GUEST POST: For Today, Don't Even Dream

Fangirling on Korean boy band BTS helped me navigate failure and depression

BY SURBHI, lawyer and academic

Today is 9 March. It is the birthday of Min Yoongi, (stage name Suga/Agust D) who is a member of the South Korean boy band BTS. I celebrated today by eating tangerines, which are Suga’s favourite fruit and a major object of online artwork and memes amongst BTS fans. I celebrated because I love BTS, particularly Suga, whose lyrics have been a source of comfort to me. Let me share lyrics of my favorite song, ‘Snooze,’ a song he wrote for younger artists to encourage them to take a break, to rest.

When the repetitive schedules erase you,

It is okay to feel overwhelmed

It is okay to take brief rest

For today, don’t even dream (Translated from Korean into English by Doolset)

Or another favorite song of mine, titled ‘Life Goes On’:

I know, I know, that this place where I am now

Is one that will soon become a memory

Don’t be afraid because until the end of life,

Life will continue to go on

Time, like a wave

Will wash away, like the ebb tide

Life goes on (Translated from Korean into English by Doolset)

I have cried to these two and many other BTS songs on countless nights since stumbling upon their music last year while going through an episode of what my psychiatrist described as ‘severe depression’. Between April and May 2024, I did not go to the office. I did not take a bath for a week. Tears flowed like water through a stream. The episode was triggered by a critical juncture in my career where I felt my PhD is worthless and I am worthless too. I often woke up with sweat, uneven breaths, and a panting heart during this time. This was not a new occurrence. I have felt this often over the years. It was, however, a severe one.

I left my home, moved to another city in 2013, and studied law all while facing a hostile environment at home. I was a class topper, and won medals. Being anything less meant returning to Jodhpur, and being denied opportunities to have space and a sense of one’s self. Probably be married within caste and pray that your in-laws allow you to work. All of this created a very complicated relationship with real or perceived fears of failure. Failing was simply not an option. So any presumed chance of failure sent me in a race to the bottom.

It seemed I was catching up to years’ worth of tears. I was incredibly harsh on myself all these years. And now, I was exhausted. Of constant negative monologues in my head, constant feelings of free falling into a bottomless pit that demanded more and more. Of the neoliberal education system. Everything!

I needed art that could tell me that it is okay to rest, that life will go on, that even if I fail, it won’t matter in the long run, that it is okay, it will be okay.

Good art has a life-affirming quality. That does not mean that art has to be only about happy things. On the contrary, human beings have always created art from a place wanting to document their pain and struggle. Good art, however, gives hope by extending a warm hand of solidarity amidst the cold, harsh realities of the human condition. By showing that we are not alone. Our fellow humans across time and place have felt the same and have survived too.

For me, BTS music is one such source of art. Their lyrics are documentation of wide-ranging human emotions: fears, exhaustion, damage to self because of discrimination, one’s imperfections, survival, finding pleasures, and much more! To an unknowing eye, they are a K-pop boy band singing lovesick songs. That, however, is a prejudice. Once you hear their music and read their lyrics, you notice romantic love is not the predominant theme of their music. Songs like ‘life goes on’ have confronted me with the enormity of life and yet, at the same time, comforted me that this enormity is a good thing. That you can die any minute, and that will be it. But till you live, you have to live. Or songs, like ‘Epiphany,’ have reminded that our existence is enough. That we don’t need to do anything further. Or songs, like ‘lonely’ and ‘forg_tful’, that have made me realize different cities that I inhabit our not central to what counts as home. If home is to be understood as something that stays, then I am my own home.

Their albums, like Love Yourself and Map of Soul 7 have been entirely about finding one’s pace and embracing one’s imperfections. While the Instagram self-love industry has made ideas of self-care and self-love entirely about buying more products. At the core, however, it simply means eating tangerines on 9 March, a random date in the long list of days that make up a year, just because it makes you smile. (On that note, can I please recommend this book: Art Against Despair).

I am a fangirl. Like millions, I watch their dance choreography in marvel. I laugh uncontrollably at their game show, Run BTS, where they often cook for each other, compete in silly games, and comfort and hug each other on losing. Those who don’t know, they are a 7-member band with a very close-knit friendship). I get lost in their interviews where they openly talk about their struggles, including mental health struggles, and the impact of fame on their creative process and sense of self.

And yet while I type these lines, I feel embarrassed and even shameful. I put their photos as my laptop and phone background and then feel embarrassed and remove it, especially when I am in the presence of my colleagues. I wear fan-created artsy t-shirts of them and then hide them under sweaters lest someone find out my fangirling. How can I, a rational, educated person, be a fan?

The reason is that the neoliberal and capitalist world order demands that we behave ‘professionally’. That we should not have tattoos, or big earrings, or pink shirts (if you are a man), or dark lipsticks, or flower patterns. In the cogs of the market economy, we should all look alike: faceless, nameless entities making dollars for our bosses. All looking ‘professional’, all looking the same. Every iota of our individual quirks and whims and fancies has to be removed for profit-making.

I am in academia and academia; a supposedly noble profession, is not immune to the neoliberal structures. Academia today is not about the joy of teaching or researching. It is about university ranking, the number of papers published, the number of students placed in law firms. Academia operates on strict hierarchies of public and private self. An academician is the one who gives dispassionate big talks. Having passions doesn’t sit well with your job role.

The ghost of shame that lingers on fangirling is based on a devaluation of our emotional selves. It is a ghost that asks us to treat our emotional selves as secondary, either to be entirely ignored or to be tactfully tamed and controlled. It asks to hide parts of yourself. So internalised was my sense of shame that I asked my therapist if it is okay to be a fan.

My therapist said something very helpful. She said that it is beautiful to love a piece of art, a piece of music so much that you feel connected, involved, and lost in it. It is a marker of your human self. It shows our ability to create an emotive space for ourselves and that is to be celebrated.

So now, I try to embrace my fan self reluctantly. In December last year, I skipped a professional event to go watch a documentary by RM, the leader of BTS, about his creative process while writing and creating his latest music album, rpwp. I went with a fellow BTS fan and spent the evening talking about their lyrics, their meanings, and interpretation. I felt so happy. My mother has embraced my fan self too. She tells me that I did not put pictures of boys in my teenage room. I had 100% attendance and did not break rules. She is very excited for the new poster of them that I have pasted in my room! She even got me a BTS cup as a homecoming gift when I went home the last time. I did not have a hobby before. Now I do, and it is beautiful!

Maybe tomorrow I will change. Maybe I will become ambivalent towards them or maybe I will stop liking them altogether. But for today, their music is confirmation of myself that is beyond marks, beyond CV. It is ultimately not about them. It is about me and my journey of finding unfiltered joy and pleasures. It is about who I am irrespective of my success and failures, what brands I carry. Being a BTS fan has become a larger canvas of doing things that pleasure me: going to art galleries, gifting handwritten letters to my friends, going to the gym, reading Hindi literature, writing this subtrack post, looking at the waves of the Pacific Ocean, having a favorite tree, reading about birds. (Did you know contrary to their image; crows truly care if you care for them and protect you from those they consider a threat to you? Did you know that octopuses are very intelligent, capable of solving puzzeful routes, and disguising themselves? Oh did you know, the waves of the ocean seems darker towards the far end?) Being a fan has opened the lid to a process that is equivalent of living with love: not romantic, not heteronormative, but a love necessary for our very survival!

I will go eat the rest of my tangerines now!