Coffee on a Bench Life / Acting vs Songwriting / Minari
It’s been a pleasant week. I’ve started this new habit of stepping out to my local bagel shop, buying a cup of coffee ($2.48) and people watching from the bench right outside. Sitting there in my beautiful neighborhood with all these randos passing me by while I do absolutely nothing… what a life!
This means a lot more to me than you’d think. Back in college during the most idyllic period of my life I’d spend hours sipping coffee and listening to music on a bench on Sproul watching people walk by. There was a weird sense of pride in taking life so slowly.
Before that point I felt like I’d rushed through so much. There was always something to do or something I had to go towards and fuuuuuug what a grind.
Then I graduated college, work started, the grind resumed and I lost that practice of drinking coffee while doing nothing.
So it feels great to come back to it full circle.
I also love benches. Possibly one of my favorite things to sit on.
Been listening to a few songs on repeat this week.
Haven’t been the biggest fan of Kali Uchis but DAMN this song is fire. The production is incredible and gets you bobbing along right from the first sound. The lyrics are beautiful. That moment in the middle when she hits you with that English out of nowhere? Fuego.
That melody at you know I’m just a flight away—whoooo—so good.
I love it when artists mix up languages mid song. Maybe I’ll do that as well once I improve my broken Korean
Dead Man Walking - Brent Faiyaz
That voice right from the first verse. Played this a few times on the piano. There’s something about the vocal register you have to sing in that makes it pretty fun to cover. I like the production for the song as well. It’s pretty sparse but that’s what makes the drums/harmonies hit harder in the second verse.
Not a fan of how long the intro instrumental takes though
Leave the Door - Open Bruno Mars, Anderson Paak, Sonic Silk
Fuggin incredible music video. That vibe. Those vocals.
They’re so fuggin cool.
A bit of a tangent—I’ve asked myself in the past what the point is in making songs.
My acting teacher back in college would always repeat this phrase (paraphrased because I forgot the exact quote):
Art is the process of finding meaning amongst the chaos of life
This idea resonated a lot and I tried to imbue it in my acting. Exploring each beat within the scene and trying to extract the truth for every moment. Taking apart very possible moments of a human’s life and deep diving into what it means to experience each one.
So it’s never been a question as to the “value” of acting. As the actor you learn about what it means to be human and as an audience member you also learn what it means to be human by watching.
How good is music at teaching you what it means to be human?
Jury’s still out on that for me. How many songs can you list that hit deeeeeep. How many songs have changed your life? Changed the way you live your life?
Books and movies/plays are great at this (todo: write out a list of life changing books/movies in a future post) because they can go deep. They also have the benefit of your near undivided attention whereas most song listening (for me and most people?) happen with other activities.
Yeah… I’m still trying to think of life changing songs.
In any case, I really do appreciate Year of the Ox’s The Point. I respect it because it talks about topics worth talking about. Once I finish my current batch of songs I want to write some more about Asian Americans. I want to rep my people and dive in to what it means to be Asian living in America.
So yeah maybe this is a song that changes the way I live my life and encourages me to think about/embrace my culture more.
You can tell I’ve been thinking about Asian Americanness a lot these days. I’m in this weird place where I’m trying to define what it means to be Asian American despite having lived that experience for the past two decades. I wonder why it’s taken me this long and I think it’s because we as a people don’t talk much about these things. With our parents, with each other. I have been talking about it more with some of my friends (shoutout Andrew, Sherry, Sylvia) but even that’s mostly because of the influx of attacks on Asians recently.
No one has ever sat me down and said “this is what it means to be Asian in America.” And as I’ve said before you’re not going to learn Asian American history growing up unless you specifically study Asian American studies in college.
I watched Minari earlier this week as part of this effort to educate myself more (also just love seeing Asian actors on the big screen).
I also watched this interview between JJ Abrams, Lee Isaac Chung, and Steven Yeun about Minari. Here’s a excerpt paraphrased from Steven that I thought was pretty interesting:
Sometimes we as this middle immigrant community are caught in between two worlds. These third culture kids often times are tasked by the American gaze to engage in an authentic rendering of our culture from another place. But the truth is we don’t have access to that at that level because we’re us right here. And on the other end we also have our motherland’s gaze placed upon us where we’re seen as American. This dissonance creates this weird place where we’re trying to authenticate ourselves in a polarized vacuum where it’s either American or Korean but the truth is we want to say who we are right here. And this is valid enough.
We don’t need to be made by the framework of these nations but we are this own unique thing within the construct of America. And that is uniquely American. The American dream is to be able to make your own life. The freedom to be you and live and die by your own choices.
There’s this itch that we have where we don’t feel validated by Parasite, per se. And in that same way we’re not completely validated by a Terrence Malik movie.
How beautiful is it to be in this place? There’s a lot of difficulty in being Asian in America but I’d never swap out this experience. In these uncharted waters, this undefined middle ground, we have the opportunity to define Asian Americanness.
It’s sad that we have so little representation in media and politics. But that’s an opportunity.
It’s sad that we’re so unaware of our own history in this country. But that’s an opportunity
It’s sad that we’re getting physically and verbally attacked. But that’s an opportunity (although if I’m real on this one this issue seems the hardest to solve).
And the list goes on.
This week’s post is getting pretty long. Anyways here’s this week’s update:
Going to keep an eye on my Tiktok usage going forward. 11 hours in a week is a lot…
In other news:
Got dim sum with Sylvia at Dim Sum Palace in East Village. First time seeing her in years (last time in 2017) so it was great seeing her again. Drank way too much jasmine tea. The dim sum was good but not as good as I expected
Went to Cinnamon Girl (local bakery) and got a beef patty and a slice of upside down pineapple cake. Wow. Biting into the crust of the patty was a Moment of the Week. Flaky goodness. The pineapple cake was delicious as well. First time I’ve had upside down pineapple cake.
Unfortunately did not take a photo of the pineapple cake but you can look it up on Google you lazy bum
Caught up with Sherry now that she’s more settled in in Singapore. Had a lot of fun. In the middle of the conversation I marveled at the fact that we’ve known each other about a decade. Time flies.
Took a walk and snapped a pic. I call it Mixed Signals. It’s a commentary on the confusion of the life we feel daily on these everyday streets
Yeah I’m a photographer now. What of it?
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