What I remember of being a child consists of a few scattered images, impressions, scenes peppering a great void of boredom and idleness. Being a child felt like endless waiting for something to happen without any satisfactory answer for why I should be so patient in waiting for it or what I might expect if/when it finally arrives. I struggle to shake this feeling to this day, forcing myself out of bed and into the world to stir up a fantasy of possibilities which very well may only exist in my own head, but exists nonetheless as no less real, concrete aspirations which give me purpose to keep living. Being young was painful in many different ways and even the joys seemed to be shadowed by an incessant unknowing. I mean my mood was dark, my inner experience, the fundament of my psychology that formed how I was thinking and feeling about the world, which must be distinguished from the external reality of being a very privileged person born into a supportive family. I harbored my own terrors, but they were inflicted by the world not due to negligence from you or mom as I acknowledge that you have always done everything you can for me. I feel much better now as an adult, ready to negotiate this world on my own terms.

My reaction to your writing was immediate: I felt overwhelmingly melancholic for how you described my own strange trajectory of a life and horribly guilty for not having it meet your expectations, in a way, while also knowing full well that it was never my intention to live the life that you described as ideal. I will try my best to recount my own experiences honestly, even though I think it's a bit foolish to do so, to admit to one's father such a morose perspective. It seems disrespectful, cruel somehow, and I don't wish to behave this way towards you. However, I believe that we are capable of attaining a powerful transparency in our conversation, a radical honesty if you will, and so perhaps this description may be received as a sacrifice of my self in tribute to what our relationship is and will be rather than a stale recounting of a past we are both helpless in shifting. I would like to give you something, a gift that is immaterial, some honor or sign of my sensitivity, or at least a tribute to our family as a delicate trinity that we are all equal in participating in. So, I will follow your lead by responding to your memories.

I don't remember being very young. I don't recognize that person as "me" when I look at old photos. I think of children as sponges that are passively absorbing the world around them, being completely immersed in it without differentiating themselves, as I certainly was. I've heard the stories you tell, but I cannot account for them physically, can't say it was me. My first memories are of toys, plastic, video games and screens. I was immersed in a world which seems incompatible with others, as a kind of narrator to my own imagination, obsessed with taking on character roles of individuals with lives more interesting than mine. I never really liked the puzzles or simulated fighting so much as merely exploring the worlds of the game, being invincible and invisible so that I could navigate without distraction, not playing to win so much as just playing for no purpose. I wanted to travel to other places, collect powerful objects, become wise and powerful while avoiding the main objectives just so that I could keep playing. Later, when the games were being played on the computer, I became interested in the back end architecture and began intentionally scrambling the code to see how I could manipulate the parameters and delve even deeper into an exercise of creative freedom that had nothing to do with winning or losing, or with interacting with others at all.

I was lonely, always lonely, as far back as I can remember. Loneliness feels like a ground state for me, a starting point. I remember having a few friends like ___ in Anaheim and ___ in Corona, and others of course, but it is difficult for me to really consider this people more than play partners as we were never really that close emotionally. From the first traumatic experience of going to daycare and continuing all up through Jr. High I was always a loner, although it's difficult to say if it was by choice or not. I couldn't understand to how the other children were relating to each other, so casually and mindlessly, and I couldn't bring myself to behave in such a manner. It simply didn't make sense to me, which made me feel like I didn't make sense in such a world. Always the feeling of awkwardness, physically and psychically, of being out of place or excessive to the situation. Around 7th grade the boys became incredibly vulgar, especially towards the girls, which became an even more confusing and disgusting situation that I seemed stuck in the middle of as I suddenly had a whole new set of reasons to feel ostracized from both sexes. I remember girlfriends and forming a strange relationship to the female body through unhealthy sexual initiations, but there were some good times too. It wasn't until meeting Michael and Sarang in high school that I began to find my place as they introduced me to a whole new dimension of human experience through radical music, literature, films, and human creativity.

School was a tedious, painful, inhuman, institutionalized experience for me. I remember how boring the architecture was - everything painted in neutral beige and brown, everything rigid and cement - and how boring the classrooms were with their uncomfortable desks and laminated posters. It felt like prison, with mind numbingly simple exercises put into place just to keep us from fighting each other, and I remember staring at the clock everyday counting the seconds until recess, until lunch, until the day was over, until the week was over, until I would be set free and not have to return to this place. I can't really understand why I received good marks while being so unmotivated. I don't know what this says about me or about the school system. Music and then photography became outlets for me as the most sane forms of activities I could be involved in, but then again I felt completely constricted by the predictable scores and repetitive mechanisms of how these mediums were handled by those around me.

Home was an escape, a fortress disconnected from the chaos unfurling outside, and I wanted nothing more than to stay indoors for as long as possible. I remember never wanting to leave and never wanting to have to pretend to get along with anyone else. I remember the fast food in front of the television, cereal and cartoons in the mornings before school, big boxes of donuts and more cartoons on sundays, pizza and movies in the evenings. All the fried morsels and fatty television that I consumed became psychologically bound to comfort which I've been struggling to free myself of ever since.

Leaving for college changed everything. Suddenly I encountered other human beings that were just as misanthropic (yet creative) as I was, providing much needed affirmation. I wanted to study science, but at the time I couldn't bring myself to focus upon the memorization of facts and figures while other questions concerning the nature of being loomed so large over my existence, hence the apartment disarray of my studies during those first years as I explored the potentials of comparative religion and philosophy to provide me with answers. Although music and art has always been presented as "extracurricular activities" which only fools or geniuses may pursue, I found myself returning to them as the only satisfying option for (self-)manifesting meaning: I remember the epiphany quite distinctly, that there is no meaning to be found in the world that was anything more than just some simple human's best guess or forceful assertion, so I must take this as validation in asserting my own, in literally creating me own, the vision to become an artist in the truest sense of the word. I didn't really know what this meant at first but I knew that I owed it to myself to find out, and so began the journey for autopoietic truth that I am still carefully navigating. Once I discovered the need to become an artist it became absolutely clear that I needed to be the best, the most rigorous and outspoken, the most prolific and accomplished, the most technically diverse and conceptually difficult. It was perfectly clear that I needed to attend the best school and read the most difficult books and make the most challenging works that I could. I would say it was my responsibility to do so, to myself and to the world, and this was the first time I felt the draw of such a concept and a dedication to the community that would enable me. CCA was a disillusioning experience... [file corrupted]