An Unexpected Side Effect of Social Distancing
How an urge to listen to old Boyz II Men songs would pave the way to an obsession I didn’t know I had or was capable of.
When social distancing started, it wasn’t a complete disruption to my lifestyle. I am a total homebody. I live on my own. And as long as I had the essentials— Internet, food, the ability to keep in touch with my friends— I’d be okay. I was also deep in the process of writing a play for this year’s Fringe, so it wasn’t all sitting on my ass and stuffing my face as I burned my retinas clocking in a new personal best in screen time. I had something productive to focus on too! It would be, for the most part, “business as usual” for me.
This is not the tale of a woman slowly going stir-crazy. That would be too obvious. And even I had enough self-awareness to know that that could happen.
What happened was something, in hindsight (Shoutout to the Universe and her wicked sense of humour hashtag 20/20 in 2020) makes perfect sense, but completely unexpected, especially in the range and depth of F E E L I N G S .
It went a little something like this:
- Groove to #dnicehomeschool Presents Quest Lovers Rock: Sloppy Seconds while working on the play (So innocent and innocuous.)
- Get inspired to create own sweet 90s slow jams playlist (i.e., Got stuck in my writing so let’s distract ourselves before spiralling into yet another episode of crippling self-doubt. #justpartoftheprocess)
- Get recommended by Spotify’s algorithm to add A Love Before Time by CoCo Lee(!?), from when she tried to cross over to the U.S. market (Didn’t like that particular song, but she had such a great voice, guys! Truly!)
- Laugh at how I at one point in my life listened to Cantopop back in high school (Grade 10. For like six months.)
- Search Spotify to see if any of those songs are available (Holy shit, they are!)
- Get the urge to look up Cantopop stars from my early childhood and key in “Leslie Cheung” (Ha ha ha, this will be a hoot!)
- Fail to recognize any of the songs by name so decide to just play the ones that are popular to see if I recognize them (I can read some Chinese, but that did not help.)
- Get excited and giddy from the familiarity of the melodies (OMG THIS SONG! I KNOW THIS SONG. AND THIS ONE. AND THIS ONE. THIS IS AMAZING.)
- Start remembering the movies Leslie Cheung was in. Like A Better Tomorrow, with Chow Yun-fat, who was in all those John Woo movies, and God of Gamblers, which, oh man, Stephen Chow, and all those other movies my dad loves and and and…
- Start crying.
- Then laughing.
- Alternate between crying and laughing and wondering what is happening for the next 75 minutes.
- Realize that I am craving connection and community so my brain’s like, “Let’s go back to a time when we did have those wonderful things, wheeeee!”
- Spend the next 10 hours diving deep into the wikis and discographies of singers from the Golden Age of Cantopop and emerging with a four-hour playlist that no one will care about.
- Watch A Better Tomorrow.
- Get my mind blown by just how much I remember from this movie that came out when I was five, and how much I am LOVING it.
- Get so obsessed that I START MAKING GIFs.
- Decide that I want to revisit all the movies from Hong Kong Cinema, starting with the ones from my formative years all the way to modern day hits… maybe?! Who knows. Basically wherever this newfound obsesssion takes me! And documenting it online because I MADE GIFs AND THEY MUST BE USED.
CUT TO: Me, here, kicking it all off with this post.
