90. Return
How we come back to the source. Gathering in the motherland, playing the gayageum, seeking shamans. Animating on the road.
It is 4:30am and I’ve been up for a few hours. While I’ve been fading around 7pm, I can’t say that jetlag has been all that inconvenient. I’m able draw a lot of charge from six to seven hours of sleep, and since I’m most productive during dark morning hours, it’s been incredible to get four before sunrise.
I’m staying at a hanok (traditional Korean house) and despite the glass-instead-of-paper doors and the timed-heat floors, the oldness of the place is palpable. It feels most intense between sun-down and sun-up. I mention this half in passing, half in unease, to a friend over lunch. She’s a local and comes from a line of, for lack of a better word, mystics. She suggests that I make an offering.
The only thing I have of value is a small container of perfect—and expensive—blueberries from the department store, which I’d purchased as a breakfast treat to last throughout the trip. I’m reluctant to engage for a few different reasons, but when I get home, I place three in a little bowl and set it on the table. I bow and say please, have some. Unfamiliar with my own customs and the old ways, my movements feel uncertain and awkward.
I’m sorry that most of the newsletter is for a smaller audience today, and behind a paywall. Thanks for reading, I appreciate you.
Members, read on for details of where I’m at and what I’m up to, as well as some good stuff I’ve been consuming. Lastly, get a peek at fragments I’ve been animating in transit as I continue to make pieces for my film.