The Journey of a Ground Mole (Me)
About the pressure to specialize in a medium - and how I have happily failed.
There is a Korean proverb that goes “우물을 파려거든 한 곳만 파라” - If you want to dig a well, dig only in one place. I spent my childhood firmly believing that this was the only way to succeed. I admired stories of prodigies: stars that discovered their calling at five years old, making ground-breaking success at an astonishingly young age. Naturally, I spent my whole life searching for that one thing.
Unfortunately for my wise ancestors, it seems that I am a ground mole. A gopher. Something along the lines of a burrowing rat. I’ve been digging all over the place, ruining someone’s backyard.
Let me introduce you to the many holes I’ve dug in my lifetime. When I was a kid, I made a lot of 2D art, as most kids do. I quickly got bored of using one medium, so a lot of my art practice was multimedia (I should have known I was no good at digging wells then…). I still remember cutting up an old bra to use for the collage below when I was 11 years old. You can see the old bra strap on the mouth of the fish next to the man. I remember the bra strap being so much more exciting than the still life paintings I thought I had to do for ‘real art’. Throughout my high school years, I jumped around between multi-media collage, printmaking, photography, and sculpture.
Jumping forward to 2019 - my senior year of college. I watched Parasite (2019) by Bong Joon Ho. It’s a bit embarrassing (in light of Parasite’s astronomic success) to say that this was the movie that turned me into a filmmaker. I actually grew up hating movies, because the only movies I ever went to see were superhero movies. I thought they were boring and I stubbornly rejected every opportunity to go see a film. My sister dragged me to see Parasite and I only went because there was nothing to do. Thank you sister for your foresight - you changed my life. Long story short, I was hit by lightning. This was what I wanted to do. I thought I found my one thing to devote my life to, finally!
18 years old, full of energy, and with absolutely no experience, I joined an internet filmmaking club and directed my first short film, 마녀 (The Witch). I cried every week through all stages of production. It was not a sad film. It was just a sad process for my horribly unprepared, emotionally unstable teenage self. Though it was a slightly traumatic rollercoaster (as I assume a lot of people’s first films are)…when it was done I was already thinking about what I was going to shoot next. Up until this point, I genuinely thought that I wanted to make live-action films for the rest of my life.
My freshman year of college, I took a playwriting class only because I couldn’t get into a screenwriting class and it was the closest thing. The class completely shattered my narrow understanding of storytelling, and I fell in love with theater. I wrote and directed my first full length play, Someday [언젠가는] in my sophomore year. Directing the play was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life, and I thought (again), that this might be it. My one thing.
Around this time, I began animating because I was accepted into an animation class at RISD. Again, there was that electricity. The medium was exploding with possibility before my eyes and I was completely obsessed. I made three animation shorts in the span of four months. I spent more time at the animation studio than I did anywhere else.
Listed above are the big holes I’ve dug in my lifetime. There have been many smaller holes along the way as well that I haven’t listed here.
Now I introduce myself as a freelance animator, and I work part-time as an assistant editor/producer at a production company. As my journey shows, I was never good at sticking to one thing. Only one thing is for certain: I love storytelling. I don’t think it matters to me whether I do it through a play, an animation, a live-action film, or a multi-media collage.
I am positive that my passions will continue to change and evolve, but I still feel the pressure to specialize - to pick one medium and spend my life becoming really, REALLY good at it. I think that some people do have one thing that will captivate them for their whole lives. However, that is clearly not who I am cut out to be.
If you are a ground mole like me, you may find yourself resonating with the gopher tunnel network. Some of these tunnels connect to make bigger tunnels. Some of them don’t connect for now - they may or may not in the future. I have come to think of my journey like building a tunnel network. If I dug one hole straight down, I might build a well but I wouldn’t have a nest. When I am digging, I don’t really think about where I’m going or if this hole will connect to another hole that I dug last year. I’m still deep in the dirt and trying to let curiosity and joy be my compass. For my compass needle to be steady, I am protecting myself from the winds imposed by the world saying “CHOOSE ONE ALREADY”. Are you a gopher too? If you are say hello in the comments :)
To be continued next week with Mahjong as a metaphor :)
i too am a ground mole