I met Eugene in June 2008. Our mutual friend, the chef with a PhD in literature, the third arm of my imaginary 2004 band The JMZ, the woman who visited me in Seattle and Lorient, Mademoiselle Jennifer X. Cho, introduced us. Jen knew Eugene from being Korean at NYU (they were in different years and departments) and I knew Jen from being an English major in AmeriCorps. "So you want to be a writer?" was my nervous pick-up line to this gorgeous heterosexual before she became the renowned Chef Dr. And we started a writing group that more often than not wound up in bathtubs and bars where real writing happened sitting in a circle on a kitchen floor and our imaginations bounced off rooftops and along the banks of city rivers.
Eugene studied business as an undergrad and got his MFA in fiction at the New School. He loves Borges and Nabokov and was reading Dickens on his kindle yesterday when we met up at the MoMA. The last time I went to MoMA was with Eugene and we saw the German expressionists, Kathe Kollwitz and Picasso's guitars. This time was less exciting but it's still a New York museum, it's not bad. There's a good collection: the Monet room and sculpture garden, Picassos and Kahlos an Elizabeth Catlett and a wall of Jacob Lawrence. It's a way to spend a day.
I met Eugene in the summer of 2008. I had been living in France and a few weeks before I came home for the summer I got an email from Jen asking if I wanted to write for a project her friend, Eugene, was putting together. It was the Alexander Lim Project. Lim was an imaginary sculptor who broke boundaries and acquired fame, however, the material he used in his work was toxic and he gave himself lung cancer and died prematurely. The participants in the project were to write critically about the life and death of this celebrated and misunderstood artist.
Awesome, I thought. But I was moving home, didn't have a job, didn't have much money so how was I supposed to focus on writing? Had to. No one in their writer's mind could resist being a part of this project that culminated in a reading of all the participants. It was brilliant and absurd. A superb afternoon.
Eugene and I have managed to keep in touch over the years. Our early adventures focused on readings and drinkings. We've branched out to museums, Brooklyn and more food than booze. We're growing up, we've written novels we're passionate about but have families and lives and responsibilities that are maybe more important than dreams because dreams will always be there. Comparisons are odious (says Jack Kerouac) and first gen Scottish is definitely different from first gen Korean, but the chosen exile is similar, our parents wanted out and moved to the States and gave their children different opportunities. I feel like I've gone on a sentimental tangent that is more irrelevant than . . . thus I end.
I'm thrilled that Eugene will be reading at the launch event on September 15 at Five Myles Gallery around 3PM or so.
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