“We’re moving to America!” I recall the excitement that unraveled for me as a child at this unfurling of words from my parents, the exact wordings of which evade me now. It seems almost funny in hindsight – how playful and light immigration appears through the naïve gaze of a nine-year old. All that this life-altering announcement evoked in me back then was the thrill that often precedes traveling, the delight that a plane ride could bring, and the longing to play with family friends moving to the United States around the same time. The joy I felt upon learning that our new home will reunite me with friends to play with was all that I needed to wait eagerly for this move from the small peninsula of Korea to the other side of the world. Anxieties regarding cultural differences eluded me; complexities concerning citizenship dodged my thoughts. Only the optimism of a child, and a new place and playground to yield to my heart’s desires, awaited me at the airport and the gates to this country, which I have come to call home.

Even as an adult, I am uncertain of the depth and breadth of the critical and emotional processing that must occur for me to digest where and who I am in the present, and to fully snuggle in the quiet luxury of these moments. This inquiry becomes further complicated for me as a lover of words, finding comfort and ease whenever and wherever I can experience the reading of words by others and witness the outpouring of my own. And in this vein, I must come clean to the reader that in addition to serving a relational purpose of connecting with other graduate students, this personal essay also stages a rather self-indulgent dive – a delving into sentiments I may have unknowingly gathered over the years and the roots of which cannot be unearthed without words on a page that betray my true colors.

Choshim: “Original Colors”

The Korean word choshim literally translates in English to “original feelings” and is generally used to mean “initial intent.” This translation is rough at best since the word shim being rooted in a similar sounding Chinese character could refer to either one’s state of mind or emotions (when a stricter dichotomy exists between the head and the heart in the West). The closest Korean word I could find an English equivalent for is bonshim, which varies slightly to mean “true shim or state of mind.” Even in my cursory semantic reflection, I find it puzzling that the English phrase of “true colors” often assumes the negativity of one’s interiority that should be disclosed behind a relatively more positive exterior, albeit artificially crafted by effort, i.e., someone who was trusted to be benign revealed their “true colors” as a real villain. Such usage not only presumes a stance of pessimism toward one’s innateness but also emphasizes the presence of one’s exteriority, which serves a “beneficial” purpose of veiling oneself. To the contrary, while the Korean synonym of chosim can refer to similar contexts, it exhibits more of a positive outlook, i.e., a student who has lost their determination to pursue a life-long dream may vow to return to their “original feelings” (or for a better comparison: “original colors”) and to try again. Chosim with its more generous affordance of connotations does not focus on the fronted exterior so much as what is (positive) behind it, hinting that we can return to our initial shim – our unique blend of head and heart from the past – if we are willing.

Centered In-Between: De- and Re-construction

“Is it okay if I speak in English? I’ve heard that I sound arrogant when I do,” confessed DJ Peggy Gou with a chuckle in her interview with the Korean television network, tvN, revealing a refreshing vulnerability. Sometimes, I wonder if I betray the same nervous laughter in my own musical and intellectual pursuits. I am the one who chose to pursue education in the U.S. rather than the country of my birth for the opportunity it affords. I am the one who after studying “abroad” in Korea as an undergraduate in the hopes of finally discovering a “home” – that one place romanticized to ease all my qualms and insecurities and which I realize in hindsight cannot be tied to a singular, physical locality – returned to California, having found no comfort in faces of strangers resembling mine on late night streets in Seoul. I am the one who, upon reading Lisa Nakamura’s research on the neocolonial labor of women of color for technology companies founded in Silicon Valley, thought: “But I am a woman of color and from the Bay Area.” Nodding wholeheartedly to calls for diversity, I sit here writing an essay in the seemingly omnipresent language of English, which I had the privilege of learning (and loving) due to my positionality. 

This is not to disregard the unique role that I can play in academia, using my distinctive experiences as factors that shape my critical thought as a scholar rather than as deterrents that obfuscate my affinity for education in any way. Reflecting one of the shelves in my cluttered room (or one of the selves of my multifaceted being), there seems to be a part of me that demands a reprimand for the infiltration of Western art music that has pervaded much of Asia and my childhood, a majority of which consumed countless hours at music centers or hagwons all over Seoul. Why do I receive looks of admiration in Korea when I disclose my standing as a doctoral student in the U.S., and what explains my hesitancy before announcing my pursuit of popular Korean electronic music, almost as if I fear disappointing others? How have I come to internalize what I claim to criticize, being “deviant” from what or who is “normal” and hence rendered “devious” in my studies?

While I can undergo such self-interrogations now as a graduate student trained to think critically in academia, I am also surprised to uncover that it is not these sorts of inquiries that immediately arise for me in my personal reflections on childhood. Just as immigration came to be associated with an adventurous spirit and an optimistic embrace – ever accompanied by an armful of books – my training in Western classical music in Korea doesn’t conjecture grievances against unfair or unjust treatments, which are positively clouded in my memory by the colorful, round candies that my piano teacher handed out for completed assignments, my walks to the music hagwon with my brother on paths lined by flowers on either side, and the snacks purchased from convenience stores on that same street back to our high-rise apartment, triumphing tall in the Seoul landscape. As the scholar in me wonders if my musical childhood was simply a byproduct of centuries of history that cannot be undone or if my love was truly mine bound to the whims and wills of the psychological conditionings of my own body and mind, I have no choice but to remain silent – the air heavy with remnants of a question that I fear to face. In between books like Piano and Politics in China and Mr. Popper’s Penguins sit my early music training books of Bach, Czerny, and Mozart – with their Western names Korean-ized into the alphabet of hangul, and with covers torn and corners worn with love.

Concluding Collage: Chosim and Community

I wish there could have been more to this introspective endeavor than missed attempts to present a cohesive linearity of words, tangled and still unraveling in irreducible complexities. Perhaps I should have staged myself in a better light and in a way that is more digestible for others. But can internal processing be anything but messy for anyone who is simultaneously a product of a system and a contributor to that very context? This fractured texture, then, perhaps represents where I have been and who I am – broken but sustained – and steadfast through changing circumstances. While my self-parsing has only led to such hazy conclusions shaded by the rosy optimism of my childhood, I would like to believe or at least hope that not all things have to be so well distinguished, defined, and divided. My pursuit of popular Korean electronic music cannot and, in fact, does not need to be dis-rooted from the Western classical piano training, which served as the primary gateway to my love for music. The seemingly sharp change in my education is neither to be shamed nor elevated in its status as it is simply a means by which I attempt to articulate myself. What I initially perceived as contradictory trajectories resulting in an inner conflict and turmoil perhaps stand as united as my disparate collections of books, interwoven by the same longings and repeated resolutions from my past.

What “original feelings” emerge when I take a moment to fight the hustle, sit still with myself, and move forward by remembering? The sweet smiles and kind hearts of my first elementary school friends and teachers in the United States. The generosity I experienced that did not wear the mask of mere tolerance. The grace I received that did not stay hidden but illuminated my life with yet another place and even more people to love – portraying a privilege evident to me now as an adult but was dense to as a child in love with life and with complete trust in people. The more I reflect on my chosim and attempt to sit with myself, both with my privileges from the past and positionality in the present, the more I become grateful for the potential of communities to care for people and cultivate the type of environment that is seeded with kindness and harvested with the empathy of two moons.