While we're on the subject of THON weekend...
If I hadn't gone into lab on the Saturday of THON, I never would have seen the poster on the door of Life Sci advertising a performance of Slanty Eyed Mama there later that night. Funny how things work out sometimes. I had heard of them before, I believe on angry asian man, but had never heard their work. It seemed like fun, and I got Chen to go with me - with adequate warning to him that it was part of a graduate women's studies conference - and ended up getting a free CD because I knew fortune cookies were invented in San Francisco. Otherwise useless knowledge for the win!
Though a fan in general of the idea of spoken word, mostly because it - and rap, too - is a poetry form, I had never sought it out. I told myself I would (but I didn't), earlier this semester, after Nev sent me this video of Alvin Lau, which left me speechless. Everything about it - his crazy-clever diction, his intonation and sheer passion, his movement - was hypnotic. Regardless of subject matter relatability, the emotion behind spoken word has a universal appeal. Who hasn't felt like launching into a diatribe at some personified idea ("Bioengineering, you're killing me, and all I want to do is graduate and escape," for example), or delivering an ode to something underappreciated ("I try not to think of the pigs that had to die for you, bacon, my true love")? And who wouldn't want to get up in front of a crowd and perform alone like that, knowing all eyes were on you and everyone was hanging on to your every syllable, at least one time, just so you could say, "Yeah, I did that"?
But certainly, much of my admiration and applause is because of the subject matter, that this guy, in three minutes, spits out much of what, I think, many, many Asian-Americans feel about our identity and our culture. There were lines that screamed out at me ("you're the farmer's tan skin I rock like pride into the summer," "...who's losing more words of his first language daily," "there's gotta be a solution to this Rubik's Cube identity," the list goes on), and I wanted to scream back, "YES!" I felt the same way listening to Slanty Eyed Mama two Saturdays ago. They are not strictly spoken word - there are two leads, one who does the vocals, and one who plays the violin and does the beats - but they have the same powerful (and, dare I say it, angry?) performance style as spoken word artists, just with additional instrumentation.
Their piece "Wild Wild West" resonated with me the most because it captured so well the... guilt(?) I feel when I think about my life in comparison to, say, my own cousins'. As a "1.5-generation" immigrant (though for all intents and purposes, I'm pretty much second-generation, because I was so young when we came to the States), I wonder sometimes, What did I do to deserve this life?
The answer: absolutely nothing.
I just had to be born lucky. Born to industrious, intelligent parents who themselves were lucky to have been college-aged when the Chinese government reopened the universities after the Cultural Revolution. (This isn't to discount their own struggle and hard work to get into a university, but just to say that if they had been a few years older, they might not have had the chance to go at all.) Born to a father who was lucky to have been in the U.S. studying abroad when the Tiananmen Square Massacre took place, which made him automatically eligible to apply for a green card. It really makes one believe that all of life is about being in the right place at the right time. (Though, at the same time, I belong wholeheartedly to the "everything happens for a reason" camp, and so even the "wrong" time/place is still right. I think. Maybe.) I'm not saying that had things been different, my life would be terrible. Obviously there's no way to know. I also don't reject the possibility that things could have worked out even better than they have, either. But all things considered, I truly could not ask for more.
It is enough to have been raised here, enough to have an American college education, enough to have a sibling, for crying out loud. These are things my older cousins could not have, just because of their parents' circumstance - having been "sent down" to the countryside to be "re-educated," effectively erasing their chances to get an actual education - and their residency in a country with a one-child policy. And I always wonder if they are jealous of, or their parents bitter over, my parents' success and my and Flip's subsequent prosperity. Hell, even I sometimes look at Flip and think life's not fair, that he got to be born at a time when our parents can afford sports and music lessons and all sorts of stuff for him from a very young age, and perhaps more importantly, when they can afford, timewise, to chaperone his field trips and attend all his special school events. But then again, what is "fair"? Is it fair that I will always have fifteen more years with our parents?
Fair or not, our birth - the when, where, to whom - is uncontrollable. But while I have no reason to feel guilty over the winning hand that happened to be dealt to me, I think I ought to feel guilty if I don't use what I've been given. I don't know, it's like the whole, "Eat your food - there are starving children in [insert Third World country here]!" argument that parents make. (Or that Blue made once, totally politically incorrectly but hilariously: "There are starving children in China - who you probably know!" Karma is probably going to get me someday for laughing at that... For the record, no one I know in China is starving - and I always, always try to finish what's on my plate.) There are people who would die for the opportunities that I have just by virtue of being a middle-class American, something I can't take any credit for, and it seems wrong to not acknowledge that and to try to use those opportunities, then, to somehow better society or give back or ... something.
There are people who use the line "God put me here for a reason" or some variation thereof, and though I'm iffy on the God part, I think there must be a reason I'm here, you're here, we're all here. To crib from Avenue Q: I don't know how I know/but I'm gonna find my purpose. (Sidenote: I love that someone took the time to take all those Johnny and the Sprites clips and fit them somewhat to the song. Also, John Tartaglia is super adorbs.) I guess I just hope that when I am old and looking back on my life, I will be able to say that I used my luck well and didn't take it for granted. Which means I should stop being so lazy. (See how these posts interconnect?)
I've rambled enough for now and will end with more of "Wild Wild West" because I like it so much: And I can get some money to buy the things I see/And I don't have to ask myself how the fuck can it be/That I'm doomed to Third World misery/'Cuz I lost the karmic lottery/When I could see, plain as day, in newspapers and magazines/Worlds of opportunity, totally closed to me/'Cuz I chanced to land in the wrong place, right century...
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