You Need Secrets. You Need to Be Good at Lying.

📖 An Unsettling and Incomplete Letter_Yi So-ho

I happened to pick up this book, which was stiffly placed in the library’s new arrivals section.

Unsettling stories were densely written within.

But I couldn’t look away, and in the end,

I devoured her story from beginning to end, right there on the spot.

As forewarned from the start, there was no such thing as happiness or hope.

Dipping my feet into a bathtub filled with cold water, where no one would ever come, then my legs, my waist, my chest, and finally my head,

I felt completely consumed by sadness, from my toes to the top of my head.

Yet, I found her beautiful.

The woman who loved passionately, was cruelly abandoned, and failed completely—

I found her beautiful.

📝 Thoughts and Sentences I Loved

pg.25

What the beginning was doesn’t matter. According to records, Soho wanted to speak of misfortune by borrowing Gyeongjin’s name, and a few years later, Soho sold Gyeongjin to get her first book. After that, I practiced misfortune every day to solidify my artistic world. Collecting my misfortune, my family’s misfortune, women’s misfortune, humanity’s misfortune, I abandoned my everyday self. Reader 1 believed that was the author’s true self. So Reader 2 called that ‘Soho’ a reenactment or representation of everyone. Reader 3 said that only true stories could genuinely move people. However, ‘Soho’ was merely a byproduct of another creation. As a poet, I simply replicated the life of an ordinary person, and then replicated that replication, using photographs as a replica of a replica. In the tenth year of writing poetry, I eventually abandoned Soho as an ordinary person. What mattered was the Soho readers wanted to read. So the original events were deleted, beautified, perhaps even exaggerated to pose, and readers believed that Soho was real. Thus, I gradually became like ‘Soho.’ As long as I don’t stop writing, I will ultimately remain only as ‘Soho,’ existing as a complete simulacrum. My life lies on bookstore shelves. Soho, taxidermied and floating as a rumor, is somehow lonely. Now I can no longer tell what made me write, or if it truly happened. Soho exists as something among countless Sohos, within them. Once I decided to remain as a work, what the original Soho was no longer matters. This poem is the last record of ‘me.’ I wanted to easily become unhappy, consume, and leave behind the real me, a mere skeletal shell. How is this ‘poem,’ arranged by excluding the Soho readers want, read? Fortunately, while writing this poem, I loved passionately and was cruelly abandoned. I wanted to die a little more and live a little less. This small difference, one yet many, eternally repeating me, wanders through this unavoidable world of simulacra.

pg.unknown

The countless lies I told to hide my poverty. And the innocent gaze of friends who asked, “Why are you always unable to?” Instead of answering, “If I play with you today, I’ll have to eat only potatoes for a whole month,” I lost friends that way.

pg.150

“You can only truly understand a painting by experiencing it, just like a person.”

I closed the worn-edged catalog, recalling his words.

pg.151

I linger on some things and quickly pass by others. A museum can be read like a book of poetry, divided into sections.

The Frida hanging on the wall, with all her hair cut off, sat on a chair.

Frida, dressed in a man’s suit, was crying.

Very faintly, she filled my eyes, crying.

I asked him,

“You know, why does this person torment herself?”

“Well, perhaps because she couldn’t bear not to express it.”

“Does something so painful that one cannot help but express it truly exist in the world?”

“For artists, that’s probably everyday life. And they exhibit it, and we observe it.”

“So, an artist shouldn’t have secrets.”

“No, an artist needs to have secrets. They need to be good at lying.”

pg.156

I lie down and open a blank page. He asked again,

“If not a poet, then what kind of person are you?”

“I am a person who writes poetry.”

“What is poetry?”

“Well, what is poetry? It’s someone who captures images and draws pictures. With words.”

I speak, and he closes his eyes again. No one sees my pictures. I write here like this. I touch another world and then stop. I write myself down in scattered sentences.

pg.158

New York is like that. No one is there, and everyone is unhappy. Amidst the overflowing tourists, the lights never go out, and only the shops I loved go out of business one after another.

I walk against the current in the park. I look at the spot where someone left. He will never return. Live, and do not love, and live. The day I wrote the sentence about him leaving forever, because though I belatedly said I loved him, there was no ear to hear it.

Looking at Manhattan from Long Island, I whispered to him,

“I’ve found something I want to do. I want to keep writing poetry. And that poetry will be truly beautiful.”

“You’ll definitely do well.”

He said.

And I failed completely.