About KAYRAGE
‘Asian culture needs a truth-telling court jester’
I have been in and around the Korean American community enough to know some of these people get funny ideas… (not the ‘ha ha’ funny). Screwy notions and an off-kilter view of the world influenced in part by Confucianism and Western Judeo-Christian ideals.
You can’t argue with these people. Their problems don’t register and oftentimes you’ll wish you never engaged in the first place out of frustration. It could be your aunt, uncle, parents, friends, piano teacher, swim coach, church peers. The disconnect is not an accident — it’s an incompatible world view.
Your problems don’t register with these people. Cause and effect are merely foreign words to them if it doesn’t fit into their mold of what the truth is. And you don’t educate your way out of something when the goalposts are constantly pushed, boundaries redrawn, or ideas bastardized on a whim. That lasting feeling you get is what’s called Kayrage.
What is Kayrage?
Korean rage: [Han] is often described as an internalized feeling of deep sorrow, resentment, grief, regret, frustration and anger.
The emotional roots run deep, but this same concept of a reality distortion bubble has been around since the dawn of mankind. Kings (or those in the highest positions of power) are often surrounded by sycophants and yes-men, who filter out inconvenient information and unpleasant truth.
So who am I?
The job of the court jester is to skirt offense with thinly veiled criticisms under the guise of humor. Authentic jesters have the rare ability to uncover and successfully address blind spots in thinking and action that directly effect communication, morale, and results.
Kayrage plays the modern day fool. It’s the jester’s job to extol the trivial, trifle with the exalted, and parody the common perception of a situation. In doing so, the fool makes us conscious of the habits we take for granted and rarely question… the ways of living that prevent growth from trauma and keep us from maintaining meaningful relationships, emotional connections, and satisfying lives.
A good fool needs to be part actor, part poet, part philosopher, and part psychologist.
As a cultural fool, Kayrage carries the strategy of “looking at things differently” to an extreme realm, the being for whom everyday, NPC ways of understanding have little meaning. Throughout history, the fool has been consulted by Egyptian pharaohs and Babylonian kings, Chinese emperors, Greek tyrants, and Hopi Indian chiefs… and now subscribers of Kayrage.
Through art, fashion and thought-provoking editorial pieces, I hope to challenge your assumptions and stimulate your thinking.
The content will be absurd, contrarian, irreverent, and possibly cryptic with the aim to notice things that other people overlook and reverse the standard assumptions of conventional wisdom.
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Kayrage