JyK Blog

To be clear from the beginning, I am an amateur runner. For many years I have been working out at gym, mostly to improve my physical ability. Sometime it lasted 2 years, and then I became a bit lazy, then I went back again for a year, and then took a break for months, and so on. When I had the traffic accident in 2011, for entire year I was unable to go to gym. From there till the beginning of this year, again I was going back and forth. I was never a runner: I only ran 10~15 minutes combining with fast walking. Fast walking is good too. The point for me was to sweat. Sweating made me feel like I did exercise. Last year I went out to run again on street, but it was a bit hard, and my mind always was shaken by the weather condition. (Hey, I am living in the Netherlands, the wind/rain country!) So it wasn’t so successful. I only ran once or twice per week, always ended up having muscle pain, and didn’t want to go out again.

From January 2015, I started going to gym again. This time, I really set my mind to be discipline, mostly because my mood had been down for awhile, due to external reasons. I had become quite negative, and I was going through many things in life. When turning into the new year, one of my resolution is to go to the gym again. It started nicely. I enjoyed working out again. Then there were two major issues happened in my life. In February my boy friend -now ex- and I broke up, and in March my father suddenly passed away. I needed to move out of the house where I was living, and I went to Korea for 2 weeks for my father’s funeral. It was hard. Meanwhile, I kept on working out. -of course I couldn’t, while I was in Korea.- When I came back to the Netherlands, I really needed some help. But it was more important for me to help myself as much as I could. I needed a big change from inside. Seriously running was one of the helps.

As I was not a serious runner, I could only run -at the moment when I was trying to really run- 2.5 km. This took me 15~20 minutes of running. Still it made me feel very good. Then I slowly increased the distance but didn’t care so much about the speed. I ran 3km, 3.5km, and 4km. I ran every two days. The day I ran and the day I didn’t made a huge difference for the day. My mood was very much depending on my physical activities. Because of that, when I didn’t run, I went out to take a long walk for an hour and a half. That made a bit different. Now, it is a bit too early to say after few months of running, but I increased my running distance into 5.5 km average. I am planning 6.5 km for daily running. And once in awhile I’d like to go on 10~12km. I feel I can do that, but I am still careful not to get injured, and my already-injured left leg by the previous accident can’t handle well much. -It is a very nice discovery thanks to the running. My two legs have different stamina.- After 5.5km of running, I feel that I can run much longer. But I stop, since I know that my mind always goes ahead of my body.

My current house mate is a real runner. He does a full marathon here and there. 42km of running. He was a big inspiration for me to run too. He gave me a lot of insight about what running is about, and he recommended a book to me recently by Murakami Haruki, ‘What I talk about when I talk about running.’ This book is a memoire, he talks about the relationship of long distance running and his writing. A wonderful book. This was a big motivation for me. Mainly because I really wanted to ‘use’ this difficult moment of my life into a new one. I wanted to reborn. Running has become the main tool for that so far.

I see a number of connections between running and composing. Let’s say, rather than composing, a creative work. How we go into the flow of thoughts, how much efforts we need -in order to sit down and start working-, and how much concentration is needed. I see those process from running. How I communicate with my own body, how today’s work moves into tomorrow’s. How I can pass the ‘difficult moment’ in order to just go on. Fighting with myself constantly without knowing any answer. The flow of running, the void of thought that running gives every time, can be compared to the flow of thinking process, the composing process too. Running can be painful. -yeah too early to say when running 5~6 km. But still I have my own standard!- It gives me lots of temptations to ‘stop for a moment,’ ‘drink a water,’ ‘my leg is a bit numb,’ ‘I feel like falling down,’ ‘maybe I am dizzy,’ ‘I ran maybe too much,’ and so on. Then I stop thinking there, and just kept running. Quite a few things sound familiar to what I think of when I am composing. The fear.
Not only mentally, running helps my daily composing process physically too. I have a full energy till the end of the day when I am running in the morning. I seek for healthy food naturally. This is quite an amazing, natural change. I lost around 3 kg too.
I am really happy that I got into this. -rather than drinking, overeating, and smoking.- Somehow I feel that it saves me from many things around especially last months having hard issues. Now in the morning I want to go to run. I am very excited to run. After running, I feel grateful. Then I carry this feeling to composing. The level of confidence, and the level of fear are very different from before. My father always told me that people who have a job requiring more brain activities than physical ones need much more physical exercise. I fully agree.

I have a new goal too: to try a half marathon. I wish I can do that near the future. I just started writing an ensemble piece too. I wish they develop together. Running and Composing.

** Small update on the date 18/June/2015
: it’s been a month since I wrote this post. Now I am running 8km/day. Still with lots of joy, lots of energy. Something I’ve added to this activity is meditation. Maybe I write about it someday.

It has not been a short time since I seriously put myself into being as a composer. I have been composing for acoustic instruments, pure electronics, and combination of two at different venues from a big concert hall to a small underground place. After all those years trying to have more experiences, I have too many questions about life as a composer.

The first thought -that is always in my head- is sadly about how to survive and support -at least- myself in order just to continue. It is true that such a music is quite far from the main stream or a commercial field. It is certainly not aimed to be sold vividly, but to provide a rare, unique experience in a concert place, which I think it is invaluable. It is easy to focus on the issue with the finance, as I also mentioned as the first thought, simply because of its connection to the real life. However, I’d like to talk about the important matter: how to provide the rare and unique experience.

There are many styles in music; the style can be derived from the ways to approach, elements to focus, what the main ‘actor’ is. When those subjects become a style, there are a number of influences between existing music, researches, and social activities. A simple example can be ‘spectral music’ which involves the use of the fundamental properties of sound as a basis for harmony as well as the use of spectral analysis, FM, RM, and AM synthesis as a method of deriving polyphony.^[1] This example is more methodological approach and I gave this as an example in order to differentiate from what I’d like to talk about. When I go to a new music concert and listen to the pieces that are presented, such techniques and the methods that composers use in their music are not the core that drag my attention. It is certainly an interesting point to look at. However, first I see the energy of the performance, the actual spirit from the performer(s) that deliver the music to us. Human ears are sensitive enough to catch this; how much interaction was there between the performer and the composer, how many concerns were involved, how seriously they have prepared, how much pain(?) they had. All those matters become an energy to the audience to actually ‘feel’ the music. (I would like to clarify that this term ‘energy’ is not at all as in New Age) The methods and techniques in music require a more intellectual process of listening, which also requires some background study and experience in order to appreciate. However, the feeling, a more emotional process of listening can be achieved without any background. It just comes, and it also let people move. This is something that a child can achieve from a contemporary music.

I am more interested in this matter: how to make people move? What are the things that create such result? Music study doesn’t teach this, and I, probably like any other composers, constantly think about this when starting composing a piece. My thought always meets in social interaction with other people: we never meet a person that is exactly the same as any other. Every single body has a different personality, background, so that we always create a different experience whenever we meet a different person. Some are nasty, some are sweet, some we fall in love, some we remember years later. All those feelings come from the experience we had. All those experiences and judgements toward our own feeling also reveal our own character. We interact, and we become ourselves.

I think this can be applicable in the same manner. What I’d like to see and listen in a concert is a voice of a person, the personality, the different character that I can associate with myself as an individual. No matter what techniques they use, whether it’s with a new, incredible technique or a solo violin piece, I’d like to feel a different personality. And this, in my opinion, could be one of the most important matters for a composer to consider: How I show myself? I am definitely not talking about ‘expressing oneself’ in music, like ‘hey I am very sad these days so that I’d like to make a sad song.’ I am more focusing on the identity, who I actually am, am I sensitive? am I having an accent? am I humorous? am I a jealous person? am I laughing outward or inward? am I introvert and shy? am I have a loud voice? how am I? Those questions bring myself into the things that I really like. from the construction of sound to a science fiction movies, things that make me move. If I know clearly the things make myself move, then I can apply that into my music too. That’s a true sharing, no matter what kind of musical language one uses, one should tell their own story, not someone else. Not the stories that they do not know or that they never experienced.

One said that there is nothing original. I agree. However, there is a different identity.

1. http://www.compositiontoday.com/articles/tristan_murail.asp