Author: The Arts Are Life

I am a writer and musician. Lover of music, movies, books, art, and nature.

The Suitcase

I boarded the flight on Friday morning. When my parents dropped me off, the airport was bustling. People were milling about, checking their luggage, flights were taking off and flight attendants were calling the numbers for departures. Mom and Dad and I went outside to get my luggage checked. The guy checking the luggage was a tall white guy with glasses and a buzzcut hairstyle. He placed my large 100-pound suitcase on the weight machine and frowned. “This will cost you an extra $50.” I looked upset. “Why?” “Because it’s too heavy.” I panicked. I only had fifteen minutes to make it through to my gate. My body gave off a fight-or-flight response and my heart started racing. Adrenaline pumped through my body. I begrudgingly took the suitcase and rolled it back to the parking lot, which was about ten minutes away walking distance. Fuck, fuck, fuck. “It’s okay, sweetie,” Dad said, tousling my chestnut-colored curly hair. “We can find another flight for you.” I sulked.

“I feel so disappointed in myself,” I muttered.

“Don’t be. It is what it is,” my mom said with a stony expression. She had put up with my whining and complaining long enough.

So I went over to the car when we reached it and one by one took all my belongings out of my suitcase. About fifty pairs of clothes: twenty pairs of pants, ten T-shirts, ten bras in different colors and ten pairs of high heels. Oh, and a pair of walking shoes. My mom, Kendra, and my dad, Alex, looked at me aghast.

“What the fuck, Lily?” my mom snapped.

Alex turned sharply to her. “Hey, don’t swear in front of our daughter.”

“I can swear any damn time I please,” she huffed.

I hurriedly took out stuff.

“You are only going for a week, dear, not a whole year. This is not study abroad.” “I know, I know.”

In fact, 28 year old me is writing this and wondering, Yo, like why the fuck would you bring that much shit with you? You are only going for seven fucking days, Lily. Are you going abroad? No.

I begrudgingly took out all the stuff from my suitcase and chose which ones I wanted to bring on the trip.

“Same goes for books,” my mom said as they just looked at me.

I rolled my eyes. Parents. They say the right stuff but at the same time it’s annoying how right they are sometimes. I had in fact packed a shit-ton of books. In fact, that’s why I got made fun of so much while in school because I was reading so much. It didn’t matter where I was. Café, cafeteria, library, hallway, even my classes. I was always reading. One day I was reading while Ms. Bruce was giving one of her super boring lectures. Bridget was doodling, Andrew was making disgusting spitballs and I, well, I was reading.

“Lily, what are you doing?”

I looked up, aghast. Why did she call on me and not on the other dumb kids in the class who fuck around and act goofy? Why me? I haven’t done anything wrong in Ms. Bruce’s class.

She motioned her hands to signal for me to give her the book. I begrudgingly gave her the book and she put it in her desk. The other kids started snickering. I scowled. You guys are no better than me, with your doodling, your gross spitballs. We’re all just immature seventh graders whose brains are not fully developed yet.

So yeah, I had about ten books I was going to pack. Most of them were Harry Potter and A Series of Unfortunate Events.

“Just think, you are going to be talking with other kids on the trip,” my mom said.

I took the one book. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. That should occupy me for the entire trip. Then I put a few shirts in the suitcase and a couple of pairs of pants. A pair of faded Gap jeans and a pair of nice black slack pants. A few T-shirts from Gap as well. Funny enough, I saw my math teacher the other day and she works at Gap now. Her name was Mrs. Doyle and she had wavy blonde hair and glasses.

“Ok, that should do it,” Dad said. “I am so proud of you, hon. That must have been a pain in the butt, but I am glad you did it.”

He gave me a hug. Mom impatiently looked at her watch.

“Well you missed your flight, kiddo,” she tapped her high-heeled foot impatiently.

“It’s okay, honey, we can find another flight…”

“Well, then let’s get a move-on. We don’t have all morning.”

We walked speedily through the traffic parked outside the airport, the cacophony of honking car horns and people alternately saying “I love you” and “Get out of the way” echoing through my ears. We hurried past the 38-year old woman carting two suitcases and a stroller with a four year old in it and revisited the buzzcut hairstyle guy again.

“Okay, we took stuff out.”

“Can I see your driver’s license?” he said, indifferent to our obvious plight.

Dad fishes out his wallet from his back pocket and shows Buzzcut Man his driver’s license. Buzzcut Man looks at it hurriedly and tells me I am all set to go.

“Have a nice day,” he says.

“You too,” Dad smiles, and we make our way to the terminal. But first we have to stop at the customer service desk because I missed my flight.

“I’m sorry, we don’t have anymore flights going out to Washington, D.C.,” the customer service agent says, not looking up from her computer.

“But I have to leave today, otherwise I am going to miss the orientation!” I squeal.

“Can we get another flight for her? Please?” my mom begs the agent.

The agent looks at us with a sharp glance, but then she sighs and says, “I will see what I can do. But it will take thirty minutes, I have other customers to attend to.”

“That’s fine; we can wait,” Dad said.

“Now let’s go get you a chocolate cream donut from Dunkin Donuts to celebrate you being so brave about unpacking that big heavy suitcase,” Mom giggles and we head over to Dunkin Donuts.

On Trichotillomania (content warning: mental illness)

Pluck, pluck, pluck. My fingers dry as can be, cracked shriveled skin. They move towards my eyes. My eyelashes, rough and short because I plucked so many of them out and they are not growing back the way I want them to. Damn it, I think, they are so short. I can’t pluck them. When I pluck, I feel tension, like someone is tugging at my eyelashes and then when the hair separates from the follicle in one fell swoop, I fell a weird release of tension, the same kind of tension one night release when they take a breath of fresh air. It is painful and my eyelashes are so short but I can’t stop no matter how hard I try. I pluck when I do anything: sitting, watching, television, eating Fritos, writing a blog post, catching zzzzs and failing. I wish there was some magic trich fairy that could make trichotillomania disappear.

My mom knocks on my door.

“Come in,” I yell as P!nk blasts through my stereos.

She walks in.

“Are you coming for dinner?”

I stare at the computer. The red beanie cap covers my newly plucked scalp. I mutter a laconic “mmmm-hmmm” and keep staring at the computer. Please don’t ask me about this dumb trich, I plead to God, Buddha, the Universe, or whoever is listening up there.

“Why are you wearing a hat?” she asks.

I quickly shake my head.

“Nothing.”

“No, it’s not nothing, Miranda.”

She walks closer. Then she removes my cap and gasps when she sees the plethora of hairs I have pulled from my scalp over the past couple of months.

“Dr. Steinberg told you to not pull for at least a few months!”

“I know, I know…” I mutter. “But…”

“But what?”

“I can’t stop, Mom, okay? It’s just something that I have, ok? I cannot get rid of it, I have done everything.”

“So the Zoloft didn’t work wonders for you, eh?”

“No, the Zoloft was fine, Mom, I’m not saying that. It’s just…it will take me a while to recover from this habit, that’s all.”

She rolls her eyes towards the ceiling.

“Dear God, we have been through this so many times,” she mutters, her eyes closed.

She is clearly exasperated with me and I am starting to become exasperated with her. Unconsciously, my index finger and thumb make their way to my eyelashes…

My mom slaps my hand away from my eyes.

“Mom!”

She pauses.

“I’m sorry, but this has been going on for too long.” She sighs and shakes her head. Before she leaves my room, she calls, “Wash your hands for dinner.”

I pause, then take a shaky breath. It’s ok, don’t take it personally. You will overcome this, I think. I know I will. Just get me through these dumb stressful teenage years and it will just go away.

Tears form in my eyes and my bottom lip trembles. I cover my tear-stained face with my right hand and lower my head to my desk my body heaving each time I break down. I gasp for breath and choke out sobs. I feel like a total failure. Mom and Dad sent me to a therapist and the therapist gave me medication, and it worked, so why the hell am I still plucking?

The next day I go to school wearing the same beanie. A skinny young woman wearing a red flannel long-sleeved shirt, a black skirt and clunky Doc Martens walks down the hall, only something catches my eye. She is wearing a beanie, too, except it’s a navy blue one. And it looks like her eyelashes and eyebrows might have bald spots, too… I realize then: I’m not the only one with this problem.

The girl pauses to take a drink at the fountain. Madison Hart and her friends turn and look at the girl wearing the blue beanie and start giggling.

“Why is she wearing a hat inside?”

“Maybe she has lice.”

“Maybe she is bald.”

They all gasp and giggle at each other’s jokes. I am really sad that this girl is being teased. She continues to walk down the hall, quicker this time, and out of the corner of her eye I see a tear fall. I hope I get to see this girl at some point during the day. I wonder if she has friends.

Lunchtime comes, and I stand in the cafeteria line. The hot piping smell of fresh calzones and steamed broccoli wafts up to my nostrils. I hear the sizzling of canola oil as the greasy smell of French fries tantalizes my taste buds. I feel a tingle, then a twitch, then that impulse to pull gnaws at me as I anxiously look at the fifteen other students in line. I am too embarrassed and shy to speak to anyone. I close my eyes against the cacophony of high school freshmen chattering and someone at the table nearest the lunch line blasting Fetty Wap’s “Trap Queen” from their iPhone. I take a deep breath. Please don’t pull, please don’t pull….

Unfortunately it doesn’t work. Within milliseconds my fingers are fondling my eyelashes. Ugh, they are so ugly, I just need to pull them out so that when I look in the mirror I don’t have to look at how ugly these short eyelashes are. I don’t want to do this now, not with people watching. People are going to laugh at me if I do this.

My stomach lets out an impatient growl. Hurry up already, it screams. But the urge to get rid of this super-short eyelash is screaming even louder, drowning out the cries of my hunger. I make my way out of the lunch line, losing my place within 5 minutes of approaching the mecca of food. The cacophony glides behind me and then falls from a crescendo into a muddled whisper as I am now in the quiet of the girls’ bathroom stall. I dig out my compact mirror from my purse and wipe off the smudges on the surface. I take a good hard look at my eyes, putting the mirror closer to my eyelids so I could know which hairs needed to go. I found my right hand fumble towards my chin. Ugh, there is hair on that, too. There are bald spots where I pulled the hairs out from last week. They look dry, scaly and frankly unattractive. Long rivers of tears fall down my cheek and kiss each of these bald spots. I don’t want to pull that curly one, I know it will hurt, but it’s so damned crooked and it stands out. I sigh. I am losing this painful battle and it hurts to admit that I have done everything I could and am still doing this to myself. Don’t I want to be pretty? Don’t I want to have beautiful long curling eyelashes softer than the softest pillow? I give in to temptation, and tug at the lonely short crooked hair that belonged on my chin. It doesn’t give at first but I keep tugging it. Fuck it, I just want some release, just want to release the tension in my fingers, in my body, in my life.

The hair comes loose and I rub it around with my fingers and let it rest on my tongue. Then I don’t feel good about swallowing hair so I just flick it off my fingers and let it fall to the linoleum floor and land somewhere it can find peace.

I unlock the bathroom stall, feeling relieved, anxious, ashamed and alone. But my breath catches when I see no one other than the blue-beanie girl peering in the big long mirror plucking away at her eyebrows using nothing other than her long fingers. I stop dead in my tracks. She continues to pull, a lonely expression on her face.

“Hey…” I shyly say.

She doesn’t reply. She just continues to look in the mirror silently and with a pained expression on her face. She gathers her brown leather messenger bag and before leaving, give me a blank indifferent look and leaves the restroom, the cold metal red door slamming behind her. The dim lights flicker and a cockroach crawls from under the sink. It darts towards a crack in the wall and disappears. I stand all alone.

Downton Abbey, season 3, episode 1

The episode opens with Anna, the head lady’s maid of Downton, handling a huge leather briefcase on the cupboard. Gwen walks in and Anna asks what is in the briefcase. Gwen is at first ashamed to admit it, but then she shows Anna but asks that she keep it private. The thing in the briefcase happens to be a typewriter and Gwen confesses to Anna that she is taking shorthand and typewriting courses because she plans to leave service at Downton and become a secretary. Mrs. O’Brien walks in and tells them there is a task that needs to be done, but Anna and Gwen are standing in front of the typewriter so that Mrs. O’Brien cannot see it. Mrs. O’Brien tends to spill the beans on a lot of people at Downton Abbey, so she would of course tell everyone about the typewriter and that Gwen was leaving service. Meanwhile, Mary and Cora get word that Evelyn Napier is coming to Downton Abbey, and Cora is still trying to set up someone with Mary even if she doesn’t want Cora to pick a husband for her anymore. Mary is not interested in Matthew right now, so she is putting him off, but it’s hard for her to just make her own decision like that because Matthew Crawley is Robert Grantham’s cousin and heir to the estate at Downton. If Matthew marries Mary, then Cora would lose her inheritance.

Meanwhile, downstairs, Carson and the other staff members are looking at Gwen’s typewriter, which either Carson or someone managed to steal from Gwen. Gwen comes down and is upset because someone took her typewriter and showed everyone downstairs without her permission. Carson asks her why she is keeping a typewriter, and Gwen responds that she loves her job at Downton but she is planning to leave service to become a secretary, and that is why she has been taking a bunch of classes and keeping the typewriter. Carson asks her if there is anything wrong with working in service, and Gwen says no there isn’t, but she doesn’t picture herself working in service forever and wants a better-paying opportunity. People are divided about her decision to leave, and even during dinner, the Grantham family talks about it. Lord Grantham and Cora just want to make sure everyone is happy working at Downton, but Isobel thinks that if Gwen wants to find work elsewhere, she should. Sybil, one of the Grantham sisters, is one of the few who actually fully supports Gwen in her decision to leave (besides Anna, who is cool with Gwen ‘s decision to leave service since they are close friends) and after she overhears Carson telling her father that Gwen wants to be a secretary, she actually shows Gwen an ad in the papers for an open position as secretary in Thirsk. Gwen is doubtful that she will get it and thinks she should stay in service, but Sybil never gives up on her and explains to her that the reason she supports Gwen’s decision to find a new job as a secretary is because times are changing and women are demanding more equality and Sybil supports this reform and women’s rights.

The part with Gwen reminded me of this documentary that I saw about personal finance on Netflix called Get Smart with Money. There was a young woman in the documentary who worked a couple of jobs in the service industry and was struggling to make ends meet, and in addition she also had these amazing skills with making art and wanted to become a freelance artist but wasn’t sure how to market her art and make money from it full-time. She sat with a financial adviser who encouraged her to start a side hustle to bring in extra income because she had these incredible skills that she could offer to people. I also thought about how in the recent years of the job market more people are learning new skills and going back to school so they can learn new skills because it’s not enough to get a degree from college anymore. It’s a competitive job market and the demand for different skills is always evolving and I’ve noticed that a lot of the jobs that are high-paying are typically jobs in software and technology. I remember in 2017 working in food service and was paying off student debt but my loved ones encouraged me to learn some new skills so that I could get a new job with higher pay, and the most in-demand skill I learned about was in coding. So I took a programming course and it was expensive and I ended up taking more than a year to finish it, and there were times it was hard to learn the material at first and I wanted to give up so many times, but learning this skill gave me something new to learn and work on. I didn’t end up getting a job as a developer or in the technology field but it was useful to have this skill because I also learned to commit to something challenging and stick with it for a long period of time. I also remember when working in food service, I was stuck on having these big dreams of moving to a huge metropolitan area for my music career and becoming famous and making money from it, and I was so impatient to leave the job because I wanted to achieve my dreams. However, I also learned to treasure the connections with people I met working in the job I had and on my last day I ended up crying in appreciation because I ended up developing a lot of great connections with people at the job. When I had the job I also took on a side hustle (a short project for a website someone was doing) and even though I didn’t yet know how to apply advanced knowledge I gained from the course to the project I had the basic skills needed to complete it. It was so nice getting the paycheck from that project. Honestly looking back I could have thought, Gee wouldn’t it be nice if I just had a side hustle? But at the time I was so focused on paying off my student loans and working full-time that taking on a side hustle seemed too much for me to take on. However, after watching the documentary on Netflix it makes sense why I would need to market my skills at some point so that I can gain extra income and don’t need to rely on one income for all my needs.

Meanwhile, while Gwen is figuring out how to leave service and get the job as secretary, Mary goes riding horses with Evelyn Napier and a bunch of men. Evelyn brought Kemal Pamuk, who is an ambassador for Turkey and is visiting England. At first Mary thinks Mr. Pamuk is going to be unattractive and uninteresting but she sees him and finds out he is quite fine-looking. She ends up ditching the guy who was supposed to ride with her, Lynch, and rides with Mr. Pamuk instead. The two feel an instant chemistry for one another and Mary ends up having a great time with Mr. Pamuk. They come back to Downton to change their clothes for the evening, and Thomas Barrow, who is gay, finds Mr. Pamuk quite attractive and is secretly excited that he is going to be Mr. Pamuk’s assistant during his stay. Thomas is seduced by Mr. Pamuk’s good looks and hits on him but Mr. Pamuk is disgusted by Thomas’s advances and tells him he won’t tell anyone Thomas hit on him if he lets him into Mary’s room so they can have sex. During dinner, Evelyn and Matthew see Mary and Kemal giggling and enjoying each other’s company at dinner and feel jealous that Mary likes him more than she likes them. Kemal ends up taking Mary away from the party to a private space and starts to kiss and fondle her, but she is appalled because she understands that she is an unmarried woman and that this kind of interaction with Kemal isn’t appropriate and tells him that neither of them is to speak of the kissing with anyone. However, Kemal ends up having Thomas lead him and Mary into Mary’s bedroom. (At this point, after watching it a few times I was wondering whether this was consensual sex or rape. Some said it was sex, others said it was rape, so I wanted to make sure I understood correctly since at times I have tended to unfortunately conflate the two. Thankfully people have called me out on it) Kemal coerces Mary into having sex with him and then shortly after dies. Mary grabs Anna and has her and Mary’s mom, Cora, drag Mr. Pamuk’s dead body out of Mary’s bedroom. Cora of course is pissed and asks Mary what happened, and Mary is in tears because of Mr. Pamuk’s sudden death, and Cora tells her she must never let this news get out that Mr. Pamuk was in Mary’s room because the family would freak out. I thought they could just stealthily sneak Mr. Pamuk’s body out of Mary’s room, but as I soon found out after watching the entire show, nothing is private at Downton Abbey and there is always someone watching. In this case, it was Daisy. Daisy was getting some laundry done late at night and went down the hall only to find Mary, Anna and Cora farther down the hall dragging Mr. Pamuk’s corpse away from Mary’s room. Of course, this scares the shit out of Daisy and continues to haunt her for the next episode.

Random stories in my old 9th grade notebook

Chapter one

The train lurched through the bleak outskirts of the lonely city. I explored the scenery through the frosted window. I heard the invisible sounds of an olive-skinned man and a chocolate-skinned woman performing a melancholy winter ballad on saxophone and keyboard, respectively. I glimpsed una nina wrapped in a large lavender parka, the mangled ends of her chestnut braids blowing in the wind. I stared into the face of a beautiful female teacher, and consumed the exquisite image of the fiery pomegranate red lips, the wavy black tresses that spilled on her sloping shoulders, the mammoth leather purse that nudged against her breasts as she adjusted it on her shoulder.

At that romantic moment, I felt a craving. A potent craving to sketch average-day homosapiens. My right side practically burned for an urge to spin the lead graphite tip on the perforated paper, to form an oval that would form a face, matchsticks that would form a much more complex body. How funny–a fifteen year old Leonardo sketching a contemporary anatomy, that of a handsome man spread out on beige paper like a snow angel, but a person residing in Illinois.

“Your current stop is Sulfur,” the concise masculine voice announced from the front of the train. I hoisted my messenger bag over my shoulder, pressing the front of the bag to protect it. My hometown waited for me twenty blocks away.

Chapter 2

I was fourteen-and-one-quarters when I was expelled from school. I had no desire to leave but the darn administrators forced me to. It was a windy March morning in sixth period art class. My cranium overflowed with equations and mathematical concepts from third period, and it was near explosion. My hands ached with the arduous task of writing a three-page essay on the current oil embargo and its effect on global nations. In fourth period social studies, my blood curdled and I nearly passed out at the formaldehyde-laden, expired seafood-smelling meadow-frog that the first period science class was forced to dissect (I asked the teacher if I could evade such a repugnant task. I lost that ephemeral jury.) A myriad of Shakespearean verses and lines from notable O. Henry stories spun like sugar plums in my head. After English class, I sped to Room 411, a classroom with a relaxed, good-natured atmosphere. I stole a seat next to the window from which the restaurants, hair salons and factories stood erected, and wrestled my 8×11 sketchbook from underneath the purple binder that held my math and social studies papers, the two-thousand ton science textbook that nearly broke the table I sat at, and a paperback copy of Invisible Man.

The bell echoed through the halls as students mingled in their cliques and gabbed loquaciously. Mr. Lasovitch pushed back his swivel chair and stood, resembling a five-foot eight inch tree in crimson lo-tops and a plaid long-sleeved shirt.

“Okay, guys, listen up…all eyes on me…”

Fifty pairs of multicolored eyes stared up at our art instructor.

“You lot are going to finish your charcoal drawings, under the circumstances…that you close your eyes while sketching. It is not difficult; just imagine some object or person in your head, and start doodling. Any questions?”

A cricket-chirp-worthy silence swept through the room.

“Okay, then. Let’s commence.”

I sat in my chair while twenty-four other middle-school students milled about the room, looking for those formerly new ebony pieces of smudge and fresh-smelling sooty dust. I heard the phone ring.

“Desmond Lasovitch. Yeah, I’ll send her down. Bye.”

The phone landed in its cradle with athud.

“Lilliane, the administrator wants to see you.”

I nodded, closed my sketchbook and gathered my items. I looked back in the distance at the bored teenagers who spun the charcoal sticks between their fingers and rolled their eyes in agony at the thought of drawing. My recycled sneaker squeaked like timid mice and my stomach lurched as I headed past the auditorium into Principal Dellafield’s office. I knocked on the door and walked in. Principal Dellafield sat on her throne, her ballpoint pen racing with vivacity across a lined piece of paper.

“Principal Dellafield?” I asked.

She looked up, her icy blue pupils washing me like a cascade, taking me in.

“Mr. Lasovitch said you wanted to see me.”

“Ah, yes, dear, come. Sit and let’s talk. And set your books and whatnot on the sofa next to my shelf.”

The couch looked comfortable with its velvet texture and lush green pigment. It felt as if I was disrespecting the property by setting a pile of binders on it, but I obeyed.

I pulled the chair from out in front of her desk. The chair swallowed me as I attempted to relax.

“Miss Pendant, yesterday at approximately three in the afternoon, a fellow student of Benisota Secondary School found a drawing of a woman, a drawing which the student considered quite blasphemous.”

The drawer inserted in her desk opened with a roll, and she obtained the paper. She held it up for me to get a decent view of.

Rendered speechless inside, I feigned indifference.

“What’s wrong with it?” I asked, my eyebrows sloping into two negative quadratic arches.

“It’s crude, Miss Pendant! At Benisota, all students are forbidden to wear or display anything that may be deemed offensive, such as nudity, for example. Now why did you draw such a person?”

I took in the naked woman that I animated. She seemed quite passionate and vivacious, her pixie haircut fading in the wind, her arms akimbo, commanding the entire globe to consume her ravishing beauty like a steaming rack of tender lamb…

“Miss Pendant?”

I snapped back to attention.

“Please answer me. Why did you draw what you drew?”

“Well,” I laughed nervously. “You see, my friend bought an entertainment magazine to school. I asked her politely–”

I coughed.

“—If I could borrow it to draw in. She shrugged and obliged. So I flipped through the magazine, and found a celebrity at the Academy Awards. I was going to draw her in a dress, I really was, but I guess my mind got carried away…”

I shrugged.

She sat back, astonished.

“Well, Miss Pendant, this is quite a shocker. Judging from your mature, ambassadorial behavior…I’d never suspect you would do such a thing.”

My face fell in complete chagrin.

“I would hate to say this, but…due to the action you committed, I must suspend you from this school.”

I felt a whip crack on my cringing body. I gaped in horror.

“But Principal,” I stammered. “You cannot–I–I cannot quit school! What about my degree–I can’t just throw it out the window like this—I have to finish school!”

If you were to come into the office this exact moment, you would see a formerly calm girl who, when she heard this news, was on the verge of exploding into smithereens.

It’s been a week….

I don’t know why I didn’t write on this blog for a while. I guess I was just afraid of saying imperfect stuff. Which is why I started looking up more books about embracing imperfection and uncovering the roots of perfectionism because I am starting to wonder if my perfectionist tendencies are actually even healthy or just maladaptive. Today I bought a book for my Kindle called The Anxious Perfectionist: How to Manage Perfectionism-Driven Anxiety Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy by Clarissa W. Ong, Ph.D. and Michael P. Twohig, Ph.D. and I am just taking it in. Even though I haven’t yet done the exercises at the beginning of the book, there was one exercise where I had to list three self-critical labels or stories I believe to be true about myself and pick the label I grappled with the longest and reflect on the earliest memory of having this self-critical label or story I believed about myself. I have been chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo (it’s a Buddhist practice I do every morning and evening) for clarity about my life, and as I have been on my journey with mental health and therapy, I have been reflecting on a pretty huge narrative I have told myself throughout my life: “I am worthless.” This self-critical label has been the story I have carried with me for a long time, and it is connected very much to my struggles with perfectionism, depression and lack of self-confidence. I was really young when I first had this thought of being worthless. I had always been a sensitive person and a creative person, and I had gone to public school for the first time when I was in fifth grade, and it was a huge adjustment for me. I felt like I just was falling so far behind the other students in class, and there was a program for gifted and talented kids but I wasn’t part of that program and I began to think that somehow I wasn’t smart. I would often fall behind in my schoolwork and started to think that somehow every mistake or failure I made was a character flaw. I have always been an introvert, and when my math teacher told me I had to stay inside instead of going to recess like the other kids, I just shrugged and said I was fine with staying behind to complete my schoolwork. If three-year-old me can treat time out like it’s the best time in the world to catch up on some reading, then clearly ten-year-old me can treat time away from recess to catch up on some schoolwork. However, this rubbed the teacher the wrong way and she ended up pulling me aside for a good thirty minutes to an hour talking about how it wasn’t okay for me to have a nonchalant attitude about missing recess to finish my homework. Looking back I can understand she just wanted me to have fun at recess and not make this a habit of missing homework deadlines, but at the time because I was so sensitive I started to think that maybe something was wrong with me for having a carefree attitude about missing recess.

I also started to wonder if maybe being sensitive was too much as well. I remember being in the lunch line and saying “hi” to one of my classmates, and she asked me why I said “hi” to everyone. I thought it was perfectly normal to say “hi” to everyone, but apparently not in this new environment. I started comparing myself to the other kids, thinking that they couldn’t possibly be going through the same battles of dwindling self-confidence I was going through. Of course, now that I am older and have read more and gone through more life experiences, I have realized in retrospect that those kids I thought were confident on the outside may not have been so confident on the inside. Then again, I wouldn’t know because at the time I didn’t have the language to talk about self-love and self-worth in a healthy, life-affirming way, but I’m pretty sure those kids weren’t immune to dealing with problems in their daily lives. I mean, come on, we’re fifth graders. Our brains haven’t fully developed yet, and we’re all battling our own insecurities (this was back in the early 2000s; I’m sure pretty similar challenges with self-esteem still happen today even if we have more spaces to discuss it). I remember always struggling with math and science and feeling like I wasn’t cut out for those subjects, and instead of just joking about it, it really hurt me that I wasn’t making progress in those subjects. At the time I was doing Kumon math and doing Kumon helped me gain a lot of self-confidence in my math skills, but when I tried to bring that same self-confidence about math to my 5th grade math class, I pretty much fell flat. I thankfully patched things up with my teacher a couple years after that, but every time I talk about perfectionism and failure I think getting at the root of why I continued this behavior pattern was pretty important. I’m not a psychologist or a psychiatrist, so I can’t really diagnose myself, but I just think a lot about how I still battle negative self-talk and I decided to just go back to my past when I actually started saying a lot of those negative things about myself (e.g. “I’m worthless”, “I’m ugly”, “I’m stupid”, “I’m fat”, etc.)

I guess this is why have hobbies and interests outside of my studies during that time helped. When I was struggling with low self-esteem I had an outlet: art. I loved art, painting, drawing, doodling, you name it. Even when I wasn’t supposed to be doodling in class I drew Powerpuff Girls cartoons and other stuff. However, I think I lost a lot of confidence in my art at some point and wondered if it was even the right avenue for me. Teachers are a pretty key influence on a kid’s mind, and so I’m glad I had a cool teacher in middle school who encouraged me to keep making art. He encouraged me to enter my art in a contest and I think I won (I got a bag of Fritos as my prize, and as a dedicated follower of The Holy Church of Fritos, I was in heaven.) He was a mentor to me during that time, and looking back I really appreciate how he shaped my perspective on why I make art. When I got to advanced placement (AP) art I felt like a total imposter. I was so used to drawing images from magazines and free-drawing cartoons that when the art teacher told us we could not sketch images from copyrighted images that scared the living shit out of me. God, I really am an imposter, I thought, so I met with my counselor, told her I was having second thoughts about being good enough for AP art, and high-tailed my ass out of that class. My parents had bought me all these hell-expensive art supplies and I felt terrible that they had pretty much gone to waste. I still have those paints from the class; I sadly threw out the canvas board because I just didn’t know where else to put it. I hope I can gain the courage to keep making art even if it’s just for an inner sense of fulfillment. I guess that is why joining orchestra and Whiz Quiz my first year of middle school helped, because I was sensitive and had drawn into myself because of those deep insecurities I had felt about my personality. Doing hobbies helped me build my self-confidence back up again.

Oh, gosh, I am tired and it is midnight. But I couldn’t wait the next day to write this. I just felt like something was missing when I realized how much I missed writing even if just to feel an inner sense of fulfillment. I hope to be more consistent with writing. I thought I would need to wait until I had completed editing my review of The Crown series that I’m watching, but something in me was like, Just write.

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.