Those who participate in it cannot help but love it more than those who enjoy it.
You cannot participate with your whole body without loving.
Or, if you participate with your whole body, you will love it more.
So you come to hate it thoroughly and love it in detail.
When I write rather than read, when I dance rather than watch, when I play the piano rather than listen to it, I live my life to the fullest, loving every nook and cranny and worrying about every little thing.
The more difficult writing is, the more I come to love it.
The more difficult dancing is, the more you love it.
The more you fear the piano, the more you come to love it.
I love the piano, so I'm afraid of the piano.
--- From "Everything Starts from the Keyboard"

In fact, what I remember more vividly than the contest stage is what happened afterward.
We decided to play a few songs, including the ones we played at the competition, at the academy recital at the end of the year.
I was playing happily in front of the teacher while taking a lesson, when the teacher, who had been staring at me from the right, suddenly smiled.
I asked the teacher why he was laughing, but he didn't answer, but I know why he was laughing.
Because I was playing passionately and with all my might.
Using all of her little hands and feet, her whole body, making all sorts of expressions, she moved towards the piano and then away from it.
I know that because my teacher laughed and said, “That’s what it is.”
A nine-year-old child remembers playing with all his body, concentrating like a professional pianist.
--- From "Walking In"

My world is full of sound.
Since I was five, pitch has crept into my language and joined me like a wisteria.
I have lived with sound all my life, and I still hear countless sounds.
The sound becomes a note, then a note name, and stays in the brain for a while before disappearing.
It becomes a color that colors the brain for a moment and then disappears.
All of this is the legacy of the piano.
By learning the piano, I became a person with an irreversible world.
--- From "The Body of the Piano"

I feel like classical music is the last wall I have.
Even when the only house of my heart burns to the ground, the wall that alone will not burn.
When you can't lean on anything, not songs, not voices, not conversations, you can drag your tired body and collapse on it, it may not be a soft sofa, but it's a sturdy wall that will never collapse.
When I lean my head against the rough, thick wall, those who have been happy and sad before me support me with all kinds of sounds.
This wall, at least not yet, has never betrayed me.
--- From "The Infinitely Varied Promise"

I flip through the pages of Hanong's sheet music, which has been spread out so many times that it is all worn out and tattered even after being covered with tape.
This is Hanong that I have been using since before I even entered elementary school.
There was a time when I was good at this, and I've come a long way since then.
From the time I was young and couldn't even play octave exercises, even though I played arpeggios and chord exercises, to now, when I'm practicing octave repetitions in lessons.
From the days when 'legato' was written as if it were nothing special on the arpeggio exercise page to now when I have to struggle with my fingers to practice arpeggio legato.
That hand and this hand are different hands.
That child and I are different people now.
Of course, they are the same person, but it is better to think of it that way.
--- From "When Your Backs Overlap"

The similarities between music and language are so evident that it feels almost redundant to mention them.
Words, short phrases, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and writings correspond respectively to notes, notes connected by syllables, motifs, phrases, themes, and tunes.
A book with written text corresponds to a music book with recorded musical scores.
Just as we read a book sequentially from beginning to end, we can also read sheet music sequentially, and just as we can reject reading a book in that way, we can also reject sequentiality when reading sheet music.
Music is a language without words, a language that opens up emotions instead of carrying fragmented meanings.
--- From "Reading Music"

Now I know that it's not easy to stop talking, that you have to force someone to stop talking so you can hear something, and that you have to learn to do it on your own.
Speaking is about sharing a part of myself with others, and only the silence before that can define me, and only the time spent listening can humble me.
We must not stop listening, we must be silent in order to listen, and we must speak with the power of silence.
We need to listen more closely, more carefully, more completely.
My own voice, and someone else's voice.
It was only after the isolation ended that I realized that.

--- From "Listening"