Lee Hom's " Forever 1st Day " Album Diary

89/07/15~89/07/21 @Part 6

Dear Friends,

How have you all been this last week? It's nice to get another chance to talk with you. Today, I won't talk too theoretically about the new album "Forever's First Day". I know that my last letter was a bit technical, so this week I want to talk about not my album, but rather something completely different. This week I want to share with you how travelling (both physically and musically) has affected my life.

Growing up in the USA, I thought (like most young children) that my hometown was the center of the universe. I remember riding my bicycle into town every day delivering newspapers and coming home feeling like I had just flown across oceans. Even though the distance from the last house on my paper route to my house was only a couple of miles, to me as a thirteen-year-old, that was quite a journey. All of my friends and everyone who I cared about lived nearby, so I never felt the need to travel beyond the borders of New York, let alone the USA. As a result, my world was limited, as were my experiences. At that time I did not even understand how Mandarin Chinese could possibly come in handy in the future, and as a result, I never took the initiative to learn the language.

Now I am a pop artiste and how my life has changed. In a little over one week, I have been to Taipei, Taizhong, Kaoxiong, Yuanling Hong Kong, Shanghai and cyberspace. Although travelling so much can be tiring and lonely, it does have its benefits. Other than never having to do your own laundry, and always having clean hotel bed sheets, I have also discovered a keen sense of freedom stemming from life on the move. This freedom can be seen as simply a lack of responsibility towards things like cleaning, cooking, and watering the plants, every day tasks that are no longer part of my life. But it is actually deeper than that. If you were to ask me, "What is the single greatest part of travelling to so many places in such a short period of time?" I would answer that it has enabled me to adapt to different environments quickly, forcing me to stay open-minded to different types of peoples and cultures.

I am NOT recommending that you become pop artists! All I am saying is that travelling will broaden your horizons and give you more perspectives from which to look at your own life

Admittedly, this is a fitting life-style for me, for now at least. While I constantly travel between different cities across Asia and North America, I also enjoy crossing the borders of different musical styles. Listening to jazz, classical, rock and roll, r&b, country, or folk is a kind of acoustical travel. On occasion, I'll even listen to Japanese Noh Opera, or a bit of harmonic throat-singing from Tuva to challenge my ears to accept the aesthetic principles of other cultures. After all, my philosophy as a musician has always been to stay as open-minded as possible to new ideas and sounds.

Travelling, both physically and across different styles of music are two seemingly unrelated activities that I have found to share similar rewards. I would recommend to most students to take a summer and travel abroad, or go on a foreign exchange program. But if you don't have the time or money to travel, you can ride your bicycle to your local record store and pick up an album of Ravi Shankar for a dose of authentic Indian sitar music! Keep you eyes, ears and minds open!


Yours Truly,
Homeboy