Tag: music

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wasn’t. During my first and sophomore year, I found myself gradually becoming more tired, more irritable and more withdrawn.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

Random Playlist

This is a list of songs I have listened to these past couple of weeks. It’s Black History Month, too, so I wanted to include a lot of music by Black artists.

  1. Monday, Monday: The Mamas and The Papas
  2. You Make Loving Fun: Fleetwood Mac
  3. People Get Up and Drive Your Funky Soul: James Brown
  4. Love, Love, Love: Donny Hathaway
  5. Aquarius, Let the Sunshine In: The 5th Dimension
  6. A Brand New Me: Aretha Franklin
  7. Mary, Don’t You Weep: Aretha Franklin
  8. Golden Lady: Stevie Wonder
  9. Sara: Fleetwood Mac
  10. Too High: Stevie Wonder
  11. Clean Up Woman: Betty Wright
  12. Who: David Byrne and St. Vincent
  13. After the Dance: Marvin Gaye
  14. Hey Love: Stevie Wonder
  15. Fire: The Pointer Sisters
  16. Nikita: Elton John
  17. Fool in Love: Tina Turner
  18. Night Moves: Bob Seger
  19. Baltimore: Nina Simone
  20. Sinnerman: Nina Simone
  21. Bridge over Troubled Waters: Aretha Franklin
  22. Misty Blue: Etta James
  23. Confessions: Usher
  24. I’ve Been Loving You Too Long: Etta James
  25. West Coast: Lana del Rey
  26. Watermelon Man: Herbie Hancock
  27. Boogie on Reggae Woman: Stevie Wonder
  28. Jump: Aretha Franklin
  29. Flowers: Miley Cyrus
  30. Raise Your Glass: P!NK

My Thoughts on the Grammys

So it’s 10 pm here and technically the Grammys finish at 10:30 but I am very tired, so I am going to write up some quick thoughts on the Grammy Music Awards.

Honestly, it was a beautiful ceremony. Trevor Noah, who hosted The Daily Show on Comedy Central, was the host at the Grammys. He was a really great host tonight; I remember when he hosted the Grammys some time ago, and he was a really good host that time, too. I really loved Fantasia’s tribute to Tina Turner; she performed “Proud Mary,” and she did the Tina dancing and glittery outfit and heels and everything. And Fantasia can BELT a song, man. I haven’t listened to much of her music, but now I really want to see her in The Color Purple. Oprah also gave a really moving introduction to Fantasia’s performance of “Proud Mary,” and she talked about her friendship with Tina. She said that Tina always told Oprah that she should dress up even if she wasn’t going out anywhere, and that really encouraged me because Tina had this incredible confidence and that really taught me the importance of loving yourself and developing confidence in yourself. I remember watching a documentary called TINA, and in the documentary, she talks about her Buddhist practice of chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, and how it helped her transform her life in so many ways. I always get so encouraged when I tell people about the practice, and they go, “Oh, yeah, Tina Turner chanted in that movie!” and I remember they are talking about What’s Love Got to Do With It? with Angela Bassett. The movie is still on my watch list and I feel bad saying I haven’t watched it yet even after all these years. I really loved her autobiography, I, Tina, though. I now just have so much appreciation for Tina inspiring so many people.

Miley Cyrus did a performance of “Flowers” and she also channeled that Tina Turner energy. She had a fringe dress and blown out hair, and at the end of her performance she did some dance moves like Tina Turner. They have segments where they introduce each artist, and the artist talks about their work and the inspirations, and Miley said she was inspired by artists like Tina Turner and Dolly Parton, and she wanted to channel their energy into her music. Speaking of legends, Stevie Wonder performed a very moving tribute to Tony Bennett, who passed away last year. He sang “For Once in My Life.” To be honest, I grew up with the Stevie Wonder version, and I didn’t grow up listening to Tony Bennett much, but I remember one day, I was like, I want to explore more of these legends like Barbara Streisand and Tony Bennett and Tina Turner, so I listened to an album Tony had produced with Lady Gaga where he collaborates with her (the album is called Cheek to Cheek.) When I listened to Cheek to Cheek, it was so beautiful and the collaboration between Tony and Lady Gaga’s voices was stunning. It must have been a huge treat to work with Tony Bennett. The In Memoriam part was very moving. I really loved Annie Lennox’s tribute to Sinead O’ Connor. Annie just has such a powerful voice and she put so much soul into her performance.

The Joy of Listening to Music (some ramblings)

I have always loved music. Since I was young, I remember listening to Celine Dion and many other artists in the car. Somehow Celine’s voice took me to another world, and I loved her vocal range. Some of my favorite songs were “Because You Loved Me,” “The Power of Love” and “Love Can Move Mountains.” I remember going on my way to school, listening in the car to her singing on the radio station. The soaring choir at the beginning of “Love Can Move Mountains” always gives me goosebumps because it is so powerful, and the song just has a beautiful and uplifting rhythm. It is hard to describe music in articulate words because there are so many feelings when I listen to music that I struggle to express. My music tastes have expanded over the years, and I remember when I was around eighth of ninth grade, I found a playlist station on Yahoo Music called “Coffeehouse Music,” and there were some notable songs I listened to on that station. One of them was Sia’s “Soon We’ll Be Found,” and it had a beautiful music video. It was my first time hearing Sia’s music, and after that I fell in love with her music and listened to her album Some People Have Real Problems. Another song on the Coffeehouse station came up, and it was Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab.” I really loved the music video that went with the song, too. Honestly, I miss Amy Winehouse. The day I found out that she passed away, I was heartbroken, and I can’t remember how many weeks I cried but it was painful. In middle and high school, Amy Winehouse was one of those artists whose music I really loved. In seventh grade, I struggled a lot with self-esteem and fitting in, so music was always a sort of refuge for me. I remember being young and when I was starting out with a bad Internet addiction, in particular to YouTube, I watched music videos from this artist named K.T. Tunstall. I listened to her album Eye of the Telescope, and absolutely loved it. I really loved her song “Other Side of the World” because it was so beautiful, and I love her voice. Somehow her music made me think of coffee shops and reading books. When I was in my freshman year of high school, I did a science experiment where I had people listen to music while they played cards and they had to memorize the cards, and I wanted to see if playing music helped with memorizing things. I am fuzzy about the particular details of the experiment, but I just remember it was just so much fun for me because I got to go to the library and check out all these CDs (I must have brought home at least twenty-five.) The ones I remember most was Snoop Dogg’s album Paid Tha Cost to Be Da Boss and The Very Best of Aretha Franklin- The ’60s. One of the songs I really loved on the Aretha Franklin album was “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You).” I was listening to it today and I love it, especially the parts with the piano. Her voice is so powerful, and I love the piano parts, too. I love the rhythm and feel of the music. There is just something so powerful about Aretha Franklin’s music that I really love.

One of the songs from Snoop Dogg’s album that I held onto was “Beautiful,” by him and Pharrell. There is a very cool rhythm to it, and I didn’t listen to much hip-hop before that, other than what was played at middle school social events, but then I started listening to hip-hop more after listening to Snoop Dogg’s album. The summer before my ninth-grade year, I didn’t go to summer school and instead decided to watch MTV, eat waffles and knit scarves and hats. I loved watching MTV because they had a lot of great artists on the channel, and I loved the music videos.

I started to get more into hip-hop around college, because I took an African-American Studies class on Black culture, and one of the units in the class was on music. We listened to music from the 1960s to the present, and we listened to and analyzed songs such as Erykah Badu’s “Green Eyes” and “Orange Moon,” and “We Don’t Need It” by Lil’ Kim feat. Junior M.A.F.I.A. I remember when we listened to “We Don’t Need It,” everyone exchanged glances in the classroom and everyone’s eyes got big, like, Wait, they said what? (the song is very sexually explicit) I remember for my final project in the class I did research on the banjo in African-American music traditions, and I looked up information about Black country musicians. I told my professor that I was inspired to do this research after we had the music unit in the course, and because I saw the movie Last Holiday and there is a part where Queen Latifah’s character, Georgia, is calling her sister and her sister tells her that she is going to follow her dreams and become a country music singer. Georgia tells her “there is no such thing as a Black country music singer,” and at the time I thought it was funny, but then I remembered Black country musicians do exist, notably Darius Rucker of Hootie and the Blowfish. To be honest, I only listened to a few hits by Hootie and the Blowfish and I didn’t know that Darius Rucker is African-American. But then I started listening to more of his solo music and I really loved it. He has a song I ended up listening to a lot while studying in the library called “Alright” and it really cheered me up whenever I listened to it. It was like my music comfort food. I also discovered a band called the Carolina Chocolate Drops, and they perform a lot of bluegrass music. That sophomore year of college was seriously a year of musical exploration for me. I took a couple of music courses that year and both of them were on the same day in the morning, the first at 8 am and the second at 10 am. The first class was a classical music course on music history from the pre-Classical period to modern music. It mostly covered classical music and the professor had us listen to classical music from different time periods. My favorite period of classical music, to be honest, will always be the Romantic-era music. I love Tchaikovsky, Dvorak and Brahms, and one of the pieces I worked on during that year was a cello sonata by Johannes Brahms. I went to a summer camp one time in high school and I heard an undergraduate student play the Cello Sonata in E Minor by Brahms for a master class, and it immediately hooked me. It was such a beautiful piece and I love E minor because it’s such a stormy and powerful key. We had to check out CDs from the performing arts library and listen to them, and then we had to write papers analyzing the style, the tone and the other different elements of the piece.

I am going to be honest, I love music, but I have only taken a couple of music theory classes, so to get into the nitty-gritty of the music would take me some practice. In my senior year of high school, I took a class called AP (Advanced Placement) music theory. And I bombed the AP exam. I remember having to ask a lot of questions in class and it was quite challenging, and then years later during 2020 when I was in quarantine, I took an online course on music fundamentals. And I bombed that one, too. I remember after failing music theory in high school, I was scared to take a course in music fundamentals. In general, I have a really irrational fear of failure. But I think a class in music theory would have done me some good. I really loved the African Popular Music class I took (it was the 10 am class) because I hadn’t listened to a lot of music by artists from Africa, other than Angelique Kidjo. But we listened to Fela Kuti, E.T. Mensah, and many other artists. For the final project, I collaborated with a classmate, and we researched the music of this artist named K’Naan, who is a Somali-Canadian artist. During the summer I was watching MTV there was a music video by K’Naan called “Strugglin'” and I loved the flow and rhythm of the song. Doing research on K’Naan and listening to his music gave me a deeper appreciation for hip-hop, because it helped me understand that hip-hop can be used to create social change and raise awareness about issues such as global warming, civil war and poverty. I decided to go back and listen to K’Naan’s album Troubadour, and he has a song called “Fire in Freetown” that I really love. A couple of students did a presentation for the class on the music of Die Antwoord, a rap rave group from South Africa. It was a pretty intense music listening experience, and it took some getting used to when I listened to the songs. There was a music video for a song called “Evil Boy,” and I ended up closing my eyes during the video because the presenters warned us it was explicit, and I am pretty sensitive about what content I take in. But I guess that is part of the music experience, in retrospect. You might like different songs and others not so much, but it all exposes you to new styles of music and new ways of listening to music. When I was in the classical music course, we listened to 20th century composers such as Arnold Schoenberg and Pierre Boulez and it was a new music experience for me because I was so used to classical music having this linear structure where I could predict the time signatures, the rhythms and the style of the music, but there were a lot of experimental elements in the 20th century music and it was very new to my ears. I really loved the final project for the course because I ended up writing about Dmitri Shostakovich, who was a composer from the Soviet Union, and how he navigated being a composer during the era of Joseph Stalin, when music faced heavy government censorship. I listened to his String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, and it was very powerful.

In college I really loved listening to the music I grew up with, so that included Phil Collins and a lot of Weird Al. I remember very vividly one evening I was studying in the music library, and I was super homesick and stressed with finals. I broke down in tears, but I was listening to Genesis’ ‘Land of Confusion” and somehow listening to the song made me feel better. I really loved Genesis as a kid; they have a song called “In Too Deep” and it is a sad song but so beautiful. In the summer of 2013, I took a class at a local college and fell in love with a young man who was tall, had beautiful brown eyes and had gone to school in Uganda for three years. There was something so attractive about him and during the time we worked together as students we developed a nice platonic emotional bond, and I filled my journal with fantasies about us getting married and having beautiful children together. Of course, fantasies are just that: fantasies. When I ran into him a few months after the course, I found out he was dating someone else. I was both happy to meet his girlfriend and also heartbroken inside because I had waited for so many months for him to reply to my email (I didn’t have Facebook at the time, but he did) and just kept entertaining these ideas of us getting together and having children together. I often listened to the song “Follow You Follow Me” by Genesis whenever I thought about him. It is such a warm and tender song, and I remember I was still thinking about my crush on the guy, and one fall day during my sophomore year the song “Follow You Follow Me” came on the speaker in the CVS pharmacy store, and I found myself falling in love all over again in the middle of CVS while grabbing batteries/ toothpaste/ whatever the hell I was buying that day. I think I had listened to that song during my time in the college class, whenever I had a private moment in my room and was listening to music. I still love this song, even if I have long gotten over my crush on this young man.

My Love of Seal

When I was a child, one of my fondest memories was listening to the radio. The radio station would always play adult contemporary music. These artists included Celine Dion, Elton John, and George Michael. There was just something so beautiful about listening to their music. As a child, I was very sensitive and listening to music helped me tap into that sensitivity, and I remember going to ice skating lessons at our local mall when I was younger, and every time they played “My Heart Will Go On,” I would start tearing up because it was just so beautiful. Even though I had not seen Titanic yet it was still an emotional song. Side note: I could make the excuse that I was too young to see this movie, but I knew kids who had gone to see The Mummy when they were six, so that’s not really a great excuse. Okay, on second thought, yes, it was a valid excuse. I probably would not have appreciated the movie had I seen it that young, and seeing people die on open water as a gigantic iceberg sank would have given me nightmares for life. When I finally saw it in 2016 I cried my eyes out. And from there I developed a very late crush on Leonardo DiCaprio (I was too late in my crush, I missed the gaggle of girls who screamed at this teen heart-throb of an actor but I still enjoyed fantasizing about meeting him when I was 22.)

Okay, back to the topic. I still love these artists to this day. And one of these artists is named Seal. I love the animal, but I am talking about the British singer who is known for so many wonderful songs, the number one song being “Kiss From A Rose.” I used to listen to this song so many times and each time I never got tired of it. Seal’s voice took me to another dimension, another world, another paradise. When I was in college, one of the teachers I worked with always played Seal and Steely Dan, and I pretty much loved her forever after that. I remember there was one song called “My Vision” that I just fell in love with in college. I remember in sophomore year listening to that song and it just took me out of my every day challenges and allowed me to just enjoy some beautiful music. I remember going to the campus library and the third floor room, the periodicals, was always super crowded and it was hard to find a seat anywhere, especially during finals week (good luck with finding any kind of study space during that time.) But I remember sitting at one of the crowded long tables with other students who were plugged in or whispering study guide notes to each other to prepare for midterms, and Seal was just singing about if I could see his vision of a red-hot summer in white, when love was the feeling. There was something so powerful about the song that just drove me to listen to it more and more, and I still love Seal’s music to this day. There is one song from his album Human Beings called “Colour” and the first time I listened to it I fell in love. It is hard to describe how beautiful this song was but I think the first time I listened to it I got goosebumps because it was just so riveting and moving and deep. The way Seal’s voice soars during the chorus and I also love the instrumentals. The strings, the voice, everything about this song just takes me away.

Cello

Written on: January 26, 2021

I have a wooden muse
She produces wonderful sounds
She is my cello
Each time she straddles her sexy self between my legs
She performs a seductive dance for me
Winding her perfect hourglass figure 
Grinding against my groin
She has more meat than a tenderloin
Steak, done medium-rare
She has a fierce personality 
So fierce that Sasha got her to sing on stage with her
Backstage pass for free.
When my cello performs her traditional daily lap dance
For the evening
She also seduces me with her soulful voice
Her voice is a sticky honeypot
That makes my mouth water and my eyes water
As I take in the frequencies, the power, the soul
Of her sensual serenade
My ears waltz to the tunes of her melodies and harmonies
They slow dance to the largo of the bow
They rock out like they're in a mosh pit to the aggressive fortissimos
That she growls in a show of ferocity and passion
My ears fall into a trance
When they see her dance
And whisper "pianissimo" 
By the time the lap dance is over
I am exhilarated
Mindblown
Flabbergasted
What did I just witness?
Each time she dances for me
I pay her in empty compliments and cheap thrills
But she is the real deal
And I owe her more than just a good time.

Movie Review: Patti Cake$

I had been meaning to see this movie for a while. I saw the trailer a long time ago and thought it was really cool. If you haven’t seen Patti Cake$, it’s about a young white woman named Patricia Dombrowski, aka Patti, who lives in a small town in New Jersey but has big aspirations to become a famous rapper like her idol, O-Z. Even though she struggles to make it big, she and her friends Jheri, Bastard and her grandma Nana form a rap group called PBNJ together and Patti finds herself developing more confidence in herself as a rapper. I think that is why I love this movie, because it showed me that even if circumstances are hard, you can take steps towards accomplishing your dreams, but it requires a lot of serious dedication. Patti works two jobs and gets fired from one of them, and it puts a strain on the family finances. She gets frequent calls from debt collectors telling her that she is overdue on rent and other bills, and she also has to take care of her mom and grandma. But she spends time with Bastard and Jheri writing rhymes and recording in Bastard’s studio.

The relationship between Patti and her mom is really fraught at the beginning. Barb comes in while Patti is working at the bar and wants Patti to serve her alcohol, but Patti doesn’t want to. She does it though and after multiple shots of liquor she watches her mom sing on stage and then later vomit in the bathroom stall. Her mom is an excellent singer, but she gave up on her dreams when she had Patti and in fact, she blames a lot of her inability to follow her dreams on Patti. When Patti tells her about her rapping career, her mom laughs about it and makes fun of her for it, but it’s not until she actually sees Patti performing one night that she really starts to respect that girlfriend has bars.

It was also sweet seeing the romance between Patti and Bastard. When we first see Bastard he is at an open mic playing heavy metal on guitar and people are throwing stuff at him and teasing him. At first he doesn’t warm up to Danielle even when she tells him she liked his stuff but over time as he gets to know her he sees that she really likes his music and wants to collaborate with him, and they develop a beautiful friendship over the course of the movie. I also love love love the friendship between Jheri and Patti. I think that is why I gravitated towards the movie in the first place, because at the beginning of the trailer Jheri, who works at a pharmacy, is getting on the intercom when Patti walks into the pharmacy and gives her a grand ovation, introducing her as Killa P to an imaginary audience.

I also kind of related to one of the scenes in the movie, where Patti is interviewing for her second job at a catering company, because the man interviewing her asks where she would like to be in five years, and Patti at first imagines herself in a music video rapping in a hot tub with champagne and money around her, but then in reality she tells the manager that she envisions herself working for the catering company for the next five years. In 2016 I applied for several jobs after college to go towards paying off my student loans, and I landed an interview with a hotel as a front desk person. I was sweating how I was going to answer the interview questions and one of the questions, which is pretty common for job interviews, was “Where do you see yourself in the next five years?” Honestly I wanted to say “playing in a professional orchestra” because that is where I envisioned myself being after making enough financial resources and honing my craft. But I said, “I envision myself still working in the hospitality industry.” Part of me answered this way because I had this fear that if I answered that I wanted to have a different career path in the next five years, then they wouldn’t get me the job. (side note: I ended up being let go after four weeks. Probably for behavioral issues.) I’ve learned from watching this movie though that it really does help to have an income though so that you can still do what you love in your spare time. As much as I tried to quit my day jobs in the past, I realized that I really do like having stability sometimes. I think when I quit my job last year I was really anxious about finding another source of income, and when I played my music or did my writing I realized at some point that I didn’t need to quit my day job to do my passions on the side. I think I’m actually more determined than ever to use whatever time I have after work to practice my writing and work on my music.

This movie also showed me that it’s important to be true to yourself as an artist and not worry about what other people think of you. Even though she spits mad rhymes, Patti is a human being and at times struggles with self-confidence, especially because she faces a lot of bullying (the people in her neighborhood have always called her “Dumbo”). There is one scene where Patti falls in love with this guy named Danny who works at a pizza shop but during a rap battle he ends up insulting her and when she insults him back, he hits her. He does have a slight change of heart when he agrees to buy Patti’s CD, though. He was a jerk though to Patti. Patti also has a crucial moment when she meets her idol, O-Z. Throughout the film, Patti envisions following in O-Z’s footsteps and achieving his level of fame and fortune, but she gets a catering gig where she has to serve at O-Z’s mansion. When the manager asks who can make O-Z’s favorite drink, she makes it, and when she goes to his studio and finds him sitting on his fancy couch she envisions herself rapping for him. But instead she is extremely nervous and loses her confidence when she leaves a CD of her raps and O-Z puts down her dreams and stubs the CD with his cigarette and tells Patti to stick to catering and to give up on her dreams of becoming a rapper. The manager tells her she messed up and fires her, and Patti feels like she is failing at everything. She quits the group and then quits her job at the bar when one of the patrons finds her journal of lyrics and recites them in front of everyone without Patti’s permission, and she tells Jheri that she is giving up on her dreams. Before she meets O-Z, Patti tells Bastard that she wants to be like O-Z, but Bastard tells her to not be easily influenced by O-Z’s prestige and influence because it’s all just about appearances. Patti finally realizes that O-Z didn’t care about Patti’s dreams and was just a really terrible guy who looked down on people even though he was super successful. This reminds me of when I went to a professor’s house to audition for an advanced chamber music ensemble that he was coaching, and I thought very highly of this person, but to be honest at the time I really looked down on myself for working at Starbucks after graduating from this elite college. I thought that if I told my peers and professors from college that I worked at Starbucks, they would look down on me, so I often hesitated when telling them. When I met this professor, I was so nervous and wanted to impress him so badly, but it turns out that I didn’t end up getting into the group and to be honest, when I told him I worked at Starbucks, he told me he thought it was a shame that I graduated from a prestigious college and was working at Starbucks. I found myself losing my confidence and continued to make myself feel ashamed, but after a while, I realized that it doesn’t really matter what others think of your life journey in the long run, because as long as you are growing and maturing from the experiences you are always going to be on the best path for you. Of course, telling myself this everyday is much easier said than done because it’s a lot easier to look at someone else’s career path and think they have it easy, when you don’t even know their journey or what they struggle with every day to pursue that dream. I think what Bastard told Patti about not being swayed by O-Z’s success reminded me of this letter from The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin that I repeatedly turn to called “The Eight Winds.” Nichiren is telling one of his followers, Shijo Kingo, who is a skilled samurai that he shouldn’t let the promises of fame and praise sway his behavior. The four favorable winds are praise, pleasure, prosperity and honor, and the four adverse winds are decline, disgrace, censure and suffering. It’s easy to let other people’s validation or criticisms influence our decision-making or our life paths, and sometimes that praise or criticism comes from a good well-meaning place but other times it doesn’t, so I’ve realized as I’ve been pursuing these creative passions of mine is to not let these external influences prevent me from making art in the most authentic truest way. Bastard encourages Patti to keep being true to herself, regardless of whether people receive their music well or not, and DJ Tips, a famous emcee (played by MC Lyte) ends up playing Patti’s song “PBNJ” on her station one evening. DJ Tips also really loves Patti’s music even though she says it was “rough,” and when they meet at the bar mitzvah Patti is catering at, DJ Tips says to Patti that she can’t believe after 20 years as a DJ she gets a gig playing at someone’s bar mitzvah. This showed me that as musicians, you’re not always going to get that big glamorous gig you want and even after a lot of experience in the field you still may need to take gigs that may not be big and glamorous but are still really part of the job of being a musician. I kind of struggled with this at times because I expected that I would land an orchestra job right after college just because I’ve played for so many years and have all this playing experience in college, but that’s not how it worked. I would call the personnel manager asking if they needed me to sub for any gigs, but I didn’t get a reply and felt discouraged. I ended up playing quite a few gigs for free, and at someone’s Christmas party for some cash. But after talking with other classical musicians I have come to understand that is pretty normal. I had this grand idea that I would be this big name soloist who was going to collaborate with all of these famous artists, and when that dream didn’t come true I felt like I had failed or that this wasn’t the career for me anymore simply because I wasn’t making the progress I wanted. But what I have learned over time, and it’s still a life lesson I need to internalize, is that success is not a one-time thing, like you struggle and then bam, you just become successful after one hit or one CD or one gig. Sure it happens, but for the most part, artists have to keep producing and working on their craft to keep growing in their careers.

Overall, I really loved this movie. I kept jamming to the songs and it was a really encouraging movie for me to watch as a musician and writer who is still struggling to believe in myself and that I can achieve my dreams. Side note: Honestly, while watching this I kept thinking about Lady Sovereign, who is a white British female rapper. I grew up listening to a lot of her music in middle school and even today I found myself playing some of her old hits. Also there is a part in the movie where Patti and Jheri go to a recording studio and I thought the actor who played Swisha looked like Anthony Ramos, and sure enough when I watched the end credits I freaked out and was like, “Oh my gosh, Anthony Ramos from Hamilton was in this movie!!!” I loved watching Hamilton on Disney Plus and I loved Anthony in In the Heights, so seeing him in this movie had me going “Oh my gosh!” Ok, enough rambling. All that to say, if you haven’t seen Patti Cake$ yet I definitely recommend it.

Patti Cake$. 2017. Starring Danielle Macdonald, Siddharth Dhananjay, Bridget Everett, Mamoudou Athie and Cathy Moriarty. Directed by Geremy Jasper. Rated R for language throughout, crude sexual references, some drug use and a brief nude image.

Playlist 7/26/23

“Chopped and Screwed”: T-Pain

“Gossip Folks”: Missy Elliott

“Jump to It”: Aretha Franklin

“Never Gonna Break My Faith”: Aretha Franklin

“Automatic”: The Pointer Sisters

“On the Radio”: Donna Summer

“Come Around”: MIA

Cello Sonata in E Minor by Johannes Brahms

“Don’t Cha Wanna Ride”: Joss Stone

“Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See”: Busta Rhymes

“Kitty Kat”: Beyonce

“Soldier”: Destiny’s Child

“Love So Soft”: Kelly Clarkson

“Ain’t No Other Man”: Christina Aguilera

“Can’t Hold Us Down”: Christina Aguilera and Lil’ Kim

“Son of a Gun (I Betcha Think This Song is About You)”: Janet Jackson

“Damage”: Danity Kane

Song Playlist

  • “High Hopes”: Panic! At the Disco
  • “Fool of Me”: Meshell Ndegeocello
  • “Superposition”: Young the Giant
  • “Supermassive Black Hole”: Muse
  • “Decode”: Paramore
  • “Hey Mama”: The Black Eyed Peas
  • “In Bloom”: Nirvana
  • “Classic (feat. POWERS)”- The Knocks
  • “wait in the truck”: HARDY feat. Lainey Wilson
  • “Are You Gonna Be My Girl”: Jet
  • “Prisencolineusinainciusol”: Adriano Celentano
  • “Make Me Feel”: Janelle Monae
  • “Team”: Lorde
  • “Like a Prayer”: Madonna
  • “Love Can Move Mountains”: Celine Dion
  • “I’m Alive”: Celine Dion
  • “The Boondocks”: Little Big Town
  • “Keep on Singin My Song”: Christina Aguilera
  • “Jojo”: Boz Scaggs
  • “Longview”: Green Day
  • “Drink You Away”: Justin Timberlake
  • “Na Na”: Trey Songz
  • “Trouble”: P!NK
  • “Beautiful”: Tweet
  • “Let It Bump”: Missy Elliott
  • “Through the Dark”: KT Tunstall
  • “Ashes”: KT Tunstall
  • “What Were We Thinking”: Joss Stone
  • “Put Your Hands on Me Baby”: Joss Stone
  • “Just Friends (Sunny)”: Musiq Soulchild
  • “When We Get By”: D’Angelo
  • “What’s It Gonna Be?”: Busta Rhymes feat. Janet Jackson
  • “Gett Off”: Prince
  • “Love from the Other Side”: Fall Out Boy