2019 mix CDs

Yes indeedy, yet another addition to my vanity project of making a mix CD for every year I've been alive! And same as since 2012, it's a double-disc collection filled with K-pop! Yay! Of course there's no reason on multiple levels for doing this. There's no reason for most of my life, what's your point? The CD medium itself is an artificial and/or obsolete construct. Who even uses CDs anymore? (oh yeah, me) But for me the physical limit is important (if allowing for a second CD can be called "limiting"), as is the concept of a "collection" with track order, segues and flow and contours. Who even thinks that way anymore? (oh yeah, me)

What a long, strange trip it's been in just these mix CDs. The extreme left turn that is K-pop so late in my life still confounds me to the point that I still can't dismiss mystical attribution of future life resonance – that my next life will be in Korea. FLR might also be why I'm primarily attracted to girl groups, whereas if it was just about the music genre I should be equally accepting of the boy groups. I'm drawing analogies with passages in the so-called Tibetan Book of the Dead that describe the bardo of rebirth whereby individuals that are to be reborn as male will feel jealousy towards the father and attraction to the mother and vice versa for females (that's just the basic template while, as my theory goes, genetics also play a part; the gender-"determining" experience in the bardo primarily affects subjective identity and may influence physically being born one gender or another (or yet another these days) but can't counter genetics dictating otherwise. It explains a lot if you think about it). So the Korean thing may be a resonance as to where I'm to be reborn, while the focus on the female may be sticking with current karma that I'll be born male (getting XX chromosomes notwithstanding). What the hell am I talking about?

Back on planet earth I've tried to explain the K-pop in other ways – that it's about songwriting, really good melodies, tight backing-track arrangements, the progressions, the gestalt and other musical/production attributes – but I feel like I'm trying to legitimize something that doesn't need legitimizing. I've always trusted my musical tastes and rarely have I made the blunder of thinking something was good only to realize there really wasn't much substance (mostly when I was trying too hard). But I suppose maybe none of this matters if it's future life resonance at play. It's no longer my musical tastes in this lifetime, but echoes from a future that hasn't happened yet or is supposed to be happening if I had kept to script and departed for that life long ago. My music listening has been hijacked. And I've mentioned before that the Korean thing is the future life resonance, not K-pop. The K-pop is because of love of music in this current life. In future lifetimes I may not be interested in music at all. Theoretically, if I had some other strong interest, it would be some other aspect of Korea that would be inexplicably manifesting.

I wonder what I would've been listening to for the past decade if K-pop hadn't happened. Anything good coming out of the west aside from Hamilton? I haven't noticed anything. I wouldn't need anything new since all the music I acquired in those hard-drive exchanges in 2009-2010 may have taken 10 years to get familiar with; as I mentioned, it's good stuff, I like it, but I frustratingly just don't know it. 

*sigh* Music show video clips from 2019 still had live audiences. Because of the CCP pandemic, there have been no audiences for the music shows in 2020 and there's a palpable difference in energy without the screaming audiences and fanchants. 

Disc One: (zip download)

1. All Mine (Coast of Azure) (GWSN) (choreo video)
2. Bing Bing (Nature)
3. Uh-Oh ((g)I-dle)
4. Umpah Umpah (Red Velvet)
5. Tiki-Taka (99%) (Weki Meki)
6. Butterfly (LOOΠΔ) (music video) (choreo vid)
7. %% Eung Eung (Apink)
8. One Blue Night (Jiyeon (ex-T-ara)) (lyric video) (audio only)
9. Sunrise (Gfriend)
10. Bbyong (Saturday) (choreo vid)
11. Well Come to the BOM (Berry Good) (official audio)
12. Kill You (Hot Place) (lyric video) (audio only)
13. Hip (Mamamoo)
14. Dalla Dalla (ITZY)
15. How You Doin'? (EXID) (lyric video) (official audio)
16. Lalalay (Sunmi (ex-Wonder Girls))
17. 1, 2 (Lee Hi) (unofficial upload) (lyric video)
18. 5 More Minutes (DIA)
19. Sugar Pop (Cosmic Girls (WJSN)) (lyric video) (music students react)
20. Turn It Up (Twice) (lyric video) (official audio)
21. yeah yeah (Kisum) (audio only)
22. Guerilla (Oh My Girl)
23. This Winter (Berry Good)

Disc Two:
1. Picky Picky (Weki Meki)
2. Woowa (DIA)
3. Devil (CLC)
4. Thumbs Up (Momoland) (choreo video)
5. Hakuna Matata (DreamNote) (choreo video)

6. Late Autumn (Heize) (lyric video) (official audio)

7. Hush (Everglow) (lyric video) (official audio)

8. Underwater Love (Oh My Girl) (lyric video) (official audio)

9. Kkili Kkili (G-reyish)
10. Fever (Gfriend) (choreo video)

11. Boogie Up (Cosmic Girls (WJSN)) (full-stage fancam)

12. You Don't Know Me (Yoomin (ex-Melody Day)) (audio only)

13. New Day (Ladies' Code) (lyric video) (audio only)
14. Hocus Pocus (Bvndit)
15. Fancy (Twice)
16. Lion ((g)I-dle)
17. XX (Bolbbalgan4) (lyric video) (official audio)
18. Moonlight (Lovelyz)
19. Goblin (Sulli (ex-f(x)))
20. Recipe ~ For Simon (GWSN) (lyric video) (official audio)
21. LP (Red Velvet) (lyric video) (official audio)
22. Memories (Apink) (lyric video) (official audio)
23. Love RumPumPum (fromis_9) (unofficial stage mix)
24. Ruddy (Cherry Bullet) (official audio)

2018 mix CDs

current status

Alcohol: I haven't quit completely since August last year when I had that great, wonderous, earth-shaking revelation for the umpteenth time that alcohol wasn't going to kill me and it therefore served no purpose. I was drinking almost a bottle of liquor a day with some beer in the mix because beer make happy. I cut down to a bottle every three days or less plus beer still in the mix because beer. The plan was to eventually totally get off the sauce, but that didn't happen because alcoholism.

That makes me question my mindfulness practice which believes quitting completely is not only possible, but even easy when mindfully applied. On the other hand, the reduced consumption (a schedule I've been on many times before in the name of cutting back) hasn't been making me feel like crap like the bottle a day did. There just hasn't been anything compelling to make me quit completely, but like my months at a monastery, now well over a decade ago, I theoretically could stop completely if I had to and not even think about it. Same as it ever was.

Sleep: Insomnia really went away with the reduced consumption of alcohol. Coincidence? The thing is that I've been on this reduced schedule of consumption before during years I've had insomnia, so they shouldn't be related. Psychological? I still always need music on to fall asleep with a timer set to shut off. Sleep is unsettled towards the end with multiple waking in the morning, but I turn on the music and reset the timer and that gets me back to sleep. If I don't turn on music, I don't fall asleep. Average 6 hours sleep with lights out between 1:30 and 2 a.m. and getting up in the 8 o'clock hour for morning sitting.

Exercise: It was full stop on even any thought of running and cycling since August last in the same realization as stopping drinking. Why am I doing this? So much effort and maintenance required, so much pain and risk of injury, so little satisfaction as performance declines. My bike is covered with dust and cobwebs, tyres flat. I don't even want to check how the last pair of running shoes I bought are doing.

Interesting how stopping exercise and stopping drinking are totally different things. Entropy working differently in either case. Or not. I'm kidding, entropy isn't at play at all (or is it?), but I'm realizing my jokes are too abstract, obtuse or just not funny. I realize now I should've been pointing out all along when I'm joking, which is even less funnier. Yes, that was a grammar joke. Yes, that was me pointing out that it was a grammar joke. Yes, it wasn't funny initially and even less funnier pointing it out. Oy vey.

Eating: Appetite has remained completely stable since August last. Faboo. Also alcohol related? Who knows? Maybe not. Maybe it was alcohol related at that time. Which still means it was. The Korean food obsession that started last November lasted until May or June when it relented. Literally Korean food almost every day. I still go for Korean when I think about it, but I no more have to think about where was the place I went least recently to decide where to go. Aigoo.

So what have I been doing? Reading and mindfulness practice has been the all-permeating focus. But mindfulness is more of a Zen thing and I've been playing and fiddling more with Vajrayana, so I should just say practice, mindfulness being a part of it. Pushing the teachings and my understanding the best I can without a guru. No great, mind-opening, satori-like breakthrough, but that's not a focus; not something I'm striving for. More slow immersion into my understanding with tangible, experiential moments of getting things. Applying whatever whenever, focusing on energies. Everything is energy. Energy equals emcee squared (on a total aside, to date there surprisingly has been no notable rock band that has named itself E=mc², but there was a white rapper who went under the name MC Squared).

K-pop girl group obsession and immersion has remained unabated. A lot of time spent watching YouTube videos. But with YouTube videos it's not just K-pop. I watch science lectures and documentaries. There's a "World Science Festival" channel where I watch videos on cosmology and astrophysics.

I watch a channel called "Asian Boss" which features vox pop videos in various Asian countries (at least once in the U.S.) asking people on the street about various topical topics. I think they edit videos for the most intelligent responses, which is refreshing and totally opposite of U.S. talk shows where they do the vox pop thing asking simple questions, but then air the most ridiculous, stupid-sounding people.

I also pay attention to a channel called "China Uncensored", which has sarcastic "news" videos about China-related topics, mostly pointing out China's hypocrisy and unfriendly or hostile relations with other countries. The sarcasm makes the outrage palatable. I like sarcasm, in case you haven't noticed. Wait! Was that sarcasm?! Was I being sarcastic talking about sarcasm?! Good grief. I'm having a crisis of (being) meta.

Back to the South Korea fetish, I follow a few South Korean YouTube vlogs. Apparently professional vloggers. They make money off of it. It's totally voyeuristic watching these people going through certain days they decide to video and narrate. I don't know how I feel about it. It's fascinating watching slices of these people's young women's lives, but it's not prurience. True, they are attractive but that's just the dressing, the bait, the aesthetic. It's the same with K-pop. I'm sure the boy groups are putting out just as good music as girl groups if it were just about the music, but for the pop genre, my aesthetic leans towards the girls. Same with golf, mind you. You couldn't pay me to watch men's golf, but I'll watch LPGA tournaments when sports channels choose to air them (NB: they won't if there's men's or motor sports or such boring bullshit to air).

It's the lives that interest me, the living life that they are doing which I'm not. The relating with other people, the moving through their cities/lives/world, neither of which I'm doing. They are reminders of what I'm not doing, what I may have used to have done when I was younger but don't even want anymore. And there is that tension between feeling I want to be a part of something and the reality that I totally don't.

Branching out of those videos, just recently I did a brief spate of watching videos of people showing their apartments in Seoul (still the Korean fetish). Again, it's just the look at and fascination of the lives going on. All those people doing something. Is there anyone doing the worthless nothingness I'm doing?

There's a class of apartments in Seoul that I don't think we have in Taiwan called goshiwon, which are tiny, basic apartments originally meant for students cramming for national exams. Mostly foreigners and students on a budget use them now, but they remind me of my ideal when I first moved to Taiwan. I wanted to live a simple hermit-like existence, and a goshiwon would've fit the ideal perfectly.

Now I look at my apartment and all the stuff I've accumulated and this is luxury compared to tiny goshiwons. This is my karma. I haven't torn myself and my ego down enough to deserve living in a goshiwon. I probably couldn't survive a goshiwon. I'd be like, "I gotta get out of this situation", and I could because I could afford it. I live in an apartment where I had the luxury of being an insomniac and baby it. Luxury of all my perceived problems without the added stresses of the perceived inconveniences of a goshiwon.

What made me think I could be a monk? I didn't deserve it. I haven't karmically earned it. My karma is still such "bad" enough that I tend towards comfort and luxury. In another life, I could easily become the hungry ghost my mother is in this life. That's the harsh possibility. Wow, that escalated quickly.

Last and least, since last December when cable TV went down for two months (I don't know if it's related; could be), I've been spending at least two hours a day with a bass in hand, plugged into my Korg PX5D and connected to iTunes and working on ear training along with K-pop songs. Why? I don't know. I'm not trying to do anything, it's not about making music or practicing bass or being a musician or anything. It may be closure to my discarded "musician" identity. I recognize now that I was never good enough to be a musician. I'm not talented, I never learned music nor got to know it, and I certainly never practiced near enough to be a musician. And if not any sort of "formal" musician, it behooves me to admit that despite my love of music and trying to make it, I was also not passionate enough to be any sort of musician.

Maybe it's an afterglow goodbye gesture towards musicianship. Ear training is one of those things I never got and never practiced as a skill. I'm just trying to see if I can improve my ear training, and that's it. It's not going to make me a musician, it's not going to make me know music. It's just training to listen to notes and develop a sense of what intervals sound like, where to go for the next note. I daresay it hasn't been a totally hopeless endeavor. It has been evidence that if I had started ear training early enough, in my teens, I could've been OK at it. I have good sessions where my fingers find the right notes without even thinking, and bad days where I feel hopelessly tone deaf and flounder about the fretboard hitting notes only after the second or third guess.

K-pop is particularly good for this because the songs are written by professional musicians applying theory, meaning there is a structure to the progressions, unlike rock which a lot is by feel and if theory is followed it's just happenstance. The theory-following structure makes a lot of K-pop predictable (they love their circle of fifths), which is good for ear training, but the writers are interesting enough to put in lots of twists and surprises to challenge ear training.

Ah, it all comes back to me. Another YouTube channel I pay attention to is ReacttotheK, a group of classical music students who react to K-pop. I generally avoid reaction videos as pointless and varying degrees of stupid, but it was interesting listening to people who know music, who pronounce "timbre" correctly, who know the difference between a piano, horns and an elbow, and had something intelligent to say about the songs.

Hearing them use music terms I recognize but have forgotten reminded me how lacking my music education has been, including ear training. That's what inspired me when cable TV went dark to at least try to do some ear training as a last gasp of musicianhood. I can grasp ear training, whereas I couldn't get music theory even if Kim Jong Un threatened to nuke Seoul unless I mastered music theory. I would pretend to try to do it and stall as long as I could to buy time for Seoul to be evacuated.

And bam, I found the gateway video that hooked me:

2017 mix CDs

It seems like there should have been a sea change in the K-pop girl group scene in 2017 with the epidemic I mentioned before of girl groups disbanding, losing members or falling into limbo with inactivity or no news to the point of potential irrelevance. It was shocking. Yet here I am with no problem still filling two CDs for 2017. New groups have emerged amidst new trends and new top groups. Same as it ever was.

All the extra video links are supplementary videos that I enjoy. The full stage "camcorders" are room sound quality (poor), but they capture the full choreography and the audience noise, and are the closest facsimile of what it might be like to actually be there. I started linking the unofficial stage mixes by a user whose editing skills are amazing in 2016 and continue here (they also serve as a terrific review of fashions and variations girl groups go through in the course of a promotion). And then other various and sundry videos that I like.

(updated 1/15/2019)
2017 mix CD, part one (zip download):
1. Girl Front (Odd Eye Circle (LOOΠΔ)) (music video)
2. Baby Face (Cosmic Girls (WJSN)) (official audio)
3. Rookie (Red Velvet) (full stage camcorder, stage mix)
4. I Don't Like Your Girlfriend (Weki Meki) (live version, full stage camcorder, funny relay version)
5. Excuse Me (AOA) (full stage camcorder, unofficial stage mix)
6. Irony (Park Bo Ram) (audio only)
7. Bippity Boppity Boo (Berry Good) (full stage camcorder, unofficial stage mix)
8. Yes I Am (Mamamoo) (full stage camcorder, ad-lib compilation stage mix (captions recommended), unofficial stage mix)
9. No Thanxxx (Epic High) (lyric video) (audio only)
10. The Weatherforecastors (All Day Sunny) (Grace) (audio only)
11. Aloha (Pristin)
12. Signal (Twice) (full stage camcorder, unofficial stage mix)
13. Gashina (Sunmi) (dancers gender reversed version)
14. Love Me (Lee Hyori) (audio only)
15. Jealousy (Baek Ah Yeon)
16. Night Rather Than Day (EXID) (full stage camcorder, live version)
17. Love Cherry Motion (Choerry (LOOΠΔ))
18. Some (Bolbbalgan4)
19. Listen to This Song (DIA) (official audio)
20. I Think I Love U (Sonamoo) (full stage camcorder, unofficial stage mix)
21. Nalari (S.E.T) (full stage camcorder)
22. Only U (Laboum) (full stage camcorder)
23. Roopretelcham (Elris)

2017 mix CD, part two:
1. WoW! (Lovelyz) (full stage camcorder, unofficial stage mix)
2. Happy (Cosmic Girls (WJSN)) (unofficial stage mix, full stage camcorder)
3. Heart Attack (Chuu (LOOΠΔ))
4. Bing Bing (AOA) (full stage camcorder)
5. Wee Woo (Pristin) (full stage camcorder, unofficial stage mix)
6. Will You Go Out With Me? (DIA) (full stage camcorder, live stage, Eunchae focus cam because super cute, unofficial stage mix)
7. Red Flavor (Red Velvet) (full stage camcorder, Seulgi focus cam, unofficial stage mix)
8. Dlwlma (IU)
9. Stars (Rothy)
10. In the Rain (Kisum)
11. Pow Pow (Elris) (full stage camcorder, unofficial stage mix)
12. Would You Like? (Tymee) (lyric video) (audio only)
13. Rolly (Good Day)
14. DDD (EXID) (full stage camcorder, funny parts switch version, even funnier parts switch audio over live version)
15. Last Carnival (Juniel)
16. Pastry (Nine Muses) (audio only)
17. Kiss on the Lips (Melody Day)
18. Love is Sudden (MIXX)
19. Everyday I Love You (feat. Haseul) (Vivi (LOOΠΔ))
20. Glass Shoes (fromis_9)
21. Twinkle (Lovelyz) (unofficial stage mix, full stage camcorder)
22. Hz (Hashtag) (audio only)
23. Heart Shaker (Twice) (live version, full stage camcorder, unofficial stage mix)
24. Hwi Hwi (Laboum) (full stage camcorder, unofficial stage mix)

2016 mix CDs

Future life resonance. I've been eating Korean food almost every day since about the beginning of December. I have just about every Korean restaurant within a two miles radius mapped out in my head and continue to note and target the few that I've missed.

Truth to tell, I've never been this way about Korean food. Not like I am with Mexican or Italian. Two of the Korean restaurants were around when I first moved to this neighborhood almost 10 years ago and quite honestly I went years without going to either.

Now, I inexplicably melt at how good they all are. My knowledge and palette for Korean food isn't that sophisticated and I end up ordering the same things, but it demonstrates what I've heard from Korean food shows about local cuisines all around Korea being different. It's reflected in restaurants in Taiwan. You can order bibimbap at 12 different restaurants, and they'll all be different.

There are Korean restaurants who now recognize me as a loyal regular, coming in reliably at least every week or other, but they don't know they're just one of a veritable revolving door of Korean restaurants who all recognize me as a loyal regular. I feel like a cheap whore. Well, the opposite. I'm a cheap Korean restaurant John.

It confounds me. You eat so much of any cuisine, you're gonna get tired of it. And it's not happening with a cuisine towards which I've never shown any particular affinity. That's why I attribute it to a future life resonance. It's like "where is this coming from?".

Also since the beginning of December have been winter weather patterns; this year they've fluctuated quite a lot. When it got really cold right from the start, I feared it was going to be a long winter. Previous years' temperatures were mild until late January. But so far this season there have been very nice short stretches of warm temperatures in the 70s. Short stretches of rain, some hard, but not constant rain like in previous years. And stretches of low to mid-50s, brittle cold in a country where homes don't have heating. Very variable, not at all brutal. Yet.

Oh, you know, there may have been a trigger for the Korean food frenzy. Several months ago I watched a "behind the scenes" video of a rookie K-pop girl group and they were eating throughout it. At the very end, Lucy lifts the yellow box and I could see the name on it, Bobby Box. Just for shits and giggles, I searched it on google maps because I'm a google maps geek. I expected locations in Korea, but was surprised to get a hit in Taipei! I went there the very next day and have been going there once or twice a week since.



There's this thing in Korea called 'mukbang' (Japan too, I think, but I don't know what they call it) which are videos of people eating. They're popular because apparently it's very pleasing to watch people enjoying good food. I can't argue with that. This video qualifies as mukbang.

So much for that one-off insomnia. Front-end this time. Of course no one yet knows the source of chronic insomnia, but it's like a switch that doesn't turn off.

Normally when going to sleep, there is something like a switch in the brain that tells the body to stand down and go to sleep. In chronic insomniacs, that switch just doesn't flip. In back-end insomnia, the switch flips but then comes on again after a certain amount of time.

You lie there and sleep just doesn't come, the switch just doesn't flip.

As long as I couldn't sleep, I turned on the LPGA Canadian Open final round live and watched So Yeon Ryu win, beating Na Yeon Choi. I love both players, either of them winning is awesome to me. So Yeon Ryu has a charm and a smile that lights up a room. Na Yeon Choi is just the coolest ever.

Korea resonance.

The Five Gospels

Over the past few years, I've been reading a lot on the so-called Christian "Gnostic" Gospels. Not to completely rehash and to oversimplify, they were the doctrinal losing side in the early Jesus movement over the debate about what Jesus taught.

Ultimately when the canon was compiled, these teachings were outlawed and suppressed for 1700 years, but have recently been uncovered with ongoing scholarship being done on them.

The Gospel of Mary Magdalene was uncovered in the late 1800s, while the bulk of the writings were uncovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in the late 1940s, and finally the Gospel of Judas, after a long journey which nearly destroyed it, was first published in 2006.

Also to briefly rehash, I might think my interest in the Gnostic Gospels might be part of this future life resonance theory I play with. If I am angling for a rebirth in South Korea, if any at all, I'm confident that even if I'm born in a Christian environment such as South Korea, I will be able to find my way back on my path.

The texts are readily available, along with more and more books being written on them for anyone interested and not in the mind control of the church. Anyone who is intrigued by the question "There's more (than what a Roman emperor endorsed as the official teachings of Jesus)?" can now find and read about the early Jesus movement and the arguments and controversies over the teachings that were raging.

I imagine that even if I were raised as a Christian in a future life (assuming what I shouldn't assume – that reincarnation is linear in time), I would find my way to the Gnostic Gospels. I'm fairly confident it is in my karma to be inquisitive by nature and to be one of the people to ask, "There's more?!".

Me: "Well, what is it?"
Christian: "It's heresy, blasphemy"
"But Jesus taught it?"
"I don't know. I don't think so. Anyway it's wrong"
"Says who?"
"The church fathers"
"Oh. OK. Who were the church fathers?"
"I'm not sure. It has to do something with the Roman emperor Constantine who convened the Nicene Council. You can Google it"
"OK, I will"
"On the other hand, maybe you shouldn't"

Much of the Gnostic Gospels focuses on the hidden, esoteric spiritual interpretation of the teachings of Jesus, as opposed to the moralistic, institutional, authority-driven interpretation of the current canon. Today, as must have been the case in the early Jesus movement, they appeal to a completely different character and psychological/spiritual make-up than those who favored the straight-forward and direct, and even political, nature of what became the canon.

I was surprised recently to realize that I've never actually read the four canonical Gospels except in portions. I only realized it upon finding a book called The Five Gospels.

The Five Gospels was the result of a project in the late 80s/early 90s by a group called the Jesus Seminar, consisting of about 200 biblical scholars who rendered a modern, scholar-friendly translation of the four canonical Gospels from an original Greek manuscript, plus the gnostic Gospel of Thomas from a Coptic translation from Nag Hammadi.

They then set out to present a scholarly consensus over any quote attributed to Jesus and the likelihood that Jesus himself spoke those words. Consensual certainty that he said something is printed in bold red, certainty that he did not is printed in bold black; and pink and grey are used for weighted votes in between relative consensual certainty.

The reason they included the Gospel of Thomas is that it is simply comprised of alleged quotes by Jesus with no narrative context. Since the project was focused on what Jesus likely actually said, they deemed it appropriate to subject Thomas to the test.

I would say it's a flawed work, for sure, but still fascinating. The criteria for putting words into the mouth of Jesus are based on narrow presuppositions imposed by the seminar. The voting method over a period of years also results in inconsistencies, which the authors reveal in the commentary.

Actually, never having read the canonical gospels didn't mean much. Just growing up in the U.S., just about all of the stories were familiar. It doesn't matter if you're Christian or not, if you grow up in the U.S., you're bombarded with Christian references your whole life.

(Even in the subtlest ways. In high school, a group of friends were playing Trivial Pursuit. Two of the participants were brothers, Mark and John Smylie. The question was what are the four gospels of the New Testament. One of the brothers on the other team rattled off "Matthew, Mark, Luke and John", and we were all blown away how they knew that as easily as any of the rest of us could name The Beatles. He casually pointed to his brother, "John", pointed to himself "Mark, and our dad's a pastor, if we had two more brothers, they would have been Matthew and Luke". And that's how I learned the names of the four gospels culturally. The only Luke I knew prior was Skywalker, son of Vader Anakin)

One thing I found fascinating was that just about any familiar quotation, repeated ad infinitum in U.S. culture, was voted black. Jesus likely never said those quotes, but were attributed to him by members of the later movement trying to push their interpretation of what he taught.

This is a good place to note that I realize even though the Gnostic Gospels appeal to me, they also are iterations of positions in a fervent debate. I think they are right and the canon got it completely wrong, but there are billions of Christians who disagree (no doubt Christians who don't even want it discussed or out in the open and would prefer the suppression and censorship to continue).

Also, just reading the red quotations, this Jesus character strikes me as someone enlightened, imparting radical wisdom that was intended to shake the normative sensibilities and mores of the day. I agree with the assessment of scholars that Jesus wasn't into institution building.

That seems to indicate to me that if he were alive today, he would rail against the institution of the Christian church. He would rail against the conformity, control and conservatism of the church. A red quote widely attributed to Jesus can be directed to many Christians today: You point out the sliver in someone else's eye while ignoring the timber in your own.

He wasn't about placating people or making people feel good about being moral and righteous. He was about shaking things up. If you thought something and mindlessly accepted it as the norm, he would say something to disturb you.

Something the Jesus Seminar posits, which I have no comment on whatsoever but think is quite funny, is that he ate well and drank freely. I think they call him a glutton and a drunkard.

To Christians today, those are vices to be eschewed, but they make sense to someone trying to shake the norms of society. I think he did live under Jewish law because that was the water in which he was a fish, but I think he constantly pushed their boundaries to the extent that the law was being abused by temple authorities.

And even if he was glutton and a drunkard, his teachings understood correctly were good. They aimed toward liberation. I'd take a good teaching by a glutton and drunkard over a bad teaching by someone self-professed to be moral and righteous any day. 

It seems to me natural now to be fascinated by Christianity, but it's not. I never was much interested in Christianity until the Gnostic Gospels. The vast majority of my exposure to Christianity was cultural – the devotional side of blind, uncritical faith which never resonated with me.

I did take a course at Oberlin which did critically cover the historical underpinnings of Christianity and I loved that course. Mostly because it didn't deal with the myth of Christianity, which is what most Christians today believe. Myth comprises the reality of most Christians because they for most part reject the scholarship, which aims at getting to the historical realities.

Before the Music Dies

I have a few more cable channels thanks to my landlord upgrading the telecom around here. Shouldn't complicate things too much. I now have an extra Korean entertainment channel, expanded Discovery, news and HBO channels and Sundance Channel.

A primary gain from the extra Korean entertainment channel is a program which highlights working South Korean bands of various genres. With my recent unhealthy and unholy penchant towards K-pop girl groups, this program makes it clear that the Korean music scene is, in fact, more variegated and diverse.

Rock, live music, musicianship and people who are likely not so impressed by the international popularity of K-pop are alive and well in Korea, granted none of the bands on the show, albeit listenable and not terrible, have grabbed me. It's still good to know it's there.

And irony not missed, one of the first films I watched on the Sundance Channel was a documentary called Before the Music Dies, generally about the commercialization of the music industry in the U.S. The important point to me is that everything disparaging that is said or described about how bad music is manufactured in the U.S. is precisely how it's done in Korea.

The difference, I might defensively flail, is that there's no question about the nature of K-pop in Korea. There is no argument about art vs. commerce. I'm a fan of K-pop girl groups and not once has it crossed my mind that this is art or has integrity in any way.

K-pop idols are people who want to be performers, but don't have the artistic inspiration or wherewithal to make it on their own from the ground up. They have talents and are highly trainable. The entertainment agencies aren't interested in art. They're not trying to make good music. They only want to make money.

To the process vs. product argument, by process, K-pop is by definition bad music. As for product, as I've mentioned over and over again, I don't know why I like K-pop and no other manufactured pop from other countries. I put it to better songwriting, but that's hardly quantifiable.

I might mention, if I haven't already, it is essential to my fandom that I can't understand the lyrics, which I'm sure are so banal as to be insulting. That's a given. I'm only a fan because I can't understand the lyrics.

Another given is that if I saw the music collections of the celebrity idols of whom I'm a fan, I would cringe and wilt and scream in anguish to the skies, "whhhhyyyyy?!!!". I'm sure they listen to shit that I despise and would likely not be impressed by my music collection, either.

Mind you that's very different from musicians I genuinely respect. I would want to know their sources and I'd likely listen to and respect, if not personally like, what they listen to. Fuck, I don't even like Eric Clapton, totally overrated, but he's real enough that I'd totally be interested in who his influences were.

This is future life projecting. If the Hinduistic/Buddhistic model of reincarnation is somewhat valid, and if it is Korea to where I'm angling a rebirth, then maybe it's not a place that will be jolting or shocking towards my samsaric karma.

That is to say that if I am reborn in Korea, it would be the result of attachments and not-quite-enlightened views of being that would manifest, but I'd still be OK to find myself on my path. Penchant towards K-pop girl groups notwithstanding.

I now consider myself to have been sick for quite some time, finally having come out of it in early October. I've been trying to trace how long I've been sick, and so far I've found a mention of having no appetite in November 2011, so it was probably more or less fully formed by then.

That squares fairly with my memory that I was afflicted for the entirety of 2012 and 2013 until October. It probably started in 2011 sometime after a trip to New Jersey in April of that year.

I'm guessing it didn't suddenly start, but slowly, amorphously manifest through my lifestyle of sitting in front of a computer all day, obsessively watching Korean videos and TV shows, and then getting out for only three or four hours in the evening to read at a library or bookstore and eat if I could manage it.

It manifested through certain symptoms in a way that didn't point to a particular pathology. Actually, in retrospect, if I went to a doctor, I think they would've taken a shortcut diagnosis and labeled it depression.

- I wasn't doing anything productive, nor felt any need to be.
- I had no social life, nor wanted one.
- I had no appetite (but wanted to eat as I also obsessively watched food shows on Travel & Living Channel).
- I had gastronomic or intestinal problems. My stomach wasn't behaving and was a source of daily discomfort.
- alcohol consumption maintained at alcoholic levels and even increased.
- I stopped morning sitting somewhere along the way, as I felt it no longer was contributing to mindfulness practice. There was no difference between sitting and the rest of my day, so I deemed it appropriate to stop.
- I developed rosacea! My parents visited Taiwan in December 2011, and that's when it started since I remember they asked about a pimple on my face. It didn't concern me as pimples go away after a few days, but this went on for 10 months. It resurfaced briefly during Sadie's visit in 2013, and it's been touch and go since then.
- Insomnia has been a constant, sometimes better, sometimes worse. Insomnia and rosacea are probably independent of whatever else was going on symptomatically.
- It became fully formed during this period that I had no interest in doing anything I had done before that established my identity.
- I was fully happy just lying on the bed all day listening to music. Music has constantly and consistently been a source of pleasure.
- Mindfulness reading and practice was continuous all through this. 
- Korea, Korea, Korea. Possible future life resonance possibly continuing, and if it was beckoning, that may be a source of psychic discord (die already so you can be re-born and continue the journey).

The only problem with the depression diagnosis is . . . I was pretty "happy" all through this. I didn't feel depressed at all. I had to take the physical discomfort in stride, but at no time could I say I was "unhappy".

Was I manifesting physiological signs of depression without the emotional or mental baggage? The psychiatric community would have a field day with that suggestion.

I'm trying to figure out how to put 2012 into perspective. Without boring the fuck out of myself. 2012 was different from the two previous years, but the two years prior were a progression that culminated into the habit of 2012. 

January 2010 was when I stopped working (quit my job at the Post), and that is a defining constant of the past three years, but 2012 was the year I basically lost interest in doing any and everything, and pretty much every single day, with minor variations, was the same idea for the entire year.

The routine was characterized by complete social avoidance. I met up with a total of three people. I also avoid my neighbors who live in the rooms on this same floor. I'm friendly saying 'hi' when I happen to run into one of them, but that's it.

In fact, my daily routine neurotically involved avoiding them by getting out of the apartment in the late afternoon before they started coming home from whatever they did during the day, presumably work. I'd come back after 9 o'clock or so as if I was coming home from . . . something; like somewhere I had to be with something to do. I know, neurotic.

There was some cycling later in the year because of the bike GPS I found, which is different from previous years when either 2010 or 2011 I stopped being able to drag me and my bike out of the apartment. Otherwise, very little sunlight was seen. I don't get direct sunlight in my room.

I constantly tried to turn out the lights and get to bed at or before 3 a.m. That rarely happened. Mostly I was pleased if I could accomplish that by 4. But usually couldn't.

Getting up was an entirely different and varied affair, often depending on insomnia. And my complete lack of interest in wanting to do anything made hours lying in bed listening to music completely reasonable. Even enjoyable.

I guess one affirmative development this past year was not only maintaining quiet sitting for 45 minutes after getting up for most of the year, not every day, but also adding a second 45 minute session afterwards, mostly concentrating on internal energies, inspired by tantra and Dzogchen teachings, which I've apparently been absorbing and integrating for years without even knowing it.

Otherwise, as I've noted before, all of my previous interests that used to identify me were pretty much completely gone. Listening to music has been a singular enjoyment, and a lot of time was spent on things Korea. The possible future life resonance thing.

If I'd been more diligent or efficient in dying like I was supposed to sometime during these past few years, my theory being I was heading for South Korea in my next life, and having failed to accomplish that goal, metaphysical or psychic resonances of that life-to-be have started to inexplicably appear in this life, as I've previously noted that I'd never been particularly interested in Korea despite plenty of exposure to the people and culture.

As for this year, my goal is still the same. Whether I'll accomplish it or not, I have no idea. I'm not going to sweat it. I'm boring the fuck out of myself.

My day to days are simply getting from day to day. Can't say I'm particularly happy, but certainly not unhappy. I have nothing to complain about, but I do sometimes and then I stop myself.

I don't feel particularly desirous for anything, but I'm aware of my human nature, which by nature has the concept of desire in the mix. I'm at a measure of peace with myself, but I still grapple with my negativity, staring it down as an improper and unworthy way to be in this world.

I've never been one to bore easily, it's quite easy for me to amuse myself uselessly, but my day to day has taken it to epic levels. I'm wasting my life away in epic fashion (but aren't many people similarly wasting their lives away? . . . only much more busy, filled with things they do to give their lives meaning, but ultimately may be vain and fruitless).

Over the past recent years, I've lost most interest in all of the things I used to do that identified me. And at about the same time I've developed this "thing", this resonance over Korea. It's internal and not something to act on. I'm not going to start taking language classes or traveling to Korea or trying to meet Korean people. Not even re-connecting with the Korean people in my past. I'm not idealizing Korea, I'm fully aware of the faults of Korean society.

But a thought occurred to me that I totally don't believe in, but I'm gonna float it out anyway. With this whole unsuccessful suicide thing looking to becoming the story of my life (even though I feel suicide is my goal and purpose in life as a culmination of my understanding), I had this bizarre thought that on some plane of existence, in some imaginal or psychic realm, I have died and this psychic part of me is continuing on despite my not having died yet.

That psychic part of me got fed up with me blithering on about suicide, and finally said, "You keep being undecided about your physical self that you're obviously so attached to, I'm moving on". And there went all the things I used to enjoy, the things I used to do that identified me. Died.

And as I seem to have this idea that my next life will actually be in South Korea, in this imaginal, maybe mystic realm, my current consciousness has become very sensitive towards imprints and stimuli of South Korean culture.

If I had actually gone through with it and was re-born in South Korea, I'd be experiencing the real deal with no need for psychic or mystic realms. But since I'm not there physically, my current consciousness is responding to stimuli and imprints of where I should be. 

I have no theoretical mechanics to offer to even try to explain this. Karma, or the same metaphysical substrate that might theoretically carry karma, may be involved. Maybe a sort of "reverse karma". When I do die and if I end up in Korea next, actual karma and this reverse karma just meld, and what is disjunct now come together.

As weird as that is even for me, the universe is a very weird place. The further scientific exploration takes our understanding, the weirder things get. So why not?

Future Life Resonances: Christianity

I grew up in the U.S., a Christian country, but nothing about Christianity ever rang true to me. As a youth, I recall being exposed to Sunday school. I even have an extant copy of the New Testament from a completely forgotten Sunday school teacher who apparently had taken to me. Touching, as she wrote a message to me in it, but it's just an anomaly to me now.

Back then, there was absolutely nothing known about the teachings of Jesus other than what was contained in the canon, promulgated by the Roman Empire. Shall I emphasize that point? Promulgated by the Roman Empire.

Since then, scholarship on the so-called "Gnostic Gospels" has come a long way, along with the discovery and multiple translations and analyses of the "Gospel of Judas". I actually didn't even know how vilified the Judas character was in the Roman/Pauline Christian canon that is dominant today.

So back to future life resonances. It did occur to me that being reincarnated in South Korea might mean being born into a Christian household. It isn't a major concern. I do believe that once firmly on the path, we will always find our way back to the path in whatever lifetime or circumstance.

Then I realize how much I've been interested in and reading about the Gnostic Gospels recently. I think I even mentioned that if those alternative gospels had been available and taught, I might not have been so turned-off by Christianity. They make sense in terms of divine insight, rather than the controlling brain-washing of canonical Christianity with its superficial morality.

I'm inclined to take this interest in this other side of Christianity that has been suppressed for 1700 years as also possibly a future life resonance. Maybe I'll be born in South Korea, maybe I'll be born into a Buddhist household, maybe a Christian household, maybe like in this life a non-religious household. But no matter, I think I'll still continue on this path, and if I'm born in a Christian household, I'll be karmically/subconsciously primed against the current Christian canon.

If karma really does have force, I'll still question canonical Christian hegemony even if surrounded by it, but now that the gnostic teachings and scholarship on them are available and being spread, I'm not at all concerned that I can still find my way onto the path, even if surrounded by Christianity.

I mentioned before how disappointed I was in reading Elaine Pagel and Karen King's conclusion in their otherwise incredible scholarship in their book "Reading Judas". They opined that what comprises the Christian canon needn't be revisited to include the recent findings in the gnostic gospels because of the centuries of guidance the canon has provided, ignoring the centuries of harm, destruction and suffering that has happened in the name of the canon.

And they are conveniently willing to ignore teachings of truth, or more accurately the ability of people to determine what is truth when presented with a full spectrum of divergent teachings. I don't necessarily condemn them for their opinion, but I definitely don't agree with it.

Aside from it being their opinion, it is also a reality that 1700 years of brain-washing is not easily erased. Current Christians versed in the canon are deeply convicted in their belief that anything outside of what was decided by a council (Nicene) appointed by a Roman emperor (Constantine – who might as well be George W. Bush as far as I'm concerned) as gospel is heresy.

"Revisiting the canon" is simply not an acceptable option according to the church and unthinkable to the vast majority of Christians. It's not unlike one physics professor I had in college who cut me off when I mentioned "faster than the speed of light", and wouldn't even consider my question if that was the basis of it. Scientific canon states nothing in the classical physical universe can go faster than the speed of light. It's still cosmic law, but physicists today are more open-minded and willing to consider thought experiments whereby the speed of light isn't the cosmic speed limit.

No, scholarship into the other teachings of Jesus that are being uncovered are likely to remain in the realm of academic scholarship, and not likely to be considered as part of the Christian faith anytime soon, whether or not it was, in fact, an aspect of what Jesus taught, which I think it was. While what modern Christians believe for most part has little to zero to do with what Jesus taught. It is what it is, I have no problem with their faith and belief and how they pursue it, but it's simply not what Jesus taught. They changed it and should own up to it, even if it means they made truth out of fairy dust.

Anyone who takes such scholarship seriously would be, like author and scholar Bart Ehrman, who was a Bible thumping evangelist in his youth, forced out of the church, voluntarily or not. He now considers himself an agnostic but writes in a solely Christian context, and I think that's kind of too bad. Reading the Gnostic Gospels, even I'm convinced that Jesus was a big deal with a radical spiritual message in his time.

If punk band Mission of Burma was onto something when they wrote "The Roman Empire never died/It just became the Catholic Church", then the Christian canon is not about the truth or the true teachings of Jesus, but about control and domination. And 1700 years of control and domination is a powerful thing. Powerful . . . "karma".

Actually, all I wanted to say in this post is that my recent exposure to so many things related to the so-called Gnostic Gospels, the alternate teachings of Jesus regarding true divinity (including these two documentaries: The Gospel of Judas and The Lost Gospels), might also be what I term "future life resonances", similar to geekiness about Korea.

WordsCharactersReading time

Nothing about Korea resonated until I came to Taiwan in 2006 and met classmate Hyun Ae who introduced me to K-pop after I asked her to make me a mix CD of music she liked. I'd been swapping mix CDs with people for years and gotten into bands and music as a result, but nothing compares to the impact and change K-pop brought. And it wasn't necessarily about that mix CD. Hyun Ae's CD may not have even been the start. I liked songs off that CD and most of it went into my iTunes collection, but it didn't make me a dedicated K-pop fan. It was just good music I was introduced to.

YouTube also started becoming big in 2006 and I credit YouTube for helping launch the second Hallyu wave, which otherwise might have been contained in South Korea without the international exposure YouTube brought. Trying to reconstruct my personal history of K-pop, I recall an early YouTube video of a karaoke competition variety show called Korean Madness catching my attention. Aside from those teenage high school students being hilarious and full of personality (Hyun Ae informed me later that the show was a competition and that those girls ultimately won), I ended up liking the song (the original is played at the end of the clip and, yes, I have it in my collection now) as well as the other songs they sang in the course of the competition. Those girls had good taste.

The next step was the Wonder Girls "Tell Me" dance phenomena. Wonder Girls debuted in 2007 and their dance for "Tell Me" went viral with high school students, flight attendants, military personal, traffic police, etc. etc. uploading themselves doing the Tell Me choreography. I watched a lot of those, starting with one high school student, and got into the song. Isolating the backing track, it's quite groovy and subtle, although I'm sure I didn't notice how cool it was right away.

Hyun Ae and I had fallen out of touch by the time I saw the video for Girls' Generation's (SNSD) Gee (2009) on MTV probably in 2010. That was when it took off. Initially, part of me was practically offended by what was on my TV screen, likening it to awful, superficial, garish, candy J-pop. What the hell is this crap? the snob in me sneered, reaching for the remote to change the channel, and I pointed the remote at the TV and . . . didn't. Not only did I stand there with the remote pointing at the TV for the rest of the song, afterwards I immediately went online to look them up.

So much of that video and song should have had me cringing. Even now I don't know what attracted me more to the video against what should have repulsed me. I should've considered it god awful and I wouldn't blame anyone clicking that link thinking it is god awful. But it's going to be a classic K-pop song if it isn't already and I agree with that. It wasn't pivotal only to me. SNSD had debuted in 2007 to much acclaim domestically in South Korea, but it was "Gee" that made them famous throughout Asia and led to a string of hits that made them the reigning queens of K-pop all through Asia.

Very soon after that, Invincible Youth started airing in Taiwan with two members of Girls' Generation (Sunny and Yuri) cast and I watched religiously even though it only had Chinese subtitles. The other cast members introduced me to other girl groups leading the second Hallyu wave (T-ara, 4minute, Brown Eyed Girls, Secret and Kara). K-pop became an obsession since 2010. No explanation except that it's a future life resonance. It seems I've determined that my next locale of rebirth will be South Korea and all this is an indication of it.

Future Life Resonances

So this blog has a label "future life resonances". To recap, "future life resonances" is a spin-off of "past life resonances", whereby under some flaky theory of reincarnation, we might suspect that aspects of our current lives and beings are the results, or resonances, of past lives by force of karma.

Karma, I very unscientifically propose, being an aspect of a natural energy substrate of the universe that is as unknown as the scientifically proposed dark energy. The form this natural energy substrate has taken with biological beings on this planet may be what we think of as consciousness or awareness. It's what enables all living beings to interact with our environment, from bacteria to human beings.

In the cycle of death and rebirth as envisioned by people who believe in reincarnation, karmic impressions are able to be transferred from one lifetime to future lifetimes. It's not scientifically testable. It is attested to by masters of various esoteric traditions. For laypeople, it's only intuitive in the most flaky way possible. "Intuitive in the most flaky way possible" is maybe a proper definition of "faith".

But whereas past life resonances look at our current lives and habits to think about what we might have been or what issues we might have dealt with in previous lives, future life resonances look at our current lives to imagine or project what or where we might be reincarnated in future lives.

Oh, and as far as I know, it's my creation. I didn't read or hear about it from anyone else, and it only occurred to me in relation to this Korea thing.

My implication is that my inexplicable attraction to South Korea so late in this life, and assuming this is late in my life (anyway it's later in my life), may be an indication that I'm angling towards a rebirth in South Korea, whether by choice or by force of karma.

I've had plenty of exposure to South Korean culture and people before, but never until now did it become a near obsessive focus. As early as college I had a Korean roommate for a semester, Myung Soo, and looking back at the people from whom I learned the most from college, he was one of them.

He had come to the U.S. when he was about 10 years old. He was very patriotic and spearheaded a Korean student movement to get Korea included in Oberlin's East Asian Studies department, which at the time only included Japan and China (I know, wtf?).

To the still marginal extent Korean studies are now included at Oberlin is because of his efforts and the stink that he raised. I know because I was at those meetings (drunk, if I remember correctly) with the all-white East Asian Studies faculty (I know, wtf?!) who tried to defend their hegemony.

How can you have an "East Asian" Studies department and not include Korea? Look at a map! They argued that most people were only interested in Japan and China, but that was probably more an expression that they, the all-white fetishizing faculty, were only interested in Japan and China. In the end, I think they realized they had to make more of an effort to promote Korean studies as well.

He was the kind of person who could change people's lives and he did. And he transformed himself, too. Initially, I was very unimpressed by him. He was very materialistic and superficial when I first met him, and I witnessed his changes over the years and after college he went back to L.A. and became a labor organizer. Far more impressive than anything I've done since college.

And, like all Koreans I've met, he was Christian. He actually turned my prejudice against Christianity around to realize all Christians weren't like mainstream white Americans, who I found to be frightening, hypocritical, racist bigots, spewing words of intolerance, hate and evil in God's name, while believing themselves to be righteous and godly.

My exposure to Christians had me thinking that it made sense to me that if Satan were to wage war against God, the most effective strategy would be to subvert and assume the word of God to spread evil, and Christianity was the very language of hate, intolerance and evil, while convincing the weak minded they were agents of God and good.

Myung Soo felled me on my ass just by saying, "Do you think I'm like that?". I hadn't thought of him as Christian, but he forced me to and to tear down that blanket view of Christians.

Still, nothing in my experience with him stirred any interest in Korea or Korean culture. For me at that time, it was all about Japan, a possible past life resonance. Aside from Myung Soo, I continued to have exposure to Korean culture and nothing about Korea resonated.

I met plenty of Korean/Korean Americans after moving to the Bay Area. Among them, I had a Korean American roommate who had graduated from Brown University and knew my brother ("You're Rob Li's brother?!", she said) and nothing Korean was inspired. I had a Korean co-worker who, when she called me inter-office, I would answer the phone in Korean (learned that from Myung Soo), and she swore my pronunciation was perfect.

Nothing until I came to Taiwan in 2006 and had a Korean classmate who introduced me to K-pop after I asked her to make me a mix CD of music she liked.

WordsCharactersReading time

I just realized this blog just passed its 10 year anniversary. The first post was February 12, 2002. How many personal blogs have survived this long? All of the bloggers I connected with back then have long since stopped.

The so-called blogosphere has completely changed since then. Now the blogosphere is filled with pundits and opinion-makers. Any buzz in the blogosphere is about news. Back then it was about personal expression. Individuals who just wanted to say something. I suppose that's what this blog continues to try to be.

And how things have changed for me in 10 years. And not. Suicide was my goal long before this blog was created. Now, 10 years later, I feel I'm closer to that goal than ever before. Meaning 10 years ago, I was a lot farther from that goal than I would've admitted at the time.

Foolish. I was still social back then. I was still engaged. I still did things. Now I'm totally isolated and non-social in a foreign land. I've stopped doing all the things that I considered my identity before. I've stopped playing music altogether. I don't run anymore, I don't cycle except to further my next attempt.

I've completely gone on a tangent, immersing myself in Korean entertainment media that no one I know understands, much less shares. I personally think it's the future life resonance that will have me angling for my next life in South Korea.

I do hope this blog will end soon. I don't see any realistic future otherwise. Yet I still have my attachments. Things I'm clinging to, when nothing whatsoever should be clung to.

This autumn has been a boon for K-pop girl groups with a plethora of comebacks by top acts. In Korean entertainment, "comeback" doesn't refer to a return from some fall from grace. It just means a new song from a group that has already debuted.

They're called "idol" groups, which I think has become a palatable term because of shows like "American Idol". In Korea it just refers to pop music celebrities, and it's a term adopted from the Japanese pop music scene, "idoru", which of course is taken from "idol".

When I first heard the Japanese use of the word several decades back, I didn't like it because the idea of an "idol" or something that is idolized was an afront to respectable musicianship. An idol was something superficial and glossy; an image that could be manufactured. "Real" musicians and songwriters garnered respect.

For the Japanese, any singer or music group popular enough to appear on TV shows was considered an "idoru", including what I consider legitimate rock bands that aren't corporately manufactured, and who write their own music and play their own instruments.

In Korea, that latter group, from what I gather as an outsider, doesn't get much international exposure or attention. Music is almost all corporate and manufactured with relatively few national artists who write and create their own product. And even though that's something that generally offends me everywhere else, I've somehow accepted it in Korea.

I tell myself it's because the songwriting is good. I still think I'm a discerning listener. Otherwise, I'm not sure where my change of heart occurred. It may be midlife crisis, watching these girls half my age strut their stuff, but I insist it's not prurient interest. If the music isn't good, I'm not going to watch or follow them no matter how "sexy" they are.

And I think I've mentioned before that I still can't stand Western, Japanese or Taiwanese pop music on the basis that the songwriting is still offensively bad. I'm still not discounting the possibility of the future life resonance idea, and the fact that I've out of the blue honed in specifically to Korean music and no other, adding that music is my big love in this life, might speak to that.

So be warned, major K-pop girl group geeking out follows, stop reading if it's not a place to which you're willing to go:

So far, this autumn has seen four top acts make their comeback stages. Kara was the first, followed by Brown Eyed Girls a few weeks later, and then finally Secret and Girls' Generation (SNSD) simultaneously began their new promotions head-to-head (note my consistency: members of all four groups were on Invincible Youth).

My personal tastes rate Brown Eyed Girls' "Sixth Sense" as the best quality of these comebacks. The lead track off their album was actually a song called "Hot Shot" which I initially liked better for its Latin groove, but their main promotion was for "Sixth Sense".

Brown Eyed Girls are a bit of an anomaly in the idol scene because three of the four members are considered advanced in age at 30. Only one member is 24 (Ga-in). But they are with a smaller agency and I gather they have a lot more creative and artistic control than younger idol groups on bigger labels. I also heard that Je-a and Miryo earn copyright royalties because Je-a writes and Miryo takes credit for her own raps.

And even though their stage performances have choreography, they are recognized for their vocal talents, and the media has covered their vocal skills during this comeback, highlighted towards the end of "Sixth Sense" after Miryo's rap section when first Je-a hits a big note, followed by Ga-in and Narsha hitting high falsetto notes (I would also note the subtle background vocals during those high notes which are pretty cool, but not necessarily noticeable unless paying attention to them).

When top acts first make their comeback stages, they're usually allowed to perform two songs, one a truncated version of a second song (in this case "Hot Shot") before going into their main promotion:



Secret's "Love is Move" hooked me immediately, so I would rate it as a very close second.

I thought the only thing that would prevent it from taking number one spots on TV programs is that it was directly going against SNSD's comeback, a Daniel and Goliath battle where Secret didn't have a chance. The thing is that SNSD's comeback was supposed to come a few weeks earlier, but then they changed their plans and ended up releasing simultaneously with Secret.

I applaud Secret for not changing their plans as other groups did to avoid competition with SNSD. Secret and their management seemed confident about their product and even if they wouldn't get number ones on the TV programs, they weren't going to change their plans. That I respect.

It's just a rocking, bopping romp that's a lot of fun.



Kara made a splash with the first autumn comeback, "Step", and I rate it third best among them. The synth blare kinda put me off at first, but the track grew on me:



Finally, SNSD came out with their much-hyped comeback, but it was quite a disappointment for me, if not for SNSD fans. The song is still dominating, but to my ears it isn't great. Certainly not as catchy as their two previously promoted songs, the Japanese language Mr. Taxi and last year's Hoot.

The song was hyped as being created by Teddy Riley who was behind Michael Jackson's "Dangerous", but to me that's a big so what? and indicative of what I don't like about corporate pop music in general.

This track has some good qualities and has grown on me through the promotions, but I wouldn't go out of my way to listen to or watch this track. I'm not a big fan of the fact that there is no bass, and therefore lacks oomph.

I can't fault SNSD's execution as they present their parts and choreography professionally and flawlessly. But in the end I think the success of this track lies in the fact that it's SNSD.



Autumn comebacks are still anticipated by Wonder Girls and T-ara (another Invincible Youth member group).

I'm about halfway through watching the Invincible Youth series I mentioned. I started watching the series on Taiwan TV with Chinese subs at around episode 10 and I watched until Taiwan stopped airing it one episode after 3 of the 7 original members left (SNSD's Yuri and Sunny and 4minute's Hyuna). Their replacements were introduced in that episode.

It's really great watching the series with English subs. I remember all of the episodes, and I was pretty good at guessing what was going on, maybe I'm underestimating my ability to catch on to the Chinese subs, but there is also a lot of dialogue that I totally missed.

I remember the final episode with those three members came suddenly, and even more so because it was the second half of an episode, the first half of which was fun and games as usual. The farewell scenes aren't representative of the show, but they do capture what I think is important about human connections.

I've spent my life burning bridges and cutting connections, so it's no wonder the state of my human relations is so negative. It's no wonder that I have no human relations that are playing any role in my wanting to leave.

But that's not to say I don't value human relations and promote good relations between people. If you love someone, tell them you love them. Ozzy said that about his long-lasting marriage with Sharon. He said that he never stopped telling her he loves her and buying her little gifts and doing small things for her. The value of those little things add up to more than big gestures only once in a while.

And yes I'm admitting my human relations are negative, despite my saying that I'm trying to keep a positive spin on everything. I am trying to keep my mindset and outlook positive, or at least not down, but I have to look around me at my life's landscape, and it would be denial for me to say it's not negative.

But despite the negativity of my experience with human relations, I don't want that to be part of my karma. I don't want to be carrying that around like luggage. So again, that's why I'm watching this series through, because it's an expression of what I think is important. It's OK to want such connection. If I can keep the feelings I get out of this show, it's certainly better than what I have now.

Confession time, and more evidence that this next attempt is going to come to naught (even though it has to be a real attempt). Even though a window of opportunity has opened and any day now would be just fine and everyday now has been feeling right for a go, even compelling, I've been putting it off for . . . a TV show.

A Korean TV show.

A Korean variety/reality TV show.

It's called Invincible Youth. The premise of the show is 7 members of the top K-pop girl groups at the time (2009) are sent out to a rural farming village and experience and learn what life is like out there.

Roughly the first half of the show was aired in Taiwan and I got hooked on it, because, well, I'm into K-pop girl groups (Ozzy would not approve).

The important thing for me in watching the show is that, although I might describe the appearance of my living life as having fallen apart, and that I'm not focusing on the negativity, the show has more of the emotional space I'm angling for.

Unlike other Korean variety shows which are solely about self-promotion and entertainment, this show has a lot of heart. On other shows, you don't get to know the celebrities because they're being celebrities on the show.

On this show, they have to be down-to-earth because it's unscripted and very loosely structured. They know they still have to self-promote and entertain and they're constantly poking fun about getting screen time and not being edited out, but their tasks, games and competitions are all impromptu so you get to the heart of their talent and personalities and short-comings. Even their celebrity pretense is presented without pretense.

There are a lot of the warm and fuzzies about the show, tearing up or grinning like an idiot from being touched is common – it's not a show for the cynical and hardened-by-life – but it's also killer funny and they don't hold back when they rip on one another.

The show also uses a still photographer to get the intended effect. The still photographs are notably used during the end credits, and they really capture the feeling and feelings of the show. Really good photography.

I love the show because of the values it presents. It's very resonant to me because it seems to suggest a lot of the meaning of life is about community. Our tribes. You find your tribe and you stick with them through thick and thin to get things done. You work together towards goals and you have fun with it. And winners win and losers lose and it's all good.

It's a lesson I haven't learned and that's why I'm alone in this cave with a plan to abort this life because whatever awaits in my next life, it's gotta be better than this. Ugh, I don't mean that in a negative way, I just don't have the words to express it in the positive way that it's meant. There are plenty of ways my life could be worse than what it is.

There's a lot of love on the show, and even though they were awkward in the beginning, and they're competing, and they rip on each other, you get the sense that lifelong friendships are being formed on the show.

Another aspect of the show that is important to me is the "future life resonance" thing I mentioned before. This recent infatuation with Korean culture is really unexpected and inexplicable. It's not like I've been ignorant about Korea prior, it just never resonated until recently, and now I'm convinced my next life will be in South Korea, inshah'allah.

So I'm filling what I hope will be my last days in this life with indications of where I'm going and what I might strive to learn in my next life.

part deux

I've never read anything about anything like this, but I wonder whether the recent Korea fetish I've developed over the past five years might be something like "future life resonances". Akin to and opposite past life resonances I've written about before, whereby people who believe in it might muse about past lives based on current life patterns, habits and characteristics.

Quirks about me that I can't explain have led me to wonder if I was Japanese in my previous life. My cousin Audrey thinks so. She also has an affinity towards Japan, and she even thinks we were a couple there in a past life. In Kyoto, apparently, although my spidey-sense is not quite that particular (and mind you I find a lot of what my cousin says as suspect). I also think it's possible that in some previous life I was a Native American tracker in the southwestern desert of the U.S.

Those sort of quirks are distinguishable from characteristics that do have an explainable basis in this lifetime, like my love of music or being a musician. It's possible that it's from a previous life, but my affinity towards music could have developed logically and naturally in the course of my experience in this life. I have no particular sense that it came from somewhere else, that it's extraordinary. Unless you count that I come from a decidedly unmusical family. Music wasteland.

This Korean thing came out of nowhere and had a definite start – asking Hyun Ae to make me a mix of Korean music she liked – which snowballed into an unreasonable affinity towards many other aspects of Korean culture, which outlasted and surpasses anything Hyun Ae may have been about.

The strangest and most uncharacteristic thing, of course, is K-pop, which I would have rather choked to death on than listen to when I was younger. It boggles my mind, and no matter what excuses I make or try to make it palatable for other people to give it a listen, it's still pop music. And other people who hate pop music also aren't convinced. I've lost a lot of music cred over K-pop, I shouldn't wonder.

Another thing is I've read that through the death bardos, as described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead and related literature and commentary, that in the early stages of the bardos, we have more association with the body and life that we just left. The habit mind of the existence we just left is still fresh and strong, so whatever disembodied impression or consciousness there is, it's related through that.

But as we progress through the bardos and still don't attain enlightenment or realization or whatever and head towards another round of samsara in a brand-spankin' new life, we have more of an association with our life-to-be, our future life.

So I wonder whether there might be an analogy at the end of the life bardos whereby we start experiencing things that may be resonant of things regarding our future life. As with past life resonances, sensitivity and inquiry is required to spot them. 

Stranger things have happened. Of course, there's this outrageous assumption that I'm at the tail end of my current life. I'm not going to die for the theory, but I'd have to die sooner rather than later for this theory to have even a drop of being in the realm of the credible.