Taemin's "Soldier"

The Things We Cannot Have

Taemin's SOLDIER: The Things We Cannot Have

“The only solution to the longing for union is union with the longing.”- C. G. Jung

Let’s put aside the words “Taemin is Taemin” for now. What he means when he says it is lost in translation to me here. Of course his identity remains, but like all of us, he is capable of being absolutely different from day to day and very much so from performance to performance. We are not one fully integrated being. We grow. We are works in progress and come with many pieces that don't find their place in our essential self all at once. It takes a lifetime.

Taemin’s songs always contain the possibility of change. During this tour, I’ve begun to think a K-pop idol might be the lesser part of who or what Taemin is, despite his nearly decades in the industry. Is this a pop singer of any sort you watch break his own heart into pieces in performance? Rooted to his audience with the comfortableness of your uncle Frank coming over for dinner? Everything he does seems alternately thoughtful, intentional, spontaneous. He creates a world for his audience, and he is bigger than his image. He tells stories with his songs, but mostly with his dance. No words, just images. This is primal stuff. The closest description I can find for him today is Performance Artist. But I think "Chaos merchant" more frequently. If you know, you know.

We become attached to his stories as much as to him. We wish, as he does, for the way through the woods, or through a maze, to find our way back home. There is a kind of transcendence to participating in this ritual by being his witness. We often end up with the spontaneous desire to sacrifice something of ourselves for his happiness. But love is imperfect. Taemin's new performance of Soldier is about this.

Sometimes we yearn uncontrollably for the unknown thing, or for something out of reach forever. The Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi comes to mind. In fact, this feeling of serene melancholy as it's described, is a big part of Taemin’s charm. Or at least that blend of two emotions experienced at once is all over his work. And on his audience, handprints on their hearts. In Soldier, its an aching pleasure found in longing for someone who is lost forever.

**********************************************

The passing of time weighs on Taemin and on me as I watch him. We're all growing older. Nothing gold can stay. He has had an extraordinary "first act," as he calls it. To be this intense of a dreamer with a highly emotional center and the work ethic of a honey bee is one thing. Then there is his lean, classically proportioned body and lovely, youthful, expressive face. His portrayal of complex feelings and forbidden ideas is a loaded gun. These riches allow him the skill to connect to an audience on a profound level. In turn, he allows them to connect to him. It's love, but in its wabi-sabi form. A beautiful thing we can never really have.

Taemin is frequently called "perfect." But in Soldier, his character is tarnished, in the form of a broken, irredeemable relationship. Here in this stage, we watch him embracing the sadness and inevitable loss of beauty without stalling, or hurrying. He's simply present. Greedy, Taemin has called himself. But when it comes to longing for someone absent or unattainable, greed visits us all. We want what we can’t have. We want more than is possible from what we can have. It's reassuring in an inexplicable way that not even Taemin can have everything he desires. Giving up and letting go in all its forms is pleasurable at some point. It's, as someone once told me, a terrible freedom. Then it's heartbreaking.

*******************************************************************************

Soldier is a song Taemin wrote lyrics for back in 2016. It appeared on his first full length album, Press It, and it was special even then.

He says it's a fictional story, but that doesn't mean it isn't part of his 23rd year. And the guilt and atonement in the lyrics are, he has admitted, feelings he deals with. This is likely the first time he felt vulnerable in the way a songwriter does, knowing exactly how much of yourself is in the work, worried about being... sorry, Taemin, unmasked.

Naturally, the soldier in his debut story is the personification of a youth and romanticism. Full of libido and uncertainness at once. But clear that for him, being a man is being a soldier. A protector. The one who will step in front of you to shield you from harm. And who will take the consequences for that. He sings that he failed to meet his own standard. He asks for forgiveness and offers suffering as penance. While forgiveness may mean you don't have to carry a chain of guilt around your neck. It doesn't mean you get what you want.

As in every subsequent version of Soldier, Taemin comes to it unarmed. It seems to me that we are watching a young man who had been walking a long way and stepped off the road to gather up his strength and hope. He is unbelievably centered. People talk about his posture in general as being more upright than most, and the straight stillness here is very young. Can I say a little...frightened? In any case, you feel privileged to share the moment..

Over the years Soldier has gone through several versions. First he added movement. Then there was playing the intro himself on the grand piano. It's my favorite start. When he controls the tempo and the dynamics himself, he's doesn't need a single trick. Once the piano was white. Once he even had his Advice-phase long hair. Playing the piano led to dancing on it. Every time he did, his energy surged wildly. His belting was stunning. In one version he did almost lose control and it was wonderful.When Taemin gives in to his rougher feelings it looks a bit like he can't hold them all in and stay balanced. Then he does.

This Ephemeral Gaze Encore interpretation of Soldier may be the saddest performance of any I have ever seen. I don’t just feel his yearning, I see a kind of regret for some unspoken, wordless something he has wanted forever but is afraid he’ll never have. It’s in his voice too, a rich, powerful release of emotion. The way a church bell rings with poignancy but isn’t always calling you to church.

This new, older Soldier is still young. But he's come a long way from believing happiness is a permanent possession. I imagine he’s discovered that his lost love was never really going to make him complete.

"The way back is a maze.

The wind caressing my cheek lifts away.

I open my arms.

It doesn’t matter."

Taemin brings passion to grief in a mysterious way. What is he longing for? Why can’t his beauty, his sweetness, and all the love he has fill this place in his soul up? My heart goes out to Taemin as if he were a guttersnipe of a kid looking for the way home from a dream. A kid whose breadcrumb trail was eaten by the birds. Who feels remorse for failing to mark the way out. Does he want love too much? Then comes the thought, "Do I?"

“I need an angels hand,” he sings. Grace is his only chance. He knows it isn’t coming. Not this time.

"Because the devil kissed me.”

Whatever temptation he accepted, whatever responsibility he takes on, his beloved is not innocent either. None of us are. So he sings with resignation. “Why’d you never miss me?”

Even Taemin's offer to sacrifice himself isn’t enough to let him retrace his steps. It’s the most precious thing he has, the drive to protect his loved ones no matter what it does too him, to put them first. He insists he honor those qualities in himself, no matter how imperfect, who finds it worthy or how tragic the result.

Taemin has a singular essence that allows us to feel the bones under our skin and flesh, and drop all pretense of the face we show at other moments. He's so honest and forthright in the moment respect is the word that comes to mind. When he says he wants to show the audience who he is, he means it.

The audience is quiet and still. Look, he says, listen. This is my heart today, my soul right now. And the audience, his other half, is compelled to try and offer their hearts to him. In those instances, we feel strangely safe. Not mindlessly happy or satisfied. But at balance on the tipping point.

The human condition is to feel forever incomplete. So often Taemin, this brother from another world, leads me to consider suffering over happiness as having some value if I can just sit with it, even for the length of a song.

Longing to be what you want, to have what you want, to do what you want, is one of the most intense feelings in life. I’m beginning to understand its lesson. It’s never really over. Loss, its blow to the heart, is an unresolvable, shapeshifting thing. Wanting, yearning, desiring is forever. Taemin, and his Soldier, I want to tell them they’re not alone. Watching him, I'm not alone. Taemin is one of the things I cannot have. But he knows how I feel.

Pat Troise

Tuesday, April 15, 2025