Tag: music

Some Music Albums I Really Love (I Have Too Many to Choose Favorites), part 1: Christina Aguilera

For my biology class in ninth grade, we had to do a science project. I love music and so I decided to do an experiment where I had people listen to music while they played cards, and then I wanted to see if listening to music helped them memorize the cards. I mainly just did it for myself, not really for the grade or to submit for science fair, because I love music. I checked out a ton of music CDs from the library and just listened to each and every one. I loved hearing these artists. Even before I did the science fair, I was into listening to various albums by artists, and I loved listening to the entire CD from start to finish. Each has their own unique style, and each artist has their own influences for their music. One album I really love is Christina Aguilera’s Back to Basics. One summer before ninth grade, I watched a lot of MTV and knitted scarves, hats, and other things, and I remember watching Christina Aguilera’s music video for “Ain’t No Other Man”, which is a song from her Back to Basics album. It definitely had a different feel from her 2002 album, Stripped, because the songs on her album Stripped deal with a lot of topics like relationship abuse, sexuality, and trying to be yourself in a society that tells you that you need to fit in. It just felt very raw and personal, and a lot of the songs made me cry because there were definitely times when I felt like I wanted to fit in and felt bad for being different. Christina’s song “The Voice Within” always moves me to tears because it’s about trusting yourself even when society tells you that you are not enough. It is a very moving song. Honestly, I kind of wish I had listened to this album when I was in sixth and seventh grade because I really struggled to love myself and I had bad depression. When you are depressed, you feel worthless and like no one cares about you. I listened to the album in my 30s, though, and it still hit hard because even though I am an adult and no longer a teen, I still struggle with low self-esteem and insecurities.

There were a few songs from the Back to Basics album that were sad, like her song “Hurt.” The music video for that song is absolutely beautiful. I remember watching it for the first time that summer before ninth grade and it was a really touching music video. Christina Aguilera plays a young woman in the 1940s who is grieving the death of her father, and she is performing in a circus and sees the vision of her father as she takes autographs and does circus stunts, and wrestles with a lot of regrets about not being able to mend her relationship with her father while he was still alive. At first, I thought the song was about Christina Aguilera’s father, but I looked on Wikipedia and the song was actually inspired by the death of Linda Perry’s father (Linda Perry was one of the songwriters of “Hurt.”) The song kind of reminded me of this song I heard a lot on the radio growing up by Mike + the Mechanics called “In the Living Years,” which is about a son regretting not patching up his differences with his father while his dad was still alive, and dealing with the grief of losing his dad. As a five-year-old, I didn’t really understand much about grief because my parents were still alive and I hadn’t lost anyone close to me. I think I just loved the song because the singer’s voice was so incredible and it was a very beautiful song. As I got older and listened to the song more than once and looked up what the lyrics were about, it took on a much deeper meaning. Even though my parents are still alive, a lot of my friends have lost their parents, and I can’t really fathom what it is like to lose a parent. Going to my friends’ memorial services for their parents is a sad experience. It makes me reflect on my relationship with my own parents and how I can enjoy the time I have with them. It also makes me reflect on my own mortality. Even though I am in my 30s, I do not want to take that for granted anymore. In my 20s, I thought if I hated life, I would just kill myself and things would be easier. But getting older made me realize that all the stuff that I struggled with in my 20s was going to be different as I got older. I am really glad my parents have supported me because I struggled to fit in and wondered if I was doing something wrong by having different interests than my peers, but my parents have always encouraged me to follow my own path even with all the difficulties that come with forging your own sense of self and your own path in life. I really appreciate them for respecting my individuality even when I didn’t feel like I had anything unique to offer to society. Even when our relationship with our parents is complicated, they gave us life and there is still that deep inexplicable bond between parent and child. Of course, everyone experiences grief differently, and I am not going to know what grief of losing a parent is like until the time comes when my parents pass away. I really want to make the most of my time with my parents while I can.

I really love the other songs on the Back to Basics album. There is one song called “Here to Stay” that makes me think of this poster I saw for the movie Babylon, and it shows Margot Robbie crowd-surfing at a party in Hollywood in the 1920s. It is a glamorous-looking poster and Margot is drunk and high and enjoying the party. (I haven’t seen the movie, but I heard it is actually dark and depressing.) The theme of Back to Basics is very 1940s circus, and the music videos feature a lot of things from the 1930s and 1940s. “Candyman” is a really awesome fun song, and the music video shows Christina Aguilera dressed in these 1940s outfits as she sings about finding a young WWII soldier hot and how she is sexually interested in him. I love reading historical fiction and learning about history, so I really love the 1940s theme of Back to Basics. She has a great song on the album I still remember called “Understand” and I love it because it is in the key of G major and I love G major. During the chorus, she sings in the key of E minor, which is a sad key that I really love. For some reason I love listening to songs over and over again, and I listened to “Understand” and every time I thought of the song in my head, I would start crying. I think I would cry because Christina’s voice is so soulful and beautiful. There is an amazing performance of Christina Aguilera singing “At Last” by Etta James on her Stripped tour, and it is raw and beautiful. Etta James was a huge influence on Christina Aguilera’s music, and Christina even got to perform “At Last” at Etta James’s funeral. When she hits the end of the song, “for you are mine,” she just belts out the “mine” part and just holds that note for a good long minute or two before finishing with “at last.” Her performance of “At Last” reminded me of Joss Stone’s performance with Motown singer Gladys Knight. These two young women love soul music, and as a young person who loves old soul music, I would get goosebumps whenever I heard Christina and Joss singing these old Motown songs because they were so powerful and raw. I could really tell that these young ladies feel the music with their lives.

Synesthesia and sensitive ears

I have a confession to make. I have synesthesia. Or at least a rather mild form of this neurological condition. According to Cleveland Clinic (because I’m not a doctor and I experience only one form of synesthesia), “synesthesia is when your brain routes sensory information through multiple unrelated senses, causing you to experience more than one sense simultaneously. Some examples include tasting words or linking colors to numbers and letters. It’s not a medical condition, and many people find it useful to help them learn and remember information.” (Cleveland Clinic, “Synesthesia”, my.clevelandclinic.org) Whenever I hear songs in certain musical keys, I associate them with a certain color. Like when I hear songs in the key of F Major, I see the color pink. When I was listening to this song called “Last Worthless Evening” by this singer named Don Henley I just saw the color pink. I don’t know how to explain it, but it just happens. I remember when I was in my first year of college, and I was reading a book for school, and this young woman who lived in the dorm room across from mine blasted Taylor Swift’s “I Knew You Were Trouble” on her stereo. While she and her friend were laughing as they sang to the song, tears flooded down my cheeks. Of course, there was other stuff going on at the time that was making me cry, but I think I mainly cried because the song was in a key that made me see this golden yellow color, and it was emotionally overwhelming. It was in F# Major, which makes me see golden yellow. As a kid I listened to this song called “A New Day Has Come” by Celine Dion, and honestly that song always makes me cry. It doesn’t help that the music video is emotional, too, and it always confused my family why I cried during that song. Then again, Celine Dion’s songs probably make a lot of people cry. I remember when I was really young and I was taking ice skating lessons at this mall called The Galleria, and when “My Heart Will Go On” started playing on the intercom, I couldn’t stop bawling my eyes out while I was taking my ice-skating lesson. I don’t know how, at eight years old, a song like that could have moved me to tears, but then in 2016 I finally saw the movie Titanic and was up crying at 1:00 am and then bawled even harder when they played “My Heart Will Go On” during the end credits.

I also have sensitive ears, so I cannot go to loud concerts. In ninth grade we had our annual orchestra banquet, and I told everyone I had to leave during the dance at the end of the banquet because the music was loud and my ears were sensitive. When I was in sixth grade, I went to a talent show that was held at my middle school, and these eighth graders who were in a rock band played their music VERY LOUDLY. It was earsplittingly loud, and also people in the auditorium were screaming with so much enthusiasm, and the screaming was pretty loud, too. I sat through the performance feeling miserable, and my mom and sister looked at me with sympathy because they knew I had sensitive hearing. It was really loud for them, too. But yes, this is why, even though I really wanted to go to big arenas and concerts, I just can’t. At least with Spotify or the radio, I can control the volume of the music. In a concert setting, I would have to bring the best earplugs because they would be very loud. I wanted to see HAIM a couple of months ago, but I knew that the music was probably going be loud, so I didn’t go. I do love classical music concerts, though. Going to the symphony is always a treat.

Why Everyone Should Go See CODA If They Haven’t Seen It Yet

I LOVED CODA. I know it sounds like I am screaming when I write all caps, but I will say it again, even louder. I LOVED CODA.

Seriously, I was weeping by the end of the movie. I started watching it a few months ago, and then stopped halfway and watched other films, but finally after a long day and because I was having period cramps and needed to do something relaxing for a while, so I collapsed on the couch and turned on Apple TV. I thought about what to watch and then realized I had not finished CODA. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to finish it, so I did. And honestly, it was the best decision I made.

For those who haven’t seen the film yet, CODA is a movie about a young woman named Ruby Rossi who lives in a fishing village in Gloucester, Massachusetts. She helps her parents, Frank and Jackie fishing business and also translates for them in American Sign Language because they and her older brother are both deaf (CODA stands for “Children of Deaf Adults”). Ruby loves to sing, and at the beginning of the movie, she is singing along to “Something’s Got a Hold on Me” by the legendary soul singer Etta James while helping out Frank and Jacki on a fishing boat. Her life changes when her music teacher, Bernardo Villalobos, encourages her to apply to go to college at the Berklee School of Music, but when she tells her parents, they don’t want her to leave because she is their ASL translator and they also cannot afford for her to go to college. Through this emotional journey of a movie, Ruby learns that no matter how far she is from her family, she will always be close to them, and they will always love her. I got really emotional when she started singing “Both Sides Now” by Joni Mitchell during her audition for Berklee. I didn’t grow up listening to much Joni Mitchell, to be honest, but hearing the song “Both Sides Now” was such a moving experience. Joni has a beautiful voice, and when I saw her on TV performing at the Grammys, I was deeply moved by her performance.

I was so happy when CODA won for Best Picture at the Academy Awards in 2022. When it won, everyone in the audience applauded in American Sign Language, which involves waving your hands in the air and twisting them at the wrists. Marlee Matlin and Troy Kotsur, who play Ruby’s parents in the movie, were incredible actors, and Troy actually was the first deaf male actor to win an Academy Award. I haven’t seen a lot of films with deaf characters, to be honest. The last film I saw was Babel, directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu. One of the characters in the film was a girl from Japan named Chieko and she was born deaf. The movie shows her communicating in sign language with her classmates, who are also deaf, and struggling to communicate with people who don’t understand her. Babel was a really powerful movie that also had me bawling like a baby, and the actress who played Chieko was incredible. You could see the pain on her face when people could not understand her, when she faced rejection and loneliness, all while grappling with the death of her mom.

I also didn’t know anything about Children of Deaf Adults (CODA), but I now want to learn more. I didn’t grow up with deaf parents, but I remember watching an episode on a Buddhist YouTube channel about a young man named Alex who overcame his battle with leukemia, and the video showed him communicating with his parents in American Sign Language because they were deaf. I also started to become more curious about the deaf community after watching a video of a deaf professional dancer in Germany dancing to Beethoven. Her performance was incredible, and so I started looking up social media channels by deaf people and was really fascinated by their videos. The Buddhist organization I am a part of has virtual meetings every few months for people who are deaf/ hard of hearing. The meetings are also open to hearing people who have deaf spouses, friends or siblings, and anyone who wants to help support any deaf and hard of hearing Buddhist members in their community. Even though I am a hearing person, it was really cool to see people communicating in American Sign Language.

Even though CODA is about deafness and children of deaf parents, it is really, at the end of the day, a story about family, connection and the power of music. It also has a great message: to never give up on your dreams even if they seem impossible. Ruby is frustrated that she has to always translate for her parents and that she cannot go to college because her parents depend on her to translate for them, but they see her perform at her high school choir concert and they can see how much she really loves music. Earlier in the film, Ruby sings “Let’s Get It On” by Marvin Gaye for her music teacher, Bernardo, and he sees she has a lot of potential, so he encourages her to apply for music school. Even though she doesn’t have an extensive background in music or come from a prestigious family of musicians, Ruby feels the music with her life, and it is truly her passion. However, her family’s fishing business is struggling and the family and other people in the fishing business are dealing with unfair policy changes by the local government, which could put them out of business. Ruby is responsible for being her parents’ translator, so she can’t focus on preparing for college because she always working on the boat with them. Bernardo becomes frustrated with her for skipping rehearsals and thinks she is not as serious as he thought she was, but over time he becomes more understanding and even meets Frank and Jackie. It was funny because he tried to say, “Nice to meet you” in ASL, but he ended up saying “Nice to fuck you” in ASL, which is something he learned on YouTube. Ruby is mortified, and Bernardo apologizes when he realizes that he said the wrong greeting, but Frank laughs it off and jokes “Nice to screw you, too” in ASL to him. It was a sweet scene, and what really got me emotional was when Ruby is about to leave for college and drive off but then she gets out of the car and hugs her family. I cried until my eyes got red and puffy and my shoulders shook as I couldn’t stop crying. I was bawling especially during the end credits because Emilia Jones, the actress who played Ruby Rossi in CODA, performed a beautiful original song called “Beyond the Shore” and all I could say at the end was, “Wow, this was such a touching movie.”

I also realized as I was writing this that a coda is also a musical term, so it was fitting that this was the title of the movie because the movie is not just about children of deaf adults, but also about the power of music. There is a scene in the movie when Ruby’s parents are at her choir concert, and they are looking around at the audience and everyone can hear the music and is singing along and clapping, but they don’t know what they are trying to communicate. Their son, Leo, has his girlfriend with him, and she translates for him during the concert, but Jackie and Frank don’t have an ASL translator who can interpret the song lyrics in ASL for them, and they cannot rely on Ruby because she is onstage performing. Later in that scene, the volume becomes silent and for a couple of minutes you cannot hear the audience clapping or Ruby singing. They show the scene from the parents’ perspective to show how the listening experience at the concert is for them. Early on in the movie Frank and Jackie pick Ruby up from school, and as Frank pulls up in his truck, he is blasting loud rap music and jamming along to it, much to the embarrassment of Ruby, who doesn’t want to be ridiculed at school for having deaf parents. Ruby says that even though her dad is deaf, he likes to still jam out to rap because of the bass. I take it for granted that I can hear and listen to so much music that I don’t even think about what listening to music is like for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. I would be interested to learn more, because even though I am a hearing person and a young person, at some point, when I get older, I am sure I will also gradually lose my hearing and will need to wear a hearing aid to listen better, so I cannot take it for granted that I am a hearing person. Watching CODA also reminded me that deaf people are human beings who deserve the same respect as everyone else. I don’t have any friends who are deaf so the only way I would know more about the deaf community would be through watching films like CODA that represent deaf people as complex human beings rather than as people to be pitied. I also didn’t know anything about Marlee Matlin and Troy Kotsur, or Daniel Durant, the deaf actor who plays Ruby’s brother, Leo, in the movie. I have seen Emilia Jones in a previous film, though. She was in a movie with her and Nicholas Braun (Greg “The Egg” Hirsch from the show Succession) called Cat Person, which is based on a viral short story in The New Yorker by a writer named Kristen Roupenian about a college student’s awkward (and uncomfortable) date with an older man. Even though it wasn’t my favorite film, Emilia Jones was a good actress in the movie. Her performance in CODA, though, was phenomenal and she is such an incredible singer in the film.

Random paylist

I was going through all my old miscellaneous writings and saw a list of songs I must have listened to at some point in the past. I love listening to music and exploring new songs, so a lot of these songs are from various genres, such as alternative rock, R n B, international, and jazz. I must have listened to these songs while exploring Amazon Music or Pandora.

  • “The Way Things Are”: Fiona Apple
  • “Can’t Let Go”: Anthony Hamilton
  • “Do You Remember”: Jill Scott
  • “Dance for You”: Beyonce
  • “Found/ Tonight”: Ben Platt and Lin-Manuel Miranda
  • “Love”: Keyshia Cole
  • “Foolish”: Ashanti
  • “The Next Movement”: The Roots
  • “Watermelon Man”: Herbie Hancock
  • “Turn Your Love Around”: George Benson
  • “You and I”:Avant
  • “Mr. Blues”: Hank Crawford
  • “Untitled”: Sigur Ros
  • “Smile”: Lily Allen
  • :Tiny Dancer”: Elton John
  • “Ring of Fire”: Johnny Cash
  • “La-La-La”: Jay-Z
  • “Walnut Tree”: Keane (I am listening to this right now, and it is one of my favorite songs by them.)
  • “High by the Beach”: Lana del Rey
  • “The Essence”: Herbie Hancock
  • “Soon As I Get Home”: Babyface
  • Piano Trio No. 4 in E Minor (“Dumky trio”): Antonin Dvorak
  • “A Sky Full of Stars”: Coldplay
  • “Man in Black”: Johnny Cash
  • “Where Did Our Love Go?”: Babyface
  • “Fugue State”: Vulfpeck
  • “Ainvayi ainvayi”: Salim Merchant
  • “Dear Summer: Memphis Bleek

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.

Daily writing prompt

Daily writing prompt
What would your life be like without music?
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Honestly, my life would feel empty without music. I love to listen to music every day. When I pick up my musical instrument (I play the cello) I always enjoy it because I just love bowing the different notes and hearing how each note and line combines to create a beautiful piece. I love classical music, but I also love to listen to music of various other genres (except heavy metal. I’m not a huge fan of it unfortunately.)

Summertime

I love summer. I don’t enjoy the weather, necessarily, because down South it gets really hot, and I’m talking, you can fry an egg on the sidewalk kind of hot. I love the prevalence of things to do during the summer. There are a lot of things for kids to do, and I remember going to summer programs was a great investment of time and money for my parents. I remember going to summer school when I was in elementary school and taking a class where we learned about multimedia. I also remember taking a Spanish class where we had a cool teacher named Ms. Basdeo, and she would sing songs with us in Spanish. One of them was “Willaby Wallaby we, a elefante setse do en mi. Willaby Wallaby,” and then we had to go around and sing “[insert name] got sat on by the elephant” in Spanish. I think one of my favorite parts of the summer programs was going to the vending machine and getting those Cookies n Cream ice cream cones. My least favorite was riding the bus to the program because I was shy and quiet, and had difficulty being comfortable around the other kids because they seemed to be more outgoing than me. I really enjoyed art class, though, because I love creating things. It was nice to sit in the class and draw and paint and sculpt things. I remember sitting with some pretty nice people and would often give them my soy nuts and other snacks to munch on during class. They actually really liked the soy nuts; I didn’t think they would, but one of the girls at the table kept putting her hand out every time and so I would give her some of my soy nuts. I also loved the snacks they served at these enrichment programs; Cosmic Brownies was my jam, as were Little Debbie Zebra snack cakes. The sugary filling in the middle, and the softness and puffed-upness of these snack cakes was like being on Cloud Nine, I’m not kidding you. Even though I am vegan, I can still taste how good those Zebra Cakes were. Art class was one of my favorite things to do during the summer, because it gave me an outlet to express myself and it gave me something to do over those hot long months. I really liked one of the classes that I took because we got to have little indoor picnics where we had pieces of fruit with this creamy cheese that we spread on crackers. We were pretending like we were eating French food. I fell in love with that creamy cheese, and even though I can’t eat it anymore due to my lactose-intolerance, I can still imagine the creaminess of the cheese as I spread it on those crackers and ate it with those pieces of fruit. There was another art studio that was above the college preparatory summer school I ended up going to a few years later, and it was called The Artist Within. I sat with a small group of kids, and we just drew and ate snacks and listened to music. The kids were really nice, and they somehow embraced my quiet and sensitive personality. There was one girl named Rose who had a short blonde haircut and wore all black, and she was pretty cool. The art teacher was really sweet, too. She and I had some pretty good conversations. I vaguely remember one of the songs we listened to on that little radio was “Any Other Girl” by an artist named Nu. I didn’t know who the artist was at the time, but I just looked up based on the few song lyrics I remembered, and I got lucky because most times I hear a song, but I don’t know who the artist is.

As I got older, I started participating in more music programs. I still loved drawing, but by this point I had started playing the cello the summer before sixth grade and I fell in love with it. So, I attended a summer program at a university that was about an hour from where I lived that was for cello students in middle and high school. It was really fun getting to play with the other students. They offered a masterclass, which is a class where a faculty member has some students play for them and gives them feedback on what they did well and how they can do better. I didn’t know what to expect from a masterclass at first, and frankly it sounded intimidating. The word “masterclass” made me wonder if I needed to be an advanced student to be in the class. I don’t think I ended up participating in the master class, but I remember watching the older students perform and thinking, Wow, they’re so cool and mature! I want to play like them! Some of the tunes I remember playing was this piece called “Evening Prayer” and we had two really cool instructors named Louann and Andrew. Andrew was part of an ensemble of cellists called the 440 Alliance, and my parents and I went to see them play. They were really, really good and they played cello in this really cool way. They were rocking out together, and it was just a blast to watch!

One class I took over one of my summers (it was either fifth or sixth grade) was an improv class at a local university. As a quiet kid, it was really hard for me to fit in at first. I was so used to reading my book and not talking with other kids, and I was more accustomed to talking with adults than with the other kids. But looking back, I am glad I took that improv class because it helped me go outside my comfort zone. That’s not to say that right after taking the improv class, I stopped being introverted. But it helped to learn something new, something that I wasn’t used to doing. I remember being in that summer class and the kids were all super outgoing and talkative and I just wanted to crawl into a corner and read, but I couldn’t so I did my best, but I suffered from so much social embarrassment. I remember one time I had to get up with a couple of other students in the class, and we had to pick one or two other students to join us in an improv game. I was freaking out because everyone kept getting up when it came my turn to choose, and yelling, “PICK ME! NO, NO, PICK ME!” I desperately just wanted to hide in a corner, but I ended up making a decision and we played this game called The Party Game. I forgot what it entailed, but I somehow survived standing up there in front of a bunch of kids, worrying about how people were going to judge me. Like I said, I definitely needed to get out of my comfort zone.

Summers were also a really fun time to visit family. Summers in Chicago were a lot of fun because my family loved going to the movie theater. I would excitedly mark in my calendar the movies that were coming out and we would go as a family to see them. We were too young to watch any PG-13 or R-rated films, but we would see movies like Shrek or The Rugrats Go Wild, and we loved them. Fast forward, and in the summer of 2016, I am walking down the streets of Chicago to go to the Chicago Culture Center. However, at that moment I was no longer the carefree seven-year-old but now a 22-year-old college graduate with major depressive disorder and no plans for the future. I rode the L train to the center, determined to battle whatever inner turmoil was going on within me. I went to the center and furiously chanted the phrase Nam-myoho-renge-kyo over and over again. I wasn’t trying to work miracles at that moment. I was battling this fundamental inability to believe that my life was worth living, that I had a future full of possibilities and opportunities that I couldn’t even imagine. I was in a state of suffering, and I was determined more than ever that summer to claw myself out. After chanting, I felt so empowered to make efforts to transform my suffering and my state of life expanded. A few months later, I finally got the help that I needed, and was able to finally address that inner turmoil with a mental health professional. That moment during that summer of 2016 was a profound cause for me to transform my life on a deep, deep level.

On Burnout, part 1 (content warning: mental illness, self-harm)

I am no stranger to burnout. In fact, this year I made a determination to take better care of my physical and mental health, and in Buddhism whenever we make a big determination, we face obstacles. One thing I’ve been noticing about me is that I tend to burn out very quickly. In my first year of college, I wanted to take on as much as possible, and I’m glad I took on the challenge, but I remember I wasn’t taking care of my health much during that time. I decided to work two work-study jobs, one in the dining hall as a dishwasher and the other as a pre-K teaching assistant at a daycare. I had a heavy courseload and also was burning the midnight oil well past my bedtime. My roommate would turn off her light around 9 pm, and I was determined to stay up until 12 or 1 in the morning poring through my philosophy textbooks, studying each book several times and perfecting every draft of every essay I wrote. It’s no surprise that I would come into class feeling tired and sleepy, and I would nod off during class. I would at first start off enthusiastic and alert, but as the class went on, I found my notes started to get a little less legible and my eyelids were feeling rather heavy. Before I knew it, I was dozing off at my desk in just about every class that I took. It wasn’t that the lessons were boring; they were very interesting topics. However, when you’re running on four hours of sleep each day, your body soon starts indicating that this is not a sustainable habit in the long run. And by junior year, I realized that it certainly wasn’t. During my first and sophomore year, I found myself gradually becoming more tired, more irritable and more withdrawn. And by junior year, I had hit rock bottom with my mental health. That fall semester there were several unarmed Black people that got killed at the hands of police, such as Eric Garner and Tamir Rice, and reading the news about police brutality made me feel disillusioned, frustrated, and depressed. I became a lot more hyper-aware of my Blackness, and going down the streets of the predominantly white town that I was in made me feel very self-conscious and unsure of whether people were looking at me because I was Black or whether they were thinking about what to grab for dinner or what time to pick up their kids from school (a.k.a not looking at me because I was Black). All I knew was that I was in a life state of pure Hell during that fall semester of junior year, and frankly I’m not sure how I even made it out alive, because I had lost so much hope in life. When I came back to school in my spring semester that year, I lost steam and was just running on fumes at this point. I had very little energy, I went to class feeling like a numb zombie, thinking everyone around me hated me and wanted me to disappear. I would go to bed a lot earlier than normal, which was great because my body needed to compensate for all the hours of sleep it lost due to my poor sleep hygiene those first two years.

I remember during my first year, I would hear gentle reminders from folks to take care of myself, to schedule fun time, to hang out with friends. The seniors often saw me running around during my first year juggling all these commitments, and they always reminded me to get sleep when they saw me staying up late in the hallway, click-clacking an essay on my laptop. I didn’t even go to senior banquet because I thought all I had time to do was study. However, the next day the seniors let me know, “Hey, we really missed you.” One of them gifted me a planner so that I could schedule time for myself, reminding me that college wasn’t just about the classes. At first, I got upset and offended when anyone told me to take care of myself and schedule time for self-care, but now that my body is recovering from years of being on all the time, I’m learning the tough way that self-care is a daily practice. I’ve also learned self-care doesn’t always need to be expensive. Sometimes self-care for me was taking walks in nature (as hard as it was to not have my own vehicle on campus, I did a lot of walking and I think that helped with my health to some degree), reading a book that wasn’t for class, or hanging out with my housemates. During my senior year I decided to try twerking for fun, so during study breaks I would twerk in my room to Iggy Azalea and other hip-hop artists’ music. I wasn’t very good at it, but it was fun, and it relieved some of my stress.

After college, I still had to learn that self-care is something I have to do every day, not just when I feel like it. And I learned that taking care of my body is important as a musician. In 2016, I auditioned for a local professional orchestra. I had this idea in my head that I would get the audition and be able to pay off my student loans just like that. Little did I know that it was a lot more challenging than I had envisioned in my idealistic mind. I remember shredding away at the audition excerpts for hours on end, without taking a single break to get up and drink a glass of water or exercise. I did go to the gym, but only sometimes, when I felt like it. I remember feeling really exhausted after practicing for three straight hours, and unfortunately, I still felt horrible about how I was going to do at my audition the next day. At around 2 am, I started harming myself, which is something I struggled with in my junior year of college. I didn’t want to be alive at that moment. Life felt too painful. The next morning, I lay in bed, feeling like life was over for me and that I should just give up. I didn’t have the energy to leave the bed, I didn’t have the energy to go to my orchestra audition later in the evening. I felt like a complete and utter failure. A relative who lived out-of-state called to check up on me, and at first, I missed his call because I didn’t have the motivation to answer the phone, but this time I answered and thanked him for calling me. He told me to take care of myself, and honestly, I think his phone call saved my life at that moment, because before he called, I had no hope and had lost the will to live. I made sure to rest my body before the audition, and in fact, that was all I had energy to do at that moment. About fifteen minutes before I had to go to the audition, I decided to chant to my Gohonzon (it’s the scroll I chant to morning and evening as part of my Buddhist practice) to have a good audition. I was terrified at this point about auditioning, and as I chanted the words “Nam-myoho-renge-kyo”, I started crying. I realized that I didn’t want to take my own life, I wanted to live, and I was tired of feeling numb. I cried on the way to my audition, and my dad gave me a hug. I got to the audition space (it was in a church) and the person helped me sign in. She was really nice. I went into a small practice room and warmed up with scales. It was an unrealistic expectation that I would play perfectly at this point. I just needed to focus on doing my best and getting through the audition. When it was time for me to go in (I saw only one other person going into the church to audition) I saw two people: the conductor of the orchestra and the principal cellist. They sat at a small table. I was nervous, but somehow because I chanted, I was able to be myself at that moment. I played “The Swan” by Camille Saint-Saens for my solo piece, and then did my best on the excerpts. Sure, I fumbled quite a few notes, but looking back, I did my best. I think because I chanted, too, I was able to have a very natural down-to-earth interaction with the conductor and the principal cellist. After the audition, my dad and I celebrated by getting Taco Bueno.

To be continued…

Random playlist

Here are a few of the songs I have been listening to this week. Most of them are Motown. I’ve been craving a lot of Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder lately.

  1. “Baby Baby Baby” by Aretha Franklin
  2. “Can I Get a Witness” by Marvin Gaye
  3. “Jimmy Mack” by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas
  4. “With a Child’s Heart” by Stevie Wonder
  5. “Big Time” by Peter Gabriel
  6. “Fool in Love” by Tina Turner
  7. “New Attitude” by Patti LaBelle
  8. “Put Your Hands on Me Baby” by Joss Stone
  9. “Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)” by Sly and the Family Stone
  10. “Border Song (Holy Moses)” by Aretha Franklin
  11. “Only the Lonely” by Aretha Franklin
  12. “Eleanor Rigby” by Aretha Franklin
  13. “Mean Old World” by Sam Cooke
  14. “Trouble Blues’ by Sam Cooke
  15. “Let’s Go Get Stoned” by Big Mama Thornton
  16. “Hound Dog” by Big Mama Thornton
  17. “Dark End of the Street” by Aretha Franklin
  18. “Dark End of the Street” by Percy Sledge
  19. “Papillon” by Chaka Khan
  20. “I Got a Bag of My Own” by James Brown
  21. “Funky President” by James Brown (I’ve listened to this so religiously this week. It’s got a really funky beat and makes me want to get up out of my swivel chair and dance around the office.)
  22. “Mother Popcorn” by James Brown
  23. “I’m Shook” by James Brown