Speak, Memory
Speak, Memory
Seoul, South Korea
My very first memories of existence are of and in this place despite being born 7,000 miles from here. Hearing Korean words being spoken around me fills me with a unique and indescribable sense of familiarity and comfort even though I barely understand a fraction of what is being said. They’re the very first sounds I have a memory of ever hearing. The distinct lilts and lifts and specific staccatos bring back memories of colors and smells and tastes, all things that I can still viscerally recall even though I don’t know what the sounds I’m hearing mean. They’re like songs you once heard at a moment in time and when you hear them again later, your mind and body instantly sync to the rhythm and melody even if you can’t actually sing along. An obvious pulse in your gut and a subtle flare in chest tell you that you know this song, your heart has already memorized it.
It’s hard to reconcile how alienated I sometimes feel here and yet there’s simultaneously some sort of gravity that is impossible to replicate anywhere else, even places I have spent years living. There’s probably some cliché in all of this that speaks to genealogy and lineage and etc but really it has everything to do with actual memories and how the first ones you have often become the building blocks of who you become. I was very young when I lived here and the time was brief, but there were little to no memories prior to this time. This was my starting point.
I come back here often and regularly and the last few times, I’ve started to wonder why. This is not my favorite city to visit, I don’t have a uniquely fantastic time here (I certainly don’t have a bad time), I don’t know a lot of people here, I don’t really have any professional ties here, flights and hotels are not cheap, winters are brutally cold, summers are uncomfortably hot and humid… But there is something quite wonderful about tapping back into that vein of time that extends from my childhood and then got away from me. I don’t wish I had grown up here. But I’m not distinctly grateful that I didn’t, either. I don’t know what I wish other than wanting to feel more connected to these foundational memories that I have from decades ago that I have very little context around. Those smells, those sounds. There’s a certain gravity that is in the sum of all those almost familiar things that I’m always chasing but can’t identify.
Without gravity, you’re just drifting with no point of reference, no ground to land on. You only exist as you pass through space, which is not existing at all. And so I keep coming back here, looking for ground. The irony of getting on a plane and traveling through the sky for 15 hours in search of gravity is not lost on me. Every time I do that flight, I suspect (or hope) that those 15 hours in the sky will land me into some magic where all loose ends automatically tidy themselves up and connections are fused to give me real continuity from my childhood to the present. But of course that’s not what ever happens. And maybe that’s not really the point. Maybe the real value of gravity is to make defying it meaningful. After all, having wings only matters if there’s gravity to defy.
