Trace Your Steps
I have consumed a lot of content this year. Like, a lot of it—and I know I will continue to do so in my lucid, waking life.
So when it came to making mental ‘best of’ lists and narrowing down my greatest hits for 2022, I was surprised by how easy it was to pick just two out for each category (drumroll):
Books: Crying in H-Mart, Hamnet
TV shows: The Bear, Severance
Films: Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, Aftersun
Songs: Spitting Off the Edge of the World, GMT
And if these have made it to the list, you can bet I cried pretty much during/after consuming all of them. (Except for the songs. Those were mostly joyful, but more on that later.) It only occurred to me recently that the running theme behind all these wonderful works is love and time. What does one do with all the love you still have to give to a loved one, even after they have run out of time? And what do the ones who stay behind do as time marches forward?
In Crying in H-Mart, we walk with Michelle Zauner (of Japanese Breakfast fame) through her journey of caring for her ill mother, and grieve with her when she eventually dies of cancer. In the process of it all, Zauner reacquaints herself with her other homeland (South Korea) through family, food and music. Food, in essence, will forever bind her to her mother and her Korean heritage. The act of cooking is an act of love that she’ll pass on to her friends and family as she processes her grief. Towards the end of the memoir, it was a joy to read about Zauner’s experience eating super garlic-ky noodles at Myeongdong Kyoja in Seoul after her mother’s death (I am a fan of nearly all things garlic, and I went to the same restaurant twice when I was in Seoul in March 2022). It’s fitting that graphic designer Na Kim designed the cover with oodles of noodle goodness.
In Maggie O’Farrell’s devastatingly beautiful Hamnet, Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes, process their grief after they lose thier son, Hamnet, to the plague. The journey for both was entirely different, but they arrive at a similar destination: a place that acknowledges that there is pain and loneliness in dealing with loss. One can say that “the rest is history”, because Shakespeare eventually channels all this grief through the writing of his play, Hamlet. But what O’Farrell succeeds in doing is reimagining and speculating what his wife and remaining family members went through when they remained in Stratford-Upon-Avon, while Shakespeare (who is never mentioned by name in the novel) was days away in London becoming a literary legend. I read this book twice within a couple of months. In both readings, the closing words of the novel (“Remember me”)—which are from Hamlet—made me gasp. They were the perfect parting gift for readers who were so immersed in Agnes Shakespeare’s world.
Moving away from the printed word—the offering of TV shows was so rich this year, but these two shows really stood out for me. In The Bear, (hot, hot) chef Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) is processing his grief when he takes over his family’s beef sandwich shop that his brother used to own. His brother — whom Carmy looked up to and deeply admired — took his own life. With that as a background, we also see the lengths that Carmy and his staff will go for their culinary passions and desire to elevate the restaurant to greater heights.
Characters in the dystopian world of Severance — which, man, remains one of the most unique stories I’ve ever encountered—deal with grief and loss very differently. We follow grieving widower Mark (Adam Scott), a corporate historian who leads a team of office workers who have chosen to surgically separate their work and personal lives. These office workers do … some sort of work (we’re not sure exactly what; it’s a cross between tetris and some 80s game). It’s horrifying to see why Mark and his team would sign up to erase their sadness and grief, and bury it (literally) at subconscious levels. But the question is why is all this being done? (I really can’t wait for Season 2.) My one liner explainer to people who have asked me what the show is about, is that it brings work-life balance to a whole new (basement) level.
Film-wise, there is no doubt that indie darlings, the Daniels, have really wowed everyone with Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (otherwise known as EEAAO). The film is about an exhausted Chinese American woman called Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) who can’t seem to finish her taxes. It’s also about her husband, Waymond, (yes, it’s Waymond and not Raymond but mispronounced), and multiverses and sausage fingers and eyes and bagels and realising that the life we have right now is a life! Michelle Yeoh deserves all the prizes in the world, and for reppin’ Southeast Asians and making us so damn proud. The soundtrack by Son Lux is sublime. I was so thrilled to see them perform in Portugal over the summer. (I wish they had played the bagel song though, but I guess Stephanie Hsu would have had to be there. Maybe she was!)
I am, in general, a sucker for films that have characters that lose their parents because I too have been there, and am there. I’ve always found it cathartic to watch films/TV shows that convey moments of grief, or disbelief from a sudden loss. When death and absence loom, it’s challenging to navigate through the fog of what ifs and whys once a loved one departs this earth. Some films really nail it, and Aftersun is one of them.
Set in the 1990s (with flashes of present day), the film is about a single dad Calum (Paul Mescal) and his daughter Sophie (a truly fantastic Frankie Corio) in Turkey for a holiday, and it’s one of the last memories Sophie has of her dad before he presumably passes away shortly after. The last 5ish minutes feature a present-day Sophie shouting and screaming at Calum (who—because he died young—will be forever young) in a rave as she’s trying to understand why her father left her behind. This confrontation — which ends with a hug — is set against a haunting slower-tempo remix of Queen and David Bowie’s Under Pressure. It’s juxtaposed against a scene of a young Sophie dancing with Calum during the holiday (see below). It just left me in tears. Lots of them.
Earworm-wise, two songs were on repeat for most of the second half of this year: Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Spitting Off the Edge of the World, and Oliver Sim (of The xx)’s GMT.
Spitting Off the Edge of the World is a very empowering song. I mean, if Karen O opens the song with ‘Cowards, here’s the sun, so bow your heads’, you bow your head. But there’s one stanza that stood out for me in the hundreds of times I’ve listened to this over the last five months:
Mama, what have you done?
I trace your steps
In the darkness of one
Am I what’s left?
I know the song is not meant to be sad or depressing, but it got me thinking about my own recent acceptance of my mum’s early death, and reconciling that with the steady, unwavering passing of time. Am I what’s left? I guess I am, and I’ve truly appreciated all the music, shows, films and books that have helped me in tracing not just her steps, but my own.
Which leads me to Oliver Sim’s beautiful, gentle GMT. It is, indeed, Greenwich Mean Time and is Sim’s love letter to London—which was also a place I called home during my young adulthood. I first heard it when Jamie xx played a longer version of the song at a gig in Portugal over the summer (the same gig that Son Lux was at), and it was such a Come to Jesus moment for me when he played it at 1am. That beat, those choral feels and the lyrics — just perfect. It’s a gentle, calming sonic memory of London, the summer and overall year.
Notable mentions: Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility (a great time-travelling tale that I read in one sitting); The White Lotus (I finally caught on and basically binged two seasons in two weeks — can’t get that damn tune out of my head [Aloha!/Renaissance]); 1899 (a multi-language Titanic meets Lost meets Space Odyssey); and last but not least, one of my biggest finds this year is an artist from Los Angeles called NoSo. Their debut album, Stay Proud of Me, is a blissful indie listen from start to finish.
