Author: Thao

It is the end of May, and after 10 weeks I am ending daily entries with this post.

When the order to shelter in place went into effect on March 17, I started this blog simply to record my personal experience of everyday life in quarantine. The order from March 17 through April 7 was extended to May 31. And now the only thing that is clear is that the call to suddenly shut everything down was a lot easier to make than plans to restart and reopen public life.

The world is becoming a different place as we speak. Or is it? A reckoning is taking place throughout the United States of America right now. I do not know what to do or say. I just feel more compelled to civics and (re)learning history.

I knew that I would want to make a change to these daily posts once the order to shelter in place ends on May 31. Instead of the order being lifted today a curfew has been imposed on several cities here in the Bay Area. Nevertheless, or perhaps precisely because of, it is time for me to focus on my work rather than indulge in complacency.

The daily posts will be replaced with a weekly update on Fridays in which I will write about what I am working on, whether it is my professional life or civics. May was a hard month, and June is starting off with even more upheaval. But I hope my weekly updates will show progress however it may manifest itself. Until then, take care.

The lyrics “I read the news today, oh boy…” from A Day in the Life by The Beatles rings in my head while the melody weighs on my heart. It happens to be how I feel about the news today, which felt notably bleak. With 100,000 U.S. deaths and everything else touting the absurdities of society, I should have stayed away.

But in fact I had a good day. I was productive, had meaningful exchanges in the form of conversations, and made it up surrounding hills and back on a great bike ride. I am reminded once again to not check the news so much.

After all, no news is not so bad, or too much of a good thing is no good. Better still, as Mark Twain supposedly said, “Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough.”

After 10 weeks of shelter in place and with the order set until May 31 here in the Bay Area, I do not expect things will be very different in five days. It has been said that it was easy enough to suddenly shut everything down, but now how to restart?

Just in time for the beginning of summer, perfectly warm weather set in this past Memorial Day weekend. Temperatures are high here and so is tension. At least that’s how I feel.

I came across this @HarvardBiz article explaining crisis as a three-act story: Emergency. Regression. Recovery. It makes a good case for the highs and lows I am experiencing.

Act two is such a drag. I look forward to moving on to act three. Above all I look forward to the end of this story of pandemic crisis. Now that’s something to drink to.

I was reminded of today five years ago, closing the week on the red carpet at Cannes Film Festival:

This is how I want to end any day and every week:

Exuberance is beauty. – William Blake

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. – John Keats

Life is beautiful.

The film critics of the New York Times also ends their week with Festival de Cannes.

Have beautiful days and weeks’ end. See you at the start. ❤️

We hardly noticed Ascension Thursday today. In Switzerland it is observed as a national holiday. It’s hard to tell the days apart these days. Nevertheless they pass by fast.

I would attribute time passing by quickly with being busy. The piano has keeping me busy, namely BWV 847. When I am not learning and practicing it one measure at a time, I find myself preoccupied by it.

Something about the clarity of the composition and total concentration it demands appeals to me. It is strangely comforting. Incidentally I came across this illustration that aptly depicts how I also feel about the piano right now.

As I am thinking a lot about films and watching Cannes Film Festival films almost every night this past week, I would be remiss not to mention The Piano by Jane Campion, who is the first and only female filmmaker to receive the Palme d’Or in the 73 editions of the festival’s history.

I saw The Piano as a high school student in 1994. My best friends were enamored by it. I think I was too, but I honestly do not remember if I was more mystified by it than admiring of it. No matter, because it is time to watch it anew.

In the Mood for Love by Wong Kar-Wai premiered 20 years ago today at Cannes Film Festival. I note it here, because it is one my ultimate favorite and must-see films.

I don’t know how many times I have seen it these past 20 years. In the first few years, after it was released as part of the Criterion Collection, I would watch it just to be under the spell that seeing In the Mood for Love puts you in.

It is a visually stunning film about restrained emotion and desire. The film transports us to an exiled Shanghainese community in Hong Kong under British occupation in 1962. While this setting is very specific, the film and the emotions it evokes remain timeless.

The introduction in the title sequence, in fact, reflects this very moment:

I assume anyone interested in world cinema knows this film. If not, oh wow, definitely get In the Mood for Love.

No post today.

I finally started to learn the first two measures of Bach’s Prelude in C minor BWV 847 today after deciding a few days ago that this is the composition I want play next. I had been learning to play BMV (Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis) 846 Prelude in C major. I can play it technically, but as it is with Bach’s music you can spend a lifetime interpreting it.

Learning to play a new composition is like jumping into cold water. I tend to circle the pool and put off getting in. But once I finally make the leap, I can become fully immersed in and obsessed with whatever it is I am doing. I love being in this flow, a notion Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi‘s work centers on and that I find most pertinent particularly at this time.

The joy I find in learning to play the piano again as an adult has to do entirely with this notion of flow. Once I commit to the focus it requires, I find I can get totally lost in it. We all know how to get to Carnegie Hall, but I practice to get to into the flow.

À propos Brad Pitt in Inglorious Basterds, this exchange in German and Italian is one of the best, most funny scenes: Grazie. And arrivederci.

It is now exactly two months since shelter in place was ordered in counties around the Bay Area. Our quarantine routine runs more or less like clockwork. Monday to Fridays: We’re up and at it around 8:30 in the morning. Between 5:00 and 5:30 in the afternoon, we call it a day. Martin will bike up through the hills about three or four times a week. I will usually join him usually twice a week. And so the days pass seamlessly and fast. All of a sudden it’s Friday and the week’s end again.

As I am in Cannes-fever mode, I have been rummaging the archives and naturally Clint Eastwood figures into the pantheon of stars. Although it is not a Cannes film, we watched Escape from Alcatraz tonight. Clint Eastwood stars as Frank Morris in a film adaptation of a real prison escape from Alcatraz Island, which can be seen in the horizon from our cross street of the same name.

I have never visited Alcatraz Island even though I am a Bay Area native. Nowadays I see it every time I reach the top of the hills on our bike rides. The panorama of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge is quite stunning. I like the view of Alcatraz Island from this side and prefer to keep the prison aspects on the big screen and great escapes to the movies.

Here’s to a lovely weekend escape in any way you can, whether through the magic of movies or on an outing in places like Switzerland where public life has started opening up again this past week.

During Cannes Film Festival my favorite discussions between meetings, screenings, red-carpet-hopping, hobnobbing, rosé all day, partying the night away before landing at Le Petit Majestic revolve around the inevitable question, “What’s your Palme?”

The Palme d’Or is the most prestigious award in world cinema. The Academy might think differently, but the Oscars center around Hollywood. It has, however, become more international and diverse by expanding its member base following #OscarsSoWhite, and hence propelled the Palme d’Or winner of 2019, Parasite by Bong Joon Ho, to make Oscar history as the first non-English language film to win best picture as well as the first film to win for both best international film and best picture.

Tonight we watched 3 Faces by Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi. The film was in competition in 2018 and awarded the Prix du scénario, best screenplay. It is a gem that transports you to a faraway place where culture and ways of life are so different from what we know here but a curious and somehow comforting reminder that people everywhere are, well, just people.