Reader's Comment: I Thought It Was A Little Bit Rushed.

Reader's comment: I thought it was a little bit rushed.

Writer's brain translator: I love this shit so freaking much! I don't want to let it go! GIVE IT BACK TO ME!

BTS (방탄소년단) MAP OF THE SOUL : 7 'Outro : Ego' Comeback Trailer

Feeling feverish and sleepy? > One “Ego” tablet in the morning.

Feeling sad and disappointed with life? > One fill of “Ego” any occasion. To be consumed without moderation.

Having a nosebleed? > Stick “Ego” up into your nose and sniff it all day long.

Fed up with your boring colleagues/classmates/family/subwaymates? > Plug in your airpods and play “Ego” on repeat.

Having a shitty day? > Just think “Ego”!

Feelings are scary, and sometimes they’re painful. But if you can’t feel pain then there’s no way you’ll feel anything else either. You’re here and you’re alive, and don’t tell me you don’t feel that…It is good, believe me.

Judith Guest (via quotemadness)

The ultimate truth. Numbing a pain is numbing everything else in the process. And nothing deserves that, certainly not even your pain.

Someone in the comments of the video said "it's not a comeback, it's an artistic movement", and I couldn't agree more. This is a thrilling experience, to watch, to listen to, to feel, to connect to. I'm amazed at the transcendental power of this piece.

BTS , you have mesmerized me a second time. ✨

@stankris Thank you for another enlightening post ☺️

I felt my throat clench when I read the first part of Martha Graham's words you quoted. It rang so much across time, space and passion in any form as well. I'm sure many of us can relate and transpose it to many other fields, as long as they vibrate.

This is an incredible and inspiring lesson she gave, and that BTS have chosen to pay tribute too.

What I keep from this experience she went through and shared with the world, is that nothing has to end but everything can be transformed. It might demand struggle, personal hell even, scarring mourning. Yes, self-discovery is highly risky (Dante can relate).

I want to believe that everybody has their own purgatory waiting somewhere, like Martha Graham found her own. It might not be paradise indeed, but it's as close to heaven as it can get. I'm all for it, and I wish BTS, as individuals or as group, will find theirs.

Black Swan’s Epigraph

(Is it still called an epigraph if it’s at the beginning of a music video? I’m still calling it an epigraph.)

“a dancer dies twice – once when they stop dancing, and this first death is the more painful.” -Martha Graham

This is a thought-provoking quote, and one that encapsulate’s the fear expressed in BTS’s Black Swan – the fear of growing numb to one’s art and losing one’s inspiration or passion, or being unable to continue it. 

But to understand why this epigraph was chosen, it’s just as important to look at the person behind these words.

Martha Graham is a legend who revolutionized the dance world, and essentially made modern dance what it is now. You can see why BTS, mold-breakers in their own respective field of art (kpop), might identify with her and her words.

She was also so passionate about her art, that when she retired from dance she sunk into a depression and turned to alcohol. Here is another quote from her:

It wasn’t until years after I had relinquished a ballet that I could bear to watch someone else dance it. I believe in never looking back, never indulging in nostalgia, or reminiscing. Yet how can you avoid it when you look on stage and see a dancer made up to look as you did thirty years ago, dancing a ballet you created with someone you were then deeply in love with, your husband? I think that is a circle of hell Dante omitted.

[When I stopped dancing] I had lost my will to live. I stayed home alone, ate very little, and drank too much and brooded. My face was ruined, and people say I looked odd, which I agreed with. Finally my system just gave in. I was in the hospital for a long time, much of it in a coma.

(Martha Graham, 1991 - Blood Memory)

When she spoke of a first death, she was scarcely being figurative – she loved dance so much that it almost killed her to give it up.

Luckily it didn’t and she went on to recover and continue choreographing dances, even if she would no longer perform them herself, until she passed away from pneumonia at the age of ninety-six.

I think the song Black Swan has a similarly consoling message. Even if they are afraid the end could be approaching in some form, there’s hope of a life after death.