fl- a poem can be pure dance

IV. A poem can be pure dance

 

     1. A pure desire

 

  A mind becomes pure when it desires for a thing only.

 So your mind can be pure by getting indifferent

to other things. Multifarious desires make it impure.

 - kierkegaard -

 

 

                 

 

                                      

  Pure Desire and the Boundless Imagination! 

Last summer this line of the logo of 2007 Keochang

International Festival of Theatre happened to catch my eyes. 

In summer of the year,2007 I participated in the Festival 

in order to inform the Kift's staffs of flamenco unfamiliar

to them. The logo I first saw  was written on a placard

hanged on the edifice of a hotel I stayed in  at the entrance

of the Kift  located in the Susungdae area of Keochang County.

And again I saw the logo  again in the kift's periodicals 

at the restaurant there. At times from then I have been

captivated by the logo:

Pure Desire and the Boundless Imagination.

 

The logo of the Kift festival  suddenly inspired ino me

a thought to write about my experience of flamenco.

At the moment when I encountered with the Logo

I had in front of it a question in relation with it:

Desire is pure ? How?

By nature it is impure!

And for what?' A pure desire?

unstained or innocent ?

What does it  mean on earth?

How is 'pure' harmonized side by side with 'desire'?

 

 In our minds there are several forms and levels of desire.

Desire, in its lower form, is a subtle form of greed,

and constant worldly yearning. But desire itself is so subtle

that we may not even realize that we are habitually 

 under its control. It is said that lower desire, in any form,

is in relation with  degradation of higher aspiration,

like how lust is related with degradation of passion.

 

 

When it comes to desire,less is often more!

Unclutter your life of desires ,and you will be freer!

 

Question again, your desire is to write?

If so, the best way to be a writer is to get simple and

indifferent to any other thing.

One step further,

keep yourselves 'far from home and friends,

separated from your language,

snatched from your props and stays,

deprived of your masks...'

 

Another advise, below, Baudraire gave to

whoever desires to write:

focus close attention on one subject,

even in bathroom, or in a prostitute quarter,

with your mine concentrated on one subject.!

 

 

Then what in the world do they want to express

by 'pure desire' ? To me  the two words of  'pure desire' 

seems  contrdictory  to each other.

Probably does it means to me  an irresistible yearning

to fly beyond the sealine to an exotic land of imagination. 

 

Right! 'A pure desire' seems to mean an irresistible passion

 

to break from the yoke of the routine day life

in a imagination, exotic and poetic. Then it is unsuitable

to the life of sensation which requires more and more.

It can exists only in the life of spirits

which require less and less.

 

 

 

 

Monet was a very different traveler from Renoir.

He had remarkably little curiosity about new cities or cultures

for the sake of novelty and was no tourist at all.

His drive to discover new and diverse sources of motifs

was for one purpose only: to paint.

 

As for me, 

I traveled again to Portland with one purpose only:

 to see Laure dancing  Morning Dew .

I flied to Andalusia with one purpose only :

to see and hear flamenco

with a simple desire to write it,

 I had no desire to be a bailaor, a giuitarist or flamencologist.

 

 

 

 About 20 years on , I have written on my personal story,

with a desire to be a poetic essayist in mind.

As for  my writing style ,it  is quite different in form and

character from the formal essay, such as academic criticism

or an actor's professional essay. It ,as a personal poetic prose, 

depends less on airtight reasoning than on my personal style

or personality. Saying again, it is just a free, informal personal

story. So, it has an open form and a drive toward candor and

self-disclosure, full of  freedom from stiffness and affectation.

So, this book of 'flamenco in emails'  is something

like personal diaries or letters of a tramp on the road.

 

Glancing over sentences up and down you would figure out 

an image of a flamenco-holic tramp on the road . His image,

personal propensity etc. are hidden between lines of emails and

the coffee smell or vino aroma in certain phrases which depict

places he visited , for example, Pioneer Square cafe in  Portland 

or a flamenco cave tablao in Granada. And also you would

imagine the winding lanes on shrub-covered slopes of

Andalusian territory seen through windows of the running bus or

catch with curiosity the exotic flamenco cante rising up

from the foot of  Sacromonte hill.

 

As for me, through writing the past things that once caught me

on the road now comes in sight  in defiance of the physical order 

of passing time. It is said that the physical time runs just forward

into the future consisting of a system which never goes in reverse, 

However,you would see in this essay an unreal atmosphere 

where every experience of a traveller runs free of time order. 

as if they were on stage for dramas. In this regard,

if you paid attention, you would catch between the linesa hint

which Annie Dillard gives in her book of 'the writing Life':

 write summer story in winter

and winter story in summer.

 Describe Debulin , as James Joice did,

on the desk in Paris.

 

My hands and eyes were faithful to her advice from time

to time in relation with the construction of my writing.

For example, my first encounter with the Kift Festival of

Keochang county came to be written, not in the very spot

of the scene, but in the triste bed of hostels in Tokyo 

in deep Autumn . on the other hand, it is during my stay,

as a drama viewer, in Susungdae in summer that I was driven

to write the flamenco fever or the forests of the remote

Siberian frozen lands where I had roamed before. 

 And It is in late autumn, chill and wet, in a  hostel in Portland

that  the mages of the  kift festival floated before my mind's eye:

the summer landscape of Soosungdae valley,

scenes of dramas which I watched squeezed among spectators,

singing cicadas on the ceiling of Chungsongdang house ,etc.

The kift festival itself  on the spot was to me no more

than so-so. It is not in Kift festival while I was staying there

but in Portland several months after the festival 

that I came to catch the meaningfulness of Kift

and to love the Festival.

 

In retrospect, the finale party of the theare festival was great!

At that time I sat free alone on the floor of Chongsong Dang 

in the deep darkness, giving my ears to the rhythmic sounds

of drum and guitar outside. I know well the drummers .

Then who is the guitarist?

A new comer as a member of drams group from Qubeck ?

Of coures I could not but walk out, hooked by the rhythm,

toward the garden party.Below is the mummering to myself

at the moment: 

 

 The time is in repleteness,

 its stream sweet. 

 Sergio, a Spainish and David, a German, both of youths

 playing drums is stirring up  a night of their farewell  undulating.

 The fascinating guitar melody,

 brillant displays of fireworks in the sky,

 Every actor and actress share warm embraces 

pledging to meet again next year.

And stars above pouring down were decorating

the night landscape of the festival.

 

On the other hand, 

It was in the Chungsongdang house at the Kift fesival 

that I  visioned fascinating images,

of  Dani dancing flamenco in a studio in Portland ,

of Lau dancing Morning Dews in Masan, my hometown,

of Sacromonte hill in Granada of Spain

where the dark song of flamenco was heard,

and of the running train through the snow-covered Siberia,

with Samovar tea boiling on it, etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IV

 

 

2. The 3rd flight to Portland

At my first visit to Portland, this city let me have an encounter

with flamenco  completely unfamiliar to me. In case of my second

trip to this city in the summer 2001 I stayed there a couple of months

with one purpose:to see and hear flamencos performed  in the very

city where I was hooked by the far-off and strange sound of flamenco

cante. By accident I got a fortune to meet Lau, a flamenco bailaora,

with whom  I have exchanged emails for 8 years or more.

And in winter of 2007  I made my third flight to this city. I wanted to

persuade her and her group to participate with me in the Kift festival

of 2008 in Korea. I particularly wished  the poem 'Back to Heaven' 

to be danced in Sloea by Lau. She already danced  Morning Dews

in flamenco before. So I thought that she was the very bailaora

to express in flamenco the tragic lyricism of the  Korean poem.

 

 

Masan, Aug.,2007

Dearest LauI would fly to Portland and Tokyo in September.

In relation with my September visit to you, Following is

my rough idea of the expected flamenco performances

on the stage of the 2008 Kift Festival in the K County:

 

Two flamenco groups are to be separately on the stage 3 nights.

one of them is  hopely to be from Spain. The other is supposed

to be a flamenco-Salpury group . You  and Korean dancers are

to be the other group. You are expected to dance 2 Korean poems

, 'Morning Dew 'and 'Back to Heaven' in flamenco accompanied

by a guitarist, preferably Mark .And some Korean dancers  are to

dance Salpury and Sungmu, the Korean traditional dances.

 

On my way back home after our meeting in Portland,

I am going to have a short time of stay in Tokyo,

in order to contact Spanish flamenco groups.

As you know ,in Tokyo there are several Spanish groups.

Fyi, at Tokyo I am expected to meet Juana,

a Spainish bailaora, who is to visit Tokyo in October

to have concert at a Flamenco Tablao in Sinjuku there.

Her expressive style was intoxicating. I saw her team

performing 3 times at a small flamenco cafe

during my stay in Granada. I hope to suggest to her

that her team come to Korea next year in Summer

 

As for a Spanish flamenco group to be invited,

Probably a flamenco group in Tokyo is preferable to

one In Spain because in this regard kift side would not

have to pay for the Madrid- Seoul flight charges .

 

Of course this is now a rough concept only in my mind.

Before flying to Portland, I will have a meeting to discuss

with the Kift side on these. one of The staffs there

informed me that flamenco performance should be

as one of two imortant new projects for their 2008 kift.

 Any question?

 

 Much love,

 Gohk

 

 

 

Masan, Sept. 2007

 Hi, lau:My flight to Portland was booked.

I am to be in USA from October 7 to 13.

I hope to stay in Portland 3 days from 8th of October

to see you, if it is not unconvenient for you.

The next year I hopefully will see flamenco danced

as an important event for the Kift festival.

For this summer at my presentation of flamenco 

given to the Kift staffs they came to be sure that

flamenco is to be a potential attraction for Kift Festival

from 2008 on. In particular lots of audience there 

was attracted by a Korean flamenco dancer whom

I invited for the presentation.

loveGohk 

 

 

 

 

 

Portland, Oct. 2007

Dear Gohk:

This is wonderful news! 

 May I please have your flying schedule

so that I can meet you at the airport? 

 Would you like to stay with us in our home?I am so excited!!!

Abrazos,Lau

 

 

 

Masan, Oct. 2007

Dearest Lau:Thank you for your considerateness!

But please don't come out at the airport.

It would be my 3rd arrival at the airport of Portland.

I am familiar to the way to the downtown.It would be better to meet you free over coffee

at Pioneer Square around at noon on 8th of Oct.

You know that I, as a tramp, would be more comfortable

to stay in the hostel where nobody knows me .

And please never fail to pass To Mark my ardent hope

to see and hear him accompanying you.LoveGohk

 

 

 

Portland, Oct. 2007

Dearest Gohk:

I am very excited to see you early next week. 

Also, we will be having you as a guest

at the Flamenco studio on Wednesday evening

so that you can watch a rehearsal and party.

Please call me when you are safely in Portland.

Love,

 Lau

 

 

 

Masan, Oct. 2007

 Hi, Lau

Just a day prior to departure!

The weather man said that it will be rainy and windy

tomorrow here before my take off time .

I am a little worried.

How excited I would be at the flamenco party in your studio!

Will call you at Oct.7th in the afternoon.

Thinking of you,

Gohk

 

 

 

 

On the other hand, following are the emails to

and from Juana, the bailaora of Granada whom

I referred to in the above page.

As you know, during my stay in Granada I was

deeply impressed by her dancing. During my stay

in Granada, I went to Del Loro, a  flamenco cave

3 times to see her dancing, She performed there

every other day.

In a sense, two cities Portland and Granada, 

remind me of 2 flamenco dancers ,

Lau of the former city

and Juana of the latter.

By her recent emails, Juana  was still performing

in Granada. And she was also performing abroad . 

She said her group had  shows in Naples and Ireland.

                          

 

 

Masan, South Korea, Aug. 2007

Hello Juana:This is Gohk, interested in you and your group as ever.

 Mako, manager of Ol'e in Tokyo informed me

that you are scheduled to have concert at El Flamenco

there in October. I think it would be a very good chance

for me to see you dancing again,

this time in Tokyo much nearer geographically to me.As you know, I saw your performances twice in Granada

and above all things, you speak not only Spanish

but also English. So I came to contact you again

by email person to person.Now as a request of the Kift Festival in South Korea,

I have a plan to help them to add flamenco performances

to their 2008 Festival held in July-August next year.

Now I have a question - Shall I meet you again at Tokyo

in September? For your information, in relation with it

I am scheduled to visit to Portland, USA.

So if you are okay, on returning home I would like

to drop in Tokyo at the time of your stay there.

Waiting for your reply,Gohk

 

 

Granada, Aug., 2007

Dear Gohk

We are to be at Tokyo around the middle of October,

when at any time it will be okay. Our performance will be

available 3 nights in a week until at the end of the month.

In El flamenco which has a smalll stage, we keep the same

program of our performance you saw at Granada.

For the further negotiation in detail It would be better

for you to contact with our manager,

who will email you soon.

Sincerely yours

Juana

IV.

 

3  Could 'Back to Heaven'  be deep baile!

                      

Were 'Back to Heaven' expressed in flamenco baile!

This was inspired by the below words of Eva Yerbueneva ,

a bailaora in Granada: 'a poem can be pure dance.'

A poet would dream of seeing his verse sketched out

on a human body and a bailaor would dream of reading

his dancing expressed in a poem.

 

 Once I read the poem, 'Back to Heaven' by Chun Sang Bung,

a Korean poet, the speedy flow of the  first phrase of the poem,

'I shall return to heaven, hand in hand with dews evaporated

at the touch of dawn light......' reminded me of  the body rhythm 

of Solea or Sigyuria  baile. Both dances are in relation with 

the ｅxpression inside of an individual of his or( her) sorrow

and solitude.  

 

 In general Flamenco is named  El Arte Flamenco.That is,

a term of what is called art is confered on it. As you know,

the ornamental term of  art is rarely used when discussing

any other folk music. Flamenco lovers are likely to think

that in case of it the term is proper to describe an art form

that is fed from two sources: joy and sorrow.

With regard to El arte Flamenco, they say, soul and body

must be in perfect harmony. In other words, 

intellegence governs the voice ,

and heart conveys the contents. 

Then when it comes to flamenco baile

in particular, I  personally would like to add one more

to the above phrases: the downwardness,

one of the main characteristics of the dance.

It is related with zapateado, that is, the creation

of rhythms by drumming on the ground with the feet.

 

It is worth pointing out how important it is. The dance

uses the whole body , but it is largely generated

by these drummed rhythm. To create its patterns,

the dancers makes variations in the quality and intensity

of sound by using the heel ,the whole foot, the sole and

the the point of the toe. All these movements tend toward

a stamping downward. By the same token there are no leaps,

no upward movements of any sort. The downwardness of

the dance also shows in the eyes, which are usually

'directed downward even when the face turns up.'

 

The idea that  could 'Back to Heaven' be deep baile!

was inspired by the two particular performances held

in 2005 at Masan and Haman, in which 'Morning Dew',

as you know, was  sketched out  2 times through

the dancinf movement of Lau, a flamenco bailaora .

 

 

' Back to Heaven'

 

I shall return to heaven

hand in hand with dews evaporated

at the touch of the dawn light

 

I shall return to heaven

together with  the evening glow light

at the waving sign of clouds 

to me playing by the hill foot

 

I shall return to heaven

when the picknic is over

on this earth

and go there to say 

it  was beautiful

 

 

For the poem of Back to Heaven ,

there are a couple of musics , but all of them were

so and so to my ears, All of them were,

by my private emotion and  irrational judgement,

thought to be disqualified means for expressing

the poet's spirit.

In case of Morning Dews, on the contrary,

I personally preferred the music to the poem .

So I gave the poem only without any kind of music

 to Lau  in order for her to express her emotion

in solea for the poem of 'Back to Heaven'

free of any existing music for it. 

 

This poem reminded me of ' a child' in the book of

<Also sprach Zarathustra> written by Friedrich Nietzsche ,

a German philosopher. once the song and poem of

'Morning Dew 'brought up the image of the invincible paws

of 'a lion' he expressed in the book.

On the other hand, in the case of 'Back to Heaven',

it was a child's blue soul symbolized in the book

that I was reminded of  while I read the poem .

The book referred to three changes of  the mind

we have to undergo as below:

 

The writer of the book advised us to learn camels first.

Everybody knows that the camel symbolizes endurance.

What we have to learn next ,he said, is the lion's spirit:

the beast is the symbol of invincible courage to say 'no'

against unholy duties . And he went on,

'lastly learn to be a child'. What he meant by it

was that in order to keep creative instinct

we have to learn the pure oblivion and affirmation.

 

At the moment of reading 'Back to Heaven',

I happened to come on an idea

that the poet,Chun Sang B must have been a child

whose soul was blue.

 

Sensing a stoic far-sighted view of the unworldly poet

between the lines of the poem, lucid and crystal,

I wished it to be expressed through the deep baile of Lau

who had danced Morning Dews twice here in Korea.

I was sure that Lau as a bailaora would express well

the agony and sorrow hidden in the mind of the poet

through her body. In addition, she had a good sense

of the Korean lyricism.

 

The Korean poet of Back to Heaven was prisoned

and put to torture under the military dictatorship in Korea 

through 1970s. As an aftereffect of  it he was ill-fated

throughout the latter half of his life with the deep scar

never to be recovered from. In a sense,

while Morning Dews was symbolized a torch of resistance,

Back to Heaven is still with us as the child's soul.

 

I don't want the soul of the poet to return to the heaven.

I don't want the poet to be allowed to fly to the high sky,

too far off and too remote from the world we live.

At this junction, The downwardness of flamenco baile solo

 ,it seemed, could help us to keep the poet alive

by our side as ever.

 

I wish the poet to live with us down in this earth,

not up in heaven, as the twinkling morning dews,

the evening glow of hymn, and the creative soul of the child,

getting our mind's eyes ,easy to be dull, purified .

For the deep baile of flamenco, downward and introvert,

is a deep song of this earth itself, not one of that heaven .

 

And one thing should never be forgotten to add:

please have the baile dance for Back to Heaven

accompanied for sure by the guitar only,

the soul of flamenco, as below:.

 

 

The cry

of the guitar begins.

The crystals of dawn

shatter.

The wail

of the guitar begins.

It is useless to silence it.

It is impossible

to silence it.

It cries monotonously

like water cries,

like wind cries

over frozon peaks.

it is impossible

to silence it.

It bemoans

distant things.

It is the hot Southern sand

craving white camellias.

It is an arrow without destination,

the afternoon without tomorrow.

(*written by Garcia Lorca)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Epilogue

 

……...bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life

 becomes increasingly merged in the universal life.

                                 -Bertrand Russell-

 

Gohk used to mutter : No art without intoxication.

These days it seems that he revolves in his mind

some other abstract meditations beyond the subject

of art. He likes to take a line, as above, from Bertrand

Russell. And he sometimes gets absorbed in a religious

question: to go to church or not to go. Gohk tried

in vain to find out a way to follow his wife, a true Christian.

 

In an email sent by him on a railroad trip to Siberia ,

he referred to a Russian tribe's epigram. He said 

he had read this epigram in  a book titled 'East of The Sun :

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 cante of Manolo Caracol and Cello Sonata

 

of S. Bach .He said ," It is because both of them

kill my inner pain."

 

Gohk is thought to have lived with a pain alive 

in his heart, a half of which was caused by himself.

Once He said to me that the pain is something 

for him never to get free of. He seems to know well 

that his pain sharing with nobody is what he should

keep to himself. He seemed to get it just overcome

only through his own way: to write.

Praying for Gohk's recovery soon,

In Seoul, South Korea

 Jh

 August, 2009

 

 

* For 6 years or so, the manuscript has been put among books

in my study .Gohk in poor healthy got less interested in Flamenco

and hesitated to have it published. So did I. To tell the truth,

I was afraid to see it published, because I did not like

the manuscript in English I finished . Anyway,  it was left

in the corner of my study unpublished.

I apologize him for it.

Well done it or not, as the translator of the manuscript,

I should have had it published much earlier,

                       

 

 Now passing his sincere thanks to Laurena Marrone living in Portland,

who, the writer said, inspired him to write ‘Flamenco Journey,

 I put an end to it.

                                         January, 2015

In place of the writer

Jh