Hyehwa: Jung Eun-ji’s Homecoming

Home is just as much about our senses as it is our physical surroundings and emotional reactions to them. A sense of belonging and familiarity, the smell of the wet leaves on the ground of a recently mowed lawn, the sounds of river rushing by, the shivers running throughout our body, bare feet altering the direction of the current around us. These are all elements that tether us to a certain locale or location. Sure these phenomena may exist elsewhere in the world too but I KNOW this river, these leaves, and all of the sensations that they elicit. They were with me on the first date, the first time I saw a beaver, when I needed to clear my head from the bustle of adolescence.

There's no place like home

Female soloist Jung Eun-ji of Apink, takes us on this sensational, musical journey back to her home. Recreate the image of what that looks like in your head. The minimalism in its instrumentation and lyricism allows it to feel intimately connective, familiar. Exactly how an artist would want their creation to be conveyed when attempting to evoke feelings of nostalgia. However there is a slight sense of abnormality. The potential reality that the home she’s going back to, isn’t the same one she left, preserved meticulously in her heart and soul. These feelings occur differently and are imagined uniquely for each and every one of us, even if there are shared familiarities. 

Hyehwa (a Subway station in a rural area of Seoul) is where we start our journey with Eun-ji. Leaves crunch beneath each step, birds are chirping against the backdrop of a gentle piano melody. After all this time, acclimating to a new place, a new life, away from the comparative quiet of Busan, she is going home. And we are going there too. Though most likely not the same place. The morning dew periodically drips off of the leaves onto the ground. It’s time to set off, into the previously known turned great unknown. 

We’ve arrived. And it certainly is our hometown, but the sense of trepidation on our commute was as well-founded as we feared. We don’t recognize anyone here, all these unfamiliar faces blend together. That feeling of isolation is ironically heightened even further when being around people you don’t know, and people who don’t know you. Maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves?

The sights and sounds feel less comforting, the places we used to go for comfort have been replaced, modified, possibly even modernized. Our humble beginnings have been changing with each season gone by since we were last here. Our worst fears have been realized. The home we left behind is gone. It remains mostly in name only.

We’re taken back to the place we’ve preserved in our mind. Remembering a younger self. One with much less emotional baggage. A hopeful nativity. Wanting nothing more than to escape from “the box” of a town that we feel keeps us from reaching our potential. From being the person we want to be, from living the life we want to live. We can’t achieve our dreams here, but we never thought about sacrificing a part of ourselves to to get there.

Singing is more than just something Eun-ji does for a career. As she said in an interview with The Korea Herald, “I tried to start working on the album by reflecting on myself, as I used to sing whenever I needed comfort.” In multiple interviews in the lead up to the album’s release there was a tinge of reminiscence attached to each quote. Beyond missing her own hometown, there were other aspects of life from other places she’d lived she was grieving. Missing the home-cooked meals and community of dormitory living as well, even lamenting the fact that “people don’t really buy CDs anymore.”

Dealing mainly with themes of grief and sympathy, Hyehwa isn’t necessarily as “sad” album. Certainly it goes to some fairly nostalgic places with its subject matter, but it’s hard to say that it ever feels “negative” in any way. Rather a comforting reminder for anyone who is dealing with their own past and personal strife of yesteryear. And if enough people are able to take comfort, that sympathy might turn itself into empathy beyond the confines of its artistry. 

Your hometown will not necessarily feel like a place you used to live when coming back to visit. The turnover that occurs whilst you are gone takes place in multiple forms. Stores closing, friends and family moving away. The place you left isn’t the home you’ve come back to, what made you who you are. There’s no getting around it, it’s sad. Sometimes it’s a place better left preserved in our minds with zero compromise. The rose colored haze blurring out the pieces we don’t want to have intrude our headspace. As hard as it can be to accept that the town we thought we were coming back to exists solely within us. You may find that the place you left to get back to your hometown has become the place you receive the comforts and familiarity of a “home.” But as long as we hold onto something we know and love, even just one small thing, in Eun-ji’s case singing, we can make even the most unfamiliar surrounding feel a bit more homely.