Some Thoughts on ‘Tick, Tick… Boom!’ and the Pervasive Anxiety of Finding Success Before the Age of 30

As a rule, I don’t like musicals. But I like Lin-Manuel Miranda, I liked Hamilton and I like Andrew Garfield, so I made an exception to watch ‘Tick, Tick… Boom!’, an adaptation of the late Jonathan Larson’s semi-autobiographical musical about his worries and frustrations with his career in the arts. It’s a good movie. The energy is infectious, the songs are catchy and Andrew Garfield electrifies from beginning to end- and yes, that’s him really singing… despite never having learned how to sing before!

But what resonated strongest was Larson’s anxiety at turning 30 years old and not having anything to show for it. At the time of the story, he’s a struggling waiter at the Moondance Diner in SoHo and he fears that he’s never going to succeed. He measures his progress to that of his idol, Stephen Sondheim, who broke on to the theatre scene at the youthful age of 27 with writing the lyrics to West Side Story. He captures this frantic drive as a metaphorical ticking sound like a timer counting down to doom.

And that struck home quite deeply.

If you look up ‘People who became famous before 30’, you’ll be struck by the fact that there are no results on either Google or DuckDuckGo’s first page. The opposite is true: it’s filled with links about people who became famous AFTER 30. Which is the norm, not the exception. Only a handful of lucky people get their big break before starting their third decade in life. But somewhere along the way, it has become a misconception that if you haven’t produced anything by your late 20s or younger, you’re a failure. Which is a lie, obviously.

Except it’s such a pervasive lie that it’s hard NOT to buy into it and feel anxious, especially if you work in the arts. It’s a cutthroat world out there, no matter what part of the world you come from. The odds of finding that sweet spot of critical and commercial success are miniscule, especially if you come from a country outside America or England where the market for the arts in the English language are still big and uncensored. Well, mostly.

Since I was 9, all I wanted to do was write stories. Then I wanted to make films, but that’s just another way of telling stories. I worked away at it since then, through my adolescent years, my late teens, my early twenties, my mid-twenties… I’m 27 now and like Larson, I’ve got little to show for it.

Lately, I’ve contemplated giving it all up and, to quote Neil Gaiman, getting a “real job”— whatever that means. I assume a “real job” comes with a nice paycheck and probably healthcare. Healthcare would be nice. It would be nice to have some money and not worry, especially as the country I’m living in continues to swirl ever downwards in a whirlpool of shit while caught in a storm of incompetency, buffoonery and complete clusterfuckery. It’s not that I don’t think I can write— I just wonder if I’m capable of telling an interesting story. That’s a big distinction. All the writing in the world can’t compensate for a badly-told and, Heaven forbid, boring tale.  

But lately, there have been glimpses of hope. Not many but some. Faint flicking moments like sparks bursting far away in a dark void when I look at the work and it doesn’t make me cringe. Moments when character suddenly feels more than just words on a page. Writers talk about how their creations come to life like Frankenstein’s monster and for the first time, I know what they mean. Like a guitar string slowly tuned to its correct pitch, the story feels real. To me, anyway.

Watching ‘Tick, Tick… Boom!’, I’m reminded me that there isn’t a ‘Best By’ date in the arts. If anything, time and age is your friend. The older you grow, the more experiences you accumulate and the better your craft gets— so long as you keep at it— by which time you might have something worthwhile to say. I guess what I’ll give it a few more years and work harder at it. With luck, who knows? Someone might be interested enough to read it.

Loving (2016) | Film Review

RATING

With his fifth film, Jeff Nichols has proven that he could take a leaf from an old Yellow Pages book and turn even that into a cinematic experience. His previous directorial efforts include Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter, Mud and Midnight Special. In the span of nearly a decade, Jeff Nichols has proven that he is one of the most adept directors working today. Is it any wonder that actors and actresses from all walks of life are drawn to his projects?

Unlike his previous films, Loving is Nichols’ first biographical film. It revolves around the plaintiffs of the landmark U.S. Civil rights court case, Loving v. Virginia, Richard Loving (Joel Edgerton) and Mildred Loving (Ruth Negga), to allow interracial marriage without criminalising them. Mild spoiler: Virginia lost.

Now a lesser film might have covered the trials leading all the way to the federal Supreme Court with a climactic act of the lawyers duking out their arguments. But Nichols, who also wrote the film’s screenplay, forgoes this option- save for the opening remarks of the two lawyers representing the Lovings, a blurry shot of the judges and snippets of the verdict read in voice over- to focus wholly on the Lovings instead, and their human trials for committing no crime except for being in love.

Though the title, “Loving”, is in reference to their surnames, it also aptly describes the film’s overall theme. Here were two people, quiet and shy, who wanted nothing more than to live together and be left alone. Naturally, racist and miscegenation laws refused to permit this because since when has society been able to resist poking their noses into the private affairs of others?

Loving opens on a quiet night in 1958. Mildred tells Richard she’s pregnant. He nods, smiles, takes her hand and says, “Good”. They drive to Washington to be married. But an anonymous tip sends Sheriff Brooks (Marton Csokas) bursting through the house in the middle of the night, dragging the surprised couple out of bed to throw them in jail. When Richard points to the framed marriage certificate on the wall, Sheriff Brooks’ responds: “That’s no good here”.

To Nichols’ credit, he never depicts the Sheriff as a two-dimensional antagonist but instead as a man who firmly believes in his views. When Richard fails to bail out his wife, Brooks calls Richard into his office and tells him, “[God] made a sparrow a sparrow and a robin a robin”, before warning that if he sees Richard trying to bail Mildred out again, he’ll arrest him. Plenty of Sherriff Brooks live among us: the people who aren’t fundamentally evil and perhaps otherwise kind, with simply a racist viewpoint.

Eventually, the Lovings are forced to leave and move to Washington or risk imprisonment. They can’t afford a lawyer to fight their case and resign themselves to raising their three children away from their community. Mildred, particularly, is affected. Around the time of the Civil Rights March, she writes a letter to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy explaining their predicament and he passes it on to the American Civil Liberties Union, where the young and enthusiastic Bernard Cohen (Nick Kroll) takes up the case, later enlisting Phil Hirschkop (Jon Bass). As a case of the ACLU, the Lovings aren’t charged a cent. Thanks to the kindness of strangers, Richard and Mildred might have a chance to return to their families without fear of prosecution. That their case might reshape the Constitution and set a precedent in the history of American civil rights is almost an afterthought. Loving is proof that change doesn’t necessarily emerge from large-scale protests: sometimes, it can spring up from as simple an origin as two people simply wanting to spend the rest of their lives together.

Despite its historical nature, Loving has never felt more relevant than it does today. With hate speech, bigotry and racist attitudes openly on the rise, Richard and Mildred Loving remind us that there are real people at the receiving end of this racist hatred. Nichols never preaches; indeed, he takes a large step back to lens the Lovings, and allows his leads to communicate these messages through their body language and by what they leave unsaid. This is one of Joel Edgerton’s best performance to date- he also starred in Midnight Special– but the real limelight falls on Ruth Negga. She delivers Mildred’s quiet resolve and fortitude of inner strength with conviction. She knows they’re in this for the long haul- as she tells Life Magazine photographer Grey Villet (Michael Shannon), the man who captured the iconic photo of the Lovings in their living room watching television: “We may lose the small battles but win the big war”.

Even if Loving isn’t necessarily Nichols’ at his most striking, still it is an important entry in his filmography (interestingly, his best films happen to be the ones where Michael Shannon- Jeff Nichols’ lucky charm who has vowed to appear in every one of the director’s films until his death- has the lead role). As a filmmaker, he wants us to contemplate what we watch, to understand that when governments pass laws that infringe the rights of certain denominations- whether it is women’s rights, LGBTQ rights or in the case of Loving v. Virginia, the basic right to marry- we often fail to take into account the very people affected by such restrictions. Most such laws are written in lieu of implementing politician’s religious beliefs, but what about the people at the receiving end of this?

When Richard Loving refuses to attend the hearing at the federal Supreme Court, Cohen asks if he wants to convey a message to the judges. Richard thinks for moment, then quietly says, “Tell the judge I love my wife”. That’s it. Next time you feel that a group’s orientation, lifestyle or whatever conflicts with your personal beliefs, remember the Lovings. And then ask yourself if you would still like to take away their rights.

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WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY: Jeff Nichols
PRODUCED BY: Ged Doherty, Colin Firth, Nancy Buirski, Sarah Green, Marc Turtletaub, Peter Saraf

STARRING: Joel Edgerton, Ruth Negga, Marton Csokas, Nick Kroll, Terri Abney, Alano Miller, Jon Bass, Michael Shannon

The Role of Identity in The Legend of Korra

When The Legend of Korra aired in 2012, seventy years had passed since the end of the hundred-year war. Aang had died and a new Avatar was born into one of the water tribes. Her name was Korra and based on her energetic introduction alone, it was made clear that she was a different breed of Avatar altogether.

Two years and three Books later, it is fair enough to say that the spin-off had numerous challenges to overcome. While its third season, Change, circumvented a great deal of the criticism plaguing Books One and Two, Air and Spirits, the journey has not been easy— despite the superior animation, J.K. Simmons voicing Tenzin and an ambition to explore larger themes and ideas. It was hard enough for The Legend of Korra to live up to expectations set by Avatar: The Last Airbender (ATLA for short) without having to shoulder the extra burden of pleasing the original fans while drawing in new ones simultaneously.

To stand out from its predecessor and for many other reasons, Korra’s adventures began when she was well into her teens. From a story-telling standing point and in hindsight, it was a sound creative decision as it not only injected fresh blood into the series but offered a different aesthetic to the material. Reception to these ideas, however, was mixed. Fans were a little unhappy with Korra’s belligerent and even bratty behaviour initially, the romantic subplots were poor and the execution of certain storylines was half-baked at best.

With the conclusion of Change and the final Book, titled Balance, set to air this week on October 4^th, an examination of the series thus far reveals that Korra’s journey has been fixated on a central overarching theme of identity.

In comparison, ATLA concerned itself with the theme of destiny: Zuko spent three Books thinking his destiny was to destroy the Avatar before subsequently joining forces with him; it took over a hundred years (and two Books) for Aang to reluctantly accept that his responsibility lay in maintaining the balance of the world; Katara was determined to be accepted as a serious Waterbending Master and Sokka struggled to live up to the expectations of being a warrior chieftain’s son.

In The Legend of Korra, the titular character, Mako, Bolin and Asami all attempted to find and understand their purpose and place in the world as they stood on the threshold to adulthood. Mako and Bolin went from poor street kids to Probending sportsmen to saving the world alongside the Avatar; Asami struggled to build a legacy of her own as a visionary and not as the daughter of an Equalist. And while her companions have more or less finally found themselves, Korra has yet to do so.

Observe her trajectory: born into more peaceful times as the daughter of the Southern Water Tribe chieftain, Korra spent most of her life training to be the Avatar with an enthusiasm absent in Aang— who would happily have palmed off Avatar-related work in exchange for fun play time. Korra dived into her work and role as world saviour so willingly and earnestly that being the Avatar defined who she was. Without it, Korra would have been lost, devoid of purpose.

So when Amon— Korra’s first proper antagonist— emerges in Republic City sporting an ability to remove a bender’s powers, he was not content with killing Korra as much as destroying her morale and crushing her sense of identity. Book One’s finale may have felt a bit of a cheat when Korra’s powers were fully restored through convenience of a deus ex machina; upon reflecting back, however, perhaps that intention had been deliberate from the beginning. By having imbued Korra with the thought that she could emerge from her battles unscathed, the severing of her connection to the past Avatars at the hands of Unalaq and Vaatu in Spirits suddenly becomes even more brutal in retrospect. By the time Zaheer showed up in Change and nearly kills Korra— proclaiming her legacy would be that of “Korra: the Last Avatar”— her spirit was worn down enough to finally be broken.

And Zaheer was not the sole reason for it.

In the season premiere, ‘A Breath of Fresh Air’, it is apparent that Korra’s confidence in herself as Avatar is already under fire after she fails to find a feasible solution for people and spirits to harmoniously co-exist in Republic City. “I’m the Avatar,” Korra bemoans to Asami, “I should be able to fix this”. Subsequently over the season, Korra is banished from Republic City, makes an enemy (temporarily) of the Earth Queen before finding herself outmatched against Zaheer. In several ways, Korra finds herself stumbling desperately to assert herself, forced to depend several times on her friends for help. An instance that stands out is in the episode, ‘The Terror Within’, where Zaheer and his cohorts nearly succeed in kidnapping Korra if not for Pabu’s and Bolin’s timely intervention. But it is in the season’s finale, ‘Venom of the Red Lotus’, that Korra’s sidelining becomes most prominent when Jinora ultimately brings Zaheer down— literally.

Glancing through Book Three, it is apparent that many of the supporting characters were given a prominence that was a little stringent in Spirits. Staples like Bolin and Asami are pushed to the forefront with a solid purpose; Jinora demonstrates her abilities as a fully-fledged Airbending master; and Lin Beifong and newcomers Kai and Suyin Beifong are similarly allocated generous screen time. All of their actions are important and influential against the onslaught of Zaheer’s plans. In several ways, they had to step up their game when Korra was down— and this has not escaped Korra’s attention.

By the end of ‘Venom of the Red Lotus’, the wounds inflicted on Korra have become more than skin-deep. Notice her despondency to having to rely on Asami to help her get dressed for Jinora’s ceremony. Korra is not a person who likes to depend on others for anything— especially to fight her battles. But the killing blow to her sense of self-worth and identity ironically comes not from the hand of an enemy but her close friend and mentor, Tenzin. By announcing to the gathering that the Air Nomads would take up Korra’s work while she recuperated, he indirectly hinted that a world without an Avatar could exist. It is a cruel twist to consider that Tenzin succeeded in accomplishing what Amon, Unalaq, Vaatu and Zaheer were trying to prove all along. Korra’s tears in the final shot of Change, as she sits there listening, emotionally drained, aren’t tears of happiness. They are the tears of pain and sadness: the knowledge that her spirit has finally crumbled.

Where Korra goes from there remains to be seen. From the trailer of Balance, we know that the story picks up a good three years later and that Korra hasn’t been sighted in Republic City since. A plausible guess is that Korra will be travelling the world to recover her confidence and find herself again, possibly starting with the symbolic act of cutting short her hair.

Every journey and story arc must reach its end. If Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino have a spectacular conclusion lined up, the rockier— even questionable— moments of the show can be forgiven. At any rate, it is certain that within the closing minutes of The Legend of Korra, she will assert herself as the Avatar and that like it or not, we would have to “deal with it”.

The Art of Letter Writing is Dying

Growing up, one requirement in the English Language classes included learning to write a letter. It could be a letter to a friend, relative or parent and would oft consist describing perhaps telling your favourite aunt in Europe about your summer holidays or thanking your uncle for the wonderful birthday present they’d mailed. It wasn’t my preferred writing exercise, much less if it was as an exam question but it was fun to a certain extent. Not to mention, you learned something from it— for instance, I know now that you always write your address on the right at the top of the page before starting the letter. Also, some novels have been written in an epistolary format, my favourite being Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Today, I wonder if children are still taught to write letters. Or even a proper email, at least. Because you see, the truth is: the art of letter writing is dead. Or at any rate, dying.

Maybe it is still taught as a small module in the English Language syllabus, I cannot say. But the advancements in technology and the ease of real-time communication through Skype, Viber, Whatsapp and more has condemned letter writing to the slow walk down to the gallows of extinction. I can’t claim to remember eagerly waiting by the letter-box in the hopes of receiving a communiqué from a loved one in some far-off land but I do recall how nice it felt to receive a birthday card if that person lived in a different continent. Nowadays, we might drop a text or even call them up to wish in person.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s great that distance no longer hinders keeping in touch with people even if they’re halfway across the world where it doesn’t take forever to hear from them.

But this development feels a little hollow and empty.

I’m a bit of a sentimentalist at heart and I do believe the art of not only writing a letter but the very act of sending it has a dab of what I like to refer to as “old-fashioned magic”, by which I mean it tends to conjure a strange mix of warm feelings partly nostalgic and comforting possibly accompanied by the rich scent of pinewood shavings, emotions of goodness that fill you up from head-to-toe the way a cup of hot chocolate will do on a cold night when you’re curled up with a book. Letter writing creates an invisible link of intimacy and it does not have to necessarily refer to the romantic kind of intimacy, either. This bond is primarily formed out of an unspoken understanding that letter writing is not an easy task for it takes time to compose and mail and even then it could still get lost travelling from sender to receiver. When it reaches its destination and is delivered, it is made implicitly clear that the writer evidently thought and cared a great deal to make such an effort and endeavour.

Did any of you have a pen pal growing up? Letter writing advocated this frenzy. Sadly, I didn’t but I do know they were popular. This meeting of strangers, their only form of contact being through this communication, was the pen-on-paper equivalent of how one might meet strangers on the Internet— except we’re cautioned against doing so owing to the rise of unwanted nuisances such as pedophiles, perverts and a whole bunch of unsavoury characters prowling the cyberspace. Pen-pals allowed two individuals from varied backgrounds to exchange cultural information and I’m guessing sometimes they even met up eventually. That must have been fun. Ask your parents about it, I’m quite certain they may have had a pen pal growing up.

It isn’t too late. We can still keep that magic alive. Don’t believe me? Try writing someone a letter and see how they react. I guarantee that it will be very happy— unless you wrote incredibly nasty stuff in it.

How To Write A Best-Selling Young Adult Novel in Ten Steps

[NOTE: This is actually a repost of an old post from my old blog, Holmes Hideout, which I wrote at the end of 2012- literally. Going back through it, I find it still contains some humourous value in it and felt it’d be a shame not to share it with a newer audience. It also sheds some startling light on the phenomenon of YA novels that was so massive in those years (not so much now except perhaps in film- the new trend is superhero movies/reboots/remakes/shared universe franchises. Nonetheless: enjoy]. 

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If you follow my 10 steps, you will easily be able to write a young-adult novel catered to meet the requirements of readers in the 21st century: 

1) Create an uninteresting, meek female protagonist who’s very insecure about themselves and co-dependent, not to mention complete helpless damsels-in-distress 24/7. 

NOTE: exceptions CAN be made but nobody gives a damn because three-dimensional characters are alien to this genre! 

2) Create a male protagonist who seems to spend all his time at the gym because he’s built. He will fall in love with the female protagonist because that’s what is expected of the genre and because he’s clearly got no one better to fall in love with. In this genre, insecure boring females are the Queens!

 

3) Male protagonist should be perfect and flawless with- this is VERY IMPORTANT!- an endless amount of patience to have nothing better than to listen to the female protagonist whine constantly. Why is this important? Because that’s what your targeted demography (i.e. 13-50 year old women) wants. They are not there to read about a flawed male protagonist- that’s what boyfriends and husbands are for!

 

4) Make your male protagonist a supernatural being. Like a vampire. Or an angel. Or a werewolf. Bitches love supernatural beings. Even if said being is a 110 years old trapped in a teenager’s body. It is not considered as pedophilia.

 

5) Create ANOTHER male protagonist! This guy will most likely have been a friend of the female protagonist since the beginning of time and is usually (gasp!) secretly in love with her. He’s got to be a nice guy and a perfectly legitimate choice for a girl to fall in love with; yet in the end, he will get kicked in the nuts because he’s not bad-ass like the main male protagonist.

 

6) Now create a love triangle between the female protagonist and the two male protagonists- even though the reader ALREADY knows that the girl is going to choose the supernatural bad-ass perfectly muscular male protagonist. Because pointless love triangles with predictable outcomes are a MUST and completely unclichéd, trust me! No requirements necessary to make it interesting.

 

7) Spend the next 500 odd pages describing how perfect the male protagonist is. If you’re a little more creative, you can add in a little plot to make it seem “exciting”. NOT a must!

NOTE: keep a thesaurus with you at all times when writing scenes involving the male protagonist so that you never run out of adjectives to describe how perfect he is. 

 

8) Don’t stop at one book. Create a trilogy. Better than a trilogy, make it a quadrilogy (that’s four in a series). And your fourth book should be very big- because in case the books are adapted into films, the final book can be split into two films even though it’s highly unnecessary but will be done in “the name of the fans who are clamouring for more”. 

 

9) Give your books mysterious and obscure titles, preferably after times of the day, like ‘Morning‘, ‘Afternoon‘, ‘Evening‘ and ‘Night‘. The titles don’t have to make sense. 

10) Watch as the books become best-sellers and tarnish the good of literature as we know it, while the film adaptations win all the MTV Movie Awards each year. 

 

NOTE: if you can- by some miracle!- make your books appear to be “metaphors” for abstinence, then you’ll seem a little more credible as an author to the oblivious fans. The intelligent ones will see through the facade immediately.

On Writing

I’ve been writing since I was nine. No exaggeration. From that time onwards, I wanted to be an author. It was the first clear ambition I ever had and it is still an endeavour I strive towards each day.

I know what brought this about, I can clearly pinpoint the exact moment in which the startling understanding, a message possibly originating from the unknown depths of the Universe, dawned on me. It was when I read Harry Potter. The books transported my imagination into a field of wonder and delight not so different from when a tornado swept Dorothy and Toto from the dusty plains of Kansas into the colourful Land of Oz. The series, however, left me with an impression that went deeper than the usual reading experience. I was fascinated and mesmerised with J.K. Rowling’s ability to construct and create a world relying entirely on nothing more than an active imagination and a good vocabulary. She had crafted it all out of nothing but words. Since then, I threw myself into writing and I haven’t stopped since. There are several decisions that we make in our lives that alter its course forever and this was one of them. Said simply: I love writing.

I love how by placing seemingly unrelated words one after the other, one can formulate a cohesive comprehensible meaningful sentence that can conjure images within a reader’s imagination. As Stephen King aptly put it, writing is an act of telepathy between writer and reader. When applied rightly, words can yield a magnetic power. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”; “The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places”; “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” — these phrases by Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway and Leo Tolstoy have stood the test of time and continue to resonate vibrantly as ever though they have been dead for plenty of years and nothing remains but their bones and legacies.

But writing isn’t easy. No art or craft ever is should you dedicate yourself to it. It is tedious, tiring and exhausting. Writing requires a great deal of self-confidence to counteract the constant shifts between extreme exhilaration accompanying a day of good writing, followed the next by plagues of self-doubt and a crippling conviction that you are an awful and truly terrible writer and that it is blasphemous for you to even attempt putting words to paper (or to word processor, as is more common these days).

The act of writing and putting your work out into the world for reading is akin to performing on a trapeze high-wire in your birthday suit. Writing forces you to strip away your clothes and bare your naked self and soul with utter abandon, a terrifying act of intimacy that requires you to give yourself over with a heart brimming with infinite emotion. Ernest Hemingway said it best: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed”. That is why lots of people in the creative arts are more prone to bouts of depression, mental illness and alcoholic tendencies. Virginia Woolf drowned in an act of suicide. Hemingway shot himself. Vincent Van Gogh reportedly shot himself. In a world where it is safer to stay hidden and masked, exposing your raw defenseless soul is to risk losing it little by little, worn away until it’s gone and you have nothing left except an empty shell where your spark once set fire to a blazing flame.

And yet I still write. It helps to keep my demons at bay and prevent them from dragging me down to the hidden pit of all my fears and insecurity, to calm and assuage my qualms in times of discouragement and despondency. Writing shuts all these bastards out, drowning the screeches of these sirens and reducing them to meaningless incoherence. On occasion, people tend to like what I write and that is one of the best reasons to keep going at it. When you can put a smile on faces and tug at their heartstrings with a bunch of words, why would you possibly want to stop?