Jang Pil-soon - Studio Album [Petrichor]

 

The Heart of Wind and Water
Jang Pill Soon <petrichor>
 
When singing ‘Mirage’ (Soony6 2002) over the desert, his voice felt like the dry wind blowing. The crisp, dry air weaving between the tall buildings of the city, the indifferent voice strangely shook the heart. That summer, a group in red t-shirts cheered and rejoiced, while many were hotly excited, but where did this lonely and desolate resonance come from?
Across the sea to Jeju, life in the sparsely populated forest turned the wind into moist humidity. The sounds floating densely like the early morning fog wrapping around the pale skin are a pleasant awakening and an inviting hand telling the mysterious stories of the forest.
 
If you willingly take that hand, you must climb the hill. In the dawn awakened from sleep, the dim path walked alone, the thick fog is submerged in the stillness anticipating the light. Just like when climbing the hill on a windy day to ‘Welcome the Morning’ (Rose-colored Life, 1998), I open the album with a song that has become a long-ago dream, resembling that time exactly while climbing ‘Mist Rising’. And, the gentle, moist rain moistens the ground. The sound of rain begins a cheerful performance like a xylophone, and Earth Scent (Petrichor) may awaken a pungent memory. The world evoked by sound, color, touch, and smell creates a small and sacred microcosm.
 
The sea is where wind and water meet. There, it rains, and light falls. Standing before the vast and dynamic water that surpasses my senses, it feels as if the world has stopped, becoming immensely simple. Before it, my gaze returns from afar to close, to myself, to the present, and I feel the miracle of today. If Not Now asks when can the heart be revealed. The act of emptying and filling this sea is the power of the moon. Though distant, with the incoming waves, it is there but not there, and rising in the darkness, the moon resembles a dream. That light is neither hot nor cool. Becoming ‘a single soul between light and darkness’ it takes flight (Meeting on the Moon).
 
If in the darkness, light is met, and in silence, a song is encountered, it will soon become Salvation (soteria). The weighing between love and hate, depression and joy is futile. I merely wait for the day to lightly soar into the atmosphere of dawn. Crossing into the world beyond is a blessing permitted to the birds that fly lightly, not with heavy bodies.
 
Today, I who cannot fly walks. You, who made the long walk not lonely, have gone on a farther journey, but the sea, sunset, and memories, the landscapes we shared wrap around with every step. The gesture of the sturdy ‘Dog Dung’ guarding the yard of the gentle yellow gate house has seeped into the damp soil. The forest is a space good for mourning. The forest is as deep as water, dark, sunny, sparkling, fearful, and unknown. In the forest, as new sprouts grow and flowers bloom, there are also things that wither, die, and return to the soil. The shade of trees creating a cycle sings while rubbing against each other. It is a ‘Forest's Requiem’ towards the changing and disappearing things.
 
The place reached at the end of the long walk is ‘Again, Home’. The warm blanket of that place, which is both the starting point and destination. In the sensation of the night air felt at the window, the past fades softly. It is a space where yesterday, which was the life of the wind, can rest for a moment. The careful approach of the keys, in the quiet movement that flutters the curtains, is a time that can pause for a moment. In the stillness of the night air, I watch ‘Fireworks’. The light that brightens the moment and sinks into darkness. The voice gradually rises and after blooming, slowly disappears. Just as it asked when if not now, it looks at today more than any tomorrow. Both shining and breaking.
 
Jeju, where there are home, forest, and sea, and the earth is somewhere eroded, collapsed, and disappearing. The trees of the forest are cut down, more cars pass on the widened roads, streetlights shine, and tall buildings arise. The deep and dark beauty of the forest, the dark sky and the stars within it have become increasingly distant. Passing through the pandemic era where civilization without brakes was forcibly stopped, I reflect on fundamental questions. I ask whether I know about the ‘Eighth Star’, which I have forgotten even exists, about the life that recklessly treats the living. It is also a quiet response to the requiem that the forest called for itself.
The place reached at the end of the long story is the sea. Misty rain falls, and foam rises white. The moist sensation touching the face is refreshing. Jang Pill Soon's pale voice swells in the last track and scatters white like waves. “Water always flows, always falls, and always dies and disappears at the end of the horizon,” said the writer, and though each changes its appearance, water, which is ultimately a single material, concludes in love, no, ‘Sorang’. It becomes a heart that humbly accepts the shining now, the disappearing tomorrow, and all the cycles of nature. It becomes the heart of water.
 
_Shin Young-sun