Sunday, October 4, 2026

Bangtan Herman Notes: Between You and Me: Namjooning is Life

When RM talked to the press at the SFMOMA San Francisco Museum of Modern Art last September 29, he was sincere, vulnerable, and the happiest I have seen him with the media in a while. I also enjoy seeing him be, become, and keep becoming. This art exhibit, which he co-curated, feels like a full circle of what he has always written about in his songs and in many of BTS’s music: agency. Choice. The right to decide who you are beyond what an industry has made of you. You can’t control my shit. And for years, he has been insistent and persistent in asserting the person behind the idol persona of an industry that dictates and manufactures.

So much of that has echoed through his work, from BTS’s music to his solo albums. And now, through art, he gets to make another kind of statement. It’s not look at me, but come and look at what I have been looking at. And in art, we find our truest humanity.
So when he said that South Korea experienced losses through colonization and the speed with which it reared its tail when it became a democracy, it also produced and created bright and shiny things, I took that thought with me. I am walking through a season of loss and losing.

With Papa’s inevitable journey to the other side, I find myself painting, creating, making pottery, and just listening to my body. I don’t know where this will lead me. I just know that being in the here and now is the better way to live this one given life to the fullest.
Here’s to more Namjooning in the future!

Friday, October 2, 2026

Finalist at the Catholic Mass Media Awards: The Disaster Ready Kids Series

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