Author: levinishungry

The first Murakami novel I read was Kafka on the Shore. It was unlike anything I’d read before, and to my 9th-grade mind it was bogglingly fresh. I wasn’t quite sure I liked it, I wasn’t quite sure what I felt about it. The book, like so many of Murakami’s works, falls under the genre of magical realism, juxtaposing fantastical elements with the narrative. The plot (the central plot) follows a Japanese boy Kafka through a journey and traces the people he meets along the way.

I should probably insert a disclaimer here that I’m not a diehard, religious Murakami fanatic—I enjoy his works, I keep up with his new ones, but I have yet to read every single novel he’s published so far. And to be completely honest, his memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running was far from my liking. But Murakami’s writing has a strange way of drawing me back in time and time again, and I have yet to tire of it.

Over the summer I picked up a copy of Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage as soon as it came out, and I loved it—I agreed with many of the reviews that mentioned how this may be his best work of date. Of the ones I’ve read so far, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki isn’t the most colorful (pun absolutely intended) of Murakami’s novels, but the subtlety in the way he utilizes all the tropes he’s known for makes the book succeed. And let’s face it, Murakami is famous for having tropes—so famous that the New York Times made a ‘Murakami Bingo’ when the new book came out.

Right now I’m working on After Dark with the Bingo board in hand, crossing off these elements whenever they appear. I don’t know where the story will lead, but that makes it even better.

To be continued.

To be more precise, the papers I needed to ink in order to transfer into the Interarts Performance program, a joint degree program offered by the Stamps School of Art & Design with the School of Music, Theater and Dance. I had been an unofficial part of the group since last semester, trying out a couple of classes and seeing whether it would be a good fit. And today, after an 8-month probationary period of sorts, I made it official.

Interarts is a relatively small program at such a large school like the University of Michigan, with an average of 4~6 students per year. Everyone’s interests are different, lying somewhere in the realm of performance and visual art. Everyone’s reasons for joining the program are different—some applied directly to the Interarts program, while others (like me) transferred into the program from different areas of study.

I joined Interarts because I felt limited within the art school—I came in last year without a very clear idea of what I wanted to do. I had never taken formal art classes, I just knew that visual expression was what I wanted to study because I enjoyed doing it. But going through foundation year, I realized that this rigid curriculum was something I had little interest in pursuing. I also felt like I was wasting so many resources at the University—a big part of the reason I chose Michigan over art schools was the fact that it was part of something bigger. I wanted the chance to explore other new fields of study and to continue pursuing my academic interests as well. But foundation year offered me little breathing room, and by the end of the year, I wasn’t very invested in becoming a solely visual artist.

Granted, every individual’s experience with foundation year is different. And to a certain extent, it is also necessary; with students coming from a variety of different skill sets and interests, foundation year provides us with the necessary aid to hone in on our basic skills that could be applied to multiple fields. And it’s also being improved from year to year, with both positive and negative feedback from students, so maybe in the coming years it will encourage more exploration.

Now that my official transfer has been processed, I’m prepared to make the most out of this semester (which a third of is already gone), shuttling between theater classes and art classes with a dash of engineering classes thrown in for fun (but not really). It’s an incredibly hectic semester so far, but I finally feel like I’m in the right place. After all, fitting into a single label was never my thing, and I don’t intend for it to ever be.

It starts the way all these stories tend to start.

By all these stories, I mean the ones where people talk about how they stumbled upon the random song/picture/show/epiphany/etc. this one time. It usually starts with a time stamp, a brief insight into what they were doing at the time and segues into how this random thing came into their lives. These stories are usually rambling in nature, and probably have nothing to do with the thing they found. And you, the listener/reader, will in all likelihood not remember the story but maybe the random thing might stick with you. One can only hope.

I have two such stories today. Two stories, two random finds.

The first one starts with me sitting at the kitchen table in my apartment, the oven clock reading a little after 4 in the morning. I had just finished a rather emotionally taxing episode of The Knick (great TV show, more on that later), tired but not wanting to go to bed yet. I briefly pondered whether to go on with the next episode of the show, but my tired eyes whispered loud protests. I like to listen to music as I fall asleep, so I turned on Soundcloud and started to drift off to sleep when this song came out of nowhere:

Turns out I had accidentally clicked on ‘Folk’ instead of Indie. I’m not a massive folk music fan, wasn’t particularly feeling folk-sy, but the song captivated me. I don’t know if I would call it folk, but it still worked for me. In fact, their whole Soundcloud page worked for me (maybe with the exception of the Coldplay cover), ‘Run’ being followed up by an indie song then a trip hop song, ending in two low-key, somewhat acoustic feeling songs.

I listened to them again this afternoon, just to make sure my sleepy self hadn’t prematurely taken a liking to something that my non-sleepy self wouldn’t have. Verdict: non-sleepy self was indeed still impressed. Lucky finds, oh the things we stumble on at 4 in the morning.

The second story is shorter than the first, I promise.

I was looking for bike horns online, to give to a friend who had recently gotten a new bike. Google recommended that I also look up ‘bike horn mambo no.5,’ because apparently a lot of people search for bike horn mambo no.5. Thinking what an awesome bike horn that would be (can you imagine, a bike horn blaring Mambo No.5?), I had no choice but to click on it.

I was close, but I got much, much more than what I was expecting.

I got this.

A whole album with song covers played on bike horns. Mambo No.5 was indeed on it, as well as Pokemon and La Cucaracha (of all songs). It was so annoyingly impressive. I mean, the work that went into this album must have been quite an incredible amount because the songs are very intricate. But the result is so abrasively enchanting and addicting in a weird way. In other words, my morning alarm for the next few months.

Here’s to the endless number of random things still waiting to be discovered.

I remember all of this. Buses pulling in and out of CC Little, quirky shops in the Nichols Arcade, deer crossing the street right in front of Bursley Hall. Even the weather—early September Ann Arbor weather is in a distinct category all in its own for me. I remember taking my first-ever bus down to Central Campus (a Commuter North bus) and being disoriented like no other, because both sides of CC Little looked identical. I had my first meal at Pancheros, because that’s where I ended up after a series of random turns that somehow felt right.

It all feels eerily familiar the second time, the same exhilarating sense of independence tinged with a slight shudder for the responsibility that accompanies it. But it’s different as well—I’m coming back to my home from another home. Ann Arbor is no longer a place full of unknowns, where I know I’ll be forced to search for answers that exist somewhere in this place. Instead, I know where to look for the answers (well, at least some of them) that I’ve carefully stored away in nooks and crannies. I know I’ll have more questions and more answers I’ll need to tuck away in places around town. I know my playing ground, and I can’t wait to start playing again.

A new beginning means changes—moving into an apartment instead of a dorm room is one of them. It’s an aspect of this year that I’m looking forward to the most, but one that will undoubtedly be very different. My freshman dorm experience as a member of the Michigan Learning Community called Living Arts was unique in that I had the chance to live in a hall filled with people constantly engaging with each other on many levels. I was always surrounded by many people who shared my interests, from art to theater to engineering. Living in an apartment after a year in Bursley will be a welcome change, but I will definitely miss the communal aspect of bustling dorm life.

New and improved schedule: after the infamous ‘Foundation Year’ at the Stamps school, I am so glad to have control over my classes that more accurately reflect my interests. It’s going to be an interesting semester, with my full load of classes ranging from Acting 101 to Linguistics to Programming and Data Structures. After my first week, I can safely say that I genuinely love all my classes and am excited to go to class every day. It’s going to get challenging as the semester goes on (I can already see the storm coming) but even that makes me more excited for how much I’ll have grown at the end of the semester.

So, here’s to the new, the old and the in-between. To a (somewhat) new beginning.

I moved to Normal 13 years ago. Well technically, somewhere right next to Normal, Illinois. I stayed there for 3 years. We had a Normal police force, I spent hours in the Normal Public Library and I would have graduated from Normal Community High School had I not moved back to Korea.

But apart from a geographical definition, I don’t know where (or what) normal actually is. I don’t think any of us do, not really. In a way, we’re all trying to live somewhere next to normal, or at least close enough to normal to get by. We wander between our personal version of normality and a slightly more macroscopic vision of it, trying to find a place to be. The musical Next to Normal sheds light on the Goodman family as they explore the meaning of normality, both individually and as a family.

The first production of this musical I saw was the original Korean cast version about a year ago. The cast included some of the most veteran performers in Korean musical theater history, including one of my favorite music director-turned-performer Kolleen Park as Diana and Kyungju Nam as her husband. The show received mixed reviews from both the critics and the public, though it did return for a second run a few months later. It was a love it or hate it thing, with people becoming ardent fans of the actors and the piece itself or leaving the theater with nothing more than disappointment. I fell into the former category—I came away from it with many ‘feels.’

My favorite element of the show was how the stage was utilized—a minimalist set, with only the bare skeleton of a third story house transposing into a woman’s face. It served as an effective visual metaphor for the multiple layers that the musical moves between. In addition, the actors moving vertically up and down the stage instead of the traditional horizontal layout broke many of the conceptions I’d held about utilizing stage space. It was one of the few times I didn’t regret sitting on the second floor—watching Jaelim Choi (who has since become one of my favorite musical performers) belt out I’m Alive right in front of my eyes is an experience I’ll never forget.

The set in the Ann Arbor Civic Theater production that I watched today wasn’t as grandiose. Still, a small scaffold on stage with hanging backdrops of house elements actually fit in with the more intimate take on the piece. It was interesting how differently I responded to the show from a year ago; I reacted to different things, picked up different meanings and made previously nonexistent connections. Part of this was definitely the different production—language, scale, direction and so on—but most of it was how much I’d changed. I reacted strongly to Natalie’s character last year, especially during ‘Everything Else.’ Having just gone through the college application process with a burning desire to escape, everything else did go away for me during that song.

But this time around, I found myself crying as Diana sang of missing the mountains, missing a life and a self she had known before. During the past year, I’d developed a fear that I might someday sing that song, feel that emotion. While thinking about the future, I I’d developed a fear of regret, constantly questioning whether I’m making the right choices that I will not regret later. Dan’s character was more fully realized for me as well, especially towards the end of the second half when we see how Diana’s illness has affected him. That shift in perspective didn’t work for me the first time around, mostly because of the scale and the different cultural context.

I wonder how I’ll view Next to Normal in 30 years. Perhaps I’d be a mother (hopefully a happier one than Diana) by then? The shows, books, music and other media we come into contact evolve with us as we change; at the same time, they remind us of who we used to be. Whether something is ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ well-staged or well-written or ‘crappy,’ this kind of personal connection is what really makes a piece special.

Our family has always been moving—not necessarily as in changing homes, but moving as in constantly in motion. Each of the places we lived in was little more than a base camp we would return in between trips. This is mostly my mother’s influence—her previously occupation as a flight attendant had made her aware of her instinctive love for finding herself in new places, a trait that I inherited.

Our base camp is filled with evidence of this shared love, but it is most present on our door because the inside of our door is covered from head to toe with magnets we’ve acquired from various places and times. Welcome to our home—be careful not to slam the door! Yes, we know that the steel door is heavy. It’s made heavier by the weight of the pieces of us it carries.

The Yosemite magnet in the top left corner reminds me of the comic resourcefulness our family mustered when our car ran out of gas in the middle of the mountain road at 4 a.m. I remember being scared witless of the pure darkness, surrounded by nothing but nature sounds. The Cancun magnet? The best things in the world don’t come from books, even if they are highly recommended travel guides that speak well of a certain 5-star hotel. Even though our hotel was right on the beach, it’s the view from the top of the Chichen Itza that will be forever imprinted in my memory.

I haven’t yet picked out an Ann Arbor magnet that will one day take its place on our family’s eccentric version of the world map. I’m still working on building the meaning it will carry, shaping the parts of myself it will come to represent. Meanwhile, I’m building my own welcome map on my dorm door, filling it with pieces of my college life. My college map is a little different from our family map back at home in that it has much more than just places—it has people, events, changes…and the random things that just sort of stuck. Each day as I walk out and in this door, I think about all the experiences I’ve already collected, and take in all the empty space yet to be filled. My doors are visual representations of all the things I am made of. As I journey in and out of our door each day, it gives me the courage to keep exploring, to keep adding new magnets on the door that leads to the place I call my home.