Her Private Life is a South Korean drama against the backdrop of the artistic life. Sung Duk-Mi is a curator at the Cheom Museum of art by day, and a fan of kpop idol Cha Si-An by night. She also runs a fan website called The Road to Si-An. But being a fangirl is a big secret. If her identity as The Road to Si-An were known, Duk-Mi would lose her job.
Si-An, Duk-Mi’s idol, is himself a fan of Lee Sol, a reclusive artist known to have produced only nine paitings before retiring. Duk-Mi tries to purchase a painting by Lee Sol for Si-An at an art auction, but she is outbid by Ryan Gold, a famous artist who lost his ability to paint when he first beheld a painting by Lee Sol.
one of Lee Sol’s paintings
Ryan Gold is a Korean adopted by Americans as a child. He returns to Korea and assumes the directorship of the museum where Duk-Mi works. Through a series of comical events Ryan Gold and Duk-Mi embark on a relationsip. The story of the relationship is the typical romatic comedy that Korean drama leads us to expect. To me, the art of Lee Sol was far more interesting. Each of the nine paintings offers a clue to Ryan Gold’s real identity and his relationship with the artist Lee Sol. They are intelocking puzzle pieces.
All of Li Sol’s paintings
When Ryan Gold eventually begins painting again, after a tearful reunion with his mother, I realized I never really believed in him as a painter. Whereas Lee Sol’s paintings told a story, Ryan Gold’s painting is just added splotches of paint to a portrait that was traced from a shadow of Duk-Mi.
Ryan Gold’s portrait of Duk-Mi
I enjoyed watching this series because of the way it addressed the question of art and of fandom. The love story, the childhood abandonment trope and the fact that everyone in the story seems to have met before when they were children are not what impressed me. But the story of Lee Sol and her art was intriguing.
Julia Hanna and I interviewed Jean Graham on our show on Oct. 22, 2021.
Jean Graham is a writer of short stories in both the horror and the science fiction genre. Her work is available on Amazon.
Before becoming a professional writer, Jean Graham was a member of many fandoms where she wrote, edited and published fanzines. Some of her work is archived at Archive of our Own.
The Rational Life is a Chinese drama that came out in March of 2021. It follows the life of a thirty-three year old woman, Shen Ruo Xin, who is working in the legal department of an automobile manufacturer called ZenPro. She becomes involved with her assistant, who is twelve years her junior. The series is both a workplace drama and a romance.
Dylan Wang and Lan Qin
The Rational Life is set in glamourous and glitzy Shanghai, and it features other minor characters who pursue their own dreams, rather than conforming to society’s expectation for them. There is an aspiring comic book artist who refuses to take a civil service exam in order to have a sheltered life as a government worker. There is Ruo Xin’s best friend, a woman her own age, who is married, but is floundering in search of a career, and who does not wish to have children.
The series seems to espouse western values of business success, competition in the marketplace and the pursuit of happiness in one’s personal life. It is unclear why the Communist Party and its values and goals are never even hinted at in this thirty-five episode long series. Since The Rational Life aired on Netflix, perhaps it is only intended for external consumption. But if it is also viewed in China, something seems a bit off. This is not the propaganda we expected!
A drawing of Dylan Wang, who plays Ruo Xin’s love interest
Below is a video that puts together many amazing sights I saw while walking on my ten acre property today. There are my chickens and ducks, of course. There are the twin fawns who show up to graze on my lawn. And there are also the butterflies!
Today is October 11, 2021. I saw so many monarch butterflies this morning! I was so surprised. The monarchs must be beginning their autumn migration on their way to Mexico.
There is a difference between communicative utterances and intentional communication. The hen in the video embedded below announced she had just laid an egg. But did she mean to tell me that? Or was this an instinctive cry that she was unable to silence?
Who benefits from this announcement: the chicken or the person who wants to cook the egg for a meal? Why do chickens have an urge to announce their egg laying accomplishment? Why are wild birds mostly silent about laying their eggs?
As a linguist, I am interested in both intentional and unintentional communication. All beings, including humans, have instinctive cries that they have difficulty turning off, to signal pain, fright, pleasure and delight. These are “tells” that others can use to figure out what is happening to us, even when we do not want them to know.
Bow, a common chimpanzee I cross-fostered with my own child, has language. He spells out what he wants to say. But Bow also often lies. He sends false messages for us to interpret.
Language is different from body language and inarticulate cries, because it is intentional. However, neurotypical people have a tendency to subvert all communication by feigning emotional states they do not possess in order to mislead others. For this, you need theory of mind. Apes of all kinds have the tendency to lie. But chickens usually are truthful. If they signal they have just laid an egg, there usually is an egg right there!
Bettine Clemen is a world renowned classical flautist. Born in Bavaria, Bettine made her early career with such prestigious orchestras as ‘The Munich Bach Orchestra’, ‘The Prague Radio Orchestra’ and ‘The Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg’. In 1978 she became solo flutist of ‘The Belo Horizonte Symphony’ in Brazil. The Amazon rain forests had a great influence on her own compositions and led to her recording ‘Love Song to a Planet’. At age six , Bettine started playing violin, piano and recorder and concert flute at age 12. She gained her Master’s degree of Music at the Academy of Music in Munich, where she studied with Prof. Walther Theurer. She also studied with renowned European flutists Aurele Nicolet and Peter Lukas-Graf, and took Master Classes with James Galway and Julius Baker. Bettine was one of the first Western musicians officially invited by the Chinese government to perform concerts and teach Master Classes in Shanghai and Beijing. In 1994 Bettine recorded her popular album, ‘Forever’, with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and in 1996 recorded her album ‘Open your Ears to Love’. More recently she has recorded her albums, ‘Echoes of Life'(1998), ‘Salut d’Amour'(1998), and ‘Communion'(2000). Apart from her world-wide performances in such prestigious venues as the Festival and Royal Albert Halls in London and the Lincoln Center in New York, Bettine has performed throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, the Far East and on many different cruise ships as a cabaret artiste. In addition to playing for humans of all ages all around the globe, Bettine also shares her music with the animals she meets. She has even played for Bow!
This Friday, Julia Hanna and I had the honor of interviewing Bettine about her music and her world travels, playing for humans and non-humans all around the globe, in 176 different countries.
In this time of lockdowns and mutual mistrust, Bettine offers a ray of hope for all of us. Music can be a tool for healing and communication. Bettine amply demonstrates this with her flutes, her music and her love for animals.
I highly recommend the Korean series Misaeng미생 – An Incomplete Life 아직 살아 있지 못한 자. Misaeng is based on a webtoon about a failed Go (Baduk) player who becomes an office worker. Some say it is an office drama, which it definitely is, but I would like to characterize it as an eye-opening window into the exciting world of international trading.
Have you ever heard of trading companies? I may have, but I did not stop to think about what they do until I watched Misaeng. According to the Wikipedia: “Trading companies are businesses working with different kinds of products which are sold for consumer, business, or government purposes. Trading companies buy a specialized range of products, maintain a stock or a shop, and deliver products to customers.”
The idea behind the trading company in the Korean television series Misaeng, One International, is that their only real mission is to buy low and sell high. They are not manufacturers. They are not suppliers. They are not shopkeepers. They do not specialize in only one type of product or market. They just make deals all over the world.
One day the deal may be to supply pre-owned cars from Korea to the used car market in Jordan. The next day our heroes are cutting a deal with Chinese companies for solar energy panels. One moment it is about fabric and textile manufacturing in Korea, and the next day everyone is scrambling to meet the needs of the meat market in Kazhakstan. If crude oil from Iran is out of bounds due to a trade embargo, can One International get what it wants through Turkey, as it is not in the EU and thus is free to do business with Iran?
These are some of the business questions that come up in Misaeng. Some of the other issues have to do with behavior in the workplace: bullying, bribery, kickbacks, taking advantage of connections and guanxi.
Bullying and Solidarity
There is an awful lot of bullying at One International. There is bullying by interns against other interns. There is bullying by bosses against interns. There is sexual harassment. There is intimidation of younger colleagues by older, more seasoned colleagues. And there is even bullying of Manager Oh by the almost all powerful Director. There is also tension between the Director and the President of the Company. (A diagram of the command structure of the company would certainly have come in handy, but was not provided.)
Our hero, Jang Geu-Rae (played by Im Siwan), gets bullied because he has no college education, never finished high school, has only a GED and got the job because the Director pulled strings to let him in as an intern. Everyone else who arrived to intern at the same time has an impressive resume. The other interns resent Jang Geu-Rae, snub him, insult him and play tricks on him.
Jang Geu-Rae’s boss, Oh Sang-Shik (Lee Sung-Min), believes that the Director saddled him with an incompetent intern as a way to get back at him for something that happened in their past. Oh very much objects to hiring people without credentials to fill important positions. He is not willing to make any allowance for the ignorance and incompetence of someone who simply does not have the background to do the job.
But Jang Geu-Rae is not the only one being bullied. Ahn Young-yi (Kang So-Ra) is a very competent young woman. She speaks Russian and English. She has a degree in political science and business. She can do anything better than anyone else. But she is a woman, so she ends up playing cinderella to everyone else’s wicked step-sister in the materials department to which she is assigned.
All of the new interns, once they are hired to permanent positions, face new challenges.
Jang Baek-ki, (played by Kang Ha-Neul), who is handsome, competent and has never failed at anything before, is now put in his place by a boss who refuses to allow him to do any original work. He has to let his intelligence and ambition take a back seat, while he learns to do routine things such as filing reports and following company procedure manuals to the letter.
The mischievous Han Seok-Yul (Byun Yo-Han), who comes from a blue collar textile worker background, loses his spark as he is taken advantage of time and again by his indolent and abusive boss. The boss, an obvious narcissist, labels his hapless worker a psychopath, every time he tries to get the boss to pay him back for money he has lent him. But the former interns help each other, and they forge bonds that cannot be broken. Seok-Yul helps Young-Yi move fertilizer. Baek-ki helps Young-Yi find a document that Mr. Oh needs to clear his name. Everyone eventually supports Jang Geu-Rae in his quest to become a permanent employee.
Bribery and Kickbacks
Bribery and kickbacks would not exist if people all worked for themselves, instead of serving employers who are collective entities requiring fealty. It is the conflict of interest between the employee and the corporate employer that gives rise to the criminality of accepting a gift from a customer in return for doing your job. When waiters do it, it is called a tip. But in the West, tips have become acceptable through social custom. Other kinds of payments directly to an employee from the customer are not acceptable.
One plot revolved around an unscrupulous employee who used a family-owned company to funnel profits from ONE International. Pretending to be based abroad and run by foreigners with confusing names like Mohammad Ghandi, the company was actually run by Koreans whose surname was predominantly Park. Mr. Oh and Jang Geu-Rae were on to the Parks though, and the climax when the culprits were trapped was rather amusing.
Connections and the Master-Apprentice Model
Early in the show, when Jang Geu-Rae asked Mr. Oh to give him a chance, Oh replied: “Chances are given to those who are qualified.” However, just as all employees owe fealty to the company, the immediate superior to a new intern eventually takes on the role of a master to an apprentice. As the work relationship deepens, loyalty turns to love. This kind of love is not sexual love or family love, but the love of a master for an apprentice, or of a knight to his page.
The draw of Misaeng is that it romanticizes ordinary work relationships.
Guanxi
Guanxi ( 关系) is a Chinese concept that is not really acceptable to the Korean work ethic. It is all about how individuals must form connections with others working for rival companies and then do favors for one another in order to cause their respective employers to enter into contracts. How is guanxi different from bribery or kickbacks? In the same way that tipping a waiter is not bribery in a country where tipping is customary, doing favors for business associates is not seen as corruption in China. It is not an ethical question, but rather a matter of culture.
Koreans feel that guanxi has a fishy smell. However, to do well in trade within China, guanxi has to be practiced. The Director is very good at guanxi. Mr. Oh, on the other hand, is uncomfortable with even the appearance of impropriety. But the Director offers Mr. Oh a tempting opportunity: close this deal in China involving solar energy, and he may be allowed to hire his apprentice Jang Geu-Rae as a permanent employee.
A series of misunderstandings ensues, and Jang Geu-Rae inadvertently gets the Director in trouble. The Director is transferred. Mr. Oh is asked to resign, and the whole universe goes completely off kilter.
Up to this point the show had been realistic, despite the way it romanticized the Trader’s Quest. But in the final episode Misaeng veers into fantasy, as Mr. Oh opens a new business, hires Jang Geu-Rae and they go off to Jordan to capture cell phone thieves, while acting out scenes from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
https://youtu.be/3b8mVfV-pjM
All in all, Misaeng: An Incomplete Life is an excellent drama that romanticizes work relationships over and above all other aspects of life. While the characters do have personal lives — Mr. Oh is happily married and has three kids, Jang Geu-Rae lives with his widowed mother, Young-Yi has a spendthrift father who is grifting off her — their work lives are so much more important, so that anything personal pales in comparison. Watching this show makes one want to become an office worker in a Korean trading company, not in order to make money, but just so as to lead a meaningful life. Pursuing that elusive deal is like the Quest for the Holy Grail.
You never have to erase not matter what medium you use. It’s a little like never having to say you are sorry. You can still revise and correct your painting, but it does not mean having to remove the pigment from the paper or canvas. You can just paint over whatever needs revision.
Lately, between acrylic paintings, I paint with coffee on paper. It is a way to practrice painting without much of an investment of either time or money.
Today I painted a portrait and realized the eyes were too small. So I just went in and made them larger. Just like that!
Realizing you never have to erase is a liberating feeling.
Julia Hanna and I were planning on having a single filksing on Sept. 17, 2021, with two guests, Mark Horning and Leslie Fish. However, events contrived to give us two filksings for the price of one.
The secret to painting on paper with acrylics is this: you don’t have to prep the canvas. You don’t need gesso. You don’t need a strong coat of underpaint. You don’t need to pre-paint with sahara desert latex house paint. You can just let it be. And then just start painting.
When I first bought my acrylic paper, I did not know this. I tried to prep the paper with my favorite house paint, but that made the paper curl up and become disfigured.
After that, I just painted on that paper with coffee.
But now I know the secret: you can just use the paint to draw the figure you want to appear on the paper. If you are not drawing the background, there is no need to paint the background. Application of paint is just for the drawing. It is not required for covering the surface. And knowing this is half the battle!
