K-pop to the Rescue... The Sequel.
febrero 19, 2018
I think I started liking K-pop around 2009, and was really invested in it by 2011. Saving a few exceptions, I met my closest friends to date either through the Super Junior fandom or K-pop context.
If you stan K-pop or part of it, you know it is a world on its own. It is a gateway to Korean culture: food, music, shows, social structure, even history. You get immersed in a glamorous world that used to be so far away (now it's easier to travel there and get your merch shipped home) but became closer when there were events and fandom get-togethers. Then concerts started to happen: JYJ, Music Bank, Super Junior, etc., and the community thrived.
Because school sucked and my best friend was into K-pop anyway, we dove into K-pop face first. It consumed a lot of my time but it was okay because there was nothing better to do.
But then I got into college and things slowly changed.
The groups that debuted got less interesting, the friend-group drama got unbearable, there were many scandals both in Korea and Santiago. It seemed, suddenly, as though K-pop had become toxic all around.
And then college got really interesting too. Suddenly I was in an environment where I could grow and develop and be interesting, important, an adult.
Over time, I think I've attempted to get rid of everything I felt was insubstancial, unimportant, useless in the strictest sense of the word. I have this feeling of hopelessness whenever I think of how much I could have done/could still do if I devoted all my time to "important" pursuits. Amongst other things, I reckon I've always felt as though fandom, but K-pop in particular, wouldn't equate to a "real adult" life. And that was, for some reason, very important to me back then.
But this approach hasn't made me happy (except for books, a realm wherein getting rid of everything mediocre has improved my experience a great deal).
I realized last year that, although I do enjoy college and studying and life overall, I'm taking su much fun out of it by being so resolved to make it "important". Because the truth is it is not.
No one, really, is that important. No matter what you do or who you are, no matter how relevant it might seem to history now, no event or person has been essentially fundamental in the history of humanity. If something had been different, then we wouldn't know about it and that's that. Things would be technically different but not relevantly so.
And that can be tough to acknowledge. It can be the bane of one's existence and encourage a fatalistic out look on life. The fact that nothing means everything is the reason why religions thrive.
Yet, I want to choose to see it under a different light. Nothing really matters, so what I'm here to do is be happy, whatever that means to me as a person.
There isn't a formula for that, and while someone as cerebral as me is always trying to calculate one in the end I think it boils down to doing what makes me genuinely happy (and trying to worry less about all of this).
What I'm trying to say, is that back then I enjoyed K-pop, watching K-shows and meeting with people to talk about K-pop and K-shows. And after a few years away from the fandom, I have sort-of returned to K-fan life and it's been great.
I've always felt that certain things arrived in my life at precisely the right time. Harry Potter and Vampires when I lived with my mother, J-rock when I was alone and depressed, K-pop so I could cheer up and meet people who literally saved my life, college giving me a sense of purpose when I thought I could not endure another minute of existence.
And this personal Hallyu Wave 2.0 has come to remind me that it's okay to rest. It's okay to binge watch a show a Sunday afternoon, it's okay to like things just for the sake of them (which, by the way, is not very far from certain conceptions of art).
It's okay to do whatever the fuck I want, as long as I'm healthy and responsible and, more importantly, happy.
And it was exactly what I needed to hear.
Hello, I'm Roxie!
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