flamenco journey 5

VI. Epilogue

 

.......bit by bit the walls of the ego recede,

and your life becomes increasingly

merged in the universal life.

-Bertrand Russell-

 

Not long before Gohk made a comment on Manolo Caracol singing siguiriya, a song form of flamenco: the cantaora seemed as if he were 'leaving in each line of the verse a piece of his soul.' And This literary work under way, he said, reminded him of the siguiriya he had heard, adding that sometimes he felt as if he were leaving every bit of himself.

 

And I have sensed that Gohk was undergoing a significant change in his mind. He travelled as an aesthetic digger with his concern concentrated only on the paintings or how to writer a poetic prose. He made a trip to Spain, returning home as a man of aesthetics, too. this time with his mind absorbed in flamenco. Then after the recent trip to Siberia, he is getting more and more religious and philosophical in thinking beyond art.

 

He used to recite: No art without intoxication. These days, by his recent emails to me, he is thought to get often lost in meditation on the meaning of a Ruusian tribe's remark: it is only upon Baikal in Autumn that a man learns to pray from his heart.

 

When Gohk was pondering over something to write, he would like to listen to flamenco cante, if possible, the siguiriya of Manolo Caracol and Cello Sonata with no accompaniment of Bach. once He said to me ," Because both of them kill my inner pain."

 

Gohk is thought to get conscious of a pain alive in his heart. According to him, he has lived with the pain, a half of which was caused  by himself ,the other half  by his late father he loved. Once He said to me that the pain is something  for him never to get free of. He seems to acknowledge well that his pain is what he should keep to himself, sharing with nobody. So he just wants to get it  forgotten through his own way-  subduing an impulse to go to alien lands beyond the sea line or to write.

 

Praying for Gohk's recovery soon,

 

In Seoul, South Korea

Joon Kim

August, 2008