This semester, one of the courses I’m taking at Kwantlen Polytechnic University is an Interdisciplinary Expressive Arts course focussing on the exploration of Sound, Music, and the Creative Self as developed by Kwantlen music professor, Dr. Daniel Tones. As I’ve been doing with my short Coursera, Skillshare, and Udemy courses, I’m going to package up the work I do for this course into posts for this online journal.
So, for this post - I’m including a brief overview of the guidance given for the assignment, as well as the instructor feedback which I used to revise what I had handed in, which is what you will find presented below. I’ve also included links here and there, as I do with most of my journal posts.
This Reflection on Listening to Yourself asks you to describe who you are, the values you hold dear, and how you view your place in the world. In other words, listen to yourself deeply and sincerely, and share the story that emerges. This assignment is a starting point upon which you will build and reflect, at several points in the course, before completing your final Summative Course Reflection.
Prepare and submit a 250 to 500-word / 1 to 2-page written reflection that describes yourself. The content of your description is open-ended; however, it should consist of a series of statements, in paragraph format, that describe who you are, the values you hold dear, how you view your place in the world, and your potential to be a catalyst for change, creativity, or whatever goal you aspire to achieve. Due to the limited length of this assignment, you will likely need to select only the observations that best describe you.
I’m Steve, which is short for Steven. But, why does that matter? I mean, wasn’t it Shakespeare who asked, “would a rose by any other name smell just as sweet?” ? I mean, if my parents had named me John, would that have changed who I am today? Would it have changed any of the directions I’ve taken in my life? Honestly, I don’t know. But I know for sure is that at some point after I was born my parents named me Steven Robert Han Lee.
Why Steven? When I ask my Mom this, her go to answer has always been just because she always liked that name. So I go exploring. I love how R. Murray Schafer, in his book “The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World” describes our senses in his introduction, which are our means of exploring the physical realities of the Earth School. Specifically, Schafer explains how:
Touch is the most personal of the senses. Hearing and touch meet where the lower frequencies of audible sound pass over to tactile vibrations (at about 20 hertz). Hearing is a way of touching at a distance and the intimacy of the first sense is fused with sociability whenever people gather together to hear something special.
So, I let my fingers navigate my keyboard, as the quick click, click, click of the keys fills my ears. I alt-tab my way to Safari, and Google my way to learn a bit more about my given name. Specifically, Wikipedia notes how:
Steven is a common English first name… particularly significant to Christians, as it belonged to Saint Stephen (Greek: Στέφανος Stéphan), an early disciple and deacon who, according to the Book of Acts, was stoned to death; he is widely regarded as the first martyr (or "protomartyr") of the Christian Church.
My eyes scan the page, drawing in information about my name. I was baptized at the Cariboo Bethal Church, in the City of Williams Lake, British Columbia. I get lost on Google for awhile, finding the church, and then ending up in Google Maps looking down at an aerial view of a town whose history is now some twenty-five odd years in my past. It sits cut into a valley that falls onto the southwest edges of the lake it’s named after. I can’t help but think that the shape of the town itself sitting on the map appears not that dissimilar to the boot-like shape of the province of British Columbia itself. I use my fingers to move the map around on my iPad. I tap to drop pins, zooming in and out with a pinch of my fingers. The screen feels so smooth and slightly warm to my touch. In my mind flashes of images come and go, streets I walked down as a child, or was driven down by either my Mom or Dad. The sounds of my youth also fade in and out of my memory, as another quote from Schafer floats to my attention, where he noted how:
The eye points outward; the ear draws inward. It soaks up information. Wagner said: “To the eye appeals the outer man, the inner to the ear.” The ear is also an erotic orifice. Listening to beautiful sounds, for instance the sounds of music, is like the tongue of a lover in your ear.
I hover over the Stampede Grounds, on which the homestead of my biological Great Great Grandfather, William Pinchbeck and his wife Chulminik, once stood. His grave is at the top of a hill, looking out over the Stampede Grounds and the lake that held his father-in-law’s name, Chief “Sugar Cane” Will’ium, my 3rd Great Grandfather. But I digress. I can almost hear the sounds of the horses on the Stampede Grounds: the raking of hay, the shovelling of shavings, the sound of a truck engine turning over to take someone home who was done looking after his horses for the day. Or the sound of the bacon sizzling and the sound of a metal flipper, lifting and flipping a pancake over on a large hot griddle during one of the Stampede pancake breakfasts my Mom used to help with, as my young eyes would look up at the various people rushing around, doing whatever they needed to do to serve up the delicious smelling food that was cooking. The memory of these sounds, that have laid dormant and locked in my mind across these decades, provide a foundation that makes my visual memories feel so much more real. I stare at the map longer, and swear I remembered location of the building where those breakfasts were cooked, but I don’t quite see it on the map. Gone too are these large trees I was certain used to live behind the stables. Thankfully, several stumps nestled between the grasses on a hill provide comfort to me, that my memory of this place hasn’t completely faded.
As I’m transfixed on the map in front of me, I find I’m slightly aware of the slight hum of the beer and wine fridge which sits across from the kitchen table I’m sitting at. I’m also aware of the muted sound of the television my Mom is watching, floating down the hallway of her house where I’m staying tonight. I strain my ears slightly, trying to narrow in on what she’s watching, but it’s no use. The voices are just too muffled and muted by distance and the solid doors of her bedroom to make out anything concrete.
I remember to circle back to Wikipedia. Christianity. Martyr. I’m not a practicing Christian, even though I would later spend a year at the White Rock Christian Academy, for about a year after my folks and I moved from Williams Lake to South Surrey. So no, I’m not a practicing Christian, even though I wear a small cross. I wear it, not so much for what the church represents, but for Christ himself – a man who cultivated unconditional compassion, curiosity, gratitude, forgiveness, love and reverence for all life. No, today, I consider myself more of a Christian Spiritualist, open to studying not just the myths, stories and tenants of Christianity, but also the foundations of other practices, such as Buddhism, or even some New Age mysticism thrown in for good measure. The Wikipedia article about my name also says how:
The name "Stephen" (and its common variant "Steven") is derived from Greek Στέφανος (Stéphanos), a first name from the Greek word στέφανος (stéphan), meaning 'wreath, crown' and by extension 'reward, honor, renown, fame', from the verb στέφειν (stéphein), 'to encircle, to wreathe'. In Ancient Greece, crowning wreaths (such as laurel wreaths) were given to the winners of contests. Originally, as the verb suggests, the noun had a more general meaning of any "circle"—including a circle of people, a circling wall around a city, and, in its earliest recorded use, the circle of a fight, which is found in the Iliad of Homer.
The metaphor of the circle seems apt in describing my life. Beyond the loops my mind is making right now, looking back at my childhood in Williams Lake, but also as a young adult, when I was much more of a high functioning depressive, working for several different nonprofit organizations as a teenager and into my early twenties. I first volunteered for the South Surrey District 5 RCMP Community Police Station, where I was able to put work the knowledge I was gaining studying marketing management during my first time at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, then Kwantlen University College. There, I organized events, such as Police Week, which saw us take over the Semiahmoo Mall with a gathering of two dozen different organizations who setup information tables to highlight the different ways they each proactively helped to keep South Surrey safe. I can remember the hustle and bustle of people walking through the mall, visiting each table. Muffled voices and shuffling papers, the slight sound of mall music hanging in the air. This volunteer work helped me later land a job with the Kwantlen Student Association, where I also organized many events for almost a decade, and even fought corruption that broke out when a group of students got elected and began systematically finding ways to mine their pockets with student’s money. At each of these places, I was involved with different circles of people who were trying to make life for a surrounding larger circle of people just a little bit better.
The name Robert was the name of the groundskeeper of the Williams Lake Stampede grounds, Mr. Robert Turnbull. I don’t remember much about him, but he too was a person who always worked to help a greater circle of people. I do remember his wife Rose, who painted oils on canvas. She let me have a go once when I was very young, maybe two or three years old. I remember the feel of the paintbrush in my hand and the palette laid out in front of me, with the remnants of the browns, reds, and dark green splayed out on her palette. I remember the wood panel walls of the trailer they lived in, and the chiaroscuro light that made the edges of everything I’m now remembering feel as though it was out of a dream. I want to say I remember the sound of her voice, gently explaining the very basics of painting to me, but that would be a lie. I don’t remember at all. But this was the first time art had circled into my life, and it’s something I’ve circled back to today, as I work to complete a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Kwantlen.
When I was a teenager, I changed my name to Steven Hanju Lee, to reflect the name of my adopted father. Han was his name here in Canada, and it’s been a part of me since birth. You see, when he came to Canada in 1952, the customs and immigration officials misheard his name and recorded it as Han Choo Lee, and not as Hanju Lee. My Mom and I found this out in the early 90s, when my Dad’s family found and made contact with those family members who were stuck in the authoritarian dictatorship known as North Korea. Each letter that came from them was addressed to “Hanju Lee” and one day, my Mom asked my Dad why this was.
“Because, that’s my name,” he replied. The mistake was something he never corrected customs on, in the moment, or even later on in his life. I’m not sure why he wouldn’t get it fixed. Maybe it was between English being a second language for him (even though he could speak over half a dozen), or maybe it was because growing up with so many unstable governments you never quite trusted or ever questioned, it was probably just easier for my Dad to accept the error, and move on with life. But it was an error that gave him a name he would have to live with for the rest of his life, one that his parents hadn’t given him.
I spent almost a decade with the student association before leaving their in 2010. Leaving, wasn’t by choice though. I lost my bid for re-election. But near the end of my time there, I found my depression started to circle into my life with a force I hadn’t really seen before. I suffered a lot as a teenager, as I was bullied a lot, but the depression I experienced while working at the student association led me to try and take my own life a few times in 2007. I still remember going into the small bathroom of my parent’s apartment and closing the door behind me. I remember the feel of the bottle of Tylenol 3s in my hand as I unclipped it’s lid and emptied the bottle’s contents into the palm of my hand. Two or three dozen little white pills, which I shoved into my mouth like candy, washing them down my throat with a cold glass of water I had taken from the tap that was still running, phssshhhhh pouring water into the sink, and a tinkling sound at the same time as it promptly escaped down the drain. I remember my hand shaking, and looking at myself in the mirror, my eyes haggard from the tears that had been streaming down my face just moments before.
In many ways, I consider the last decade of my life to have been a lost decade. Lost jobs, countless failed courses, a lost girlfriend. An art history teacher signing off on a waiver to let me take her course again, saying that if I was anyone else at any other institution, without the talent I had, I would have been kicked out of art school by now. Each loss represented a small little instance in life where it felt like a little piece of me had crumbled. It’s something I’m still struggling with today, impacting my dream of circling into a career of making art that serves to make people think.
Had things gone as I had envisioned, I would have graduated in the spring of 2021. Instead, the fall of 2021 marked the sixth semester in a row that I bombed. It’s something that landed me in the hospital last fall after another suicide attempt. This time, after having a horrific fight with my Mom, where I ended up by my car in the driveway of her house, trying to stuff some rags into the tailpipe, to drive off and park somewhere, leaving the engine running, and hopefully going to sleep just one last time. As I stuffed the rags into the pipe, I could hear the sounds of sirens off in the distance, quickly moving closer to me. My Mom had called 911. I remember arguing with the cop through the closed door of my car, and him threatening to smash the window of the vehicle if I didn’t unlock it. Eventually, I climbed out of the vehicle, to be arrested on the lawn of my Mother’s house, under the Canadian mental health act. I felt so utterly broken and useless as the officer snapped a pair of handcuffs onto me, and had me maneuver into the back seat of the cruiser. I remember how uncomfortable it was to sit there, with my hands cuffed behind my back, staring through the bars and glass of the cruiser at my Mom talking to the officers. In so many ways, that’s how the last few years have felt for me, as though I’m stuck hand cuffed in the back of a cruiser going nowhere. And sometimes I still worry that I’ll never break free.
INSTRUCTOR FEEDBACK
“Thank you for your open and sincere reflections. You've captured some important memories, values, and elements of your life, and it appears you know yourself very well. I wish you all the best as you address and explore the topics you've presented.
What do you make of the Wagner quote? I was hoping it would be addressed more directly, although having said that, there are some excellent reflection here already. Perhaps ponder this quote, and in your future writing for this course, relate it to our listening, music-making, and reflective writing exercises.
I've enjoyed your comments in our chats thus far. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and experience. Wonderful to have met you, and I wish you all the best with your studies.” - Dr. Daniel Tones
Grade: 87+9=96