Learning to Act, Learning to Write

Last December, I decided to finally muster up the courage to enroll in an acting class. I’d wanted to learn acting for a long time. My directing professor, Barnet Kellman, encouraged us to take acting classes to learn how to direct actors. When a month opened up free of schedule, I jumped on the acting class as a life line to inject some weekly structure in my schedule. The class, and all that I learned, came to mean much more to me than that.

Actors have many superpowers that I deeply admire, chief of which is the power to put you at ease. When I stand in the company of an actor(s) who have this superpower, I relax a bit. Maybe it’s because they make me feel seen. Maybe it’s their body language — maybe actors are more comfortable in their skins than us. Whatever it is, this is probably one of the things I admire and want to emulate the most.

I also wanted to learn how to confidently speak in public, as actors seem to be able to do. I noticed this in my peers in film school who have an acting background. They’re not afraid to stand in the light and to tell a story. I really wanted to develop this muscle.

I was so privileged to have an unscheduled block of time during the past three months to try my hand in acting. Now that time is coming to an end, I’m more than a bit sad. I really love being with actors — they are very special and I feel seen among them. I will miss them a lot.

Learning the art of acting taught me how difficult this art form is. I will hopefully never again take good acting or actors for granted. It takes so much practice to learn the lines until it becomes muscle memory. I’m still recovering from the six minute scene that I bombed last Saturday. I thought I knew the lines until I stood up on that stage, and then BAM — strong start, then lines left my brain. It was very embarrassing but also so humbling in a freeing way. It taught me that you have to earn the stage, the spotlight. It has to be the most important thing until the minute I get up on the stage. I regret my cavalier attitude to performance.

Acting also taught me what a playable scene is, and how to write one. Knowing what the character wants in the scene helps make it playable. So does conflict. Pauses are hard. Quiet scenes are hard, at least for an unsophisticated actor like me. Playable scene also has beautiful dialogue that has really clear subtext. I’ll never forget that scene from Sideways where the two characters are talking about wine, but they’re really talking about themselves. Acting taught me how to write dialogue — repetition of words, antithesis, rhythm… good dialogue is musical, so much more musical than writers realize. Good dialogue sings. It truly sings. Greta Gerwig writes singing dialogue. Alexander Payne. Emerald Fennell. Michaela Cole. Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Damn, all of them except Alexander Payne are actors. See what I mean about actors having superpowers? One of them is that they’re great writers.

Prior to acting, I thought a screenplay is a visual medium with lots of action lines and some dialogue sprinkled in. Nope. It’s as auditory a medium as it is visual.

Part of me really wants to continue the class, but I know it won’t be fair to the fellow actors, my new manager, my new job, and ultimately to myself. Spreading thin doesn’t do anyone any good. So for now, I’m bidding acting class adieu. Yes, I’ll always remain an amateur in acting in true sense of that word, as its root word means to love. And I think I’m okay with that. But I’ll always appreciate it for what it taught me. It taught me the value of its art form, how to respect its traditions and the people who carry it forward, how to fail, how to be kind to others (actors are so good at this!), and how to write scenes that have, at the very least, germ of truthfulness in them.

On ORIGIN

I just watched Ava Duvernay’s film ORIGIN. And it was absolutely breathtaking and almost heartbreakingly underrated and under-marketed. It’s a film that almost everyone should see, a piece of art as important as all the other arts that have brought on great social change. It’s masterfully rendered, tugging at our pathos, ethos, and logos as a great story does. I don’t understand why we’re not talking about this film enough.

It dramatized and put to cinematic language all the nuanced moments I have experienced and witnessed as a first-generation immigrant in the United States. The land of irony. It perhaps left out one important subgroup while mentioning so many others in sequence. The undocumented immigrants in the United States. I hope that one day I can fill in this gap. I hope to tell a story that sheds light on the current Caste system in America, which has to do with how we treat over 10 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.

There’s a scene where Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor’s characters tries to convince a Jewish woman living in Germany that the past experiences of Jews and Blacks are linked somehow. The Jewish woman almost cannot accept this. And it rang true. It’s difficult to acknowledge that the parts in us that hurts the most, whether it’s a personal trauma or generational, can be compared and found similar to another subgroups’ sufferings. Sometimes, we become identified with the experiences that have hurt us the most. I don’t know why this happens. Maybe because that particular minority moniker that caused so pain within us becomes engrained in our identity and how we see ourselves. I don’t know why, for instance, my identity as a woman and my identity as a first-generation immigrant is so much stronger than my identity as an Asian. Maybe it’s because I have witnessed and felt isolation and loneliness in these two identities, and became attached to them like a life raft lest I forget what had happened and become complacent. Maybe it’s because I see my vocation as bearing witness to what I’ve seen and felt, and dreaming up what I hope can be different for my younger self and for those who share similar experiences.

I see why Angelina Jolie hosted a screening of ORIGIN recently at The London. Those who experienced heartbreak, which is all of us, can see a film and empathize with the heartbreak of the writer / filmmaker who bled on the page to tell the story. And I hope that the monumental effort that goes into telling a meaningful story gets its moment in the sun. To me, ORIGIN is a type of film that I hope to make someday. It’s more meaningful, more emotional, more engrossing than OPPENHEIMER or BARBIE.

I read one of the reviews for ORIGIN that people walked out of the theater after ten minutes because it was too “heavy”. That’s… I think that’s like being a good German. And that’s what we’re doing as a nation to news about undocumented immigrants. Forever subjugating it to secondary news of non-national importance. We’re so entranced by the world news and what goes on elsewhere. But we’re so afraid of facing what goes on within our own nation. That our caste system is alive and well, and that we’re all participating in it by not speaking up against it. I hope someday I’ll have the courage, the artistry, and the business acumen to speak up about what I have witnessed and what I know to be true. That our nation can be a beautiful place if we only open our eyes to see and accept the injustices that go on.

What I learned in 2021

Year 2021 taught me many lessons that I want to cherish, remember, and update. I wanted to capture them here as a reminder to myself, as guideposts toward the North Star.

I learned that I am a writer, and that I prefer writing to producing, and producing to directing.

I learned when I live with my parents I expend a lot of my creative energy to appeasing / worrying / anticipating their wants and needs. 

I learned that not writing regularly makes me so unhappy and ragey and inhibits my ability to be productive in any other area in my life. And that that the act of writing gives meaning to my existence. 

I learned that I’m a genre writer, and that genre - specifically thrillers - allows me freedom to explore the shadow side of both myself and others. And that in exploring this, I gain greater understanding of myself as a whole - both light and dark. 

I learned that I love living by myself. But also that it sometimes get unbearably lonely around the holidays. And that having a glass of wine and milk chocolate somewhat helps.

I learned that a movie projector is one of the best purchases I’ve made in my life. 

I learned that prestige, accolades, honor are useless indicators of how good a someone is as a collaborator. In fact they may work to disguise red flags in a person’s character, so they obfuscate rather than reveal.

I learned that I love writing about what it feels like to be a girl in Silicon Valley.

I learned that I love making podcasts, and that its limitation (lack of picture) is actually very freeing for a creative.

I learned that I May Destroy You is about introspection and not consent, and I loved that. 

I learned that I get ahead of myself and land myself in a hole when I get too excited and too ambitious about some future achievement or impressing someone. And that a remedy to this is to let that go and come back to myself, and write just for myself. 

I learned that budgeting sucks and takes a long time. But necessary. This goes for both movies and personal finance.

I learned that my current job is a day job. And that day jobs require a different mentality than a career. It’s not about outperforming to get ahead and earn more money. Day jobs are to be contained, enjoyed, and should be used to support the real job of being a creative. 

I learned that it’s critical for me to be financially self-sufficient in order to create sustainably, and also that best jobs are the ones that allow you to write and give you the satisfaction of meeting other people who are doing creative things. 

I learned that I can cook.

I learned that the sense of safety I have been seeking is from my twelve year old self. And that reminding myself that I’m here in the present and that the current reality is safe, helps me feel calmer. 

I learned that therapy helps. 

I learned that remote jobs don’t work for me because so much of what I am seeking in a job is dependent on interpersonal interactions and connection.

I learned that writing groups really help. 

I learned that when I feel stuck, I can take a day off from work and just be.

I learned that I can walk to museums and many of them are free or have free weekends. And that audio visual experiences are healing and inspiring.

I learned that writing characters that are too dark in a one-sided way lands me in hole that’s non-productive and unhappy. And that the stories I want to write have characters (protagonists, antagonists, supporting) that can elicit my empathy.

I learned that I need to always remember and choose to get the right results the right way. And that taking shortcuts that feel overly self-justified and live in a shady ethical area will cause me much unrest and anguish until I can see what I’ve done, make it right, and surrender it to God.

I learned to say “yes” only to things that deeply resonate in every cell of my body and in my soul. A “Hell Yeah or No” as John August calls it. No to everything else. Remember Oprah’s words: "Never again will I do anything for anyone that I do not feel directly from my heart. [I will say no to projects] in which every fiber of my being does not resound yes. I will act with the intent to be true to myself."

Gardening

My parents let me take over the dirt patch in the front yard when I told them I wanted to start gardening. They even gave me a small seed fund (forgive the pun) to get started. I bought a book to learn more about gardening; the book is called “Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home Scale Permaculture”. It taught me a lot about how nature creates self-sustaining ecosystems. The book appealed to my sense of aesthetic inspired by years of living in Northside Berkeley during college. It made me think of the organic farm co-ops, the Berkeley Rose Garden, and the hills near the Berkeley Botanical Garden and the Lawrence Berkeley Labs. I miss running through those hills and buying produce from the farmer’s market every Thursday morning. So it has been really nice to be able to harvest little things like the red chard from our front lawn. Here are some pictures of the garden that’s been a source of small joy during the pandemic.

My mom makes miso soup with the stalk and leaves of red chard. It gives it a deep flavor as if the miso soup is made from bone broth. Our garden doesn’t produce nearly enough red chard leaves for her soup so we have to supplement the recipe with store bought red chard.

I think these nasturtium leaves look like little puppy paws or a baby’s hand. I high five them in the morning and they bounce up and down and make me happy. I can’t wait to see the flowers in the spring.

I spotted a caterpillar feasting on the leaves of milkweed flowers. The nice thing about permaculture garden is that there’s lots of stuff for critters to eat so they don’t all go for the same stuff that humans like to consume like red chard.

This little bird flew into my shot while I was trying to take pictures of the flowers. The hummingbirds also seem to visit more often now that our front yard has more flowers.

There are two squirrels that think that our backyard is their home, which it is. We have to share the avocados, guavas, and other fruits with them. They also like to hide my parents’ golf balls strewn around the yard. My dad found fifteen golf balls hidden in different places around the backyard. The squirrels must think that the balls will ripen or sprout if they are buried under the dirt.

These flowers are a hit with the hummingbirds. The nice thing is that they bloom all year-round

This is my next project, which is a keyhole-shaped garden in our backyard that will house herbs and salad greens. I am in the process of mulching, which is just gathering leaves and sometimes compost to nourish the soil. The bricks were lying around the backyard, half or entirely buried under the dirt. I dug them up to create a low barrier for the mulch.

On the Virtue of Lazy Mornings

In the past few days, I started to remember what makes me happy. It might be that free time has opened up over winter break. The students have gone away and with them the pressure to always be working. Solitude, which seemed so unbearable in the first day or two so much so that I ran away to my parents' house to spend time with them rather than be alone, has once again become pleasurable.

The thing that gives me greatest joy is the hours in the morning, when I get to wake up relatively early and make myself breakfast. I will make my bed (rare), go downstairs to a kitchen that is unoccupied by my housemates (important), where I can make myself a bowl of oatmeal with nut butter and a soft boiled egg. I will enjoy this meal in absolute silence, uninterrupted by anyone, and read few chapters from Murakami's memoir "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running". And I will remember again what gives me joy.

I don't exactly know why mornings, specifically the "lazy" mornings when I can actually cook breakfast, are so meaningful to me. I think back to my undergraduate years at Berkeley when this habit of making breakfast started. It must have started after I read the "French Women Don't Get Fat" book. It feels embarrassing to say that I've read this book repeatedly over the last decade or so. This book is really a meditation on joyful living, as Murakami's book is a meditation on running. I like these stories that talk about the mundane in specific terms. These artists and writers remind me that true joy lies within the smallest moments. And this thought helps me pause from relentless striving and reminds me that being an artist, which I want more than anything, is also living your life artfully with beauty, quiet moments, joy, wonder, awe... all the things that feeds one's soul.

When I look forward to the future into the life that I want to live, I see myself waking up early to spend the early morning hours in solitude writing in a beautiful Maybeck House with tall ceilings and lots of wood with windows that look out to nature. And then the day would begin with a loud, busy breakfast with my family, then continue to meetings with other creatives to collaborate on projects. It would conclude in a long run in nature passing through quaint houses, little hills, small animals, brooks, and lots of trees. And it's important to remember that this kind of life doesn't require fame, prestige, or lots of wealth. It would be more about having the respect of my peers who are also creating, a loving family, luxury of time each day for myself, and moderate savings to live a healthy and balanced life while also being able to help others who are in need.

I don't yet know how the confluence of my training in writing, producing, directing, and technology will come together to create this lifestyle for me. And maybe I already have part of this life, and all I need to do is remember to exercise it. What I can do now is wake up early to write, make myself breakfast, collaborate with lots of creative people, and go for a run even on a treadmill. This is a note to myself to do these small things even when I'm in a funk. To wake up early, make myself some good breakfast, write, converse and collaborate with interesting and creative people, and go for a run to refuel my soul.

Telling Our Stories

_{Angel Island Immigration Station in SF}

Below is an essay I wrote in 2010 as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley for an immigrant student advocacy organization called Immigrants Rising. This piece was written and read out loud in front of the 150 guests at the "Day of Immigrants" event that took place on the Angel Island in 2010.

For my college application essays, I avoided the gloomy topics of immigration and living in a low-income family. Each of the college admissions books I read and internalized had an underlying theme: college essays ought to focus on the positive aspects of one’s life, with humor injected in between the sentences. I simply couldn’t do this with stories about immigration; my memories were too depressing. How could I inject humor into nights filled with anxiety when I overheard my parents arguing whether or not we should give up and go back to Korea, phone calls with my landlord to fight for the deposit she refused give back, or moments of panic whenever I thought about paying for college? I asked my counselor if I should write my college essays on these experiences. “Ten thousand other immigrant students probably wrote about overcoming adversity much greater than yours,” she replied. So I concluded that stories about immigration are all too similar, all too pervasive, and all too serious as a topic to be handled by a teenager. In the end, I wrote about how I played piano for the Alzheimer’s patients at the local hospital, how I won a motor-building contest during the summer technology program at MIT, and how I am the only service-learning teen-ambassador in all of Orange County. And all the essays I wrote came out detached and cliché, as if I was hoping my readers could fully grasp who I was just by looking at my shadow.

I wonder how many immigrant students feel as if we ought to bury our painful memories and underscore the humorous and hopeful moments of our lives. It is easy to write about wonders of a new land, the nice neighbor who taught you English, and the teacher who changed your life. But there is nothing harder than sharing your experiences of extreme anxiety as you sleep in fear of deportation, or the feelings of guilt and bitterness at making your parents pay so much tuition when they already work ten hours a day just to put food on the table. With happy events, words pour out like honey and milk. There is no need to worry that you might sound self-pitying, no need to recall unpleasant events that will drain you emotionally. But by focusing on the happy and hopeful events of our lives, by pretending we are the same as stable and happy middle-class American families, we unconsciously erase the sacrifices our families have made to get us to where we are today. We erase ourselves. Writing about past experiences, whether pleasant or unpleasant, forces us to reflect and re-evaluate the past and the present, as well as what we truly want to achieve in the future. So let us rely on words and their ability to capture even the most fleeting emotions, no matter how sad or depressing they are. Let us preserve our memories before they slip away into oblivion. Let us preserve ourselves.

Ode to New York

Everything about New York blows me away. The diversity of people, amazing art collection, bookstore with history and charm, delicious food, the lights of the Times Square and Broadway, music of the NY Philharmonic, impressive skyscrapers, historical buildings, parks with so much character. I can't count the ways this city draws me and charms me. The four days I'm spending here turned out to be the best weather New York has had in a long time. It was preceded by a thunderstorm and temperature drops. The only side of New York I have seen is a city saturated in vibrant colors under warm and bright sunlight, and I feel impelled to to move here immediately.

The city somehow injected me with energy and health that I haven't had before. In two days it satiated the artistic paucity I felt for years. Surely it can't be all roses to live here, but it's unfair that I only get to see the best that New York has to offer because somehow I got lucky with the weather. I wonder if money would be a deciding factor in whether one enjoys New York or not... and I feel very lucky to have the means to go to the concert and not worry about starving for the next month.

It's eleven pm at night but I feel like I want to step out again, to gaze at the city from the top of the Empire State Building, to admire the Art Deco floors and the golden statue in front of the Rockefeller Center. And it's amazing to behold the sight of Broadway and the Times Square... I wonder if you can feel lonely in the middle of all the warm glow of lights. I'm sure you can but tonight I just felt alive and happy to behold the sight in awe.

The ode to this city has been sung many times by writers (E.B. White "Here is New York), filmmakers (just see any Woody Allen film or hear him open his mouth), artists (Winogrand), jazz singers, pop singers, musicals, tv shows, etc etc. With all this hype from so many self-professed 'New Yorkers' and admirers of the City,  I thought I would feel blasé and I am so surprised to find myself so in love with a city and long to be with it as if it were a human entity. It's a weird feeling.

So here is my ode to the great city, in the form of a blog post and couple pictures. And someday, I will have to move and work here and earn the claim to 'know' the city like a true New Yorker.

Italian Cinema Scores by NY Philharmonic

The Program

My friend brilliantly noticed, while traveling in NYC in August, that NY Philharmonic was scheduled to do a night of Italian Cinema called "La Dolce Vita", including a piece from Cinema Paradiso. It was a two-day event with amazing violinist Joshua Bell, vocalist Josh Groban, and soprano Renee Fleming scheduled to perform. The last day of this event fortuitously fell on the day of my arrival at New York City. So despite the jetlag from time difference and flying the red-eye, I attended the event at the Lincoln Center.

I guess I should disclose that I have an on-going love affair with Italian Cinema. I haven't seen enough of Italian Cinema yet to qualify myself as an aficionado, but I find myself extremely attached to the ones I have seen. The one in particular is Cinema Paradiso, which captures the wonderment of childhood, and is steeped in beautiful nostalgia and melancholy over the innocence and naivete that often inevitably goes away as we grow older. But truthfully, these movies would mean almost nothing to me without the scores by Ennio Morricone (Cinema Paradiso, Once Upon a Time in the West), Nino Rota (Fellini's films like 8 1/2, La Dolce Vita), and Luis Bacalov (Il Postino).

New York Philharmonic did this very smart thing where instead of playing the footages from the movie like SF symphony does to scores, they commissioned an Italian film director Giampiero Solari to create a visual screen play for the performance. I felt that I could really experience the power of music and its role in cinema without confusing which is influencing me more (was it the images or the score?!?!). Tonight, music assumed a leading role in the world of cinema and made it clear to everyone in attendance of its power in storytelling and provoking deep emotions that transcend time and space.

Joshua Bell performed as a violin soloist on the Suite from "The Anonymous Venetian". It was heart-wrenchingly beautiful, and I think I had to actively fight the tears from flowing. His violin seemed to be telling a beautiful story, and all I could do was empathize with its melancholia, its vulnerability, its passion as the song played.

The piece I was looking forward to, called "Se", from Cinema Paradiso, ended up disappointing me. Possibly because I have heard that piece on youtube so many times (possibly around hundred times) without the singers (and with Ennio Morricone conducting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FzVWlOKeLs). The singing somehow took away from what was already perfect, or that was how I felt at the end of that piece...

The NY Phil also played a piece from Life is Beautiful, and the gorgeous footages from the movie played (instead of the animation), along with the piece that ebbed and flowed, swelled with the crescendo and made our hearts melt into pools of emotions.

So these are the movies on my to-watch or re-watch list:

• Life is Beautiful

• Cinema Paradiso

• Il Postino

• Once Upon a time in the West

• Incontro

• Amarcord

• Profumo di Donna

• Juliet of the Spirits

Picking up the brush again...

It's been about four years since I've drawn/painted anything. I think I couldn't justify the act of drawing/painting - I mean, I wasn't going to become an artist. My profession is clearly in computer science and everything else seemed like such a waste of time. Recently though, I met someone who convinced me to pick up the brush again and get back to painting. I watched Casino Royale with him and the image of Vesper Lynd stayed with me. It sort of shocked me that a Bond Girl can be witty, brainy, and vulnerable (as well as beautiful - I think you have to be if you are a Bond Girl). Anyway, Here are the paintings: