It’s been a while since I’ve last made an entry – The past few months have been absolutely crazy.. Recently, I’ve been part of a leadership class with a bunch of folks from my church, which was led by our lead pastor – Peter Ahn. One assignment for everyone was to write what was called a “lifeline”, and to read it to the rest of the class. In it, the obejective is to divide our lives up in 5 year periods and to identify some key moments (both good and bad) that happened during those times. For most of us, it ended up being a short-autobiography, and it was great to hear everyone’s stories.
Since I spent some time working on this, I thought I might as well post it here. I was a bit hesitant at first to put some of my personal private stories out there, but I figured that’s what I’d been doing most of my musical career anyway. Also, since this is a bit lengthy, I figured that the only people who will read will be those actually care. So, here goes – enjoy!
—————————————————————————————–
0-31
It was almost over before anything even got started. You know, doing music, meeting Jinny, leading worship for the fine folks over at Metro. None of that might even have happened had my surgery been unsuccessful. About 3 months into my infant life, I began spewing out everything I was being fed, and rapidly started losing weight. At first my folks thought it was indigestion, and well, I guess they were right because in layman’s terms, you can call what I had – “indigestion in the highest form”. My intestines got coiled up and food would not go past that point. So, I was rushed over to the ER, and my arms were too small so they inserted needles into my head to get the anesthesia started, and within a matter of time, they detangled that sucker. And by the miracle of a God who I think wanted to keep me alive a little longer, and also by the careful surgical proceedings of the doctors, I survived. Now that’s a way to jumpstart your life. This consequently, other than the fact that I’m out of shape and my last name isn’t McConaughey, is basically the reason why I keep my shirt on at most times. Even at the beach. That little scar never grew with the massive man I turned out to be. Baby sized scar, fully grown dude with a gut. You do the math – It’s just not an ideal sight. If I had the choice to be an upper body “never-nude”, I’d be just that. (Arrested Dev. Fans will appreciate that one)
I actually don’t remember any of this obviously, but I can only recap it pretty much the way my folks would always tell the story. Other than that, 1 through 5 was thankfully pretty uneventful for me. But, I do have a few vivid memories that stick out. One of which is my dad picking me up when we came home so I can reach up and pull on the string to turn on the light in the hallway. I liked the fact that this was my “job”, and if one of my parents accidentally turned on the lights before me, I wasn’t shy to throw a mini fit.
And then I remember my mom’s asian-fro, and a bit of my dad singing opera, and me drawing on the walls with crayons, but a good chunk of time was spent with Big Bird, Burt & Ernie and the rest of the Sesame Street gang on that tiny black and white TV.
I must have discovered how to use the telephone very early on – At an age when I was too young to understand the basic relationships between family members. While my aunt (who was temporarily staying with us) was busy in the kitchen doing something, I would pick up that rotary phone and call my folks at work. I attempted a prank call even before I knew that’s what it was called. When I heard my dad answer the phone, I deepened my prepubescent voice to as low as it would go and state, “I want to speak to your mother”. (Meaning, I wanted to speak to MY mother). Quick to catch on, but wanting to give me a hard time, he replied, “She is not here. She lives in Korea”. My 6 year old mind is convinced that my dad’s English is not good enough to understand my request, so I continue by saying, “No, she’s there! Next to you, I HEAR her!”. To which he says, “That is not my mother”. Exasperated, my voice comes back to normal as if to admit my plans were foiled, and I say what any other Korean kid would say when he’s frustrated with his dad – “APPA!” I wasn’t a very bright child. Either.
I didn’t have any siblings yet, so my aunt who was staying with us was the closest that came to having an older sister, and she sure acted like one. I remember she’d go and hang out with her friends, and I’d always want to tag along, and she’d always say “no”. But one time, I wouldn’t take “no” for an answer, so she told me I can come if I go and take a bath first. And while I excitedly threw off all my clothes and jumped into that hot tub of water, I heard the outside door close along with the sound of her heels echoing away through the hallway as she successfully left me behind. To be deceived hurts, period. But thanks to my aunt I remember the exact moment it happened to me for the very first time in my life. I nearly ran out the door to chase her down after hopping out of the water and putting on only my tighty-whities, but thankfully my mom stopped me, and after realizing what my aunt had done, consoled me and told me it wasn’t a very nice thing what she did. By the way, another funny tighty-whitey story coming up later.
Dennis was my best friend at St. Teresa Elementary School. I only bring him up briefly because it is at his birthday party (which is the first one I ever attended) that they blindfolded me and stuck a bat in my hands and told me to break the piñata. Let me tell you – I started 3rd culture life early! Standing there swinging that bat, I didn’t make contact once. Utter and complete fail. It is after this that I redeemed myself at the next event in his party, which was a mini dance off, where I won 1st prize. I only wish I can go back to see how hard everyone was laughing at me.
Up until 2nd grade, we were living in Sunnyside, NY in a tiny one bedroom apartment. Except for Dennis, and another friend named Johan, I didn’t miss Sunnyside much at all when we moved out to Bayside, to our very first house that my folks were able to put a down payment on. I was too young to appreciate the fact that this was quite a significant move and accomplishment for my hard working immigrant parents who were still young, bright, and full of dreams. They sold everything from cigarettes and cigars to belts, bags, and pantyhose in a small wholesale store in Manhattan. And because I helped out at work ever since I was a kid, I know way too much about pantyhose. Control Top, Opaque, Ultra Sheer, Fishnet, you name it – I know it. Returned stockings w/ runs in them made great masks too.
The first day at my new school PS 203, in the middle of the school year, my 2nd grade teacher sat me down and introduced me to the class and said that they were about to take a spelling test and that I was welcomed to take it, but it wouldn’t count since I didn’t learn the words yet. It turns out that I got a 100 on it anyway. This was nothing like my first day at Nursery School several years back, when the teacher told everyone to write their names on a piece of paper and I panicked. You see, I knew how to say the alphabet out loud and even to write the letters, but I didn’t know how to spell anything. Not only this, but at home they called me by my Korean Name “goo yull ah”, so with no clue whatsoever, except for seeing that the rest of the kids were writing away, I just wrote a bunch of letters too in random order. My teacher kindly reached down and wrote the letters “K O O’” for me and taught me how to say it, to which I came home and said to my mom, “My name is Koo”? Since then, spelling was not taken lightly.
As long as I could remember, music was my lifeline and the very thing that had no problem capturing all of my attention. My mom was quick to recognize that and started me off on a collection of Vinyl Records of music that ranged from Sesame Street Jamboree all the way to Michael Jackson (which I still have today.) With these records and a boom box and blank cassettes, I quickly discovered the much antiquated art form of Mix Tapes.
Now, when 5th grade hits, you start feeling that you’re an adult, and you’ve moved on past toys and coloring books. Talk about someone truly knowing your love language: When I turned 9, my mom gave me a small box and said “Happy Birthday”. It was my very first “walkman”. Not “My First Sony” kids stuff. But, a legit, cool looking, adult walkman. If there was a gift I remembered from my entire childhood, this was it. And when I was 10, she figured that I might equally enjoy another form of media and got me my first point and shoot camera. She knows me well. I can’t begin to count how many boxes of photos I have that I have developed over the years all the way until digital photography came about. And well, you know how much I still love photography today. It was an important time indeed to receive a gift like this because it was not too long before then, that my baby sister was born – and well, I wanted to take plenty of pictures of her.
It is also at this age that I learned that I don’t have one athletic bone in me. I got a baseball and glove for the first time, and so I took them outside and threw the ball as high up as possible. Blinded by the sun, I lost sight of where the ball went and it plummeted straight onto my forehead, and that was the end of that. This lack of skill also surfaced in my inability to climb fences. One Saturday when school was out, a few friends and I decided to take a shortcut going somewhere and cut through what would eventually be my high school. After we hit a fence that looked like it was a mile high, they started climbing and I ran to the other side of the field to find a different opening and told them I’d catch up with them. I came across a gate that was locked up by a thick chain, and thought I should be able to squeeze through the opening. To my surprise, my entire body made it through to the other side, and then at the very last minute, my head got stuck. The way I was positioned, I couldn’t squeeze back through to the other side either, and basically to paint a picture of what I looked like – my body was hunched over with my head in the other side of the gate and it looked like I was in a modern day pillory for trespassing, with the whole town walking past me, looking at my chubby asian rear. I remember standing there hunched over, yelling out my friends names at the top of my lungs, and when people passed by and asked me if I needed help, I said “I’m OK”. After about 45 minutes passed, with no friends in sight, I decided I was no longer OK and before I knew it, there was a crowd of strangers surrounding me trying to figure out how they were going to pull my head out. Eventually the police came and got me out of that mess and took me home. Seeing that I was brought home in a police vehicle, my parents naturally freaked out, but when the cops explained what had happened to me, they said thank you, took me inside, and started laughing at me.
Bayside was a pretty safe town, and still is today, but for a while, it, along with many other surrounding towns became a major hangout place for Asian Gangs. My folks’ business grew successful and they hired my aunt and uncle who came from Korea to work with them – and every day they all drove back together in our Blue Dodge Van and pulled up into our driveway. It suddenly became clear that we were not the only ones that were familiar w/ this daily schedule. One summer evening when I heard the van pull into the driveway, I excitedly ran out my front door to greet my folks coming back from work. And you guess what I was wearing – Yellow Tank Top and tighty whities. I could see though, that from across the street a few young asian teenagers dressed in black came running up to our house as well. For a moment I thought they were my aunt’s friends because she was in the van as well, and I guess they were just excited to come and say hello. But when they came up close, I saw that they were all holding guns. It turns out that these guys had been watching us for a few weeks and were planning this robbery for a while. This is when I freaked out and ran back into the house and exclaimed to our babysitter “THEY HAVE GUNS!!” and of course she gave me a blank stare and didn’t know what I was talking about. Upon seeing me run, they yelled “stop!” but I kept going and ran into my room to see if I can sneak out of my window to see if I can get help. But when I looked out the window, I realized that I was higher up than I thought that I could jump (remember my incredible athletic abilities). So, I opted to hide in the closet instead. I heard one of them coming into my room and I stayed absolutely still as I heard him rummage through my drawers. He then opened the closet door to see chubby asian kid in yellow tank tops and tighty whities and pointed a gun to my head and told me to get out and go and join the rest of my family in the living room who were on the floor with their heads down so as to not be able to identify the faces of these young gang members. Long story short, things could have gone a lot worse had we not been cooperative – as it turns out that two other teenagers who were hanging out in the baseball field across the street got shot at when they refused to look away when the gang members told them to. Because of my mom’s ability to think quickly in distress, she managed to kick her handbag underneath the van when she realized what was happening back outside when those guys started running over to us. And that bag actually had a huge chunk of cash in it. Also, when they were getting ready to take our video camera, my mom took up the courage to ask them not to take the videotape that was in it because it had my 6th grade chorus performance on it. (I must have gotten my sentimentality from her) So they weren’t able to take much, again thanks to mom. But they took about 400 hundred dollars that my dad eventually surrendered, which for some odd reason was in his tube socks that he was wearing, and they did find that very much cherished walkman that I spoke of earlier, and this broke my 11 year old heart – and set me on a path of looking for the “perfect walkman” thereafter to replace the one my mom gave me.
Before music became such a huge focus in my life, I actually wanted very much to go to art school because I had a knack for drawing and my teachers always recognized it and told me to do more with it. But I guess in your teenage years, it isn’t the opinions of teachers that matter as much as the cool friends you look up to. My best friend at the time, Joe Park had another upperclassmen friend that he looked up to and respected very much. One day he came bragging to me about how his friend drew him this really cool picture of a comic book character, so a week later, I spent all Saturday morning drawing him what I thought was a pretty decent sketch of “the punisher”. When I eagerly ran over to his house to give it to him, he took a quick glance at it, and with an unimpressed look on his face said, “What’s wrong with his legs, they look short”. Trying not to reveal how hard I worked on it, I took it and ripped it up in front of him and said, “Yeah it looks dumb”. And w/ only a moment of awkward silence, we went about our day and my self-esteem for drawing went straight out the window – at least for that year of my life. As if having hard to impress parents wasn’t enough in life to deal with.
The 3rd hired nanny we had was the bane of my existence. This grumpy old lady that lived w/ us wasn’t happy to be there and we weren’t happy to have her with us either. Well, at least I wasn’t. My sister who was only 3 at the time was probably not bathed too well under the care of grumpy nanny and soon started developing itches around her body. Normally, I didn’t let my sister come into my room because I didn’t want her to break everything and rummage through my belongings after seeing how she broke my favorite red boom-box when I left it out in the open. But one afternoon, I wanted to be nice and told her she can hang out in my room, and I closed the door because grumpy nanny’s korean programming was up too loud on the TV and I didn’t want to hear it. After a bit of time, my sister went back out into the living room and I guess for reasons mentioned earlier began to scratch herself.. down there. I was in my room doing homework, and all of a sudden grumpy nanny bursts into my room and says “what were you two doing in here, and why is she scratching down there?” I was old enough to understand what she was insinuating, and as if I didn’t hate her enough already – this made things exponentially worse. I told her to “shut the hell up” and pushed her out of my room and slammed the door in her face and locked it. Too embarrassed to even talk about it with my mom, I simply ignored the nanny for months and cursed at her in English under my breath when I’d pass by her in the house. That is also the very last time for a while that my sister was allowed into my room – and now for more reasons than one. In fact, I inexplicably felt guilty around my sister even though I had done nothing wrong and I stopped hanging out with or near her much at all thereafter. Noticing something was terribly wrong, my mom confronted me one day and asked me why I was behaving the way that I was. In tears, I finally explained to her what the nanny said to me, and she was literally gone the next day, for good. And it was then that my folks decided to take turns going to work so that one of them could be with us in the afternoons instead of hiring outside help.
I wish kids didn’t force each other to grow up so quickly and wish I can go back in time to tell myself it’s alright to do things at my own pace. Once my friends found out that I thought this one girl was cute, after school they dragged us to each other over at the bus stop, and with everyone watching she simply said, “Fine, I’ll go out with you”. My first girlfriend said “yes” to me even w/o me asking her out! A thing to brag about? Hardly. Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure she just felt bad for me. If you want to know just about how little “game” I had in 8th grade, imagine Kevin Arnold from The Wonder Years minus the memorable first kiss with Winnie. I might have held my head up high at school for the next few days, but after a few awkward phone calls, talking about nothing – she broke up w/me in less than one full week - quicker than I can say , “I have no idea what I’m doing”.
Meanwhile, I had discovered yet another level of appreciation for music. I would plug my earphones in and put myself to sleep most nights listening to The Beatles, Michael Jackson, and Billy Joel, and then of course, some of the occasional Korean Music – all until I discovered New Wave – and that genre of music alone became an obsession for all of us Queens Asian Kids at the time. I have no idea why. But I have to admit, Erasure and Depeche Mode ruled my life for a while. This is the season in my life when I made an attempt to learn playing the guitar. Not so coincidently, it was also the time that I began attending church w/ my uncle and found myself being drawn to God. With the few chords I knew how to play, I wrote a song simply acknowledging that I accept Jesus as my Savior. I walked over to my friend Joe’s house (who actually got me started on playing guitar) and shared it with him. Unlike the “drawing of Punisher” experience, I found a lot of support and encouragement from him and it meant the world to me. For the rest of my high school days, my guitar and I were inseparable and soon I became friends with a kid named Ji Young, who taught me a lot about music, and eventually would become one of the members in a little band I formed, called “Broken For Good”.
For no particular reason, I knew back in 6th grade when we went on our school trip that I wanted to attend Boston University when I grew up. And that is exactly where I went for college. Freshman year was the most liberating year of my life, in more ways than one. Other than not having to get permission from my folks to go and hang out, I found a group of friends I can really be myself in front of. You have to remember, I grew up in New York, and adolescence is confusing enough as it is already – and many of us were finding out about ourselves and learning who we were – but acceptance sure didn’t come easy – Especially if I chose for a moment to be my dorky self.
I visited Tufts quite often, because this is where my friend Ji Young went to. His immediate circle of friends all seemed to be very musically gifted for some reason, and before we knew it we were singing together, trying to have our own version of the amazing acapella groups we got to see and hear around the different campuses. One thing led to another and I decided to write a song for the first time in a few years and we sang it for our church. I remember that I enjoyed singing, but didn’t think I was very good at all. I hid behind my guitar playing so that people wouldn’t notice how pitchy my vocals were. I had zero confidence until a few people started affirming me, one by one. Initially, I reacted by saying “Oh no, that was the other guy in the band you have me mistaken with that you thought was good up there on stage”, and I sincerely meant it. And I remember one person saying, “no, that was definitely you”. And those kind words from some honest friends went a long way for me. Eventually I saved up some hard earned money from working during the summers and rounded up Ji Young, Ken, Kathy, and Yoon Ha and booked us some sessions at a music studio in East Orange New Jersey to record the songs we had written. This opportunity came about from knowing an African American customer who used to come to my dad’s store to shop. Good ol’ Jerry Hankins. He happened to be part owner of a studio and told me I should swing by to record if I was serious about it. We took every chance we had during the breaks in between semesters. It ended up being a hip hop studio, so they had no idea how to record the style of music we were going for. We got through the record with having performed every musical fo paux imaginable for my genre of music, from keyboard drums to thick layers of chorus on my acoustic guitar that was plugged in. If you’re not familiar with these terms, you might be wondering what the big deal is, but trust me they’re the very reason back in the late 90s that made people think that Christian music was terrible and sounded dated. I still cringe when I hear these recordings. But certainly don’t regret the process and journey. Broken For Good held a CD release concert that was quite successful, with a packed house and I had a ridiculous amount of fun that evening and was overwhelmed with the support of my friends from all the different churches and colleges in Boston.
One goal that I put on myself to achieve before I graduated from college, other than recording this album with my band, was to run the Boston marathon. During my 2nd to last semester at BU, my friend Tom Lin and I, with whom I was on staff with for BU Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, committed to training together for it. The very first day I went to run, I called it quits less than a quarter mile in. Months later, I completed my first stretch of 6 miles straight, and eventually the time came for the real thing. The Boston Marathon is a special day for all Bostonians. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE comes out to support the runners. It is a day off, since it’s held on Patriot’s day, and this is probably the most literal comparison to “running the race”, biblically speaking, that I’ve felt. At the 5 mile mark, I lost my friend Tom in a huge crowd of people who stopped to get a drink of water, and didn’t see him again till the end of the marathon. After about 10 miles in I started feeling the despair, and began asking myself why I ever committed to this thing, and a complete stranger at that moment ran beside me, patted my back, and said “Come on, let’s keep going”. Meanwhile, people who were standing, cheering on the runners would see us but not know our names, so would identify us by saying, “BLUE SHORTS and WALKMAN” and encourage us to keep going. People make an absolute difference in your determination and will. I witnessed this first hand. When we got closer to the end of the run, we started passing by several colleges, where I saw a lot faces I recognized from other churches, waiting to see me and other friends who decided to run. The best feeling however, was when we were 5 miles away from the finish line, and I passed my school and saw all my friends. It is without a doubt what enabled me to run the last 5. About a mile before the finish line is where the ENTIRE city waits on the runners. It is here that the applause and cheers are the loudest, and till this day those few seconds passing the finish line is still one of the most vivid memories of my life where I experienced a taste of heaven.
While I dreamt of doing music full time, reality sank in and I found myself applying to different companies in Boston during my last semester in college so that I can begin my career. What career specifically, I wasn’t sure – but some kind of career, so I decided to go with an entry-level job at a Marketing Firm called Halo. During this time, my father’s health was declining steadily because his doctor made an unfortunate error while operating on him and basically damaged a few nerves in the process. The correct medical terms are lost on me but it turns out that the very complicated heart surgery my father endured occurred only because they misdiagnosed what my father’s actual health problem was, which was a simple need to have a gallstone removed. Instead of suing for malpractice though, my father just wanted to be cured – but for the rest of his life he would only be able to numb his pain at best with prescription painkillers. Only a year after living and working in Boston post-graduation, I moved back to New York so that I could help my mom out again at a store she had been running mostly by herself because my father had become bed ridden most days of the week. And it was becoming too much to handle by herself.
About another year of selling pantyhose, and my cousin who just graduated college came to the rescue and took my place at the store so that I can continue working somewhere I wanted to. The funny thing is I still wasn’t exactly sure what my “career” should look like, so I thought I might as well apply for places that are closer to the entertainment industry so that I can at least enjoy my work. One interview at Sunbow Entertainment, and I was in. You might recognize the name from old GI JOE, Transformers, and Jem cartoons, which were all produced by this company. It was a great time over at Sunbow. At first I started out in the sales dept as an assistant to International to Sales (or Assistant International Sales if I were Dwight). However, as the company started downsizing because it was acquired by another foreign company, and it was going downhill – I got moved over to the Creative Dept. because they wanted to keep me on board but didn’t have a position for me. I’m actually quite thankful that this happened because it was way more fun working for the Creative Team and I became friends w/ my boss Suzanne Berman, who continues to be a great friend today and has come to several of my concerts to support me.
On the side however, I kept my music going. I kept writing and recording small projects and held concerts here and there. When we all graduated from college, Broken For Good disbanded and I was left to look for other people I can team up with to perform, and for many years I went through several different bandmates trying to find my sound, and also musical and stage chemistry that worked. Gradually, the music side of things got busier and busier and before I knew it I was performing most weekends out of the month and I felt it was time to take the next step, which was to find a producer and work on a professionally recorded album. At the time, I became friends with a guitar builder named John Mayes out in Maine who liked my music enough that he wanted to endorse me and offer me a great deal on a custom built guitar. This friendship grew as we supported each other’s work and as it turns out, he was also endorsing Jars of Clay (a band which many of might be familiar with), and he was in regular contact w/ the band. I thought, “hey, this industry is all about connections”, so I asked him if he might put in a good word for me and ask if perhaps the producer who worked with them would also take me on. Soon, producer Mitch Dane got in touch with me after hearing my demos and said he’d love to take me on.
This brought me to a major crossroads in my life, and it seemed as if I was going to take the opportunity to record with Mitch and the Jars guys, I was going to have to quit my job because the process of recording was at least a month long, and I’d have to be down in Nashville for the whole time. I took a deep breath and approached my boss and gave her my notice but to my surprise, after talking to her superiors, she got back to me and said that I could come back after recording and stay with Sunbow. The fact that I didn’t need to give up my full time job, and I can be given that type of flexibility was a huge blessing, especially as I was just getting things started with music.
The next step was getting funds to go and record. I started going to different banks to try to take out loans, and when my father heard about this from my mom, he interceded and said that he’d give me the money that I needed. The catch was, that after this he wanted me to go to business school instead of throwing away my life and wasting more time with this music thing. So I thought, well I’m probably not going to do this for a living and I just want to get this out of my system and go record something – so surely I’ll be able to come back home and plan on business school. Why not? But this, as it would turn out, was the seed that planted the biggest chasm between my father and I.
I gladly accepted the money and headed down to Nashville and experienced one of the happiest times of my life, recording music with folks that I never even dreamed I would ever cross paths with. The very band that my friends and I listened to and obsessed over when we were in college – the endless concerts we drove out to – “lift me up, when i’m calling” – those guys were laying down tracks on my album, and I thought about how it just probably won’t get much better than this. After returning to NY, I held a little release concert at my old church and before I knew it, the music was taking off and in the back of my mind, my promise to my dad about going to business school began haunting me. For the months to come, I took on gigs almost every weekend, for which some I flew out to all over the country, and my fatigue and burning out started surfacing at the very gracious Sunbow that let me stay with them. Meanwhile, I picked up a few GMAT books and began studying on my own, but I had forgotten all about equations and calculus and so on, and soon felt discouraged wondering what I have gotten myself into. When my friends would ask me what my next step was, I would say “business school”, and they didn’t have a problem letting me know how illogical that seemed at this stage in my life. When my boss saw that my work was being compromised at Sunbow, she sat me down and told me how I was up for a promotion in the months to come, but if I was going to stay with them I was going to have to give it my undivided attention, and without a second thought, I told her then and there that it looked like my time at Sunbow was up. I stayed on for three more months so that I could help out w/ one remaining project – and without any sort of back up plan I was out of a job. It is then that I met with an old friend from Boston, John Kim and his wife Kara to catch up and chat about life – and this is where he offered to invest into my music career so that I could do it full time.
Figuring this was not just by chance, I went home and had the difficult talk with my father. I told him about how I tried studying for business school but it just wasn’t for me and that I didn’t mean to break the promise to him but I couldn’t see myself going through with it, and that I’d pay him back somehow as I made some more money. More importantly I felt that it was during this time that God was making it clear to me that I should be doing music and ministry - but the fact that I would obey an invisible God over my real life father baffled him beyond belief and told me that from that day on I was no longer his son – no matter how sorry I was. I packed my belongings that night and had my friend pick me up and I stayed with one of my band members, Minnow, for a few days while I was trying to figure things out. I began sharing my situation w/ close friends and every single one of them encouraged me and thought that this was still the right step. I was still feeling unsure about my decision, but one night I got a phone call from my mom. I figured she was going to tell me to come back home so we can figure things out and that I should just go to business school. To my surprise, she called simply to check up on me, and with trembling in her voice and tears in her eyes she told me that I made the right decision and that I should be obedient to God and go do music. I took this as a full blessing – and it comforted me and gave me courage to proceed, and within months John Kim, who ended up to be my business partner in starting this label found me a place to live and funded me to get things started.
Months later, my mom called and told me that I should come home to visit because my father wanted to say something to me. I was reluctant because I wasn’t sure how the conversation would turn out, but she reassured me and said it would be fine. The three of us sat down and began talking about what had transpired over the months and slowly untangled the coil of misunderstandings we had built over the years. The one thing that my father couldn’t get passed was the concept of how I could believe in God so confidently if He was only a fictional character. This was when the miracle happened. My mother was actually never a believer when we were growing up. And when I started attending church, she wasn’t so convinced about Christianity, but between my aunt out in California and me, we always made sure to share the message of the gospel to her. Some people get converted in one day, but with my mom it was a very gradual process, and it turned out that on her own she had been studying the scriptures, and just researching about Christianity in general and continued to let her sister share the gospel with her. That night, when my father had trouble understanding the bible and Christianity – she began describing God and how Jesus was actually alive and not the fictional character my father had believed him to be. She preached the gospel like a pastor that came out of nowhere, and I was floored. We spoke for hours about God together and at the end of the conversation, my father understood why it was that I was doing what I was doing. When I was about to leave, he called me back into the house and asked me if I needed anything or if I wanted to take furniture for my new apt. Korean men are terrible at expressing themselves, and in my mind I thought, “I love you too dad”, and gave him a hug and went on my way to tackle this journey of music ahead of me with the true peace of mind that I needed.
While I was living the dream, traveling the country, recording more records with musicians that I looked up to – the unavoidable stress of trying to make a living doing music caught up with me and I entered a serious quarter-life crisis, with terrible bouts of depression and thought more often than any other time in my life about how I wanted to die. You know us artists and how melodramatic we are, but it had become a considerable problem as I got severely self-destructive and couldn’t shake it off with a mere good night’s rest. I began doubting if my label would ever become viable and if I would ever meet that special someone who would accept me and even if she did, would her parents allow for their precious daughter to go run off with a starving musician. Really, I was thinner back then.
But one day, I sat down and wrote a slew of songs to tackle my depression head on, and God delivered me from this dark time. Not surprisingly, it happened through music. That very thing that I was wired to do, and it was with that rough patch in my life that I realized the important truth that we will not have joy in our lives unless we live doing to the best of our ability what God created us to do – and simply leave the rest up to God. It was not long after letting go of the idea that I was going to meet anyone soon that Jinny and I met through our good friends John and Kara.
If you’ve every watched our wedding reception video, entitled “Eat It”, ( http://www.vimeo.com/3677307 )well that’s pretty much how things happened. Jinny happened to be staying over at John and Kara’s apartment for the week, and I invited myself up to their place after having dinner w/ them and was introduced to a cute girl who happened to be interested in my music, and as it turned out had been to my concerts in the past. We’ve been in the same room together a few times but I just had no idea. And then I heard her sing, and it was over. End of story.
We slowly became friends, and she joined my label and I felt conflicted about having her join because I knew that in the back of my mind I was interested in her, and the whole conflict of interest thing was bound to happen at some point, but the one thing I knew for sure was that it would be a terrible shame if people didn’t hear her music, and so we proceeded and recorded her EP and started doing shows together, and eventually started dating – and to put it lightly, things were absolutely tumultuous for a while thereafter. The Jinny that I fell in love with was definitely present, but the issues we needed to work through because of her difficult childhood was just something I wasn’t prepared for even though I was willing to see us through to the other side. We lived a life of extreme ups and downs, and the pressure of keeping the music successful while trying to keep the relationship healthy was probably what perpetuated my hair loss even more, and it’s good friends like this guy at my church named Won, who remind me that I USED to have a widow’s peak, but not any longer.
But I have to say, I’ll take singing with Jinny any day over not singing with her, even if we’re fighting up till the last minute, because I’ll tell ya, it’s powerful. There’s something in the chemistry of our voices and our musical skill levels that really balance each other out, and while practicing and coming up with music together might be stressful – when it comes together, it is absolutely worth it. While it hurt my self-confidence in the very beginning, I quickly got used to the post show ritual of people coming up to us when we’re standing RIGHT next to each other and they look at her and say “you have a wonderful voice”, look at me briefly, and then move on. It’s something we laugh about now – and I’m extremely proud that my cute little could sing and make people cry on the spot.
While we were FINALLY settling into the rhythm of music and life together, and it seemed like things were looking up and we booked several tours to go and promote my last album “Parallel” and Jinny’s debut “Finding Ophelia”, we found ourselves in the middle of Arkansas and endured something that forced a radical left turn upon us. Our van as well as our trailer caught on fire and destroyed just about everything that my band and I owned as well as Jinny’s belongings and our good friend Mike Schmid’s – who happened to be opening for us. But don’t worry about him – he plays keyboards for Miley Cyrus on the road now 
. But back to the fire – It swallowed up all of our instruments, merchandise, CDs and PA gear and at the end of the day it was an 85,000.00 loss. Jinny who happened to have her digital camera in her bag, was taping what had happened and you’ll see clips of me making jokes, throwing remains of my boxer shorts into the flames saying “I’m glad I changed my underwear this morning”, but that night when we sat down at a diner near the area to have dinner while we were waiting for a good friend of mine Jonathan Chu, to pick us up, and we began to pray for the meal – I absolutely lost it and broke down as it all finally sunk in. The months ahead were filled with constant battles between bitterness and staying optimistic about things. The church that Jinny and I settled into, Metro Community Church in NJ was a huge source of encouragement and support during this time – especially Pastor Peter – and this is the reason I am absolutely loyal to and serve at this church till this day.
My plan was actually to propose to Jinny not too long after the time the fire happened, but of course that threw a huge wrench into things, and the proposal got delayed till about a year after that time. She’s a weird one, my wife – she absolutely loves all things creepy and Halloween is her favorite holiday, so I decided to take all of these things into account when I proposed. I basically lied to her about my work schedule and told her that I would yet again NOT be able to go to the haunted house w/ her that year and that she would have to just go w/ her best friend Lorraine, and that’ll be the end of that – but little did she know that I was planning w/ Lorraine the whole time so that I can integrate myself into the production as one of the characters and i would propose to her in the Maze portion of the haunted house. As much as I prepared, she caught me off guard because they came a little earlier than I expected. When I saw her I was wearing a mask that I was pretty sure she’d recognize and make the connection that it was me, and say “KOO?” Instead, she makes conversation with me not knowing that it’s me and says “Hey, I got that mask in Mexico”.
Here’s some background info: the whole time, I was wearing one of those mouthpieces that can hold a glow in the dark stick.. you know, for added effect. So that when i proposed, my mouth would be glowing. But the thing about mouthpieces (boxers who wear mouthguards probably understand this) is that it causes you to lose control of the flow of saliva in your mouth. Now, back to the story – She sees my face, and makes this hilarious cartoon like shocked facial expression, and after having that dumb glow in the dark piece in my mouth for over 20 minutes, having lost saliva control, laughed a little too suddenly and then I ended up spitting in her face by accident. It is THE most romantic proposal ever, wouldn’t you agree? Meanwhile I had all of our good friends waiting for us at our favorite restaurant, and this was part of the surprise as well. We got there, and they burst into applause, and Jinny welled up in tears as everyone came walking over to hug us and congratulate us – and other than the actual wedding itself, this was one of the most memorable nights of my life.
Decisions, decisions, decisions – plagued us in the months to follow and my hopes to continue pursuing my music career full time grew dim, as we had responsibilities and a new set of priorities to face. I got a side job at Starbucks while I was producing music for other local artists and I was barely getting by, while working the most horrendous hours. This is when Metro Community Church and Pastor Peter came yet again to the rescue and offered me a quarter-time position to lead worship for church. Still, barely getting by on the occasional production jobs that came up and the quarter time salary, Jinny and I fought away until a few weeks before the big day, and it was decided that I’d just look for a full time job after we get married, no matter what.
My family flew in from California a week before the wedding. They were out there because my dad had made a million dollar investment into a medical center that never took off because the city didn’t grant the needed permits. Meanwhile, they didn’t have the funds to move back home to NY because my mom’s hosiery business would have to be transferred over to NY again and my dad never got the money from the investment he made because the business partner somehow put the funds into other businesses and condos and never left a paper trail of money. Our family was conned in the worst way possible – and it is this stress and anxiety that my dad had been living with ever since, in addition to his pain killer meds and other meds to help him cope with depression. I am eternally grateful though that he was healthy enough at this point to come to NY and see us get married.
A month or two into our marriage, I started on the quest to look for that full time job I promised Jinny I would look for. Talk about timing – it was the worst possible state of economy that the US had been in since the great depression, and here I was sending resume after resume out to companies that are thinking how they’re going to let go of several hundreds or thousands of employees. Yet again, Metro came up big three times in the clutch and offered me a full time position to be the Worship Arts Pastor and to oversee the entire Arts Ministry. With the flexibility of hours and generous vacation time that is offered, I figured that I could have a full time job doing what I love, and spend some of that vacation time doing what I love – perhaps a short tour or two when I have new material, and I could not thank God enough for coming through with the most ideal situation in our time of need. It was a win win situation, and continues to be.
You would think that I was a full fledged adult at this point – married, working full time, thinking of when we’ll have kids and save up for a house – but nothing forced me to grow up quicker than when my father passed away in April. It’s strange because months before this, I was talking to Jinny, mentioning how my father was getting old and how I thought at best he had another five years in him and we were trying to figure out how we would take care of my mom. I was off by 4 years and 10 months.
My father, in a desperate attempt to get a loan so that he could move our family and hosiery business back to New York flew to Korea in his frail condition and went from bank to bank and got rejected every single time. His stress and anxiety got the best of him on morning of April 21st, and he collapsed in his hotel room and began bleeding internally. The hotel manager, who thought it to be odd that my father who walked out at the same time every morning didn’t show up that morning, went to check up on him and knocked on his door and asked if he was ok. With his weak voice, my father replied that he couldn’t get up even to unlock the door for him, so the manager had to grab the key from the front desk himself and let himself in. He found him on the floor and helped him up and told him that he needed to go the ER immediately, but of course my dad thought he was fine and told him that he’ll just need to catch his breath and walk over to hospital in a few minutes after gaining some strength. The hotel manager acted quickly and called the ambulance and in a matter of 10 minutes was rushed over to the hospital. An hour had passed, and he went to check up on my father since the hospital was only right across the street, and it is during this time that my father drew his last breath.
My mother called me from California and sounded unsure but said we should head over to Korea because my father was in critical condition. A few moments later my cousin called me, and was being very vague about my dad’s condition, saying that they were trying CPR on him but it wasn’t working and that they were trying again. “What the hell is going on!” I yelled, “is he dead or not???”, and he told me to call the hospital myself. With my broken Korean, I asked about the condition of my father and they finally explained to me that he had passed away.
Jinny and I flew to Korea the next day, and met with my mom and sister and we were picked up by my cousin at the airport. It all felt incredibly surreal, even after I dressed up in my suit and I was walking over to the hospital. Soon all the noise in the background drowned out after they asked us if we wanted to go downstairs to see the body. They pulled him out, like he was an object in a filing cabinet and I didn’t hesitate to place my hand on his face, which was cold to the touch. Afterwards, we waited for a while for them to clean his body and told us we’d be going to down again to see him one last time before he went into the coffin.
I had so many things I wanted to say to my father, but the gruff men who worked in the morgue were distracting. They told me to hold my dad’s head while they moved his body around trying to put clothes on him. And afterwards, they were about to pull a piece of cloth over my dad’s hands, and my mother interrupted them and asked if she could hold his hand one last time. I immediately walked over and said that I needed to do this as well. Right as they were finishing up, they told me to put my hand on his forehead. In fact, he took my hand and put it on my dad’s forehead and told me to say that I’m sorry to my dad for all the ways that I failed him. It is then that I told him to get out of the room because this was no way our family was going to say bye to my dad for the last time. When the morgue people left the room, my mother, sister and Jinny and I surrounded my father, prayed for him and spoke words of love to him but also of regret and how terrible we felt that he was all alone when he died, with not one family member nearby. I never wanted so bad to hold my father’s hand again when it was still warm, but the only thing that kept me going was remembering that the last time I saw him in California in February, we were sitting around the dinner table, laughing, and having a good time. I am so incredibly thankful that this was my last memory of him.
I’m still sorting through my emotions at this time, and am wrestling with the fact that I felt like a disappointment to him for the last decade of our lives. I’m saddened by the fact that when my sister gets married, it’ll have to be me walking her down the aisle, and that one day when we have kids – the only thing I have left to share with them about their grandfather are stories of him. Most of all, it breaks my heart to know my mother works alone out in California and comes back home to an empty room she once shared with her husband and I desperately hope that time will move quickly so that the pain will be lesser than it is right now.
While we end on a sad note for now, I remain hopeful and confident to entrust the upcoming years of my life to the author, perfecter and creator of it. I look forward to looking back to see that God knew what He was doing all along because He loves us beyond our imagination. I am bracing myself though, for the crazy, goofy, and nutty kids Jinny and I will have one day, God willing. Those guys are gonna be a handful, I just know it.
(on our way to North Carolina a few years ago)
and this one, i still am getting used to, but yet oddly enjoy – sea urchin
– so here it is. ENJOY!
