The Child Who Held the Microphone
— On Dreams That Persist

By Minhee Yeo

“Good afternoon, everyone.
The fertiliser for this week’s chilli fields has arrived, so please come to the village head’s house and collect it by four o’clock.”

The grandparents, who live in a rural village, seldom see their granddaughter, who lives on the other side of the peninsula. During the grandchild’s summer visit, they hand her the microphone, struck by how she has just started school and somehow manages to look both sweet and very much like a proper pupil. She grips the microphone and delivers the announcement with surprising confidence. Her grandma watches her with pleased, contented smiles.

“Sweetheart, you speak so clearly. You should grow up to be a newsreader.”

Back in the city, during the years she attends school, the child’s daily streets are filled with a sharp, stinging smell that burns the eyes, like gunpowder. There is a university nearby, and the older students throw tear gas at the riot police almost every day as they demonstrate. She wonders why the older sisters and brothers are so angry all the time.

Her father swears at the university students, criticising them for even throwing stones, and calls them mad, brainwashed communist bastards.
What is it that makes him so angry?

As she passes through adolescence, she grows to resent her father, who drinks every day and comes home late. Normally taciturn and barely speaking to his family, he becomes the happiest man in the world once he has had a drink. Then he comes home with fish-shaped pastries in both hands, trying to give a big hug and kiss her cheeks. She hates it so much that she locks her bedroom door.

Instead, she reads books and watches films. Her family is not well off, and she has never travelled far beyond school trips, let alone abroad, so books and films are the only windows through which she can see the world. Novels that allow her to live other people’s lives in her own language are enjoyable, but the languages and landscapes of other countries encountered through film subtitles feel like adventures that make her heart race, no matter how often she sees them.

She also goes to the theatre to watch plays. All she has to do is sit still for two hours, and an entirely different reality unfolds vividly before her eyes. The distance between stage and audience is far closer than in books or films, so close that she feels she could reach out her hand and slip straight inside.

Her dream changes. In her teenage years, she dreams of becoming a writer, then a film director. At some point, she begins to dream of becoming a playwright.

Expecting that university will bring independence and the freedom to do whatever she wants, she starts working. But she decides not to major in theatre or film. Having grown up watching her parents struggle financially all their lives, she does not want to live a life bound by money. Fortunately, she is physically strong and has a knack for earning, so she spends her twenties filled with lively, energising work. During that time, she steadily saves money to study abroad.

In the UK, as she writes her thesis, she receives an unexpected call from a theatre. And so she returns to the theatre once again.
Starting this new path at this age?
She finds herself acting — something she has never once imagined doing. And it is fun. Exhilarating. Above all, she loves the theatre.

After more than a decade of living as an actor, she becomes a mother raising a daughter who is now about the same age as that little child who once stood on her grandma’s wooden floor, making announcements to the village. She suddenly feels curious: what will this child want to become when she grows up? But she does not ask. She believes there is no point in asking now, and that a parent’s role is to build a healthy fence around a child until she discovers and finds her own path.

And she thinks:
Ah. I did want to be a writer.
Did I forget that? Or was I avoiding it — out of fear, or perhaps out of laziness?

After having a child, one feeling takes deepest root: she must become a better person herself, to show her child the values she hopes they will carry. She must live in a way that, in whatever way she can, makes the world her child will grow up in a little better. To do this, she must keep her centre and follow what she truly desires. Yes — her unchanging dream is to live a life that touches and stirs the hearts of others.

So she decides.
Let’s write.
Anything.
Whatever the genre.

Let’s just write.
Because if you do nothing, nothing happens.

And so she makes a New Year’s resolution.
Once again, her heart begins to race.