My flight to Los Angeles for the Permission to Dance live shows in November 2021 was a red eye, still I was huge awake, surrounded by an enthusiastic Military group of all ages, races, languages, measurements, and genders — we had been going to see BTS! We entered the doorways in our hearts and emerged into paradise we had been strangers yet most effective of buddies, complimenting just about every other’s purple hair, comparing our BT21 tags, exchanging LA restaurant tips. We shared a really like for BTS, and experienced used so several several years watching 7 gentlemen help each individual other deeply, like Jungkook’s Golden Closet Films highlighting his fellow band members or the way they show up for each individual other’s solo songs. The exact thing is undoubtedly going on for thousands this 7 days, as BTS will take more than Las Vegas, renamed as Borahaegas, for a four-date concert residency. Army bond comes instantly, influenced by the beautiful brotherhood managing through Bangtan, reminding us we will in no way walk by itself, a reminder offered to me again and once again by the men and women and artwork I enjoy.
At the press meeting in Los Angeles, Jimin reported that “…we want to carry therapeutic and consolation to absolutely everyone else who is also going as a result of these tough times and living through these challenges together… [These concerts] designed me really feel like we are back the place we belong, and I hope everyone can end up exactly where they belong.”
We, Army, did conclude up exactly where we belong. We belonged at the concerts, singing and dancing and crying with just about every other and our preferred artists, and I can not wait around for us to preserve nestling ourselves in belonging — at BTS live shows, yes, but also in bookstores, artwork galleries, movie theaters, our residences, our cherished ones’ arms, our delicate and tender selves — because we belong with what ever and whoever keeps us thriving and reveling and ruminating in this universe.
In her book The Stop of the Novel of Enjoy, 1 of my favored writers, Vivian Gornick argues about her personal preferred writer, Grace Paley, that people today adore lifetime extra because of her producing. That Paley’s producing tends to make us “feel again the ridiculous wild sexy pleasure of lifetime.” I, and quite a few other Army, no question experience this way about BTS. Is this not the purest, truest, feeling of art? This revel of life?
How can you like them so considerably, asks a good friend. How is your mind wired to fangirl so hard, asks another. The answers to these issues maybe lay in the point that to me, there’s no distinction in between listening to a BTS track and standing in front of a Devon Shimoyama painting. No variance concerning seeing a Leslie Cheung film and observing an Etel Adnan leporello and hanging up my friend’s illustration in my residing place. It’s all art to me. Artwork that reminds me why this everyday living is value living.
