A list of things that hold out — YOONJUN's full session
Four songs. The last title calls holding your breath a game.
In three lines
- NONOL LIVE has the full-length version of YOONJUN's session.
- The four songs are '독립영화', '사랑은 흐르게 할 거야', 'starving' and '숨참기 놀이'.
- The last title calls the act of enduring a game.
The list of four
Line the titles up in order and it looks like this.
| Order | Song |
|---|---|
| 1 | 독립영화 |
| 2 | 사랑은 흐르게 할 거야 |
| 3 | starving |
| 4 | 숨참기 놀이 |
Four different phrases, but one thing overlaps. All of them are about holding out for a long time.
'독립영화' is an independent film — one finished without big money behind it. '사랑은 흐르게 할 거야' is a sentence saying I'll keep it flowing. 'starving' is a state of hunger. And '숨참기 놀이' — a breath-holding game — is a case where the enduring itself became play.
When you call enduring a game
'숨참기 놀이' is a strange pairing. Holding your breath hurts, and yet the word 'game' is attached to it.
Children actually do play it this way, competing over who lasts longer. Turn pain into a contest and enduring becomes a game, and once it's a game, quitting gets harder.
Adult patience has something of the same shape. Once holding out starts being called skill, stopping becomes losing. One title carries that switch exactly.
The place of the one English word
Only the third song is in English: 'starving'.
Write it in Korean and hunger of the stomach comes first. Left in English the meaning blurs a little and becomes a word for lack in general. It doesn't specify what is missing.
The songs on either side are Korean sentences; this one stands as a single word. A single word set among sentences reads wider than a sentence does.
Today, like this
Play this session at middling volume. Loud, a song about holding out sounds like a song about suffering; too quiet and it doesn't reach.
Don't try holding your breath through the last song. Just notice when you exhale — before it ends or after.
Four songs isn't short, so there's no need to finish them all at once. Songs about holding out don't have to be endured.
A new song has arrived at the playground today.
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