🖇️ Curiosity, Opportunity, Reflection, and Sharing

What guides my nomadic life, my writing, and this newsletter

Nomadic Life

On my last day at the artist residency in Wonju, South-Korea, I took the bullet train to Busan. Anyone who has seen the 2016 Korean hit movie Train to Busan will understand why this was slightly unnerving. A father and daughter make this cinematic train ride straight into tragedy: People everywhere turn into flesh-craving zombies. Although horror is not a genre I typically like, Train to Busan impressed me with its character development, psychological depth, and innovative twists. Boarding the train to Busan, I realized that my curiosity for Korea started with that zombie apocalypse.

I watched more Korean films and series in the following years, most notably Parasite (winner of the  Palme d’Or in 2019) and Squid Game (Netflix’s most-watched series). I loved how I could never predict the endings, how Korean plots strayed from the hackneyed Hollywood formulas and dialogue-centered French films.

Around the same time I fell for the haunting poetic novels by Han Kang and K Pop crossed my radar—my then music-producing husband even co-wrote a K Pop hit! I also started to pay more attention to news articles on the (history of the) Korean peninsula. Have you ever noticed that once your interest is piqued the object of your interest keeps popping up everywhere?

In short, my fascination for Korea grew, and when a dear friend alerted me to the possibility of an artist residency in Wonju, I applied.

What guides my nomadic life: curiosity and opportunity.

Writing

In South-Korea, I did not meet the country I had come to expect from its cultural output. A certain darkness seemed to be missing, as if I were only seeing the pleasant surface and the complex reality stayed stubbornly out of sight. As a traveler and non-resident, it’s my lot to remain the outsider almost everywhere I go. In Korea, however, I felt more excluded than elsewhere. This intrigued me. Was it just my being lost in translation or was there more at stake?

We often have ideas about the places we’ve never visited in real life. Traveling can be a way to verify these ideas, or more often: disprove them. Once I arrive somewhere, I observe, ask questions, and mine each detail for meaning. Why is there so little crime in Korea that I can walk home alone at night and people in busy bars leave their wallets unsupervised on tables while the entire party goes outside to smoke? How policed do people feel when every other commercial on the bus shows how it’s each citizen’s duty to correct one another when someone breaks the public transportation rules?

When I travel, I recalibrate my ideas, reorganize the categories through which I perceive the world. But traveling rarely answers my questions; it poses only more questions. And in the liminal space between my attention and my understanding, the writer in me thrives. What can I read to deepen my knowledge? How can I get closer to the truth? Where must I look? How do I communicate what I cannot yet grasp?

What guides my writing: a need to interpret life and my wish to bring others along on this journey.

Wander, Wonder, Write

Some authors can plot a novel and write each scene as envisioned. I’m not one of these authors. When it comes to writing essays or even this newsletter, I set out with a certain idea, but whatever I end up with is invariably different.

I cannot name all I want to write in advance. Nor do I want to: Naming it would chase the inexpressible from my words. I can only hope that my writing is a portal for all I cannot grasp.

Or as Mary Morris wrote, “Recently I realized that silent is an anagram for listen. It is the voice that comes from the silence that the writer or artist must listen to.”

Still, I thought it wise to let you know what I have in store for you. As whimsical as I portray myself to be, I actually have a content strategy! Which is mostly due to the excellent newsletter Attention Economy by

Leigh Stein

.

How did this neighborhood (the Gamcheon Culture Village in Busan) that looks so pretty in pictures become a tourist trap? Or was it the rain or my jadedness?

I’ll show you travel pictures, tell anecdotes, share my recommendations, and talk about the world of writing. But I mostly want to zero in on the existential questions that occupy my mind and view my experiences on the road through a thematic lens. Some of the subjects I hope to address this year are:

• How do we know what strangers to trust and what dangers to avoid?

• What role do other cultures attribute to grief and death?

• How can we change the fear that holds us back into a force that motivates us?

• What do we do with white guilt?

• Should we try to live with less?

• How do we keep our bodies and relationships healthy on the road?

• Why do we seek a home away from home?

• How can we let improvisation be part of our travel experience?

What guides my newsletter: Reality is unexpected.

All my best,

Claire

P.S. You can find older posts on my adventures abroad on my website, where you will also encounter links to my published fiction and nonfiction, plus some writerly resources.

I am fascinated by doors and gates. Whom are they trying to keep out and why? What are they hiding? I feel compelled to open what is closed.