Snow White, finding magic...

A year ago I was sitting in a cab on my way to JFK when the driver exclaimed “oh, it’s a global pandemic now!” March 11, 2020. I just turned a quarter century the day prior, and was in NYC for auditions. The world was strange, and only to get stranger.

We’re three months into this new year now, and while there has been fulfilling creative work and meaningful virtual connections with friends and family and art, I have to admit the past few days have been a particularly difficult slump. The usual birthday blues of melancholia and nostalgia mixed with exhaustion and circumstances of Covid to make for a peculiar, bleak, bland, bitter stew of feelings and non-feelings.

A particularly unmagical day. I didn’t even want to eat cake.

But, (yep - there’s always a ‘but’, thanks to my pink, yellow, hopeless-romantic goggles), somehow, by some miraculous blessed way, little gestures and gifts still found their way to warm my heart. Particularly a few messages from people profoundly dear to me that reminded me of the magic. The mysterious sparks of the universe. The words that encouraged me, or the Gifs that made me laugh, or the dialogues that allowed us to wallow a little in our grievances and bond over something both heavy and empty in our hearts.

I am so very very lucky, I can recharge my magic because of all the magic around this shared space of ours, all these incredible human beings and also birds and trees and spirits and imagination and of course - music, music, music. All the sounds, all the colors and smells and textures and art, all the ideas and strangeness and familiarity and overwhelming surges of emotions and connection with something larger that brings us to tears.

Not everyday we feel things, but it’s okay.

I still believe in magic and I love fairy tales.

How do we play music when we feel depressed and empty? Not sure. Sometimes the music reminds something within us, I hope. I hope something sparkles. I hope we notice the sparkles. Here are some glittering Disney tunes and derpy dwarfs.

Yours,

Asian Tinkerbell