INDEX
The “lack” felt in his latest work. Telling my own story is helping me heal myself.
In “GANGNAM OASIS” released last year, you wrote the lyrics as your own story based on what you heard from your mother. When did you start thinking about the idea for this piece?
Heemoon: After I finished making “Kipunsarang,” I was thinking about what story I should tell after that. With “Kipunsarang,” I expressed myself about traditional culture in a straightforward manner and solved some of the questions I had been having since I started doing folk songs. So next time, I thought that if I made a work about the time before I started doing folk songs, I might have a better understanding of who I am now. To do so, I thought I needed a new way of expression and new songs that I had never written before, so I teamed up with the band CADEJO to create a melody based on a folk song motif and wrote the lyrics myself for the first time.
– How did you go about writing the lyrics to the song, which are based on an episode of your late father?
Heemoon: The artist with whom I worked on “Kipsarang” interviewed my mother, and I transcribed the interview and wrote the lyrics. I thought it would be better if people who don’t know us heard it, since there are probably many things we can’t tell our families.
– How did you feel when you read the interview?
Heemoon: There were stories that I already knew, but there were also stories that I wouldn’t have been able to tell my son, so I read the interview thinking, “Oh, I didn’t know that” (laughs). There were only a few memories of my father that remained in me.
– So there was a picture of your father that you didn’t know about?
Heemoon: I realized that I had been under the illusion that my mother had told me that my father was this kind of person, and that this was my own memory of him. So, the father I remember is the father in my mother’s mind. I had very few memories of my own father, partly because we were together for such a short period of time. So I wrote the lyrics to “GANGNAM OASIS” based on my mother’s story, and I put my own thoughts and feelings about my father into the lyrics. I said, “This is wrong, that is not right” (laughs). That’s what I’m singing now.
– What does “GANGNAM OASIS” mean to you when you actually perform it?
Heemoon: Lack, I guess.
– How do you think that “lack” will change as you continue to sing?
Heemoon: Maybe it is the feeling of healing oneself. By telling my story to someone and having them listen to it, I heal myself.
