같이 있으면 괜찮아 (everything's fine)

By Caleb Kim (he/him/his), Berkeley College, Class of 2021

Description

This is an original song I wrote and recorded in March, when we were all sent back home in the middle of spring semester. My friends and I decided to do "Daily Themes" during the initial quarantine, and this song was made for the theme: "untranslatable." An interesting quirk of the song (and what makes it relevant to the daily theme) is that every lyric is a translation of another lyric - you only need to know either one of English or Korean to understand the whole song.

The opening and closing lines are inspired by lyrics from 이소라 (Lee So-ra)'s song "바람이 분다 (The Wind Blows)." The original lyrics (translated to English) are: "The wind blows, within the cold air // Thinking back to past times // The silhouette of your back standing at the end of summer // I think it was cold, I think I know."

The title of the song is in reference to the meme of the dog sitting inside a house on fire, saying "This is fine."  The Korean title actually has a different meaning; it translates to mean "It's okay if we're together."

This project was completed March 21, 2020.

About the artist

I'm Caleb Kim, a senior majoring in psychology in Berkeley College. I've been translating for all of my life: between family and friends, between poetry and music, and between English and Korean. Outside of academics, I sing with a Korean cappella group, play the jangu, and perform spoken word poetry.

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