The Arts Are Life

Album Review: Seal (1994)

July 15, 2022

This week I decided to write another album review. I hadn’t written one for a while (I think the last one I did in a while was for Stripped by Christina Aguilera) so I checked out some CDs from the library to review. But for some reason I was in the mood to listen to some Seal, because he is one of my favorite artists and has been since I was a kid. While I have listened to some of the songs on his 1994 album, Seal, I wanted to just write about what I felt while listening to the entire album since I hadn’t listened to the full album. At first I put off writing this because I thought, I’m not a professional music writer, how can I even write an album review? But I figured I would just take a chance.

The best way I can describe this album is that it felt like a spiritual experience, a rich, deep, universal experience. I have lately been thinking about what it means to be human and those deep questions of life and death, and as I listened to the album Seal provided me the space to reflect on those questions through his songs. For me, I’ve listened to Seal since I was a kid. I was always listening to “Kiss from a Rose” and even when I got older I listened to more of his songs and I remember listening to his song “Dreaming in Metaphors” when I was working on a project for my environmental science class and even though the project itself was, well, a project, listening to the song felt like a meditative exercise that got me in the flow while brainstorming ideas for the project. I would hear my parents listening to Seal’s music, especially “Prayer for the Dying” and “Don’t Cry.” Seal’s music allowed me to slow down and ponder the questions of the human condition, like fundamental questions and issues. Seal covers a lot of human worries and problems but he always gives a light of hope to his music, so I feel moved and uplifted. It’s very spiritual music and also some of the themes include God and spirituality, like spirituality and humanity are inseparable. Spirituality makes us human, it’s the essence of our existence. The music on Seal is a meditation on life and existence: why are we alive? How do we return to our humanity? What makes us universally human? The themes/ topics he covers in his songs are so open ended. Some of the themes include faith, resolving doubt, life and death, love, romance, awe, self-reflection, humility, self-reflection/ actualization. I think the album cover kind of conveys these themes because it shows what is presumably Seal and his naked body, bending with his head downward and his arms outstretched against a white background. It conveys vulnerability and just this sophisticated beauty. His other album, Human Being, has a similar image with Seal naked against a blue-green background. It just has this incredible beauty that I can’t even describe every time I look at the artwork of the album.

The first song on the album is called “Bring It On” and the song sounds like it belongs in a thriller or action movie of some kind. Compared to the other songs on the album it has a very urgent imperative tone, like “bring on whatever you’ve got coming at me because I’m ready.” The way he says “bring it on” is fierce and bold. The second song on the album is called “Prayer for the Dying” and it has a bittersweet but hopeful feeling, as Seal reminded me that life goes on even after someone’s passing. It also conveys a sense of empathy because Seal is telling the person that he doesn’t know what they are going through but there is a light of hope even when the other person is suffering grief. Even though C major is typically a bright cheerful key, I love the way Seal makes it not optimistic or happy-go-lucky but hopeful that life is eternal and even after we pass away, we continue through this cycle of life and death. It’s a very self-reflective song. Seal reflects on how he has learned lessons from the past but has used them as opportunities to learn about himself and what he can do differently in the future. The third song is called “Dreaming in Metaphors” and it revolves around an unanswered question about something so complicated. I don’t know what the something is but it is a why question, and it implies that there are no tangible straightforward answers to this question. Seal repeats that people are dreaming in these complex metaphors that no one can understand. This really digs deep beyond the surface, and I think that’s what I love about this album is that it is almost like philosophy, because with philosophy it’s fundamentally about asking questions. You can try to find a straightforward answer but you’d be hard-pressed to do that in a philosophical discussion. Believe me, I have tried and each time the professor just keeps getting me to think even deeper beyond the surface. But that’s what I love about philosophy is that it’s about asking and exploring those fundamental human questions about life. The fourth song is called “Don’t Cry” and again it conveys that sort of empathy with the person who is hurting so much. Seal consoles the person as a sort of friend, gently telling them that everything will be okay and that no matter what they will always be loved. I think a motif that features a lot through the album is sadness and tears. It reminded me of an article that cultural critic Wesley Morris had written called “Crying: The Power of a Good Cry” in which he talks about the significance of actors crying in films and the fundamental reason why people cry and how our ability to express these emotions through tears has been shaped by politics, the COVID-19 pandemic, and many other events. At the end he has a very powerful passage:

“Crying arouses the animal in us. I didn’t know such a creature, a werewolf in my case, resided in there. Not a hulk but a hurt, kept far from the surface. For safety. You don’t access it. The wolf finds you. It drags immense sorrow through those tiny openings–nostrils, eyes, the mouth. It’s the animal in us that needs to speak now. It’s waiting, ready for a mass howling when we are.”(Wesley Morris, Feb. 13 2022, “Crying: The Power of a Good Cry”, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/08/magazine/crying.html)

In the songs he sings Seal allows the listener to make space for the natural bodily function called tears. He encourages us to open our hearts and be vulnerable and honest with ourselves and our emotions. He doesn’t want the listener to numb their feelings; he wants us to express them in full.

TV review: The Crown, Season 1 Episode 8, “Pride and Joy”

The episode opens with the Queen Mother (played by Victoria Hamilton) staring in her bedroom mirror as she prepares for the funeral of her husband, King George VI. Everyone at the funeral is wearing somber black clothes. Before they attend the funeral, Princess Margaret argues that she was her father’s favorite, not Elizabeth, but Elizabeth asserts she was his favorite even though the mom says he didn’t choose favorites when it came to both of them. They are at the funeral and Elizabeth reads about the unveiling of the statue of the king and the Queen Mother, overcome by emotion, walks over quietly to the car and drives away, quietly sobbing. Queen Elizabeth is preparing to travel to newly independent countries that are part of the British Commonwealth, but officials think Elizabeth should cancel them due to the independence demonstrations people have been holding. Meanwhile, the Queen Mother travels to Scotland to stay with the Vyners, some family friends of hers. Before she goes, she tells Elizabeth to back off of Margaret and to stop giving her such a hard time. It has been two years since Peter, Margaret’s husband, got sent to Brussels and was separated from Princess Margaret (their engagement created scandal since Peter divorced his wife after she found out he was having an affair with Margaret). Margaret is still angry with Elizabeth for arranging for Peter to be sent to Brussels. The Queen Mother is sad and nostalgic because her daughters are grown up and they seem to not need her. However, she finds she is much needed later on in the episode.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill, on the plane ride to Bermuda, tells Elizabeth to show herself as Queen Elizabeth, not Elizabeth Windsor. She cannot show people the ups and downs of being queen, she cannot complain about her job, she needs to pretty much be perfect at what she does and make it seem like the monarchy is the ideal everyone needs to strive for. There is also this idea of “preserving” the British Empire because Britain is worried that by becoming independent these countries will have their own autonomy and won’t need to depend on Britain. Britain believes if that were to happen, they would lose their control over these countries and how they are run. There is a beautiful scene where the Queen Mother and the Vyners are riding the horses on the beach in Scotland, and then at dinner the Queen Mother mourns the loss of her husband and in a way she is losing her daughters, too, because they are older and are no longer little kids anymore. Elizabeth lands in Bermuda and makes a speech there. Meanwhile, Martin gives Princess Margaret a speech to read at the ambassador’s reception in London. Margaret tells Martin she wants to change some words of the speech around and make it sound more fun, but because she is deputizing for the Queen, she is supposed to just read what they wrote for her to read. However, Margaret refuses to listen and goes so far as to put Elizabeth’s tiara on her head because she wants to be in Elizabeth’s shoes and have the spotlight on her just for once. She is supposed to be deputizing for her sister but instead she goes completely off script and pokes jokes at her sister’s trip and then calls out some of the ambassadors, making jokes about them. Martin is just standing in the back of the room, freaking out, like “Girl what the fuck.” She honestly should have done a standup bit with Mrs. Maisel because I felt like in that moment she channeled Mrs. Maisel energy (Miriam Maisel is a female comedian on the show The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel).

However, that shit lands Margaret in the papers. Elizabeth sees it and thinks of course, Oh no she didn’t, she is stealing my spotlight. Elizabeth, after traveling to the Caribbean, must go to 57 Australian towns in just 58 days. Philip opposes it because he knows it will be a lot of travel and they will get exhausted. But Elizabeth refuses to call off the trip.

Meanwhile, back in Scotland, the Vyners convince the Queen Mother to acquire property there and so they take her to the Castle of Mey, where Captain Imbert-Terry lives. Meanwhile, Elizabeth has a doctor’s appointment because she has a spasm in her face muscles. The doctor thinks she might be smiling too much so she lets him inject some liquid in her cheek to cure the spasm (honestly, the needle freaked me out a bit because needles today are smaller compared to back then.) Peter sees a movie and then sees Margaret talking to people working in a coal mine and sharing her honest opinions on the working conditions there. Martin is standing right next to her, looking at her like, Girl, watch yourself, but then one of the reporters asks Margaret if she misses Peter and she says of course, but then when asked if she misses her sister Elizabeth, she says not really. Peter later tells her she needs to check herself and not say shit like that on air because it could jeopardize their relationship. Back in their hotel room, Philip is smoking and Elizabeth takes away his cigarettes because her father smoked and she doesn’t want her family to start smoking. Elizabeth and Philip have a row because Elizabeth is spending all this time traveling and Philip thinks it’s all a joke and they can’t just spend one moment together as husband and wife. When Philip insults her further, Elizabeth attacks him and chases him around the room, breaking her shot glass.

Unfortunately paparazzi catch them fighting and at first Philip goes out to investigate but Elizabeth says she will go out and do it. She talks briefly with the men filming her and the guy filming takes out the film out of the camera and gives it to her to keep rather than deciding to broadcast it for everyone to see. He did the right thing. Elizabeth soon gives Margaret a talking-to and basically tells her that people came to hear the Crown, not Princess Margaret cracking jokes. Finally, the guy who sells the Queen Mother the house finds out she is the Queen Mother, but she didn’t tell him earlier because everyone who meets her starts treating her like a god and not as a human being. Unfortunately her vacation is interrupted and she has to go back to London to sort stuff out with Margaret after Margaret’s fiasco at the ambassador’s meeting. Meanwhile, there are still security concerns with Elizabeth going to Gibraltar, including death threats. Philip opposes her going but Elizabeth refuses to give in. She says she knows there are better leaders there but she is the Queen so therefore she has to go on the trip to see the people of Gibraltar. Elizabeth finally has Margaret meet her in her study room and when they met up I thought, Oh it’s on, because obviously Princess Margaret is pissed her sister is stealing back her brief moment of spotlight. Elizabeth tells Margaret that the monarchy, not the monarch, should shine. Margaret confesses she feels overshadowed by her sister and wonders why Elizabeth has to be the perfect sister while she, Margaret, stands in her shadow. Finally the Queen Mother gets to return to Scotland after things are settled with Margaret.

It’s only the first season and already I am starting to see similarities between Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret’s relationship and Mary and Edith’s sister relationship in Downton Abbey. Like Elizabeth, Mary is the older sister and thus she becomes responsible for keeping the family together, and like Princess Margaret, Edith just wants to feel valued and not overshadowed by her older sister. Mary has all this pressure on her to find a husband because she is the oldest of the three Grantham sisters, and when Edith can’t find anyone Mary constantly pokes fun at that. Edith also pokes fun at Mary when the Duke of Crowborough, who is supposed to be engaged to Mary, ends up leaving Downton. Mary digs at her by telling her that at least she’s not a fish with no bait like Edith. Edith and Mary continue to have this intense sibling rivalry with one another, but it becomes clearer that Edith really just wants to be happy herself and seeing Mary get all this attention to find someone makes her feel like she has no direction or purpose in life. Even when Edith does find love, it is challenging because the first guy calls off their marriage at the altar and the second guy goes missing and is killed, leaving her pregnant and then having to raise his child on her own. In The Crown, now that Elizabeth is Queen, she and Margaret don’t have the same relationship they did before, and everything they do they have to make careful decisions about so that they don’t cause scandal for the monarchy. When Margaret wants to do what she wants, Elizabeth tells her she either cannot or must ask for permission to do so. This makes Margaret feel constrained and she is left feeling like her sister doesn’t trust her to live her own life and make her own decisions.

Movie Review: Kajillionaire

A few weeks ago I watched the film Kajillionaire, which came out in 2020 and was directed by Miranda July. It stars Evan Rachel Wood, Richard Jenkins, Debra Winger and Gina Rodriguez as the main characters. The film is about a couple and their daughter who work as con artists in Los Angeles, and how, when they meet a friendly stranger on an airplane named Melanie, have their entire lives turned upside down. When I first saw the trailer, honestly the first thing that attracted me to it was the pink suds.

And then I saw the actual film and it was nothing like I expected. Actually I didn’t really know what it was about other than watching the trailer.

The film touches on a lot of key themes, one of which is love and trust. Old Dolio, who is the daughter of Robert and Theresa Dyne, has spent her whole life living in a manipulative relationship with her parents, and they tell her constantly that it’s a cruel world and everyone is out to scam them or trick them, so they need to fend for themselves as a family. The movie opens up with a bus stop and as the bus pulls away the only people who don’t get on it are Old Dolio and her parents, and so that people don’t see Old Dolio going into the mail office to take something from the safety deposit boxes there, her parents scout around and look around them as people pass by so she can go in at the right time. These many years of not being able to trust people has made it hard for Old Dolio to trust even the people with the most benign intentions. When she goes to an older Black couple’s home dressed as a Catholic student, the couple thinks she and their daughter, Jenny, went to school together and they give her a gift certificate for a massage because Jenny is a masseuse. When Old Dolio comes over, she is anxious about staying too long because she knows her parents will come over and rush her out of there since they came to pawn Jenny’s stuff for money, not let their daughter get an hour-long massage. Jenny is fine with Old Dolio asking for a shorter massage, but Old Dolio tenses up when Jenny puts her hands on her back, and so finally Jenny hovers her hands over Old Dolio to make her more comfortable. Under the headrest we can see Old Dolio quietly crying because she is emotionally overwhelmed by Jenny’s touch, which has a gentleness that Old Dolio’s parents never gave her.

This theme plays a huge part in the family’s bond with Melanie, a young woman who they meet on a plane headed to New York City. Melanie is agreeable and thinks that what Old Dolio and her family do is like Ocean’s 11 or other heist movies. But when she actually sees how Robert and Theresa carry out their plans, which is really to take people’s checkbooks and write checks for themselves, and moreover, how they treat Old Dolio, she realizes that the situation is less glamorous than what she thought. Also, when we see heist movies the people tend to get a lot of money from the heist schemes and we see them celebrating these wins in humorous ways. But in reality, the family is barely paying the rent and is always being hounded by their landlord who works at the adjacent soap suds factory from which pink suds always leak through the walls of their home. Melanie falls in love with Old Dolio from the beginning, but it takes a really long time until Old Dolio can finally trust Melanie. Earlier in the film, when the family’s landlord is hounding them over their inability to pay the rent, a pregnant young woman named Kelly calls them over and has Old Dolio sit in her childrearing class for $20. Old Dolio at first is reluctant because Kelly told her she could get her yellow slip at the beginning to show she attended and wouldn’t have to actually sit in the class, but the ladies at the sign-in desk tell her she needs to sit in the class and can get her slip at the end of it. Old Dolio comes in wanting to leave, but then she watches a video demonstrating a technique called the breast crawl, and in the video a newborn rests on its mother’s breast and approaches it gently. Old Dolio keeps coming back to the class because she sees in the video the kind of love and attachment that she never received as a child. She sees her parents getting along with Melanie and Theresa even calls Melanie “hon”, a term of endearment that she never called her daughter in her 26 years of existence. When Old Dolio finally gets a check in the mail for the rent, she isn’t ecstatic but rather sad because she realizes that she needs more than anything love and affection for her survival as a human being, not just money. She says to Theresa that she will give her the money if she will just call her “hon” like she called Melanie “hon”, but for Theresa this is uncomfortable because Old Dolio is there to do a job for them, so she mocks Old Dolio’s need for affection, joking that she’s sorry that she can’t do nice things for Old Dolio like make her pancakes, give her birthday presents, dance with her, and other things.

Melanie sees how stressful this is for Old Dolio and takes the money so they can cash it, and they leave Old Dolio’s parents behind. When they cash the money, Old Dolio just wants to cash it and go, but Melanie actually writes a list of the activities Theresa never did with Old Dolio when she was a kid, and she actually makes Old Dolio pancakes and treats her like the daughter she wanted to be treated as growing up. Old Dolio, through her deepening bond with Melanie, awakens to her sexuality as well and realizes that she and Melanie are deeply in love. Melanie opens up a whole new world for Dolio, and it’s interesting because we’d think that the closest relationship in Old Dolio’s life is with her parents but it’s actually with someone outside of the family.

And it’s sad that Old Dolio spent her whole life having her parents take advantage of her and manipulate her, but of course these kinds of relationships happen in real life and so Old Dolio’s story is not just something that happens in a movie. I understand people live through these experiences and end up making it out alive, but as someone who can’t really relate to what Old Dolio went through, it was pretty sad but also I’m glad Melanie came into Old Dolio’s life because she taught her what genuine love means. I also really loved the film score and the cinematography. It kind of made me want to visit Los Angeles again.

Movie Review: Spencer

July 8, 2022

I just got done watching the film Spencer, which came out last year and is directed by Pablo Larrain. I saw an Actors on Actors Zoom interview that Nicole Kidman and Kristen Stewart had done with each other, and in the interview they were discussing their films, Being the Ricardos and Spencer respectively. I really loved this interview and it made me even more excited to see Spencer. But I haven’t been to a movie theater since 2020 and may not plan to go back for a while (I might just try wearing a mask but who knows. The COVID-19 situation is always changing.) so I decided to wait until it was streaming to watch it. I found it on Google Play for a good deal, I could rent it for $1.99. Seeing as how I’m saving money and finding a new job (also, it’s hot down here and I was too lazy to go to the public library and get a copy), and I craved a movie to watch, I couldn’t resist the temptation. So I got Spencer and I must say, it was a really good movie. I have seen Kristen Stewart as Bella Swan in Twilight and Joan Jett in The Runaways but seriously this was one of her best roles yet. She played Princess Diana with the utmost concentration and it kind of reminded me of Natalie Portman playing Jacqueline Kennedy in Jackie. It’s a similar genre: both are psychological dramas that get into the private minds of these public figures, and how they grapple with being in the public eye and telling their own stories without anyone trying to speak for them.

One key theme that I got from the film is the theme of freedom. Everything in the film, even the smallest details, is about how Princess Diana felt constrained by her environment and in the end found her freedom by saying no to it. I don’t know much about Princess Diana other than what I learned in history class in high school, and of course the film is a biopic so it was based on true events but is still fiction, but the film gave some glimpse into how Diana might have lived life and the effects it might have had on her self-image and her views about life and the world. Throughout the movie, Diana struggles with her mental health, in particular bulimia. She also encounters Anne Boleyn in many of her hallucinations, and Anne seems to constantly tell her that she is not free in any true sense and that she needs to get away from the pressures that everyone puts on her. In one scene Diana is eating soup with her family and it seems that everyone around her is looking at her in a strange way, and she sees Anne Boleyn, and then seems to rips off her pearl necklace and eat the soup with the pearls in it. She stumbles to the bathroom and vomits. In another scene she goes into the kitchen after hours and eats many of the food items from the fridge. Alistair Gregory (played by Timothy Spall) finds her and tells her to be careful about what she does in the palace since there has been a lot of publicity, particularly about Diana not keeping her curtains closed. Diana tells him to mind his business but he reiterates that he is only doing his job. This shows that even though Diana has all this wealth and prestige by being part of the royal family, she can’t just do whatever she wants, whenever she wants, because everything she does–what she says, how she behaves–will be reflected in the press’s stories about the royal family.

This movie shows that even the seemingly everyday things that we as humans take for granted can have profound significance to someone who doesn’t just get to move about and freely take those things for granted. The house that Diana grew up in is another example. She keeps telling the royal staff that she wants to go home, and leaves the grounds of the palace to go back to her old home, but the guards and everyone tells her it is boarded up for a reason and that she’s not supposed to go in there. When she finally finds a way to break into the house, she relives a lot of her old childhood memories. When she walks up the stairwell, she nearly falls through the steps because they are so old and she remembers when she was a young girl being free to play with her friends outside and dress the scarecrow in the field. Even just spending time with her children is a pleasure that she cannot take for granted because the family is supposed to abide by certain meal times, bed times, etc. So when she gives her children their presents early and is playing a make-believe game with them late in the night, they even began to wonder if their mother is truly happy with her life because they start to see how she is really suffering from mental health issues and spends a lot of time withdrawing from people. Even just trying on her clothes is a huge liberty that the staff don’t allow her, and she tells them to back off and let her try her dresses on by herself but they don’t let her.

There is also a powerful scene where Diana is talking to a pheasant while sitting outside on the steps before she is called to dinner. She sees the men shooting the pheasants for sport and we can see the deep discomfort on her face as she sees them being killed. It’s as if she can feel their pain at not being free. Sure, they are birds and they have wings, but in the end they aren’t free because humans rob them of life by shooting them for sport. When she finally can’t take it anymore, she takes her sons away from the pheasant shooting grounds and takes them into the city for Kentucky Fried Chicken. Fortunately she doesn’t have to go in the actual store, she can just drive up and give a different name (“Spencer”) so that no one knows it’s her ordering. This was pretty important to reflect on because you think about all the celebrities who can’t walk out of their houses to do every day things like get ice cream or go to the grocery store without photographers taking photos of them. I used to be really into Us Weekly and People and would read sections in the magazine like “Stars: They’re Just Like Us” and would be both wowed and humored. As I grew up though I started realizing that celebrities were just regular everyday people, it’s just that the work they do gains more publicity (although since the pandemic, the jobs that didn’t gain as much news, like working in hospitals and in food service, have gained more recognition than in the past since many people realized how much they depended on those services for survival, especially during a period of mass deaths in hospitals and quarantines). I think watching Actors on Actors helped me change this perspective on celebrity because the actors are just regular people having regular dialogues, and the bottom line I got from watching these interviews is that acting is a regular job for these people but they also have families, friends, hobbies and household chores just like everyone else. I think this especially helped when watching The Oscars because before I just viewed it as this glamorous thing, and I still am dazzled by the red carpet, don’t get me wrong, but what watching Actors on Actors taught me is that the acting work doesn’t stop once you get the Oscar, even if it is your big break in the industry. It’s just the beginning; at the end of the day, it’s a job so they still need to show up and do the work no matter how many awards they may win along the way.

After watching the film I read this chapter in the book Discussions on Youth by Buddhist philosopher Daisaku Ikeda, and in the chapter “What is Freedom?” he talks about what freedom means from a Buddhist perspective. After reading the chapter it gave me a more profound perspective on what freedom is. There’s a really cool quote in the chapter that resonated with me: “…no matter what circumstances we find ourselves in, our hearts can be free; we don’t have to let our spirits be shackled or confined. We need to have the strength to soar on inner wings of hope and freedom and never be defeated by anything.” (Daisaku Ikeda, p. 279, “What is Freedom?”, Discussions on Youth) I thought about this when looking back and thinking about the movie. Even though in the movie Diana was in a state of suffering because she had all these pressures from the outside, she broke through that suffering and was able to savor true joy. I thought about the scenes where she becomes free and then dances to her heart’s content in all of her gowns and when she runs through the fields savoring that freedom. Honestly that was probably one of the most touching scenes of the movie.

I also really loved the music in the film. It combines elements of jazz and classical, and after the film I listened to the soundtrack because it is so beautiful and has all these incredible unique sounds. Overall, this film was amazing and I definitely recommend it!

Spencer. 2021. 1 hr 57 m. Rated R for some language.

Movie Review: Turning Red

June 24, 2022

A few weeks ago I watched another Pixar movie called Turning Red. If you haven’t seen it yet, it is a must. I saw the trailer and the billboards and posters advertising the film around the city, but I didn’t really care at the time. Then my friend recommended it and we watched it together and it was better than I expected. Even though I couldn’t exactly relate to Mei’s life, I could relate a lot to her struggle to achieve and please others.

The movie takes place in Canada in 2002, and Meilin “Mei” Lee is a thirteen-year-old young woman who seems to have it all together. She aces all of her exams, she is number one in her school’s band, and she wins at pretty much all competitions, and she has a group of friends who love her company. She brings home report cards with all A’s to show her mom and dad because she wants them to be proud of her, and she also helps her parents with the Buddhist temple they run. She lives by the principle of filial piety, and everything seems to be going smoothly. But Meilin is a young woman growing into her sexuality and puberty, and her friends and her are huge fans of this boy band called 4-Town and can’t stop dreaming about them for days. Moreover, there is a cute boy at the local store that Meilin likes and she is struggling to navigate her romantic feelings for this boy, drawing in her private journal sketches of her falling in love with the boy. Her mother thinks that Meilin needs to focus on her academics and work at the temple, and anything that has nothing to do with that is not a priority. When she finds Meilin’s journal she is appalled and thinks that the boy did something wrong to Meilin, marching up to the store where the boy works and threatening him if he touches her daughter. Meilin tries to hide her embarrassment but she is furious, and she ends up turning into a red panda. Not surprisingly, she is freaked out and tries to hide from her parents so they don’t see her, but then they find out and her mom isn’t surprised at all because there is a family history of the ancestors turning into red pandas. Meilin goes back to being a human being but any time she feels a strong emotion like anger or fear she becomes a panda again. Her friends come over to her house and they see her as a panda and at first they freak out, but then they tell her they are going to support her no matter what and they figure out how to get to 4-Town’s upcoming concert. They get the idea of fundraising for the concert tickets, and at first the students are freaked out when Mei becomes a red panda after her mom comes up to the school to look for her, but then they come to see her as the cool kid and only end up liking her when she is a red panda. They raise money for the concert but it ends up not being enough, and moreover the concert is the same night as the ceremony where the ancestors gets rid of Mei’s panda form so she can be fully human. Mei is invited to a party by a kid who doesn’t like her for who she is, but only wants her to come if she promises to turn into a red panda. But then Mei’s grandmother and aunts come in preparation for the ceremony and tell Mei that she is forbidden from turning into a panda and needs to control it from now on. Mei goes to the party dressed in a papier-mache sort of panda costume but then the kids think her costume is lousy and she finally gives in to peer pressure and turns into a red panda. At first she is happy she is getting more attention from the popular kids and people like her, but then things take a turn when her mom comes up to the party and finds Mei turned into a red panda and disobeyed her family’s warnings. She scolds the kid who threw the party and also Mei’s friends for making her sneak out and disobey her parents. Mei’s friends turn on her, feeling betrayed.

The night of the ceremony, Mei is hesitant about giving up her red panda form but she tries to stay calm as the family members make their preparations for the ceremony. Mei’s dad finds Mei’s old camera and sees videos of her goofing off with her friends as the red panda and he finds it funny. Mei is at first embarrassed and freaks out when he finds them, but then he tells her they are hilarious and that she is having fun, and encourages her to make the best decision for her, and if she wants to keep being a panda that is up to her. During the ceremony, they try to get rid of Mei’s panda but with little luck. Mei ends up escaping to the 4-Town concert and finds her friends there so she can rekindle their friendship (she even finds out the guy who invited her to his party is a fan of 4-Town). Mei’s mom is furious that she ran off to the 4-Town concert without her permission and transforms into an even larger Godzilla-sized version of the red panda. She busts the concert and wrecks the auditorium and scares the concertgoers, and goes at Mei for sneaking out to the concert. Mei fights back at her and tells her stay out of her life and that she is too controlling, and she ends up knocking back her mom, causing her to fall unconscious. Mei realizes what she did and regrets it, and the aunts (who have transformed into red pandas, too, and her try to get her in the middle of the auditorium so they can change her back into a human. The aunts chant a mantra but Mei keeps struggling and doesn’t chant, but she soon does it because time is running out. Her friends and the 4-Town singers provide some acapella singing to back up Mei in her efforts to save her mom. They end up getting her mom in the circle and the chant ends up working, and Mei finds herself in this forest where she finds her mom as a 13 year old red-haired version of herself crying and saying how her mom wants her to be perfect all the time. Mei realizes that her mom treated her the way she did because her mom also treated her that way, and the two of them walk through the forest, Mei’s mom transforming from a teenager into the grown version of herself at the beginning of the film and they are at the point where they need to decide if they want to give up their inner panda or not. The aunts go through the portal, giving up their inner red pandas, and Mei’s mom decides to give up her panda, too, but Mei hesitates and explains that she doesn’t want to give up her panda because it’s part of who she is. At first, Mei’s mom struggles to agree with her daughter, but then understands and lets her keep her panda identity. Mei’s family ends up embracing her for her true self and the temple actually gets more business because everyone loves Mei as a red panda. She also makes things up with her friends and now they’re tight again.

This movie kind of reminded me of Encanto a bit because the theme of both movies is what to do when you don’t fit the expectations of others. In Encanto, Mirabel is the only one in her family who doesn’t have a magical gift and she makes a lot of mistakes, which infuriates her abuela. Her abuela is the one who holds the family together and covers up any imperfections that might tarnish its reputation, but Mirabel tries to alert everyone that there are cracks in the foundation of the house and everything they hold dear isn’t perfect and is falling apart, but people don’t want to listen to her because they’ve spent so long trying to put on this image of perfection. But Mirabel ends up actually saving the family even if she didn’t meet their expectations at first because she knew that there were things in the family that needed to be fixed. Mirabel’s struggle with self-confidence kinds of resonates with Mei’s struggle with self-confidence because despite being a high achiever and perfectionist, Mei is like any other human being and teenager. She likes boys, she likes pop music, but she also loves her family. It’s not until she goes through her own struggle with her emotions that she finally realizes her true self, because before that every time she felt strong emotions her inner critic would kick in and she would berate herself and tell herself that she needed to stop feeling certain ways because she didn’t want to disappoint her mom by not meeting her expectations. I definitely could resonate to some extent because I often at times would get self-conscious or self-critical whenever I felt strong emotions. Of course, I’m working on not letting those strong emotions negatively affect my relationships with people but it was only when I got in touch with myself and my emotions that I learned that I’m a human and I, well, feel things. I would often try to hide my emotions under more work, more smiles, more “I’m good” and “No it’s fine” but after a while as I chanted I started to see my emotions as they were, good or bad, and realized that I needed to get professional help to deal with those emotions because I was feeling anxious and depressed and would beat myself up for feeling those things, like they were things I needed to magically wish away. But after seeking help, I learned to understand my humanity and that I can manage my emotions without pushing them under the rug or the other extreme, lashing out at others.

Turning Red. 2022. 1 hr 40 min. Rated PG for thematic material, suggestive content and language

4 Reading Recommendations

June 22, 2022

Here is a random list of books I have read so far that I recommend:

The Book of Form and Emptiness: A Novel by Ruth Ozeki- I finished this book a week ago and I literally could not put it down. It is my first time reading anything by Ruth Ozeki (a fellow Smith grad 🙂 ) and her writing just blew me away. If you haven’t read the book yet, it’s about a young boy named Benny Oh who lives with his mom Annabelle, and both are coping with the death of Kenji, Benny’s dad. As Benny grows older he struggles to fit in at school and is bullied because he hears voices from objects. He finds refuge in a mysterious corner of the library, where he meets an artist named The Aleph and a poet and philosopher named Slavoj, who help him navigate his journey through his grief and his ability to hear voices. I thought it was pretty amazing how Ozeki let the book be the narrator of the story and have a back-and-forth dialogue with Benny. The book also helped remind me why I love reading so much, because they really do open you up to different ways of viewing the world. It also talks about clutter and how it’s connected to grief and loss, and how getting rid of clutter is a challenging emotional and spiritual process. Annabelle struggles to get rid of a lot of things in her home that are taking up space, such as news clippings from her job and Kenji’s belongings, because many of these things play a crucial role in how she grapples with the grief and loss of losing Kenji and her dealing with Benny growing up and changing as he goes through adolescence. There is a clear-your-clutter expert in the book who is based on Marie Kondo, and it alludes to a lot of the backlash that Kondo received from critics about handling books (there’s a Bustle article that talks more about the racist and classist overtones of these criticisms.) To be honest, I haven’t yet read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, but I will say that organizing my bookshelves has brought me peace of mind, and when I was in 11th grade I decided to give away a lot of my old books because I had read a book called Clear Your Clutter with Feng-Shui by Karen Kingston and it said that clutter affects the way people treat you. For some reason I thought that the reason I was struggling to make friends was because I was holding on to too many books (which, looking back, probably wasn’t the reason at all), so I gave a lot of my old books away. Even though I thought I would miss those books, I have since accumulated more books and still have yet to finish even those, in addition to my stack of 12-13 books from the public library. Overall, The Book of Form and Emptiness is an amazing read and I recommend it.
Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole: Susan Cain– Wow. This book. It really helped me unpack, heal, reflect and understand myself. I often thought my sadness and depression was things to be ashamed of, but this book taught me that sadness is human and that it can help give meaning to life, especially when it comes to dealing with the inevitable truth that we will experience loss, death, grief throughout life and it’s the not absence of these events but how we make meaning of them that matters. Honestly I wouldn’t mind reading it again. It helped me understand why I love the key E minor so much or why I love dramas and sad music by Sam Smith and Celine Dion so much, and why I cried as a kid (and still do) whenever I heard Celine Dion’s music (especially whenever the theme song to Titanic would come on while I was ice skating at the mall at 4. Golly geez.), or why I spent a month crying over George Michael’s death, why I cried for the longest time over anyone’s death (I recently broke down a few months ago while chanting in front of my Buddhist altar because Madeleine Albright passed away and I had finished her memoir Hell and Other Destinations some time before that and really loved it. It gave me a lot of insight into her diplomacy and dialogues with leaders and the life she led.) And unsurprisingly, this being a book about sorrow, I definitely teared up at some parts and even after reading the book got a little choked up just thinking about it. It also helped me understand that love is a process, not a one-and-done thing. I found myself resonating with the chapter in the book on longing because I had been struggling with romantic feelings for someone and reading the chapter helped me understand on a deeper level why I felt those kinds of feelings for this person. It’s still a process I am going through, but I’m growing so much emotionally and spiritually in the process of learning to love myself. Susan Cain gave me the space to tap into my authentic self and be honest about my emotions, just as she gave me the space to be comfortable in my skin as an introvert with her previous book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking (ironically, I’ve become an extrovert when I write, as you can see from this long-winded blog post.)
The Count of Monte Cristo: Alexander Dumas (there’s a lot of editions out there; the version I read was the Penguin Classics version)- I remember reading the abridged version of this book in 10th grade English, and while I enjoyed studying it I would get a tinge of envy whenever I saw the pre-IB (International Baccalaureate) kids toting around their 1,000 page copies of the unabridged version and decided one day that I was going to finish the unabridged version, too. Fast forward and that desire still held sway over my bookaholic imagination, so I finally asked my aunt to send me a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo for my birthday (in addition to a copy of Bleak House by Charles Dickens, another big-ass book. I’m in the middle of reading it though and it’s pretty good.) As you can guess, I was positively elated when I received them, and decided to finally open those first pages and dive in. Just to give a brief summary if you haven’t read the book yet, it’s about a young man named Edmond Dantes who lives a pretty happy life with his fiancee, Mercedes, but at their engagement ceremony, he is unjustly arrested and accused for a crime he didn’t commit, and is imprisoned in the Chateau d’If for several years. He meets an old priest named Abbe Faria and escapes the prison under the disguise of The Count of Monte Cristo. From there he gets revenge on the people who tormented him. Like I said, I loved reading the abridged version and I loved the 2002 movie with Guy Pearce as Fernand Mondego and Jim Caviezel as Edmond Dantes/ Count of Monte Cristo, but the unabridged is like a big juicy Big Mac fresh off the griddle and is just dripping in meat juices (as a vegan whose never had a Big Mac in my life though, I’d need testimony to see if I’m telling the truth.) It is juicy with detail and also violence, sex, revenge, and other intense moments. I took a long hiatus in the middle of the book, and darn did I forget some key plot points! But I finally finished it because well, I wanted to know what happened at the end. I’m glad I took my time reading it though because it is a pretty thrilling read and something that I kind of wanted to savor.
Finding Me: Viola Davis- honestly, right after reading this book, I tried to articulate my thoughts and failed miserably. Ho.ly. shit. I remember Viola Davis coming to speak at my alma mater during a free Q and A panel and I was sitting in the balcony and she made eye contact with me. I was looking at her briefly but as I tried to put on a calm composed appearance, inside I was screaming with joy and jumping around as if one of The Backstreet Boys had kissed me on the cheek at a concert. I. was. fangirling and almost burst with excitement. But as this was a public event and I knew I wasn’t the only one fangirling in that auditorium, I kept quiet. But oh god, during and after the event I was in heaven and was deeply appreciative that I actually got to attend a free (key word: FREE, not just Turbo-Tax free-free-free, not just Free-Willy-free, but free.) event where Viola Davis was talking about her work and career. When I finally read her memoir, though, I slowed down and reflected. Davis gave me the real about having an acting career and that it takes grit and a long process of building your self-worth and overcoming imposter syndrome when you get that big break, and then continuing that process throughout your career. She also gave me an honest portrait of acting, because I didn’t know much about the field, so until I read Finding Me I didn’t know that theatre acting and film acting have as many differences as they have similarities. The salary range of actors was also a new statistic for me, because before I had always had this naïve idea that actors made billions and billions of dollars for each movie they starred in, but the reality is that a small percentage make somewhere around $50,000 (please correct me if I’m off the mark though) each year. Even though I’m not a professional actor, Davis gave me some lessons about the career and business of being a working actor to think about as I figure out whether to have a professional music career or not. One lesson is that you need grit and need to take rejection well, and not every gig is going to be stellar but it is an opportunity to work so take it. I was fortunate to have been paid for some music gigs, other times I played for free, and sometimes I think, “I just want to get paid for what I do” and other times I play tug-of-war with myself and my ego and say “It’s for my career/ for exposure/ I need to put myself out there.” Davis taught me that whatever the ups and downs of my music career, I need to just keep doing my best and not worry about how I measure up to others or whether I deserve success or not. I really loved the part where she meets with one of her idols, Meryl Streep, though (they acted together in the film Doubt), and I thought the same because I’m sure I would have been internally squealing with joy and a bundle of nerves at the same time if I met, let alone got to collaborate with, one of my favorite actors or musicians. Davis said that Streep is a very down-to-earth person though and even though she thought she was the only one dealing with imposter syndrome, Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and the other actors that Davis worked with admitted they, too, struggled with imposter syndrome during their careers. This part really encouraged me because I struggle with imposter syndrome, so reading this made me feel less alone. After reading Finding Me, I watched an interview from one of my favorite series, Actors on Actors, and Viola Davis and Samuel L. Jackson talk about their careers and the daily work that goes into them.

Movie Review: The Pianist

Written 6/9/22

Two days ago I decided to watch The Pianist. I was going to rent it, but then I saw it on YouTube for free, so I watched it there. I probably should have rented it though because there was some dialogue in German and the YouTube version didn’t have subtitles so I didn’t know what the characters were saying in German. As much as I want to re-watch it though, it is one of those films where I need to take at least a couple of weeks to process it. My parents told me it was going to be an intense film. Then again, any film about war and genocide, particularly about World War II and the Holocaust, is going to be hard to sit through. The atrocities that the Nazis committed against Jewish people during that time were very real, and the lasting trauma that this genocide left for many survivors is still very real today, and as someone who isn’t Jewish I needed to continue to educate myself on the Holocaust. Also, in middle school we weren’t allowed to see R-rated films, so there was no way that any of my teachers would be able to show The Pianist for our curriculum.

I think especially it was important for me to watch this film because to understand how bad the Holocaust really was, I had to listen to and watch first-hand accounts by people who lived through it. The film also showed me events during World War II that I had studied in world history class but had forgotten after a while. I am sure I studied about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which was depicted in the film, but I hadn’t studied about it in depth. Wladyslaw Szpilman (1911-2000), the pianist and Holocaust survivor whose memoir the film is based on, witnesses the uprising at the same time that he is in hiding. It really is a story of one man’s survival and trauma as he witnesses the Nazis commit some of the worst human rights abuses in history. It kind of reminded me of the film 1917; even though of course the former takes place during World War I and the latter takes place during World War II, both movies depict the horrors of war. In 1917, we see how horrific the war and its aftermath were from the perspective of two British soldiers fighting in the war. The camera follows their perspective; we don’t see the perspective of other soldiers. These young men make their way through all kinds of destruction; they wade through trenches where human and non-human corpses lie ravaged with flies, they make their way through bombed-out buildings, and one of the soldiers is stabbed and killed by a German pilot, so the other soldier has to survive on his own. Even as he meets people on the way who try to help him in some way, he knows that the security given to him won’t last long and that he is still very much in a war zone where his life and the lives of other civilians are in jeopardy. The film shows him becoming more and more hopeless each time he has to navigate and survive the moment-to-moment traumas of war. There is no time for him to stop and process the psychological toll that witnessing the war has on him; he is always moving through this constant trauma and like his fellow soldiers, he loses hope for humanity.

In The Pianist it is similar. Szpilman, like so many Jewish people, is fighting for his life and even though the couple he meets takes him in and provides him shelter, he knows it won’t last long because soon after, he accidentally shatters a bunch of plates in their cupboard while they’re away, and a non-Jewish woman who lives in the apartment bangs on the door and tells him to come out, and when he comes out she accuses him of trespassing because he is Jewish, even when he tells her that the couple let him stay in the apartment. Another scene that stuck with me is when the SS guards force Szpilman’s family and other Jewish families onto cattle cars to be taken to the Treblinka killing center, but Szpilman is forced to stay behind. Soon after, he is seen walking through the city of Warsaw and breaking down in tears. Like the soldiers in 1917, Szpilman is forced to witness trauma and loss moment after moment. He witnesses corpses in the streets, a dying child caught in a wall dies in his arms and he has to leave his dead body there, and towards the end when he is in hiding, he sees some SS officers burn several dead bodies in the street while two other SS officers casually watch the bodies burning and eat their food. The film’s depiction of the trauma that many Jews faced will be engraved in my memory for a while. There is a scene in particular that stuck with me, which was when the Jewish civilians were held in a blocked off area to be taken to the Treblinka killing center, and a woman is sitting there and just repeats over and over again “Why did I do it?” Wladyslaw’s sister says aloud how it’s annoying that the woman keeps saying that over and over again, but then someone who knows the woman says that when the Nazis invaded her home, she smothered her baby and killed it. The woman has to relive this trauma and grief in her mind over and over again. This is just one of many moments in the film that sat with me.

The film reminded me of a quote that Buddhist philosopher and writer Daisaku Ikeda says at the beginning of the novel The Human Revolution: “Nothing is more barbarous than war. Nothing is more cruel.” In Buddhism, there is a concept called The Ten Worlds, which are different life states that humans experience at any given moment. The lower life states are Hell, Hunger, Animality, Anger, Heaven and Humanity and the higher life states are voice-hearers, cause-awakened ones, bodhisattvas and buddhas. This film clearly shows that the Nazis were in the life condition of Hell. Hell is a life condition in which everything around you is suffering, and it feels like there is no way out of it. War is a manifestation of the world of Hell because people who commit atrocities during war are in a state of life where they feel hopeless and feel that the only way to address their internal suffering is to hurt others and cause destruction. Another life condition in Buddhism that everyone has is animality, which is where people put others down who they think are inferior to them and act servile when they are confronted by people in higher positions of authority. I’m pretty sure all of the SS officers were terrified for their own lives and terrified of Hitler so they felt they had no choice but to make the Jews feel inferior to them and murder them. There is a scene in the film where Szpilman is in the ghetto and is a laborer, and the SS guards force him and the other men to line up, and for no reason other than they just felt like it, the SS guard has six or seven men from the line lie down and he just shoots and kills each of them. It was hard to look at that and think “Oh, it’s just acting.” As much as I tried to tell myself it was acting, it still felt way too real and it was a reminder that yes, the people playing these men were actors but the crimes the Nazis committed were very real.

I know I am stating the obvious, like “of course the Holocaust was a real-lived genocide where many people were murdered and treated as scapegoats. Most people know that already.” But after this film I reflected on the anti-Semitism that is very much still alive today and how there are still people who say the Holocaust never happened. This film also forced me to overcome the apathy in my own heart and understand that human rights and social justice requires persistent efforts to educate oneself, especially if you’re not a member of the community that is being marginalized, so that I can overcome the indifference within my own life that causes me to dismiss injustice and human rights abuses. I remember when I was ambivalent about watching 12 Years a Slave for an African-American history course in college, especially because everyone had said it was a very sad and painful film to watch, but then my professor told me that it was just acting and that while the atrocities that white slaveowners committed were true, the people reenacting these atrocities were actors. Like, Michael Fassbender isn’t actually whipping Lupita Nyong’o. And so I watched the film at least four times, thinking, “It’s just acting.” I somehow thought I needed to watch it more than once, but each time I watched it I found myself pushing down a lot of those uncomfortable human emotions that I normally would have expressed. I would have felt fear, disgust, anguish, and I would have cried loads of tears. But I just watched and casually thought, “It’s just a movie.” I honestly couldn’t do that with The Pianist this time; I had learned that I don’t necessarily need to watch the movie twice to understand the depth of the pain and trauma that Szpilman went through during his life. It will pretty much stick with me for a long time. I don’t like horror movies, but this film was pretty much a horror movie for me because everything in the film really happened and a human being, along with other human beings, was forced to see the most ugly darkest sides of humanity.

In our June 2022 issue of the magazine I read called Living Buddhism, there is a section with excerpts from Daisaku Ikeda’s peace proposals, and one of the excerpts is called “Removing the ‘Arrow of Fundamental Delusion'” (2013). It talks about how Siddhartha Gautama, or Shakyamuni Buddha, found that the fundamental cause of conflict between communities of people was fundamental darkness, or the inability to see the inherent preciousness of each person’s life including that of our own life. This fundamental darkness manifests as an egocentric worldview where one is only focused on self-interest and cannot put themselves in the other party’s shoes. I have this fundamental darkness and we all have this fundamental darkness, too, just by virtue of being human beings. The solution to overcoming this fundamental darkness is realizing the interconnectedness of life and that each person’s life has inherent dignity and thus each person is worthy of respect no matter what their ethnicity, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc. When I look at the history of World War II and the Holocaust from a Buddhist perspective, I realized that the root at these atrocities committed against Jewish people and other minorities was this fundamental delusion about life and the value that we place on life.

The Pianist. 2002. 150 minutes. Rated R for violence and mature, upsetting themes.

Being True to Oneself

Written I think about a month ago:

Tonight I went to a study meeting on Nichiren Buddhism, and we studied this really beautiful article from a book of speeches and essays that Buddhist philosopher and SGI president Daisaku Ikeda wrote called The Wisdom for Creating Happiness and Peace. It is an excellent book so far and has a lot of beautiful wisdom. I read it during lunch because I’ve been struggling a lot with self-confidence at work and reading it was encouraging. In Chapter 6 of the book, Ikeda talks about the principle in Buddhism called “cherry, plum, peach and damson”, which comes from the teachings of Nichiren Daishonin called The Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings, and it basically means that each individual has their own personality, their own strengths and weaknesses, but everyone has what is called the life state of Buddhahood, which is a state of life where we have boundless courage, wisdom and compassion just as we are. In “Live True to Yourself” (the material can be found here), Ikeda says that the purpose of religion is to understand the human condition and the meaning of life, and part of living as a human being is experiencing both joy and suffering. Ikeda says that it is important for each of us to be true to ourselves, but that it’s easier said than done because most people tend to be easily swayed by their external circumstances. The purpose of Nichiren Buddhism is to build an unshakeable self, a strong inner core that, whether the circumstances are favorable or unpleasant, we can confront these circumstances head-on and create the most value out of them. In the second part of the study material, “Appreciating Your Uniqueness,” (the material can be found here) he says that it’s important to keep growing and developing ourselves in a way that is true to ourselves, and that we are each unique and have our own precious mission in life, so there’s no need for us to compare ourselves to others. He says that chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, which is the name of our innate potential, lets us bring out that potential just as we are. Even if we’re going through difficulties, we can challenge them using our inner wisdom, courage and compassion. I remember printing off “Appreciating Your Uniqueness” and keeping it with me in my purse and on my desk at work after reading it because every time I read it, it reminded me to not compare myself with others, which is a lot easier said than done. I’m a human so I still struggle with comparing myself to others, but then I think about this part of the book and it just reminds me I have my own unique mission to accomplish and to just keep doing my best at it every day. Even when writing this personal blog, I wondered whether my writing was good enough to publish, but after just practicing my writing, even on days when I didn’t feel like writing, I became more confident in writing in my original voice. Of course, there have been days when I don’t pick up the pen or go to the computer to write, but after some days or months pass I just have to remember to just refresh my determination to write consistently no matter what outcome the writing produces. Again, this is an ongoing process but I have to go through this process to grow as a person.

I also really loved this study material because embracing my individuality has definitely been a journey, and while there were many painful moments I have had to confront while on this journey, each challenge has helped me build my self-confidence and conviction that I have the potential to overcome my challenges each time through chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo and making efforts to encourage my fellow SGI Buddhists and other people. In 2016 I didn’t really know what to do with my life, but I knew that I still wanted to play the cello even after college graduation. I thought that I wanted to have a job as a cellist in a professional orchestra, and while I still am working towards that dream, I have been able to use these past few years to develop more confidence in my abilities as a musician, and moreover, my self-worth. In another book I love called Discussions on Youth, Daisaku Ikeda says that self-confidence isn’t something you just magically have overnight, it’s something that you develop through challenging yourself in something, and that one can’t be said to have true self-confidence if their opinion of themselves see-saws based on others’ opinions. I think this is especially true these past couple of years, because before the pandemic hit I had this big glamorous vision of moving to New York City and playing at Carnegie Hall and having this glamorous career where I played with many different musicians and got all these awards. While some part of me is still striving for that, I also have done a lot of inner transformation, called human revolution in Nichiren Buddhism, over these past few years and I have come to understand that success isn’t just about glitz and glamour. Genuine success comes down to making earnest daily efforts even if they aren’t glamorous. When I first started working at Starbucks I struggled to take my work seriously because I thought that because it wasn’t related to my music career it wasn’t important, but as I polished myself through my SGI activities and efforts in my Buddhist practice, I gained the confidence to keep doing my best at my job whether or not I was going to be at the company long-term. I also came to understand through studying Buddhism that it’s about developing my inner self and letting that self shine so she can bring her best self to any area of her life, be it work, school, friendships, other relationships, and faith activities. It’s not about keeping up appearances, it’s about embracing who I am and understanding that I’m always going to be growing and improving and always have something to learn about myself.

Honestly looking back, I am glad things have worked out the way they did. I am still striving for a music career, but I’ve gradually been able to build a skill that is essential for anything in life, and that is learning how to embrace failure. As a recovering perfectionist I had to learn how to embrace rejection and failure so that I could grow, because the truth is, life isn’t always going to be fun but you can use those difficult moments, the seemingly un-glamorous moments, to figure out what your strengths are, what you can improve upon, and figure out how to use that in your career. Also, I learned through studying Buddhism to see things from a broader perspective, so I realized over time that rejection is part of any career, part of life itself, not just in the world of orchestra auditions. When I auditioned for my first professional orchestra audition I played to the best of my ability, and frankly I almost didn’t go to the audition because I was battling serious mental health problems and broke down crying while I chanted Nam-myoho-renge-kyo before my audition. I played “The Swan,” not knowing until a little later that most people probably choose a concerto for their solo piece when auditioning for professional orchestras, but what did I care? At this point, after literally fighting to the death against depression, suicidal thoughts and anxiety to get my ass to the audition place, I was willing to just cut the perfectionist bullshit and just do my best for the judges. And it turns out, when I let go of trying to put on airs and just played my best, the judges at the end of the day listened to me play and looking back, I appreciate them even just hearing me play, mind you without a curtain separating me from them. I look back with appreciation that I even got to play for them in person and also talk with them on a heart-to-heart, human-to-human level. At that point it wasn’t about me being perfect, but about connecting to another person’s Buddha nature through my music.

Movie Review: Encanto

Oh my gosh. This movie. I saw it twice and I still cried each damn time. I watched it a couple of weeks ago (6/6/22: as of today, it was a couple of months ago when I saw this film) and my gosh, when I say I bawled through the entire movie, I literally did just that. The colors. The music. The storyline. Just, like, oh my gosh. I honestly think I cried, too, because I hadn’t seen a Pixar movie in a while and forgot how much I love them. Coco and Onward were the last ones I had seen lately.

So just to give you a synopsis of the film if you haven’t seen it yet. It’s about this girl named Mirabel who is part of a renowned family called The Madrigals. They are known throughout Colombia for their incredible gifts. Her mom, for instance, makes delicious food that can cure just about anyone’s ailments; Luisa is the strong one and can literally lift anything, whether it’s a house or a bunch of donkeys; Isabela is Mirabel’s sister and is the perfect sister who doesn’t want anything to do with Mirabel; Pepa can make weather; Delores has super-sonic hearing and all the other family members have some sort of magical gift. And the matriarch holding down the fort is Abuela, who keeps everything together and makes sure that nothing falls through the cracks and damages the long-held reputation of the Madrigals. In the first musical number Mirabel is telling all the neighborhood kids about her family members’ gifts, but then after she is done they ask her over and over again what her gift is and she keeps dodging their question, instead preferring to talk more about her family’s gifts. Finally, Abuela catches her dancing and singing and asks her if there is anything wrong, and Mirabel hesitates, but then one of the kids blurts out that they were asking Mirabel about her Gift. Abuela then tells Mirabel and the kids that Mirabel didn’t get a Gift. A delivery guy then comes and has Mirabel carry a huge basket of goods for Antonio’s gift ceremony (Antonio is Pepa and Felix’s son) and mentions in passing Mirabel’s giftlessness. Crushed but trying to keep an appearance of I’m-doing-ok, Mirabel tries to help with the preparations for the ceremony but ends up damaging some of the decorations, prompting her grandmother to tell her to not help because everything must go perfectly during Antonio’s gift ceremony. Before the ceremony, Mirabel finds Antonio hiding under her bed and gives him a present to celebrate his ceremony (this scene really made me tear up because it was so heartfelt) and she tells him the ceremony is going to go perfectly. He doubts this and asks her what if his gift doesn’t work, and she helps him cheer up. When the ceremony finally arrives, Antonio is walked down an aisle in front of lots of people, but he finds Mirabel standing on the side and motions to her to come and escort him to his door, where he will be tested to see if his gift works. As Mirabel walks, she remembers when she herself was at her own gift ceremony as a little girl and nervously walking towards the door. Antonio ends up succeeding and opens the door to find his gift is that he can communicate with animals, and he finds this incredible jungle of animals when he opens the door. Everyone is celebrating, but then Mirabel stands on the side and remembers that when she tried to open the door for her gift ceremony, it disintegrated, meaning that she wasn’t given a special gift by the family Madrigal. She wonders if there is ever a hopeful future for her since she doesn’t have super crazy cool gifts like everyone else in her family does.

However, she does find something that the other members of the family don’t seem to perceive. She finds cracks in the foundation of the family home, but when she brings it up to people at Antonio’s ceremony no one recognizes the cracks and once again Abuela looks embarrassed that Mirabel even brought it up, leaving her feeling even more dejected. There is a member of the family that the Madrigals don’t talk about, and that person is Bruno, who they portray as this creepy guy who caused everyone’s misfortunes. Mirabel sets out to find Bruno but ends up bringing some glass back from Bruno’s lair and piecing it together, which is a big no-no because the family isn’t supposed to bring up Bruno. Unfortunately this happens at Isabela’s engagement dinner, when Dolores, who hears everything, finds out Mirabel visited Bruno’s lair and then tells everyone at the dinner table. The dinner is ruined and no one trusts Mirabel anymore. Before that, there was a brilliant number by Luisa, who is supposed to be the strong one in the family who lifts houses, donkeys, basically anything heavy. Mirabel tries to get some information from her, and Luisa tells her she feels pressured to lift everyone’s burdens. She then tells Mirabel that she secretly felt weak when Mirabel revealed there were cracks in the foundation at Antonio’s ceremony, and says that she often feels she carries too many people’s burdens.

Honestly, I really felt I could relate to Mirabel. She feels like she doesn’t possess a gift and often struggles with self-confidence just because there’s so much pressure on the Madrigal family to put on appearances of having these supernatural gifts, this supernatural strength, and trying to keep it all together. But later on, we find out that no one in the family is perfect and everyone actually just wants to live in a way that is true to themselves. Even Abuela realizes that neither she nor the family are perfect, but to get to this realization she had to go back and face her painful past where her husband was killed by an army of bandits and she had to fend for herself to protect her three children. Carrying this grief and trauma inside of her while keeping an appearance of togetherness was probably one of the more painful moments of the film, because Abuela really was trying her best to keep the family together and happy, but she realized that by alienating her daughter and Bruno for being different, she also kind of suffered because she couldn’t truly be happy knowing that her granddaughter felt like an outcast and like no one cared about her just because she didn’t possess the gifts they did.

This movie also reminded me of this TV show I used to watch called The Good Place because there’s a character in the show named Tahani and she has a sister named Kamilah. When they were growing up, Tahani’s parents favored Kamilah over Tahani because she got good grades in school and was an all-around perfect child, while Tahani didn’t live up to their expectations. One particularly painful moment Tahani recalls is when their parents had her and Kamilah compete to see who could paint the best picture, and Kamilah’s painting impressed the parents while Tahani’s did not. Tahani finds Kamilah put on a successful art exhibition in Hungary and is impressing all these people with her talents in art and cooking, and it angers Tahani because she’s always been compared to Kamilah for most of her life and she doesn’t want it to continue. However, Tahani realizes that she really just wants to have a loving relationship with her sister, one that is free from cut-throatness and perfectionism, one where they can just love each other for who they are, and Tahani ends up giving Kamilah a hug and telling her that their parents want her and Kamilah to keep competing with each other and it’s getting in the way of their sisterly bond. I thought about this moment in The Good Place because in Encanto, Mirabel’s sister Isabela is the perfect sister and she is just keeping up appearances of being perfect because that is what Abuela and the community expect from her. Each time Mirabel tries to talk with her or be near her, Isabela sees this as a threat to her image of perfection and gets angry and tells Isabela to stay out of her life. However, there’s a crucial moment when Bruno is helping Mirabel see into the future what she needs to do to save her family’s foundation from crumbling, and in the future she sees her hugging Isabela. At first, she is repulsed that she would even do such a thing because Isabela has been nothing but mean and condescending to Mirabel, but when she visits Isabela in her room, Isabela confesses to her that she just wants to be free to create what she wants. Her room is expected to look a certain way, but she ends up using her gift to express herself however she wants even if it’s not the perfect image people see of her. She ends up producing all these colorful powders and gets them all over her room and all over her and Mirabel and when Abuela sees this she is distraught that Isabela would ruin her image of cleanliness, but Isabela at this point doesn’t care because she’s now happy that she doesn’t have to live up to other people’s expectations of her.

This is totally random, but do you remember when they had the Oscars pre-show this year? The cast of Encanto was on the red carpet and they were talking about how they were going to perform the song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.” For some strange reason, I thought they were talking about the 2009 mockumentary called Bruno with Sacha Baron Cohen because I haven’t met someone named Bruno in a long time and that film was one of the few times I have encountered someone named Bruno (Disclaimer: I haven’t seen the film Bruno so I of course can’t talk about it, no pun intended.)

Overall, Encanto was an excellent movie and I recommend it if you haven’t seen it. Also, Stephanie Beatriz, who played one of my favorite TV characters Rosa Diaz in Brooklyn 99, plays Mirabel so I was really happy when I read she was played by her! 🙂

Encanto. 2021. Rated PG for some thematic elements and mild peril.

“Naive” by The Kooks

The other day I was at work, and a song called “Naive” by a band called The Kooks came on. It reminded me of when I first heard the song, which was the summer before my 8th grade year of school. That summer I went to Western Europe and we had a chaperone who was British and really cool. She had a Red iPod nano just like mine (the one that was part of the Product (RED) campaign to fight AIDS in Africa) and had a lot of epic songs on it. The very first song I heard her play on our bus ride around Ireland was “Naive” by The Kooks. It sounded pretty cool, and I pretty much remember listening to all sorts of other British artists and consuming British stuff when I got back home. I even started begging my parents to buy me Weetabix cereal, which is a popular cereal that was often served when we were in the United Kingdom. It’s actually pretty good with soy milk and fruit, and I wouldn’t mind eating it even now.

The chaperone also had a lot of other cool music by The Kooks on her iPod, many which I have fond memories of listening to with the other people on the trip. “Seaside” was one of them, and it’s just such a peaceful and beautiful song. It made me want to go to, as the song title suggests, the seaside. Another was “She Moves in Her Own Way,” which is a really fun tune I love. After listening to these songs I started loving The Kooks. The chaperone also had some songs by Gnarls Barkley on her iPod, specifically “Crazy” and “Smiley Faces,” and listening to these made me fall in love more with Gnarls Barkley’s music.

This is the one of the first songs I listened to on the trip by The Kooks:

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