Earl Kim, one of the world’s greatest composers
This is my email, dated May 30, 2024, to Ty Kim, Emmy winning Director-Producer of the documentary, Earl.
Dear Ty,
Your magnum opus, Earl, puts Earl Kim among the world’s greatest composers through the interviews with his luminary peers like Itzhak Perlman and John Harbison and selected performances of his music, thus immortalizing him and thereby denying him his second death, erasure from collective memory, his own penetrating but pessimistic perception of human mortality in general but particularly his, a man with compulsive creative passion and perfectionism but with no vision of narcissistic grandeur.
Lucky were we, the crowd present at the New York Korean Cultural Center for the screening, getting an eloquent, insightful journalistic introduction beforehand and Q & A afterwards from you, the Writer-Director-Editor-Producer, how you were introduced, willy-nilly, to the randomly stacked archives of his music nearly a couple of decades after his decease, got hooked, and was compelled to devote 2 and a half years of your Emmy award winning journalistic career, traveling around the world, to produce Earl. Then there was the finale, your self-debasement, “I am just a parasite.” Actually, I vaguely heard an echo from James Boswell, who wrote Life of Johnson. Samuel Johnson, a great scholar, rendered invaluable service to the English language as its first lexicographer but may have been forgotten by now, had it not been for Boswell, the greatest biographer, greater than Plutarch by far, who sees himself as an unworthy appendage.
The line of people wanting to shake your hand and talk to you was long and I almost despaired of my turn. Then you remembered me and said that you liked my fiction. I am full steam ahead with my screenplay for Cry Korea Cry with perhaps a more globally appealing title, something like Star-Crossed.
It was sweet of your parents to have a seat reserved for me between them. I have missed them so much. Your Dad is a legend to Andrew, my youngest, 44, his namesake, Managing Director at Mizuho, and also my daughter BJ, 55, compliance officer at Morgan Stanley, and her husband Suok Noh, formerly Managing Director at Goldman Sachs. Sit-Kim, your father’s hedge fund, is the principal venture capital that brought the Korean economy out of the debacle in the final years of the last century. Suok, who has known him in his prime, was saddened to see him so oppressed by age.
Also it was great to meet your wife who had called my wife to confirm our reservations. Not only has she supported you through the 2.5 years for the documentary production but in all your great beautiful enduring married life with 2 brilliant children. I remember them playing the piano and singing when I visited your Santa Monica home with Woody when you were doing something together. I missed your wife but your parents were there. Incidentally, Woody and his wife were in Taiwan where they were showing his Wedding Banquet for the third year and were planning to detour through NYC for the screening but a faculty emergency arose at Berkleee College of Music and he had to fill in, forcing him to fly directly to Boston. Woody was really looking forward to the reunion.
With love,
Ty Pak
