauseu=full house).  I find the attribution of its “hanja” name (according to the English wikipedia article) confusing:
浪漫满屋…
lemme try to analyze this:
[1浪][2漫][3满][4屋]
=[1랑][2만][3not in naver’s online hanja dictionary, but I found it here:만][4옥]
=[1물결][2흩어질][3그득][4집]
=[1?wave][2?scatter][3full][4house]
Is this truly a “hanja”?  Or is it simply a Chinese name for the show?  The proper Korean name of the drama is a Konglish term, and Konglishemes don’t have matching hanja, do they?  I’ll be the first to admit, my comprehension of the niceties of the hanja system is next to nil.
context:  dictionaryland and websites.
목록(目錄)=catalog, inventory
구동사=phrasal verb
명사=noun
형용(形容)=form, shape, appearance, description, metaphor
형용사=adjective
미리보기=preview (lit advance example)
다시보기=(lit again example)=?review?
가르치다=teach (I should know this)
말씀=language, talk
context:  thinking about what’s best.
최고=superlative, best
짱=best (slang.  perhaps mostly used by children–but don’t forget what you saw Ella and Stacey writing on the wall at school, that time)  (…a site for korean slang info)
context:  reading the script for episode 3 of 풀하우스, I’m seeing all kinds of reduplication words, which seem common and are interesting.
쓱쓱=easily, smoothly…
툭툭 치고=tapping…
씩씩=?smiling at each other? not sure what this is
잘 있어=take care (jarisseo=be well)
수목=tree
알았지?=understood?  got it? (This was exciting for me to understand, as I parsed it simply upon hearing it, without having seen the form in writing before… and then I was able to type it in–correctly spelled–and confirm that I’d indeed understood it).
context:  other random curiosities
문어=octopus
문어=literary expression
…wow – nice pair of homophones.  far out!
고기=meat, fish (and could I forget this?  It’s one of the few words I thought I’d retained from my first time in Korea, in 1991)
글월=letter, note, epistle
동물=animal, brute, creature
낙지=common octopus
발=foot, paw, arm
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Caveat: “Notes for Korean”

Banalities & Journaling / Language & Linguistics / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / My Photos / Quotable / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

Over the last month, I’ve been trying to get more serious and disciplined about my study of Korean.  I have begun to keep little computerized notes, every single day, of interesting or useful vocabulary items, phrases, and things like that.  But I’ve reached a point where I have compiled enough of these that they’re becoming difficult to keep organized;  more importantly, I sometimes go looking for something I know that I put into a note, and cannot find it.  Also, some of these things are things I would love to have found by searching online, in the same way that I have found other similar things.
Because of all of that, I have decided that it might be useful to post these daily notes and observations about Korean as a kind of footnote to each day’s blog entry.  This will make them searchable by not just me but by anyone – although it won’t improve their level of organization.  But with google, who needs organization? – just let the spiders crawl around and find it, right?
So, starting today, I will include a little, disorganized spattering of notes somewhere in each blog entry.  Most of my regular readers (how many are there, really? 3?  2?) will not have much use for this, but they’re mostly going to be there just for myself, as it’s a convenient and logical place to put them – I’ll be able to access them anytime I need, and I’ll be able to search them, too.  Further, by compiling them I’m helping myself to remember them, and I can express my joy at trying to make sense of this fascinating yet difficult language.
-Notes for Korean-
context:  my cellphone’s “phrase of the day”:  식품 매장이 몇 층에 있는지 알려주실 수 있습니까?
매장 =department, floor (as in a dept store), store
so:  식품 매장=food floor, food court
and: 알리다=know, tell, inform, notify
context:  episode 13 of 쾌걸춘향, 춘향 says to 몽룡, “금해애애!” (approximately) = “stop thaaaat”
금하다 =refrain, prohibit, or (idiomatically) stop doing something
In researching this online, I also found an interesting double negative:
…-ㅁ을 금할 수 없어요 = [I] can not stop myself from …
context:  deciphering instructions in a student textbook
풀이 =explanation, clarification
찾다= seek, search for, spot
발견 =discovery, revelation
발견하다=find, discover
context:  conversation of words with a coworker
나륵풀=basil (the herb)
풀=grass, herb, plant, pasturage, weed
context:  trying to figure out instructions on a korean website
지나다=pass, spend, elapse… etc. (I should know this – it’s lesson 1 in most Korean-as-a-foreign-language textbooks!)
사용=use, employment, appropriation
복사=reproduction, copy
주소=address
똑=exactly, precisely
소리=noise, sound, talk, word
끝=end, conclusion
처음=first, beginning, start, cf. 첫
도우미=helper, wizard (in computers)
정보=information, report
닫다=close (close button says 닫기)
당신=a special word meaning “you” (I should know this)
context:  vocab words for “blue” class
discover (v)=발견하다
energy=정력, 에너지
forecast=예보
shed (v)=벗다
source (n)=원천
stay (v)=머무르다
put on (v)=입다
until=-까지 (nominal ending)
spot (v)=발견하다, 찾다
always=항상
have seen / haven’t seen=본적 있는 / 본적이 없는
Meanwhile, in other pursuits… I rediscovered a Portuguese poet named Fernando Pessoa, who apparently wrote criticisms of his own poetry under alternate pseudonyms (heteronyms). This is interesting, cf. Borges. I vaguely recall running across him before, but, if so, I completely forgot him.  I was reading the Portuguese-language wikipedia article about him, just to entertain my linguistic fancy, I guess – keeping myself challenged, and all that.  And under the Spanish-language article on him, I found the following pithy observation about Pessoa by Octavio Paz:  “nada en su vida es sorprendente, nada excepto sus poemas” (nothing in his life is surprising, nothing except his poetry).

Quote of the day:
“Tenho o dever de me fechar em casa no meu espírito e trabalhar quanto possa e em tudo quanto possa, para o progresso da civilização e o alargamento da consciência da humanidade.” – Fernando Pessoa

picturePessoa is perhaps best known in the English-speaking world for his last words:  “I know not what tomorrow may bring.” I’m sure others may have said these words as their last, too, but he’s the one to whom the quote is generally attributed. It’s notable that he, in fact, wrote them rather than speaking them, as he was unable to speak at the time. And it’s also worth noting that they were in English, not Portuguese, since English was a second native language for him, because he’d spent much of his childhood in South Africa.
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Caveat: 1%

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)

I had a melancholy weekend.  I guess I'm feeling depressed about what's happening with work.  I won't dwell on it here… suffice to say it interfered with my ability to enjoy my weekend.

I spend a lot of time messing with my computer – trying to get my linux install working correctly again, after having hosed it a week or so ago by trying to upgrade to the allegedly latest and greatest ubuntu.  I'm still not happy with it.  I'm spending way too much time logged in using Windows Vista – hmm, maybe that's why I feel depressed, as that's the sort of operating system that could depress anyone.

I've downloaded and watched a lot of Korean dramas and TV serials lately.  Trying to improve my listening skills, while watching the subtitles.  From a language standpoint, it's so discouraging.

One series I got kind of hooked on was 1%의 어떤것 (translated idiomatically as "one percent of anything"), basically an extended romantic comedy-drama, with weird subtexts around issues of contract-driven relationships vis-a-vis traditional and western/romantic notions of marriage, as well as some unsettling sidelong glances at the fact of men acting violent against women.  But it was funny, most of the lead characters were entertaining and reasonably plausible.  It was mindless avoidance of the things that are bothering me.

Caveat: Just a mass-murderer, after all

Banalities & Journaling / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)

I finally finished the Death Note manga series the other day, and I have to admit feeling slightly disappointed in how it all pans out, although I enjoyed how the authors kept me guessing right up to the end.  Light (Kira) – the main protagonist – turns out to be nothing more than a mass murderer, after all is said and done.  The point being:  the victors are righteous, and the losers are criminals, right?  And his shinigami (a being from another realm that enables the death note powers in our world to begin with) is who kills him, ultimately.  I really have no idea what sort of ending would have been more satisfying… I'll have to contemplate that.

Caveat: Lyric Babel

Life in Korea / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

One thing I have been doing to improve my Korean is downloading Korean pop music (mostly pretty randomly, and not very focused on whether I like it or not), then finding the lyrics so I can try to learn to sing along a little bit.  Here is a fragment of the first song I grabbed that way, some months ago, and then forgot about.

나를 불렀던 똑같은 호칭으로 그 사람을 부르고
내가 널 데려 간 곳들을 그 사람 손잡고
마치 처음가보는 사람처럼 설레이는 척하며
모든 게 나와 함께했던 소중한 추억들인데
그 사람과 다시하면 다 지워질텐데
우리추억들을 왜 지우는데 왜왜

Nareul bulleottteon ttokkkateun hochingeuro geu sarameul bureugo
naega neol deryeo gan gottteureul geu saram sonjapkko
machi cheo-eumgaboneun saramcheoreom seolle-ineun cheokhamyeo
modeun ge nawa hamkkehaettteon sojunghan chu-eoktteurinde
geu saramgwa dashihamyeon da jiweojiltende
urichu-eokttereul wae ji-uneunde waewae

[Calling at him as if you were calling me
Holding his hands at those places where I hold yours
You seem so excited as if it’s your first time
The precious memories you’ve had with me
You’ve wiped them all away
While creating a new one with him
Why do you want to wipe away our memories?
Why? Why?]

The artist is Rain (Bi) [Bi=Rain in Korean], the song is called "In my bed."  Lyrics, romanization and translation courtesy various random websites.  It's an effort, anyway.

Caveat: Perhaps Dubya is the real Kira?

Banalities & Journaling / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

I have become substantially absorbed in the ongoing episodes of the manga series called Deathnote.  I bought volumes 9, 10, and 11 on Sunday and have ploughed through two of them in the last two days. 

These texts definitely have a lot going on in them, and I've decided it's quite a bit more than just a serialized graphic novel in the suspense/thriller genre.  The main characters are quite complex, and moral ambiguity is pandemic – no one is faultless, and you can't even decide who the good guys are – as opposed to the bad guys – although the authors do tend show some of them in a more sympathetic light than others.

The central protagonist is Light (Raito) Yagami, an academically gifted Japanese teenager who's father is a career policeman.  He gains the power to kill people by merely knowing their names and faces, and sets out to "make the world a better place."  I won't go into the details of the plot and character development here – If you're interested, you can start at wikipedia or any number of other places on the internet to find out more.

From what I've read in my own explorations online, the authors did not specifically intend for the series to be philosophically deep, nor did they set out to create a semiotic masterpiece.  The main writer (Ohba) explicitly states that he tried to avoid being "ideological" – whatever that means.

Nevertheless, the text is brimming with all kinds of tasty ideological morsels (and morasses) – to such an extent that I think it would be extremely fruitful and interesting to undertake an in-depth semiotic study of the text, perhaps something in line with Frederic Jameson's method, as he outlines in his seminal work, The Political Unconscious.

I can't help but be constantly aware of the geopolitical backdrop for the writing of the series – these times we inhabit, the first years of the 21st century.  It's set in a Japan still basically attached to the U.S. strategically, but increasingly unrooted culturally and economically.  The early books constantly had me flashing to the awkwardness of Japan's postwar identity, and also to the looming moral cypher that is represented by the United States' nuclear umbrella.

But in the most recent episodes I've been reading, I keep thinking about righteous hegemonies… about U.S. unilateralism, vis-a-vis the character of Kira (the machiavellian boy Light, who's become a demonic-powered avenger, Kira, but is also masquerading as one of his hunters, the character named "L").  In chapter 75 (book 9), Light says "If we catch Kira, then Kira is evil.  If Kira rules the world, then Kira is good."  To which Aizawa responds, "So the victor is righteous…"  Which is to say, righteousness has less to do with morality than with might and victory.  "Might is right."

And isn't that what's going on in Iraq, now?  Isn't that what happened in Japan 60 years ago, for that matter?  Yet there's a muddled moral imperative, however contrived, that drove both that old war and the one we are witnessing now.  Personally, I continue to be compelled to reject those revisionists who insist there's some qualitative moral difference between any given war and any other.  I have decided that Kira represents the exercise of inordinate power, whenever blinded by its own moralizing rationalizations.  Yet one finds oneself sympathizing, at least sometimes, with those rationalizations.  Because they're "rational," of course.  And because Light-Kira is the protagonist.

I like the way that the authors exploit the graphic format, also.  In book 11 there's this long, complex dialogic thing going on, involving a conversation between Light and Takada, who are speaking for the benefit of known eavesdroppers, but secretly supported and manipulated by notes being passed between them, and at the same time commented and subverted by the listeners, all in a chaotic progression of comic-book frames that becomes dizzingly non-linear.

Caveat: Dodging Popperazzi

Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

I finished Lee Smolin's book, The Trouble With Physics.  I've been looking at some critical reviews, online, too.  Several people mention Susskind's use of a term "popperazzi" to refer to people who make a big deal of Karl Popper's ideas about the importance of "falsifiability" in developing scientific theories, and I think that it is probably accurate to say that Smolin's book is, at least in part, a popperian review of contemporary physics, especially string theory.

I'm not a physicist, nor a mathematician.  And I don't really have an opinion about string theory, either way, although I never found it as intuitively appealing as, say, general relativity or even quantum mechanics, to the extent that I understand them at all.  In that vein, I'll confess I find Smolin's earlier-enunciated, and currently somewhat academically marginalized, loop quantum gravity theory more intuitively appealing.

But I also would agree with Smolin's critics that his popperian view of string theory is overly combative and ends up coming across as academic sour grapes.  It's too polemical to be useful.  And I do think that Popper, to the extent I understand him, may not have been the last word on how science works.

Caveat: Wandering in a straight line

Banalities & Journaling / Life is a Dream / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)

I was listening to the U2 song "The Wanderer" just now – the one Johnny Cash sings vocals, and there's this vivid post-apocalyptic image of a man walking down an "old eight lane" highway.  I was thinking of that book I read a while back, The Road by Cormac McCarthy.  Then I was thinking of Wim Wenders' movie, Paris, Texas.  One of the greatest movies.  How it opens:  the amnesiac Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) walking along through the Texas desert, in a sort of mindless straight line, clearly disturbed, obsessed, broken.

I feel like that man sometimes.  Just walking through the world in a line, no longer with any purpose except to move forwards.  Wandering, in a straight line.

And so then I was thinking of other movies I love, and I thought of Fitzcarraldo (by Werner Herzog).  I looked it up on wikipedia, and discovered a wonderful quote by the director:  he described himself as a "conquistador of the useless" in discussing the fact that rather than use special effects, he actually moved a real, giant steamship over a hill in the making of the movie (which is about moving a giant river steamship over a hill in 1890's Peru).

Caveat: Citizen Dog

Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Quotable

I mentioned a Thai movie called Citizen Dog a while back.  The other day I found it online and downloaded it (it took a while, of course – downloading movies is slow business, even with a DSL connection), and this evening, amid my general gloominess, I watched it.  It was a delightful exercise in almost pure garciamarqezesque magic realism.  And isn't that a cool word I just made up: garciamarquezesque?

One of my favorite moments is when the narrator says:  "Now Kong is dead.  But he is still here because he really likes riding his motorcycle."  Kong is the character who is killed by the rain of motorcycle helmets.

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