The Big Bang Story
Selki Yang
Professor Walter Smelt
LENG-111-012
May 10, 2023
Narrative Essay: The Big Bang Story
I grew up in a poor and abusive family. Getting beaten up almost every day for being a kid. While the kids on the other side of the world were getting their parents’ embrace, I had to deal with their fists and feet, and that nasty sting of wired flyswatter. Being a scrawny, and ignorant kid was a serious felony in my small world. My father was an elementary dropout and spent a lot of time in a penitentiary. Considering their mistreatment and cursed inheritance, there’s no way that I’d ever amount to anything in this world. The curse of violence and poverty were about to make me a menace to society, as my father was, until music came to my world. It gave me a warm embrace. It inspired me that I can turn the hatred to love. It gave me hope. I remember one concert in particular: the comeback concert of the Pioneer of K-pop, Seo Taiji.
K-pop is globally recognized nowadays, and there are numbers of enormously successful K-pop artists such as BTS and BLACKPINK, but Taiji has been the most successful musician in Korean music history. When he announced his retirement back in 1996, the whole country was in panic, including me. I remember his silvery glasses and a black suit, short black hair from the previous crazy pink-red color at the press conference. He was tearing up, speaking with a trembling low voice. His retirement came with a music video of a song named “Goodbye” from his last album. In the video, he waved his hand, and then hopped into a helicopter, which presumably was headed to the States. As he hopped into his jet, I lost my hope. I admit that I had no plan for my future like any other 11-year-old kid, but I was developing my liking for music at that time. After his retirement, I stopped listening to music. Instead, I got into hip-hop dancing. At that time, I thought that I was going to break dancer, until Korean Thanksgiving Day in 2000.
Korean Thanksgiving Day has always been my favorite holiday. The summer heat dwindles day by day, and my favorite season’s greeting comes with a frosty morning and golden hue of ripe rice paddies all over my hometown. An intense smell of sesame leaves as I was walking down a muddy road. Red dragonflies were flying to let us know it was the time to harvest. A thick morning mist comes at every dawn that moisturizes the trees. That perfect day was the airdate of my favorite musician Seo Taiji’s comeback concert. He came back to Korea after 4 years and 7 months of gallivanting in the U.S. When he came back to Korea, he had long straight black hair. He wore black & white shirt with bizarre patterns of upside down “Y." He was going to do a concert in a few days after his homecoming. Me and the rest of the people in the country were thinking “how is he going to do a concert with that look?” I thought he looked as if he had just been released from a nuthouse. A friend of mine thought this was the end of his career. “He became boring and uninteresting” was my first impression of his homecoming, but my criticism of him didn’t last more than a few days.
On September 9th, 2000, his comeback concert was held in Olympic Stadium in Seoul and broadcasted on a public TV 3 days later. The temperature was goldilocks perfect. The weather was cloudless and sunny. Humidity was a bit higher than normal, but the perfect temperature made it satisfyingly moisturizing. The town had the best smell of the year: the smell of grain, the smell of fresh air, the smell of richness. I was very excited for his concert. The show showed a panorama of his career. Then suddenly the scene changed into space. The memory reminds me of a movie called 2001: A Space Odyssey, and a song called “Space Oddity” by Davie Bowie. Percussions started beating, the ambient sound of spaceship. In space, there’s a little spaceship. Inside of it, there’s a red-haired guy asleep. The ship docked to the station, and it launched the ship to earth. He opened his eyes through his colored glasses. In a dark venue just like space, the huge screen on the live stage shows “Do you remember?” “It’s an and, not an end”. It was written in his previous Goodbye compilation album. “We will be together again.” The engine sound of the spaceship gets closer and clearer. The crowds go nuts. A big white curtain opens up, a bloody tank appears in the middle of the stage. Firecrackers popped with a popping sound. 16 flamethrowers throw fires. A heavy low tuned guitar explodes and opens up a new universe. The repetition of “F C# C# C# B B~C# A#.” The heavy backing guitar supports the melody, the artificial harmonics play in the first beat of F in every second measure. I felt the electric shock from my brain through the spine. Goose bumps on my arms, eyes turn red, tearing up, shuddering, shuddering, and shuddering!
A smoke rising in the middle of the stage, hiding the main guy. The main guy glides forward to the main stage. A man who looked like a nuthouse breaker has gone, but there’s a man who looks more like a true rocker. His hair was braided in a reggae style with a color of red and dressed up like a b-boy. Silvery chains were clinging on his hip. A big pair of black sunglasses made him look like a man from space. After a longer intro, he began to sing a song from his first solo album called “Take One." It was the best opening and one of the finest live songs I’ve ever listened to in my life. The crowds were crying and singing the song together, waving the yellow cloth. After the first song, he played his new song called “Orange." The second song was like a storm. The D-drop tuned guitars rushed like a storm. At the intro, he jumped up to the stage from nowhere. Headbanging, lapping his braided red hair. Cranked up heavy guitar sound blasting with his band members: Top & Rock. I’ve never listened to a heavy lead guitar sound before. The first thing that came to my mind is “I want to be like these guys." Their 7 string guitars and the stage looked so amazing to me. A bloody tank on the stage. A DJ spins turntables, the skateboarders skate on the ramp. The scene was something new for a boy of 15 who never tasted a slice of pizza or a bite of cheeseburger. It was the gateway to a new world. The Internet wasn’t big at that time. It was hard to listen to any pop songs. However, that experience led me to yearn for the wonders and splendors on the outside of the world. I wondered what Taiji saw and felt in America. I wanted to have the same experience he had. Most of all, I wanted to play music with a guitar on the stage like him.
Therefore, I decided to become a musician: a guitar player. I wanted to be on the stage and live on it until the last day of my life. It took a while to get my first guitar as I grew up in a poor family. 2 years later, I finally got my guitar when I was 17. With my guitar, I felt invincible. I knew that this would lead me to the new world that I yearned for. Playing guitar changed my character as well. My violent traits that were inherited by my family, started to turn into passion and love. It gave me the drive that I can live through my darkest days. For the first time in my life, I thought it is good to be alive. Music embraced me like Gaia, and it inspired me like Muse, and it gave me a fate like Achilles. Speaking of fate, living life as a musician is the way of uncertainty and pain, but it is the way that leads to life. I have chosen to walk the path regardless.
There are bright and dark sides of music life: uncertainty, poverty, and solitude. At the very moment of making my decision to become a musician, there was no way that I could pursue comfort, stability. The hardships were waiting for me with a grinny face. On the other hand, it gave me great things that I could never have if I didn’t choose music. I’ve been singing with multiple languages, so I became multilingual. I could work in many countries for many years. I’ve met amazing people from all around the world. I could communicate with them in a language that has no borders. Music changed my whole life and shaped me in every way. If I did not choose to pursue music, who knows that I could've remained a violent/anti-social person. I am still resisting this cursed inheritance, but I can reflect on myself now, and try to become a better person, as I practice guitar every single day. I became even grateful for all these bad experiences that happened in the past. I learned great things from it. I learned compassion from hatred; I learned love from violence; I learned gratitude from scarcity. I am walking on a dark path, but I am walking towards the light.