Uncategorized – Page 21 – The Arts Are Life

Wishy Washy Wanda and the LinkedIn Profile

6:00 am. Wanda rubs her eyes of crust and with a grumpy growl turns off her alarm clock on her smartphone, which is blaring Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” and lay in bed for a good ten minutes.

Breathe in, breathe out. She looks up at the ceiling, figuring out what she was going to do for the day. If only she didn’t make a stupid poor decision to leave her corporate job to take a mental health break. What a bullshit excuse.

One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi….

She feels the tightness leave her chest. Her shoulders relax. She picks up her phone and started scrolling.

Crap. There’s civil war in Sudan. COVID is (technically) not over. And anti-Semitism is alive and well. She continued scrolling, and had a thought. Hmmm, what is my crush and his girlfriend up to? Her heart skips a beat, and a voice in her head screams, No! Don’t check social media today! You’ll be heartbroken. They’re vacationing in fucking Bermuda, for crying out loud! Bermuda!

She doesn’t listen to her conscience, and instead logs into Facebook. She searches under his name. “Jasper Friedrich.” He pops up and his girlfriend, Vera, is kissing him on the cheek in front of a palm tree.

Wanda’s heart goes down with a thud. Her conscience tuts-tuts and shakes its head. Girl, see, I told you. But would you listen? Nooooo….

She shakily logs out, and then with a thump her head falls back onto the pillow. Maybe it’s not a great time to do stuff today. It’s early and clearly things aren’t working out with my life.

But she knows that chanting is going to help her stay motivated, so she resists the temptation to go back to sleep. Her body, emotionally worn down, screams, No! Life is pointless. Go back to Dreamland forever, and never wake up! But she needs to. Her hands clumsily fish for her little orange bottle of Zoloft pills. Dr. Greenberg told her to take one at the same time each day. 6:15 am it was. She trudges to the kitchen downstairs, and nearly trips and falls on old Sparky, her fluffy white little dog. Sparky gives a little yelp.

Ah, shit! Sorry. She picks up Sparky and brings him down the stairs with her as she trudges more carefully down the stairs.

She puts Sparky down, and he runs across the stained white carpet. When she was 12, Wanda’s mom held a birthday party and the adults all got tipsy, and Brenda Crawford, their next-door neighbor, accidentally spilled wine on the carpet. Brenda and her family packed up and moved to Montana for Dave’s job, but Wanda’s mom still bears a grudge. If she had her bearings, she would mail that stained rug all the way to Billings so that Brenda would never forget.

Wanda turns the tap on, careful not to wake her mom, who lies and snores on the couch so peacefully. She stayed up late completing an assignment for work, and is knocked out. Wanda shakes out one of the Zoloft pills from the bottle, and knocks it back with a gulp of water. They’re not magic pills, the Doc told her, but they work. She crosses her fingers and hopes for no more staying in bed all day, no more appetite fluctuations, and no more suicidal ideations.

She goes over to her wooden altar, which is framed by two beautiful purple vases of dying flowers. A single navel orange sits on the side as a dear gnat dances giddily around it, intoxicated by the zesty smell of the slowly maturing fruit. She opens the altar and sits back in her chair, and starts chanting the phrase Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo…

She gets in rhythm with the sound of her voice, and it vibrates throughout her body. Sparky scampers over because he loves the sound of Wanda chanting. As Wanda chants, Sparky is calmed down and lies down, looking up at her with a yearning expression, Please pet me. With gentle fingers she strokes Sparky’s silky fur and continues chanting. She finishes reciting the second and sixteenth chapters of the Lotus Sutra and closes the altar. Her mom is still sleeping. Wanda goes back upstairs. Okay, now she feels a tad better. Still heartbroken but feeling okay enough to get through the day without a panic attack.

She opens her laptop and waits as it buffers for a good ten minutes. She got this laptop five years ago, and while it held up pretty well over the years, she didn’t get a laptop cooler for it, so it’s been overheating and it’s exhausted the battery. Too bad they don’t make the kinds of batteries for her laptop anymore, so now she has to save money she doesn’t have to buy a new laptop.

When the screensaver of Homer Simpson eating a doughnut pops up, she double clicks on the Google Chrome shortcut icon on her desktop. She opens the YouTube app on her phone’s home page, and types in the search engine, “Beyonce Love on Top” and clicks on the first search result.

Tired of having erectile dysfunction? Then take Viagra Plus, the only—

She clicks the black box at the bottom, “Skip ads.” Beyonce’s soulful voice jams out, and Wanda gets to work. She types in the search engine, LinkedIn.com. She attended a webinar yesterday for career development and listened to Marissa, the person who connects all the alums together for networking and social events, talk about the value of networking on LinkedIn. The minute Marissa mentioned networking, Wanda’s heart skipped a beat, even more than when she saw Jasper and Veda smooching in Bermuda this morning.

She closes her eyes and just lets Beyonce’s greatness wash over her, and then she feels sad. If only I had a love like Jasper, then I would be complete. If Vera wasn’t in the picture, then him and I would be happy together. She knows she shouldn’t be jealous, but ever since he told her about his girlfriend, all these painful insecurities have emerged from deep within her life, and sometimes they feel too overwhelming and painful to deal with. Jasper keeps my love on top, and as she thinks this she imagines being Beyonce and singing a corny rendition of “Love on Top,” black leotard and fishnet tights. Not that she would fit in a black leotard and fishnet tights, because she is twenty pounds overweight and her flesh would hang out of the fishnet tights. Very unflattering look.

She shakes herself out of her fantasy when Beyonce finishes the song with a #flawless bang, and her eyes open. Yep, her practically nonexistent LinkedIn profile is just sitting there, collecting dust for about two months. She hasn’t posted a thing, but her rich and successful connections sure have. She panicks. She remembers in the webinar, they talked about how to have a complete LinkedIn profile, summary, job titles, everything. How can she wax poetic about her three year part-time stint in college at the Tailfin, a fish joint known for their lobster rolls and snarky staff? Or her one month gig spinning cardboard arrow signs, sweating while dressed as the Statue of Liberty in 100 degree Texas heat?

She hears a knock.

“Come in.”

Layla, her older sister, pops in.

“Mom headed to work an hour ago. I’m going to class.”

“Okay.”

She looks at my computer screen.

“What are you doing?”

I give her a blank look.

“Nothing.”

She snorts.

“Weird.”

And leaves.

I don’t care though because I have all the time in the world to work on this. My About section is short. Maybe I should put some accomplishments? But, like, how do you talk about accomplishments if you haven’t accomplished anything major? I’m not a bestselling author, I’m not even paying paid gigs, so can I even call myself any of these things?

She types a short sentence in the section.

“I am a writer and musician.”

Bam! But oh crap, according to that LinkedIn profile experts page she needs to put more, sound more like she knows what she is talking about and knows her brand. But like, what is my brand? I’m not very self-promotional.

“You need to have a brand to market yourself. Everyone knows that!” Lucy told her as they sat a week ago at Brandy’s Cafe eating shrimp scampi and mimosas for brunch. Because Lucy was working, she paid for Wanda’s meal, even though Wanda told her she wasn’t going to eat because she felt ashamed for Lucy paying for her meal.

Wanda spirals into another almost panic attack. Okay, just breathe. It’s not that deep, kid…

Her mind spirals into another self-critical cycle.

You suck. Your profile sucks. You have no value.

Wanda does a quick Google search, “How to write a linkedin summary if you quit your job.” The first result is a generic post about how to write a linkedin summary. She finds another article with examples of LinkedIn summaries that attracted employers. As she scrolls through the list, instead of making her feel encouraged, she feels less confident that she can pull off a compelling summary with her work history in retail and office administration.

She goes under the experience section. The Tailfin, January 2018- January 2022. She looks at the bullet points. Ugh, so annoying, she has written about it like it’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Really girl, it’s just a fucking resume, not your autobiography.

She looks up the profile of Maggie Bergman, who graduated as valedictorian at her alma mater and has 500 connections. Maggie’s angelic face, framed by curly brown hair, touched up for a professional photo. Maggie Bergman, Executive Director at The Metropolitan Opera.

About

Experienced executive director with five years in the opera music industry….

After reading the 2,000 word summary, Wanda panics. She’s not following the rules of the articles she read about summaries. Hers isn’t long enough, so why not make it longer? Maggie’s summary clearly attracted the likes of recruiters because she has mad connections and is so popular.

She looks up. Two hours have passed and she still hasn’t written a word. So she panics and looks up another article. One of the tips reads, “Sound personable. You’re not just your job title!”

Okay, she relaxes a bit. I’m not my job title, I’m not my job title. Maybe to break the ice I could talk about me.

She is about to type something and her fingers hover over the keyboard in anticipation. But wait, what if some creepy stalker dude, like the guy who groped her that time she went to her friend’s twenty-first birthday party and has stalked her ever since. She feels another attack coming on. He will find you, her mind repeats, he will find you and hurt you. So don’t post anything.

She chants under her breath to calm down. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo….After a few minutes, she calms back down but still hasn’t written anything remotely interesting. Fuck it, she thinks, I’m going to spend ten minutes max on this. Whatever I don’t finish, I don’t finish.

Add a profile picture. That was the advice she heard on the webinar. It gets you more views. But I hate it when people can publicly see my picture. That dude at the party ruined shit for me. Thanks a lot, Bryan (or whatever your name is. It doesn’t matter. You were too drunk and disgusting to care.)

She clacks and clacks away at the keyboard. It’s not perfect but worth a shot, she shrugs. After an hour she has a summary:

Hello. I am a twenty-seven year old writer living in Dallas with my mom, sister and my dog Sparky. I am not sure what I want to do with my life, but I came in undeclared to college and after a lot of soul searching I majored in government and minored in Spanish. I was awarded a prize by the Grant Lewis Department of Political Science and got to represent an ambassador group at former President Barack Obama’s inauguration. I have worked a variety of jobs, mostly in retail and food service. I worked as a…..

It droned on and on. This will be a snorefest.

…I am not sure what career I want but by 2025 I want to write books full-time and release my first album on Spotify. My favorite books are Pride and Prejudice, The Secret Life of Bees, and anything by P.G. Wodehouse. My favorite music artists are Michael Jackson, Tyler the Creator and Johannes Brahms. My favorite movies are X-Men, Love in the Time of Cholera (ditto the book) and The Imitation Game.

Does anyone care if I’ve read P.G. Wodehouse? Do they care about any of this stuff? It’s a professional network, you dum-dum, not Facebook.

Wanda’s inner critic has a field day as she weighs whether to take down the summary or keep it. Five seconds later…

I’m deleting this. It sounds stupid and irrelevant. So for the third time I changed the summary back to “I’m an artist. Connect with me!” Desperate but short.

But you need a FULL SUMMARY. You’ve gotta rack up those views and connections, girl!

Her anger towards herself boils and she find herself feeling acid bubbling in her chest. She knows this happens in my body when she can’t make a decision. She grabs her water bottle and chugs. The cold elixir of life washes down her throat. She feel a little better now.

I have been at this for the past five hours, and haven’t gotten anything done. The only thing I can do… is just shut down my computer.

So Wanda shuts down the computer, angry at herself for going back and forth for an insignificant decision. She gets upset and pushes her pillow up to her face, and then lets out a painful loud blood-curdling scream. She feels the scream unleash itself from her body, releasing the pent up perfectionism, frustration, anxiety and insecurities she has held onto for years.

You’re perfectly imperfect, her old therapist told her. And she needs to hear that more than ever, because she just spent five hours working on something that nobody probably cared about in the first place. Worst of all, she couldn’t decide what to put. She kept going back and forth about her decision. Should I post this, should I not? And her decisions often carried the weight of other people’s expectations, or rather, what she thought other people’s expectations were of her.

Wanda goes to her Buddhist altar and cries, tears running down her face. I made such a stupid decision, wasting five hours working on a small thing like my LinkedIn summary. How could I have wasted so much time?!? I am falling behind in everything…

She continues to chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

She feels better after thirty minutes.

I’m going to do some exercise.

Normally, Wanda can’t make up her mind whether to exercise on a given day. I’m too lazy, it’s too stressful, I don’t have time. But Wanda is running on empty and hasn’t worked out for a good while, so she turns on the pilates YouTube video that her friend sent her last month but that she didn’t open until now because she didn’t think she needed exercise. She does lunges, kicks, and punches, and twists her body in various directions. As she works out, her body releases stress and tension, and she feels in a better mood than she did before.

My favorite restaurant

Daily writing prompt

What is your favorite restaurant?

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One of my favorite restaurants is Spiral Diner located in Fort Worth, Texas. They closed the Dallas location unfortunately, but I really enjoy taking a trip to the Fort Worth location on special occasions. It is a vegan diner and my favorite thing to get is the Spiral burger, which is a seitan patty (seitan is wheat gluten) topped with vegan cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, vegan mayonnaise, ketchup and mustard. I usually get it with a side of vegan potato salad or corn chips. Often when going there I would get a slice of cake or a cookie, and sometimes the vegan ice cream shakes would end up being my dessert if they were sold out of desserts. Last time I went and was adventurous and got tofu migas. As a kid I would always love to go to Eatzi’s, a European-style market, and order migas, which were scrambled eggs with tortilla strips. But I became vegan around 2009 and cut out dairy and eggs from my diet, so I ended up eating a lot more scrambled tofu. The tofu migas I think came with a vegan sausage patty.

Another great vegan place I loved was called Native Foods Café in Chicago. Before I developed a mini-intolerance to gluten (I had a breakfast burrito with a huge wheat spinach tortilla and I’m wondering if the weird nausea and stomach pains is because my body is becoming more sensitive to wheat) I would get any vegan burger on the menu. It was a seitan patty with lots of melted vegan cheese and seitan bacon strips, and I got it with French fries. No wonder I had to often take the food home because I could barely finish it, it was just that delicious. And then for dessert I had an oatmeal cream cookie sandwich, and I often had to resist the temptation to eat it all in one sitting, to no avail because it was absolutely sweet, creamy and delicious. I’m bummed that my body can’t really tolerate a lot of sugar anymore, but it’s probably a good thing because I would have probably had one of those oatmeal cookie cream sandwiches once a week. I have learned to enjoy sugar in moderation. Yesterday I had some Lotus Biscoff cookies with some tea, and I haven’t had them in a while, but then my stomach started hurting for some weird reason. I also had a couple of Oreos. Maybe it’s because I didn’t drink enough water during the day and my body was playing catch up. But I digress.

Another restaurant I enjoy is any restaurant with Indian food. A few years ago, I used to go to a South Indian buffet that was delicious. They had lentil donuts, sambar, naan, rice, and so many other vegetarian dishes. As a vegan I really loved this place, and especially the dosas with potatoes and peas was delicious. I The little lentil donuts were one of my favorites because they were so crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside, and I often dipped them in my sambar. Back then I enjoyed eating large portion sizes, so I would often go back to eat seconds or thirds, but then my stomach’s threshold for lots of food decreased, and today I would probably be able to eat a plate of food and call it a day. Eating too much now and especially eating too quickly often gives me indigestion. I was really sad when the restaurant closed down because I used to go there a lot when I was in high school and during summer breaks from college. When I was in college, we had two really delicious Indian restaurants, and one of them was near my dorm. I would often go down the street to this place called India Palace to grab some vegetable biryani and samosas, and in my senior year of college when I permitted myself to loosen up and drink a little wine I would order a glass of red wine at the restaurant. Wine has an interesting and strong taste but somehow it went really well with the food. I learned though that I’m not super accustomed to drinking a lot of alcohol, and the few times I did have alcohol were when I was on a cruise ship in 2019 and had some Caribbean beer and some of the red wine in the mini fridge in my room. I think I just stopped drinking so much because I thought I needed alcohol to be social, but realized later I didn’t. I still enjoy the taste of wine and beer though, even though I haven’t had it in a few years. Again, I keep digressing.

I also really love any great restaurant with pho. There was a delicious banh mi place during my time in college and they had an epic tofu pho and tofu banh mi sandwich. I loved the taste of the breaded tofu swimming around amongst the noodles, carrot rounds, and scallions, and the hot steam rising from the pho in that large porcelain white bowl. Since moving back I have continued to enjoy tofu pho and banh mi. For the banh mi, I love the crispy toasted-ness of the sub sandwich bread, and the sauce and sriracha as they blend in with the breaded tofu. Delicious.

5 everyday things that bring me happiness

Daily writing prompt

What are 5 everyday things that bring you happiness?

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5 everyday things that bring me happiness:

Food. I love food. I can’t eat meat or dairy but I love anything vegan. I just made myself a scrambled tofu this weekend that was really good. Well Your World has a great recipe. I used to make tofu scramble on the stove, and it was good but there is always the issue with cleaning out the pan afterwards. This one is delicious, and for a while I was putting the potatoes in with the rest of the ingredients when I put them in with the oven, but someone taught me a good tip and that is to boil the potatoes in an Insta-pot first so that when I combine them with the tofu, vegetables and other ingredients the potatoes aren’t super hard. I would bake the tofu scramble for twenty minutes, but would always have to put it in longer since the diced potatoes were still pretty hard to chew. Boiling the potatoes made them softer, but of course, I made sure to dice the potatoes before putting them in the Insta-pot.

2. Spending time outside. Before the COVID-19 pandemic I would often take my outside time for granted, but when I spent a lot of time in quarantine my attitude towards going outside changed. I think I gained a deeper appreciation for spending time walking in the park and around the neighborhood, and I burned some calories and got my body moving. Yesterday I didn’t walk too long but I spent some time walking around the park and around the neighborhood and I saw the neighborhood cat walking around outside. The other day I saw a woodpecker and it was just really beautiful to watch. And a couple of weeks ago I went to someone’s garden to admire their beautiful abundant display of freshly budding irises. And of course, the bluebonnets are in season and I love walking in the field of bluebonnets. I also love seeing the chickens in a farm located across the street. And the squirrels racing each other around the thick tree trunks.

3. Reading books. I love going to the library and have loved libraries and bookstores since I was small. Something about the smell of the pages, the feel of the pages, and how the writing of each word blends so well together entices me about books. Every time I go to the library I end up checking out loads and loads of books, and sometimes I don’t get to finish them all. I mostly enjoy fiction but have read some good non fiction lately.

4. Spending time with loved ones. I enjoy spending time with the people in my life I love and connecting with others. I took a lot of my friendships with others for granted but when I went into quarantine I started to appreciate the connections I made with people.

5. Honestly, life. It may sound cheesy but life itself is an everyday thing that makes me feel appreciation. It’s easy for me to take a lot of things for granted, but it wasn’t until I faced a lot of my own inner struggles that I started to gain more perspective on life. It’s still a challenge sometimes to see the larger picture but I have seen over time how practicing gratitude has helped me become happier and more fulfilled. Of course, I still have big dreams I want to strive towards, but this past decade of facing all these challenges and victories has taught me to appreciate the journey instead of only focusing on the outcome of the situation. Even just something as simple as waking up out of bed I have started to appreciate more.

Romance in India

I lay on your lap

Under a myriad of stars

Mosquitoes buzz in our ears

And we sit in each others’ embrace

Intoxicated by kisses and the warmth

Of our bodies on one another

Music blares from the vehicles

Below the roof upon which we sit

And I kiss you and say your name

Again and again

My Australian love

I know we are leaving each other in a week

To go back to our homes

But I will always keep you in my heart

Until death do us part.

Your blonde shaggy hair

And cerulean eyes

Peer down into my face

And my heart rushes ferociously

Beating rapidly against my chest

Until I cannot take a breath

Because you sucked it all away

With your tender kisses.

When you danced with me

Until the wee hours

Us alone

It was magic

My first real romance

Happening right before my eyes

Heartbreak is a killer

But I go through the grief

Of not being in your proximity

And eventually I make peace

With the love we once shared

And find closure.

Thank you for a beautiful moment

Of love.

Movie Review: Women Talking (content warning: descriptions of rape)

March 11, 2023

I watched this movie yesterday because again, it’s one of the Oscar nominees. I didn’t really know anything much about the movie other than watching the trailer, and it looked really interesting. This actress I really liked from this series called The Crown, Claire Foy, is one of the characters in the movie and so is Rooney Mara from another movie I loved called Carol. Honestly the movie left me shook. It was a deep movie with a story that left me up at night. It’s based on a novel about an isolated Mennonite community where several men drug the women with cow tranquilizer and rape them, and the women in the community meet in secret to discuss whether to leave the colony or fight against their attackers. It is based on a real story about an ultraconservative Mennonite community called Manitoba Colony in Bolivia where between 2005 and 2009 a group of colony men sedated 151 colony women and girls with animal anesthetic and raped them in their homes. The victims reported being bloodied and bruised but these reports were dismissed as false. Eventually, the men got put on trial and sentenced to prison, but with anything trauma-related, you can’t just move on because the body stores trauma.

It made me think of a book I read called Room by Emma Donoghue, which is about a young woman and her son who are held captive by a rapist and they are figuring out how to escape the room. It was similar to Women Talking because it grapples with how the abused navigate their trauma after they leave their circumstances. It takes Ma many years before she and her son escape from the abuser, but even after she finds freedom Ma battles severe distress and ends up overdosing because she is constantly reliving the trauma she dealt with being captive in that room. Honestly, when I read the book I broke down in tears because it haunted me like no other book ever did. I couldn’t imagine what Ma and Jack had to go through to get out of such a horrific situation. Both of them were surviving in this situation, and even with the childlike innocence of the book’s cover (the letters “Room” are written in crayon), it is anything but a children’s book. It literally has sat with me since the time I read it, and it scared me. But I understand that Ma’s experience isn’t an isolated incident and sexual assault and trauma is a painful reality for many women.

The film Women Talking doesn’t show the sexual assault, but rather the distress they feel when they recount how this violence against women has gone on for so many years under the guise of morals and religious obligations. In one scene, one of the women at the meeting, Mejal, is smoking a cigarette and suffers a sudden panic attack after the conversation triggers a flashback where she is remembering the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of the men in the colony. Mariche, played by Jessie Buckley, says that Mejal’s episode wasn’t that bad because they have all faced sexual trauma in the colony, not just her. However, Mariche also faces her own past trauma when she goes back to the house to retrieve her daughter when everyone plans to leave the colony. She and her daughter leave the house very badly bruised because her husband beat them. August is a teacher in the colony who takes the minutes during the women’s meetings is August, and he had a strong female role model in his life who spoke her mind and encouraged him to speak his mind, too.

The film also talks about religion and the role it plays in gender norms. The women still pray at the meeting and one of the women says that leaving the colony is an act of faith. It’s interesting because when I was growing up the only idea of fundamentalism was a magazine cover of an Iranian woman with her nose cut off by the Taliban, but this movie showed that religious fundamentalism can happen anywhere, even in a country like the United States of America where we talk about freedom of religion and freedom of speech. When I was watching this movie with my friends, they made a point during a scene in the film where a man rides around in a truck and calls out for the women to leave their homes because they are taking the 2010 U.S. census. I thought the men were actually taking the census but then someone I was watching the movie with interpreted the U.S. census truck as a setup by one of the men in the colony, and that when the two girls approached the man in the truck and told them their ages, they were being set up. When the older women hear the truck blasting “Daydream Believer” by The Monkees, they don’t open the doors and don’t go outside in order to protect themselves from potentially being attacked. Another issue they talk about is what would happen if the women fought back against their abusers. It reminded me of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. In the book Lisbeth Salander gets revenge on her rapist in the most violent way possible, and earlier in Women Talking Salome (played by Claire Foy) is shown getting revenge on one of the attackers. Salome stands by her decision to stay and fight, while others talk about forgiving the men and leaving the colony. The discussion leaves a lot of food for thought, like what would the movie had been like if the women stayed in the colony and fought against their attackers?

It was also pretty powerful because Salome has August keep the minutes he took during the meetings so that he could share them with his students, who are all boys. So that they can learn about the repeated trauma these women faced in this colony, and so that they can unlearn these toxic ideas of masculinity and how to treat women. It reminded me of a couple of PSAs I saw from the Ad Council. These commercials came out in the early 2000s but I think they are still relevant today. There was one I saw a while ago, in which a boy and his father are out eating at a diner with the boy’s friends and they are having fun at first, but then they hear the couple behind them arguing, and the man screams at his wife and starts beating her in the restaurant. The father finds himself conflicted in that moment about whether to intervene or do nothing, and sits in pained silence while the man beats his wife. The scene cuts to the son’s pained expression after witnessing what just happened, and the screen reads that now is the time for men to teach their sons that violence against women is wrong. Because if the men don’t teach their sons this, then the men may grow up to be like the man in the restaurant beating the woman. The commercial left me with chills. Another powerful ad showed young boys going up to grown men and asking the grown men if they could teach them how to respect women. The first boy approaches a mailman and tells him he needs clarification since he has been getting mixed messages about violence against women. The second boy asks his uncle how he can grow up to respect women if he has such lousy male role models who don’t teach him to respect women. The last boy approaches a middle-aged man on the basketball court and asks him if he can reshape his attitude towards women.

I reflected on these commercials because around the time the #MeToo movement was gaining more traction on social media, an ad by Gillette, a famous men’s shaving razor and personal care company, kicked off a campaign addressing toxic ideas around manhood that have been perpetuated in society for years, and how men can unlearn these ideas and take action to treat women with respect and teach their sons how to respect women. It was in response to multiple allegations of sexual harassment against influential male figures in the media, and how sexual harassment also happens in daily life as well, and how men can change the narrative of masculinity by unlearning traditional ideas of manhood. The ad, titled “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be,” opens with grown men each looking in the mirror as the voices of news reporters talk about bullying, the #Me Too movement and sexual harassment. The screen cuts to an older Gillette ad where the slogan was “The Best a Man Can Get” and suddenly it shows a group of boys breaking through the screen and chasing after another boy, and then a distressed mom is hugging her son as his texts blow up with demeaning messages from the bullies calling him “freak,” “loser” and other derogatory names, and as the other boys continue to chase the boy through their living room. The scene cuts to a group of boys watching shows where men catcall and sexually harass women, showing how these young men are getting mixed messages about sexual violence from the media they consume and may think it’s a joke for a man in a sitcom to grab a woman’s butt without her consent. The audience watching these sitcoms, many of them men, are laughing and thinking it’s funny to watch, and then it cuts to an executive at a corporation speaking over his female colleague and her hurt expression. Then it shows boys fighting each other at a barbeque and instead of breaking the boys up, the dads all keep grilling their meats and chuckling as they all say in unison “Boys will be boys.” Then the tone changes, when several reporters report on allegations of sexual harassment and abuse against women. The audience stops laughing and watches silently and then the ad shows men who take action to teach their friends how sexual harassment is wrong. It shows men preventing their male friends from catcalling women and real-life videos of men, young and old, learning respect and tolerance not just for women but for each other. A dad runs over with his young son when he sees the earlier mentioned boy running from school bullies, and intervenes, and one of the dads at the barbeque intervenes and breaks up the two boys fighting. The ad ends when the boy sees his dad asking the boy being bullied if he is ok, and then it shows different boys looking into the camera as the narrator says that the boys watching today will be the men of tomorrow. The ads ends with a caption saying that only when we challenge ourselves to do more that we can get closer to our best, meaning that when men hold each other accountable for perpetuating violence against women or outdated gender norms that keep women oppressed, society will get better. This ad was similar to the Ad Council ones because it showed that men need to teach their sons to respect and value women and others and unlearn a lot of their own biases against gender. It reminded me again of when I was watching the movie 42 and there is a scene where Jackie Robinson (played by the late Chadwick Boseman) is about to hit the ball and a white man is with his son, and he starts yelling racial epithets at Jackie from the bleachers. The son pauses and doesn’t know what to do but then because he sees his dad doing it, he thinks that he needs to shout the N-word at Jackie too, so he joins his dad in screaming racial epithets at Jackie. I had a very surface-level perception of the scene, which was that it was shocking, but then my professor explained that it wasn’t shocking because white children at the time were taught that racism and discrimination against Black people was okay, so it took work for white people to unlearn this racist ideology they grew up with. In short, they weren’t born racist, they were taught to be racist. Similarly, the boys in the Mennonite community could have learned from their fathers that inflicting sexual violence on the colony women was okay, but August took responsibility for his role as a man in the community and decided to teach his young male students about the importance of consent and respect for women. One of the issues the women debate about is whether to just take their daughters with them when they leave the colony or to take their sons as well. One thing I had to remember is that the boys in the colony also experienced severe psychological trauma from learning about the ongoing sexual violence against these women, and so I would be curious to know how they navigated this trauma in their later years, because what happened in the colony was horrific and traumatic and it left scars on pretty much everyone who lived in it.

This film definitely impacted me in so many ways, and it has stuck with me well after watching it. When Sarah Polley, the film’s director, won the Academy Award this year for Best Adapted Screenplay for Women Talking, my family and I celebrated because we thought the movie was so powerful. It would have been a shame if it didn’t go home with any awards because it is definitely worth a watch.

Women Talking. 2022. Directed by Sarah Polley. 1h 44 m. Rated PG-13 for mature thematic content including sexual assault, bloody images, and some strong language.

my thoughts on loneliness, technology and the COVID-19 pandemic

It’s ironic that I’m writing this online but I had lately been thinking about my relationship with my smartphone and the Internet, and the ways in which I use it. Yesterday I finished a really good book called How to Break Up With Your Phone by Catherine Price, and in the book she talks about the impact of smartphone use on our brains and our mental and physical health. While the statistics of phone use were disturbing, it was refreshing to read a book about how I could get my smartphone use under control. She provides a 30-day plan for spending less time on our phones and being more intentional with our phone use. I read another book by another author named Cal Newport called Digital Minimalism, but reading Catherine Price’s book was a good reminder about how, while technology has its benefits, it’s also a good idea to be aware of how much time we spend on our electronic devices. I have definitely noticed since I left my job last year to take care of my mental health, my phone use has gone up. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us spent time in isolation during quarantine, while many others had to work on the frontlines to deliver groceries and take care of patients dying of COVID-19, and as I reflected on my own challenges with loneliness I realized that human beings are wired for connection. Which is why quarantine was so challenging for a lot of people, even though in reality I can’t actually speak for everyone. As an introvert, going into quarantine at first seemed like no big deal since I usually recharge by spending time alone or with a few people. But I also realized that it was hard not being able to visit my family and friends in other parts of the country and the world, and that even though I was safely ensconced in my house with my books and computer and phone, people around the world were dying at rapid unprecedented rates and I found myself anxiously checking the statistics for how many people were being hospitalized and how many people were dying. All this doom-scrolling had a serious impact on my mental and emotional health, because when I came back into the office for work after having the unexpected fortune of working remotely for over a year, I viewed everything and everyone in my environment from the lens of my own fear and anxiety.

When the rates went down at one point during 2021 I tentatively walked around without my mask on, thinking, “I guess we’re safe since we’re not wearing masks anymore and the vaccines are coming out and rates are going down.” Then the numbers shot back up again with delta and omicron and once again, I found myself in a serious panic mode. Every day at work, I don’t know if I can honestly diagnose myself as having anxiety or panic attacks because I’m not a doctor but it felt like every day I sat in my cubicle I felt a deep tightness in my whole body and my thoughts were racing and even just little stuff set me off. I guess you could say I was having a serious nervous breakdown while trying my best to keep it all together. But then someone did something I didn’t like, a small thing that was really no big deal, they told me to take a breath and calm down, and I exploded at them. I ended up taking a day off, but I still continued to wrestle with my own little mental health crisis. I struggled with loneliness early on as someone with depression, but I didn’t give it much thought until my music teacher and I had a conversation about the pandemic and he mentioned how so many people suffered from loneliness during the pandemic. I found myself isolating from my coworkers during lunchtime often and while I normally love my alone time, I felt so disconnected from everything and everyone in my life. I think that’s what I realized about loneliness; it’s not the same thing as solitude, because there are many people who enjoy solitude, but loneliness is a painful experience and it made me feel disconnected from everyone and everything. It reminded me of when I was in college; I had met a lot of people and connected with a lot of people, but I got burned out within the first few months of my first year of college and started isolating myself from people, eating alone because I didn’t feel genuinely connected to the other people I interacted with. Even when some of my peers encouraged me to join their group for meals, I would ignore their text messages and sit alone by myself. While I need to move on from the past, as I’m grappling with loneliness in 2023 it brought up a lot of past memories and events in which I also struggled with loneliness. Being lonely has brought up some really destructive and unproductive and potentially toxic behaviors, but it has also given me a chance to think about my purpose in life and what I am bringing to my connections with other people.

Checking my smartphone all the time has been one of those unhealthy coping mechanisms, and I’m pretty relieved that I read the book about breaking up with your phone because it reminded me that checking our phones is something people often do when they are bored, lonely, anxious or dealing with other uncomfortable emotions and they want to self-soothe. When I was in the depths of depression a couple of years ago, I would stress-eat as a coping mechanism. I couldn’t be bored, I couldn’t be alone with my thoughts. I couldn’t be uncomfortable, so I ate and ate and ate to numb this discomfort. I went to the break room for snacks as many times as I spent checking Gmail, YouTube and text messages on my phone (which is a lot of times.) I wasn’t even eating because the food tasted good; I was eating because I didn’t know how to deal with my stress in a healthy way, so self-soothing with food became my way of handling stress. I nibbled on vegan Hippeas cheese puffs, MadeGood granola bars, fruit, kettle-cooked chips, pretzels, vegan rice-krispy treats, anything that had salt and sugar. I normally don’t drink a lot of Starbucks, but I was running off to get Frappuccinos and lattes every week. I wasn’t even drinking it for the taste; I was just drinking it because I felt stressed. I wasn’t even appreciating the taste of the food; again, because I was using it as a coping mechanism to get through the day, I was numbing myself, so I didn’t even appreciate the taste of the food because I had accustomed myself to eating this kind of food in serious moments of stress. Thankfully I had a meditation practice of chanting that helped me stay afloat even in my darkest moments, even when I didn’t want to get out of bed, even when I felt hopeless. I also was part of a great Buddhist community and continued to participate in Zoom meetings with them as we gradually began to open our community centers back up again. I am still thankfully part of this community and while I am still grappling with loneliness, I am reminded that I don’t have to grapple with it alone.

I think what this experience of loneliness has taught me is the value of asking for help. In 2016, I was reluctant to seek help but then it got to the point where I actually needed to see a professional about my mental health. It ended up being one of the best decisions I have made in my life. But then time passed, I got busy, and stopped going for a couple of years when things went smoothly. Then the pandemic hit, and I gradually without knowing or understanding it, grew overwhelmed with everything but I still wasn’t seeking professional help because I thought I felt fine. But gradually as I started getting lonelier and this loneliness and depression started to affect my daily functioning, it became clear that asking for help wasn’t weak but was rather the best thing I could do to take care of myself. Even though I didn’t see my therapist every week, when I did see her I felt better. She really helped me make sense of my emotions and how to manage them better, and seeing therapy was a reminder that working on my emotional health, showing up for myself, and asking for help is a daily effort. I think that’s why reading Brene Brown’s books during these past few years has helped me a lot because I didn’t understand why I felt this huge range of emotions and also the root cause of why I felt anxious, sad, lonely, and confused but also grateful and happy.

*I know a lot of articles on mental health I read about typically put this in at the end of the article, but if you or a loved one needs help this is the new Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org

Movie Review: The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Last week I watched a movie called The Killing of a Sacred Deer. I had been meaning to watch it for a while and saw the trailer, and it looked really good. I also love A24 movies and this one is an A24 film. It reminded me of this previous movie I watched that was directed by Yorgos Lanthimos called The Lobster. For those who haven’t seen it yet, The Lobster is about a dystopian society where single people need to find a partner within a specific period of time or else be turned into an animal of their choice. It’s really bleak and sad but it made a really good social commentary about how society has stigmatized being single. In The Lobster, Colin Farrell stars as the main character, who needs to find a companion before he gets turned into an animal. I really wanted to watch The Killing of a Sacred Deer because a week ago I watched The Banshees of Inishirin, which stars the same actors Colin Farrell and Barry Keoghan, and I really loved their acting in The Banshees of Inishirin so I was excited to find out they were in a previous movie together.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer is disturbing, but the acting was incredible and I really loved the music score. The music score gives the movie its intensity. The movie is about a cardiologist named Steven who performs open-heart surgery at the beginning of the movie. Word of advice: if you are not squeamish, keep your eyes open. If you are, keep them closed for the first minute of the movie. To be honest, I closed my eyes at first but then somehow I opened them and was able to stomach watching the surgery. It was hard to watch, but then again, many people have had to get open heart surgery so this probably won’t be the last time I see a movie with an open-heart surgery scene or have to even witness an open-heart surgery myself in real life. Over the course of the movie, Steven gets to know a teenage boy named Martin, whose father died while Steven was performing heart surgery on him, but he realizes that Martin’s behavior towards him and the family is off and as the movie progresses it becomes clear that Martin is out to avenge his father’s death. At first he gives nice gifts to Steven’s children, Bob and Kim, and has casual conversations with them. He even invites Steven over to meet his mom, but soon Steven realizes that Martin and his mom lack boundaries. This is seen when Steven is at Martin and his mom’s house, and they are watching Groundhog Day. Even though Steven insists he needs to go home to his family because it is getting late, Martin and his mother insist on him staying to watch the movie with them. When Martin goes into his bedroom, Steven and Martin’s mother are alone, and Martin’s mother comments on how smooth and beautiful Steven’s hands look, and then she suddenly grabs his hands and starts touching them inappropriately. He leaves and even though Martin’s mother wants him to stay, Steven abruptly leaves because Martin’s mother crossed the line by initiating that kind of inappropriate contact.

Martin shows up unexpectedly to Steven’s office and tells Steven he has a pain in his heart, and that it’s the same heart pain that his father suffered with before he died during surgery. He is very upfront with Steven about his father’s death, that his father’s life could have been saved during the surgery because he was healthy, but that Steven didn’t save him. He says all this in a very calm collected tone, which I think is what makes the film so disturbing to watch. None of the characters in the film, except for Steven, who loses his shit rightfully so because his family is falling apart all because one kid is getting revenge on all of them, show much emotion. It’s like they are hypnotized to be numb and not show emotion. This is how viewing The Lobster felt for me. The characters show little to no emotion and they pretty much resign themselves to their fate and are really depressed and emotionally numb, even when the people around them are suffering. It was also pretty scary to watch Kim and Bob suffer the symptoms Martin told Steven they would suffer because Steven killed Martin’s dad in the surgery. Kim and Bob lose mobility in their legs, they lose their appetites and they bleed from their eyes. (I thought the bleeding was going to be gratuitous blood, but it wasn’t super scary. Then again, we all have different levels of comfort. I may not be able to stand supernatural horror film levels of blood but somehow I could stand this movie) When Anna, Steven’s wife, tries to give Bob something to eat (a donut) at the hospital, Bob refuses it and Steven, who is freaking out about what is happening to his son, tries to force Bob to eat the donut, but because Bob is experiencing the symptom of losing his appetite, he spits it out and complains he isn’t hungry. Because they lost mobility in their limbs, Kim and Bob have to crawl on their stomachs through the house on their elbows. At the hospital, when Steven tries to lift Bob and get him to stand up, Bob collapses again, and Steven threatens him and tells him to cut out all his nonsense, but Bob insists that he is not playing around and that he literally cannot stand up on his own because he is paralyzed in his limbs.

The music was pretty nerve-wracking because it sounded like a helicopter crashing overhead and it kept getting louder and softer, softer and louder, and each time it built my heart raced because it was building up to one disturbing scene after the next. I also thought about the theme of revenge and forgiveness. Martin had such a rough time after his father died, and so I can see why he found it incredibly hard to forgive Steven for what he did. But also Steven’s family suffered immensely and it’s like Martin was bringing up in the family all these deeply held insecurities that they wanted to keep hidden under their perfect suburban family life. When he meets with Steven, Martin tells him he needs to sacrifice one of his family members or else the kids will be cursed with the symptoms of paralysis, loss of appetite, eyes bleeding and death. He delivered it pretty quickly to Steven, and of course Steven is thinking, This kid is nuts, but as the movie continues it becomes clear how Martin is pretty dead serious about getting revenge on Steven’s family.

To be honest, this reached my threshold of scary. I don’t normally watch scary movies, and the only ones I have seen are Get Out and It Comes at Night, yet for some reason I could sit through this movie and not have to close my eyes multiple times. I closed my eyes during a few scenes but for the most part I felt more disturbed and depressed than jumpy and excited, which I would feel after watching a scary movie that involved things like killer clowns, possessed dolls/ children or exorcisms (which is why I steer clear of those films because I don’t want nightmares.) I don’t typically watch scary stuff because I don’t enjoy jump scares, but there weren’t any jump scares in this movie, just a slowly building suspense and disturbing story. I think that’s why it’s so scary and why it was so scary for me to watch. I had a rehearsal to go to after watching the movie, and it was a pretty heavy movie so it sat with me and I ended up not talking and just being quiet for the next thirty minutes while I drove to the rehearsal because I couldn’t stop thinking about how disturbing the movie was. But honestly, what I loved most was the visuals and the acting. The way the camera focuses in and out was somehow very masterful and unique. It was the same camera focus I saw in The Lobster and somehow it just really appealed to me as I was watching the film. Also I really loved Barry Keoghan and Colin Firth’s acting. It’s really cool that they starred in The Banshees of Inishirin together.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer. 2017. Rated R for disturbing violent and sexual content, some graphic nudity and language.

Movie Review: TAR

I heard so much about this movie, and as a classical cellist I really wanted to see this movie, especially because it is about a female conductor and I haven’t seen many movies like that. Cate Blanchett acted the hell out of her role, and I could not help but bob my head to all of the pieces that Lydia Tar conducted. I especially loved it when Olga played the Elgar Cello Concerto in E Minor since that is one of my favorite pieces, and loved it when Tar conducted “Adagietto” from Symphony No. 5 by Gustav Mahler. I remember playing it in high school during my last year and it was really special to play that movement because it is so powerful and gives me goosebumps. It literally tugs at my heartstrings each time I hear it.

The film brings to light a lot of the issues in the classical music world. It takes place in the present day and writer Adam Gopnik is interviewing Lydia Tar, a well-renowned conductor of a major orchestra in Berlin. She has all these accomplishments and runs a tight ship, but things get messy when allegations come out against Lydia after Krista Taylor, one of the participants in the program she runs for aspiring female conductors, commits suicide. Lydia alternates between New York City and Germany, where she lives with her wife Sharon and their daughter, Petra. Tar is a perfectionist and sets these incredibly high standards for success and this drives her to alienate the people around her, most of all her wife. When a young cellist named Olga auditions for the orchestra, Tar is immediately entranced and finds herself feeling attracted to the cellist. This puts a strain on her relationship with Sharon because Sharon sees Lydia’s growing attraction to Olga, and with the growing allegations against Lydia, Sharon and Francesca distance themselves from her.

There is a scene in the movie where Tar is giving Olga a ride back to her place, and Olga shows her a small teddy bear that she keeps with her. It is adorable, and Olga accidentally leaves it in Tar’s car. Tar finds Olga forgot the bear and she goes through the entranceway, which is really just a maze of graffitied buildings, and looks all over for Olga but cannot find her. If I were her, I would be so freaked out to be in that isolated area all by myself, especially because there is a rather vicious looking dog that is staring straight at Tar and Tar keeps running through the series of buildings looking for Olga but cannot find her. Then she finally finds her way back to her car, but on the way out of the entrance she trips on the hard concrete steps and falls flat on her face, which leaves her with some pretty nasty cuts and bruises to her body. She comes to rehearsal the next day and everyone is quietly aghast, but no one wants to be that person who says aloud, “What happened to you?” Tar sees their horrified looks and chuckles to herself in her Tar way, and tells them with a frustrated expression what happened. She doesn’t mention she was trying to find Olga, and instead afterwards gives Olga her bear. Olga probably didn’t want Lydia to find where she lived.

Another key scene occurs earlier in the movie. Francesca doesn’t want Lydia to find out that she had been corresponding via email to Krista before Krista’s suicide, and so Lydia asks Francesca to fetch her a cup of matcha tea. Francesca reluctantly goes, and when she leaves the room, Lydia sneaks over to Francesca’s laptop and looks in her email inbox and finds that Francesca never deleted her correspondence with Krista, even though she was instructed to end correspondence with her and delete the emails. When Francesca comes back, Lydia doesn’t mention she was snooping in her email inbox and asks her about whether she got rid of the emails between her and Krista.

This film also touches on the growing awareness of how white classical music canon is, and how to navigate these spaces as people of color. During a master class at Julliard, Lydia talks about the genius of Bach and one of the students, Max, says as a pangender person of color they don’t see themselves represented in the music they are working on because all of the composers are white cis-gendered men. Lydia gets offended by this, and asks the student why they are even in the master class to begin with. She humiliates the student in front of their peers, and even though Max listens to her berate them, they finally gathers their things and leaves and cusses her out. She tells Max if they wants to dance the mask, they must service the composer and also sublimate their ego and their identity. On the one hand, I understand she was trying to get the student to understand that as a conductor they is going to be subject to a lot of criticism and critics won’t care that they wants more diversity of composers, and that even though the composers are white, they can still find expression in the music. In fact, she tells they that they needs to focus on the music rather than the lack of diversity of the composers whose music they are playing.

However, I can also see it from the student’s perspective. In 2020 with the killings of George Floyd and other Black people in America and around the world, and the global reckoning with centuries of systemic racism, genocide, and colonialism, the world of classical music came under fire for its racist past. When I had an Instagram account in 2020 I followed found a lot of posts detailing BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) classical musicians’ experiences with microaggressions and racist insults while working in the field of classical music. I can’t lump together everyone’s experiences with racism, but it’s fair to say that there have been quite a few instances of racism that people of color have faced in classical music. For example, historically operas have featured white singers in blackface and yellowface, and it wasn’t until I went on social media that I started hearing more people discuss how problematic this tradition has been for many years. While I saw Madame Butterfly in the tenth grade thinking it was okay that a white opera singer put on yellowface, I am more aware that this is not okay. I became especially more aware of this when I read a story in one of the newspapers about a famous European opera singer who put on blackface for her role in an opera called “Aida” and how she faced a ton of backlash because more people had become aware that blackface is not okay even if that’s how people have done the role for years. The movie doesn’t take a side in whether Max or Lydia was right in how they approached race and identity in classical music, but it did make me just think about the ongoing conversations around how orchestras are addressing diversity and race.

I’m also ambivalent about Tar’s statement that to serve the composer, one needs to sublimate their identity. On one hand, the music is there and people need to play it and go home, so there’s the job of conducting that needs to get done. But also, as the film continues, Lydia literally loses her sense of self when she achieves all this success as a conductor, and she gets to the point where her work and getting ahead of everyone else is the only thing that matters in life. She doesn’t sublimate her ego; instead, over the course of the movie, she manipulates people, puts people down and also suffers inside because she feels everyone is against her and she is also incredibly frustrated that no one is living up to her extreme expectations. As a perfectionist myself, I can relate in the sense that a lot of times when playing the music my ego would get so wrapped up in winning the audition or trying to prove the people around me wrong that I ended up suffering deeply as a result because I was so wrapped up in my own self that I couldn’t embrace anything less than failure. I think that’s why having a spiritual practice like Buddhism helped because it was a reminder that yes, working hard is important, but everyone is working hard, not just me, and that yes, I need to work hard for my dreams but I also need to appreciate the people in my life and not treat them like my personal servants to my art and ego. One time, in 2016, I auditioned for a professional orchestra. I was coming straight out of college and didn’t even have a music degree, but I thought, If I just practice, practice, practice, then I will win. But I became so focused on winning the audition that I burned out and started neglecting the things in my daily life I needed to take care of, like cleaning my room, doing dishes, vacuuming. I would practice for three hours straight and not take breaks, and I would get easily frustrated every time I made a mistake and use that as an excuse to beat myself up. So it’s no wonder that on the day of the audition, I had no energy to even get out of bed because I had just run myself ragged by cramming in so much music at one time. Wrapping up my ego in my dreams also affected how I viewed work in general. I felt that having a day job wasn’t like having a music dream job, and that if I just ran away to New York City to chase my dreams and perform with a prestigious orchestra and make lots of money I would finally be happy. But when I didn’t meet those expectations I set for myself, I literally lost it. I threw tantrums at work and at home, I got easily upset at the littlest things (I’m still working on changing that behavior to be honest), and if it didn’t have to do with my music career, I didn’t care. But I realized that in doing so, I was blocking out the people in my life who mattered, the people in my life who kept me down to earth. I had to understand over time, too, that even if I have a successful music career, in any field you work in, you have to work together with people, and some people you may get along with well, and others not so much. I can be successful but if I’m only focused on serving my own ego, I can’t expand my capacity as a musician because I have so much to learn from different perspectives. In reality, having a music career involves not just being talented at playing your instrument, but also being good at teamwork since I’m going to play music in many ensembles with people. I don’t know what it’s like for people who play in professional orchestras or conduct professionally, but it definitely seems that like anywhere else, you have to work well with other people and can’t just focus on yourself.

Movie Review: The Banshees of Inishirin

Written on March 10, 2023

Content warning: self-mutilation, violence

So today I wanted to watch The Banshees of Inishirin because I am still trying to watch as many of the Oscar nominees as I can before Sunday. Honestly I forgot how much I love escaping into movies until I started watching all these films during Oscars weekend. In the previous years I saw maybe one or two movies out of all the nominees, and last year I had only seen The Power of the Dog and Drive My Car. I am a little more caught up on the movies for this ceremony than I am from last year, although I probably won’t be able to watch them all before Sunday. But today I decided to rent The Banshees of Inishirin because it got a really high Rotten Tomatoes rating and a lot of nominations, so I wanted to know what all the buzz was about. And it ended up being quite a deep movie, and it was the same feeling I got after watching The Lobster or The Lighthouse, which both left me with intense chills. I saw Colin Farrell’s* other movie called The Lobster, and other films where he plays supporting roles in Roman J. Israel, Esq. and Widows (*I almost put Colin Firth lol, I’m getting my last names mixed up. I always confuse Colin Farrell and Colin Firth the two since their first names are both Colin and their last names start with F. Why I always confuse the two actors’ names, I have no idea.) He plays the main character in The Banshees of Inishirin, which takes place in a coastal village in Ireland during the 1920s. The main character, Padraic Suilleabhain, lives with his sister Siobhan and he is pretty content with his friendships, until his longtime friend, Colm, gives him the cold shoulder and tells him to not speak to him anymore. Padraic is wondering why the hell Colm won’t talk to him anymore, and when he tries to engage Colm in conversation Colm keeping ignoring him or avoiding him. He then threatens Padraic in the wildest way: if Padraic doesn’t leave him alone, Colm will cut off his fingers. Literally. Not a metaphorical “ugh, I hate you, I’m just going to cut my fingers off. Haha jk,” no. Literally he is going to slice the fingers off of his hands. Which stinks because he plays the fiddle and loves playing music, so if his friend keeps bugging him he won’t get to play violin anymore. Siobhan and the other villagers (this being a small town, gossip travels verrrrry quickly) tell him to leave Colm alone, but Padraic doesn’t listen because he (and I) couldn’t understand why Colm wouldn’t want to talk to him anymore.

This film does imply that Colm might have been struggling with depression, even though at the time there wasn’t any super advanced DSM-5 book detailing depression symptoms, no Better Help, no therapy other than the local priest. Colm visits the local priest several times for confession, and admits he is struggling with despair, which is probably the best word they could call depression at the time. He still doesn’t think Padraic can understand what he is going through though, even though we clearly see throughout the film how Padraic feels even lonelier and more isolated when Colm continues to ostracize him. Siobhan gets fed up at one point with Colm cutting off his fingers every time Padraic tries to talk with him and she is like, “Well fuck this nonsense. I can’t deal. I’m heading to the mainland,” so she leaves, leaving Padraic and the animals. To go off on a tangent, those farm animals earned their own Oscar nominations because they navigated this bleak storyline with the utmost calm. Unfortunately Jenny the miniature donkey wouldn’t be able to attend the ceremony with Sammy, Colm’s dog, and Minnie the Pony because Colm accidentally murders her when she eats one of his cut off fingers, chokes on it and dies (that scene left me quite sad, almost as sad as the opening scene of The Lobster where the lady at the beginning shoots a donkey dead.)

This film explores the price of loneliness and friendship and whether it’s really worth continuing friendships if the other person is no longer interested. Of course, I couldn’t blame any of the characters in the movie. It’s the 1920s and there was no social media, so you had to talk with people face to face. Padraic just wants acceptance from people, and so he asks people like Dominic and Siobhan if he is really as boring as people say he is, and they have to reassure him that he is ok. Sometimes I find myself often dealing with these kinds of insecurities in my own friendships. Back then, you just asked someone, “Do you think I’m boring?” and now the idea of a friend has changed a lot since Facebook defined what friendship is. If you don’t like someone you can “unfriend” or “unfollow” them (that’s probably why there was a movie called Unfriended. Probably too chicken to watch it, but again I’m digressing) and probably not have to see the person again, unless that person is a coworker or relative (or worse, your kids.) But Colm and Padraic couldn’t just leave each other, and there were no cell phones at the time so you couldn’t be at the pub pretending to be on your phone and avoid talking to someone you didn’t like. Padraic often finds Colm playing his violin at the pub with other musicians or writing music, a piece called “The Banshees of Inishirin.” He really wants Colm to stop ignoring him, but Colm won’t let Padraic talk to him. We never actually find out what Padraic did to make Colm not talk to him, but all we know is that the situation just keeps getting more and more stressful.

When I saw this movie, I thought about an article I read in The New York Times Sunday magazine in a segment called The Ethicist, and there were two inquiries related to loneliness and friendship. In the first, the person asking the question says they have an older person who keeps wanting to talk with them, who is deeply lonely and may or may not struggle with untreated depression, and the person was wondering if they should still be friends since they have their own busy life to deal with. The other person asking a question asked about someone who they consider to be good friends, but the other person doesn’t respond to their messages or invite them to things. The Ethicist columnist concluded that the person might want to accept the fact that this coworker might just be an acquaintance at this point. This is how I felt for many years, and so I wondered for a long time, Which people should I consider acquaintances and which people should I consider friends? And, Am I too clingy as a friend? When is it time to show up and when should I back off? A lot of my insecurities have come up with my friendships and navigating them has been challenging, but I’m just chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo for the happiness of my friends.

Dominic latches onto Siobhan and Padraic at first, and then Siobhan rejects Dominic when Dominic tells her he loves her and wants to know if she would fall in love with him. Then there is a scene where Padraic finds Colm talking at the brewery with Declan, another musician, and he wonders, Why does he laugh and talk with this guy and yet completely ostracize me? He catches up with Declan, and while riding on his cart, Padraic lies to Declan and tells him that he heard his dad got run over by a bread van and that he should leave to go find his dad and take care of him. Declan falls for this and leaves, and later Padraic and Dominic are sitting and talking and Padraic jokes about what he told Declan about his dad, and Dominic gets upset and tells Padraic that he used to like him, but that now he is mean, and he leaves Padraic alone. It reminded me of one time in the seventh grade, when I was really insecure. I often partook in gossiping about my classmates and saying negative things about them that weren’t true because I just felt that would get people to like me better, and I was talking on the phone with one of my friends and she started gossiping and then I gossiped even more, and she cut me off and was so surprised and said, “You’re gossiping about all these people!” At the time I didn’t care because I was just so hateful and cynical about everyone, but looking back she was getting me to stop and reflect because I was saying hurtful things about people (and unfortunately saying many hurtful things about myself at the same time.) When I gossiped, eventually all those people I gossiped with moved on and we were no longer friends.

Movie Review: The Fabelmans

I am gearing up for the Oscars Awards on Sunday and so I am watching some of the movies to prepare for the award show. It seemed so far away but I honestly cannot believe it is coming up this Sunday already. Time flies.

Yesterday I watched a wonderful movie called The Fabelmans. I had heard so much about it and I remember watching Steven Spielberg’s speech on the movie at the Golden Globes and how moving it was. I saw the trailer and it looked really good, so I decided to watch it. I have seen a few Steven Spielberg movies, but most of them are his recent ones (I had to go on his Wikipedia page to read about his filmography) such as the remake of West Side Story, Bridge of Spies, Lincoln, and The Post but I haven’t seen Jurassic Park, E.T. or his older films. But watching this movie, The Fabelmans, gave me a deeper appreciation for the work he has done in film and the magic of film in general. It actually served as a reminder why I love movies so much. As a kid I was always watching movies. Maybe not PG-13 or R rated films but still my family and I were always going to the movie theaters and even during the pandemic I watched so many movies (T.G.F.S., Thank Goodness for Streaming). For the past few years after seeing so many movies and writing about them, I have become more interested in the behind-the-scenes process of filmmaking. I used to focus on just the acting and the storyline, but when I made time after the film to sit and watch the end credits roll, I began to gradually appreciate how many people work behind the scenes before, during and after the film’s production. I began to read more about cinematography, film scoring, makeup and costumes. I used to only pay attention to the cast members of the movie, but there is so much that goes into making a film, and The Fabelmans showed me that.

For those who haven’t seen the film, it is a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age movie based on Spielberg’s life. The movie opens up in the 1950s, in New Jersey, and Sammy Fabelman is out with his parents Mitzi and Burt and his sibilings to see a movie called The Greatest Show on Earth. Even though Sammy is young, he is deeply fascinated with the movie, even though it shows a lot of violent upsetting scenes (for the 1950s, it was tame compared to 90 percent of the stuff today) where people get killed by trains and the trains derail and explode. Unlike his siblings, though, the movie stays with Sammy, and when his parents get him a train set he recreates the movie using the train set and a camera that his mom uses to record the movie. He spends so much time recreating the movie, and his parents see his early passion for film blossoming. Meanwhile, his parents have to deal with their marriage falling apart and Mitzi’s mental health suffers after the death of her mother. As Sammy grows up, he faces more challenges, including his dad not taking his filmmaking seriously, his parents’ crumbling marriage, and anti-Semitism at school. Sammy and his siblings are the only Jewish students at their school and Sammy faces a ton of anti-Semitism from the school jocks. However, Sammy has a passion for film and so he uses his passion for film to escape the pain of growing up and his family troubles. He meets a Christian girl named Monica who really likes him and tries to get him to become a Christian, but they end up parting ways after he proposes they marry and move to Los Angeles (she is going to Texas A & M). Even though they didn’t end up together, I think they needed to go their separate paths because Sammy really wanted to make movies and I don’t know if he could have compromised his dreams. Monica also didn’t want to compromise her dreams of going to college in Texas.

There was a pretty poignant moment during the prom after Monica rejects Sammy’s proposal to marry her. Logan, the school jock who bullied him, ends up confronting Sammy in the hallway, because the film Sammy made portrayed him as being this tanned perfect hero when deep down inside he doesn’t feel like that at all. He confesses to Sammy that he feels less than and feels embarrassed that Sam made him look like that in the movie because he struggles with incredibly low self-worth. Even though Sammy and Logan don’t end up friends, it was still telling that Logan was so vulnerable with Sam about his low self-worth and how even though he is popular, he is still insecure. Reading Brene Brown’s books on vulnerability and shame helped me appreciate this scene because it showed me that even though Logan picked on Sammy, he was probably grappling with a lot of his own hurt and pain, but since there were probably few to no positive mentors or mental health discussions back in the 1960s, the kids were taught they had to just deal with their pain by internalizing it and not talking about it to a trusted adult. I’m glad Spielberg showed this because kids, especially young men, aren’t just randomly cruel; they’re taught to be cruel by societal expectations.

Another really powerful scene is when Sammy meets John Ford, a famous film director, at the end of the movie. He is really nervous because he loves films and he is going to meet this guy and this guy is going to encourage him, but the director gives him very short but blunt advice and tells him to look at these paintings around the room. I think what this movie reminded me of is this letter I read in The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin called “The Eight Winds,” which explains the concept of the eight winds, which are influences that people can easily be swayed by. The four favorable winds are prosperity, pleasure, praise and honor, while the four adverse winds are decline, disgrace, censure and suffering. In an earlier scene, Sammy’s great-uncle Boris, who used to be a lion tamer and also worked on films, visits the Fabelmans’ house. He talks with Sammy about his time working in entertainment and sees Sam’s movie equipment, and that Sammy is editing some movie footage he shot during him and his family’s camping trip. Sammy’s father urges him to make the movie about the camping trip, but Sam says he is shooting a movie with his friends and doesn’t have time, but Burt tells him to do it for his mom, especially because her mom just passed away. It takes Boris to finally convince Sammy to make the movie. Boris tells him that if he wants to make art, he should really start with where he is at, which is with the camping trip footage. It’s a very down-to-earth exchange and it reminded me that when making art it’s okay to have big ideas but you need to start with what you’ve got instead of focusing on becoming big and famous because success is not an overnight thing and it can’t come at the expense of daily life. Sammy wanted to escape into his filmmaking, but he also had to deal with daily life and couldn’t run away from his family or the struggles of daily life, so it’s like Boris was telling him that yes, he should keep making art, but to understand that it is going to be a long-term struggle and he can’t expect immediate success.

Throughout the film, Sammy meets people who serve as protective functions for his filmmaking career each time he wants to give up. Bennie, who is the Fabelmans’ family friend, has an affair with Mitzi, and Sammy finds this out while he is making the movie about the camping trip. It leaves a bad taste in his mouth and the family moves from Arizona to California, leaving Bennie behind, but Bennie buys Sammy a film camera at the electronics and film store and at first Sammy doesn’t want Bennie’s gift because he had an affair with Sam’s mom and that really tore their family apart, but Bennie insists that Sam not give up on filmmaking even if it’s his hobby for a while. Sammy tries to give Bennie cash to pay for the film camera but Bennie tells him to keep the change, and so Sammy has no choice but to keep making movies. Even his girlfriend, Monica, encourages him to make a movie for Ditch Day at school and tells him that her father has an Arriflex camera he can use to shoot the movie. Sammy gets angry with everyone at the table because while Monica encourages him, Burt thinks it’s just a hobby and that Sammy should be getting more serious about his future. Sammy wants everyone to just drop the subject of him making a movie, but it’s like he has no choice but to keep going with filmmaking because deep down it’s what he loves to do. He ends up making the movie with the help of other people, and adds special effects such as using vanilla ice cream to look like bird poop is dropping on the faces of students sun-tanning on the beach. The film ends up being a hit and it’s when Sammy realizes once again that this is his passion and what he loves to do. It was a personal reminder to me to keep making music and writing even if I do it as a hobby for a while. It reminded me that no one ever just starts out “great” and “successful” and for many people their art is their hobby before they make a full-time career out of it. Many people in my life have told me to keep going and not give up in playing music and writing, and I’m deeply appreciative, even at times when I wanted to give up or felt ashamed to tell them whenever I didn’t ace an audition or got a rejection email for an opportunity. Sammy’s journey as a filmmaker was encouraging because it showed me that the most important thing is to just keep making art whether people like it or not. Even if you have day jobs, keep making art. Even if the people in your life praise you for it, keep making art, don’t get complacent. Even if the people in your life don’t like it or you get criticism, keep making art. At the end of the day, Sammy had to gain his own self-confidence and understand that this is what he really wanted him to do. Even his dad Burt came to accept that Sam wanted to make a career out of filmmaking. This movie showed me that a hobby is never just a hobby, and even if you make a career out of your hobby to not get jaded with success or failures, and to always keep going back to your roots so you can stay grounded when navigating the ups and downs of a career in the arts or really any career.

I really appreciate this film, too, because it reminds me that I can’t forget the people who made me who I am today. Steven Spielberg’s film shows how much of an impact the experiences he went through in his childhood and adolescence formed the foundation for his later life and career. His love for movies began when he was young, and even through all the ups and downs that life threw at him he continued making movies, whether he got paid for them or not. This taught me that even if I don’t get paid for my music or writing right away, to keep writing and playing music no matter what. My life has a huge influence on my writing and music, even if I don’t always directly talk about it. Sometimes I think that it’s hard for me to write about myself than it is to write about other people’s work, such as this film review, because it feels so personal and when I’m still going through the struggle, writing about it often brings up painful or uncomfortable unresolved things deep down in my life. When writing the characters I had to push past my own deep insecurities and confront those painful battles with myself because I saw so much of myself in these characters. But this film encouraged me because it showed me that our early experiences often do shape our art and it also has the power to encourage others who are going through similar experiences. As a child I really loved writing. Even now I have an entire bin filled with old journals I have filled out, and not all the entries are long and full of big words and flowery language. Some days I wrote and some days I was too tired to write. Sometimes I would just write about what I had to eat for breakfast or would watch on television. Other days I wrote about my mental health and how it was such a challenging thing to deal with each day. I wrote about love, music, books, everything I could. Sometimes I look back at these journals and it amazes me how much self-growth I have gone through over the past 20-something years of life. Even though I haven’t published a book yet, I still love to write and I have to keep reminding myself that making art isn’t an overnight thing, but rather a process of just making unseen efforts each day.

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