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Movie Review: La Vie En Rose (2007)

When I was in middle school, I was watching the Academy Awards, and the nominees for Best Actress in a Leading Role came on. They show the clips from the films for each nominee, and the French actress Marion Cotillard was nominated for her movie, La Vie En Rose, a biopic about the late French singer Edith Piaf. When I saw the clip the first time, it blew me away. And Marion Cotillard won the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role that evening.

Fast forward to 10 pm tonight, and I just finished watching La Vie En Rose. I can now see why Marion Cotillard won an Oscar for her portrayal of Edith Piaf. I had seen Marion Cotillard in one film when I was younger. She played Josephine, Edward Bloom’s pregnant wife in the movie Big Fish, but in that movie, she is not the main character. She is a supporting character. When I watched La Vie En Rose, I got to see Marion Cotillard playing in a leading role. To be quite honest, I didn’t know anything about Edith Piaf, and I had only listened to a couple of her songs in passing. I had only one song of hers on my iPod nano (I can’t remember which song, but I think it was “Hymne a L’Amour”) and I heard her famous song, “Non, je ne regrette nien” on the film soundtracks of movies like Babe, Pig in the City and Inception. And I have heard “La Vie En Rose,” but mostly covers of the song by Louis Armstrong and other artists. I didn’t know anything about Edith Piaf’s life at all before watching the movie. All I know is that Marion Cotillard put her heart and soul into playing the role of this woman, whose life was short and also filled with many challenges, including childhood abuse, emotional neglect, substance abuse, grief, and loneliness.

The movie reminded me of a movie I saw a few years ago called Judy. It stars Renee Zellweger as Judy Garland, and like Edith, Judy died in her 40s. And like Marion Cotillard, Renee Zellweger is an incredible actress and was so incredible in her portrayal of Judy Garland. Renee Zellweger, like Marion Cotillard, won an award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance in a biographical drama. Both of these women were commercially successful but faced a lot of pressure in the public eye and used substances like alcohol and drugs to cope with the stress of their careers. I remember sitting in the hotel room while on vacation, sipping from a little bottle of red wine I found in the minifridge, and watching Judy. By the end, I was a sobbing mess of tissues. I only knew Judy Garland as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, but what these biopics show me is that you have to look past the role someone plays in a movie or TV show or on stage, and you get to see them wrestling with all this deep personal stuff when the cameras are off and they are dealing with their pain alone. Edith lived through a lot of tragedy, and it was even more tragic because there is a scene in the film where she is about to die, and it is scary to see her suffering as she faces her death alone. The film doesn’t hold back from showing the suffering that comes with illness and death. Seeing Edith’s gut-wrenching pain and sadness as she lives her final minutes on her deathbed was painful, especially because she had already dealt with so much grief in such a short time. The man she loves, Marcel, dies in a plane crash. She is thinking he is still alive, and she goes over to bring him breakfast, but then her staff inform her that Marcel died in a plane crash. Watching Edith run down the halls, screaming and grieving with tears running down her face, was an emotional rollercoaster. Actually, the entire movie was an emotional rollercoaster. I really loved watching the special feature afterwards where they discuss the movie. Marion Cotillard had a lot of prosthetics on her while playing the role of Edith Piaf, and she said that she tried to bring her own interpretation of Edith rather than just imitating her. I find the process of actors fascinating, especially when they are tasked with playing people who actually lived.

The movie is entirely in French, but I watched it with English subtitles. Honestly, I don’t know if I would have been mature enough to watch this movie the year it came out. I was only 13 at the time, and I don’t know if I would have gotten through the emotional rollercoaster of this movie. Also, there is a lot of mature material in the movie. Edith grew up in a brothel, and one of the women working in the brothel is sexually assaulted. Edith is separated from the women in the brothel, and it is a pretty painful scene to watch because Edith dealt with her mother abandoning her at a young age. I probably wouldn’t have been able to deal with watching the subject matter very well, especially seeing Edith grappling with illness and death. Even at 31, I still couldn’t fathom how painful this woman’s life was. Marion Cotillard showed through her movements and facial expressions the pain that this woman went through in her life. Even though the movie shows a few happy moments of Edith’s life, it doesn’t flinch from showing the grim realities of poverty, addiction and grief. I think after studying Buddhism, I think it helped me think about the movie from a Buddhist perspective. In Buddhism we deal with the four sufferings of birth, aging, sickness and death. Even though someone may be wealthy or famous, they are still a human being at the end of the day, and they are still going to experience these sufferings. Even though Edith lived a short life, she really gave her all to her career, so it was really sad to watch the scenes where they show her later in life when she is unable to continue performing due to her declining health. Watching this movie helped me appreciate the legacy that Edith Piaf left, and it also helped me appreciate Marion Cotillard’s work as an actress. (Also, side note, but I recognized one of the actors in the movie from a movie I saw with Queen Latifah in it called Last Holiday. I found out the actor’s name is Gerard Depardieu.)

La Vie En Rose. 2007. Directed by Olivier Dahan. Starring Marion Cotillard. In French with English subtitles. Rated PG-13 for substance abuse, sexual content, brief nudity, language and thematic elements.

Movie Review: Memoir of a Snail

A few weeks ago, I watched a movie called Memoir of a Snail. It’s an Australian adult animated feature directed by an Australian director named Adam Elliot, and it stars Sarah Snook as the lead protagonist, Grace Pudel. I really loved Sarah Snook in the TV show Succession, in which she plays Siobhan “Shiv” Roy, who is part of a family that runs a multimillion-dollar media conglomerate called Waystar Royco. Logan Roy runs the media conglomerate, but he is getting on in years and needs to figure out which one of his kids is going to become the CEO of Waystar should he become incapacitated or pass away. Shiv is the only female sibling and competes with her three brothers, Kendall, Roman and Conner, to be the CEO. Shiv is an incredible actress (I did try to focus on Shiv’s character development throughout the show, but honestly while watching the show all I could focus on was how fashionable Shiv was. She was always wearing the best dresses and the best outfits throughout the show, and she is also an incredibly beautiful woman. And her ass is perfect. Just saying.) I would see HBO ads that showed the Succession poster, but I didn’t know much about the show. I just kept hearing about it all the time. Honestly, I started watching Succession because Sarah Snook got a bunch of awards for playing Shiv in the show, and when she won, I thought, Man, this gal must be an incredible actress. Also, I thought she was an American actress, but when she got her award and made her speech, I heard her accent and was like, What!! She’s Australian! That’s so cool! Before seeing Succession, I hadn’t seen Sarah Snook in any film or TV yet, but that’s because I haven’t seen a ton of Australian shows or movies. The one time I remember watching an Australian TV show was when I saw The Crocodile Hunter as a kid in the early 2000s. I want to see the movie Animal Kingdom, though, because I saw the trailer several years ago and it looked really good. I have seen Australian actors in movies before, but I hadn’t actually seen many movies that were funded and distributed from Australia. Memoir of a Snail is one of the few Australian films I’ve seen so far. In fact, I was so excited to be able to rent the movie on Google Play this week, because I checked the showtimes for my local Cinemark movie theater, but it wasn’t playing there. It was only playing in select theaters, and so I thought, Maybe I’ll go see the movie in theaters. But the showtimes either took place when I was at work, or the theater was too far away to drive to. I really loved the trailer, and it’s funny because when I first saw it, I thought it was going to be a children’s movie. But that’s because I saw the clean version of the trailer, the IFC teaser trailer. I found the Australian trailer that the production company Madman Films had put out, and it was uncensored. Halfway through the trailer, I saw a bully on the playground give Grace the middle finger, and I paused and was like, Woah, hold up…I thought this was a kid’s movie. Wait a minute…Is this a kid’s movie?!? Then the next scene showed an old lady dancing on a table and her hand accidentally hits the ceiling fan, and she loses her pinky finger. When that happened, girl, I immediately paused it and was like, What?!? We got kids giving middle fingers in the trailer and then a lady’s finger gets chopped off in graphic detail?!? Girl…what is the MPAA rating for this movie?!? This movie has got to be rated R. I have seen a few G to PG rated Claymation films, and not in one of them have I heard the term “dickhead” or seen limbs cut off (unless you’re watching the TV-MA-rated Robot Chicken, that is.) So, I looked up the rating and sure enough, I confirmed my findings. The film was, in fact, rated R, and, therefore, not a kids’ movie. Of course, I should have known, because when I watched the trailer again, I realized that those two Claymated guinea pigs that were sitting next to the couch were humping each other, and that’s how those little guinea pig babies multiplied. Sure, Rocky and Ginger fell in love in Chicken Run, but Pathe and Dreamworks were never going to show that Claymated British chicken and American rooster getting it on. They went straight to the “they hatched some kids and lived happily ever after” narrative because it was G for general audiences.

But MPAA ratings aside, this was seriously one of the best movies I have seen in my life so far. I knew it was going to be sad, but I thought when coming in, even after watching the trailer, oh, it will be this sweet happy story about a snail. Boy, I was WRONG. I cried throughout the movie. The minute they cued the Australian Chamber Orchestra in the opening credits, I was already an ugly-crying mess of tears and snot, and I didn’t have my tissues nearby, so I used my shirt collar. In the opening scene, Pinky, a dear friend of Grace, is dying, and she wakes up briefly to shout “THE POTATOES!” before passing away. Grace wonders, Wait, what does she mean by “the potatoes?” But Pinky is gone, and Grace is left to mourn the one friend who stuck with her through the wild ride of life that Grace is going to go through during the entire 1 hour and 35 minutes of the movie. Grace sits by Pinky’s Pity-Pit (Pinky’s gravestone) in Pinky’s garden, and she recounts to her snail friend, Sylvia, an account of her life (She named Sylvia the snail after the late American author Sylvia Plath.) Grace Pudel, grew up in 1970s Australia, and she has a twin brother named Gilbert, who always stands up for her and supports her through thick and thin. When Grace is bullied on the playground, Gilbert breaks the bully’s finger, and Gilbert, to Grace’s consternation, loves to play with pyrotechnics and fire. Like his dad, Gilbert wants to be an entertainer. Gilbert and Grace’s mom died shortly after giving birth to them, so they grew up with their dad, Percy, who had dreams of becoming a famous performer but had those dreams cut short when he got hit by a drunk driver. Percy was from France, and he attracted the attention of Grace and Gilbert’s mom, and they fell in love. After he became physically disabled, Percy became an alcoholic and also developed sleep apnea. But Gilbert and Grace did their best to support him. Percy loved knitting and jellybeans and had a jar full of them, and he and his kids loved to joke around, watch TV together, and sing songs in French. Gilbert and Grace bond over snails and watch in disgust as the snails get it on in their glass jar and produce lots of baby snails. Percy makes Grace a snail hat, and Grace takes on the identity of a snail.

However, he died in his sleep one evening, and Grace and Gilbert were left with no parents. A lady from child protection services took them away and sent them into separate foster homes, so they grew up apart. Grace spent her time being lonely and tried to make connections at school but was bullied and called a “rabbit face.” Even when she got older, she still dealt with loneliness. Grace was adopted by a couple named Ian and Narelle, who loved self-help books and positive thinking. They would shower Grace with praise and give her awards for being a good daughter, but all of their positive reinforcement did nothing to assuage Grace’s grief at being separated from her twin brother. Gilbert often writes letters to Grace about his foster family, Ruth and Owen, who run their own church and have Gilbert work on their apple orchard doing menial tasks. Ruth and Owen are hostile to Gilbert, and they make him eat meat even though he is a vegetarian. Gilbert promises to Grace that he will come and reunite with her, but as time goes on, Grace loses hope. However, while working at the Canberra Public Library, Grace meets a lady named Pinky, who keeps putting library books in the trash can, mistaking it for the library book chute. Pinky looks at Grace’s snail hat and asks her why she is dressed like an ant. Grace nervously tells her that she is a snail, but Pinky doesn’t make fun of her. Instead, she shares her own story about how she got the name “Pinky.” While she was dancing in Barcelona, she was dancing right under a ceiling fan, and her hand hit the ceiling fan, accidentally cutting off her pinky finger. Grace finds in Pinky someone who accepts her for who she is and doesn’t tell her she needs to change her identity to fit in, which is what Grace needs. Pinky is also willing to sit with Grace in her loneliness and just show up for her as a friend, rather than trying to find quick fixes for her loneliness like Ian and Narelle were trying to do. Pinky drives Grace around in a truck and also works as a school crossing guard (there’s a wild scene where a car rushes past Pinky and the kids, and Pinky shouts “Dickhead!” and then the other kids join her, putting up their middle fingers and shouting “Dickhead!” too.) She also takes Grace to get a perm, which looks like an Afro, to be perfectly honest (then again, it’s the 1970s, so Afros were probably all the rage in many places, not just in the United States of America.) While Grace and Pinky are sitting outside eating Chiko rolls, a guy drives past and teases Grace about her perm, and instead of flipping him off and calling him “dickhead” like Pinky would probably do, Grace is humiliated and cries. Pinky tells her to not pay attention to that dude and tells her that she and Grace look really cool with their perms.

Grace eventually finds love, in the form of a man named Ken. Ken seems sweet, and honestly, I had high hopes for Grace and Ken. Ken told her when they first met that he was a shallow person, though, and I thought, Hmmmm, okay? What does he mean by “shallow?” But, okay, I guess they’re happy together. Ken showers Grace with compliments and makes her feel loved, feeding her sausages and whipping her up milkshake after milkshake. Ken proposes to Grace after a month of dating, and she readily accepts. However, over time, Grace learns that Ken really is a shallow human being who only liked her for how he wanted her body image to be. He kept feeding her sausages and making her milkshakes to make her gain weight, and she doesn’t realize this until she finds one of the guinea pigs ruffling through the scrapbook on top of her shelf, and she finds a bunch of pictures that Ken has put of overweight or obese women and comments about their measurements and how much weight they needed to gain for him to find them sexy. Grace realizes that Ken only thought she was beautiful if she looked a certain way, and she throws him out of her house. On top of that, when they are about to get married, Grace receives a letter from Ruth telling her that Gilbert died in a fire. Ruth catches Gilbert kissing another boy and puts them both through this horrible electric conversion therapy, but Gilbert manages to escape and even sets free the pigs and birds that Ruth keeps in cages. Gilbert sets fire to the church building that Ruth and Owen run, and honestly, I cried buckets because I thought, Geez Louise, Grace and Gilbert have been through way too much. Do they have to go through more tragedy? Grace, thinking Gilbert is actually dead, starts hoarding more and more snail-themed stuff–snail statues, snail condoms, anything related to snails. It’s her way of dealing with grief. The house starts to pile with snail stuff, until finally Pinky comes to help out Grace in her time of need after Grace kicks Ken out. Pinky puts Grace on a diet to get her back to her normal weight and starts to get out more often. Unfortunately, Pinky develops dementia and passes away, leaving Grace to cope with her loneliness and despair alone. Pinky was the only person who Grace had left after her and Gilbert were separated, so now she feels like nothing will ever be the same. But Pinky motivated Grace to find what made her happy, and Grace realized that she really did want to become an animator and go to film school. She ends up making her own film and showing it at a film festival. Only a few people attend, and it seems like no one has questions during the Q and A part at the end of Grace’s movie, but then someone in the back raises their hand, and Grace recognizes that it’s Gilbert. I literally broke down sobbing so hard at this part, because I really thought Gilbert had died in the fire, but it turns out that he was able to escape the burning building and escape from Ruth and Owen’s farm. Grace ends up getting rid of all the snail trophies and stuff in her room, and she and Gilbert get to live together again. Even though they don’t have any other family, they have each other.

I could relate to this movie to some extent because I remember losing a dear friend of mine last year and grappling with the grief process. She was in her 70s and was so compassionate and energetic, and she always encouraged me to follow my passion of pursuing music, even when I wasn’t sure if I had what it took to make it as a musician. In 2023 I was depressed, I had quit my job the year before, and I was also feeling suicidal, like there was no point to living. However, I visited her in the hospital in the weeks leading up to her death, and she encouraged me through her life condition. Even though she was going through a much more serious life event than I was (i.e. she was going to die in a few weeks) getting to visit her gave me a different view on life and death. I was pretty careless with how I viewed my life. I often based my happiness on external achievements, like getting a boyfriend or getting admitted into a prestigious grad school or classical music program or leaving my job and making a six-figure income. However, as I continue to practice Buddhism, I am starting to see that while those things are fine to have, there are lots of people who go through heartbreak, rejection and many other life events that take them in a completely opposite direction than the one they envisioned for their lives. I took my life for granted so many times, and looking back, I can’t believe how selfish I was to think that my life was a waste of time and that I was better off not living. Because there were so many people around me who cared about me, including my dear friend. When Grace witnesses Pinky’s death at the beginning of the film and is crying, I cried along with her because it reminded me of when I lost my friend. When I attended my friend’s funeral, I wept and wept. I promised her I would not cry, but I failed to hold my tears in. I was in so much physical and emotional pain, and I just sat through the entire funeral weeping until my tear ducts were exhausted. Grief is a complex emotional experience, and no one chooses to grieve. People also grieve differently depending on their relationship with the person, but bottom line is that grief is a universal experience. I think that is why watching a movie like Memoir of a Snail was so cathartic

I really love how Grace and Pinky’s friendship develops through the course of the movie. Pinky reminds Grace to be her authentic self, and she is the only person Grace has left who she can truly trust. Pinky doesn’t judge Grace for being different because Pinky is true to herself and also has a lot of life experience, so when Grace feels like she cannot move forward in life because she is experiencing grief, separation from her brother, and loneliness, Pinky reminds her that life isn’t about looking backwards, but instead it’s about looking forwards. I have always loved befriending older people, especially in college because I didn’t feel like I fit in with everyone in my peer group. I didn’t have social media, and I was introverted, and somehow, I thought there was some perfect way I had to be throughout college in order to fit in with others. But in my junior year, I remember having a friend who was in her 60s. She had so much wisdom and life experience, and she, like me, was an introvert. I was feeling really depressed at the time and didn’t feel comfortable opening up to others about my depression. I felt so ashamed that I was going through it that I didn’t want to seek professional help for it, but somehow, I had developed trust in this older friend of mine. She listened to me and was able to sit with me and show up fully, even if I was sharing a vulnerable moment with her discussing my battles with depression. She helped me understand that I had a profound mission in my life and that I was going through this experience so that I could encourage others who were experiencing similar struggles. Befriending this woman was an incredible treasure I will cherish forever, and she encouraged me to be true to my authentic self, too, which is what I needed to hear because I often focused so much on being liked by everyone, but deep down I really didn’t like myself. I thought, Maybe, if I was more outgoing, people would like me more, but as I get older, I am starting to realize that not everyone is going to like me, but if that’s the case then it’s not the end of the world. That’s just life. I also love that, even though Grace decluttered her snail memorabilia, she still kept the snail hat that her late dad knitted her when she and Gilbert were kids. That was just such a beautiful and touching moment.

The movie also made me think of this concept in Buddhism called “cherry, plum, peach and damson,” which emphasizes that each person is unique, and that each person should be true to themselves. Grace spends a lot of her time alone, and even when she tries to be friendly with people and come out of her shell, people ignore her and bully her. Growing up, she was bullied a lot and her twin brother, Gilbert, often came to her rescue and beat up the bullies, but after they are separated, Grace has to navigate loneliness and being ostracized pretty much on her own. She ends up staying home a lot and collecting snail-related stuff because it reminds her of her dad and Gilbert, but she ends up feeling only lonelier because she feels disconnected from other people around her. That’s why her friendship with Pinky is so special. Pinky didn’t care what other people thought of her, even if people thought she was eccentric. She fully embraced Grace for who she was rather than doing what other people did and alienating her. As a kid, I really loved going to activities at my local SGI Buddhist center because I was accepted for who I was. I struggled with low self-esteem in middle school, but when I attended SGI meetings, I met other young people who were also struggling with the same things I was struggling with in middle school, fitting in, self-confidence, and loneliness being just a few of them. It was one of the few spaces where I felt I could be truly my introverted artistic self around people who were also encouraged to be their authentic selves. My mentor, Daisaku Ikeda (1928-2023), always encourages people, especially young people, to live true to themselves. The cherry, peach, plum and damson trees are each unique, and just as cherry trees can’t become peach trees, plum trees can’t become cherry trees. We all have different personalities, likes and dislikes, but we all have a unique path to pursue in life and need to follow our own paths in life.

To be honest, even at 31, I’m still figuring out my personality, my identity and my values as a human being. At first, I pressured myself to figure out who I was in such a short time, but as I get older, I realize that you can’t really rush that process of figuring out your own path in life and you can’t compare your path in life to anyone else’s. Of course, this is much easier said than done, but it’s true. I can’t compare my path in life to anyone else’s. I have to follow my own path and be true to myself, because I want to encourage other people, especially young people, to be true to themselves, too.

Thoughts on the movie Whiplash

Several years ago, I watched a College Humor parody that Weird Al Yankovic did of the movie Whiplash to promote his Mandatory World Tour. In the parody, Al makes it so that it actually looks like he is starring in the movie, and that Terence Fletcher is his instructor. Except that Al is playing the accordion, and not the drums like the main character in the movie. It’s a funny parody because Fletcher is this huge perfectionist who keeps pointing out Al’s mistakes, and at first Al is fine with it because he tells Fletcher at the beginning that he wants to be perfect, but he keeps playing the piece at the tempo he wants, not at the tempo Fletcher wants him to play at. The sketch was hilarious, and I saw it years before I finally watched the movie, Whiplash. I’m glad I watched the parody first, though, because watching the actual movie was a very intense experience that made me think of my own struggles with perfectionism and ambition as a musician, and remembering those experiences isn’t always fun because I look back at the kind of person I was back then, and I was super self-critical and hard on myself about everything (I’m still working on taming my inner critic, but I’ve gotten better at recognizing when I’m talking negatively about myself) and I don’t want to be overly critical of myself anymore.

If you haven’t seen Whiplash, it takes place at a fictional music conservatory in New York City, where an ambitious but shy young jazz drummer named Andrew Neiman enters his freshman year. The movie opens with him practicing for hours in a practice room, and Terence Fletcher, who runs a world-class jazz ensemble, comes in and sees Andrew’s potential. Andrew is starstruck to have met Fletcher because of his reputation, and he expresses interest in wanting to join Fletcher’s ensemble. Andrew starts off in an ensemble where he is not known for being the best player, but then Fletcher visits the class, and everyone is super intimidated by him. Fletcher ends up recruiting Andrew for his jazz ensemble because he can tell that Andrew wants it so badly, and Andrew is so elated to join the group. However, he is in for a really harsh and rude awakening when he realizes that Fletcher is not there to stroke Neiman’s ego or make him feel good about himself. He is there to tear Neiman down until Neiman has a breakdown. Fletcher hears someone playing an out of tune note during rehearsal, and he blames it on one of the horn players. When the kid starts crying, Fletcher shouts at him. Over the course of the movie, Fletcher screams at his students, throws chairs at them, calls them nasty names, humiliates individual students in front of the class and pits the drummers against each other. Andrew ends up taking things to extremes, such as breaking up with his girlfriend, Nicole, so he can pursue his career as a successful jazz drummer. At first, Nicole and Andrew are hitting it off, and Nicole likes Andrew because he seems nice, but then Andrew breaks up with her later on in the movie because he thinks that their relationship is going to hinder him from going after his music dreams. Nicole is deeply hurt and later in the film, when Andrew calls to invite her to a performance of his, she tells him that she would need to ask her boyfriend first. Andrew is hurt because he thought that Nicole would easily forgive him and leave the breakup in the past, but he realizes that Nicole moved on and ended up with someone else.

There is one scene in the movie where Andrew is sitting at the dinner table with his family, and his parents are excitedly talking about his brothers’ achievements in sports and extracurricular activities, but when Andrew tells them excitedly that he got into Terence Fletcher’s jazz ensemble, they kind of go “So what?” or “Who cares?” Andrew tells them that it’s the top jazz ensemble in the nation, and his family asks him where that is going to lead him in the future. Andrew tells them about all these famous musicians who worked really hard at their music to be successful and tells his family he wants to be this huge success as a musician, but the family still doesn’t care about his accomplishments, and Andrew takes this personally and starts to put down his brothers’ achievements, thinking he is better than them because he got into Fletcher’s orchestra. Honestly, this movie resonated with me because I remember in 2016, when I auditioned for this professional orchestra in my hometown, auditioning for this one orchestra became my sole focus, and anything else that didn’t have to do with getting into a professional symphony orchestra took a backseat. I practiced and shredded at my cello for hours upon hours weeks before the audition, cramping my muscles and berating myself over and over for missing notes and not being able to play the piece perfectly. Looking back, I would have probably had a lot more compassion for myself because Don Juan by Richard Strauss, which is a common audition excerpt for symphony orchestra auditions, is a very challenging piece to play and it requires you to play all these notes very fast. It is a beautiful piece to listen to, but it requires a lot of practice to master, and also, if 30-year-old me were talking to 22-year-old me, she would have told her to prepare well in advance instead of trying to cram in hours of practice mere weeks before the audition. 30-year-old me now looks back and while I am grateful for the intensive musical training I underwent and all the hours I have practiced, now when I play my instrument, I try to think long-term about my goals rather than only focusing on getting one audition perfectly, because I realize now how unrealistic it is to expect myself to win an audition perfectly on the first try. Of course, maybe people saw the movie differently, and saw Andrew’s perfectionism as healthy and inspiring, but as someone who went through berating myself and putting myself down, I realized looking back at how I thought about success in my 20s wasn’t very realistic or healthy. I know people say that there is healthy perfectionism and maladaptive perfectionism, but I think it’s best to say that there is a difference between healthy striving and perfectionism. Because everyone is going to have their own different version of what “perfect” is, and at the end of the day, it just wasn’t healthy for me to continue pushing myself the way that I was. I still love music and love to play my instrument, but I also have learned to have a life outside of just professional orchestra auditions. I remember when I started working after college at Starbucks, and all I could think about was, “Why am I not playing at Carnegie Hall in New York City right now?” I really wanted to move to New York City to pursue my dream of playing a Carnegie Hall, but back then when I was in my early 20s, I had a very narrow, two-dimensional perspective on success that was just focused on satisfying my own ego. Even though I didn’t win the audition for section cellist, I got on the list of substitute players. I felt kind of crushed, but I asked my orchestra director from college about it, and he encouraged me to not get discouraged about it, which I appreciate looking back because I really wanted to be in that orchestra and beat myself up about it, and I remember while working at Starbucks, I was so impatient to get an opportunity to sub for one of the cellists and I didn’t get any opportunities to sub that year, and I felt rather disappointed. I think in retrospect, dealing with that disappointment and not being able to get what I wanted was probably the best outcome, because I realized that I tied so much of my self-worth and greatness to getting into that symphony orchestra, and I noticed that when I auditioned for other orchestras, I got rejected and would feel so crushed about it. Of course, it’s perfectly normal and healthy to feel disappointment when you don’t ace a test or win a position in an orchestra, but it’s about how you cope with that disappointment. Are you going to throw in the towel and say, fuck it, I am a terrible musician, and I’m not cut out for this career? Or are you going to say, Hey, this really stinks, but it’s not the end of the world and I still know my worth isn’t impacted by whether or not I got into the orchestra.

I think that is why I really loved watching the movie Soul, which I saw a few years ago. If you haven’t seen Soul, it’s about a middle school music teacher named Joe Gardner, who wants to get his big break as a famous jazz musician. He isn’t really happy with his teaching job, or his life in general. He wants to become something great, not lead an ordinary life. However, everything changes when he falls down a manhole while walking down the street, and he falls into a coma. The movie shows how he learns to appreciate his life and not take it for granted after he comes out of his coma, and through his journey as a soul, he realizes the value of his own life and how his worth isn’t based only on how good of a musician he is. Early in the film, Joe wants to impress this legendary saxophonist named Dorothea Williams (played by the beautiful Angela Bassett), but she doesn’t really care about boosting his ego. In fact, she scoffs when he tells her he is a part-time music teacher at a middle school because she doesn’t think that’s a reputable career, so she assumes that he doesn’t have what it takes to be in her jazz band. However, he is so hell-bent on impressing her and while he is performing in the jazz quartet one evening with her, he is dazzling the audience, and Dorothea lets him play quite a few solos. However, after the show is over, even though he got all this applause and recognition, Joe asks her what happens after they played what he thought was his ultimate debut as a jazz musician. Dorothea gives him a huge reality check, though, and tells him that they come back to the club and do the same thing over and over again, play for the same audience every night. Joe realizes that he was so focused on getting his one “big break” as a jazz musician that he ignored so much of what was going on in his daily life. He often took the people and little things in his life for granted, all because he wanted this glamorous career and thought that playing in Dorothea’s quartet was his one shot at being a great musician, but he reflects on what he missed out on in his daily life by focusing only on getting into this lady’s jazz quartet. Honestly, that’s why I really resonated with this movie, because through practicing Nichiren Buddhism, I have learned to appreciate and value my life, whether I play at Carnegie Hall or not. Early on when I was playing music, I was just playing because I loved the music. I wasn’t thinking about conservatory or anything. But as I got older, my teachers started to become more demanding and because I had such a big ego, I would chafe every time my orchestra teacher in senior high school pointed out my mistakes in class. I think all of these music instructors were trying to show me how overly critical I was of myself when I would make mistakes and how arrogant I was at times. I was very fortunate to be able to continue my cello lessons after graduating from college, and I was able to find a wonderful cello instructor and start lessons with him in December of 2016. However, I came into the cello lessons with a sort of cockiness, and I thought, I’ve become an advanced player, so all this guy needs to do is make me a great orchestra musician. I want him to make me the best cellist in the world. He is going to help me make it big as a musician. However, looking back, taking those lessons with him helped me do an incredible amount of human revolution, or inner transformation, because I really did think I was hot shit at the time because I had achieved what I thought was an enviable level of musicianship, but whenever he pointed out my mistakes or got frustrated with me over me repeating these mistakes, it bruised my ego and I would get defensive with him and frustrated with him. As I chanted Nam-myoho-renge-kyo and participated in my SGI Buddhist activities, though, I started to really see how arrogant I was becoming and realized that I didn’t need to be arrogant in order to be a great musician. We’re encouraged to chant about our goals and dreams in the Buddhist community I am a part of, and it’s cool because as you continue to practice Buddhism, other parts of your life open up and you begin to see the opportunity in challenging circumstances to create meaning and value. I was so focused on becoming a great musician and playing at Carnegie Hall, and honestly at the time, I thought that Carnegie Hall was the only time I could prove to people that I had “made it” as a classical musician. But I also realized through chanting that I have other skills and interests that I love and enjoy, such as writing and watching movies. I have learned that having a life outside of music is really important, because it helps you gain perspective and realize that the entire planet Earth doesn’t revolve around your success and your ego. I would often feel ashamed to tell people in classical music circles that I had a day job at Starbucks (and later on, a law firm) but after gaining more confidence in myself, I know now that I needed those jobs to gain basic work experience. I remember going to a classical music symposium that the Dallas Symphony Orchestra had for women and people of color who worked in the classical music field, and we had a concert one night where I got to meet the musicians after the concert. I got to talk with one of the cellists in the orchestra, and I thought that she was going to give me this super glamorous insider advice about how to win an orchestra audition and was going to tell me how wonderful being a member of the orchestra was. While she said some great things about working in the orchestra, she said that you also have to deal with a variety of personalities and attend frequent rehearsals. She also encouraged me to not focus only on winning the audition, too, and gave me a realistic perspective on having an orchestra career and auditioning. After we talked, it felt like I been brought down to Earth. Also, talking with my cello teachers helped me because they had been in the professional field for years and had played with orchestras and as soloists, so they were able to give me a realistic picture of what life as a professional musician is really like. I was in my early 20s when I listened to their experiences, and frankly, I wanted them to make a career in a symphony orchestra seem glamorous and effortless. But it’s not like that. Reading the book Reaching Beyond with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock and Daisaku Ikeda also gave me a more hopeful outlook on being a musician. They said that one’s behavior offstage is just as important as their behavior onstage, so when Wayne was alive, he would treat people with respect even though he was this renowned musician. His Buddhist practice helped him also tap into these endless reserves of creativity and he also used his music to inspire and encourage others, not just for his own personal glory. Herbie Hancock is also the same way. He, too, is a renowned legend in the jazz world, but he always goes back to his Buddhist practice and talks about how it not only helped him tap into those reserves of creativity, but it also helped him value and respect the dignity of all people regardless of their social standing or how much money they made. When I first read the book, I didn’t know if it would apply to me, since I’m trained in classical music and not jazz. But it applied to me very much, because reading the book helped me understand that being a musician is so much more than playing your instrument and it’s definitely not about dazzling people or becoming famous. Music is an expression of people’s humanity, and music has the potential to give people hope and possibility when it doesn’t seem like there is any. I was so focused on stroking my own ego while pursuing this music career, but reading this book encouraged me to go back and chant about my fundamental purpose in life, not just as a musician. Because even if I got my big break at Carnegie Hall, that by itself wouldn’t make me a better (or happier) person. I would still have to show up and go to work like everyone else, and I would have still had to deal with disappointment and failure just like a lot of musicians have to deal with in their careers. But I now play music because I love it and because I want to share it with others.

Book Recommendations

I was going through some old papers and came across this booklist that I meant to give to someone but never did. These are some books I have read in the past and that I recommend:

  • “The Subject and Power” (essay) by Michel Foucault
  • Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
  • Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
  • Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami
  • The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
  • After the Quake by Haruki Murakami
  • A Mad Desire to Dance by Elie Wiesel
  • Native Son by Richard Wright
  • We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates
  • Beloved by Toni Morrison
  • Jazz by Toni Morrison
  • A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
  • The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
  • The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
  • Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
  • The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
  • Crank by Ellen Hopkins
  • The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon
  • Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
  • The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
  • Queen Sugar by Natalie Baszile
  • Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
  • Simon and the Homosapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
  • Mudbound by Hilary Jordan
  • Song of Solomon by Ton Morrison
  • The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
  • Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
  • Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
  • How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez
  • Gone Fishin’ by Walter Mosley
  • The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
  • The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon
  • White Teeth by Zadie Smith
  • Swing Time by Zadie Smith
  • Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirosky

Movie Review: Hustlers

A few weeks ago, I watched the film, Hustlers. I rented a bunch of movies from the library, and I had wanted to see Hustlers for a while, but I was kind of nervous about seeing it at first because I don’t like vomit scenes in movies (I have emetophobia, which is a fear of vomit) and I read that the film had a few vomit scenes in them (there is a character in the movie named Annabelle, played by Lili Reinhart, who vomits every time she gets nervous. It’s not projectile vomiting thankfully, but it was still kind of gross.) But then I watched an interview that was part of a series that Variety magazine does called Actors on Actors. In this interview series, actors interview each other about their work and their approaches to acting. As someone who knows nothing about acting, it is a really interesting series and it’s also informative because these famous actors, who have taken years to perfect their craft, are talking about what it’s like being an actor. Before watching the series, I had this idea that acting was this glamorous effortless job that was all about fame and fortune, but after watching the series, I realized I had a very shallow, two-dimensional perspective on what goes into acting and making movies. Even though these people love what they do, at the end of the day, it is still a job, and they still have to show up and practice their lines and get in character. There was one episode of Actors on Actors featuring Robert Pattinson and Jennifer Lopez. They talked with each other about the movies they were in; Robert was in a film called The Lighthouse and Jennifer Lopez was in the movie Hustlers. Even though I hadn’t seen either of the movies yet, I really love how down-to-earth Jennifer and Robert were in their conversation with each other. You can tell they really, really love acting because they talk about it with such passion, and they loved watching each other’s movies. I think it helped for me to watch both The Lighthouse and Hustlers after seeing the interview, though, because after watching the movies, I was able to appreciate on a deeper level than before the work they did for both of their films. As a high schooler, I remember seeing Robert Pattinson playing Edward Cullen in Twilight and hearing my fellow classmates gush about Edward’s hotness and how he sparkled. I’m glad, though, that he went on to do other work like The Lighthouse and another movie called Good Time, because it shows another side of his acting that I hadn’t seen. Don’t get me wrong; Twilight was great and I admit, I was a bit of a Twilight fanatic back in the day. But then I saw Robert Pattinson in Good Time and then The Lighthouse, and he really takes the acting to another level in these films. In The Lighthouse, he and Willem Dafoe lose their sanity while living on an isolated island in the 19th century, and as the film progresses it gets darker and darker. But the acting was really good. I hadn’t seen Jennifer Lopez’s other films like Selena and Monster-In-Law, but like a lot of people I grew up jamming out to “Jenny from the Block” and “Love Don’t Cost a Thing.” When I saw her in Hustlers I was blown away. I’m not going to lie; Hustlers was an INTENSE movie. Then again, it is about a pretty intense true story. But I’m glad I watched it because I had never heard of it before, and I loved the acting and also the soundtrack for the movie. I love hip-hop, so I loved hearing “I Get Money” by 50 Cent and other songs. The soundtrack features a wide variety of artists, including Fiona Apple, Bob Seger, and a 19th century classical music composer named Frederic Chopin, and honestly each song went so well with each scene. I really love how they used “Night Moves” by Bob Seger for one of the scenes because it’s one of my favorite songs. And I think the song “Royals” by Lorde fits the ending pretty well because of how the film’s events led up to the ending.

If you haven’t seen the film, Hustlers is based on a true story about a group of strippers in New York who got male clients drunk and conned them out of their money. I haven’t read the story yet, but I want to so I can understand what happened in real life and how it compares to how the director depicted it in the movie. The movie is about a stripper named Destiny (played by Constance Wu) living in New York City who is struggling to take care of her grandmother, who is struggling to pay off her debts. She isn’t able to make much money from the male clients who frequent the strip club, but then she sees one of the strippers, Ramona, performing a dance to “Criminal” by Fiona Apple and making it rain with money as male clients shower her with dollar bills. Destiny approaches Ramona about her techniques and skills and wants to learn from her so she can earn more money, and Ramona shows her how to do certain moves and attract more clients. I really love the scene in which Ramona dances to “Criminal” not just because I am a huge Fiona Apple fan, but because I just loved how Ramona got really into it while dancing. Destiny makes more money, and she is able to go back to school and help her grandmother get out of debt. Destiny also meets a really cute guy at a party and they start dating and have a daughter together (I didn’t know that Destiny’s boyfriend was played by the rapper G-Eazy until I saw the end credits. He looked really familiar.)

However, things take a turn when the Wall Street financial crisis happens, and the dancers who work at these clubs find themselves losing male clients who can’t afford to keep going out to the clubs. Destiny also has a fight with her boyfriend, and they break up, leaving her to raise her daughter alone. Ramona is also struggling to pay her rent and take care of her daughter. Ramona ends up hatching a plan for her and Destiny to get together with some other dancers and put drugs in the male clients’ drinks and take all the money off of their credit cards while these men were unconscious from drinking drugged alcohol. For some reason, I thought about this movie I watched a few months ago called The Big Short, which is about the 2008 Wall Street crash. There is a scene that takes place shortly before the crash and it takes place at a strip club, and one of the people working in Wall Street who is warning people about the upcoming housing market crisis is telling a young woman working as a dancer at the strip club about how the housing market bubble is going to burst and people are going to lose everything in the financial crisis, and she refuses to believe that anything bad is going to happen by people inflating their lifestyles. She says in the scene that since things seem so great with the housing market, she owns four or five of these big homes and dealing with these properties (I forgot exactly what she said she did with the houses since I saw the movie a while ago) is another way she can invest in the market. However, as the movie progresses, the prospect of people holding onto that wealth looks really, really bleak. The movie shows how people are getting evicted from their homes, losing their jobs and being unable to make ends meet. During the financial crisis, with less men going to the strip clubs, Ramona and the other dancers have to take on extra hours at their day jobs to make ends meet. The plan to drug the male clients seems to work out at first, and there is a scene where Ramona and the other strip club dancers are celebrating in this big, luxurious apartment over the Christmas holidays with the expensive gifts that Ramona bought them with the money she and the other strippers took from the male clients’ bank accounts. Eventually, Ramona and Destiny get caught and Destiny has to speak to a reporter named Elizabeth (played by Julia Stiles) about everything that went down.

Another thing I loved about the film was the acting. It was incredible. I hadn’t seen much of Constance Wu’s other works other than Crazy Rich Asians, which she was also really good in. She acted the heck out of Destiny in Hustlers: the emotions, the facial expressions, the dancing. She and Jennifer Lopez both gave really powerful performances, and they put their all into expressing the dynamics between Ramona and Destiny in their friendship. Even when they call off the friendship after what transpires, they still share a struggle as these single moms who are trying to survive and make ends meet and also deal with disrespect and discrimination from society as women of color who are also strippers. The friendship dynamic between Ramona and Destiny kind of reminded me of this movie I saw called Zola, which is also about stripping and tensions in female friendship. If you haven’t seen Zola, it is based on a true Twitter thread by A’Ziah “Zola” Wells (last name formerly King) who worked as a stripper in Detroit and went on a trip to Florida with a white girl named Jessica Jessica’s boyfriend, Jared, and Jessica’s pimp. The trip ended up being a sex trafficking operation and Jessica ended up putting Zola’s life in jeopardy. In the movie, Zola (played by Taylour Paige) is working at a Hooter’s in Detroit, Michigan, and one day while serving she encounters a white girl named Stefani (played by Riley Keough). Stefani and Zola bond over being strippers, and they follow each other on social media and become fast friends. Stefanie texts her one evening telling her that a friend of hers told her about some opportunities in Florida to make extra money dancing. At first Zola is skeptical, and so is her fiancé, but Zola ends up taking the trip because her and Stefani are becoming such great friends, and so Zola packs her bags and goes with Stefani, Stefani’s boyfriend, Derrek (Nicholas Braun) and Stefani’s pimp named X (Colman Domingo). At first, they are all bonding over their time together in the car on the way to Florida and rapping, twerking and jamming to “Hannah Montana” by Migos. But as the trip wears on, Zola starts to notice some red flags in her friendship with Stefani, and as the movie progresses, she realizes that Stefani lied to her about this being just a fun trip for them to make extra money as dancers. Zola had to advocate for Stefani to charge more for clients she was having sex with because X wasn’t letting her charge more for her services. It’s also exhausting for Zola to have to watch Stefani have sex with all these clients, and also hard for Stefani’s boyfriend Derrek because he loves her and seeing her get involved in what turns out to be a sex trafficking operation is painful for him because he doesn’t want her to get hurt. Thankfully they make it out alive, but Zola is still traumatized and scarred by what Stefani put her through, and she feels (rightfully) betrayed that this girl she thought was her friend lied to her and put her in a dangerous situation. Zola realizes that Stefani was just taking advantage of her and wasn’t actually a true friend who cared about Zola’s safety. Sure, they both had in common that they were dancers, but at the end of the day, Stefani was only going to look out for her own interests and Zola even shouts at Stefani that her “brain is broke” for putting her through this crazy situation. There is a scene where Stefani briefly tells the story of how her and Zola fell out, but her side of the story is so ridiculous and makes Zola look like the bad guy instead of Stefani. She portrays herself as this good white Christian woman wearing a suit and wearing her hair in this neat bun, while Zola is shown with straw in her hair and later wearing a large trash bag. It is so absurd because I knew that Stefani’s version of the story was inaccurate while Zola was telling the truth about what happened. The film also showed the racial dynamics in their friendship. There is a scene in the film where Stefani is telling this offensive story about a Black woman and she says a lot of disrespectful things, like describing the woman as having a “nappy-ass head” and Zola is realizing, Yikes this white girl is real racist. It’s clear by the time the film is over that Zola and Stefani never actually had a genuine friendship, and even after all the shit that Stefani put Zola through during the course of the movie, she expects Zola to still love her and be her friend, but Zola ignores her as they continue the trip back home. The movie showed me that friendships can be messy even if you share a common experience with the person, and that’s why I thought about Zola when I was writing this review about Hustlers because it’s about female friendship and the complicated parts of that friendship, including how hard it is to leave toxic friendships. Zola couldn’t just go home and forget what happened; Stefani, Derrek and X put her through a LOT of shit, and Zola didn’t have her own car to just get away when shit hit the fan. She put up with a lot of nonsense, and was in a dangerous situation where X was threatening to kill her if she didn’t go with him and Stefani’s plans. Similarly, Destiny couldn’t just walk away from her friendship with Ramona and forget that Ramona had her participate in doing something illegal and was also getting her to involve other strippers in drugging the male clients. What Ramona put Destiny through was pretty intense, and so when Elizabeth (the journalist) asks Destiny about her friendship with Ramona and how they ended up falling out, Destiny is reluctant to talk about it because their friendship was so complicated.

I need to head to bed, but overall, I recommend watching Hustlers. It is an excellent movie.

My favorite animals

Daily writing prompt
What are your favorite animals?
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I really love dogs and cats. I also really love elephants. I saw this really cool video of this pianist named Paul Barton, and he was playing piano for elephants at this elephant sanctuary in Thailand. It was beautiful and I could tell the elephants really loved it. I also really love armadillos. I saw a couple of them during my morning walks trudging across the road with their heavy armored shells. One of them slowly crossed the street to get to the other side, and the other time I saw one he was darting through people’s bushes as I was walking. I guess he wanted to avoid me because he must have suspected I was chasing him, which I wasn’t. I also really, really love bunnies! Every morning on my walk I would see these rabbits sitting on the lawns, quietly eating their grass in peace. When I walked past them, they would run away, probably as a defense mechanism since I am bigger than them and thus could potentially be a predator (then again, I’m a vegetarian, so I wouldn’t eat bunnies anyway.) Every time I was having a crummy morning, I would drive past this abandoned yard, and through the fence I would see a bunny sitting with its ears nestled on the sides of its head, nestled in the grass, quiet as can be, its large black eyes peering at me innocently. Of course, they’re not always great when it comes to people’s gardens because they eat people’s plants. One time I was visiting the garden of this lady who grew these incredibly beautiful iris flowers, and I saw a baby bunny scampering around in the garden. I went “AWWWW HOW CUTE!” and she was (jokingly…but also probably not jokingly) like, “Where’s my shotgun? Those things eat my plants.” There was one time a couple of year ago, I was really depressed at my job and often ate lunch alone in my car, and one day I saw a rabbit eating grass outside of my car window, and I wrote a poem about the bunny and the squirrel that joined it in eating grass. As I wrote the poem, I cried tears of appreciation. I was in a really dark place and seeing this bunny reminded me to have appreciation for those little moments in life that I take for granted.

Movie Review: My Old Ass

A few weeks ago, I came home from work craving a movie. I hadn’t been to a movie theater since the start of the pandemic, and I was wondering when I would ever feel comfortable enough to go back into a crowded theater. Normally I wait until the movie is streaming and no longer in theaters to watch it, but for some reason I was just really wanting to go to see a movie in the theaters. because I hadn’t gone in a long time and really missed going. Of course, I wanted to be safe and wear an N95 mask to the theater since I assumed it was going to be crowded. I figured I would go by myself, but then I told my parents, and we ended up seeing a film together. It was a huge benefit because we went to the 4:20 showing of this movie called My Old Ass, and the theater wasn’t crowded at all. There were only two other people who showed up for My Old Ass, so we pretty much had the theater to ourselves. I was kind of nervous since my family is still observing COVID-19 protocols, but it worked out fine and we still made sure to wear our face masks.

The minute I walked into the theater, I realized I had forgotten my earplugs, which was a bummer because I forgot how loud the surround sound is in the movie theater. The Gladiator II trailer was playing, and it was LOUD. I had to cover my ears during the trailer. But at the same time, I forgot how happy I was going to a theater to see a movie. It took a few years before I was comfortable enough to go back into a movie theater because I wasn’t sure about the transmission of COVID-19, but again, it was a huge benefit that there was almost no one in the theater except for a few other people. Some other trailers that showed were Conclave, which stars Stanley Tucci and Ralph Fiennes, Wicked with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, and A Real Pain which stars Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin (I love comedy-drama movies, so I really want to see it. Also, I love Jesse and Kieran’s acting, and I loved Kieran’s acting in the show Succession. The trailer also looked really good.)

If you haven’t seen My Old Ass, it’s a science-fiction comedy drama starring Canadian actress Maisy Stella as Elliott, an 18-year-old girl who plans to move out of her boring hometown and go to university in Toronto. At the beginning, we see her celebrating her 18th birthday with her friends Ruthie (Maddie Ziegler) and Ro (Kerrice Brooks). They ride a boat on water, with Elliott steering the boat wrong and bumping into stuff most of the time. Elliott gets off the boat and goes into a bakery where this cute girl named Chelsea works, and even though Elliott is nervous to talk to Chelsea, Ruthie and Ro encourage her to do so since Elliott might not see this girl again when she goes to college. Also, it’s her 18th birthday, so hooking up with this cute girl is the best present ever. Meanwhile, Elliott’s parents and two brothers are sitting at the kitchen table while the birthday cake they made for Elliott sits lonely at the center of the table with an 18th birthday candle in the middle. Elliott continues to hang out with her friends, and in the evening, they go on a camping trip and try a mixture of psychedelic mushrooms. Ruthie and Ro start tripping out and dancing around the forest, and Elliott thinks she is tripping out, too, when a 39-year-old version of future Elliott (played by Aubrey Plaza) appears. However, the older version of Elliott (known henceforth by Elliott as My Old Ass) is really there. Elliott has all sorts of questions for My Old Ass, and even asks the hilarious question, “Can I touch My Old Ass? What does it feel like?” However, My Old Ass has gone through some serious life experiences, and she isn’t about to bullshit Elliott about what to do with her life. Elliott thinks that in her 30s, she’ll still be partying and having fun, but My Old Ass looks back with regret at a lot of things she did in her youth, and she’s come back to Elliott in hopes that Elliott will get to change and not make decisions or do things she regrets.

A couple of things My Old Ass tells Elliott to do is 1. to spend more time with her family before she leaves for Toronto and 2. to avoid a guy named Chad. When I first saw the trailer, I didn’t know what to expect. Who was Chad? Was he a bad guy? I came in cold not knowing who Chad was. Elliott promises to obey My Old Ass, and she doesn’t think she will fall in love with anyone else because she successfully asked Chelsea out and they are in a relationship with each other. However, Elliott goes to swim in the lake one day and encounters a young guy named Chad. Chad seems friendly enough, but Elliott remembers that My Old Ass told her to avoid Chad. Elliott tries to dodge Chad, but she can’t seem to avoid him, and she finds herself falling in love with him. Elliott remains conflicted: should she avoid Chad or disobey My Old Ass and have sex with him? Chad is a nice and respectful young man, and honestly, at first, I wondered why My Old Ass told Elliott to not fall in love with him. Was he a cheater? Was he a jerk? These were all questions I asked myself as the film went on. Elliott gradually falls more and more in love with Chad, and even though she is in love at first with Chelsea, she starts hanging out with Chad more often. Elliott also starts to spend more time with her family even though she doesn’t want to at first. Elliott gets a rude awakening when she finds out that her family’s farm is being sold and no one told her about it. Elliott asks her parents and siblings why no one told her, and they tell her that they didn’t think she would care about the farm getting sold because she was always talking about how she wanted to leave her hometown. However, Elliott has many childhood memories of the farm and doesn’t want it to be sold. She starts to confide her problems and worries to Chad, and he listens and supports her. Elliott later tells him that she is bisexual, but Chad accepts her for who she is, and they end up having sex. Elliott tries to contact My Old Ass for a while, but My Old Ass doesn’t reappear much during the middle of the movie. Elliott isn’t able to get ahold of her, but then later on My Old Ass finds out that Elliott had sex with Chad, and she is very upset. Elliott asks her why she didn’t want her to sleep with Chad, but My Old Ass doesn’t want to tell her why. But Elliott persists in knowing what happened to Chad, and finally My Old Ass tells her that she didn’t want Elliott to fall in love with Chad because Chad in the future ended up getting killed in a car crash. My Old Ass is still recovering from the grief of losing Chad, and she doesn’t want 18-year-old Elliott to go through the same thing. Chad is able to see My Old Ass and meets her, and instead of continuing to tell Elliott to avoid Chad so that she wouldn’t risk losing him, My Old Ass tells Elliott to do what she wants and to enjoy her time with Chad because she sees that Elliott is truly happy to be with Chad. By the time the movie was over, I was crying and blowing my nose in several tissuesI think I resonated with this movie so much because I saw myself in Elliott in some ways. I resonated with her wanting to leave her hometown to go to college somewhere else because when I was in high school, I was so determined to leave my hometown and go out of state for college. I thought I was going to be happier leaving the South for the East Coast, and whenever someone at school or at home annoyed me, I just smugly said, “Well, in [x] months, I’ll be out of here!” But during my first year, I realized how hard it was to live so far away from home without the constant presence of my family. I took my parents’ presence for granted, and when I left for college, I cried pretty much every day because I missed them. At the end of the school year, I was so relieved to come back home for the summer because I was going to spend it with my family. I know this sounds corny, but it’s true: you don’t appreciate what you have until it’s gone. Also, after reflecting on the movie, I realized that it was teaching me an important lesson: you cannot change the past, but you can focus on the present and the future. Even though future Elliott wanted to change her past, she couldn’t. 18-year-old Elliott was going to make mistakes and do stuff that 39-year-old Elliott was going to regret, and she had to accept that. Even though 39-year-old Elliott told 18-year-old Elliott to avoid Chad, she could not. She wanted to try and shield 18-year-old Elliott from the pain of losing a loved one, but she couldn’t undo what she did in the past or make Chad live forever. She had to let 18-year-old Elliott be 18-year-old Elliott. However, through the course of the movie, 18-year-old Elliott learns that she can’t take her family or the people in her life for granted. As I’ve been reading a lot about life and death in Buddhism, it’s made me appreciate the fact that my parents gave me life. Without my parents, I would not be here, and that’s just a fact that I eventually had to come to. And it’s scary to realize, but the reality is that I want to enjoy being with them now because at some point, like me and everyone else, they will pass away. Going through grief is going to hurt like a motherfucker, but I am going to have to go through it like everyone else, so I want to cherish these people in my life while I have them.

Do I need time?

Daily writing prompt
Do you need time?
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Yes. I love having time to do things. I even just appreciate that I got to get some exercise in, because I’m trying to take better care of my health. I don’t want to take time for granted anymore, because everything is so fast paced and it’s easy for me to be impatient. This impatience has shown up in so many areas of my life, especially when it comes to making big decisions like whether I should get married and have children or start dating. I was really impatient to get married, and when I didn’t achieve that milestone, I thought something was wrong with me. But I’m honestly glad I have this time to myself to be single because I am getting to know more about who I am and what I want most in life. I tend to want to read books really fast, but now I want myself to appreciate slowing down and reading a book. When I check my phone, I’m always so impatient for people to text me back and when I’m dealing with uncomfortable experiences such as uncertainty and loneliness and anxiety, I tend to self-soothe by picking up my phone and doing random Internet searches, like “am I asexual quiz” or “is there something wrong with me?” or “why does so-and-so hate me?” and scrolling through my YouTube feed, through long videos I want to watch but don’t have the attention-span for. That’s why I’m trying to read a book before bed instead of looking at my phone. It is really tempting for me to go to sleep to ASMR videos, but I think for some reason, I’ve noticed when I check my phone, I tend to get more anxious and start to worry, “Did so-and-so text me back yet?” or “Did Sally (I’m going to put in a fake name for a hypothetical person instead of so-and-so because the latter sounds really vague) think that GIF I sent about Hump Day was funny enough? Should I send a follow-up GIF?” (Side note: I really stink at sending GIFs, so my messages often can come off as robotic and unemotional. I have a phone, and yet I am really bad with texting lingo.) When I read a book, it forces my brain to process information, to think, to understand another perspective that is different from my own, and to get in touch with myself by providing me with that space for self-reflection. I am still chugging through Bleak House by Charles Dickens, and because I’m so used to checking my phone now, I start to get antsy after a few paragraphs. But I also need to realize that I’m not going to perfectly understand everything Dickens is saying right from the get-go. A lot of times I will tell myself, I’d better enjoy this alone time before I get married and have kids, but I’m even wondering if I’m wanting to get married and have kids because all of my friends seem so happy on the outside because they are married with kids. Even if I wind up in a romantic relationship with someone, I still want to pursue my hobbies and interests and still be independent. Maybe this time is great for me because I need space to think about what I really want out of life instead of only thinking about what I should do. When I delve into the world of Dickens’s 19th century London, I encounter characters who are going through far-worse shit than I am. These people are going through poverty, illness and several other problems, while I am out here whining about work and not fitting in with others. My problems seem so petty compared to what the characters in the books I read go through. I really love fiction because I can delve into another person’s world and travel to places without paying for a plane ticket or having to plan for a trip. I do want to travel the world someday, but I am glad for now that I have books to give me that space to escape. I can travel to 19th century London, I can travel on many adventures in America with a British woman who has a shopping addiction (thank you, Sophie Kinsella) and I can travel to a reclusive cabin in 19th century Massachusetts and have a dialogue with Emily Dickinson about life and death through reading her poems.

I’m glad I also had this time to think about what career I wanted to pursue. I still love playing music, but my reasons for continuing it are different because my dreams aren’t as ego-driven as they once were in my early 20s. I wanted to get a prestigious music opportunity to boost my ego, not because I genuinely cared about music, and I remember complaining whenever I had to go to my day jobs, thinking, “Ugh, this isn’t my career! Why am I at this job paying off my student loans?!? I could be playing Don Juan with a top orchestra right now?” But looking back, that ego-driven mindset was the very reason I needed to get a swift kick in the booty from Life to teach me how to be humbler and not think that being a classical cellist made me better than a barista serving venti vanilla sweet cream cold brews at their local Starbucks (I had a really nice customer with that order, and she had it a very specific way. She taught me the value of patience, that’s for darn sure.) Also, I fucking paid off my student loans, which is a pretty huge accomplishment. Even though I didn’t get to play with the professional orchestras, I needed to gain some sort of work experience after college, because 1. I couldn’t afford graduate school, 2. I couldn’t afford to keep lying in bed going down the YouTube rabbit hole and concocting ways to end my jaded cynical 22-year-old life and 3. interest on student loans is a muthafucka and was just going to keep going up until I paid that shit off. I also am glad I had this time through my 20s to do things I love, like writing on this blog and just writing a lot in general. I knew as a kid I wanted to be a writer, but I have always done it as a hobby. After college, I wondered if I should pursue music professionally, and even though it was hard to go through all the rejection, disappointment and other complicated emotional experiences of being a classical musician, I had to build character and become a stronger person. What this whole experience has taught me is that resilience and character take time and patience to build. And also, same with self-confidence. It takes patience and hard work to believe in your capabilities and know the value you can bring to relationships, work and other areas of life. I needed time to also develop spiritual strength through practicing Buddhism. Practicing Buddhism helped me develop a strong foundation for my life, and I am still developing that foundation, but I feel a lot happier with myself and more comfortable being my authentic self. When I was pursuing the music career, I felt I had to be this pretentious person who knew everything, but what I have learned over the years is that, well, you’re human and you’re not going to know everything. You’re just not. And learning that has taken me many years and it’s still a lesson I need to internalize.

But long story short, do I need time? Yes, I still need time to live my life and deepen my relationships with people and do stuff that I love to do before I leave this planet for good and go on to my next lifetime.

Movie Review: Blindspotting

On Monday, I came back from a trip and watched a movie called Blindspotting. If you haven’t seen the film, it’s a comedy-drama starring Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal. Honestly, I didn’t read that many reviews about this movie before watching it. I just saw the trailer a couple of years ago and thought it looked pretty good. I also really love Daveed Diggs in Hamilton (the version on Disney +. I still have yet to see the original live Broadway version) and blackish. In Hamilton he plays Thomas Jefferson, and his performance (along with of course Lin-Manuel Miranda’s performance as Alexander Hamilton) blew me away. And in the popular TV show Blackish, he played Rainbow Johnson’s brother, Johan. To be honest, I only knew a couple of the actors in the movie, one being Daveed and the other being Utkarsh Ambudkar, who plays a character named Donald in the first Pitch Perfect movie.

The film Blindspotting is an important film to watch because it tackles a lot of uncomfortable subject matter, namely police brutality. At the beginning of the movie, Collin is driving a movers’ truck for his job at night, and he stops when he sees a young Black man running across the street. Collin sees a white police officer yelling at the young Black man to freeze and watches in horror as the officer shoots and kills the young Black man. He looks in horror at the atrocity this officer committed, and the office turns to look at him. Of course, Collin is fearing for his life at this point because he is a Black man living in America, and even though the place he grew up in, Oakland, is predominantly Black, it’s not isolated from the rest of America, which has a long history of racism that is very much still alive. The last scene was pretty powerful, when Collin and Miles go into the empty house to help people move, and they find a picture of the white officer who killed the Black man earlier in the film. Collin goes upstairs and finds the officer in his room, and he gets out his pistol and holds it up to the officer, reciting a freestyle rap about how white American society often views Black men like him (Collin) as threatening and menacing, but that in the moment that Collin saw the officer kill that young Black man that one evening, he realized that the officer was a monster for killing another human being simply because he was Black. It is a really powerful scene, and after Collin recites the spoken word, the officer starts crying and has to reflect on what he did to the young black man. At first, the officer is only focused on not getting shot and killed by Collin, but Collin gets this man to reflect on his actions and realize that the young Black man that the officer killed was a human being just like he was and that he had no right whatsoever to rob another human being of life simply because of the color of his skin.

As a Black person, this scene brought up a lot of feelings for me because I thought about the killing of a Black man named George Floyd in 2020, and how confused, hurt, angry, and hopeless I felt about being Black in America. Like, why are my people getting killed?!? Why?!? I think chanting about my grief really helped because when I chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo (it’s a Buddhist mantra , I am affirming and reaffirming over and over that my life has inherent dignity, and that no one can take it away from me, no matter how people treat me. After chanting about how I could take action in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, I remembered how writing, and especially writing poetry, was a medium for me to express myself. When I was going through a dark time in high school, I wrote poetry about my depression and my struggles with self-hatred, and writing helped me get out all the pain I had bottled up and couldn’t communicate with people. I was unsure and lost when trying to process my grief in the wake of the killings of so many Black people in America, so I wrote a poem after reading an article about the murder of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT living in Louisville, Kentucky. After reading the article, I was shaken to my core, especially since I was the same age as Breonna when she was killed. I wrote a poem called “Breonna Taylor is 26” and it was a space for me to honor the inherent dignity of Breonna Taylor’s life and speak out against police brutality. After writing the poem, it made me realize that I could use art not just for my personal enjoyment, but to also speak about issues that I was passionate about.

The movie also makes some subtle commentaries, such as who gets to use the N-word or not. Each day that Collin and Miles go into the office, they are greeted by Val, who is Collin’s ex-girlfriend. Val broke up with Collin after he started a fire outside of a bar, but up until that point, I didn’t know the full story of what went down. There is a scene where a South Asian guy named Rin (who is played by Utkarsh Ambudkar) is going to the office with Tin, a Black friend of his, and when Rin sees Collin walking into the office, he recounts the whole story about how a drunk white guy ordered a scorpion bowl that was on fire, and he took it outside to show everyone. While recounting the story, Rin refers to Collin as the N-word (the version with an “a” at the end. I don’t feel comfortable saying the actual word) and he stops and has to correct himself when Tin reminds him that he can only use the N-word around him. Rin calls Collin a “dude” instead of the N-word. It made me think of the movie Dope, which takes place in Inglewood, California. The main character, Malcolm, is African American, and his two friends, Jib and Diggy, are respectively Latino and Black. In the film, there is a scene in which Malcolm, Jib and Diggy argue with this white guy named Will over whether white people get to say the n-word. Will thinks he should be able to use it, but Diggy slaps him for saying it, and then Jib, who is Latino, says the word. Will asks why Jib can use the word since he doesn’t look Black, and Jib says that he gets to use the word because he found out on an ancestry site that he is 14 percent African. Honestly, I don’t know where I personally stand on the use of the N-word, but I personally don’t like using the word because of its long history as a pejorative term. The debate about who gets to use the N-word or not is a long discourse that has spanned for many years, mostly in debates about cultural appropriation. In Blindspotting, there is a scene in which Collin and Miles go to a party in a gentrified neighborhood of Oakland, and Collin is one of a handful of Black people at the party. Most of the party guests are white, and while the host of the party is white, he tries to act cool by dropping in some African American Vernacular English (AAVE) to communicate with people at the party. Miles is at this party thinking, What is going on?!? Miles is wearing a T-shirt that jokes about killing hipsters, poking fun at the gentrification of Oakland. One of the Black guests at the party thinks that Miles, who is white, is pretending to act Black, not knowing that Miles grew up in a predominantly Black neighborhood and was never pretending to be Black. Miles gets angry at the guy and beats him up, and then shoots a gun when the guest tells him to leave. Collin is embarrassed by Miles’s behavior, and he shouts at Miles that because Miles is white, he wasn’t going to get arrested, but because Collin is Black, he wouldn’t have been able to shoot a gun like that without repercussions. It made me think of when, in the fall of 2014, this 12-year-old Black boy named Tamir Rice was playing with a toy gun and a white police officer shot and killed him. I remember being in college when I heard about this, and in a class, I was taking on African American history, I and many other students, as well as the professor, were grieving. However, I was studying with a classmate in my Spanish class in our dorm, and she made a comment about Tamir Rice’s murder. She laughed nervously and said something along the lines of “Well, the kid had a gun, so of course he was going to get shot.” I really didn’t know how to feel about what she said and felt pretty confused and frustrated after the conversation. Collin calls Miles the N-word (with an “a” at the end, not a hard “r” version) and asks Miles angrily why he let Collin call him that epithet, but Miles never called him the N-word. Miles gets exasperated and tells Collin “Fuck you,” and refuses to call Collin the N-word even after Collin goads him into saying it. When Ashley, Miles’s partner, bandages up Miles after the fight, she says that Collin and Miles were acting like [N words] and Miles asks her to stop calling him the N-word because he realizes that even though he grew up in a low-income Black neighborhood for his entire life, he is still white and can get away with a lot of the things that his Black friend, Collin, can’t do, like keeping a gun on himself for protection.

There is a pretty intense scene in which Sean, who is Ashley and Miles’s son, finds Miles’s handgun and plays around with it out of curiosity. Ashley, Miles and Collin are afraid that Sean is going to accidentally shoot himself, and after they take the gun from Sean, Ashley yells at Miles and Collin to leave her house because of the harm they put Sean in by keeping a handgun around the house. Even though Miles thought he was using it to protect his family from crime, he didn’t realize that his son could find the gun. It made me think of this commercial I saw about gun safety that the Ad Council did as part of their End Family Fire campaign. The campaign launched in order to encourage safe gun storage and prevent “family fire,” which, according to the Ad Council, is defined as “a shooting caused by someone having access to a gun from the home when they shouldn’t have it.” Honestly, the ads are all pretty terrifying, but that’s because the misuse of firearms by family members is a terrifying reality. One ad that stuck with me was one in which a little boy asks his father if he can play with the firearm that he found in their household, and the father thinks his son is joking about wanting to play with the firearm. It shows the little boy sneaking into his dad’s drawer and finding his firearm, and then the next shot shows that the boy is no longer there, and the father is reflecting on what could have gone differently if he had locked up the gun so that his son wouldn’t find it. It was a pretty chilling ad, and it gave me nightmares, but honestly, I needed to know about this issue because I didn’t really know much about gun safety before. I think that’s why the scene in Blindspotting with Sean handling Miles’s handgun out of curiosity was such a chilling and painful scene because it showed that even though Miles got the gun for protection, no one probably told him that his child could potentially get his hands on it even if Miles thought that he kept the handgun in a place where his son couldn’t find it. His partner, Ashley, didn’t even know that Miles had a handgun, so when she finds Sean seated on the floor, playing with the gun, it is heartbreaking and makes Ashley feel that Miles betrayed her trust because she wasn’t honest with him about having a gun around the house.

Even though Blindspotting is a serious drama, it also has some tender lighthearted moments. There is a hilarious scene in which Miles, who is white, tries to sell a bunch of flatirons to a Black hair salon owner. He does so in a very convincing and hilarious way and speaks about the flatirons in a free verse spoken word form. I love the look that Miles gives the hairdresser when she tells him that she won’t take the flatirons off his hands unless she knows the price he is selling them for. I don’t know how to describe the look he gives her, it’s just that he seems so determined to convince this woman how good quality these flatirons are, like he’s saying to her “Oh woman, it is ON. Bring it.” He continues to rap about how incredible the flatirons are (he got them from Collin’s mom, Nancy) and he is trying to sell them for money so he can send his son, Sean, to a better school and so that he can get his friend, Collin, out of probation. The whole scene is funny because this Black female hairdresser isn’t expecting this white guy to come up in her shop and talk to her about flatirons with such boldness, so Miles coming up and so confidently trying to sell her curling irons in front of a bunch of Black women getting their hair done. He literally gets on a soapbox to freestyle about flatirons and natural hair, and I was ALL FOR IT.

Weird Dreams part 2

October 17, 2024: had a crazy dream that I was sitting at a table with this girl named Maddison Hansen and another blonde girl from high school, and we were talking about our shoe sizes. I told them I was a size 12 in shoe size, and they were like “Oh my gosh. That’s huge.” (In real life, when I was in college one time, I told this one girl I wore a size 9 in boots, and she just exclaimed, “Oh my.” I am short so having big feet is an interesting quirk of mine. Like one of my math teachers from middle school said about this one other short girl in the class who had big feet: “You’re a mighty mouse that has big feet.”) Somehow the table Maddison, the other girl from high school and I sat at was on astroturf/ fake grass and it sloped to where if I moved back so much as an inch, I could fall backward and fall off this little hill. I joked with the girls that I act my shoe size and not my age (I think this is because I was listening to “Kiss” by the artist Prince, and there is one lyric where he says, “Act your age, mama/ Not your shoe size/ Then maybe we can do the twirl.” Also, in sixth grade there was this one time where a guy named Tony got called out in class for goofing off, and our social studies teacher asked him, “Sir, what is your shoe size?” And he replied, “It’s six.” The teacher then told him, in front of the class, “Act your age and not your shoe size.” The whole class looked at each other and was like, “Man, that was COLD.”) I was also at this boarding school and my dad had me pack some black pepper in a little baggie and I tried to hide it from our teacher (she looked like Janelle Monae) and the teacher saw me keep the bag of pepper under the desk and asked, “What are you hiding?” in a snotty sort of high-pitched voice, and I sheepishly showed her the black pepper.

“You know you couldn’t take that with you on the plane,” she said. “Why did you bring it?”

“Ummmm…I wanted to put it on my food?”

“Oh, do you know the menu for the week?” she snobbishly asked.

“Ummmm..” I tried to remember what was on the menu, but I couldn’t.

“So, you don’t remember what was on the menu?” she huffed. She continued to condescend to me.

Before she could patronize me any further, I woke up and shrieked, “Argh, no!”

Before that I was talking with these two girls (one of them was a girl named Hannah who was in my English class during senior year of high school) and one of the girls looked like Jojo Siwa (just her face and blonde hair) and we were going to miss each other, so we sang some songs together. I think they were leaving school.