Rock N Roll 1

The rock and the roll. A rock rolling down a hill gathers no moss. Live in the present moment. Just keep on going no matter how bad things get. It's all going to be ok in the end. It'll be ok.

My first love of Rock and Roll was the Beatles. Going up young and Korean in the 1980's, I never felt happy. My parents were disappointed in me. They had invested all their energy on their oldest son and my older sister. Rock and Roll was what made me happy. In a way, it was the only thing that made me happy.

Actually, my first love was not the Beatles. The first rock and roll song that I loved was actually a song I heard on Family Ties, the TV show with Michael J Fox. "What would you do..." I cannot even remember the entire lyric. It sounds hollow and false to me now, but back then, it was the way I thought about women, that they were angels who lived on a higher ground than I did and they were deserving of worship. This may have developed from my perceptions of American girls. They were the only ones who seemed to sympathize with my situation. My D, my ESL teacher, who gave me a kiss that made me blush after I bought her a card and perfumed it with cheap perfume. I often wonder whatever happened to that shy boy that I used to be. I have now become so callous, indifferent, gazing at life with hard, insensitive eyes. Girls seemed to sympathize with me because they were also put in a passive position just like me. If I showed any sign that I did not actually like the reality that I was in, there would be a reaction, sometimes violent.

This was before I moved into a predominantly Jewish neighborhood of Narberth. I still remember those Jewish girls. Linda Blumberg, who wanted to be a doctor. She was passionate about helping out people. Merit Kaufman, who wanted to be beautiful and died a tragic death. Alexis Barr, smart and beautiful. I think I was liberated in a 1960's way in this neighborhood. My sense of humor started to come out and I no longer was silent, but funny in a twisted way. This is when I started to listen to the Beatles. Here, I am going to add some of my grownup thoughts on music. America invented Pop music. Pop music is more immediate, more chthonic than classical music. It tells a story in a few minutes. It expresses "jouissance," a sexual joy in living. It is about the present moment and sinking into the happiness or sorrow of that moment. "Help" by the Beatles is about being totally sucked in by celebrity, drugs, and sex and not being able to get out. "She loves me" is a validation of the feeling of happiness when you find out that a girl loves you just as much as you lust her. The Beatles made me feel happy. I do not know where these feelings came from. Perhaps it was the feeling that I got from the fact that so many Jewish girls validated my existence. They loved my poetry. They found me funny. I was actually an asset to this particular society. Of course, the society had its flaws. The 1980's were driven by emotion which would later turn into formalistic coldness as expressed in Robert Mapplethorpe and the movie, "American Psycho." But the Romanticism of the 1980's combined with the early romanticism of the "Beatles" made me feel blissfully happy. At the same time, after leaving this society, I felt it to be very difficult to fit into any other society. Sometimes, I visit Brandeis to feel this early happiness of my life and the intense, passionate fire that inspires the sense of social justice at Brandeis.