THE HOLY SPIRIT OF 2002
During downtime in the hospital, I managed to surreptitiously write the pronunciations of the lyrics that Amy was going to sing in church this week (Amy speaks Corean but can't read it yet). At least I thought I was being surreptitious.
"What instrument do you play?" an observant clinic doctor asked me.
"What? Oh, I'm not playing anything. I have to sing this Bible song in church this week. In Corean," I explained.
"In Corean? Neat. I didn't know you could sing. "
"I can't."
I'm not religious either.
And yet, with more guilt and trepidation than a Catholic Corean boy bringing home all C's on his report card and an African-American boyfriend, I decided I would enter this holy singing contest, just to make my teacher happy. And Amy was going (down) with me.
(Well, maybe not quite that much guilt.)
And what the hell, might as well have some fun while we're at it, right?
"I'm painting our faces like they did for the 2002 World Cup," I informed Amy. I've been wanting to paint my face like that since, well, the 2002 World Cup.
"...."
"Oh, and I'm going to wear my suit and you're wearing your hanbok," I also told her.
"My hanbok? This isn't New Year's."
"Come on, where's the pride, woman? You can wear your hanbok any time. Just like those harmonis (grannies) at church who wear their hanboks for no reason at all half the time. This is the perfect excuse to wear it. It's at church, it's a contest, and it's two days from Halloween. Who needs to wait for New Year's?" I explained.
"Is anyone else wearing theirs?"
With all the confidence of a chaebol CEO speaking to his richest stockholders, I promised,
"Everyone's wearing their hanboks."
LOVE IS NEVER UNSTYLISH
Well, no one else wore their hanboks that night. And only the pastor and his assistants were even wearing suits. And as far as Corean flag face-paint from the 2002 World Cup ...Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
No one else had red and blue on their face that night,
Except Amy and me and we ROK'ed like it was 2002!Amy got a lot of adoring comments from the church people, even more so when she put on her hanbok. My teacher was ecstatic that we showed up, although I don't know how anyone would miss us among the dozen other families singing that night.
Eventually, it was our turn on center stage. The assistant pastor did the short little Corean MC interview thing with Amy.
"Wait, when do we start singing?" Amy whispered to me.
"I don't know," I shrugged.
Amy ran down to the pianist, Miss Shades, dressed in her usual sunglasses at night (and day), and asked her to give us a sign with her finger to begin.
With the relatively late preparation, things didn't flow too well. We still didn't start on cue. My microphone was too low. I didn't hold some of the notes long or short enough.
I didn't sing out in a loud strong voice like I tried to imagine myself doing if I had another month (or lifetime) of practice.
I was wondering if people could really hear us at all.
But that didn't matter, because gradually the audience themselves began to sing with us. It started out as a low hum but soon became an entire cathedral's worth of melodic praise about how love is never boastful and always kind, and on and onjaenah ("always").
By the end we weren't singing for them or even for ourselves, but with them and they were all singing with us. Not as a competition but as a community.
Everyone clapped as usual. Even Sun Su stopped running and nose diving into the stage for a moment to clap his hands together. Then again, he starts clapping whenever someone else starts clapping. Same with laughing. He's social like that.
We sat back down, and the next couple did their thing. Sun Su started running between their legs on stage just like the previous six couples.
"I sang more of the words than I thought I could. This was fun," my beautifully colorful bride whispered to me.
"You did great, baby. See? What'd I tell you?" I said.
SUPPLIES !!
We didn't win first prize. Nor second. Nor third. But to our
suppliessurprise, we did win a jug of Tide detergent (all the winners got household/hygiene supplies actually - which might have been a bad racial slur if the judges weren't Corean themselves I suppose).We won for "Pome Seng Pome Sa," which means,
"Style to die for, style to live for. It's an expression that the young people in Corea use. They're really concerned with looking good," the pastor's wife explained.
Amy truly won it for us. I was just glad to be her accessory, because let's face it, that's really all men are when we go out on the town with a truly beautiful woman.
The pastor said he liked my style. The harmonis (grannies) pointed and chuckled. The 21-year old guy who can beat me at Soul Calibur 2 said he liked my face paint. (This is not to imply that I sometimes leave sermons early and sneak down into the basement where all the kids are playing X-box or anything. But hypothetically, he's the only church person who can beat me consistently at Soul Calibur. The rest of them get schooled by my furious no-non-stop nunchakus, especially that one mouthy little 10-year old.)
At the dinner fest afterwards, one of the young mothers told us with a cheerful fist in the air,
"You should have sang OH PILSUNG COREA!"*
Tae Han Min Guk, sistah. Maybe next year.
Amen.
* "Pilsung" roughly translates to "victory." A sports chant.
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