fl- preface

Preface

 

‘Flamenco Journey’, a hybrid of personal essay and fictional technique is mainly based on the emails which a Korean writer named Gohk and an American dancer shared for over 10 years. With his first meeting of her in Portland as a point of beginning, he kept on his tender companionship with her, by inviting her as a flamenco bailaora to Korea as well as, by writing poetic proses on the art of Flamenco. In particular the writer in this work shows his deep emotion and meditation on flamenco emailed to her during his flamenco trip to the cities of Spain; Granada, Jerez, Seville, Cadis, etc. Last year the writer made his 3rd flight to Portland, Oregon ​to meet the dancer,, his companion for the purpose of consulting with her about his idea that he planned to have a couple of flamenco performances in Masan of South Korea, his hometown.  

Once he confessed to me that to him writing is a way of getting over the feeling of despair and pains in his mind. In this relation, he added that whenever he pondered about his style, he was reminded of the stories of two men: one is Charles Lamb, an English personal essayist and the other, Franz Schubert, the composer of the lied of 'Der Lindenbaum'. According to Gohk, the former who tried in vain to make great novels was famous for his short essayist style, and the latter was a great composer much more brilliant in composing rylic melodies or pretty string musics than grand symphonies.

By the way the writer has not been seen in public since then.  It was because he kept himself in isolation ​at a seaside hamlet several miles away from his hometown. Unfortunately ​he relapsed into the lung consumption he had suffered in his twenties. In fact, he is kept away from the ordinary life.

He once revealed that whenever he got conscious of the old sores of his lungs, he loved to recite a poetic passage of solea, a song form of flamenco: 'Singing the pain, the pain gets forgotten.' In my conjecture, he seemed to try consciously to forget some distress hidden in his heart by writing or travelling.  

​When it comes to his travelling, he inclines to go beyond the near sea familiar to him over to the exotic lands. He vaguely yearned to be a traveller getting 'the juice insider of the grape', not a tourist fed only with the 'skin of the grape. He often seemed to be put under an irresistible drive to drag him ​out of the humdrum daily routine, to snatch him away from ​the comfort and to separate him from his native language.

He would wander alone anywhere far from home, be it Portland, New York, or Paris with a simple desire to be free on the road of ​the exotic lands. one time when he stayed in Portland he worked for a hotel as a time as a part time house keeper. Another He was tramping around Andalusian cities, particularly Granada peeping in the flamenco caves of gypsies in Sacromonte.

On the other hand he said that staying home or walking alone , he was be in the habit of murmuring to himself: Can I write novels? No. You can’t do it. Write poems? No.  Probably that will not be your way. If not so, what genre is it where I can do well? Such questions the writer asks to himself are sure to be perceived between lines of sentences.

 At the writer's request, I as an old friend of his, ​came to take the lead in getting it published, partly by helping to translate some parts of the manuscripts into English. ​Joining Gohk for this work, I was caught  ​by a line he would quoted from a flamenco cantaora and until now have wondered what it means:

“When I sing as I please, I taste blood in my mouth.”

In place of Gohk,

Jh