Monday, October 25, 2010

Kim Young-ha On Being An Artist

TED is a small non-profit devoted to "ideas worth spreading". Suiting the action to the word, I'm spreading this TEDx video that I picked up over at the Korean Lit in Translation blog:


In it, Korean author Kim Young-ha (김영하) talks about the urge to do art that is in all of us, its suppression and how to liberate it. He has some interesting things to say: Parents, the first time you catch your child in a lie, rejoice! He has taken the first step to being a storyteller!

He tells a story of getting into a New York taxicab, and being pleased to learn that the cabbie was also an actor (no surprise, really). "What kind of roles do you usually play?" Kim asks. The man answers, "King Lear." King Lear, Kim ruminates to the audience. "Who can tell me who I am?" A famous quote from Lear--that is the world I dream of.

"The ideal future for me is where all of us have a sort of multi-fold identity, and even just a single fold of it can be an artist."

3 comments:

Andrew Lasher said...

Well I didn't watch the video, but I did just buy the 'destroy myself' ebook. I like the name, what can I say?

Tanner Brown said...

That was great. Understood every word.

Tuttle said...

What, TB? Did it not come up with English subtitles? Dunno what to tell you.

But if you go to the YouTube page http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aja-8sYjNaY you can see an interactive transcript if for some reason you don't see the captioning.