My friend is a singer:)

 Often, when I imagine another life, I think about how I would love to be a person who performs on stage. Or a person who makes tangible things (like paintings or the like) with my hands, for a living. It's a desire I have, I guess, because in this life, I am a person who ponders on words, crafts sentences and essays that seem to have no tangibility whatsoever. Of course, I can make these intangible thoughts and words, structure them into a convincing argument or an analysis, and of course, I want to some day, publish a book. That would certainly be tangible...But, unless I suddenly decide to become a fiction writer or a poet, my audience will always be small. Hence, I envy my friend who is a singer. Not only does he perform on stage, he communicates with so many people, people of different age groups and gender. That must be exciting.

The friend's name is Youngwoo Kim, a musician who belongs to a Korean group called Sweet Sorrow. The name comes from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet-- parting is such sweet sorrow-- and yes, my friend is an English Lit major. (He's the one on top/with glasses and a big smile) I met him when I was doing my masters back home. We joined the department on the same year, took a class together (African American fiction), and came to be rather friendly with each other. He hadn't debuted just then-- while coming to class, working as a TA (TAs back home don't have to teach/ we are basically grading TAs), and striving to make a debut. And the year after, his group won in a music competition, with a big flourish, with a magnificent debut song that awed and impressed the critics. But, the group didn't do quite so well until later. The song that was celebrated by the critics as awesome and new and elegant, was not welcomed in the market that had gotten so used to the bubble-pop music produced by idols. And since the group did not have that many schedules at first, Youngwoo continued on with his studies-- meaning, I got to see him quite often, despite his being now, a "professional singer."

Anyways, I don't see him that often anymore, because Sweet Sorrow is now doing quite well. Their concerts are always sold out, their third album (and this is not a mini-album but a proper one with more than 10 songs in it) came out last year, they work as radio DJs, and appear on rather famous music programs in Korea. We don't get to talk about the stuff we read for class anymore, since he is now busy with music, and I live across the country. But I can still see how his ideas are changing by reading the lyrics to his songs. And it's fun to see a friend becoming more and more famous-- he's no longer "that guy who is often late to class" or "that guy who sang while presenting W.E.B Dubois's book", but now a singer who ponders on the difficulty of satiating the public's taste and his own artistic desires. Instead laboring over words and books, he plays with notes and rhythms. Instead of the in-class presentation, he produces concerts and other gigs on stage. And  it's cool, as a friend, to see the transformation. Here is a link to one of Sweet Sorrow's performances on television. Oh, and if you search "sweet sorrow" on Spotify, you will find some of their albums!

Sweet Sorrow's performance