The concert was meant to be the last event they were booked for before the world tour, and from the literal blood, sweat and tears that was going into it, I could tell they were using this event as an outlet for the grief they felt at being forced to cancel on their fans. Because what no one was saying, was that their world tour would probably have been the last time they’d have the chance to tour the world before they enlisted for their military service.
I watched their practice for well over an hour, falling into a sort of daze as their repetitive movements lulled me into a sense of calm.
I’d been repeatedly assured by Joon and Sungmin that it wasn’t weird to watch. All of their practices were filmed or live streamed. Sometimes the recordings were used as ‘relay challenge’ footage for social media, sometimes parts were used in music videos, behind-the-scenes commentaries, all sorts of things.
The more I saw the group behind the facade of their public image, the more I realised there really was no such thing as down-time for them. Unless they were in private, their homes, cars, family homes, there really was no permanent off switch for them. Not only were their dance practices filmed, but their vocal training, their exercises with personal trainers. Even theirvacations were used as an opportunity to film – as scripted as any drama.
Everything was potential footage, especially now during lockdown.
The company had seen fit to ramp up the way in which they made their artists ‘consumable’. Nearly every aspect of an artist’s life was fair game, but no one seemed to say what seemed so obvious to me. Where did that stop?
It was only now that I realised how much Jihoon had shielded me from. Most of the other members filmed their live segments in their apartments, or cars, or hotel rooms, just wherever they happened to be. Jihoon had always limited his lives to his studio at ENT. The only time he ever appeared on a live outside of his personal studio had been during another member’s live in their shared apartment, while I’d been safely downstairs.
Even now, this practice that I was watching, I wasn’t alone. Other cameras and devices were propped up next to Jihoon’s phone as he video called me. Other observers included their managers, a company executive and a dance assistant to take notes. Jihoon had told me as such, when I’d shyly told him it felt voyeuristic to watch them, while I sat silently, but he’d said he liked that I was there with him, so I’d swallowed my awkwardness.
Despite his reassurance, there was a part of me – a nagging voice that kept reminding me I wasn’t really interacting with him. I was watching. I was no different from the fans who had bought a ticket to their virtual concert, except for the fact that I got to watch their ‘private’ practices.
It made me reflective, even in my morose mood. My mind kept going back to the earlier conversation I’d had with Dad – about finding joy within. As I watched the group, I saw it. They werepanting, sweating in what had to be a blisteringly hot studio, doing the same moves again and again, but it was so clear that this was it for them. The looks on their faces… even beneath the sheen of sweat and clenched jaws, it was obvious this was their joy.
I was reminded of something Jihoon had said, in another world, on a beach five thousand miles away, about finding his purpose – which was surely just another way of saying joy? This was their purpose – their joy.
I envied them. Not their money, not their fame. I envied their purpose. I envied their joy.
From that kernel of thought, that understanding, came a different kind of thought – a train of idea more storytelling than abstract concept.
I watched – suddenly more keenly – at the way they pieced together the steps, turning them from individual beats into pieces that slotted so neatly together it was like one single movement.
The idea began to form in my mind, moving from ephemeral to tangible the way snowflakes formed in a cloud.
I watched as dance mirrored the music, not just body movements choreographed to hit the corresponding beats, but a kind of music in its own right.
My mind was a mercurial flow, shifting from one thought to another.
My mind began… to write. To choreograph a series of words, expressions that linked together to express a concept – the corresponding beats of an idea.
I sat up straighter, mind clicking away almost as tangibly as the clacking of a typewriter.
I saw the music in the background as clearly as I saw the way their bodies moved, and accordingly, I began to piece together bits of a sentence, questions, speculation.
One thought led to another until eventually, by the time dance practice was done, I had the blog – the essay – almost fully written in my mind.
I felt like I’d woken up from a long nap, and now that I was awake, I had thing to do.
Chapter 15
Hours passed as I sat at the little desk in my bedroom. I’d dimly noticed as the light in through the window had moved, shadows crawling across the carpeted floor in a steady march until, finally, my fingers paused their drumming across the keyboard.
I stared at the screen in front of me, looking over the white page now filled with digital black ink, and as I stared, I finally became ready to accept an uncomfortable truth.
I had known for some time that I didn’t want to create music anymore. Maybe I never had, despite the years of longing I’d had to do just that.
But I’d never acknowledged – until now – that part of my dream, my want to be a music producer, no longer existed because I didn’t have the talent for it. I’d once believed thst if I worked hard enough, I could get there.
I had done that. I’d worked so hard, in fact, that I’d gotten a First at university. Ceaseless theory study, hundreds of writtenpapers. Countless hours in the studios, endlessly tweaking final submissions until they were finished. But they were never good enough. At least, not for me.
In a way, it had been easy to write it off as something I just didn’t enjoy as much as I thought I would. Admitting that a part of the reason I’d stopped enjoying it was because I wasn’t good at it was a harder pill to swallow, because it naturally led to the question, what was I good at?
What was I good enough at to want to spend the rest of my life doing? No wonder I’d put the question off for so long.
