I am currently in the midst of a persuasion, and this persuasion involves some pseudo discoveries about myself and my planned future. I finished reading Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond about a month ago and have been massively excited about the implications its had on eventually affecting my life. I think it already is affecting my life. After reading this and a small collective of other related ones, I am completely and utterly enthralled by culture. I am being 100% serious when I say this train of influence has been leading my daydreams into becoming an antrhopologist and traveling the world to live with and study remote tribal villages territory. I think I totally want to do something like this with my life.

The more I think about it, the more it seems to make considerable sense. My entire life has revolved around a burning, unfettered desire for independence, for exploration, and especially encountering new and unforseen obstacles. My earliest memories stem from being in places that are regarded as ideals of established civilization. I grew up in a semi-transplanted American culture, filtered and inevitably influenced by the conditions and peoples surrounding it. The most sedentary part of my life was absolutely the most anxious. My desire to set out on my own far away from home, isolated in the metropolis, was not something I had ever ever second guessed. Chicago filled that void until it became clear I was ready to move on. Given my situation, I was certainly fortunate enough to do it. I had the support system to enable my ambitions and am and have been exceedingly grateful for it. Now, I am hitting a new ceiling that is itself being lifted to reveal a level of potential reality. This is my excursion into my true passions. What I'm discovering is fixating itself within my conscious as an awareness I've never experienced before. Something that repeals all preceding daydreams and entertains newer, more exciting ones into a realm of "Holy crap, I really could actually do that."

So it is here that I come to announce if not for anyone that reads this then for the sheer excitement of making an 'announcement' on my blog. And here it is:

I would like to travel the world and periodically live among the most remote tribal villages I can, learning and growing as I develop a new understanding and appreciation for life unattainable in the comforts of my situation now.

I'm well aware of the naivete that comes along with this announcement, but I do really believe it is something I have to experience in my lifetime. Divorcing myself from every comfort I've ever had the implicit opportunity to take advantage of has always been appealing to me. I've been extremely fortunate in my life, but I've always wanted to experience that other side I've never been able to have direct access to. It's a somewhat delusional desire to be humbled beyond all means experienced so far. I want to live in a mud hut with no electricity or running water. I want to forage for food with experienced New Guinea tribesmen leading the way through a rain forest. I want to take a blind eye to my origins and immerse myself as an observer and enthusiast among peoples that represent everything foreign to me.

This is not a biased desire to reject my foundations and culture as a person, and I'm well aware of it potentially coming off that way. Please set all negative connotations aside. What this is is something so much deeper than that. It's a mind-altering possibility that is learning the constructs of human society at the most intimate level conceivable. It is about reverting to a position of vulnerability and ultimately recognizing the stakes of a prize through it. The prize isn't within some realm of cultural empowerment, but rather through personal integration into a system that is completely foreign to me. A system that will humble me to my core.



I mean look at that picture. How cool is that? The way these girls are decorated represents, to me, an entire aspect of cultural significance that is in the process of dying out. Call it 'primal' or 'under-developed' or whatever, the fact is that it is as foreign as foreign can get to someone living in a 'modernized' culture. I can glimpse and learn about these things through the internet, but I want to be there experiencing it all firsthand.

There is just something irresistibly appealing about the whole thing. I can't say that it will happen right away, but it is absolutely going into the "life goals" section of my brain. Even just a summer living within this type of setting would be incredible.

Looooooooooong Delay

Hello everyone. Actually, hello anyone. It's been like 3 months. My hiatus has been a bit embarrassing, but the realities of blog life can be a completely burdensome and annoying chore when it comes to actually caring about the stuff you're writing out (two or more hours for one entry? maybe its just my terrible typing skills). I want to share what's going on in my life as of late, but so much has happened that I have to forgo writing every detail from those months here in one entry. Instead, I want to focus on my most recent (and probably best) of exploits. That exploit is Japan, and I am here to tell all that Japan, in my humble opinion, is officially the coolest place on earth.

So to start off, Joel and I booked a flight way back in the beginning of November and made plans progressively closer to our leave date of Christmas day. The trip was slated for the 25th through the 3rd, with full intention of exploiting Japaneseness at every possible waking second. When Christmas finally arrived, we woke early like anxious kids ready to get their presents, grabbed our bags, and headed for the airport in a limousine (side note: it was not actually a limousine, just a really nice bus). On the bus, I started playing with my brand new ipod nano's camera, realizing I could very easily make a documentary film with the most ridiculous contraption ever created. I excitedly told the camera how we were going to Japan while recording the scenery and parts of Joel's suppressed scowls. Once finished, I set the ipod down and calmly laid my head back, put on some Tortoise, and tried to relax my body for the adventure of a lifetime. In the course of maybe about two minutes, running through trip necessities in my head, I came across probably the worst realization of my entire life:

I DIDN'T HAVE MY PASSPORT.

OF ALL THE THINGS I REMEMBERED TO DO FOR THIS TRIP, IT WAS THE ONE THING I FORGOT TO PACK.

I nearly had a panic attack. Like a serious panic attack. I'm not at all using that as an expression. Joel can attest to this claim. Coming to terms with the magnitude of your idiocy can be a horrific experience. ESPECIALLY when you're on your way to THE AIRPORT which will then take you to FREAKING JAPAN.

After ranting for nearly 5 minutes straight, Joel managed to get a grip on the situation with his classic 'Don't Panic' (it's a tattoo of his) style and walked me through ways we could resolve it. I was amazed he didn't strangle me right then and there, as my brain was basically ready to explode from immediate "oh my god I'm not going to Japan anymore!" stress.

By the by, after running through hair brained schemes of using various other I.D. cards in my wallet, we got to the airport, pushed our flight back (very luckily) free of charge, called my boss (I had left it in my desk at school because of a trip to the bank the day before), worked out a way for him to go into the school on Christmas day and leave it in an envelope at the mailbox for me, got back on the limousine, traveled back to Jeongja, retrieved the passport, waited in a Tom'n'Tom's for awhile, traveled back to the airport, waited for a couple hours for our new flight, and finally sat ourselves down in a packed airplane ready to (re)embark on the trip of a lifetime.

All that said, the flight took about 1/1000th of the time and effort put into making sure we made it.

Once we arrived, Japan turned into a still somewhat hazy reality, as the effects of redundant Korean life began to wear off with a slowly adopted but hastily omnipresent 'arigato gozimus' ('thank you very much' in Japanese). We immediately hopped the night bus from Osaka to Tokyo to save some cash, and arrived early the next morning.



For what its worth, describing Tokyo here is practically useless. The utterly magnificent concrete jungle that is this city requires its own full blown encyclopedia. Describing what we (or I) marveled at throughout such a brief five day encounter is as far as I can go- and even that requires two more blog entries and at least 16 hours writing time (not kidding). However, I will leave my descriptions here short for the sake of the reader.

When we arrived, Tokyo honestly just felt like another big city- full of skyscrapers, traffic jams, and busy looking people. As the trip progressed, its magnitude was revealed. Its charm resonated from corners deep and dark, full of intoxicating foreignness. I won't go as far to say that we discovered any 'hidden' gems, but I won't pretend that parts of the trip weren't completely surreal reality check moments. We were in Japan. Even saying that now sounds ludicrous. From the all too fun to say name of our train stop (Takadanobaba) to the real (real!) cross-anywhere-you-want-while-funneling-yourself-through-thousands-of-other-people intersections
made even the most seasoned city dwellers pinch themselves in disbelief. This city is massive. Unbelievably so. To the point where trying to take it all in in one horizon shattering view from Tokyo Tower emits a sense of over stimulation. Akin to imagining the scope of the universe.

Most of the time we were there, Roy was gracious enough to offer his stupendous services as informant, interpreter, and all around amazing guy. He guided us through the various 'must see' areas of Tokyo with the kindest ease, offering to let us be our own guides and enjoy everything at our own pace. We even went to a traditional bathhouse:



The things we're wearing are called Yukatas and everyone is naked under them. Just in case you didn't see the descriptions on my facebook, everyone is so like totally naked under them. Anyway, because Joel has tattoos, our initial attempt at entering the public bath was stifled by a traditional Japanese stipulation associating all tattooed people with the Yakuza. Basically Joel wasn't allowed inside because he had tattoos. After graciously respecting the rules, he, Roy and I went to find relaxation elsewhere on the grounds. Outside we walked a heated canal path designed to massage your feet with strategically placed (smooth-edged) inconveniently narrow rocks. No easy task for the weak-footed. Here, if you look closely at the water, you can kind of see what I'm talking about:



After the bathhouse, we did some general exploring for the next couple days. Roy and I happened upon the tiniest most completely excellent jazz record shop I've ever been in:



What you see in the picture frame is what the entire store consisted of. Note the stairway leading down into the main space.

There was a specific point in Tokyo that ended up being one of my favorites. While briefly meeting up with Buntaro (a friend we met in college, actual recording engineer, and preeminent badass) on his only free night the days we were there, we ended up walking near and eventually down the streets of Roppongi, observing the night life. In a totally random aside, Buntaro casually pointed out what he considered the best live music venue in Tokyo- a stylish, unmarked, completely anonymous entrance he claimed was called "Super Deluxe". It was a basement venue with only so much as a glass door, wackily patterned walls and floors, and a set of stairs indicating it as anything other than a crazy entrance to a random apartment. With a sleek effervescent cool, he kept on walking, like it was nothing to care about. I in turn, immediately freaked out over the overwhelming coolness of the entire episode. It all happening in Tokyo made it a pristine "forever" memory.

Super Deluxe:



And here is me and Buntaro:




After Tokyo, we took an all day local train ride back to Osaka, saw a clouded Mt. Fuji in the process, and arrived pretty much drained of all our resources. However, this didn't keep us from meeting up with Roy and Hiro (our two other friends from college) for a few drinks. It was a grand night perfectly summarized by the following:



After a stress related break in our plans, Joel and I parted ways later on to head to our desired destinations. I went to Kyoto (which merits its own blog and pictures) and he went to Kobe. I saw some history, he saw a giant robot. In essence, we experienced Japan in all of its wonderful glory.

Because of this trip, I am now thoroughly convinced I will be living in Japan by this time next year. I've already started looking for teaching jobs to start me at the end of the summer. I practically don't even care where I teach. All I know is that I have to experience daily life there once more. After I finish Korea in May, I plan on subletting a place in New York to be with my brother for the summer, then planning a trip to Okinawa to revisit our childhood, and finally onward to life somewhere in Japan. I am so excited!

My last post being a bit off topic, I am going to refresh anyone still paying attention to me on the internet by updating them with some Korea news. The kids are getting more and more used to seeing my face everyday and I think are actually growing fond of it. For one, I am receiving completely adorable random hugs from students all over Wonderland. My youngest students, a class of four 3 year olds, have quickly become my favorite. They are definitely the easiest to entertain and do a spectacular job entertaining me back. We want on a field trip to the botanical gardens awhile back and I spent the whole time as their chaperone. It was awesome. Here are some pictures:


Katie and Megan posing as pretty pretty princesses (sleeping beauty and ...enthusiastic monkey)

Sean and Andy posing as super savage destructo ninja warriors

Princess/monkey cont.

Botanical Gardens group shot. 16.7% of this picture looks enthused.

Sean preparing for the dentist. Katie getting caught up in the excitement.

The notorious smirk


Anyway, its hard to discern whether things have been chaotically fast or mind-numbingly slow around here. Obviously, my blog took some serious damage in the month of September. This can be accounted for by my sheer laziness. I was perfectly capable of updating at least once after the first, but opted for embarrassingly long trips to Burger King and getting drunk in Suji. Well maybe half of that is true. I'll just pretend you know which direction of my logic is actually logical.

This past month was unwavering in its "put it off till later" and "holy crap I have to finish this stupid lesson plan before my flaking credibility as a responsible human being is ultimately flushed down the toilet." Ok, it maybe wasn't that drastic, but we did have these things called "Open Classes" this month that involved stress levels so high, they may as well have been irrelevant. An open class for Wonderland is where parents come to observe and evaluate their students' (and not-at-all legitimately trained teacher's) progress. Of course, like all things involving direct parent/school credibility correspondence, stress is pushed to maximum overdrive, ensuring no single thought escapes painfully precise preparation. I, with all the other teachers, was mandated to create a verbatim lesson plan of something inherently predictable and ultimately redundant. Not that I was above it or anything. I completely understood the risks associated with ill preparation. It was just the sheer tediousness of every single detail being mulled over and reassessed for an entire month that made things a little ridiculous. When the classes finally happened, I still managed to stumble near the end of both. Why? Because I realized how intense my freshly developed routine had been scrutinized under the high powered microscope of making a perfect first impression. In all that planning and working and devising, I forgot how to teach. I thought after any type of misstep I very well may have been a goner, but the stress ultimately proved futile. The only complaint made by any of the parents was a suggestion that I could've given the students a worksheet (more work) on top of an already absurdly condensed, nerve racking, fast paced lesson. Basically, it meant hitting the bars at raging head-on-collision force the following weekend.

Don't get me wrong, it actually wasn't all bad. I mean, I may be exaggerating a couple elements here. But I realized just how pointless stress can be sometimes. I'm aware it doesn't work for everybody that way, but I absolutely hate being stuck in the position where I'm supposed to feel like it shouldn't. Either way, it's over now and I am successfully teaching in my own "slack to the max without being foolish" style. I'm aware of my responsibilities and I will get them done. In fact, I thought today was the best, most consistently flawless teaching I've done since being here, and I did it all with little or no standard preparation. My routine, with obvious overhead regulation from Wonderland, has come into its own, and it makes me a more confident and better teacher.

Now, to highlight some things outside of school, Joel and I went to the Global Gathering festival in the Han River Nanji park a few weeks ago. With blissful intentions on observing and sporadically dancing to Royksopp, we went into the night full fledged psycho fans. It proved worthy and we were fairly certain we saw the infamous "chick from the Knife" (I swear nobody who knows of her knows her name) singing to their loveliest and grooviest tunes. I, as well as Joel, were much enthused. On top of that, Underworld played a mind-bogglingly awesome set- something I was definitely not prepared for. We'd come to see Royksopp and viewed watching Underworld as a mini-bonus to waiting for MSTRKRFT. Inevitably, that logic was thrown out the freaking window as Underworld blew away a significant portion of my mind. When "Pearl's Girl" hit the sound system, I just started jumping in pure excitement. I have never been in such entranced, spontaneous excitement.

Speaking of entranced spontaneous excitement, if you don't know my friend Ryan, you should. He has a recently started music blog called Billy D's Sunset Breeze and it is pure awesomeness. He recently posted a mix that I will honestly testify to being out of this world phenomenal. If you have any sense of transplanetary groove in you, then you must download, listen, and repeat. He is awesome.

Now That's What I Call Power-Pop-Folk-Metal!!!

After reading my friend Ryan's blog about media driven music labeling and commenting, I got pretty enamored with dissecting the labeling process even further. I find it fantastically interesting that an entire theory of social psychology can be extracted from a practically automatic human function. Categorization is somewhat of an inevitability when it comes to dense, multi-tiered artistic pursuits, but I find its automation almost always lies within too specific of parameters, essentially canceling its purpose out altogether. In the Shape of Time, George Kubler delves into this concept with a semantic approach on how history can be classified based on "style":

In practice certain words, when they are abused by too common use, suffer in their meaning as if with cancer or inflation. Style is one of these. Its innumerable shades of meaning seem to span all experience. ....gasolines and toilet papers have style (while) annual fashions in clothes are purveyed as styles. In between lies familiar terrain of "historic" styles: cultures, nations, dynasties, reigns, regions, periods, crafts, persons, and objects all have styles. An unsystematic naming of binomial principles allows an illusion of classed order.

Thus, style is illusory, having semantic significance too specific for far too many of the subjects it defines. This is just one example, and he didn't even mention music. Currently (and well, for the past sixty or so years), popular music has been driven solely by its never ending conveyer belt of labels. To give a generic consortium of these is pretty easy: Rock and Roll, Blues, Folk, Rap, Dance, Oldies, 80s, World, Metal, Alternative... I could go on. Whether these labels are media or fan based is unimportant, as they are what specifically defines them as popular music. And this is what makes the entire thing so interesting. Popular music in this regard, much like Kubler's analysis of style, is itself completely ambiguous. It is an open label broadly defining too much within too narrow of parameters. Clearly, when considered as such, Rap and Metal are entirely different musical concepts, working within practically opposite spectrums. Last.fm, Pandora, and cable packages that offer 24 hour popular music stations are subjecting thousands of distinctly dynamic pieces of music into "appropriate" (and sometimes wholly inaccurate) subcategories for the purpose of practicality. This is not to say specific popularized genres were not being exploited as such in the countless record shops strewn about city blocks 30, 20, or even 10 years ago, but is rather offering the assumption that increased global communication and technology will inevitably lump these popularized identifiers as what may be deemed "popularly necessary". I mean look at "Soul/R&B" or "Electronica/Dance" or even just flat out "80s". The categorizations inevitably limit themselves.

Not only this, but the cyclical nature of Pop music is something driven entirely by "inventing" new labels. Much of this "inventing" has fallen victim to specific formulas. Within the structure of these formulas lies what I believe can appropriately be considered "easier" means of achieving success in the Pop music market. Are those Now Thats What I Call Music!!! compilations still being released? Interesting how easily those things actually garnered sales. Sure, the songs were catchy and at rare points, innovative. But what if we were to ask the NTWICM's sales team what they considered musical integrity? Any genre represented by a particular song or group on those compilations can probably be traced back to some of its predecessor's (primary influence) more popularized works, and so on. This is not to say any genre represented by a song or group was entirely disingenuous, as inspiration and idolization define music as an art form, but merely observe them in a highly processed, easily discernible formula.

This is one major reason why I've gotten so into Disco recently. It was particularly curious to me that such a hugely popularized genre, defined exclusively within pop culture knowledge by the 70s, leisure suits, mirror balls, glowing tiles, and the Bee Gees, could be so incredibly dynamic and varied. It was literally an entire culture I knew nothing about. With that, it was also some of the most personally satisfying music I've ever heard in my life. Interestingly, I'd never really known its subtleties and variations until after stumbling upon them, and sifting past its most righteously popular definers. The irony here is two-fold:

1. I knew it as a popularized label and consciously or sub-consciously avoided its chasms of audible goodies because of this.
2. I explored those chasms and now expressly identify my tastes through this popularized label.

Granted, I could hardly say I am qualified enough to declare myself anything other than an enthusiastic listener, but my intentions are good. Am I conforming to a label or not? Should positivity or negativity be invited into this recognition? Did this blog even make sense? Comments?

Apartment Pictures and Open Invitation

I've been extraordinarily lazy about this, but I thought I'd post some pictures of my apartment here in Korea. I am quite lucky, as everyone else I've talked to here has described their apartment as being about half the size of mine, and definitely not across the street from where they work. Because I can't stop fantasizing about being a DJ, I imagine I will one day host a dance party in it. If you can make it to Korea, you're invited.



Bedroom



Bathroom (yes the entire bathroom is the shower. Extremely convenient for cleaning)



Kitchen



And Living Room

I think within the next five blogs, I am going to post one of my own songs. Brace yourselves. It will probably blow you...r hair gently around your ears.

Why hello. Been a little while. This will just be a quick update. So far, the new foreign is absolutely fantastic. No longer does the Wonderland community observe constant arrogance throughout its workdays. No longer am I, or anyone else, burdened with the obnoxious persistence of information spouted for the sake of previous foreign teacher's ego. Work is ludicrously more comfortable, and everyone is happy.

For my birthday, I met my former Chicago co-worker and original South Korea Opportunity informer Mike, friends Joel and Emily, and new friends Leanne, Andy and Ken. After some pretty pathetic decision making while briefly scouring Itaewon, we decided to head for the much more gratifying Hongdae. There we encountered probably the nucleus of all graffiti in Korea, Akira-esque motorcycle groups (I've forgone the term gangs, as they could hardly be deemed menacing), and Club Oi, a bar that would be completely appropriate witnessing the drunken annihilation of the Cat and the Hat. It was low-key and worth every minute. I thoroughly appreciated everyone there and had a great time.

With that boring riff raff out of the way, I am getting ever closer to my DJ goal. With the introduction of the Yongsan electronics market, I've been peeing my pants with anticipation in acquiring one of these (AAAGGH!It can do anything! Midi control, USB input for multiple sources, a stupifying array of effects, and compatibility with nearly any legitimate music making program! I can't believe it). Anyway, Yongsan is quite possibly, no, make that positively is, the largest electronics store I've ever been in. Joel made a pretty apt comparison of it to Marshall Fields (macys shmacys), utilizing 7 gigantic floors for laptops, gaming, cell phones, music making equipment, cameras and an assortment of black market PSP and DSlite game downloading sales. In other words, it was heaven. Now, all I have to do is get my next paycheck, buy the DN-S1200, start Djing, and become the freshest old school Disco DJ in all of Korea (mixes will definitely come within the appropriate timeframe).

Health and the Shape of Time floating in the Internet Universe

I had this entire post set for divulging in an elaborate comparative analysis between South Korea's National Health Insurance plan and the U.S.'s lack thereof after a clinic visit here astoundingly lasted a little under 15 minutes. I'm mean, I'm seriously talking the waiting, the check up, the prescription and all. But after a hefty amount of research, I'm basically going to rest most of my take on the issue on this article. And with that, I officially declare the internet as a 100% legitimate research tool (thus adding to the Internet Universe theory. Oh and this, albeit old, is interesting too)



Anyway, I finished reading the Shape of Time a little while ago and just started reading the abridgment of A Study of History by Arnold J. Toynbee and am feeling a bit analytical. Pardon any over-ambitiousness. But really, if you're interested at all in Art and history (read: NOT art history) and their relation, The Shape of Time is the most thorough analysis of the two subjects' correlation. George Kubler is ridiculously astute at reorganizing the entire structure of observing and placing significance upon all human objects, from "all tools and writing in addition to the useless, beautiful, and poetic things of the world." There is seriously not one paragraph of the book I do not in some way observe as completely profound. Some of my favorite concepts are as follows:

...our ability at any moment to accept new knowledge is narrowly delimited by the existing state of knowledge.

and

How does artistic invention differ from useful invention? It differs as human sensibility differs from the rest of the universe. Artistic inventions alter the sensibiility of mankind. They all emerge from and return to human perception, unlike useful inventions, which are keyed to the physical and biological environment. Useful inventions alter mankind only indirectly by altering his environment; aesthetic inventions enlarge human awareness directly with new ways of experiencing the universe, rather than with new objective interpretations.

and

When the industrial designer discovers a new shape to satisfy an old need, his difficulty is to find enough buyers for the new shape among people who already own satisfactory old forms. Thus every successful manufacture tends to saturate the region in which it was made by using all the occasions that might require the thing.

Simply genius. The book was originally published in my favorite decade ever, the 60s, and influenced a number of my favorite artists including Donald Judd, Ad Reinhardt, and Robert Smithson. It was complete coincidence I noticed it in the bookstore, read the back, and promptly decided to buy it. I seriously believe it has changed my life.

Anyway, I've been enjoying work pretty thoroughly this week, as one of my less favorable co teachers is leaving, a new very nice teacher is arriving, my birthday is Saturday, and there's a DJing prospect completely within my reach. This prospect is not at all any type of a career starter nor anything completely serious, but an exciting opportunity to at least play music in front of people. If I can get equipment, slow, low key Sunday nights are my bounty at Under Construction, a bar just two stops away on the yellow line. All I have to do is save up enough money after maybe two or three paychecks to buy something that mixes songs together and doesn't look like I am following some poor attempt at a trend.