on live music

I'm back blogging with a vengeance this week, before heading off on my 'Nam and Thailand adventure. (And if you don't think my first blog after the holiday will begin, "back when I was in 'Nam...", you don't know me that well.) I have struggled with entries due to a severe case of the summer doldrums. I should explain- technically, I am on summer vacation now. But I go to work every morning, just like during the school year. I actually teach more during summer vacation than during most school days during the normal school year. All native teachers must endure 3 weeks of "camp", which for me is 2 100 minute lessons every day, from 8:20-12:00. It sounds like a dream perhaps- a four hour working day, with a free lunch provided, and mostly motivated students who actually chose (or their parents chose) to attend this class in the summer. But of course the ease of the working day seeps into other aspects of life. I stay up too late, often doing very little productive, and generally sleep the afternoon away to escape the heat, and in more than a few cases, boredom. And rather than taking the time to prepare better, more healthy meals, the heat/malaise results in my eating copious amounts of fake cheese and lots of baked potatos (with fake cheese). So when I should be healthy, active, and intellectually adventurous I am instead stuffing myself with western junk food reading every football (that's soccer people) blog on the planet. But no more! I have been reading Gladwell's Outsiders, which is an analysis of the factors that lead to people being extraordinarily successful, and although it does not measure up to his previous works, reading about such success can make someone struggling to motivate himself to do anything feel like a cretin. My actual "holiday"- as in days I am not working, is a measly 7 working days before the school year resumes in the mid-August heat.

But this blog is supposed to be about music! I was recently questioning whether music had supplanted literature as the crucial component in my leisure time and also in my identity. Due to a dearth of books in my house, as well as the ubiquitous I-Pod and a reliance on music to enliven my (occasionally) lonely flat, I think music is more "me" than literature for the first time. Certainly I actively search out new music much more than new writing in Korea; where I once ranged across all subjects for reading material, my reading is much shorter and more limited in scope- NY Times Op-Ed, Guardian sportblog, BBC transfer gossip...

I recently saw Oasis in concert, 10 years or so too late. It was a good concert, at an outdoor music festival. The location was a beautiful, if strikingly meager in altitude, ski resort. I arrived for just one day of the festival, meeting friends who had been there for "the horror" of the previous night. There were the worst sorts of foreigners on display; I'm no amateur psychologist, but someone studying herd mentality and expat communities could have a field day with large crowds of expats in Korea. Overwhelmingly young and naive, so I try not to judge too harshly, but it was like the morning after a frat party. When you are 19 and trapped in a community of like minded people this is acceptable; when you are 23-27 and abroad you look like a right... I should mention I had plenty of time to consider this as my friends left before Oasis, leaving me at a huge communal event on my own. This is actually the third time I have attended a concert on my own- the first time, I was young and hated the experience, the second time was Arcade Fire and there is a slight chance Megan Fox could have been standing next to me and I would not have noticed I was so excited (no... if Megan Fox was next to me I definitely would have noticed. So let's downgrade to, oh, I don't know, Sienna Miller). But it seemed to me that being alone in a large crowd you somewhat remove yourself from the group, that the experience gains something in intimacy, or at least in internalization. I think everyone should have be alone with their thoughts and 90 minutes of good music at some point; certainly it might have proved self relevatory for more than a few of the revellers still hiding in their festival herd.

The festival was expensive by Korean standards but on a whole worthwhile. I had an encounter with live music this past weekend that is perhaps worth holding up for comparison. I ventured to the oldest jazz club in Seoul, with Jenny this time. It was everything the festival was not- intimate, urban, shared, Korean, and cheap- I loved it. No doubt the club is one of the most positive legacies of the American presence in Korea- a smoky, slightly run down place that you would find in a basement in many sophisticated, global cities (points for Seoul! Yay!) Here it was on the third floor of a completely unremarkable building looking through floor to ceiling windows on an even more unremarkable building (OK SHOPPING in large neon) and the surprisingly dim lights of Seoul beyond. Apart from a bright Christian cross in the far left in my field of vision, Seoul was dark on a Saturday night. But inside it was cramped and lively, standing room only to a band playing good jazz as only Koreans could- perfectly rehearsed and smoothly orchestrated. Musically very proficient, but lacking in imagination and charisma. (At one point I internally compared the bassist to a librarian... perhaps it is so with bassists the world over). The only other foreigners had departed for greener pastures by about 8:30, so once again I felt a little outside of the whole experience. It was wonderful.

I've been putting off this blog because, well, I don't really have any conclusions to draw from these experiences. I should mention that my mind always wanders freely when I listen to music, when I mention feeling outside the experience, it is not a complaint, but rather an illustration of how I respond to most music- to free myself from restraints and explore possibilities. Perhaps the question I have been trying to ask is whether live music is somehow more meaningful when coupled with the experience of being abroad, of adding cultural immersion to musical immersion... Certainly my experience with Oasis was diluted by my reconciling my pleasure at the festival with the antics of more than a few yanks...