For a translated version of this article by Anastasya Lavenia, click here.
It's a universal irony that alienation is something that each and every one of us goes through. Eight billion people in the world, and still each one of them struggles to connect to each other and their surroundings at some point in their lives. Despite what everybody might tell you, there's no road map or guide book to navigate life. Of course, there are expectations and pressure, but who decides them and why were they set? Could it be that generations of expectations were made by those unable to fulfill them—after being imposed to a different set of expectations by those who came before them?
As you grew, you started to realize that everyone is just winging life. Nobody knows what they are doing and nobody has all the answers. It's disconcerting, sure, but comfort can also be found in knowing that you are not alone in your situation. Look for it enough, and you can find kinship in spaces that reflect your own experiences. For me, Epik High provided that.
It was in my late university years when I first discovered Epik High by way of a friend's recommendation. We were procrastinating on our group studies at his home, when we decided to browse for music instead—playing our own favorites in turns. It didn't take long after he played "Happen Ending" that I got sucked into Epik High's discography. The sharp lyricism comes across like purging one's self from inner darkness, with the often—somber production setting the stage. It stayed with me throughout the years—while not being its soundtracks yet, Epik High's music allowed me to see that feeling disconnected and seeking out help in vices are not things that only I bear.
Barely an adult, I forged my way as a writer after graduating. Again, early adulthood and its responsibilities are things that none of us were ever really prepared for. Building a career came with a lot of questioning, feeling not quite good enough, and plain exhaustion. Days were long and nights bleed into one another. On a work day like any other, a notification came for the release of "Home is Far Away", and the emotions that had been building for months inside me poured through in a 4:51 track.
"The weight of today on top of my sagging shoulders
I wanna put it down for a moment
Home is far away"
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What does it mean to completely "go home"? What does a "home" mean? As I listened to Oh Hyuk's tender weariness opening the song, memories of driving home night after night, carrying the anxieties of the day, I could feel a hollow pang in my chest. Was I ever really "home" if my mind was always elsewhere? It was difficult to be present while trying to keep up with a pace that I was never told about.
"What's always been asked of me
Is to reach a bit higher than I'm able to"
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Even now, I haven't become the person I wanted to be yet. All our lives, we were told to follow a certain path and fulfill certain expectations. Do I want to achieve things for myself, or do I want to achieve them to appease others? It was somewhat of an eye-opener to know that even the person I looked up to felt the same way as me, despite the fact that he has achieved so much more than me and the different paths we had in life. Tablo then continued,
"Complicated relationships, it's a paradox
Only relationships exist and there's no room for humans
Afraid of becoming ordinary, I dreamed a dream
But now, I'm jealous of the ordinary
As I stand all alone in the rain
If you don't grow, growing pains is just pain"
While I can't say that I am out of the ordinary, being mediocre and "regular" were things I was desperately trying to avoid when I was younger. Now that I've had some years behind me, I question if what I was afraid of were just products of my naïveté. Of course I grew, at least that's what I like to tell myself. If I didn't, what good did all my inner turmoil do?
"Dreams just become baggage now
My only hope is to just leave it behind and run
Rushing myself to take just one more step
But when I looked up, I'm right in front of a cliff
I look back and all these expectations are lined up behind me
It pretends to support me but it's pushing my back"
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Do we burden ourselves with what we want to achieve? We're always in perpetual motion, with barely any time to catch our breath. You can't look back, but will pushing yourself to move forward destroy you instead? As Mithra Jin stated, what seemingly keeps us going could one day turn to bind us. After all, we never knew the price of our dreams—we always look at them from a distance, with a gap separating us from what they really are.
"The calculating world holds out its hand
I don't want to hold it but I'm even more scared of being empty-handed
I can hold it but would time really be the only thing that goes away?"
***
DJ Tukutz's moody piano production accompanied the short journey, a melancholic score to our collective struggles. Fitting with the album's name, We've Done Something Wonderful, Epik High really did achieve that, even by "Home is Far Away" alone. As a writer, it's frightening how often words fail me—but in the span of the song, I could hear my thoughts through the words of others. The lyrics are precise, and the discontentment is palpable. Bleak as it was, sometimes you just need to feel that connection with others, no matter how far removed we are from each other. There's an apparent lack of resolution from the song, but who would expect that everything will come together in a short period of time? We all have a long way to go, but that's alright. We were never alone and we never will be.
(alm/tim)