The Ingredients of Concrete Words

This is an automatic translation of the Korean original.

Every year I try to make one book by myself. I visit a city in person, take photographs on film, walk every alley, and record in words or sentences the feelings and sensations that leap up moment by moment.

For example, the sense of the word "relief" is strangely and deeply linked to the compact city of Azabudai I visited last winter and the attitude of the Mori family, and the word "hospitality" is linked to a story shared with Malaysian friends in some alley of Kuala Lumpur.

I often ask myself what it means for a life to deepen, and I often think it stands at the opposite pole from growing richer in function or in material. My life has certainly become richer than in childhood, but fear has grown in proportion to that size.

Having more concrete words than abstract ones.
I think this is everything.

The finest way to understand a person is to act toward that person and to build up concrete words between you. Anyone can listen to classical music on Apple Music, but putting on a concert is an entirely different matter. Traveling to a city is easy, but forming relationships with the people in that city is another matter.

The moment a concrete word is discovered, I take a photograph to bring out its aroma. I gather the writing and the photographs, lay them out, edit them, and make a small book. The way one draws fresh noodles by hand to make a toowoomba pasta.

If I ask myself again what the benefit of accumulating concrete words is, I could compare it to a refrigerator stocked with fresh ingredients. When stillness and loneliness come near, instead of turning on the microwave, you make a new dish of feeling from those ingredients.

It is to gain that chance.