The Factories of Night

So … BTS did a liveshow recently (when they video stream casual conversation for fans, responding to questions viewers type into the chat and such) and announced that they’ll have a studio album coming out in spring 2026, accompanied by a world tour. It’ll be their first world tour in 7 years! First there was the pandemic (which led to the cancelation of 2020’s scheduled Map of the Soul tour, for which I had tickets), and then they went into the military. They hadn’t even done a live show with all of them together since September 2022. (The first member of the group joined the military at the end of 2022, and the last member was just discharged less than 2 weeks ago.) They were all emotional about being all together again after so long.

There’s been some confusion among muggles (lol, non-ARMYs) about whether BTS have broken up, since they’ve all been doing solo work over the past couple of years and not group projects. But the group never broke up. The entire time that they’ve been doing solo work, they’ve been describing and defining themselves as members of BTS. The group was just not able to be working together for logistical reasons, as all members joined the military at various times, so it was a great opportunity to explore their own independent music.

All the members of BTS have different musical and performance interests, which can only be expressed so much while performing as a group. Their management company has always encouraged them to pursue their own individual projects if they wanted to, but their schedule with BTS was so taxing that most of them really didn’t have the time/energy to do side projects.

They staggered the dates when each of them entered the military, so that the ones who went in later had time to do solo projects before joining up, while the first ones to join had time after they were discharged. So, for example, Yoongi/Suga did a solo tour before he joined the military in September 2023 (he was just discharged a week or two ago). Hobi/j-hope did the reverse, joining the military earlier (in April 2023) and doing a solo tour at the start of this year after his discharge. There was a period of only a few months when all seven members were in the military, because they scheduled it so that the rest of the time there was always at least one of them out, making music.

Each of them, while they were free but other members were in the military, took this time when BTS as a whole was separated as an opportunity to each pursue their specific passions. One member, for example, really likes jazz, and so he produced a bunch of very jazz-influenced music. Another had always wanted to have time to improve his piano skills, and so worked on that and added more piano playing to his solo performances. One went full on into mainstream hip-hop. A few of them wrote deeply introspective albums about their personal emotional struggles. All seven of them had a chance to really explore their own personal musical interests as individuals who make up BTS.

But now they’ve all completed their mandatory military service and are starting up group projects again. One member (Jin) will be in the U.S. throughout the latter half of this month on his solo tour, so that’s apparently when a lot of work will be done on the album, since during the liveshow they specified they’d be following him to the U.S. to work on it.

There’s also a live album that will be released in just a couple of weeks. It’ll be their first group album release since June 2022’s anthology “Proof.”

It’s an exciting time to be BTS ARMY! Now that they've announced a tour in spring 2026, I have more motivation than ever to save money! The tickets I bought more than 5 years ago were more than $300 each, so who knows how much they'll cost now! (TicketMaster is such a scam.) Plus airfare and such...

I saw the physical therapist today, and we're getting me started back on my exercises. I've actually improved since I last saw him, because I've been walking whenever I can, especially since the injections started helping me feel better and I could leave the house more often. My legs are quite strong again now, but the muscles are still very tight and need stretching. It's nice that I've overcome some of the atrophy that was a huge problem when I first went to PT after my second foot surgery! I remember my left calf muscle was weirdly concave because of atrophy in late 2021 / early 2022.

So I'm going to start doing physical therapy stretches at least twice a day again, along with my frequent walks (whenever I have the opportunity!) and the water exercise class twice a week. It seems like a good plan.

I talked with the physical therapist about the fact that I think we need to set our expectations for the long term, because my body just doesn't heal/adjust quickly, so it's going to take a long time to get those muscles more flexible. I'll work on it, but my effort won't be enough ... it'll take time. In the past, I've always felt that if I just worked harder, then I could make things happen faster, but with my body's recovery it definitely doesn't work that way. It's a cliche, but it's also true: some things take time. That's frustrating, but it's also reassuring. If I don't seem to be improving noticeably, it isn't my "fault" ... it's just my body taking its time, and I need to learn to be okay with that.

In an example of how small the community is here on Kauai, Mary is working with the same physical therapist that I'm working with ... and the woman I met on Wednesday at the writers' group is friends with Gary and Mary because they all go to the same church. Kauai really is like a small town spread across an island's space.

Shannon and I are heading to Hanapepe for a Bon Dance festival tonight, which should be fun!

I went to the West Side Writers' Group this evening, and though there were only 2 of us there, it was SO fun!

Apparently, there are sometimes 6 or 7 people, sometimes as few as 2, and today was one of the small groups, but I didn't mind. The other woman there (M.) is the person who created the group, and she's a writer who loves BTS and Eurogames, so we had tons in common! She also doesn't live too far away, just the next town over from Kalaheo. So we exchanged numbers and maybe we'll try to get together to play games or something. I'm not going to push it, though. I don't want to be the desperate person looking for friends.

Even if I am kind of the desperate person looking for friends. lol

This writers' group only meets once a month, and it's aimed primarily at writers who are in the process of working on projects. Apparently there are a couple of novelists, a couple of poets, an essayist, etc. The woman who created the group is one of the poets, and she created the group partly to encourage Kauai writers to finish pieces and submit for publication. Talking with her was very inspiring, and I'm going to try to start morning pages again (a practice of writing three pages long-hand first thing every morning). I've done it for various periods in the past, but last time I gave up right about a year ago, because I found that creative juices weren't flowing, and every morning I was just writing about my plans for the day. But now I'm feeling more inspired to write again, so I'm going to give it another try.

I also discussed with M. my idea of rewriting one of my Korean short stories in English as a children's story. She said it might be interesting to write it in English, then later translate the Korean to see the differences. I think I might actually avoid re-reading the Korean version before writing it in English, because I remember the gist but not the details. My goal right now is to write this story before the next meeting of the writers' group in a month.

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It was actually a pretty exciting day, because I also met with my old grammar class for the first time in 2 years. Our old teacher always seemed unimaginably far above my level, but today after 2 years I actually knew more about some grammar points than she did. It was shocking. She still knows a lot more than I do about Middle Korean, but in a lot of other ways we're on a more similar level now. I'm blown away.

The class was really fun: reading aloud together, translating, and discussing grammar. My reading aloud still needs a lot of work. My pronunciation seems to be okay, but I read very haltingly, just a few words at a time without good intonation. I read dialogues aloud with my friend Zsofi every Thursday, so I think that will help in the long run. But if I'm also reading aloud with this study group every week, that will help even more.

I studied Korean grammar for the first time in ages today, and it was really fun. Grammar was my first real love in my Korean studies (unsurprising, since I love English grammar, too), so it was nice to get back to it. Now that I think about it, maybe writing was my first love in my Korean studies. I started writing a weekly journal before I even knew how to properly conjugate a verb. I would look up individual words in a dictionary, and then look up how to conjugate the verbs on an app called Dongsa (which is a transliteration of 동사, which means "verb" in Korean). It took me ages to write a single sentence, but I loved it.

I said I was studying grammar today, but it wasn't exactly grammar. It's book 8 in a grammar series, but this book focuses largely on idiomatic expressions (like saying "it's raining cats and dogs" or "his eyes were popping out of his head" or "I got a taste of my own medicine" ... where it isn't literally true, but everyone knows what you mean). So it isn't exactly grammar, but it also kind of is grammar. In Wednesday's class, we're going to talk about the first chapter of this grammar book, the first chapter of a Routledge intermediate reader, and the first chapter of the Yonsei grammar book as well. All three are quite short, so I don't have any problem doing it all, but I'm surprised they plan to do so much every week. The teacher said we'll see how it goes, though, and adjust as necessary. I predict that people in the class will start flaking if they can't keep up. So we'll see. I don't know what they've been doing for the past 2 years, since I haven't been attending the classes they've been holding, so maybe they've been doing this amount of work the whole time!

Well, fuck.

(For my own future reference when seeing this, our Idiot in Chief bombed Iran.)