the weight of the pencil sharpener (연필깎이)

Today, we began a new America with the inauguration of our 44th president:



I felt like this day in history deserves a nod here at least, though I've made known my happiness and pride all over other forums.

Tonight, I went to watch the WashU Orchestra perform with a number of classmates tonight; specifically, we went to watch T's solo (well, duet). He played well, and the experience reminded me how much I do love classical music. (I love piano and the string quartet best, oh it's gorgeous.) But the night also was a stark reminder that I am not a music person.

Maybe it's because there's just too much math and left-brain involved in it, but I was never that good. I was never that committed. I love listening to it, but I am terrible with music. I don't have an ear for it; I guess I didn't inherit that gene from my mom. I can't sight read, I can't recognize notes by ear, or tell when something is flat or sharp or off-beat. I don't understand the technicalities of performance, and sometimes that just makes me incredibly sad, because listening to it is just - it engages so much emotion. And I'm, if nothing else, pretty emotional. Listening to classical music is an emotional experience that leaves me regretting my inability to pursue it (to truly understand it).

I'm a word person. I know this. I'm not a master of words, but they are my song, my poetry, my music. A well-turned phrase makes me incredibly happy; diction and syntax all matter to me. They're interesting to me. I like the cadence, the rhythm, of certain sentences. I like the way certain words look (heechul), or feel, or sound. Words are a craft in themselves, not merely a tool to create stories or to facilitate communication. Words can evoke things for me that music does for people like T and my mom. Words don't have the same impact that images can leave - soundless, wordless - but they leave a different impact: they can be just as powerful in a different way.

Sometimes I think about these things and I wonder why I'm here, doing what I am. This is not what I love.

(What do I love? This. Sometimes Tablo can be overrated, given too much credit for being Creative and Unique and Deep, which he may be in relative context of the bubblegum-manufactured kpop scene - but this song speaks, I think, to a lot of people. To me.)

This is not my dream.

(But there are bigger things than my dreams.)