The Art of Appreciation

It was your typical beach side suburb morning – it was sunny, kind of windy but nonetheless a beautiful day. So you do what most people who live there do – going down to the beach to have a coffee.

You walked down the road to the beach and ran into retirees and families taking their dogs or kids, or in some cases both out for a walk. (It was a weekday so the younger generation are all at work or at school) You saw each other at a traffic junction, smiled and greeted each other.

“A beautiful morning isn’t it?”

“Yes it is. That’s why coming down for a coffee” I replied.

“It is good that finally it is warm and summer is coming. The dreadful cold was too much”

I smiled, “True but then we still start complaining it is too hot in a few months’ time”

She laughed, “Yeah you’re about right”

“So enjoy while it is here!” I joked

We laughed and continued with our own business.

But then suddenly something struck me – am I enjoying what I have now? The honest fact was that I went down to the beach to clear my mind. The sea gives me the tranquility I needed to move forward and that’s what I do. But then in the mist of everything did I lose sight of things that I could have appreciated?

I have always been a, what I called “Cautious Optimist”. I attempt to see opportunities in whatever situations I am in and try to make the most out of it. I understand that I cannot control the uncontrollables even though I am a well-known control freak. However, the conversation this morning with this lady reminded me that during the process when I was busily trying to improve the current situation, I might have forgotten to appreciate what the current situation offered to me.

The art of appreciation is one of the hardest things to learn in life for me. I am a person with a vision for my life and I have not stopped trying to attain that vision. But just like a lot of library users, I sometimes fixated on bad experiences and forgot to appreciate the goods that were offered. I admire people who can really appreciate life, as I was never able to fully do that. My parents are well aware of this and have been reminding me to appreciate life while I still can.

A good friend of mine regularly questions me about my never ending anxiety about money and could not understand why I can’t just appreciate the money I currently have and make the most out of it. My usual reply was I needed to prepare for the rainy days and I never believed I am fully prepared for it no matter what because I believe that when it rains it pours. To some that is a bit sad but for me that is security. I still don’t believe that I have sufficient buffer for the rainy days but then at the same time I fully understand like real weather, you can never predict when it would rain.

So the questions remains – if we can’t predict the climate changes in our lives, can we just appreciate the process of living a bit more? The answer is certainly we can. But the fact is some people are talented than I am doing so. I still try to appreciate life and what’s around me to the max, but then when I need to try so hard am I really appreciating it for real? That is the question I do have too.

I still admire people who are carefree and can appreciate life. The truth is sometimes this kind of carefree attitude makes a person more attractive and then better things become attracted to them. This might sound sleazy but it is like the guy who does not intend to pick up usually got picked up in a bar. A try-harder like me could usually just sit there and admire.

This morning’s conversation with this beautiful stranger did strike a chord deep inside me. How much I could change myself to fully master the art of appreciation I don’t know. But certainly I would like to move from the “Try Hard” category to the “Natural” category at some point.

Good Morning and Goodbye Robin Williams

Today we bid farewell to another outstanding actor and comedian Robin Williams. Initial finding was he had committed suicide. According to the statement released by his representative, Robin Williams has been suffering from severe depression and probably eventually gave in to it. I have read some people’s comments about not understanding how people as successful as Robin Williams would be depressed and killed himself. I personally think these comments are quite ill informed and lack of compassion.

I had worked with a medical association for a few years now role-playing for their accreditation for their clinical psychiatrists. During these few years I have learnt a lot about depression – the cause of it and the difficulty in treatment. Unlike some other illnesses, depression is the dysfunction of the mind that by no means physical treatments can touch fully upon. Medication and tablets attempt to cure it from a physical perspective in a way that it raises the physical threshold with the mental system. But ultimately it is the environment you are in and the events that surround you that matter most. While family and friend support are essential to recovery, personal will power and strength accounts a lot in the recovery process. And this is the hardest part because nobody else can experience what you are experiencing.

When you are battling depression, it is not just about “getting better” or “if someone wants to get better”. It is about getting better while attempting to overcome mental thresholds that tax you body and mind at the same time. You can be severely weakened during the process and all you need is just a stone being thrown into the water to trigger that ripple effect of disturbance in your head. Modern medication, as mentioned earlier, aims to raise this threshold against disturbances but ultimately it is the environment one is in that matters. And by environment, I mean the uncontrollable world around us. And the scary part is you can never predict what in the world around you would trigger that ripple effect.

While this is hard enough for day-to-day people to deal with this, for artists it is even harder. As an actor, I understand the pressure of the art in relation to life. Acting is a subjective business and as I always tell people it is taxing on your mind. In terms of acting, you could be a brilliant actor but still can’t score any jobs because you are not the hot one, or the right look or because you don’t know the power holder as good as the other person. There is no objective list to check against. You attend auditions doing your best, got great feedbacks but then when you know someone who is a bad actor or don’t even look remotely to the brief got the job, you could feel frustrated and dejected. It is a last man standing kind of business. For some people the continued validation through acting work builds up a very high and dangerous stage for them to tread on as one mis-step you could fall in a disastrous manner.

I personally do not know Robin Williams, but external success does not guarantee immunity against depression. No pass or future success would help one out of depression. Depression is a beast that lurks in the shadows that attempts to snatch and devour you whenever you are not alert. I remember there was one episode in Doctor Who known as Silence in the Library where victims were taken when they took one mis-step into a shadow. This is how depression works. For people to make comment about other people’s depression, I personally feel that it is disrespectful and unnecessarily judgmental.

I think everyone has his / her fair share of disappointments in life, but just basing on your personal experience to judge upon other people’s failure is something that I tried to avoid. Not that I had not done it in the past. I am a critical and judgmental person, especially when I was much younger, but the past 10 years or so in the acting industry taught me a lot of things – that includes not to judging others simply because of your own experience. The fact is you are only living your own life and you have no idea what other people had gone through or experienced. Simply expanding you own experience as a structure of judgment for others will only show your inadequacy and shallowness.

I might seem extremely opinionated on this issue but I do feel that if other people want to judge Robin Williams, they deserved to be judged too.

What is Feminism?

Had a very interesting discussion with a friend the other day. She is born in Australia but of Asian descent. We discussed about the whole point of “fitting in” to the society. As a kid grew up in Hong Kong and received British education, my parents from time to time would tell me I am not Chinese enough. They would first secretly and then later not so secretary hoped that I would just be a standard normal Chinese like them. Similarly this friend of mine had all sorts of expectations cast on her to behave like the rest of her ethnic group. As a girl her expectations were even higher and tougher.

This led us to discuss about the whole feminism thing. Feminism is something that has been around the block for a while. For me it seems that at different age, it represents different things. But that did not bother me that much as a kid as I always felt that it is some kind of adult related stuff (not knowing that I would become an adult myself). Also studying in a boys’ school means that I did not really need to deal with this ideological stuff.

However, things changed when I left high school and went to university. It is a mix of people and then you eventually got into this whole dating game, where feminism sometimes hit hardest. For me it was a confusing game. At times feminists (as some of my friends subtly called themselves) wanted all the rights in the new age, but then there were still occasions that they believed on top of the new rights they should have all the advantages offered to them by the old order. For example, they will debate to the end about women’s right to be in high position jobs and men should treat women equally both in terms of job opportunities and as a gender in the society. But then when you went on dates with some of them, they would expect chairs to be pulled, doors to be opened and bills to be paid in full. I once discussed with one of them why all those equality crap when they expected all the favours of the old world. She replied that is just social etiquette and any guy who does not conform is just bad form. But I hit back saying if you want old order social etiquette you cannot expect new world equality. Needless to say that one did not go down well.

Fast forward to now, when I was talking about this with this friend of mine she was so happy that I felt the same way. She said she had a hard time understanding why guys have to do that as she is strong enough to pull her own chair and open her own door. She told me that there was once that another guy pulled her chair but she just went for the other one because she was oblivious the chair pulling was for her. For me if feminism is looking for equality, it should not be applied selectively but to all aspects of life.

Then we discussed about how some people said celebrities like Beyonce represents the power of women and modern feminism. That is something that always baffles me because I personally did not see how a woman dressed scantily wriggly her bum singing Naughty Girl represents empowering of women and feminism. Yeah maybe it requires a lot of power to go out tell people what a woman wants but then do you need to dress like a go go girl in a strip club? I personally do not see how exposing your body to next to nothing represents empowerment. This is the same for Miley Cyrus whom I think was weird to think that to show how strong a girl should be is getting naked on a wrecking ball and twerking on stage. Yeah maybe you did not like your Disney years, but do remember it was Disney who made you. If that represents how a next-door girl grew into a strong woman, I am truly worried about the Hunnah Montana generation of girls. The good news is all the designers can sell their clothes to these girls with a fraction of their cost, as minimal textile is required.

Today I read that even Doctor Who is being criticized as becoming more sexist as there is less average dialogue time for female characters in the show. The study was based on dialogue and on screen time of female characters on the show. Despite the show had created some very strong female characters like Amy Pond and River Song under Steven Moffat’s helm, it was still be criticized as not female centric enough. The thing is I wonder whether one can decide the gender balance of the show with this kind of overly simplified mechanism. I can certainly get away with this kind of measurement by putting in a female character that finishes every single line of her dialogue with meaningless expression like “Kupopo”. This would no doubt increase her dialogue and screen time in the show, thus pleasing this kind of study. For me it matters more about the quality of the dialogue over the number of lines. Quantifying things that cannot be quantified within reasonable margin of error is just a flawed study in itself and this, in my opinion, does not reflect any wisdom of feminism.

I have been going on and on without finding an answer to what is feminism. Maybe there is no absolute answer. But personally I think if it is not improving female as a gender from all angles any feminist talk is just out of context talks of little consequence to the overall improvement of the situation. Maybe I am a bit idealistic on this but didn’t feminism start with an ideology too?

X-men: Days of Future Past

I have always loved the X-men movies. Yes it is another superhero movie but the variety of characters is what made the X-men movies so different from other superhero movies. Marvel is a world of superheroes and X-men has a quite central position to this world.

From the first movie when we were first introduced to some of the core characters, we know that there will be more movies to come, as one movie is just not enough to introduce all the colourful and interesting characters that populate this X-men universe. After the first movie, we had “X-men 2” and then “X-men: The Last Stand” that kind of wrapped up the initial trilogy. In these three movies we get to know Professor X, Wolverine, Storm, Cyclops, Jean Grey (aka Dark Phoenix), Rogue (still think they did not do justice to this character), Magneto and Mystique. We also had a glimpse of Colossus, Kitty Pryde, Iceman, Pyro, and Juggernaut etc. In the third movie we also had a glimpse of the Sentinels, which was one of the very important story arcs in the comics. After the first trilogy, we had some spin offs such as the Wolverine movies and “X-men: The First Class” that tell us more about the back-stories.

In “X-men: Days of Future Past” the Sentinels finally took centre stage and the scene was not pretty. Mutants are being hunted ruthlessly including humans who have the potentials to produce mutant offspring. The weapon once designed to protect the human race became a tool to oppress whoever is different or has the potential to become different. In order to save the day Wolverine was sent back to the past attempting to change the course of history. He needs to enlist the help of other mutants (the cast of “X-men: The First Class”) to change an important event so that mutants in the future (the cast of the original X-men trilogy) could avoid a complete extinction.

It is really exciting to see that director Bryan Singer did attempt to bring back most of the original cast members for continuity. After all a lot of them are now more expensive and well known. It is also very cool that these now super stars are willing to reprise their roles but some of them in a smaller capacity. Halle Berry reprises as Storm so did Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen as Professor X and Magneto. They together with Ellen Page’s Kitty Pryde and Shawn Ashmore’s Iceman formed the pillar of the future arc. When Wolverine was sent back to the past, he encountered the younger version of Professor X and Magneto (played by James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender), Beast (played by Nicholas Hoult) and not to mention Mystique (played by Jennifer Lawrence). New comers to the series included Evan Peters’ Quicksilver, Bingbing Fan’s Blink, Omar Sy’s Bishop and Booboo Stewart’s Warpath. It was a strong cast with a huge variety of personalities.

One thing I like about Bryan Singer’s X-men movies is they do have great humour despite a lot of times they are talking about serious issues such as discrimination, fear and oppression. It is good that in this movie, humour is not just exhibited by Wolverine but also the younger or past version of the X-men. James McAvoy proved once again that he is no an inferior version of Patrick Stewart’s Professor X and can hold his own ground. Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique had matured and now more and more similar to Rebeca Romijn’s famous interpretation. Michael Fassbender’s ruthless Magneto made sharp contrast to the older repenting Magneto who is fighting for his survival. Ian McKellen commanded most of the heavy weight story line with Patrick Stewart and you could see how a friendship bond by similarity then torn by differences came back in full cycle. Hugh Jackman as Wolverine is as great as ever and I think when this character is thrown into the array of other X-men, it became more interesting than just him as Wolverine holding a full movie together. However I must say the short appearance of Evan Peters’ Quicksilver had stole quite a bit of limelight from his other fellow X-men. His scenes were just brilliant.

“X-men: Days of Future Past” is not a particularly uplifting movie as oppression and discrimination are at their peak with the sole intention of elimination and extinction. However, the story was so tightly woven together that you do not want to miss a single moment of it no matter how heavy the tone is. Also the story tied up a lot of loose ends in other X-men movies and wrapped up different storylines nicely by referencing them skilfully throughout the story. I personally hope that there won’t be another X-men movie coming out any time soon so I can relish this feeling for me for a bit longer. As for the movie itself, it was a full house of applause when the credits roll, so you know what that means and I rest my words here. 

Validation Acting

Had a really good audition the other day. I was a bit anxious to be honest as it was an important audition for me. I spent two weeks preparing the pieces and took a special voice session with my teacher to make sure I approached the text from all angles.

The artistic director of the Company held the audition, together with one of the resident artists for the year. I believed I displayed my anxiousness during the chitchat but then it was down to the business. It did two monologues from two Australian plays (it was a requirement that they are from Australian plays as it is a Company that supports and promotes local artists) - one from "A Manual from the Trench Warfare" by Clem Goman and the other from "When the Rain Stops Falling" by Andrew Bovell. The first one was an intense masculine piece about surviving Gallipoli. The feedback was "that was very intense". The second is a confession piece that opens the play. The response was "That was completely beautiful! I was transported to your world and I did not want you to stop".

I was cautiously happy about the response. It is something important and precious for me, this audition, so I tried to do my best under all the pressure I consciously or unconsciously put on to myself. Now that it is done I tried not to expect too much to avoid potential disappointment. I have now been in this business long enough to understand this. That said I was really appreciative about the feedback as it meant a lot to me.

I put the feedback on to my Facebook and people commented that it was a great validation of my skills. This got me thinking about the importance of validation in this acting business. For me a simple validation of my skills is already extremely satisfying at an audition. I am not an actor with constant flow of work, or even a constant flow of audition or casting. My skills have been highly commended by teachers I respected and look up to including Peter Andrikidis and Colin Friels when I took classes with them, though I wonder whether they would still remember me. Colin Friels told me during the break on one of the days that he had no notes for my work as with the calibre of work I was doing I should be working and not taking classes. This did not really translate in the real world. However I continued to work hard on my skills with my voice classes, as I believe when the opportunity comes I have to be ready. Being given an opportunity to an important audition is huge for me not to mention such a validation.

However I am also pragmatic enough to understand not to seek for such kind of validation actively. Validation for me is icing on the cake in this acting business. For me it is not something you can actively look for. Acting is an art form. For me it is an expression of how you relate yourself to the world around you, thus makes your art unique to your audience. Actively seeking validation would tind this freedom up with invisible chains because it is no longer about who you are and how you think as an artist. This is because you are actively trying looking for what other people want. The whole perspective became muddled and then you end up with something that is not true to who you are as an artist. Not that it won't work in the industry, as I did hear successful stories of people doing so. Some even went to distance in the industry with this approach and I feel happy for their success stories. Just that it is not my way of approaching acting. For me if acting is not about understanding the world around you and thus your character and it's world, it is no longer interesting.

I might sound naive or stupid in thinking so as I should be in this field long enough to understand this is a business after all. That might also be a reason that I am not as constantly working as an actor as others (or even as successful in my other working life). But for me if it is not something I believe in, what is the point of doing it? If it is not real acting it is just "acting". It would no longer have relevance to me. If it is not a real life what is the point of living it?

I understand that not everyone could afford this kind of indulgence about art and life. I do not know how long I could hold on to this either. But as long I could afford to do so, I am willing to fight for that self-indulging purity of art, acting and life.



 

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Watching The Grand Budapest Hotel does give you a feel of reading a book through someone else’s eyes. It is very stylised but suit its context. At times it feel Tim Burtonish but with a slightly more colourful palette. It also feels very Baz Luhrmann but a lot less over the top.

The film recounts the events of a lobby boy turned millionaire through the recounting of the writer who via a chance encounter came across the story. And this recounting was done through another person reading the book wrote by this writer many years later. Sounds complicated on paper but in fact it was done quite ingeniously as each layer was peeled off like a Russian doll.

Under the lenses of Director Wes Anderson we were able to read this book chapter by chapter and let our imagination run wild. The good thing about this movie is that you do feel like images are leaping off the pages as you imagined when you are reading a book. This approach opened up a lot of possibilities in terms of how shots could be framed. Honestly it might not be everyone's cup of tea but personally I admired how the director managed to balance imagination with story telling. This is extremely important for The Great Budapest Hotel because it is telling a story. The imaginary in the movie are vivid and relevant. Sometimes you feel like you are watching a sequence in a video game, sometimes a dark tale by Tim Burton and sometimes a Baz glamour fest. But no matter what kind of technique was employed they all tied in to the context of the story perfectly. That I think is what is good about The Grand Budapest Hotel.

The Grand Budapest Hotel has recruited a number of who's who in the current acting industry. It is basically a hotel with Oscar winners or Oscar nominees in every room. Some of the big names include Ralph Fiennes as one of the leads to cameos of Tilda Swindon, Adrian Brody, Willem Dafoe, Edward Norton, Jude Law, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Murray and the list goes on. The great thing is that this is truly an ensemble piece. Everyone was just doing his or her part without attempting to upstage anyone. I think this is what great acting is about, know your part and do your part properly. Ralph Fiennes as one of the central characters M Gustav was particular and eccentric. This is a huge departure from his menacing performance as Voldermolt and his heavy and intense workmanship in The Reader. Gustav is a surreal character in a surreal environment. His popularity among older women was uncanny when compared to his pride in maintaining the meticulous high standard of the hotel for those who stay there. The Lobby Boy Zero was played by newcomer Tony Revolori. He is kind of fit for the part but then sometimes you do feel his performance is kind of one-dimensional. There are only a set numbr of looks from him most of the time. However, I have not read the original story so I could not pass judgement whether he is doing a good job or not. However, he did have good chemistry with Ralph’s Gustav, which is important. To be fair he did have some good moments to show the depth of his character. As for great cameo moments from other acting greats in the movie I could never forget Adrian Brody's dark velvet rope in bright red shoes. Those shoes really highlighted his status as a wealthy prick who cares about nothing but his own inheritance. Tilda Swindon's brief moment as the flailing Dowagers was also outstanding. Initially you didn't even notice that it is her. And her comic moments in just a few scenes were just right on the dot.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is not the easiest of the movies to watch and understand. It does require undivided attention to understand the relationships and events. Not that the story is complicated but you would certainly enjoy the movies more when you pay attention to all the tiny bits of details planted by the cast and crew throughout the movie. It is a comedy with its own quirk that distinguishes itself from the pack. Great performances from a great cast is a selling point (as you can see from the movie poster) but be sure to bring an open mind into the theatre before sitting through this production. However, if you are looking for a straightforward comedy, this is not something for you.

 

Music (that) Makes the People

Was trolling through my music collection on my iPod over the weekend. During the process I re-discovered a lot of songs that I haven't listened to for quite some time. That Sailormoon theme song; those good old Cantonpop songs that I still miraculously remember not just the tunes but also the lyrics. I was surprised that I was still able to play that sing-along thing to those songs. However at the same time I noticed that I haven't updated my music collection for quite a while.

I used to buy a lot of music. It has always been an important part of my life. I never was the person who stick to a particular kind of music. I listen and buy music according to the pleasure of my ears and my heart. As a classically trained person I always love classical music and have a sizeable collection. Growing up in Hong Kong without a doubt I got hooked on to Cantonpop. Some critics may classify most of them as sickly sweet candy tunes, which in my opinion is a sickly over-generalised view without understanding the music and it's culture. Then there are English pops. Some of them introduced by my radio days, some of them from the school's music club and some of them by accident. I also got into Japanese anime songs as these were stuff I grew up with. I even learnt Japanese because of that. With the "invasion" of Japanese drama I got into J-Pop, which for most of my friends I was a late bloomer. When I developed my interests in video games, I started listening to video games music too. To top all of these, there are also Latino music, French music and musical theatre. So with such wide spectrum of musical interest (or according to some people lack of specialisation) my music collection should be growing continuously. How did it happen that I am spending less and less of my disposable income on buying music?

With the advance of technology buying music had never been easier. Long gone are the days you need to go to the shops to get a CD. I still enjoy browsing on the shelves flipping through racks of CDS enjoying their packaging and covers. But then online shopping is now complimented with digital download purchase, which means I can virtually buy any music I like at a click of the mouse. So why isn't my music collection growing as it should?

I believe my love for music has not waned but probably as I grow older, I get a lot more picky on what to buy. This probably due to that fact that not all my disposable income is that "disposable" anymore. As I moved out of home, expenditures rises. Bills that were dealt with by parents are now my stuff. Utilities, food, car and now a mortgage they all inevitably shrunk my share of disposable income. So I have to rationalise my spending across all categories of things that I like - theatre, cinema, concerts, music, videos, video games, books etc. As a result I began to play safe in my purchases. Some of my adventurous attitude to music and cinema was eroded and leading me to restrict myself to all the safe purchases instead of just buying anything that seemed interesting. For me this is not healthy as it starts building fences around my interests, which is not great when you work in a creative industry. I believe you always need new catalysts to stimulate your creativity.

Radio used to be a main source for exposing me to new music but nowadays radio is so boring that I eventually just switched it off. One thing I sometimes cannot understand about radio in Australia is that a lot of time it is about the shock jocks not the music. Maybe the industry had moved forward and I was left behind.  The fact is on any day I prefer to listen to music broadcast than wasting my time listening to the babbling of some radio hosts who think they are funny and relevant to the society. Radio seemed to have lost its function of promoting music.

Some people may think this is a mid-life music crisis - you live to a point in life that most musical contents became irrelevant to you. You can no longer relate to those puppy and silly love songs the newer and younger artists are talking about. Yet you refuses to admit that you belong to an older generation of musicians. As a result you become the void generation on the dichotomy of music appreciation. I personally do not agree. I am still open to new music just that I do not know where to find them sometimes, or worse still do not have as much time to find them. Maybe my appreciation levels and standards are now more refined with all these years, good music is still good music. By that I do not mean music that complies with certain composition structure or marketing blitz, I mean music that pleases my ears. Once a colleague made a comment on me saying "I would never expect you to listen to this kind of music" and there was another friend who once said, "You could play such beautiful classical music why would you listen to any Madonna stuff?". For me if I like the music it is relevant to me. I don't need to build a framework around it.

So the question remains - how could I continue to expose myself to new music? Maybe I just need to find time and make the effort, as with all things you love, you need to work hard to keep the love going.