Thanks for sharing this. Your thoughts very much made me content that while it hit where it hurts, the piece was perceived as the weapon it was. That's not really an accurate term but it's not wrong. I feel that the majority of truly invested fans have this same yearning, Another commenter said on the thread that I gave words (paraphrase) to what she was feeling. I was so glad. For me it was a very successful piece in communicating yearning and being honest in my work. But if Taemin can do it, so can I.
I was relieved that you described exactly what I wonder about Taemin's frustration over being the "soldier" in his mind. When Taemin was hit with his recent dating "scandal" I was fresh off of finishing this essay. It immediately hit me that once more he was being prevented from being the man he idealizes but rarely exemplifies. Strong, stalwart, loyal, protective. I'm not saying he doesn't have some of these characteristics, or even all of them. But in his public persona, he seems to be forced into assuming the form of a young tree, having to bend in the face of any weather. His fans don't realize, or keep in mind, that he is in pain a great deal of time as a dancer of a certain age. He's not as flexible as they think. They can break him because they don't consider him as a real person, just a projection. Which he is, of course, to us all. But I only stay sane by reminding myself he's got his own freaking soul and a need for a safe, private space that needs consideration.
I have to admit that understanding yearning as the human condition through this stage was a great gift to me. I have yearned all my life and never understood why there was rarely something concrete that I thought I could have. I don't literally want Taemin. I love him, it's true, if wanting the best for someone and appreciating what they offer is love. But even more intensely, I want certain experiences he makes available one way or another. Like the yearning.
You are lucky you had the experience of feeling vulnerable in the face of experiencing these kind of feelings for him. It's horrifyingly uncomfortable. But He provides a safe landing, and it's full of insights into who you are that may reveal themselves over time in very surprising ways. And it's not easy to touch base with uncool feelings, or our secret, inner self. For that, Taemin is a pretty good role model.
"It immediately hit me that once more he was being prevented from being the man he idealizes but rarely exemplifies."
Yeah, he's basically stomping his feet at this right now. This is all totally in line with what you're talking about in your comment above.
I’ve been thinking for a while that he should watch what’s coming out of his mouth a little bit more for his own sake, and no, talking in circles isn’t gonna cut it, quite the opposite. Since he went on bubble fishing for comfort about the scandal, I also totally saw more of the “dark side” you're talking about. You know, he’s been calling himself temperamental for a while and I was waiting to witness this. I don’t think it’s that serious and I’m finding this simply amusing and super relevant to our reflections. Goes to show he’s just one of us and pushes through anyways. I'm not gonna act like I'm any better, and be a sheep in the herd that praises his artistic expresson of his own darkness while also complaining he actually posesses an evil bone.
Most times, he’s really good at verbalizing how his position and sacrifice are entirely chosen and compensated for, practically a poster child for gracefulness. So it’s interesting now to be watching him turn around and display some little brother syndrome by acting like he’s not been getting away with quite a bit compared to others, and seemingly projecting outwards his failing of the ideal by blaming “misunderstandings”…now that the assumptions became reasonably justifiable by the fact he acted in the open. Oh and using his signature super Korean, ultra-vague phrasing to cry about words being twisted. A real jungian case.
If I were his friend, I would’ve told him “You’re being a baby.” But I’m his fan and my job is to send him heart emojis, so that’s what I did ;)
I smiled at the “real Jungian case.” I wrote him on Bubble aka dropped a few words into the void asking how much he knew about Jung.
Personally, my rule is not to come to a conclusion, no matter how obvious one may be, until it’s a concrete fact in a concrete context. It’s a given that nobody is looking for the truth.
I am committed to supporting Taemin. But I really don’t know what that means in his mind. What I want is his recognition as a singular, genre breaking artist who breaks past the borders of Kpop into a larger world of performance artists. How he accomplishes that is still a mystery to me. But I bet he has a plan.
When Taemin once more got dragged into a controversy about his private life, I'd just finished this essay and it burned. The projections and privilege are so out of control. I don't believe he is just a sensitive man with a little boy's heart. He's been showing his dark side for years and soon I think it's going to grow. Don't we all? The thing is, it's going to be difficult to keep up with the group-think that it's a kind of playing house. A man needs recognition as such.
You know what's funny, at some point I realized that not everyone sees what we see. Shocker, right? Not everyone is transfixed by Lee Taemin and not everyone is in pain to the point of feeling “seen” to this extent when he sings of grieving someone. It is easy from our perspective to mistake his status of Artist-Not-Just-Idol, showered by constant effusive and hyperbolic critical acclaim as objective justification for the *melancholy*.
Yes he’s good at being good and a whole lot of people recognize that. Then they move on with their day. Many kpop bloggers have written extensive pieces on his abilities, just to move on with their day without a trace of “the longing”. I ran into another fan in the dorm of the hostel I stayed at, who was also here for his concert and took a whole flight to see him perform, just for her to tell me that no, she didn’t fail at getting a ticket for the meet & greet, she willingly didn’t get one because she was “not that into him”.
I beg your pardon?
Then I rememberd that there used to be a time like this for me as well. I’d share performance clips of Danger/Drip Drop along with “He is cool, check this out”, and move on with my day. Then Move happened, and the rest is stan history. The tricky thing with him is that since he’s so far from your typical quarterback heartthrob (a role already fulfilled by his best friend, for reference), the crush is more an insidious slow burn. Or maybe there is no real infatuation and I have too much time on my hands to watch him do his thing and be awesome. That wouldn’t translate to butterflies and wobbly knees just by seing him standing, right? That is reserved for the quarterback because I’m basic like this.
So I went to the meet & greet baring the hope that I wouldn’t internally crumble, and boy did I crumble and hurt to a shameful extent!
So yes you know maybe the thing is that aside from being able to objectively appreciate his objective effort, we’re also a litte bit in love and that…happens, I guess. We can connect to the yearning because yes we do feel what’s in the song.
On a sligtly different tangent. You cited it but I really think the most powerful thing about Soldier is the way it goes about failing someone, and oneself simultaneously. The mourning is also that of the desired self, especially since if I didn’t misunderstood his explanation, the lost romance here goes along with failing to uphold religious ideals in some way, if it isn’t a straight-up metaphor for it. And the emphasis is not so much about the failure itself, it is about the intensity of the struggle towards the superego. The song works well as preface to Idea, which years later doubles down on emphasizing this desire, albeit in a more frantic tone.
It’s easy to imagine how he might have reapplied Soldier to all the times he mourned the superego ever since. Very likely even, each time he feared failing to uphold the public (and his own) expectations as an artist.
It’s interesting to watch the EG encore version within the current context (not to mention current *challenges*), next to the other performances. You can see the how his struggle aged, if that makes sense. He spends the most part mourning in a solid and controlled stance. He’s solemn instead of vulnerable and the outbursts are expressed with more restrained and blunt force, far from the eager explosions of the off-sick versions and the boyish shyness of the Press it Showcase.
This is beautiful, thank you very much for sharing. I'm hit deeply in the gut by your description of yearning, both in this post and in some of your comments below. I came across Taemin's most recent performance of Soldier at the Ephemeral Gaze concert and ran to piece together words for the meaning I found in it. You did that extremely well... and added so much to these feelings that I'm blown away by. I don't have words.
I relate so strongly to the fear of growing older, the greediness and desperation of wanting what you can never have. Every time I listen to Taemin, for all the years that I've loved him, I'm filled with both adoration and a deep bitterness and longing. I want so desperately to create art that connects with others in this way. I want to create something that touches people intensely, so much so that they can't look away. I want to expresses everything and anything.... and I feel quite, again, desperate, thinking about a life where that never happens. What is the point of living if I can't fulfill that longing? ... I know many many people, vast majority in fact, either don't have that longing, or at a point come to accept that they will never fulfill it. I just can't let it go, but I don't know how to reach it, either, and it's suffocating.
I admire Taemin so much... I feel very blessed to be one of the people that moves past the "wow, he's talented" to the unspeakable, primal force his art inspires.
Sorry for the messy blurting of thoughts, haha. I'm not elegant about it like you. But I just wanted to yell it out somewhere, and wanted you to know how much your writing touched me, too.
Long comment gets a long answer!
Thanks for sharing this. Your thoughts very much made me content that while it hit where it hurts, the piece was perceived as the weapon it was. That's not really an accurate term but it's not wrong. I feel that the majority of truly invested fans have this same yearning, Another commenter said on the thread that I gave words (paraphrase) to what she was feeling. I was so glad. For me it was a very successful piece in communicating yearning and being honest in my work. But if Taemin can do it, so can I.
I was relieved that you described exactly what I wonder about Taemin's frustration over being the "soldier" in his mind. When Taemin was hit with his recent dating "scandal" I was fresh off of finishing this essay. It immediately hit me that once more he was being prevented from being the man he idealizes but rarely exemplifies. Strong, stalwart, loyal, protective. I'm not saying he doesn't have some of these characteristics, or even all of them. But in his public persona, he seems to be forced into assuming the form of a young tree, having to bend in the face of any weather. His fans don't realize, or keep in mind, that he is in pain a great deal of time as a dancer of a certain age. He's not as flexible as they think. They can break him because they don't consider him as a real person, just a projection. Which he is, of course, to us all. But I only stay sane by reminding myself he's got his own freaking soul and a need for a safe, private space that needs consideration.
I have to admit that understanding yearning as the human condition through this stage was a great gift to me. I have yearned all my life and never understood why there was rarely something concrete that I thought I could have. I don't literally want Taemin. I love him, it's true, if wanting the best for someone and appreciating what they offer is love. But even more intensely, I want certain experiences he makes available one way or another. Like the yearning.
You are lucky you had the experience of feeling vulnerable in the face of experiencing these kind of feelings for him. It's horrifyingly uncomfortable. But He provides a safe landing, and it's full of insights into who you are that may reveal themselves over time in very surprising ways. And it's not easy to touch base with uncool feelings, or our secret, inner self. For that, Taemin is a pretty good role model.
"It immediately hit me that once more he was being prevented from being the man he idealizes but rarely exemplifies."
Yeah, he's basically stomping his feet at this right now. This is all totally in line with what you're talking about in your comment above.
I’ve been thinking for a while that he should watch what’s coming out of his mouth a little bit more for his own sake, and no, talking in circles isn’t gonna cut it, quite the opposite. Since he went on bubble fishing for comfort about the scandal, I also totally saw more of the “dark side” you're talking about. You know, he’s been calling himself temperamental for a while and I was waiting to witness this. I don’t think it’s that serious and I’m finding this simply amusing and super relevant to our reflections. Goes to show he’s just one of us and pushes through anyways. I'm not gonna act like I'm any better, and be a sheep in the herd that praises his artistic expresson of his own darkness while also complaining he actually posesses an evil bone.
Most times, he’s really good at verbalizing how his position and sacrifice are entirely chosen and compensated for, practically a poster child for gracefulness. So it’s interesting now to be watching him turn around and display some little brother syndrome by acting like he’s not been getting away with quite a bit compared to others, and seemingly projecting outwards his failing of the ideal by blaming “misunderstandings”…now that the assumptions became reasonably justifiable by the fact he acted in the open. Oh and using his signature super Korean, ultra-vague phrasing to cry about words being twisted. A real jungian case.
If I were his friend, I would’ve told him “You’re being a baby.” But I’m his fan and my job is to send him heart emojis, so that’s what I did ;)
I smiled at the “real Jungian case.” I wrote him on Bubble aka dropped a few words into the void asking how much he knew about Jung.
Personally, my rule is not to come to a conclusion, no matter how obvious one may be, until it’s a concrete fact in a concrete context. It’s a given that nobody is looking for the truth.
I am committed to supporting Taemin. But I really don’t know what that means in his mind. What I want is his recognition as a singular, genre breaking artist who breaks past the borders of Kpop into a larger world of performance artists. How he accomplishes that is still a mystery to me. But I bet he has a plan.
Hard agree on everything! There's no caring about someone without this
Such vulnerability
Thank you 🤍
PS.
you’ve given a voice to someone who sounds like they’ve just awakened, fully rested 💕
When Taemin once more got dragged into a controversy about his private life, I'd just finished this essay and it burned. The projections and privilege are so out of control. I don't believe he is just a sensitive man with a little boy's heart. He's been showing his dark side for years and soon I think it's going to grow. Don't we all? The thing is, it's going to be difficult to keep up with the group-think that it's a kind of playing house. A man needs recognition as such.
Your piece hits where it hurts.
You know what's funny, at some point I realized that not everyone sees what we see. Shocker, right? Not everyone is transfixed by Lee Taemin and not everyone is in pain to the point of feeling “seen” to this extent when he sings of grieving someone. It is easy from our perspective to mistake his status of Artist-Not-Just-Idol, showered by constant effusive and hyperbolic critical acclaim as objective justification for the *melancholy*.
Yes he’s good at being good and a whole lot of people recognize that. Then they move on with their day. Many kpop bloggers have written extensive pieces on his abilities, just to move on with their day without a trace of “the longing”. I ran into another fan in the dorm of the hostel I stayed at, who was also here for his concert and took a whole flight to see him perform, just for her to tell me that no, she didn’t fail at getting a ticket for the meet & greet, she willingly didn’t get one because she was “not that into him”.
I beg your pardon?
Then I rememberd that there used to be a time like this for me as well. I’d share performance clips of Danger/Drip Drop along with “He is cool, check this out”, and move on with my day. Then Move happened, and the rest is stan history. The tricky thing with him is that since he’s so far from your typical quarterback heartthrob (a role already fulfilled by his best friend, for reference), the crush is more an insidious slow burn. Or maybe there is no real infatuation and I have too much time on my hands to watch him do his thing and be awesome. That wouldn’t translate to butterflies and wobbly knees just by seing him standing, right? That is reserved for the quarterback because I’m basic like this.
So I went to the meet & greet baring the hope that I wouldn’t internally crumble, and boy did I crumble and hurt to a shameful extent!
So yes you know maybe the thing is that aside from being able to objectively appreciate his objective effort, we’re also a litte bit in love and that…happens, I guess. We can connect to the yearning because yes we do feel what’s in the song.
On a sligtly different tangent. You cited it but I really think the most powerful thing about Soldier is the way it goes about failing someone, and oneself simultaneously. The mourning is also that of the desired self, especially since if I didn’t misunderstood his explanation, the lost romance here goes along with failing to uphold religious ideals in some way, if it isn’t a straight-up metaphor for it. And the emphasis is not so much about the failure itself, it is about the intensity of the struggle towards the superego. The song works well as preface to Idea, which years later doubles down on emphasizing this desire, albeit in a more frantic tone.
It’s easy to imagine how he might have reapplied Soldier to all the times he mourned the superego ever since. Very likely even, each time he feared failing to uphold the public (and his own) expectations as an artist.
It’s interesting to watch the EG encore version within the current context (not to mention current *challenges*), next to the other performances. You can see the how his struggle aged, if that makes sense. He spends the most part mourning in a solid and controlled stance. He’s solemn instead of vulnerable and the outbursts are expressed with more restrained and blunt force, far from the eager explosions of the off-sick versions and the boyish shyness of the Press it Showcase.
This is beautiful, thank you very much for sharing. I'm hit deeply in the gut by your description of yearning, both in this post and in some of your comments below. I came across Taemin's most recent performance of Soldier at the Ephemeral Gaze concert and ran to piece together words for the meaning I found in it. You did that extremely well... and added so much to these feelings that I'm blown away by. I don't have words.
I relate so strongly to the fear of growing older, the greediness and desperation of wanting what you can never have. Every time I listen to Taemin, for all the years that I've loved him, I'm filled with both adoration and a deep bitterness and longing. I want so desperately to create art that connects with others in this way. I want to create something that touches people intensely, so much so that they can't look away. I want to expresses everything and anything.... and I feel quite, again, desperate, thinking about a life where that never happens. What is the point of living if I can't fulfill that longing? ... I know many many people, vast majority in fact, either don't have that longing, or at a point come to accept that they will never fulfill it. I just can't let it go, but I don't know how to reach it, either, and it's suffocating.
I admire Taemin so much... I feel very blessed to be one of the people that moves past the "wow, he's talented" to the unspeakable, primal force his art inspires.
Sorry for the messy blurting of thoughts, haha. I'm not elegant about it like you. But I just wanted to yell it out somewhere, and wanted you to know how much your writing touched me, too.