It has been a long since I felt awkward using my mother tongue, as I have been living abroad for a long time and frequently moving between cities and countries. That doesn't mean I speak English, my second language, at a native level. I often mix Korean and English when I talk to people, and I'm not the type to keep the grammar correctly.


    After becoming an adult, I studied abroad for a long time in the Netherlands and the United States to become a jazz pianist, my dream. While studying abroad in Philadelphia, I used and heard the expression of 'Jazz Vocabularies' a lot. Curiously, the more I fell in love with this genre of jazz, the more I realized that language might not be necessary to connect people. Of course, so do other genres of music, but jazz, in particular, is a magical piece of music that creates a bond between fellow performers, the audience, and myself, without using language.


    The coronavirus, which has been around since 2020, has made me think more about imperfections. Neither my life nor my language skills were perfect, and I was always unstable or lacked confidence. But even when I'm truly confident in everything and speak Korean or English perfectly, can I be called perfect too?


    The humanity that exists in mistakes and imperfection, and the humor and wit that come from them. This is jazz, the music I am playing and want to play in the future. Even as a jazz player, I'm not perfect. However, if I can feel a bond in imperfect chaos and be happy with it, I think I will be satisfied with that alone.