Volume I : A Re-History__(The Double) EP, Still Unfit for the Album
| statement | narrative statement |

I used to be the fictive daughter of a Korean family. I know this because once I found a worn black-and-white photograph of me as a baby tucked away, shuffled in with the few other tokens of past lifetimes we tend to keep close. A small wooden chest, still lined by the faint smell of cedar, guarded the photo. It was the type of chest that didn’t seem worthy of the memories so distant you need something material to hold in your hands to confirm you were indeed there. The edges were so worn and the writing on the back so faint, if they hadn’t told me, I would have never been sure I was the baby in the photo at all.

I used to be the fictive daughter of a Korean family. I know this because I used to be a mother who lived in a park and healed wounds with the sounds that came out of an old tape deck with three buttons missing. Duct tape held the batteries in place. The sound was so bad and scratchy that sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between static and beats. Even though we couldn’t understand it, we listened carefully, as we had a million times before, to the speaker that could only sigh. The sounds bounced off the towering hedges that built us homes no one else could see. We decorated those walls with all the jewels we had in the hopes legends made there would find their way home.

I used to be the fictive daughter of a Korean family. I know this because I used to be the president of my own company. I used my platinum pen to scratch my name with force on all the right lines. In the office they played the Beatles song that had one of my names in it. It was the only Beatles song I never learned the words to. Everyday I wore this red power suit and heels just high enough you had to stomp a little when you walked. I always found myself walking in rhythm, heels clicking to the song I just never could learn.

I used to be the fictive daughter of a Korean family. I know this because I used to live on the prairie. We arrived there in a train of covered wagons that speckled white the sea of deep greens that rolled further than our iron wheels would ever take us. We staked our claim and built our shanty. Ate salt pork and made dresses out of a spring poplin we bought from the general store—it sat across from the one room, all-grade school that also doubled as the town church. I still miss staring out into the openness with the breeze that was forever blowing my bonnet down my back.

I used to be the fictive daughter of a Korean family. I know this because once I tried to hang myself by my own fake rope that was 8320 kilometers long. The rope was braided of cords pulled from the graveyard of broken headphones I have stashed under my bed. I wanted to guild it, for theatrics but instead I spray painted it teal. I had begun to tire of the way the rope held up my 40-inch waist pants, the size also for theatrics. I thought I needed that much rope, but apparently it was too long to hang anyone with.

I used to be the fictive daughter of a Korean family. I know this because I used to have these dreams about being a superhero whose sidekick was a big white Pegasus. We could never fly when we had to save people, we could only dream of doing it. We daydreamed when we slept. Napping in concrete cities between stolen walkways. Our heads spinning with hoods pulled low, we were always caught up, looking for memories we knew we’d never remember—stories that were lost in between phantom railroads and blown-out churches.