i love this version so very much—the way amel larrieux takes an otherwise bathetic expression of feminine surrender to masculine ego (from one of the most orientalist musicals of all time, the king & i, no less) & turns it into an elegy that understands even as it almost mourns a flawed masculinity. a touch of irony, a touch of rue. it doesn’t feel romantic at all. listen: ”he has a thousand dreams,/ that won’t come true,/ you know he believes in them,/ & that’s enough for you.” the way her voice so skillfully caresses & releases the word “thousand” all at once, floating upwards in notes at the end of the first syllable & the beginning of the next in a way so graceful & fleeting you almost miss it, a passage & transference of emotional space. in korean, when one responds to another’s gratitude, we say, “천만해요,” a thousand times over, i would do this for you & more a thousand times over.
in that way, this song reminds me so much of my appa, his dreams, my dreams, & that “something wonderful” that pains with one hand & heals with the other, that “something wonderful” he’s forever chasing after even 40 years after his arrival to the cruel, relentless machine that is america.
What a song, what a voice.
well that was just amazing.
