2. a poem for small things
"what makes love grand? isn't it the small things all added up?"
first of all, apologies for the radio silence. i know, i know, this newsletter is delayed. i took forever. like five drafts in five weeks kind of forever. i guess i’m still learning how to get back into my own personal creative curve, so i thank you for your patience!
this also means that the next newsletter will come in december. i know i said this will be twice a month, but our team at work just drafted a calendar for the rest of the year, and… mr. stark, i don’t feel so good. plus, my energy levels dip during this time of year, too, so i will be resting more.
when i was talking to my boyfriend about newsletter 2, i told him, "i bit off more than i can chew. i don't think i have enough hyperfixations to write about." to which he replied, "trust me. you do."
so here are some of them.
a poem for small things
BOY WITH LUV - BTS (2018)
boy with luv1 is my love song par excellence. it beats the beatles, the beach boys, bread, hell, even david fucking byrne in my book.2 this almost four-minute long bop, full of vocal hooks and dynamic melodies— a song i’m not even supposed to fully understand— encapsulates my philosophy on love.
hear me out. it took five drafts and a three-year relationship to get here.
when arby and i started dating, i haven’t outgrown my desire for grand romantic gestures. you know, the kind of shit high schoolers pulled. i remember my classmate gab from high school. one valentine’s day, he serenaded is girlfriend as me and my classmates watched the spectacle in front of the high school building. he wrote down the lyrics of grow old with you on a notebook, and sang through it while a ukelele played in the background, flipped through the pages. among the crowd i may have outwardly scowled, but i secretly craved that for myself.3 i was teary-eyed, really, as i tucked that moment into my memory, filed under: things future boyfriend must do.
boy with luv, on first listen, sounds like this high school kind of love that i’ve so longed for. very sweet, easy to like, and fun. the way it begins reminds me of how i felt whenever i saw my crush at the time. oh woah oh woah oh woah oh woah oh! then i learned that the korean title of the song translates in english as: a poem for small things.
it’s about finding joy [in the little things] in love, being curious about the little things, the details, like what you’re eating, or what you’re doing. rm, one of the songwriters, said in the livestream.
what a grounded philosophy of love. what makes this song better is that it is peppered by little things to love and pay attention to. i didn’t notice the strings ushering in the chorus until the 80th listen. hell, it took starting this draft for me to notice the variety of the arrangement, particularly for the rap parts. observe: how suga’s deadpan delivery is softened by twinkling synths, how j-hope’s is complemented by punchy drum and bass, and how rm’s sharp cadence is contrasted against jangling tropical guitars. the other night, while writing draft four, i noticed a new favorite detail: jin singing “my!” at roughly the 2:27 mark, the only time he does so.
the more i paid attention, the more the song got interesting.
when i think of arby and i right now, separated by more than a hundred kilometers in the middle of the pandemic—with vastly different communication styles and preferences—i think about how we are kept together by the act of paying attention to small things. in the beginning of the pandemic, when we were forced into a long-distance relationship, my love somehow fermented to a raging aerosmith song.4 it consumed me, distracting me from all the ways we chose to show up for each other despite the difficulty. it strained the relationship greatly.
it all came to a head during a breaking point: do i pursue my childhood vision of grandeur? or do i build something completely new with the person right in front of me?
i looked back on the way arby has shown up for me since the beginning of our relationship: stayed in the restaurant even if i was ninety minutes late, running out to mercury drug to buy me and my sister salompas for our sore muscles, gamely singing manila, manila, by hotdog with my friends in a karaoke, even if he’s shy.
the choice was clear. i haven’t looked back since. love, when it is real, is like water. it takes the shape of its containers. i didn’t know this in highschool, and i didn’t discover it in the decade that followed it either. i thought that love was locked into a set of should’s. are we being a proper couple? are we doing it right? is this okay? are we close enough? are we hitting the right milestones? is this how a relationship that lasts looks like?
these days it’s scaled down to the molecular level: how does arby take his morning coffee? how does he like to organize his things? how many moles does he have? what’s his favorite football team nga again? how about his holy grail sneaker? how do his expressions change in the course of a conversation? what are the things that he says, and how different is that from the things that he means? what small thing can i do to make him feel loved today, and how much sugar does it involve?
“what makes love grand ba?” my friend kayle asked when i bemoaned the topic of this newsletter. “isn’t it all the small things added up?”
but it’s never about counting, isn’t it? every new thing you discover makes you realize how little you know, and how much a person can contain a whole universe that you will never fully perceive. that’s the point, i think. love makes you want to try.
the genius of boy with luv is that it doesn’t make us choose between cold cerebrality of love, nor does it blow up the idea of love until it’s bursting at the seams. the simplicity of its music and its message is deceptive, because tucked neatly within its shimmering production, iconic vocal hooks (oh my my my!), and insanely cute choreography, bts celebrates love that is clear, actionable, and true. you don’t even need a partner to do it! boy with luv is a song written by bts for its fans, reminding us of the kind of love that lives on, longer than any song.
so tell me! what is your goat love song? did i miss anything about love? did i oversimplify, and am i still really stuck in high school?
damn it, i ended up writing an essay. okay, so in keeping with the theme of small things, here are some that have been bringing me joy:
the manic humor of micarah trewers. she's a seamstress who always goes off tangents, and often forgets that she's supposed to be teaching us how to sew a garment. she sometimes has a parrot, a duck, or a chicken, but always, her textiles end up with bird poop. sometimes she ends up as vision in their annual barkada group photo. (i'm still laughing about this, btw.)
speaking of youtubers, i’ve been revisiting cody ko and noel miller, my favorite straight guys on the internet. for cody i’ve been rewatching his deep dive on the actual worst reality shows ever made, whereas i keep noel on the background because i adore his voice.
the latest column of ask polly, which inspired this newsletter.
avatar kyoshi, since i have been reading two books about her. also can i just say she has been my favorite avatar since she showed up in the last airbender, and i was correct in stanning her. i just. i need to be right. i firmly believe that avatar kyoshi is a virgo.
grimes and her auteur creative process. i love watching female musicians in the studio, including this one by ariana grande. but back to grimes: i was surprised to find out that she writes all of her music, produces them, performs them, and even creates the art for her albums. here’s a docu on my second favorite grimes album, art angels.
speaking of, björk's next album is going to be a dance party in your living room.
having a work best friend. i read somewhere that having a work best friend spells the difference in your work experience. i have one now (i can't believe i survived two years without one), and it just. it means so much to have someone who understands. (hi gail!)
i have a type! i call them pouty sungets. if i do have international readers, i don't know how to explain this to you. i like men who are crabby patties? either way it turns out that i have a type when it comes to men (men in kpop?) as someone who seeks to have everything in my life labeled and organized, this gives me peace.
bts's recent live concert really had some bangers. the reason why boy with luv has been in the forefront of my cerebral cortex was because of their full band, horned-up, version of it. i had to google if trumpets were a horn. i don't care. i'm wet for full band bangtan.
i've been really obsessed with scent lately, or rather the idea of scent. i made a huge mistake in following a bunch of candle reviewers on instagram, and maybe one day i will turn into one of them, but i still don't know what a throw and a sillage is. haha! my favorite candles so far: kung tag-araw and baker street of poblacion from saansaan, and bergamia from elemento candles.
turns out i have a favorite type of game: three-match puzzles. think: candy crush. my reigning favorite is royal match (ad-free, cute graphics), but when i run out of lives, of course i play the bt21 version.
random screencap before i awkwardly and abruptly end things:
aka i’ve never been good with endings
random screencap part two:
six drafts pala!
other permutations of boy with luv that i adore: the latest live one, and their dance practice. i’ve watched their dance practice so much i ended up memorizing the choreo.
here are my main contenders for goat love songs: here, there, everywhere (the beatles), god only knows (the beach boys), make it with you (bread), and finally: this must be the place (the talking heads)
yes, i’m helga pataki.
ie, i don’t wanna miss a thing