Page 115 of A World Apart
Every word she spoke sounded painful, like she was chewing glass just to get it out.
“Anyway, I’m going to get dressed. Some of us are actually going into work today.”
She turned to head to her bedroom before I could even open my mouth. Not that I had a response. Her words lay heavily on me, covering me with guilt and discontent. I promised myself I’d examine her words… just not right now.
I reached for my laptop. I’d started a blog recently, just little entries about my life in LA, the music scene in general, bands I liked, that sort of thing. Barely anyone read it, just a few of the followers I’d amassed over the past couple of years, but it was kind of cathartic for me to interact with music in this way. Being at Pisces was… well, it wasn’t quite the experience I’d naively expected in many ways, even as it exceeded them in others.
I’d tried talking to Becka about this − how my experiences had changed my thoughts about my future career. She’d seemed alarmed at my change of heart, so I’d downplayed it since then. Perhaps not as much as I’d thought, judging by that speech a few minutes ago.
In some ways, I was glad for the reality check, but in others, I mourned. For years, I’d believed I would go into some form of music production. I’d worked toward it, studied for it. Hell, I’d dedicated years of my life to building the skills I’d need. Andhonestly, I’d built a pretty decent following on social media because of it − not that I’d spent much time cultivating that lately.
I grieved the life I thought I was going to have. Recently, whole days passed where I couldn’t shake the funk of disappointment and disillusionment.
At the same time, I was grateful I’d figured out so early that this wasn’t the career I wanted anymore. I’d thought about it a lot, and, to quote Marie Kondo: it didn’t spark joy.
At first, I’d chalked it up to seeing the unglamorous side of studio life. But after working with producers − rarely, but enough − I realized it just… didn’t spark anything in me, let alone joy.
I’d gone over it in my head dozens of times, trying to figure out why I’d enjoyed it so much at university. The only conclusion I came to was this: learning about something and actually doing it are two very different things. I still loved learning about the process − how music came together behind the scenes was beautiful. But the actual mechanics of it? No. It wasn’t for me.
And all it took to figure that out was seven months of interning at one of the most famous record studios in the U.S.
So, while I was grateful to know what Ididn’twant to do, I was no clearer on what Idid.
Becka left by 8:00am, leaving me by myself. I whiled away the morning with my blog, eating a breakfast of granola and berries, showering, and plucking away at my guitar, and then my eyebrows. I felt restless, and the more I tried not to think about it, the more my mind tried shoving to the forefront the idea that I was pausing my life in pursuit of… what? Watching my boyfriend on TV? Not being able to be there, not even being able to see him regularly, and certainly not being able to publicly be with him.
Though I told my brain not to, it stubbornly posed the question of, ‘What can this ever be, and do I want it?’ It was a nothing-burger question; borne out of restless energy and frustration, I knew, but there it was; a niggle in the back of my mind like an ever-present headache I couldn’t seem to shift.
Thankfully, the time was approaching where I would be able to see Jihoon. Albeit, on TV. I’d already connected the Smart TV to my VPN so I could access iPlayer. I was armed with a bowl of popcorn and a healthy sense of entitlement − as a fully paid annual TV licence holder and British Citizen, I felt no guilt at streaming the ‘beeb’ from outside of the UK.
The view on the TV panned away from the crowd just as the live band on stage started an extended introduction to one of their most popular hits, ‘Pulse.’The massive screens surrounding the stage began to flash with images and flashing colours, designed to whip the crowd up into a frenzy. It went on for several minutes, until a line of smoke machines suddenly expelled, shrouding the stage in grey mist. The band stopped playing for so long that the screams of the crowd began to die down, until the smoke cleared and white spot lights shot up into the sky, illuminating the stories-tall shadows of five people standing on the stage. The crowd lost its ever-loving mind.
The band began to play again, the first refrain of ‘Pulse’ pounded out and the members began to move around the stage as they sung. Not the normal, smooth choreography of music shows and music videos, no, this was pure performance, designed to involve the crowds. The stage had been designed with a long walkway that reached out into the crowd, so the members could run up and down it, getting closer to the thousands of screaming fans. And as they moved seamlessly from one song to the next, I could see how much they seemed to enjoy the performance. In between their iconic dance breaks, they were playing with each other, and the crowd; catching gigantic beach balls thrown on stage by someone in the audience and chucking them back, spraying water from their bottles into the hot crowd, pointing at signs, waving, even taking the phones of some fans and filming themselves before handing them back. Just general chaos, and I laughed regularly.
It was amazing though, because like most KPop bands, GVibes never lip synced when they did live performances, so not only were they singing with live mics whilst running around being chaotic, they were still hitting their choreography when they were dancing. The stamina was eye-watering. It made me think I should probably get a membership to the Planet Fitness that was down the street.
The energy of the two-hour performance never faltered, though the members were visibly panting and sweating, and by the end, once night had fallen in London, they performed ‘Work Harder,’ the most complicated choreography of the evening. It was clear this was the one where they wanted to leave the strongest impression. Woojin bounced as he rapped, eyes clenched shut and the crowd responded in kind by jumping and waving their arms, fully there with him. When the pyrotechnics all went off at the end, bathing the night in showers of purple, red, and green, the crowd screamed one, long refrain that went on for so long that GVibes hadalready started to file off the stage, after running back a few times to throw more finger-hearts and shouting ‘We love you, London!”.
The stream ended and it felt like my small living room echoed with the sounds of the concert. It was weird to see sunlight bathing the room in warm light. I was half-expecting to see the smoke-filled night of London streaming in through the windows. For some reason, seeing my side of the world all lit up after being completely immersed in the ever-darkening side he was in, made me feel… empty. Out of place. Like my whole life was a world apart from where it should be. I pushed the feeling down, to join the other thoughts I wasn’t allowing myself to think about these days.
I immediately reached for my phone to send Jihoon a message to say I’d watched the whole concert and how amazing they’d been.
I kept waiting to hear back from him, even if it took a while, but I didn’t hear from him the whole rest of that day.
The next Friday was the Chuseok festival in Korea and GVibes was taking the whole week off once they flew back from the UK. I’d spoken to Jihoon briefly the day after Hyde Park, but between the time difference and appearing on Radio One’s Live Lounge, it had only been during the fifteen-minute car ride from the BBC MaidaVale Studios to the restaurant they were having dinner at. It hadn’t been as much of a conversation as I would have liked, but I did get to wave at Woojin during the video call, which was cool.
I’d asked Jihoon to tell him how cool he’d looked during the rap for ‘Work Harder,’ but Jihoon had jokingly frowned at me and said I wasn’t allowed to compliment other men. I’d laughed and Jihoon had passed on my message anyway, which made Woojin look over Jihoon’s shoulder and show me a finger-heart, which in turn made Jihoon shove Woojin.
I hadn’t spoken to him since he’d flown back to Korea two days ago, apart from exchanging selfies − him at the airport, wearing a pillow around his neck and a satin eye mask pushing the hair out of his face, and me in my snoopy pyjamas, sitting in bed.
He’d warned me in advance that he wouldn’t be able to talk much during Chuseok because most of his extended family were flying to Busan, where his parents had moved back to, and he would be expected to spend most of his time with them.
While I did feel a little melancholy about not speaking to Jihoon, I actually felt mostly homesick. It was a year now since my graduation and my life was almost unrecognisable. I’d gone from that dingy, little bedsit above the corner shop in Clapham, writing my dissertation, going to lectures and studio time during the day and bar-tending during the nights, to living in LA with my best mate, working for one of the most famous studios in the country − albeit as a glorified fetch-and-carry peon − and I was secretly dating a member of one of the world’s hottest bands.
Who even was I right now? The question sounded jokey in my head, but as I sat on my bed one evening after work, it pulled me up short when I couldn’t immediately answer it.
When I’d been at university, the question of what I did in the ‘after’ time, seemed vague, but meaningful. Sure, I hadn’t knownwhatI would do, but I knew it would besomething.
I’d write music, or I’d go on tour with a band and do their sound tech, or I’d move back in with mum and dad and write about music from my bedroom.
