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coral: part i [author’s commentary]
May. 12th, 2024 12:45 pmThe Song
Coral - demo
It’s difficult to talk about something that I’ve been writing realistically for five months, because I have so much and nothing to say at once. What I can say is that it started with a prompt (Jihoon writing another song for Minghao ten years after enlistment) and a love for angsty almost-exes to lovers, “Hai Cheng” and post-disbandment/future fics. Sometimes writing too close to reality leaves a bad aftertaste, so I enjoy when I can take something familiar and adjust it, stretch it out and throw a bit of magic in there.
I couldn’t really write about “Hai Cheng,” but this story wouldn’t be the same without understanding it. It’s too real and raw and tied up with my own feelings when it came out. So I wrote my own song, “Coral,” which in many ways is a response to “Hai Cheng.” There was a specific translation/background thread I read (here) that really inspired the idea for “Coral,” with reference to something that Minghao explained about his hometown in a Weibo live (translation + clip also in the previous link). In this, he talks about a folktale where his hometown Hai Cheng was “the city where the sea once existed in and receded from.” There’s a park called Cuoshishan Park filled with reef limestones—where it’s hard to say if they were shipped there or if they were really left behind . Sometimes the truth of a story doesn’t as matter as much as it’s romanticism—we romanticize life and stories because sometimes it’s just a prettier way of looking at, sometimes we are inserting meaning into the things we don’t understand. I like to think there’s something still special in that invention. So yes, it’s coral and not reef limestone, but I can never forget the images of dying coral reefs, how they are so vibrant before they turn bone white.
There are many interpretations of a single song, but the ones that stuck with me the most probably have to do with this inescapable feeling that I don’t have a hometown, but I’m missing one all the same.
“Hai Cheng has no sea but my heart yearns to go to the ocean”—To me, the song is about home as a place as much as it is a person, it’s about being separated from the things that make you who you are, but that separation not being a subtraction from yourself. You are still as much of that person and place, even when you are missing them.
“It’s like how across from the sea, there is a lone island, and on that island there is my lover, or the life I want, or my family, or my hometown—it has everything I want on that island, but for me to go to that island, I have to cross this sea.”
Coral - demo
It’s difficult to talk about something that I’ve been writing realistically for five months, because I have so much and nothing to say at once. What I can say is that it started with a prompt (Jihoon writing another song for Minghao ten years after enlistment) and a love for angsty almost-exes to lovers, “Hai Cheng” and post-disbandment/future fics. Sometimes writing too close to reality leaves a bad aftertaste, so I enjoy when I can take something familiar and adjust it, stretch it out and throw a bit of magic in there.
I couldn’t really write about “Hai Cheng,” but this story wouldn’t be the same without understanding it. It’s too real and raw and tied up with my own feelings when it came out. So I wrote my own song, “Coral,” which in many ways is a response to “Hai Cheng.” There was a specific translation/background thread I read (here) that really inspired the idea for “Coral,” with reference to something that Minghao explained about his hometown in a Weibo live (translation + clip also in the previous link). In this, he talks about a folktale where his hometown Hai Cheng was “the city where the sea once existed in and receded from.” There’s a park called Cuoshishan Park filled with reef limestones—where it’s hard to say if they were shipped there or if they were really left behind . Sometimes the truth of a story doesn’t as matter as much as it’s romanticism—we romanticize life and stories because sometimes it’s just a prettier way of looking at, sometimes we are inserting meaning into the things we don’t understand. I like to think there’s something still special in that invention. So yes, it’s coral and not reef limestone, but I can never forget the images of dying coral reefs, how they are so vibrant before they turn bone white.
There are many interpretations of a single song, but the ones that stuck with me the most probably have to do with this inescapable feeling that I don’t have a hometown, but I’m missing one all the same.
“Hai Cheng has no sea but my heart yearns to go to the ocean”—To me, the song is about home as a place as much as it is a person, it’s about being separated from the things that make you who you are, but that separation not being a subtraction from yourself. You are still as much of that person and place, even when you are missing them.
“It’s like how across from the sea, there is a lone island, and on that island there is my lover, or the life I want, or my family, or my hometown—it has everything I want on that island, but for me to go to that island, I have to cross this sea.”
The fun thing with metaphors and interpretations is that so many can be true at the same time. The sea is my home, the sea if what I have to cross to reach that dream, that home, or that love. The sea is the center of my chest where I seem to drown in the fears I let myself believe.
Fear is what drives most of Minghao’s actions in this fic. Taking away memories, running away from the possibility of a love that could hurt. You fear hurting others, you fear being hurt by them enough that both become true. A self-fulfilling prophecy fueled by the kind of guilt that only drives you to hunker down in your isolation. What Minghao does isn’t right by any means, but it’s understandable when you are born with a power that hurts and taught that that hurting is alright. When you’ve told yourself that running away is the best option because you matter less to them than they to you.
But I think the sea isn’t all made up of fear; I think, most often, it calls you out in its own gentle melody. The thing that calls Minghao across a whole ocean is, in fact a confession wrapped up in a song.
“Hai Cheng as a ‘castle above the sea’, or perhaps, that only by crossing this sea I can reach that isolated island that represents dreams.” /“They say longing will be taken away with the sea, but hai cheng has no sea.”
“Coral” is from the perspective of that which has been left behind. The greatest loves are the ones we never let ourselves admit or explore. As a writer, it’s always the things that didn’t happen that I get hooked up on. In the context of this story, it’s meant to be Jihoon’s voice—confused because he was left behind before there was even a chance to explore this unspoken feeling between him and Minghao. The song is as much of a story as the rest of the fic. I’ll leave it up to you to tell what all the faucets of that story is.
The demo recorded here is messy and something I did when I had a chance to be alone at home, because really I am too anxious to perform anymore, I die a little inside every time I think about anyone listening to my voice, but I still want to share it. It’s a little like writing poetry first, messing around on the notes I know how to play on the piano till something sounds right, and singing until the tune finds me first. Needless to say, there are roughly ten different audio recordings of me trying to compose this song. This just happens to be the one I hate the least.
Memories are Animals
Amnesia is one of those tropes I love no matter how overused it can be—tied up in this fear that my memories will suddenly slip away and take who I am with them. What could be worse than? Having the power to erase anything from anyone, and having to be haunted with what exactly you took away. It turns you into a monster to yourself and to other people.
The thing is, Jihoon never sees Minghao as a monster. He forgives him, maybe too easily. And it can be easy to say that love does that, but I think it’s knowing a person too. Being able to look at someone and tell exactly how haunted they are by their own choices, and deciding that they don’t need your blame as well. Family is for that, I like to think.
But I have liked to think about memories as threads, as pieces of building blocks, but I also know how much memories can change over time. They age, they shift, they aren’t always trustworthy, and they bite us when we least expect it. This is closest relationship Minghao has to his own memories, as animals that he can’t quite tame. There’s fear and punishment enough in his own head.
And yet there’s one antithesis to fear that I offer in this: want. Want is so often demonized, or even in an ultra-religious setting like I am familiar with, want can be equated with sin itself. You aren’t supposed to want, it becomes selfish too easily, apparently. When you fear that your own wants are too destructive and so you deprive yourself of everything—well, you aren’t really living then, are you? So Minghao only begins to live when he follows his wants, a little foolishly.
coral: part I
Fear is what drives most of Minghao’s actions in this fic. Taking away memories, running away from the possibility of a love that could hurt. You fear hurting others, you fear being hurt by them enough that both become true. A self-fulfilling prophecy fueled by the kind of guilt that only drives you to hunker down in your isolation. What Minghao does isn’t right by any means, but it’s understandable when you are born with a power that hurts and taught that that hurting is alright. When you’ve told yourself that running away is the best option because you matter less to them than they to you.
But I think the sea isn’t all made up of fear; I think, most often, it calls you out in its own gentle melody. The thing that calls Minghao across a whole ocean is, in fact a confession wrapped up in a song.
“Hai Cheng as a ‘castle above the sea’, or perhaps, that only by crossing this sea I can reach that isolated island that represents dreams.” /“They say longing will be taken away with the sea, but hai cheng has no sea.”
“Coral” is from the perspective of that which has been left behind. The greatest loves are the ones we never let ourselves admit or explore. As a writer, it’s always the things that didn’t happen that I get hooked up on. In the context of this story, it’s meant to be Jihoon’s voice—confused because he was left behind before there was even a chance to explore this unspoken feeling between him and Minghao. The song is as much of a story as the rest of the fic. I’ll leave it up to you to tell what all the faucets of that story is.
The demo recorded here is messy and something I did when I had a chance to be alone at home, because really I am too anxious to perform anymore, I die a little inside every time I think about anyone listening to my voice, but I still want to share it. It’s a little like writing poetry first, messing around on the notes I know how to play on the piano till something sounds right, and singing until the tune finds me first. Needless to say, there are roughly ten different audio recordings of me trying to compose this song. This just happens to be the one I hate the least.
Memories are Animals
Amnesia is one of those tropes I love no matter how overused it can be—tied up in this fear that my memories will suddenly slip away and take who I am with them. What could be worse than? Having the power to erase anything from anyone, and having to be haunted with what exactly you took away. It turns you into a monster to yourself and to other people.
The thing is, Jihoon never sees Minghao as a monster. He forgives him, maybe too easily. And it can be easy to say that love does that, but I think it’s knowing a person too. Being able to look at someone and tell exactly how haunted they are by their own choices, and deciding that they don’t need your blame as well. Family is for that, I like to think.
But I have liked to think about memories as threads, as pieces of building blocks, but I also know how much memories can change over time. They age, they shift, they aren’t always trustworthy, and they bite us when we least expect it. This is closest relationship Minghao has to his own memories, as animals that he can’t quite tame. There’s fear and punishment enough in his own head.
And yet there’s one antithesis to fear that I offer in this: want. Want is so often demonized, or even in an ultra-religious setting like I am familiar with, want can be equated with sin itself. You aren’t supposed to want, it becomes selfish too easily, apparently. When you fear that your own wants are too destructive and so you deprive yourself of everything—well, you aren’t really living then, are you? So Minghao only begins to live when he follows his wants, a little foolishly.
coral: part I
