Tag: Seoul

I Want To Go To NYC Sometime Soon In Honor Of My 50th Birthday

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m pretty much a starving artist at the moment so it definitely looks as though my upcoming 50 birthday is going to be extremely uneventful. It will come and go without any thing of note happening. I will note, however, that it was my 31st year, not my 30th that was Big for me — I went to South Korea the summer of my 31st birthday.

As such, I’m trying not to be too hard on myself for being a broke ass motherfucker. At some point this year, I’d like to take a quick trip up to New York City. What I really want to do, of course, is return to Seoul for about two weeks.

But that isn’t going to happen anytime soon.

And, yet, I do hope to return to Seoul one last time before I drop dead. There are very few expats still in Seoul from my time there, so I could pretty much jump right in and stir up trouble in the expat community without anyone realizing who they were dealing with.

The question, of course, is when that visit might happen. At the moment — I just don’t know. And, really, the world is so big that I probably shouldn’t limit myself to just visiting Seoul. But I have a very strong personal attachment to Seoul.

Ideally, I would do a round robin of East Asia, starting in Tokyo, then flying over to South Korea then finally going down to Southeast Asia before flying back home. That’s the dream, at least.

But, of course, a lot is going to have to change for such things to happen. If I managed to write a breakout first novel then, yeah, I might be able to return to Asia. For the time being, though, just being able to visit New York City again for a weekend would be pretty cool.

There remains a part of me that is idly interested in visiting not New York City or Seoul, but LA. It would be a lot of fun to see if my hunch that I have a very LA personality would pan out the way I think. I think I’m probably be willfully delusional on that front, but I am, as the late Annie Shapiro said, “a delusional jerk with a good heart.”

So, lulz.

I do have a little bit of a hunch that Something Big is going to happen to me later in life. Of course, some of that is just me being my usual delusional self, but I do know my personality and skillset well enough to know that I might manage to pull off a third “hat trick” of some sort.

Only time will tell exactly what that hat trick might ultimately be.

Speaker For The Dead

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

When I first heard that Annie Shapiro was dead a number of years ago, I didn’t believe it. She was just the type of person who would fake her death specifically to hurt me. The thing about Annie was, she really knew what made me tick and she would push my buttons to great effect.

The late Annie Shapiro and me back when I was cute.

Annie’s death is a tragedy and one thing that really bothers me about it is we never got a chance to reconcile in some way. The reason why Annie grew to be so important to me was I can articulate a vision but I have shit ability to persuade anyone to listen to whatever I think up.

She, meanwhile, was all persuasion. We made a great team and whatever success my version of the magazine had came from our specific relationship. ROKon Magazine — at least my original version — was never anything more than a glorified zine.

It was doomed to fail for a number of reasons, most of them directly connected to my own personal failings and inability to manage people. That’s why when it failed, I was kind of kneecapped emotionally in ways I am still recovering from. The other reason why Annie was so important to me for so long is she brought the magazine back without me — in secret! — and so I had to live through the deep shame of seeing what huge failure I was each month.

But that was a long time ago and nobody cares anymore.

The idea that Annie would be murdered in such a random way still rattles my cage. In fact, I think Annie is the only person I know personally to have ever been murdered. I still don’t believe she’s dead. Annie was very cruel to me on an emotional basis, but, then, I wasn’t exactly all that great to her during our “divorce” because of the magazine.

But she didn’t deserve what happened to her, nobody does. I like to think this six novel project I’m working on is something of an homage to what I remember of Annie.

How I Would Tell The ROKon Magazine Story

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The first big story I wanted to tell was what happened to me and Annie Shapiro with ROKon Magazine in Seoul. I struggled with telling the literal story a number of different ways but ultimately have settled for drawing upon my experiences at that point in my life as the basis for a six novel project set in the United States.

But it has occured to me that there is a way to tell the story of ROKon Magazine in fictional form. As much as I hate to admit it, the only way I can think of to tell the story would be with a framing device. I say that because I’ve always wanted to tell the story with a straight a-b-c chronology because I lived it and felt I could tell the story without the use of such a device.

And, yet, it has occured to me that if I ever had the means to tell the story here is how I would do it.

I would have a magazine reporter decide to investigate what happened all those years ago. As part of their research, they would track down different people who were involved with the magazine and then you would have extensive flashbacks of what they were doing in 2006-2008 as the magazine’s drama developed.

That way there is some sort of mystery that would keep people reading even though we would go into things knowing that the magazine ultimately failed pretty quickly because of, well, me. Or, at least, fictional me.

Anyway, the older I get, the more I realize I have romanticized what happened with the magazine so much that it’s something of a delusion. A lot of why I continue to think about the experience so much is it’s all kind of fused with my regrets about my dissipated youth.

In the end, I am telling the story of ROKon Magazine, just is a very defused, jumbled up way set in a small town in America over the course of 25 years.

South Korea On My Mind

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Yet another expat from South Korea who I don’t know looked at my LinkedIn profile within the last 24 hours, which yet again makes me wonder if people in the South Korea expat community are still talking about me.

I don’t think you realize how colorful and over-the-top I was at the height of my bonkers behavior in Seoul in late 2006 – to early 2008. I was so over the top, so manic that someone even put me in a book about weird expats. That did wonders for my self-esteem, let me tell you.

“It was all long time ago and nobody cares anymore,” is what I like to tell myself, but I think maybe I’m underestimating the impact I had one my fellow expats all those years ago. There are two types of expats in South Korea — the ones who stay a short amount of time and the ones who never leave and go slowly insane. (I say this as someone who stayed too long and abruptly left South Korea because of “homesickness.”)

I love South Korea, but there is definitely a time limit for most people who live there for more than just a year or two. Something about Korean culture really, really gets to the Western mind and it takes a unique person with a hearty constitution to be able to survive for more than, say, five or six years.

Now that I think about it, my best friend from my Korea days is back in South Korea at the moment and I suppose it’s possible that in the process of catching up with people (she’s been out of country for a few years) I get brought up in conversation — expats love, love, love to gossip — and, ta-da someone gets curious enough that they look at my woefully unimportant LinkedIn profile.

The core of the six novel project I’m working on at the moment is pretty much what was going on in my life in late 2006 – early 2007 when I was running ROKon Magazine and DJing at Nori Bar in Sinchon. Those were the days, as they say. I am using my extremely romanticized memories of that era in my life — smashed into a few other eras of my life — as the basis of a murder mystery set in a small town in Virginia. The apex of my life to date. I’m hoping that I can ride those memories to sticking the landing with my first novels. Even if I’m going to be way too old to do such a thing by the time everything gets sorted out.

Anyway. I really miss South Korea, despite everything. But for the fact that little Koreans don’t like me (and I don’t like them) I would probably be still in South Korea, married to a Korean woman with a small brood of Amerasian children struggling to learn English like the rest of the Korean population.

This is 50: Being A Long-Term Expat In South Korea Changed My Life

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So, this is 50. Or, almost. I will be turning that milestone year in a few months. It’s January 1st of this momentous year, so I find myself reflecting on my life to date and wondering how things got so fucked up.

I think the key thing that I simply could not process at the time is that there is a time limit for 99% of the people who are long term expats in South Korea. I love South Korea, its people and culture, but something about living there long-term as an expat can do a real number on your mind. I’ve compared it to being really close to a really hot — but extremely eccentric – girlfriend who ultimately you have to break up with because she’s driving you bonkers.

So, I think that if I had left South Korea in the spring of 2007 that maybe things would have worked out better for me. It would have been extremely painful in the short term — I was addicted to being an expat at the time — but in the long term I would have been able to sort out a lot of mental issues before they ultimately got out of control.

Maybe I would have drifted to New York City and been able to live my dream of being young-ish there. But, as it is, I waited too long and now even if I somehow manage to sell a break out first novel I’m just never going to be able to live the life of a smug wealthy bi-coastal liberal who flies over Iowa and laughs at the poor rubes below me.

Me, back when I was a young idiot expat in South Korea.

As it stands, if my literary dreams come true the whole context will be a lot different than I could have ever expected. Being a “success” suddenly in your early to mid 50s is a lot different than being a “success” suddenly in your late 30s. The failure of ROKOn Magazine kneecapped me on an emotional basis and it took me a very, very long time to get my wits about me once everything was said and done.

Despite all my depressing talk, I continue to have a hunch that it’s a least possible that The Finger of God might point at me in a rather dramatic fashion at some point between now and, say, spring 2025. I have no idea what that might be, but I do know my native skillset and I have “skillz” as they say that might come in handy one way or another.

Or, to put it another way — I’m not dead yet.

A Drunk Rumination On My Time In South Korea.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m drunk. I’ve had too much 100 proof whiskey and it’s only because of some food I’ve recently had that I’m cognizant enough to write anything worth reading. I find myself thinking about what happened to me in South Korea and I think the key issue is I waiting too long to leave the first time.

The late Annie Shapiro and me back in Seoul when I was young and cute.

Here’s what happened, as I remember it. Now, remember, Annie Shapiro is dead, so I can talk about these things without being too much of an asshole.

But, as I remember it, what happened is the nadir of my time in South Korea was the summer of 2007 when Annie Shapiro brought back ROKon Magazine behind my back in secret. It was REALLY GOOD and I was devastated and what she was able to pull off. She finally proved that she, did, in fact, love the magazine more than I did.

In hindsight, I think, everyone involved in the ROKon Magazine tragedy would have been better off if I had left South Korea for home at some point in the spring of 2007. If I had spend most of 2007 just kind of chilling out back in America then I could have worked out a lot of internal mental problems. As it was, I was living on fumes. (I managed to almost get hit by a van in the process, but lulz, that’s a different story.)

In hindsight, if I hadn’t wallowed in Seoul about how emotionally kneecapped by the failure of my version of ROKon Magazine in the spring of 2007, I could have gone home and maybe moved on to New York City or something. But….I was scared. I was scared to go home to failure so I stayed in South Korea, thinking maybe I could salvage my life there and spend the rest of my life being a well known expat in Seoul.

Then all hell broke loose when ROKon Magazine came back (in secret!) without me.

And, so, here I am, 15 or so years later approaching my 50th birthday realizing only just now that I’m just too old to ever do all the fun things in NYC that I wanted to do in my 30s. Even I get what I want, I don’t get what I want. Even if I manage to sell a break out hit novel — I can’t change how fucking old I will be when it happens.

That is very depressing on a number of levels for a number of reasons. Life is finite and I can’t go back in time. I have to process that there is such a thing as waiting too long. It’s extremely painful.

And, yet, I live to be creative for creative sake and I suppose it’s at least possible that I might, if nothing else, squeeze out a bit of fun at some point in my 50s. But that’s an extremely iffy proposition.

It’s Better To Burn Out Than To Fade Away

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I can tell from my Webstats that this Website continues to get the occasional view from the occasional person in South Korea. I honestly don’t know what to make of this. I haven’t been in South Korea in a long, long time and I struggle with any rationale for someone living there to care enough about me to check up on me.

I live a very boring life at the moment, other than writing a novel that I hope will be the cornerstone of a six novel project.

But, if I’m honest with myself, I was very much a colorful, larger than life figure during much of my time in South Korea — specifically Seoul in late 2006 – early 2007. I was a wildman, burning my candle at both ends because I was manic and self-medicating with huge amounts of booze. I was a “public figure” in the tiny expat community of Seoul and I was also over exposed because I was both DJing at Nori Bar and publishing what was briefly the only English magazine in town.

The whole experience dramatically changed my self-perception, if nothing else. It was during that time that I realized I was far more creative than I could ever possibly have realized. It was in Seoul when I realized that I was never going to be a traditional journalist.

Ironically, however, I know that given the resources I could probably produce a really cool Website or magazine. Because of my experiences with ROKon Magazine, I know what NOT to do. But I would need a lot of help — I may be articulate and able to expound upon a vision, but I’m shit at persuasion. Which is why, of course, I needed someone like the late Annie Shapiro to make my vision a reality.

Anyway.

There’s no reason for anyone from South Korea to care about me at the moment. Just forget about me. It was a long time ago and nobody cares anymore.

Sometimes, I Wonder

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There’s no reason for anyone from South Korea to care one bit about me. And, yet, to this day, occasionally someone from ROK will either look at my LinkedIn profile or look at this site.

It’s very curious.

I haven’t been in South Korea in a long, long time. For me, it’s a very romanticized era in my life, which is the inspiration for a six novel project. The idea that anyone that I know from my days in ROK would even think about me is something I find very puzzling.

I suppose I made a bigger impression on people that I realized. And I have to remember that the long-term expats in South Korea have a very, very, very long collective memory. And that doesn’t even begin to address all the Koreans who were around, watching, as I went rather bonkers for a few months in late 2006 – 2008.

It makes me wonder what might happen if I ever return to South Korea for a little trip. It’s not going to happen anytime soon, but there are definitely a few people in South Korea who would have a VERY STRONG reaction to seeing me again.

The ironic thing about it all is, of course, that I’m a very different person than I was back then. I’ve turned into a graybeard and have far more humility than I ever did while I was living in South Korea.

In a way, I wish people in South Korea would just forget me. And, yet, I have to accept that I was very much a larger than life figure for a brief and shining moment a long time ago.

Young Expat In Love

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I was really….unique…in late 2006 – early 2007 when I was living in Seoul as an expat. I was a DJ at the best expat bar in the city while at the same time struggling to keep ROKon Magazine afloat. I lost both of these things around my birthday in February 2007. Despite this, the memory of what was going on at that point in my life is seared my mind to the point that it’s pretty much at the forefront of my mind constantly even to this day.

The late Annie Shapiro and me back when I was cute.

Given this situation, I have really, really dug deep into what happened to me in Seoul for this six novel project I’m working on. In fact, I would go so far as to say there are maybe six or seven people in the world who, if they should ever read these novels, will be able to pick out exactly what the inspiration from Seoul I’m using to flesh out it’s universe.

In my mind, at least, there is a direct one-to-one between elements in this six novel project at what I remember of my life in Seoul. It all reminds me of how in “Young Shakespeare in Love” you get to see the real world inspiration for some of the major elements of The Bard’s works.

My time in Seoul was some of the most creative of my entire life. It all came at a price, of course — it all kind of drove me bonkers. The pressure of effectively rather abruptly, within the context of the microscopic Seoul expat community being a public figure really, really, got to me. And all of it was happening in the context of how being an expat in South Korea can really do a number on your mental health just in general.

I love South Korea and its culture, but living there long term is like having a really intense relationship with a really hot, but very eccentric girlfriend. You get to have all this fun with her, but all that fun comes at a pretty significant cost.

Anyway, there is probably a 50 / 50 chance that I will return to South Korea for a little visit before I drop dead. My current goal is I’d like to return around the 20th anniversary of me getting there the first time around in the summer of 2004. It’s not looking like that is going to happen at the moment — I’m just a broke ass writer — but A LOT can happen between now and then.

What Is It This Time

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I often say that if you live in South Korea long enough as an expat it’s something of a black hole. There is an Event Horizon and you never really leave, even if physically you’re on the other side of the globe.

It was a long time ago and nobody cares anymore. (I hope.)

So, when I see in my Webstats that someone from Seoul obviously came looking for me online and found this Website, all I can think is, “What is it this time.” Add to this that someone I know from my time in South Korea who is still there looked at my LinkedIn profile leads me to believe there might be a little bit of chatter about me in Seoul currently.

I was in South Korea — and Seoul specifically — a long, long time ago. But I will admit that I had a very -VERY — memorable time there. I was doing a lot of things for a short amount of time. I was both a magazine publisher and a DJ. In fact, there was moment in time in late 2006 when I was probably one of the most famous expats in Seoul. I was a bit overexposed.

But that was all so long ago it makes me wonder what it possibly be happening NOW that would make anyone talk about me. It’s a very jarring situation where I’m pretty isolated at the moment and all I do is just work on my six novel project and aggressively daydream. Though given what’s going on with the novel and how much I draw upon my personal history to tell the story, I do still think a whole lot about my time in Seoul.

A cornerstone of the plot of the novel is I’m re-creating what was going on in my life in 2006 — 2007 only in a completely different context. Anyway, whatever is causing people in Seoul to be interested in me now can only be so bad. I hope, at least.