I just wish you would finish your work

Peter, I want you to know that I’m doing fine, despite my best efforts to be sad and mopey.

By the way, this post is for Peter Chung. I have no idea where he is . Last I heard, he was in India, and he had fallen in love. I sincerely hope that neither of those things have changed.

Oh, but I suppose the rest of you can read it too.

I owe you a lot, Peter. I don’t know if I ever told you that. I suppose I was too busy being needy to stop and be satisfied. I’m better now. I like the word “better” as a description of me, now, because it only implies improvement. Artists never really finish themselves.

Hopefully they finish their work though, right?

Peter, you gave me a gift the day that I first met you. When you called me an artist. I never allowed myself to be called that. You were a filmmaker. I saw your film, and you called me an artist. It was like… permission?

Anyone else out there ever feel like you needed permission to be something?

A year or two after I first met you, I had “hired” my two unemployed friends to help me produce a short film, where I had to lie, misrepresent, and create a false narrative of myself in order to obtain a filming permit in a city that will remain nameless.

Cops got involved. A homeless man nicknamed “the Colonel” almost slapped me. There was the point with the live squirrel, and the stray cat, and our poor cinematographer.

It was the best. And I am an artist now. I did all that stuff because you gave me permission to be one.

Not the illegal stuff. The making a short film part.

I don’t really make films anymore (unless you count the pen reviews), but I get to use the “A” word now without being afraid of it. I’m an artist.

Two years after that, I was in South Korea, and you also happened to be there. I was lonely. I left my home country because I just kind of wanted to be alone. Peter, I remember that you took me out to dinner. Soon Dubu Chigae (It looks weird in English). You told me something that I still think about, almost 10 years later.

“First of all, you are an artist. I just wish you would finish your work.”

I don’t know if you meant it like this, but it felt like you were saying that it was disappointing to you that my work wasn’t out there for people to see. The very idea of that (and if I misinterpreted you, please don’t tell me), just the very idea, made me feel… warm.

Like a bowl of 순두부 찌개 (yeah. It looks way better like that). The kind with the hot stone bowl? Like a warm that hits your face from two feet away.

Like I said, Peter, I owe you a lot. I lost the password to the email address where you used to email me. I appreciate you, brother. I wanted you to know that hearing you call me that “A” word made me feel like maybe I was. I am trying really hard to finish my work. I also call other people that “A” word sometimes, just so I can see things they make. The world is full of great things. The best of them are only known by a few.

I hope that wherever you are, that you’re still in love, and you’re still an artist.

Just like me.

-Stephen