A Bit About Love

Hello, hello. I have a new 2025 resolution: Share a new song in this newsletter each month. I took a voice memo of the one below while noodling around on the piano.

While I tend to think and overthink, I’ve not given the concept of love proper attention and I intend to interrogate love and write a collection of love songs. Reading bell hooks’ All About Love: New Visions, I wondered if I agree with all that she says (although I’m inclined to take her word, given her many more years of life and thought she has put in to the subject) and if I know what love is—instinctively I feel I know it, but do I know what it looks and doesn’t look like when framed as an action? After much deliberation, I have decided that love declared but violated repeatedly through actions is not a love I can accept in my life, if it is love at all.

I had ample time to read All About Love and process it some while taking my mom to the ER (twice! she’s okay now). She has an unusually high tolerance for pain and didn’t think she needed to see the doctor until it became an overdue emergency. It’s good to be sensitive to pain, I remembered. Whether physical or emotional, pain can be an alert that you need to take care of yourself.

Someone that emanates love through the music she plays and teaches is my friend and harpist Liza. Here’s our live duo version of my song “Dream of Home.”

After being rained out twice, Liza and I were finally able to gather with harpist Ginger last week for Star Party Silverlake. There were so many people in the triangle plaza. The LA Times was also there and published this nice writeup highlighting not only the benefits of looking up but the community found through the LA Astronomical Society.

Below is a snippet of the harp performance and also a ditty I wrote to welcome the Year of the Snake. I’ve been posting Shorts on YouTube so head over there to see more.

“A World Without You” from Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons is out today in Korean! It’s a few years ago now that I shot the video with Maclaine and Jon, shivering but having the time of my life. My mom sewed the purple chima for me by combining two hanbok pieces (which perished shortly thereafter in the wash) and also translated the lyrics into Korean for “당신없는 세상.”

I’ll be performing a solo voice/gayageum set for a dinner fundraiser series benefitting victims of the LA fires. If you’re into fine dining and in LA next weekend with money to spend for a good cause, reserve a seat here. (But please reserve after today in observance of the economic blackout.) Chef Debbie Lee of Joseon will be serving up a five-course prix-fixe menu that reimagines cuisine once reserved for Korean royalty.

🔊 Evgeny Kissin came on the car radio playing this perfect little piece, “The Lark.” I recall the pianist from a poster my cousin had pinned up in his childhood room.