Weekly Thoughts

 October is full of surprises, emotions that surpass the words available to describe them and a bit of anxiety bubbling up for what's to come.

Let's get into it.

᯽ Revolución

My journey with BTS is something weird. I was a Tumblr teen girl, and by the time I was leaving it behind, Korean groups were starting to pop up on my dashboard, making me curious. I knew about them, knew their names, and would sometimes watch videos of them, but I'd already poured all my teenage fangirl energy into One Direction and Taylor Swift, into 2010s YA sagas and their movie adaptations, and by 2013/2014, my music taste was going back to 90s alternative and nothing remotely like the sort of commercial pop K-pop was bringing to the market. There seemed to be no space for what BTS was debuting with (even though I liked them because I felt they were different), but still, it was entertaining to watch them.

I did become a big Red Velvet fan. I think that was the only K-pop group I truly listened to and followed on social media to check their releases (okay, and Mamamoo, but it hurts). It was actually listening to RV that sort of opened me up to K-pop music and, therefore, BTS music. I had some of their songs in my playlists and would sometimes put on Run BTS videos, but I never truly considered myself an ARMY because I felt I was more of a casual fan. I had internet friends who were big ARMYs, and it was fun because I understood the jokes, knew who they were going crazy about, and would share their excitement over the strange hours they'd have to wake up if someone was doing a random live.

I think I truly fell deeper once they started their military service. Because it sort of made me aware of the passage of time. For them, whom I'd known since they were all tiny, skinny, and wearing eyeliner, but for me as well. These guys are all around my age. I suddenly realized... wow, I've sort of known them for a long time, and look at them now, they're about to enter military service?! Followed by a... what the fuck is my life?

I sort of started listening to them more then. Especially their solo music, since I'd never really paid much attention to them outside of their group activities. I kind of found myself gravitating towards the members whose musical tastes aligned more with mine (Namjoon, masterpiece maker). I never had a bias because I always felt that 1. I'm about to turn 31, I'm a bit old for that. 2. It's probably Namjoon, but it's impossible to choose with BTS. With One Direction, it was easier. Niall and Harry were it for me. But here... you kinda have a love for all of them. 

I had the amazing opportunity to get tickets to their concert (my grandma wanted to go, she loves Jimin lol), and it just blew my mind. It was surreal. Them being there. Me being there. If I'd told my nineteen-year-old self that I'd go see the Korean guys who kept popping up on her social media, she'd have laughed at me.

I loved this journey I've had with this group. It's strange, and it feels absolutely insane that it ended up with me being able to go to one of their concerts. God knows how long Argentina had been waiting for them. Their arrival had the whole country sort of revolutionized, even people who knew next to nothing about K-pop. Social media was flooded with positive comments about the group, with people loving the members for making the effort to learn our lingo and customs.

What touched me most was probably that their album, Arirang, has a lot of songs with different meanings and concepts, but I think the concept that rises above the rest is the collective memory of a nation and, in this case, their Korean identity. It sounds strange, but Argentines, I believe (probably along with other South American countries), were really able to connect with this.

Especially at a time when we're having a very vivid conversation about what it means to be Argentine. When our national identity, our land, and even our rights feel increasingly threatened by political decisions and foreign interests. There's a strong need to hold on to the things that make us who we are, to put passion into these things, to distinguish ourselves.

With the shadow of neocolonialism looming over us, and a president who seems more interested in pleasing the United States than protecting his own country's sovereignty, I think many Argentines are finding themselves looking back at what makes us authentically us. If you follow BTS and saw the fancams or videos from their Buenos Aires concerts, you probably noticed a lot of Argentine flags, even though we were there to see a Korean group. It was an immensely beautiful side of globalization and history to see such different cultures, with completely different stories, come together during those three concerts, just for a few hours. And I love the concept of wanting to preserve the things that make us who we are.

᯽ Autumnal Spring

For us Southern Hemispherians, Halloween lands in the middle of blooming spring. But not this year.  It's October 25th, and we're living under 16°C conditions.

Everyone's cursing the cold, but I'm fully embracing this natural phenomenon. I hate being hot. Summer as a concept is always beautiful, but actually going through it? I would gladly skip it if it means no sweating or struggling to walk down the street because of how unbearably hot it is.

᯽ Journaling

I like writing and collecting notebooks I basically never use. I tried to journal but I always end up giving it up. I have one I take everywhere but I basically only collect information there, it's not really personal. This time, though, I met up with an old internet friend who's very into journaling and has been kind of convincing me to get into it as well... and it's obviously working. Might actually start putting some of these notebooks to use.

᯽ Nostalgic and emotional

This week has been a bit too emotional. I've been carrying around some negative feelings since Mother's Day (here we celebrate it in October), and I feel like I didn't have time to process them before I was thrown into the busiest week of finishing uni projects, having to go to a friend's sister's house to check on her cat (the most beautiful cat ever... don't tell my cat), traveling to see BTS, and meeting up with my friend who was visiting the city. It was a good rollercoaster, but a rollercoaster nonetheless.

To add to all that, I started rewatching Disney movies with my sister. Never do that when you're PMSing... unless you want to ugly cry while singing Reflection, I'll Make a Man Out of You, or I Won't Say (I'm in Love). We watched Hercules and Mulan. Disney truly could never go back to making masterpieces like they did in the 90s... They should try, though, cause all this new animation they've been doing since Tangled and Frozen has started blending with AI aesthetics, and now basically every movie they release looks like an AI generated clip.

Rushed Random Thoughts before leaving

ཐི༏ཋྀ The feeling of receving a really good gift.
ཐི༏ཋྀ bts Twitter memes have been all I've been able to watch on the internet ever since I went to see them.
ཐི༏ཋྀ Bought so many stickers this weekend
ཐི༏ཋྀ Anxiety spiking up because classes are ending but finals are coming
ཐི༏ཋྀ New clothes
ཐི༏ཋྀ My bestie got back into reading, and seeing her read and enjoying it so much has kind of been making me want to read a lot too. Love when you get that kind of positive influence.
ཐི༏ཋྀ Birthday coming soon as well