Thank You, BTS - A Special Post of Gratitude for BTS's 7th Anniversary
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| Image caption: South Korean group BTS performing in Times Square on New Year's Eve 2019. From left, going clockwise, they are Jimin, RM (hiding in the back behind Jimin), V, Jungkook, Jin, J-Hope (the one crouching down in the front), and Suga (on the far right). Today, 6/13/20, is the 7th anniversary of their debut. |
As a sex-repulsed aromantic asexual, I often ask myself just what I’m “supposed to” like. It’s a fairly simple question on the surface and yet one that I am constantly struggling to answer. When it comes to the media I consume, the idea of “supposed to” becomes very treacherous indeed. Most television shows that are culturally considered “great,” for instance, are far too graphically sexual for me to ever want to approach. Meanwhile, when I do find media I like or identify with, it becomes difficult to even read fanfiction about it, as so much of the fanfic I encounter tends to be likewise graphic. Even songs that are dubbed acceptable for airplay on the radio make me cringe.
As a result, I usually find myself dancing on the edges of most pop culture or even my own fandoms. So when I find something that makes me feel safe – that I can enjoy without reservation – I cling to it with every fiber of my being. And, although rare, those safe havens do exist. Imagine my surprise when one such safe haven turned out to be a Korean “boy band” – a group you may have heard of called BTS.
Like most people, I had definite ideas about this band in my head. Mostly this was thanks to the fact that many people tend to say the word “K-Pop” in the same tone of voice they reserve for words like “telemarketer” or “used-car salesman” or “bumper-to-bumper traffic.” The term “boy band” likewise conjured up certain ideas and notions that made me think that they probably weren’t for me and, although I was somewhat intrigued by them, I deliberately stayed away for a while. Thank goodness I didn’t stay away forever.
My true discovery of the band and their music came about sort of accidentally. At the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, I began listening to one of their songs – and I literally mean one, the same one, over and over again. It was their 2017 song “Mic Drop”, a song that I did not expect to change my life. At the time I found it I just really needed a lift, and listening to seven Korean popstars diss their haters was exactly the thing I needed to help get me through a time when I felt particularly misunderstood. Fun fact: as I worked to launch this blog, I listened to this song on an endless repeat.
At first, I thought that would be where it ended, but that led me to YouTube compilations of the band’s funny moments, which I watched whenever I needed a lift. When I did finally launch the blog in mid-February of 2020, I decided to unwind by watching some of their videos and discovered through my YouTube clicking that the group had previously spoken at the United Nations. I settled into a comfortable position, clicked play, and the rest, as they say, was history.
I don’t know what I was expecting their speech to be about, but I wasn’t expecting to hear someone speak my truth as clearly as I heard BTS’s leader and translator, Kim Namjoon (also known as RM) do during the six-minute speech. After a short introduction to BTS’s core message of “love yourself,” Namjoon moved into a description of his childhood dreams and how they were cut out from underneath him the older he got.
“I stopped looking up at the night skies, the stars,” Namjoon says, reflecting on himself as a ten-year old boy. “I stopped daydreaming. Instead I just tried to jam myself into the moulds that other people made. Soon I began to shut out my own voice and started to listen to the voices of others. No one called out my name, and neither did I. My heart stopped and my eyes closed shut. So, like this, I - we - all lost our names. We became like ghosts.”
As a young woman who compares herself to a ghost entirely too often, these words left me blinking away tears. As the young woman who had to learn what my own voice sounded like and what my own truth was in a world that often seems unfeeling at best and hostile at worst, listening to Namjoon’s story made me feel seen in a way I rarely ever have. In this way, the band that was my repeated one-song playlist and my daily dose of humor became my safe space, a lifeline I hadn’t realized I needed so desperately until I had it. And the more I listened to their music, the more that feeling increased and cemented; the more I listened, the more songs I found that became safety, truth, and comfort.
Video description: Kim Namjoon, also known as BTS's leader RM, speaking at the United Nations in 2018. His speech begins at 0:44.
The speech at the UN is not the only way Namjoon impacted me. The more I learned about him, the more I saw myself reflected in him and his struggles, and I identified with his endless quest to find his real authentic self. When I discovered his 2018 solo mixtape mono, I found home, especially in the song “Moonchild,” a song which literally helped reshape how I view my own sense of self. The song is dedicated to those who Namjoon says, like him, “are born in the moonlight” and “can’t breathe in the sunlight.” In it, he asserts that there are those of us who are “born to be sad, suffer to be glad” and that it is our destiny to smile through what ails us. “Moonchild, you shine,” he promises. “When moon rises, it’s your time.”
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| Image description: Kim Namjoon (RM), the leader of BTS, as well as their translator, one of their rappers, and their main songwriter. Namjoon has inspired me immensely - both through his UN speech and his music. His song "Moonchild" has become my favorite song of all time. |
As someone who often feels like happiness is more of a struggle for me than most people around me, this song cut me, beautifully and deeply. In a strange way, “Moonchild” hit me with a revelation that reminded me of the very first time I discovered the term asexuality. Back then, I was desperately searching for a way to describe myself and relate to the world around me. I only really found such a thing when I finally realized I could stop calling myself “prude” and start calling myself “asexual.” In a similar way, hearing Namjoon give name to my experience and call it being a Moonchild gave me permission to love the parts of myself I thought I had to hide – my pessimism and pain, my doubts and fears, my feelings of being misunderstood. For a long time, I felt shame about these things and thought they were things I had to change about myself, but “Moonchild” showed me I can embrace them as my true self. Just as asexuality gave me a path to walk, Namjoon shed light on that path – moonlight, to be precise.
However, this is not an isolated incident, limited to one song or one member or one moment; rather, it is an endless pattern that I find myself in as a fan of BTS. The band’s “love yourself” message has impacted me deeply, helping me nourish the parts of myself I had been hiding and the parts I still need to learn to love, even after years of self-exploration and self-discovery. In that UN speech, Namjoon goes on to speak his own personal philosophy, a belief I have long since held myself but that sometimes needs refreshing:
“Maybe I made a mistake yesterday, but yesterday’s me is still me,” he asserts. “Today, I am who I am with all of my faults and my mistakes. Tomorrow, I might be a tiny bit wiser, and that will be me too. These faults and mistakes are what I am, making up the brightest stars in the constellation of my life. I have come to love myself for who I am, for who I was, and for who I hope to become.” As the speech comes to a close, he urges all those listening to do one very important thing, one thing that has, in some ways, become the theme of my life and the thing I struggle with most at the same time: “speak yourself,” the important and difficult pinnacle of using your own voice rather than letting other people speak for you.
This message, along with “love yourself,” has become my mental mantra, the thing that keeps my head above water when it feels like the world wants to drown me. Meanwhile, the band’s songs give me the emotional support I need when I can’t put my feelings into words or hide them because I feel no one will understand. Their music has guided me through my anger and sorrow, my joy and anxiety, my hope and disappointment in a way few things have the power to do. In the not-too-distant future on this blog, I hope to do a post about the media that does make me, the asexual geek who often feels like a lost wanderer, feel a little more at home; when that post comes, I look forward to sharing these songs with you in more detail and telling you more about how their music has touched me and lifted me up.
Video description: I will be doing another post down the line in which I recommend the BTS songs that give me the most comfort and make me feel the most understood. But if you only listen to one BTS song or watch one performance in your life, make it this one - their performance of "On" from Map of the Soul: 7, performed in Grand Central Station in February of 2020 for The Tonight Show.
In the emotional song “We Are Bulletproof: The Eternal,” the penultimate track of BTS's most recent album Map of the Soul: 7, there is a line that goes “Tell me your every story, tell me why you don’t stop this, tell my why you’re still walking with us.” These are my reasons. These things and so many more are why I stand here on BTS’s 7th anniversary – the first I’ve spent with them – full of nothing but gratitude and love. Saying “thank you” almost doesn’t seem enough; after all, how do you thank complete strangers for giving you the gift of feeling understood, of having your story told?
To me, BTS is more than a “boy band” or a “K-Pop group” – those words seem so small and insufficient to describe everything they are, everything they do, and everything they’ve given me. Are their songs catchy, well-written, and meaningful? Yes. Is their dancing incredible? Absolutely. Are they physically beautiful? Well, just look at them. But those things are not what makes them special to so many people and to me. What makes them special is the incredible spirit that’s brought them this far, an incredible spirit they share with those of us lucky enough to call ourselves fans. And that is why, even though I haven’t been walking with them since the beginning, I plan to walk with them until the very end.
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| Image description: Jungkook (in the white sweater), J-Hope (in the blue blazer), Jin (in the red jacket with the red & yellow tie), Jimin (with the blue hair), RM (in the green sweater on the far right), V (in the front wearing the maroon sweater), and Suga (in the front wearing the blue cap) during a photoshoot for Map of the Soul: 7 |
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