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Looking among past dreams
A peculiar place
Surrounded by the waters of time
Rippling in her mind
Deep down visions sleep.

When the future comes

The secret gardens of Seoul's palaces

 

Intertwined with skyscrapers

        competiting with the city's mountains disappearing when the dust wind rises

                                          The lost grand trees of Gwanhamun gil
                                          The translucent subtle glow of the medusa-like fairylights along Chunggyechon canal
                                          The beaming face of the wrinkled hotel's porter
                                          The ice-flaked and red beans hills.

These memories shaped as the native tourist-but-not-born in the metropolis that I am looked at them, for me to see in the future.

William Kentridge's alternative world

O Sentimental Machine ( Marian Goodman gallery)

The South African creator William Kentridge weaves together a theatrical set, political philosophy and silent movies' techniques in his new project O Sentimental Machine.

Trotsky's theories become the subject of a part-surrealist part comic short silent movie in which they are progressively drowned. A type writer, a loudspeaker and a mirror end up taking the lead on this melancholic stage. Kentridge imbues more humanity to these machines than to the portrayed humans swept up by forces surpassing them. A peculiar transdisciplinary experience: this time he does not invite the viewers to refuse time as in his last project but to assist to a re-creation of a lost world.

Jazz upon a time

             A piece done during my Oxford University creative writing workshop session.

  I thought the picture was lost. I knew it had existed at some point but it had become wholly abstract like some vague idea one has or keeps in mind till it becomes unreal. Last time I saw it, it was in a tin box among other photographs. It was before my moving out from the old place. Now it resurfaced sepia colored.

  “ Hey man! I know you, haven’t we seen each other before?” It took me some time to realize the guy had been talking to me. He had already disappeared swallowed amid an exhilarated and laughing crowd gathered to listen to the Dave Brubeck quartet. They all went down the stairs leading to the jazz club. It was 1960, I was 19 and it was a summer of first times. First day as a dishwasher in the club’s bar, first visit to my father living in Seattle coming all the way from Korea, first jazz concert. I had found this job hoping to be less of a charge for him during my stay. As I went through the back entrance, walking in the corridor, I perceived, above the hubbub, the warm vibrations of the double bass and the drum which arrested me and kept scintillating on my skin, through my body. Once settled behind the counter, with the sole view of a row of dirty glasses, I could not see a thing of what was happening on the stage. But, as the first swinging blue measures of music played, jeez, jazz had hooked me.