[translated on 18 September, 2023]

This text is the third in a series. The previous ones (first, second) haven’t been translated yet.

When I started writing this series, I wanted to talk about people and relationships as if they were lights, inspired by this song called “Mikrokosmos”. I must say that this isn’t exactly how I had planned to wrap up this trilogy, but, looking back to the lighthouse, and the roar of our stars, I realise that ending like this was an inevitability. Today, 17 September, marks four years since an album called “Story Op. 1” was released. My plan was to save this one for December, or next April, but I thought it only fair to publish it today in honour of the irreplaceable Kim Jonghyun.

Around three years ago, I asked the heavens what my divine calling on earth was; the answer came almost immediately — “you are a storyteller.”

Although there are heavenly words that come as a surprise and bring new realities and new identities into existence, the words I heard that day simply ordered feelings that I already had inside. I like stories; in fact, I like the people we find behind stories, and the God who created all things and who reveals Himself through the fragments of our messy daily lives — as if Eternity lied very close, just a small crack away. I’ve written extensively about the reasons why I like to write, how I keep myself as a permanent reader of the world, as someone who is always responding to something else.

Today, specifically, I want to respond to Jonghyun. Choosing to publish this text is something I do with great care; I have a lot of zeal and respect for him, and the legacy he has built. As his fan, I am sadly part of the ones who only fell in love with his work after his passing, missing out on the privilege of witnessing him in his lifetime. To talk about Jjong today is to talk about the words he left behind — like the light of a star that continues to travel and illuminate for many light years, even after it’s gone.

I am so fascinated with stars that, over the years, I have collected the light of many inside my mind and heart. I grew up very much on my own, within my own world, and the artists who influenced me the most are like the best friends that I should have had, who made themselves present, somehow, when I needed the most. My life has taken many twists and turns, but, to this day, getting to know someone’s work still feels like gaining a new companion, coming in at the right time, to bring in what they should. When I started to get closer to Korean music, I think I tried to keep a conscious distance from Jonghyun’s solo work, because I didn’t want to let the tragedy speak louder than anything else he had to say. To my delight, he showed up naturally, mediated by Spotify’s random shuffle, facilitated by the sweet, captivating voice of someone who loved stories as much as I do, and who was very good and writing them, and telling them (and singing them).

In addition to being a member of SHINee, one of the greatest boy groups of his generation for nine years, Jonghyun also solo-hosted a radio show called “Blue Night,” between 2014-2017. In an interview conducted in April 2017, on his last day as a radio host, he said that doing radio was the second biggest turning point in his life (the first being the decision to drop out of high school). He considered both more important than joining the K-pop industry, or publishing his first book, because they were decisions that transformed and broadened his worldview. On Blue Night, which aired between 00:00 and 02:00, he joined his listeners to build and share the same space, and make those two hours into a safe place to rest at the end of the day.

The great triumph of the show was that it succeeded as a channel for communication and exchange, as sincere as possible. From the many stories that people shared through live comments, he began to write songs, in a special section called “Written by Blue Night, composed by him”, in which listeners would send in their stories — vague or specific, momentary expressions of longing, short outbursts, small manifestations of routine that would have gone completely unnoticed until someone decided to put them into words. These songs eventually became his first musical collection — Story Op. 1, released in 2015, which is four years old today.

Some songs came straight from stories told by the listeners — such as the track “Like You,” based on a story of a guy who was caught in a one-sided unconfessed crush, or “I’m Sorry,” about a girl who had received an email from her ex-boyfriend. “Maybe tomorrow,” my personal favourite, was a response to the many messages about tiredness and discouragement at the end of a working day, while “End of a Day” talks about having someone to go back to at the end of another day. The excellent “Diphylleia grayi [skeleton flower]” came from a proposal he received to describe life through flowers and time, and was also the title of a novel, published in September 2015, which combined extracts and aspects of the album’s songs into a single story (to learn more about the individual tracks). The album was not promoted in the usual fashion of K-pop releases, in music shows, but through a series of small, guerilla concerts, called “The Story by Jonghyun” — a much smaller scale compared to the arenas and domes he was used to selling out, with his group.

“U & I,” the album’s 2nd track, as well as Blue Night‘s theme song, is about the everyday encounter between Jonghyun and his listeners, to share a little bit of themselves with each other. From inside that studio, he was able to deconstruct parts of his image as a young idol, reveal his pessimistic side, his inconveniences, his atypical routine, and get to know more about the ordinary lives of the people who followed him — both those who lived in the same city and those who listened to him from other countries, in other time zones. Countless people he would never meet in person, but whose lives he was a part of — as an image, as a voice, as an artist, poet, song — as a memory. Every day, when the show finished at 2am, he would close it with an invitation, almost like a mission statement — “This is Blue Night’s Jonghyun. If you don’t have a place to rest, you’re welcome here whenever you need it. Come and rest here tomorrow, too.”

Hannah Ewens, in her book “Fangirls” [2019] draws attention to the use of the term “fandoms” (or fan kingdoms) to refer to the universe of admirers that orbit around a more or less public figure — something that presupposes the existence of a territory under someone’s domain. In fact, the greatest power an artist has is to create worlds around them; to open up spaces and set up new points of encounter, parallel dimensions in which different people cross paths, and build memories, and touch each other’s lives, moving the history and networks of our society. On the occasion of his last programme, on 2 April 2017, among the many messages he received, one always stands out to me — “Thanks to Jjong-D, my simple life has become a little more special. Thank you so much for always being here, no matter how good or bad my day was.” Watching his old broadcasts, reading his interviews, and listening to his songs, he continues to create new worlds and new spaces, in me and in others; his songs set the tone for some days, change the mood of others, or sometimes find no space at all. Some are like a hug, others make me laugh and dance, others remain in the background of the chores of a day. I’ve made friends talking about them, I’ve been unfollowed talking about them, and today I’m writing about them in the hope that they can touch someone else’s life. The lighthouse keeps shining.

Of the many things that fascinate me about him and his music, the most important one is perhaps the endeavour to remain sensitive to the world around him, even if his circumstances could have comfortably sent him in the opposite direction. We all order reality through narratives — the points of view, subjectivities, biases, prejudices and peculiarities of our own gaze. Constantly putting ourselves at the place of exchange is what allows us to see through other eyes, take other perspectives and discover more of the facets of life that are intangible when we are alone. The stories we keep and share all touch upon the limit between what you can and cannot come to know about someone else; we don’t always open our mouths to say good, constructive or truthful things, but the moment when the encounter happens always opens up a new world — like the lighthouses we build, which continue to illuminate the seas, even after no one else has bothered to clean the dust off the steps and handrails of the staircase. In Jonghyun’s own words, “any kind of relationship (or connection) is important, because you never know what will become of it”.

People like Jonghyun make me think of the poignant contrast between the black and white blocks of the figure-ground diagram of someone’s life, the filled and the empty spaces that remain when a person leaves, but leaves a lot behind. The places he occupied are still full with his presence, because his words were many, they were strong, loud, powerful, and they filled every corner to the brim. And that’s why his absence also speaks so loudly; everything he left behind is a reminder of how much he is missed. There’s the void of all the things he could still have done and lived, but didn’t; the family he didn’t build, the stories he never got to tell, the songs he never got to write, the books he never got to publish, the return to Blue Night that never happened. The things he said with his eyes, with his hands, as well as his own voice, they are still making rounds, they still reverberate, for those who care to listen, and for those who don’t as well, whose lives intertwine with the lives of those who stopped to listen. They spark memories, they’re the reason we stay up at night, they bump into the fragments of everyday life… But this isn’t just about Jonghyun anymore, even though it’s about him that I’m writing, today.

Of course, of everything I say, I speak only as a simple fan, and a posthumous one — the smallest and most insignificant of all, who never experienced the present expectation of admiring him in life, and for whom absence was the first reality. But that’s the power of the stories we share — that limit between what you can and can’t know about someone else; we don’t always open our mouths to say good, constructive or truthful things, but the moment when the encounter happens always opens up a new world. Even as a posthumous fan — even as such — I feel emptiness whenever I remember that he is no longer here. Death is our oldest problem, but it’s always a new problem, because we only die once, and those who live on continue towards their own death without knowing what it means. It will always hurt someone, but that, too, shall pass — but something still remains. It makes me wonder.

If Jonghyun had been a story, he would have been a great story; it’s hard to explain what I mean without raising some eyebrows, so I will leave it to the readers’ imagination. As always, life goes on, there are plenty more pages left to fill until the end of all things. This is how it all goes, like a great match of pinball, or button football, or the chain reaction of a nuclear fission; the metaphors are many, but the meaning is approximately the same. Not everything is good, very little is praiseworthy, not enough is enjoyable, but the world hasn’t stopped turning because of any of this. Storytelling has its ways of reminding us that, in spite of everything, being a part of each other’s lives can still be a privilege. At least, that’s how I see it. Thank you so much for being a part of mine, Jonghyun. You did well.

(there’s a playlist too)