12.29 | merry jetlagged xmas
Wow, I don't know if it's just because it's been two years and change since I've had to move time zones, or if the East Asia to West Coast America switch is just especially brutal, but my life since I got here a week ago has felt like one barely coherent haze.
Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
– Joan Didion (R.I.P.)
✉️ letter #21
Wow, I don't know if it's just because it's been two years and change since I've had to move time zones, or if the East Asia to West Coast America switch is just especially brutal, but my life since I got here a week ago has felt like one barely coherent haze.
I've been waking up in time for 6:30am calls with New York, then napping, then waking up groggy, barely picking myself up to do things like explore the Bay Area, then passing out somewhat early and then jolting awake at around 1:30am unable to sleep again until right before I'm supposed to be getting up for those 6:30am calls.
My cat's happy - this means a lot of attention for her during her natural nocturnal lifestyle. And funnily enough, she's been able to adjust here better than I have. She's somehow been able to shift her hours of frenzy from 1-3am and 5-7am Shanghai time to roughly that same same schedule in San Francisco.
Anyway, if anyone has any tips on how to reset, that'd be great. I've felt half-awake any moment I have been up, which has been terribly demotivating towards getting anything done.
And that's my excuse for an imperfect segue of "how nice it is to meet my siblings again!" It's been two years since I've seen my sister Jane (whose guest room I am now using), and almost three since I've seen my brother Jon (whose house and in-laws are in the pics accompanying this post).
Since the last time we've met up, Jon and his wife have switched careers, switched houses, had one baby, and gotten another one proverbially baking in the oven.
Since the last time we've met up, Jane has graduated from medical school, moved from Boston to SF with her boyfriend, and now does like a dozen surgeries a day or something on patients transitioning genders.
I don't even feel like it's been that long since we met up! How did so much happen in the interim??
🌱 the ethical ideas newsreel
- Christmas day saw the launch of NASA's big space observatory, the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope, which will begin soon its transformative mission to study the early universe. $10 billion sounds like a lot, but it's less than a third of how much "value" was "created" by Elon Musk in one day in October. If only what was actually valuable got that value attached.
- 50 years ago this week, the Man and Biosphere Programme launched to create a longer lasting connection between people and nature. Now there are 727 biosphere reserves integrating nature conservations and sustainable development in 131 countries.
- Greenpeace has done a wonderful round up of the best environmental journalism that was written this year. A good read through for the holidays.
- Who's that birb? This absolute delight of an article offers a "glimpse behind the names of Britain’s favourite Christmastime birds," which "tells us a lot about how historical speakers of English perceived and thought about these birds." Tweet it out.
- I've talked a bit about toxic Asian masculinity. Someone recently put the call out to get more articles and books that could explain, but also help us move beyond this unfortunate phenomenon. One of the pieces offered back was this absolutely beautiful piece by author Alexander Chee about his Korean father.
🎵 song of my week
I watched one of the Oscar contenders for this upcoming year recently: Tick, Tick, Boom!, a biopic/musical of the late Jonathan Larson, best known for RENT.
To be perfectly honest, while I enjoyed the movie itself, I had the same problem with RENT itself in that most of the music is sing songy forgettable and then boom there it is, the most beautiful song in the middle of it.
And considering how much was made about this song in the movie, how it was positioned to be the white whale our sad, over-the-hill,"almost 30" Jonathan Larson was chasing, it's kind of amazing how good this specific song turned out to be.
It makes me think that he knew. He knew that if he had more time to really refine RENT, he would have made all of the songs as good as "Seasons of Love," and "La Vie Boheme" and "Take Me or Love Me."
Because Tick, Tick Boom! had all of the fun parts of RENT - colorful New Yorkers joyfully living their lives in a very specific era - and all the annoying parts of RENT as well - the very apologetic but not quite getting it cis white liberal perspective. the songs that aren't so much songs as they are fun thoughts to a beat, the desperate need to validate their true Broadway Bonafides (look, I worship Stephen Sondheim as well, but good lord did he need to be painted as the "you go girl" figure of JLars' career/life?).
And yet, this song is beautiful. And bravo to Alexandra Shipp and Vanessa Hudgens for doing it such gorgeous justice.
Then again, maybe I just have a thing for songs that are specifically the wronged female supporting characters of a musical asserting themselves for a minute, confronting the main (always male) character, finally getting their one and only chance to explain from their perspective all the shit they just went through. See my other favorite Broadway ballads:
- "Burn" from Hamilton
- "Come Down Now" from Passing Strange
- "You Must Love Me" from Evita
- "On my Own" from Les Mis (a favorite from literal childhood)
- and of course, as previously mentioned in another newsletter, "I'm Still Here" from Sondheim's Follies.
Huh.
✨enjoying: one final piece of pop culture fun
Things I've been watching in this jet-lagged haze that I have enjoyed a lot but perhaps not enough to really wax on about:
- Finished Hawkeye (It was very good! I liked Yelena enough to put Black Widow on my "should probably watch" list. But there also wasn't so much of an emotional beat that I really felt like... moved by it? Like when everything resolved near the end, I was like "ok cool shrug emoji, what's the next thing that's coming out?")
- Got halfway through Brooklyn 99 final season (Wow! A lot about the broken policing system and racial inustice for their last year. I mean, I'm glad they're addressing it but also who is this show for again?)
- Got halfway through The Witcher Season 2 (Continues to be very watchable! But I get the feeling I will forget half the plot before I revisit the final episodes before the finale, considering the first episode of the first season played and I couldn't tell it wasn't new until someone else pointed it out).
Perhaps it's having too much time to veg out in front of the couch. When there's so much choice, there's not much time for anything to leave that big an impact on you. I hope that whenever I get less tired, I have more energy to do things besides flip past commercials.
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