Yuchae Lee

I decided to leave New York. Because I decided to leave New York, I decided to leave something behind about New York. Today, as I begin writing in earnest, marks exactly one year since I arrived in New York. Distant times, like a sudden flash, have just become stars and arrived here right now.

Here. Sitting alone in front of my laptop, I am writing a letter to you, the unknown stranger.

There is so much I want to ask you, but because there is even more I want to say, I begin to write.

I dreamt of becoming water. Growing up, I always said with words that I wanted to be an artist, but in truth, what I wanted to be most was water. I deeply admired water—how it changes its shape and form depending on where it rests. When I was young, the reason was simple. I wanted to be eternal. Becoming rain, becoming the ocean, becoming drinking water, becoming moisture inside a body—circulating like that, living without the fear of death. It was right after we dug up the bones of my grandfather, whom I had never met in life, from underground to move him to a sunny spot, and my grandmother was buried beside him shortly after. It was a time when my head was entirely filled with thoughts of death. That was the only time in my life when I held a single thought every waking moment. How should I live? Thoughts about death, as I said in my previous film, are ultimately thoughts about life. Because the fact that everything has an end awakens the preciousness of things.

As a child who spaced out a lot, I thought I was a coward. A coward who kept running away into dreams. Was that why? I never told anyone about my dream of becoming water. But as time passed, I came to know that it could be the source of my courage, a weapon to face my fears. I think I was born a dreamer. I dream every day. Awake or asleep, I dream. It is my way of protecting my heart, and my secret to affirming the world.

There were times when I worried about my dull sense of reality. Times when I had so many secrets I even fooled myself. But the more that happened, the more I chose to dream. The dream of becoming water became my own secret and my golden compass. Whenever I felt like losing my way, I pulled out the compass. And I chanted the spell that protects dreams, faith, and hope. “I must become water!” I decided to live while taking in all sorts of things that resemble water. Capturing a few of them through a camera lens, or recording them in words. Contemplation was my innate nature and gift, and I wanted to flow to many places to be in harmony with it.

Right now, in front of me, there is a flowing river. And even while you are listening to this story right now, that river continues to flow. Thus, it has no past, no present, and no future. Instead, human affairs—sometimes flexible, sometimes fierce, sometimes free, sometimes restrained, sometimes cruel—are merely singing a song without notes. At the unexpected intrusion of shimmering light (yunseul), I helplessly knit my brows, then suddenly think: How far have I flowed until now?

Will the day ever come when I grow accustomed to the impermanence of expressions?

I used to think that only the soul of thought exists, but perhaps there is no such thing. The idea that a human being—a presence that changes every moment with nothing fixed—can simultaneously stay in one place might be quite similar to this river! With that thought, I empty my complex mind. That aspect of it…

Ah… Come to think of it, points are like that. Points. A point that each of us leaves behind while living. This utterly human greed to draw a line beyond a point despite staying only briefly… It seems that greed often prevents me from becoming water, but…

Just then, the phone rings.

“Well, you see, we are no different from floating dust. But have you ever seen dust dance?”

Uncle Jaegun came to New York. With a white ‘face of fur.’ Occasionally I meet animals with human eyes, but I often feel he is the opposite. In a good way.

“Time and space began simultaneously.”

“Can you imagine that?”

“This is a truly important issue. We really need to think seriously about this.”

A deluge of his vast scientific and historical knowledge, and his questions.

He might sigh if he knew, but listening to his talk, I was dreaming again. His eyes grew larger than anyone’s I have ever met. So large that his dark eyes seemed ready to swallow the world. It is the exact opposite of the black holes he always talks about until his lips dry out. As his eyes expand, countless stars pour out from within them. Points of white light drift on black water. The space-time of black ‘nothingness’ surges endlessly. Looking into the white light, all colors of the world reside in there. Distortion of time. The home of all curves. Then, a line suddenly comes to mind out of nowhere: “We die when we realize why blue is blue,” and I jot it down in my phone’s notes app. By then, we were at the Whitney Museum, and he says:

“To come see this work again, or not—that is the only question.”

He left me with the words that only “BLIND FAITH” is the most necessary quality for an artist, and then he went back.

Blind faith. The necessity of believing unconditionally, without discerning right from wrong. Words like that often appeared in the books I thought I had read well. Wearing various labels like Love, Recklessness, Courage, Destiny, Slaughter, Severance.

What is my BLIND FAITH?

I re-imagine myself as an entity that is both one and the whole.

As expected, it doesn’t quite resonate.

Becoming a being that exploits nothing, nor is exploited by anything, still seems utterly impossible.

Yet I know it is not impossible. One day—a day slightly different from others, yet the same as always—as I stared quietly at water, I suddenly encountered a somewhat shocking truth. It was my destiny, a renewed realization of the destiny of us all.

That I can become water.

That we die and become water.

The origin of the immense futility and emptiness that occasionally visited me. At the same time, the pendulum of life. Now I finally understand The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

Dream and destiny were leaning back-to-back, facing each other from the farthest distance. To be or not to be? That was the true question. I hoped the dream of becoming water would run away from me, while at the same time, I chased that dream like a child chasing a rainbow.

When I heard the words that thousands of water droplets were speaking to me individually, I reached a state where the physical body ceased to exist, liberated even from the mind. Everything living is energy. One must think about this very seriously. A day came to me—though it was just a fleeting moment—when I felt every kind of living existence. From a single liverwort that had just opened upon a quietly seated black stone, to the very last leaf on a branch extended by a centuries-old giant tree, all that ‘livingness’ was drawn into each other, discharged, and circulating. Everything was flowing, living and breathing. And I was inside that ‘movement.’

I received a quiet shock. Everything was unbelievably equal. Nature embraced me, and I embraced nature. Something grabbed me and pulled me… to the far side of a distant memory…

Inside my mother’s womb.

Ah… so this is how it was… cozy, gentle, and warm.

Human and human are inherently connected. Connection is the most natural state.

At the same time, I feel awe. Awe for life. The terrible solitude that all living beings endure, unpredictable lives, and inevitable firsts. Tears poured out in the rainy forest at the unfamiliarity I felt for the first time. The raindrops falling on my face blended with my tears. I say it again: connection is the most natural state. I felt as if I were born anew at that moment. Though I must have witnessed hundreds of millions of raindrops in my life, that day I met a raindrop for the very first time. I saw the world contained within a single raindrop for the first time. I saw the tiny me inside it. I was hanging upside down, waiting to be born like that. Like a butterfly. Like a baby in the womb. Looking at each other. That the other might not be a person. That we met each other for the first time at this moment.

I was happy then. I was truly happy. My soul was free, serene, and fresh.

The moment passed. For time is a limitation.

Holding tightly onto that moment that pierced through me, like the White Rabbit, I hurriedly set off again. What was I being chased by…

Looking back, I knew the life I wanted, and I think I needed some motivation, courage, or shock to plunge into that life. Or perhaps, I felt the need to say goodbye to the things I had to let go of to get what I wanted. I’ve always been a bit like that since I was young. I always had an attraction to the dramatic. So I often made extreme choices, or found myself standing right in the middle of them when I snapped back to reality. I believe the door to a new world opens at the edge of a cliff. Just as water boils at 100 degrees and freezes at 0 degrees. To gain something for change, I relentlessly cling to it and drive myself into a corner. I know very well that only in such recklessness and extreme situations do I become cool-headed out of sheer terror. Is the destination reached that way the best option? Perhaps I’m like this because I don’t really care about that. Anyway, when such a situation comes, I feel myself splitting apart. And I feel a strange ecstasy. I feel alive as the solitude, alienation, and pain felt within—those feelings mostly beyond the expression of spoken language—engulf me. Is it a bit perverted? The illusion of becoming a transcendent being watching over the character named ‘me’ is sweet, and at the same time, laughing at this foolish self, I feel a sense of liberation. Liberation under the name of imperfection. When I become intensely, terribly myself; when I discover myself abandoned in a situation into which I kept crawling inside and ultimately threw myself. When I admit that the world has left my hands, when I allow myself to be brutally trampled by it. That this allowance is my choice. Only then does the storm inside me calm down. What will I see on that calmed surface? I end up seeing the self I want to become within it.

Why do I still want to become water? Water does not discriminate. Water does not insist. Because it has the courage to throw itself into everything. My old friend Su-ok called me one day after having a dream. And she prophesied that I must go to New York. She said if I went to New York, I would become someone great. As she spoke to me like that, her face looked younger. For a long time, Su-ok used to tell me about the New York she lived in. A red car she bought for $200 from two Scandinavian men just before she left New York. In that car, she navigated the grid-like streets of New York, which she had once drawn as a map. She was fed by Nam June Paik and experienced the moment her name was called by him. Hearing her stories of living in an apartment right in front of the Hudson River in Williamsburg, gazing at Manhattan every day, it was perhaps impossible for me not to come to New York. Of course, then and now are different. But New York was still called the city of dreams, and for me, whose job is to dream, I couldn’t just pass it by. The world was a place you could reach an understanding of only by experiencing it firsthand. And I, in particular, was born with a nature that requires physical experience. So I decided to go to the most thoroughly human place. The grandest advertiser of money, honor, freedom, and love. The most individual, glamorous, and chaotic place I knew—the place most opposite to nature: New York.

I remember the moment I first came to New York. It was my first year in the U.S., and during my first break at school in Baltimore, I visited New York with friends, about a 3.5-hour bus ride away. My first impression of New York was far more intense than expected. Skyscrapers, the symbols of the metropolis seen from afar. This strange city made entirely of corners was clearly the place most opposite to nature, and though I didn’t want to admit it, those sharp lines drawn jaggedly in the air were beautiful.

We entered a yellowish tunnel. And came out.

We came out, and the moment we did, I received a massive visual shock. I felt like I had become an ant—no, I became completely an ant at that moment. I remember the huge buildings seen outside the window. Strange scenery that moved further away the closer I got… Like Alice who drank the potion in Wonderland, my body shrank uncontrollably. Countless buildings in a giant city, several roads running between them, cars crawling along, people inside those boxes on wheels. I was among them. Conversely, I was at the center of this world, someone was sitting next to me, the bus ceiling was above us, and there was nothing above that. We were all in midair, stationary. Meanwhile, wiggling my fingers, flailing my arms, and shaking my legs, I was no different from an ant.

I also remember the moment I first thought about wanting to come to New York. This time, it was when I came on a short solo trip to New York before going to Korea for the long summer break. As always, I walked hard and reached Bryant Park. I sat at a slightly rusted table and a slightly tilted chair. I feel like it was green, or maybe blue or red. I only clearly remember that the chair in the shade, though cool, was more uncomfortable than expected. The height and the tilt of the chair were strange in many ways. That famous Bryant Park, the haven for New Yorkers—it was very different from my imagination. But that’s why I liked it. Because it was somewhat clumsy, far from perfection. It felt like learning the human side of a superstar who always shone in my imagination. I kept touching the phrase humanity. Then I quietly looked around. There were so many people. The presence of human beings suddenly felt renewed and so strange. I fully recognized for the first time the thought: ‘I will never know that person!’ Goodness! That so many universes exist! And I was glad about it. I was happy that among so many people, not a single one knew the strange country that is me, an entire universe. So, wanting to let them know, I bounced on my feet. How do I show them! Opportunities were more numerous than the number of people living in New York. No time to be bored. ‘Aha, so humans are designed not to endure boredom.’ As if reading my mind, the lawn a little distance away was laughing with sunlight smeared around its mouth. That innocent and brilliant green light is still vivid. The birds that attended diligently did not miss the chance and sang of New York. Beneath the voices of birds and branches dense with green leaves, I felt a strong ecstasy. The hope that I could become anything was sweet, and joy welled up in my chest.

New York seems to sprinkle a very captivating scent upon the first encounter. As first meetings and first impressions often do, that scent left a rather deep lingering memory in me. If it had a name, it could probably be called ‘Meaningful Flutter.’ As someone who used to fold paper perfume samples neatly and carry them in my pocket, I eventually jumped into the rabbit hole leading to New York. But as the saying goes, under a scented bait lies a fish bound to die… It didn’t take long for me to face eyes that floated around, having lost their light.

“I want to see New York through Suchae’s eyes.” That’s what a beloved friend (언니) said to me a while ago.

Since coming to New York, I’ve been running a project. On an Instagram account I had previously made for archiving, I collected the New York I met through video and text. #y_in_newyork. The pieces of New York that passed through me are gathered there. The days I loved New York, and the reasons why I ultimately leave despite that, are contained in fragments. Ahead of my farewell with New York, I binge-scrolled through it after a long time. And there, I remind myself once again of the life I want to live. That’s how important records are. Thinking about how my past is my guide, I find a commonality with water. That the past and the future are both the present.

A life where nature, art, and travel become daily routine. Of course, New York has all three. I deeply love the greenness of New York’s parks. The artists of New York and their expressions make my blood boil. The corners of New York I discover anew every day make me thankful that I am human, able to experience diverse stimuli. But in New York, a considerable price must be paid for all of that. The moment things that shouldn’t be luxuries become luxuries, smiles lose their place to sit. New York was no longer the New York of Basquiat, or from Just Kids, that I had fantasized about. Living here, I felt too much thirst for art. In a place where the effort required for mere survival takes more energy than necessary, it was exceptionally difficult to make room for small happiness, room for art. A walk without threat, seasonal fruits, artist friends, and above all, quietness—these were essential conditions for me to make art. But too much noise, trash, anger, and hunger kept catching in my throat. Even swallowing became exhausting over time. New York broke out in blotches on my face. A certain resentment that couldn’t be hidden by colorful clothes, a lively high ponytail, or makeup… Then one day, through the subway window, my eyes met a stranger’s. I stared blatantly, risking rudeness. He did the same. Usually, holding a person’s gaze for a long time made me feel ticklish—an action unimaginable under normal circumstances. In his face, I saw my own face. I felt disgust toward that person I was seeing for the first time. And that shocked me. I was hating New York.

The ultimate boss of capitalism. It was perhaps only a matter of time before I would leave this city, the epicenter of a social structure where exploitation is rampant and wealth is built upon it. To say it is a land of opportunity ultimately means it is a land of competition. But I have zero interest in competition. To make matters worse, I am particularly vulnerable to material desires and consumption.

At this timing, I will confess. I don’t want to work to make money. As much and as often as possible, I want to space out, I want to walk, I want to live while quietly gazing at water. So I ponder ways to survive while minimizing work. I decide to look for a life here, too, where I earn less, spend less, and exist as much as possible.

There are various ways to survive in New York while earning little money. Some put a cot in the living room and live with three or four people in a two-bedroom apartment to save even a little on jaw-dropping rent; many work multiple jobs. People travel an hour or two to immigrant hubs to buy slightly cheaper groceries. Chinatown or Jackson Heights, for example. Trader Joe’s is also well used. Another way is going to farmer’s markets. Despite being a huge city, markets open well everywhere in New York. People sneak over ticket gates to save on transportation, or buy second-hand bicycles for cost-effectiveness. They pick up abandoned furniture from the street and wear second-hand clothes bought from piles of dust. To add my personal tip, finding a community garden near your house is wonderful.

Seven minutes away from the Bushwick house where I lived for a year, there was a neighborhood garden. That place was perhaps the only spot in suffocating New York where I could breathe, except for 45 minutes in church. If not for that place, I wouldn’t have been able to endure even a year. Diverse people living in the neighborhood gathered every Saturday at 10 AM to touch the soil. I liked myself wearing messy hair, wet knees, and blackened fingernails. In that sense, farm work was very similar to doing art. Perhaps that’s why there were many artists there. A choreographer who prophesied that a naturalistic future is the only way to survive, a graphic designer who hosted very unique tea parties, a computer engineer who danced, and even a musician who said he wanted to become a fly stuck to a tree. Although I grew up farming intermittently since childhood, it was my first time having my own little plot. I cultivated many crops there. Tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, peppers, okra, carrots, napa cabbages, lettuces, radishes, and more. Right in the middle of the garden was a peach tree, from which we made jam and froze peaches to pass the heat. The garden fed me and my neighbors. It made me healthy in both body and mind. Nature, which gave back to me exactly as much as I worked, was mystical, and I really liked such a simple and honest life. But that too was brief; the New York winter arrived.

New York’s initiation ceremony happens in winter. Fierce winds leave scratches here and there. A vanished sun, frozen ground, layers of clothing adding weight to sighs that sink the earth, and unfortunate homeless people. The word ‘harshness’ sticks to the soles of shoes like chewing gum. In subway stations, someone died every day, and occasionally I met people who told me that someday it would be me. Perhaps because of that, from a certain point, I could no longer feel safe even at home. I was drained of an unnecessarily large amount of energy just sitting still. Seasonal depression, which I never had before, emerged. At first, I thought it was because I couldn’t sleep well due to the cold seeping through the window cracks despite taping them, or because of the sound of rats’ claws beneath my feet in the pitch-dark night. Then one day, the thought struck me: Why live like this?

Frequently, my sight turned pitch black and I couldn’t breathe well. Tinnitus rang. Bzzz— bzzz— vibrations echoed in my ears.

When it was too hard, I meditated or cooked for myself. But those didn’t solve the fundamental problem. Every single day was burdensome. Even if I barely endured this winter, what about next year? The year after? I lacked confidence. So I decided to leave. I unsheathed my privilege as an international student without regret. Having a place to return to. Being able to make a choice. I felt how grateful a thing that was. So I booked a ticket back to Korea. More people were sad than I expected. But strangely, no tears came from me.

Then, an event occurred that gave me a reason to endure. My heart dropped unexpectedly with a thud, and I had dreams I didn't want to wake up from. When I came to feel it deplorable that only I knew myself in such a state, I decided to stay in New York. Contrary to the day at Bryant Park when I first felt I wanted to come to New York, I developed a desperate desire to connect with others. Falling in love is truly more like magic the more you know it. Love makes a person create. Reasons to endure New York sprang up overnight, enough to embroider the night sky. Like New York’s salty pickles, I was steeped. Thus, even loneliness became romance. And I remembered my forgotten dream again. I must become water. I must become someone so necessary to that person. I want to make them happy. Love gave me the courage to be fooled by New York once more. Love possessed such tremendous power. And I learned that true power spreads outward, unrefined. I gathered my strength again and looked around. And I thought I simply had to do art. It was the only thing I could do and do well. I decided to make a story about New York, to which I had given another chance. So I wanted to leave it behind for the people I love, for the precious connections I met here.

In the end, love did not come to fruition. That was unavoidable. Walking quietly down the street, tears welled up. When the tip of my nose stung, I clenched my fists tightly. Burying my face in a yellow sofa, I cried bitterly like a child. This, too, was unavoidable. No, it was bound to be that way. So I opened my arms wide. Because I came here wanting to be like water, which has the courage to throw itself into everything. I wiped my tears bravely and rebuilt my heart stronger by as much as it had collapsed. Promising myself that next time it would be a less arrogant, slightly more mature house.

I learned that love resembles water. Love, too, had no concept of discrimination. Through love, I learned that giving is receiving. I came to know that loving someone is receiving love, and that love once received—and love once given—does not disappear. So I decided to keep gathering strength to make the story of New York. With a grateful heart. With a great heart.

I tried to live while working day and night. Because to meet the landscapes of New York that would keep me alive, I had to live first. Red neon signs staining the rainy streets of New York. The stained glass at every elevated station on the J line coloring the station floor at sunset. The headlights gleaming between pillars as the subway enters, and fluttering hair of various colors. Beauty steeped in the cracks of broken walls. The smallest library in the world. The performance artist dancing in Washington Square Park, rain or shine. The first tree shade on the path entering Prospect Park by bicycle. Street musicians. Running elderly people. Brick buildings and water tanks on rooftops. The view from the Whitney Museum. And the river water, different every day. Scenes that made my heart feel grand raised me up time after time. And I welcomed the things that happened because I stayed. Relationships with people become scarier as they deepen, but I realized that in terms of holding hands and going down together, it clearly only takes courage. And I guarantee, that special dive was deeply worthwhile. Underneath conversations that were like utterly unpredictable waves, discovering a dense quietness. Times spent conversing without words, solely through each other's gazes. Solidarity is born there.

The exact date I decided I must leave New York again is in my phone’s notes app. March 8, 2023, 1:34 PM. While listening to Jung Jae-il’s Listen, it is written. In the piano sound, I heard non-existent lyrics.

If you are not happy now, leave relentlessly.

I think the only way to endure the terrible is creation. At least for me, creation is that. Art heals me. I don’t know if I can become a great artist. In fact, it’s gradually mattering less and less to me. I just hope to keep making what I want to make until I die. And to do that, I made a choice. By deciding to leave New York, I became able to create a work about New York that I had wanted so much. There are things in the world that can only be seen once you part ways. The lump called regret seeps densely between every strand of hair, so that you can only face it by shaving your head. It cannot be met without accompanying great courage and effort. Therefore, the very first thing needed for surrender was to expose my weakness. Saying goodbye to New York rather pathetically. But flowers fall to bloom.

I "finally" left New York. And now, a certain fact has revealed itself. A fact visible only upon leaving.

I left New York because it was painful not being able to create. But now I know. New York is a place where living itself becomes a creative act. And that this, too, makes a person grow younger. So that was why Su-ok’s wrinkles and blemishes—she who told me I had to go to New York—had faded.

I came here to record the ways of living—no, surviving—in New York. Having a lunch enviable to anyone in a park with a $4 sandwich while listening to street music, writing after seeing a new artist’s work, going with a grand heart to the library with lions, turning a block early to walk while browsing a new shop, or lighting a candle among tourists inside a giant cathedral. New York is indeed jazz itself. Harmonizing in its own way. Impromptu, free, where even dissonance is lovely…

My best friend who remained in New York bade farewell saying that I suited New York better than anyone else.

I step out again toward a moment that becomes an end and a beginning. The moment I reach you. The moment the clue to life unravels. The moment the door opens. My heart swells expecting some explosion, departure, or union. Heading out to meet the unknown you, I also occasionally feel a dull sensation of as if I already know everything. Experiencing days of feeling mystical as the tip of my tongue remembers the scent of imagined food, and raw days where the word 'family' rolls unfamiliar on the tip of my tongue, I decide to wander a little more through this strange life.

Before I knew it, I wrote all the way here like flowing water. Have I become a little more like water? Whatever the case, my mind has grown calm because of it, so that is enough. By the way, where will I flow from now on? I still dream of becoming water. I am still sitting alone in front of my laptop, and in front of me, there is still the flowing river. The river that has been continuously flowing. Without past, present, or future. Like the black swan going backward on the water over there. And like how it vanished without a trace before my eyes. Simply accepting that it flows. I pull out my golden compass that I had forgotten for a while. Come to think of it, I have never opened this compass. I don’t even know if it opens, or if there is something inside if opened. However, what matters to a person like me is that the compass is right here like this. Just as I am right here like this.