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moonoreos · 3 years

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fic: it’s a metaphor

Dosan remembers that first day. He saw her in the midst of a bustling crowd. He saw her, and it was as if time had stood still. He very well knew time actually did not stop, but it sure felt like it had. Pedestrians zigzagged through the paved concrete to make their way across the park, but he stayed immobile. It was only when their eyes met that he released the breath he had been holding.

Was that the moment everything changed?

It’s impossible not to agonize over what could have been in the aftermath of heartbreak. It was all he could think about for a good while. He spent years trying to beat it out of himself, trying to convince his wayward heart that it doesn’t need an anchor, but one look at her and he’s right back where he began. Time away did nothing to dull the sting. It remains just as acute as it was the day it found him.

Or was it when it first dawned on him that sail off without a map held a world of possibilities?

She is leaning against his shoulder now, asleep and unaware of the chaos she inspires in his mind. The fire he stoked earlier crackles in the quiet night. He's not sure if the warmth emanating through his body is feeling its effect or the effects of her closeness that he has been starved for all this time.

Dalmi shifts a fraction, and the hair he’d tucked behind her ear falls over her face again. Reflexively, he reaches over and pulls it back for her. She has smudges of dirt on both of her cheeks. He thumbs over one side, and it’s barely a graze but he still feels the pleasant buzz of her skin. The smudge remains. With a sigh, he turns to the business plan he holds in his hands.

The possibilities were endless, Dalmi had said about Tarzan. Just how much could it learn?

Dalmi has always been a dreamer. A seasoned one at that who is keen on solving problems, not letting them become the nail on the coffin of the ideas she spins.

It was a concept he couldn’t ever grasp. To dream was to be brave, to want something so unfailingly that the prospect of failure itself would never be a deterrent. It was a terrifying idea. He could not set himself up for something that was just as likely to fail as it was to succeed. Life offered too many uncontrolled variables, too many uncertainties.

He flips through the pages, studying the scope and intended applications, the road to an MVP, short term and long term goals, and he can see it all so clearly. Dosan has never been particularly visually inclined, but Dalmi evokes something in him. She has a formula figured out, a way of imagining things, that immediately make sense to his one-track mind. She speaks, and he sees colors in her words—red, green, blue, and all the others he never thought of before he met her. He sees moving pictures brought to life in vivid sharpness, sees the solution of a problem he had never even thought of. Dalmi is a visionary, bursting with life and ideas for how it can be elevated. Dosan became familiar with the sense of fulfillment that had alluded him most of his life in working with Dalmi, in making her colorful, broad stroked dreams come true.

Perhaps that is why she came to be his dream. He wonders now; was it then that he reached the point of no return? When he realized that he wanted nothing more than to become the man who was deserving of her beautiful heart and the pure, unbridled warmth it exuded? It was the first thing he'd wanted unfailingly, even with the heavily skewed probability that he was going to fail.

Dalmi stirs awake, lifts her head off his shoulders leaving room for the cold air to rush in.

“Ah, I’m sorry,” she says, not looking at him.

“You should get some more sleep.”

“No,” she says, decisively turning to him. “I didn’t come here to sleep. We need to—”

She is pointing at the Tarzan business plan still in his hands.

“Did you read it?”

“Yeah.”

“What did you think?”

What did he think?

His thoughts are clear as the starry night sky, but he struggles to verbalize them. This is another fork in the road. The first time he knowingly took the wrong turn. The road was riddled with several thorns, but the joy of falling in love with Dalmi easily overpowered any pain he felt, any pain he still feels. If given the chance, he’d take the same wrong turn again in a heartbeat.

But he needs to do right by her this time. It’s what Dalmi deserves. He will survive even if he is not standing next to Dalmi, even if there is someone else in place next to her. After three years being oceans apart, he’s just grateful that he gets to breathe the same air as her.

“What can I do to make you work with us? At least tell me the terms you want,” she prods, when Dosan doesn’t offer anything.

“Forget it.”

“Stock options, ten percent?”

“Dalmi-ah, forget it.”

“Or do you want shares now? I can try and persuade unnie.”

“The money I got when 2STO took over Samsan Tech,” he begins, steadying his voice. “I still have it. With that money, I want to acquire shares in Cheongmyeong Company.”

He turns to face her, holds her gaze confidently, as she furrows her brows in confusion.

“What are you talking about? That should be your money. Just join the company. About shares, I’ll talk to unnie—”

“That’s my condition.”

The question in her eyes makes the dull ache in his chest sharper.

“I know, you and Team Leader Han are…,” he can’t say it, he just can’t. “I will always respect your decision. In business and—, and in everything.”

He looks away, moves to pick up the cup ramen that is lukewarm to touch now. He can still feel the weight of her eyes on him. It makes the storm inside his heart rage even harder. He reaches for the second cup ramen and pushes it towards her.

“Team Leader Han and I,” she starts, pulling the chopsticks off the edge of the cup ramen. “We’re not… we’re not together.”

It’s possible his jaw would have dropped to the floor if he hadn’t been chewing mouthful of ramen. He slurps the last of it and looks at Dalmi uncertainly.

“But Team Leader—”

“It’s not true,” she interrupts, hastily.

Dosan would be much more upset with Han Jipyeong if Dalmi hadn’t been looking at him with her wide expectant eyes this very moment.

“I—,” he starts, and stumbles immediately. “I mean, it would’ve made sense if you two were together. He is your first love.”

“My first love, Nam Dosan from the letters, doesn’t exist.” She sighs, setting the cup ramen down. “My first love was an illusion, but my feelings for you, the real Nam Dosan, was never an illusion. I’m sorry I said things I didn’t mean.” Her voice is shaking by the end, her eyes filled with tears.

Dosan is overwhelmed, but his hands move of their own accord when her tears spill. He pulls her closer instinctively, an old habit borne out of the need to reassure her in times of distress.

“Dalmi-ah. Don’t cry.” He has her face cupped in his hands, wipes the tears running down her cold cheeks with his thumbs.

“I thought about you everyday,” she says, lips quivering. And Dosan can’t believe what he is hearing. He wants to echo her words, because it’s true for him too. His every waking moment was haunted by traces of her—sometimes as a pleasant memory that gave him the strength to pull through a difficult day, more often as an omnipresent ache in the hollow of his chest. He wants to tell her these things, so she knows what she means to him, but there is a knot in his throat that he can’t unentangle. All he can bring himself to say is, “Why?"

She blinks back her tears, looks at him in confusion. “Why do you like me?” He asks again.

He continues when she doesn’t offer a response. “I am not the one who wrote the letters. I’m not the one who comforted you. I lied to you, I hurt you. Why do you like me?”

Dosan feels tears stinging the corner of his own eyes. He’s still recovering from the whiplash after learning that Dalmi is not with Han Jipyeong, but these doubts have plagued him for a long time. Even when things were fine between them, before the house of cards crumbled, he could never be sure that it was really him that Dalmi liked.

She takes a deep breath, reaches for his hands that are still cupping her face. Her hands bring a sharp awareness, but Dosan doesn’t flinch. It warms his heart instead as she uses her own hand to steady his and nuzzles her cheek into his palm further.

Sensing what is coming next, he beats her to the punch. “You like my hands. Only my hands. How can that beat someone you held in your heart for fifteen years?”

“You really don’t know, do you?” The pain in her eyes is a pinch in his own chest. He would do anything to take it away from her, but he needs to know for certain so he persists.

“Why do you like me?”

“It’s a metaphor,” she says, squeezing his hand.

“What?"

“Your hands. They’re so much more than just that, they're all of you. I like you because of you. You’re the whole and only reason.”

It takes a moment for him to process this but when he does, he is dizzy with relief. Dosan feels his heart soar, and suddenly, he is a different kind of overwhelmed. Tears spill over his eyes, but he's smiling through them. Dalmi’s eyes soften, and mirror the relief on his own. For the first time in a really long time, it feels like they are on the same page again. And that means everything to him.

His eyes slip to her parted lips, his thumb inches closer and just barely grazes the tip of her cupid’s bow. She closes her eyes at that. Dosan doesn’t know much about physical intimacy, but he knows that that's a green light.

Nam Dosan has relived their first kiss countless times since that blissful evening on the Morning Group rooftop. He had been so sure he would never forget the softness of her lips, the dizzying force of her fondness. It had been one of the few things that kept him going when he woke up in a foreign city, not knowing how he fit in, for three years.

When their lips touch, he knows his memory had failed him. Her lips are ice cold but gliding his own against it is a high like no other. They kiss slowly at first, like they are building a fire from the sparks that fly between them. She moves closer, snakes her arms around his neck, and the fire ignites in earnest. Dosan chases after the heat, licks it off her bottom lip, and feels her breath hitche. Reluctantly, he breaks the kiss but he can’t bring himself to put much distance between them. Dalmi’s cheeks are tinted pink, and the smudges of dirt do nothing to deter from the picture of loveliness she makes.

She opens her eyes after a moment, like she’s waking up from a daze. Her pupils are dilated, and her brows raised in question.

“Thank you,” he says, voice hoarse and overcome with emotion. He doesn’t wait for a response, immediately leans back in and closes the gap between them. There’s so much more that needs to be said, but it can wait. Tomorrow will come soon enough, and the sun will bring with it light and clarity.

For now though, under the cloak of the starry night, Dosan wants to curl closer to her warmth, and whisper his boundless longing into her lips.

#start-up #startup #tvn start up #nam dosan #seo dalmi #dodal

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wearingraincoats · 4 years

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13 years ago today, I fell in love with the Beatles. That’s really specific, right? They’re such an omnipresent musical force, I don’t think most people can tell you when they first heard them or when they really started to like them. I don’t remember when I first heard them-- The Beatles just felt like a cultural given. Like, what are the four cardinal directions, what are four chambers of the heart, who are the four Beatles, it felt like something everybody just knew. I don’t remember the first song of theirs I ever heard... The first memory I have of any Beatle is the commercial they used to play on cable for Paul’s greatest hits CD. I definitely remember the first album I listened to. The White Album was ambitious for me as an entry-way into the Beatles, but I just fucking loved “Blackbird.” The nerd that I am, I read the lyrics for that song in a book and I was immediately enamored; listening to the album was another story. It’s hard to explain, but I just got the weirdest vibes listening to it. I wouldn’t listen to it again all the way through for about 5 more years, it really kind of freaked me out. It was... overpowering emotion, and I wasn’t equipped to handle it.

That was when I was 14. I was 17 when I fell in love with the band. In the years in between, I was a total punk/emo/hipster (I don’t really fall in with any of those labels but it’s closer to what I was lmao). I always said, “I can appreciate their contributions to music, but it’s just not what I like to listen to.” I also would say that the Velvet Underground were the true innovators of 1960s rock music because of that hipster thing haha. What changed? I had started dating my best friend.

Lori had been my best friend since I was 9 years old. We were in kindergarten together and reconnected several years later; after that, we were inseparable... Until I moved the summer before 10th grade. Even then, we would spend hours on the phone every week, and I thought, this friendship was made to last, I couldn’t live without Lori. Things started going wrong when she confessed her feelings for me. I won’t go into our whole shitty relationship because then this post would be 10 pages long, but to summarize, she fell for me and I didn’t reciprocate at first. It took me several months to realize, oh shit, I AM in love with Lori, but I was scared to tell her because even then, I knew that it could only end two ways: with marriage or broken hearts. As I am incredibly single to this day, I think you know what happened.

We started dating March 10th, 2007. I remember because it was two days before my birthday. We broke up May 10th, which I remember because it was exactly two months, as well as the day of my driving test which I failed with flying colors. I spent months recovering. I thought that I truly couldn’t live without her. I was very, very close to throwing everything away. But on April 10th, a month before she dumped me, I had a dream that would save my life.

Out of the ephemera of the universe, though I had maybe spent a combined 10 minutes thinking about either of them throughout the course of my life, I had a dream that night about John and Paul making love. That’s it, that’s all I can remember. But I remember that it was so beautiful and meaningful that as soon as I woke up, I knew I needed to listen to them. I didn’t know then that April 10th was the anniversary of their official break-up. I honestly didn’t know anything about them, apart from very basic facts. But they got me through that horrible break-up. These were two best friends who also fell in love and suffered a horrible parting, but they had made something beautiful in the process, something that helped change the world, as well as myself.

It’s been 13 years since that dream, and now I know just about everything about these men and their music, yet they still manage to provide me with new insights and new connections to songs that came out 30 years before I was born. John and Paul’s love comforts me in a way that nothing else really can. I truly feel like John sent that dream to me, that it was a lifeline when he could see trouble on the horizon. If I didn’t have them, I don’t think I would be alive today, and that’s the truth. Through them, I’ve learned so much about life and about humanity... and about myself. I’ll forever be indebted to this band, and to John and Paul’s love.

#the beatles #mclennon #personal

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geggidys · 7 years

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Spirit

TLDR; It’s very early on a Wednesday, I rambled hard. I fucking love this album and you can pry it from my goddamn hands when I’m dead

It’s just been fascinating to me lately how different other people’s reviews have been for this album! Seeing older fans and newer/younger fans love and hate the album for different reasons.

Granted, I do consider myself a newer fan. Sure, Just Can’t Get Enough, Personal Jesus, Master & Servant, Sweetest Perfection, Enjoy The Silence were already known to me and I had them already in my iTunes chilling around, but it was just a few years ago when I went “Hey, I want to listen to the entirety of Violator because I hadn’t yet, hey let me listen to this Songs Of Faith And Devotion album right after.”

I love electronic music. My late nineties, early aughts were full of a bunch of techno and trance whatever I could find on Kazaa (remember that shit I SURE DO). I still have some Blank & Jones and Scooter from that time, that just never wanted to leave. Know what else I love when it comes to music?

Atmosphere.

It takes a lot for me to hate an album. I don’t think there’s an album I’ve listened to that I actually legitimately hate. Songs, maybe, but I stay away from them when I do. When I listen to an album, I love the songs for their own reasons to varying degrees and then figure out the feel of the album. Ultra actually took a while for me to like because I couldn’t find a feel to the album, so I disregarded it until I gave it another listen and found its feeling, at least to me. A person going through a dream and a nightmare in the same night.

When the world was introduced to the era of peche under Ben Hillier, we got Playing The Angel. This loud, all over force of an album that just had SO MUCH in it and man. It was good! Sure it’s funny when you’re going from Goodnight Lovers on Exciter to A Pain That I’m Used To and its goddamn Inception bwongs, but that energy continues into John The Revelator and into Suffer Well and even into the less intense The Sinner In Me and Precious. Each of the songs on PTA felt similar no matter what their pace was.

Sounds Of The Universe is weird. It is. Because of the feel of the album, it’s definitely one of those, with all its exaggerated bip-boops, that some of songs by themselves seem out of place, but playing them in sequence from the album, they make more sense. It’s like SOTU is one song in multiple parts.

(That said holy shit Come Back and Corrupt amirite)

And then we got Delta Machine. I. Man. I love DeMa, it’s bassy and swaggy but I will admit, it did have a few weak spots. And I know people that love the weak spots on that album. Welcome To My World is one of my favorite peche openers, Angel is great, Heaven is great, Secret To The End ... I don’t know what it was? I couldn’t latch on to that song. Or My Little Universe. Or Broken. Soft Touch Raw Nerve. Alone. The vocals with the music just didn’t seem to match.

The 4-year void is full of MG and Angels & Ghosts, my workout album and “I’M GETTING EMOTIONAL ON A 4 HOUR CAR RIDE HOME OVER MY SUN” album respectively.

When we were getting more and more bts news of Spirit in March and April of last year, and we all found out about James Ford, I got excited. One, because new producer, woop! Two, because he’s worked with Arctic Monkeys and Florence and Foals, which is some good pop I’ll be honest.

I did, unfortunately, listen to the album when the leak came out. I did a first taste, recorded it, then deleted the album to wait for its proper release. As I started writing this, I started the album, and Poison Heart has just finished.

When Going Backwards starts, it isn’t the heavy bass beat of Welcome To My World, it isn’t the startup of a modular system of In Chains, it isn’t the... bwongs of A Pain That I’m Used To. It isn’t remarkable, just a piano and a simple beat. As Dave starts to sing, and then he finishes, and the music swells a bit more, there’s already something. There doesn’t seem to be a fight over the music or the vocals. One isn’t louder or more intense than the other, like the vocals are their own instrument and actually a part of the song? Martin’s backing vocals are there in support and it doesn’t feel like it’s overpowering Dave like some bits of Delta Machine felt?

Everything is balanced what the fresh hell is this.

Then Where’s The Revolution starts. We know this song by now. Going from the first song to this, the synth is there. It isn’t exaggerated like SOTU. But there’s something else starting now before Dave starts singing about how we’re getting pissed on. There’s that subtle... like a guitar string stroke, that sounds like train wheels on a track, before it continues to be just a subtle guitar through the rest of what Dave’s singing before the chorus repeats. I love that shit. And the train rhythm on “train” and “coming” and “get” and “board”.

What’s that going on in my brain? Is that. Is that atmosphere returning on a Depeche Mode album?

The Worst Crime starts. It feels like Gone Too Far from The Light The Dead See. Which is my favorite song from that album, diggin’ that already. Yeah this song is political I mean it’s talking about a lynching ffs, it’s slow, and that buildup is a goddamn tease. Again, though, the bass and the treble aren’t overpowering each other. You’re still stamping your foot to the drums, then it stops.

Scum. I love Scum. Have I said I loved Scum I fucking love Scum. There was a review that described it as My Little Universe getting drunk and hanging out with bad people at a club and it still makes me laugh because it does. Dave’s... abusing the microphone dust filter as he’s singing it but it adds to that - gasp my heart - atmosphere of it being this omnipresent whatever following this, well, scum, around. Then we get to that “You wouldn’t even offer up your crumbs/to the dying/and the crying/you’re dead inside you’re numb/you’re hollow/you’re shallow/your empty life is done” and it just feels like a threatening lean-in before the “PULL THE TRIG-AH” and man. Man. Man.

So what’s next. You Move. Oh my heart. It starts like a sleaze and while it isn’t Deeper And Deeper from Hourglass sleaze it’s still a sleaze. There’s a good low bass, these reversing forward and back quick bips of something and that lead-in effect on Dave’s vocals makes it, oh no I’m saying the word again, feel smokey and whispy and just something you want to throw twenties at. The lyrics are simple but I don’t care I’m throwing my money at it I LIKE THE WAY YOU MOVE FOR ME TONIGHT.

Then it ends, then an organ. Then “I felt better.” Cover Me. Now, sure, like any song this could’ve sounded different in lots of ways. But this is perfect. It feels empty, purposefully. A void of space and stars, like you’re sitting alone in a field at night and looking up. Then the 2:40 mark and the remaining 2:15 is just drifting, but speeding up, building up to something and you’re going somewhere. I love it. Even the Alt Out mix of this song is fantastic and satisfies the Blank & Jones I used to listen to. (Also reminds me of Science & Machinery by Andy Stott, for some reason?)

Eternal is now starting. We get another organ, and Martin’s fallen angel of a perfect voice sings “Oh little one, I will protect you” and I feel all verklempt because it was definitely written around when his daughter was born around this time last year. It’s Addams Family-like, there’s an odd dread to it, and you figure it’s just him being gothic as it talks about black clouds and something that starts with ra as he drags that a bit and you’re thinking oh, it’s rain. But it’s a different word, and the black cloud is something else and you get this “Oh NO.” feeling as that dread throughout the rest of the song is now something less campy and A LOT MORE SERIOUS, and at the climax of the song - ack atmosphere I’m dying help I love it I can’t-

Now we get twangs, and a heavy drum, and Dave singing about Poison Heart. Honestly, this should’ve been Delta Machine. This whole song. It ravels around something, then suddenly unwinds into this mess of intense before it ravels and coils around again like thorns. You know Dave’s tattoo on his left arm? The heart with the thorns across it and the elongated cross-shape piercing down from the top of it? That’s it, that’s Poison Heart.

And suddenly we’re all going to bop to So Much Love. It’s like I Feel Loved met A Question of Time at a party, broke a window or two or five, and are now running from the cops. Sure, any of the layers of synth in this song could have been louder than any other, I’m sure you can figure out which layer I’m talking about, but they weren’t, they’re busy being crisp and playing off of each other.

We’re back to being political with Poorman, and at this point I really don’t mind because I’m still coming down from the high of the last song, that the mid-tempo of this song and the continuing, not even sure if it’s a guitar note dragging out or not after the half-way point, is getting my pulse evened out. Sure this song isn’t my top five on the album at all, but again we get a nice balance and something I won’t skip if the album is playing in my car or in my headphones like some songs on Delta Machine might.

I’m always wary about peche songs that have titles like No More (This Is The Last Time), it reminds me of Soft Touch Raw Nerve or Miles Away/The Truth Is and I love the latter a lot more than the former. Everything is low, it’s like it belongs in a movie when two characters are facing each other on a cloudy city day and have to turn around and walk away from each other within the three minutes the song lasts. Man isn’t atmosphere great?

Speaking of low, the last song is sung by Martin, and fuck when did we get so blessed? He’s normally second-to, from Blue Dress going into Clean, One Caress going into Higher Love, The Bottom Line going into Insight, or Jezebel going into Corrupt. But nope, Martin gets the last say this time, and going by the feel of the album I don’t mind that at fucking all. Because I got to hear Martin sing the word “fucked”. The synths seem their purest in this song, like an updated Speak & Spell, it feels 80s but we know it isn’t. It’s 2017.

Depeche Mode is evolving. Some older fans don’t want that but hey sit down shut up for a second.

They are evolving. For the over three decades they’ve been around, the rise-rise-rise they had, building their... little world of their own brand of darkness that isn’t really darkness, the explosion of everything of Songs Of Faith And Devotion, the tiny sprout in the ashes that was Ultra, the start of wildflowers that was Exciter, the sudden expanse of flora that was PTA, SOTU and DeMa. So what’s Spirit? Well, in all the trees and the light and the dark in the world that’s been here forever, Spirit is the final piece. Spirit is the deer in the distance, looking at us and acknowledging us. It came from somewhere, it may have already been here, we may have heard of it from the people that knew of it since their world was forming. But we’re finally seeing it for ourselves.

ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

#Fuck I'm devout #Depeche Mode

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