of ands and buts

I've been back in San Francisco for three weeks, and I've done such a fantastic job of getting resettled that it's feeling as if I never left.  I need to rediscover that positive energy and curiosity that come so easily while traveling.

A couple of nights ago I had dinner with a fascinating guy named Alan.  His life is one that appears in books, movies, or dreams.  After college, he wanted to get away from his life, so he went to New Zealand and lived and worked there for a year.  While driving from Missouri to San Diego, he stopped by Flagstaff because he had seen pictures of its beauty.  He ended up staying for over six months.  He has lived in Kenya, Hawaii, and Hong Kong.  Oh, and he routinely runs marathons and participates in iron man competitions.  Sitting across from him, I felt as small as the unsatisfying piece of fish on my sandwich.

I told Alan that I too have aspired to stay in Cambodia to volunteer at the Angkor Hospital for Children and in Thailand at Elephant Nature Park to devote myself to caring for those less fortunate, but my work and various responsibilities back at home prevent me from making such a drastic turn in my life.  The problem, he quickly pointed out, was the word "but."  How often have we made a statement about wanting to do something, then followed it with but?  "But" is the enemy of reaching one's goals and dreams.  Next time, follow that aspiring desire with "and" - more specifically, I want to do xyz, and I can make it happen by doing abc.  That little "and" changes everything, doesn't it?

And what is it that drives us ordinary people to fantasize about a different life in a foreign country and to admire those with the courage to do so?  My theory is that we all want to disappear sometimes - disappear from our current life or our future, destined life.  The problem is that we don't know if and where we will reappear, hence the dilemma and hesitation.  How will I support myself?  Will I find another job?  What do I do with all that I own (which really isn't very much to begin with)?

These questions and anxiety about the future are what prevents us from charging toward our present.  It will take great effort to rewire my brain from the "but" to the "and" attitude.  It might even require some intense therapy.

And do I know of a good therapist?

what's a little cold?

Over the weekend, I hopped on Virgin America and bid good-bye to San Francisco and her gloomy, cold rain.

An hour later, Los Angeles welcomed me with a blustering rain storm. With a kinder gesture, my mom welcome me in her SUV. We then drove in the infamous LA traffic for over two hours, instead of the typical 45 minutes. There were cars going every which way, yet no one seemed to be going anywhere.

When we finally arrived home, what awaited me was our dear, near-freezing home. How could I possibly have forgotten her temperament? You see, she is scorching in the summer and frigid in the winter. How fondly I have loved and missed her.

Over the next few days, my mom caught me up on her exciting life of back and joint pains and the joys and woes of being a grandmother. And I, well, I shared with her my knowledge of Skype and MacBooks. In between our talks over hot water infused with lemon wedges, she cooked up a storm of her own, enough for the two of us, my sister, her husband, their two kids, and the three quails held prisoners as pets.

I returned to San Francisco this afternoon, to my apartment which is so small that it is rarely cold. I also returned to three days of junk mail, an inbox full of emails to be addressed, and an empty refrigerator. Luckily, my mom had sent along with me three days worth of left-overs that safely passed through airport scanners unscathed.

The heater and the cups of hot water may have partially warmed my body in LA, but it was my mom's cooking, 400 miles away from their origin, that warmed my heart in San Francisco.

Life is good.

it's hard to believe...

It was not the best of weeks, it was not the best of days.

Okay, so mine isn't exactly A Tale of Two Cities, but it is a tale that happens in one city - San Francisco.

The last few days have gone by miserably for me, and I write this as I wallow in self-pity. They were days when nothing seems to go your way.

I wondered... obsessed... reflected... and wondered some more.

So, thankfully, I had the foresight one month ago to take the day off. To take my mind off my life, I drove myself to Ocean Beach at 11 in the morning. Perhaps watching other people live theirs would encourage me to have a little excitement in my own. It's time to wander instead of wonder.

After days of clouds and rain, San Francisco was surprisingly blue today. As I watched crystal blue sky, the foamy waves, and the shape-shifting clouds, I couldn't help but think about a song that holds special meaning for me.

It was about 7 or 8 years when a good friend of mine asked me to listen to a Mandarin pop song called Believe. Typically, it takes several rounds for me to warm up to a new piece of music. This was love at first note. I particularly loved the lyrics, which goes something like this:

Suddenly I realized I was all alone,
a bit of loneliness mixed with a hint of sadness.
I don't know how tomorrow will be,
even though today the sky is blue, the clouds white, and the breeze soothing.
I'll allow myself to leave today's entry blank in my diary,
no need to worry about everything that has happened.
Abandon any desire to work or any troublesome thoughts that surface,
abandon the desire to think about you,
what is mine will one day come,
I will not walk away from this challenge.

I sang in this song in the car, in the shower, in my mind. The words always surfaced during times like today.

A few years later, I found the music video for the song on YouTube. And there it was - the name of the composer - my cousin Debbie from Taiwan.

So there you have it - my attempt to leave today blank - no script writing, no work, no trace of its existence - except for this blog entry.

But it's hard to believe... As much as my brain wants to, my heart won't cooperate. Too many questions without answers. Too many beginnings without endings. One plus one is seldom two, especially when one doesn't know one.

That is how my day has been - a walk on the beach, a stop at Burger King for an Original Chicken Sandwich, and a few thoughts about the most important questions in life: should I get a dog? How wrinkled will I become when I get old?

There were other questions, most without answers. I wonder when I'll be an answer.

It's hard to believe...

plutôt la vie

I've always felt that classical music's magic in moving people without words is sublime.

Sometimes the unique ensemble of words achieves the same effect. This is especially true with the language of Molière.

Andrés, my good friend from Valencia who is fluent in French, sent me a card with the French photographer Edouard Boubat's famous "Plutôt la VIE" photo. First impressions of this phrase probably include a political statement and the importance of life (vie). However, on a literary level, I find the word plutôt much more intriguing.

Plutôt means rather, instead. It signifies a choice. And if life is one choice, what is the other? Death, war, imprisonment, or something else? Additionally, it suggests a difficult choice. Under what sort of a difficult circumstance must one make the difficult choice of life? The answer must be different for each person.

"Des yeux qui font baisser les miens, un rire qui se perd sur sa bouche." These gentle words come from Edith Piaf's "La Vie en Rose." When I read French, I don't attempt to translate it into English or Mandarin - for me it's too difficult. Each languages possesses its own rhythm and life that simply cannot be mimicked by another. Rather, I simply fills these words with images.

I think of "des yeux qui font baisser les miens" as "eyes that make lower my own." Whose eyes have the power to make me lower my own eyes? I don't close them, I don't turn away, and I don't look back - I lower my eyes. Elegant, isn't it? But why? Am I shy, embarrassed, ashamed, or do I have something to hide? It conveys so much meaning that no translation (at least not mine) can do it justice. Word for word, the second phrase is "a laugh that loses itself on his/her mouth." My heart melts every time I read these words. Whose mouth is it? What does a laugh on a mouth look like? Why does it laugh? How does it get lost on the mouth? In what manner - mischievously, lovingly, coyly, playfully?

I don't have answers; so much more fun to imagine.

how to boil water with a cello

Feelings.

We all have them (I think), but which of us can fully express them or even create them with an object.

That is perhaps the epitome of a true artist - someone able to elicit feelings from another being through an object such as a pen, a camera, or a cello.

It's a good sign, really, that Irina and I are exploring the emotions of a musical piece; that suggests I've made enough progress to advance beyond the basic techniques of cello playing. But, as a Valley Girl would tell you - it's like, so, hard.

I was questioning whether I possessed any feelings as Irina and I plodded through a sonata this afternoon. The tempo of the second movement was adagio, and Irina's words were - oh, how shall I put this... yes - "When you play the long notes, Alex, I feel like dead." Hey, no kidding, I felt that way too. Then she demonstrated how long notes should be played, and of course they sounded amazingly alive.

It's like a pot of boiling water, she told me. Honestly, she has an endless supply of analogies that I should put in a book. When I play, it's like a low simmer - not much is moving: all the water is safely contained in the pot. When she plays, it's a pot of vigorously boiling water - everything moves and there is tremendous energy: drops of water are craving to jump right out of the pot. Same temperature, yet very different results and feelings.

I completely understand the concept. But finding a way to unleash this energy will be a journey. A difficult one, as I will need to think in ways I haven't wanted to in the past.

Expanding on this concept of expressing feelings through music, Irina recalls attending a concert where Gil Shaham played a violin concerto by Mozart. She is a fan of Mozart, but until the concert, she simply enjoyed Mozart's work as great pieces of musical literature. On that day when Gil Shaham stood on stage playing Mozart, she felt as if Mozart were present and infusing her with his music.

I haven't experienced such an epiphanous musical moment myself, unfortunately. The closest I have gotten is getting goosebumps and chills down my spine when I listen to Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2. But again, I can understand that moment - it's a moment when you feel as if some great, divine truth is pouring into you and you understand everything that revolves around this world, be the moment music, poetic, verbal, or cinematic.

To be honest, I have had a very brief with the moment, but I cannot recall when, where, or how. Perhaps it was in a dream. I don't know. I just remember for those few seconds, everything was clear - I saw and heard and understood all. I think writing about this moment and telling stories about it will help me to find it again.

It's a cold day in San Francisco. I'm going to boil some water for tea.

for the love of the story

I attended the Adler Fellows gala concert tonight.

The Adler Fellowship is a program affiliated with the San Francisco Opera cultivating young artists, and by young I mean early thirties. We're not talking about Justin Bieber here.

While listening to aria after another, I couldn't help but think back to what Irina (my cello teacher) said a few months ago while explaining the proper phrasing for the piece I was working on: the goal is to tell a story; in a story, not every note has the same significance. It's just like talking - there are certain words we emphasize and others we gloss over. Giving every note the same energy causes can actually become overbearing.

I think I'm understanding that more and more. It seemed that most, if not all, of the artists tonight were doing their best to make every note and every syllable as beautiful and full as they possibly could. And when they got to a particularly important one, they went from 100% to 150%.

That was too much. Really.

I would have preferred 25 to 100%.

Of course, being the perfect student that I am, I naturally translated this concept to film making. I watched a movie called Ciao last night. It told the story of an Italian man coming to Dallas, Texas to meet his online chatting partner's best friend after the unexpected death of this partner. While successful in eliciting empathy for its two characters, the film had a serious flaw in its numerous lengthy dialogues covering subjects from the landscape of Dallas to a former encounter in Des Moines. Really not necessary. Really diminished the subtle energy of the story. It was as if the writers had all these ideas and lines from their own lives that they wanted to insert into the film, and the result was a diffused and awkward series of uninteresting words.

That's me. I am also that writer. As I reflect on my own screenplays that are based on my experiences and encounters, I realize that I too have failed to properly edit for the sake of a cohesive story. So it is with sharper and unrelenting eyes that I must return to my work.

Edit. Edit. Edit.

whose tears are they anyway?

I never thought that I would have to learn to understand women someday, since they aren't exactly the object of my desire.

Well, now I do. Thanks to my cello teacher Irina.

Recently I started to work on a concerto, and after three weeks of learning the notes, it is time to take it to the next level, which, as you could surmise, is the hard part.

I've long noticed that when I change the direction of the bow, I tend to make a harsh, abrupt sound. This unpleasant tone has improved over the past year, but not by much. To give you a clearer picture of the sound I create, I will try to reiterate for you Irina's words:

A cello string's inherent vibration is its heartbeat. It beats the most vibrantly when your bow is in sync with that vibration. The A string (the string with the highest note on a cello) is the most difficult; it is like a woman, a beautiful young woman who doesn't easily reveal her heartbeat: it can be palpated only with the finest touch of the bow. However, each time that I move the bow, the sound that I am making is as if I were choking her, causing her heart to stop.

I am a murderer!

I suppose the key here isn't that the A string is a beautiful young woman - it could be an old or a hideously unattractive woman - but the principle remains the same: I need to learn to caress it with my bow so that its rhythm and her heartbeat are in harmony. We spent about ten minutes working on the technique, and I dare say that I made slight progress. She was still suffocating a bit, but I wasn't strangling her any more.

This is the beginning of creating music, of making beautiful art. Irina next reminded me that the highest level of art isn't to show the audience how I can express feelings of sadness with the cello - it is to make the audience cry with the music I create. For example, if I were to over-dramatize my work with emotions of sadness, it could elicit the opposite effect from the audience. When she said this, I was immediately reminded of the performance I saw on television yesterday during which Lang Lang, a famous Chinese pianist, played Liszt's Liebestraum, Dream of Love. While watching his over-the-top, almost egotistical performance, I could only see the absurd facial expressions he was making and could not hear the music he was creating, however beautiful it may or may not have been. I was laughing out loud to the point I had to cover the part of the screen where his face was.

Obviously, everything Irina said about the art of music applies to the art of film, or any other medium for that matter. Showing the audience the tears of a sad, grief-stricken character is far less potent than making the audience shed their own tears while getting to know this character.

I am really looking forward to learning how to improve my cello playing and the expression of emotions. I am equally excited to transfer these ideas to script writing. It feels like everything is coming together and the purpose is in sight.

Of course, if I have difficulty imagining the A string as a woman, I could always pretend that she's a queen and a diva. That - I come across everyday.