And the beat goes...

Something about the combination of chillier fall weather and my recent love of throwback muzak is making me nostalgic these days. I had a long conversation with a random bodyguard at an event I was covering today, and he was telling me about all the artists he used to work for. We started chatting about who we thought were arguably today's biggest music moguls, and we came to the consensus that Mariah Carey still tops the charts both Stateside and internationally. Britney Spears has garnered some pretty hefty points in that department, but whether or not she has the same staying power is yet to be seen.

So I started thinking about just what it is about Mariah that's made her such a staple in our cultural consciousness. Voice? Well, eight octaves can't be a walk in the park. Image? She's gone through her low points (Glitter, anyone?) but has somehow always managed to rise above it all. So I think, glamor and tabloid fodder aside, it's simply hard work - but making it all look effortless in the process.

I mean, the reason why today's flash-in-the-pan celebs seem to just rotate in and out of the spotlight is because they're all capitalizing on their looks, their connections or their antics. But how much of it is based on simple hard work? The way the entertainment sphere works, with so many people constantly buzzing around you, helping you with your schedule, your makeup, your hair, your car door - how easy is it to become dependent on all of that, and to let your work ethic slide?

Random thoughts, I know, but I was thinking about this in these terms: Mariah's at the top of her game at 40, having just launched a new fragrance line and released a new album that critics praise as a throwback to the "old Mariah." She could have easily dropped out of the upper circles of celebrity after Glitter, or her meltdown, or a million other things. And yet she's managed to pick herself back up and recreate the kind of career she always knew she wanted to have - by no less than knowing what she wanted and going for it.

Strange to think that you can draw life lessons from someone as glam and notoriously diva-esque as Mariah, but I think there's something to be said for her concern over every meticulous detail of her career. She might have a million people handling her, but she knows what's going on. She knows how to see the big picture and work hard for what she's got.

Hmm. HANYway. End random thoughts.

Lessons from New Haven

If there's one thing to be said about journalism and New York and settling into your 20s, it's that every day is a test of your comfort zone. Be it venturing into a different part of town or approaching new faces, your role as a West Coast transplant in an East Coast environment consists of always toe-ing the line between the familiar and the unfamiliar, pushing boundaries all the while. This is the time and the place to learn by trial and error, after all.

This I figured out quickly in New Haven.

When I left the city to report this past weekend (already a week ago!), I knew that I would have to bring my A-game. Working on my own (save for the two other reporters who were equally busy on their own wild goose chases) meant channeling any and all of my past experiences as a student journalist and, well, as a human being, into trying to interview reluctant sources.

I thought that 22 years of life would bring with them a certain amount of intuition, but after spending three and a half days trying to get hesitant students to speak with me, I realized that intuition or not, I'm still in an industry wherein my livelihood depends upon the whims of others.

My livelihood. Depends. Upon the whims. Of others.

Whether or not I get a story doesn't come down to an algorithm or a certain number of hours put into a given project. Whether or not I'm able to deliver a final, quality product to my editor depends upon how good I am at convincing sources that what they know is worthy of public knowledge.

I have to not only get other people to talk, I have to know just how to speak myself.

And it's a dangerous balance to find, isn't it? Journalists have that reputation of backstabbing and manipulating for the sake of a juicy story, and it's one that, though an exaggeration, is definitely based on a certain amount of truth.

With an editor at your back urging you to file your latest findings, it's often hard to admit that you've turned up nothing. That you've spent days gently talking to sources and trying to cultivate a relationship so that they will trust you enough to talk - all for naught. When push comes to shove, I can see now how easy it is to just grasp at a few small leads and blow them out of proportion, sensationalize what little bit of news there is to be had.

Reporting in New Haven last weekend was a learning experience. The frustration I felt in trying to convince sources to speak to me, knocking on doors and making phone calls, visiting organizations and juggling emails, was nothing compared to the fear and uneasiness felt by an entire community following the brutal on-campus murder. In speaking with members of the neighboring areas, I became absorbed in their concerns, their wary attitudes, their adamant stance against imposing journalists.

I was hooked.

I trolled news sites and watched the news from my hotel room into the late hours of the night, trying to find some way to understand the crime, the people, the story that was unraveling nervously for the public to see.

And what I found in all my research, and through days of speaking with community members, was that autonomy and respect are the two things that every person demands. Deprive people of either and they don't want to open up.

I never used to be good at talking to people, and I still work on it constantly. I grew up ultra quiet, always fading into backgrounds and opting to observe rather than partake. That phrase, "think before you speak"? I think I just never progressed from one stage to the next.

So I can understand the comfort it must be to stay silent. Many of the people I spoke with didn't want to go into details because they were afraid they might be wrong. Others thought it best to steer clear of the story altogether. They were all still processing the horrific events in their head, and to have the media show up and try to pry open their mouths to speak was - abrasive, to say the least.

When I fell into journalism during freshman year of college, I was pushed quite rudely out of my comfort zone. One part of the trade is listening and watching. The other part, the part I needed so badly to learn, was to speak, to initiate, to project. And goodness knows that once I started, I just couldn't stop - now I can rattle on for hours, and sometimes I talk to strangers just to test myself (not heeding those childhood warnings, I suppose), to see if I can still talk to and relate to people at random.

A part of me went into New Haven a little too confident that I would be able to speak to the people that no one else could get to, because I assumed that I had honed speaking to strangers to a tee.

What I hadn't counted on was that training and intuition aside, what I didn't have was experience - crucial on all counts. While nothing previous could have fully prepared me for the tiring nature of the 24-hour reporting, a few more life experiences definitely would have shown me just where I could push and where I should back off.

This is the stuff they just can't teach you in the classroom, and the reason I can't wait to keep learning. Each time I expand my comfort zone it means I have to push that much harder to break free of it.

This is going on my wall, as it should yours.

Why wouldn't you want to watch this?

When it rains...

I'm gonna remember today and hold onto this feeling for a while. (:

Twitter this, twitter that

So things have obviously been a-buzz in the office as of late, what with film festivals and fashion week and awards shows to cover. Oh, awards shows. If there's one thing to be learned from the entire Kanye debacle (okay, so there's many things to be learned from the incident, but this one tops them somehow), it's that people are really starting to recognize the power of Twitter - and the dangers of it too.

It's a pretty interesting concept, being able to read all the reactions as they unfolded, both those of the celebrities in the audience and those of the people watching the show from back home. There's less of a filter that way, and as a result, I think people make themselves equal parts accessible and vulnerable.

Katy Perry saying that what Kanye did was the equivalent of "stepping on kittens" was pretty dang funny; reporters prematurely tweeting that the President called him a jackass, though, made me wonder about how careless Twittering might blur lines that are already poorly drawn.

Twittering, for what it's worth, humanizes people. When Joe the Plumber is Tweeting about his latest sandwich invention, Joe Zee of Elle could be Twittering his own thoughts on the latest Derek Lam collection at the same time. And people would actually want to read both. So I guess it's a good thing, being able to directly "talk to" your favorite musicians, actors, comedians. But once it gets to be politicians and bigger public figures who have a distinct public persona to keep up? Then it gets tricky.

Long story short, I never used to understand the point of Twitter. But now, I'm intrigued.

Maybe

This sounded so amazing live in the office today that I thought I would hunt it down. And I kind of love the music vid. (:

Movin' on up.

My cousin's a proud papa, as of last night.

...and the generations continue to shift and shuffle. (:

September 11th

Eight years already?

Musical chairs

Sometimes I feel like I'm playing musical chairs with my life. I made a comment to a friend the other day that my life is just one continuous stream of side notes. There's a continuous trek toward a somewhere and a something, but the vast majority of my experiences thus far have been detours, and part of me wonders when and if I'll be on a clear path anytime soon.

I mean, I'm fine either way if I will or if I won't, but some days I just wish I knew. Because it would be a lot more convenient that way.

I say musical chairs because at present, I'm balancing a few things simultaneously, and my efforts and attention seem to move pretty consistently through each project, though they can never cover all bases simultaneously. I'm still working at People (thank goodness), but am job-hunting and freelancing on the side, as well as editing for an online publication and studying for the GRE. I'm working on starting a magazine (which is a stop-and-go process), and trying to compile all my clips into a comprehensive personal site and business card.

Needless to say, days are long but weeks are fast.

It's like this immense, weighty guessing game. Round and round and round I go, where I'll stop, nobody knows. I'm trying to prepare for every possible situation at once and have a foot semi-firmly planted in different options should the opportunities arise, but it's pretty dang tiring.

Graduate school? I'd love to get a masters in education somewhere down the line, but don't know that I'm in the right mindset for that just now. The GRE is a preparation for it, though.

Working at People? It would be SUCH a fantastic opportunity, and I love working there so much, but I know that the way the economy and the industry is, I can't put all my eggs in one basket.

Freelancing? It's a tough lifestyle, and something I always saw as more of a supplement than a full-time investment. I've got ideas, but it's a hard sell getting publications to want and need them at just the right time.

Applying to other publications? Honing my skills at my present job means I focus all my attention on that, and am usually too tired to think about applications or interviews otherwise. It's a necessary thing, though, and so I'm working on it.

Creating a magazine? This is the ultimate dream, but because there aren't instant results, it's obviously slower to take flight. When there are so many other things that seem to take precedence over this "personal project," it's easy to lose site of the ultimate goal, which would be really creating something with all my heart.

There are so many paths to take, so many chairs to edge around. Because when the music stops, I want to be sure to get a seat - which one is irrelevant.

This might sound strange, but in this case, I just don't want to be left the last one standing.

Thought of the day.

Getting what you want isn't the hard part.

Knowing what you want is.

...maybe I've been watching too much Everwood, ya know what I mean?

Family & familiarity

This might sound really trite and dumb of me, but I hadn't realized how much I had underestimated the value of family until this past weekend. I spent the better part of yesterday out on Staten Island, visiting the extended family - people I haven't seen in nearly 10 years, all of whom still remember me in pigtails or jumpers or both.

My aunt and uncle (Aunt Jane and Uncle Paul, my closest relatives back in LA) flew out to New York for a weekend of reunions and meals and reminiscing. They're both just past 70, but are as active and social as ever (this is a common thread in my family, the longevity and the activeness). They've never had children and therefore take on any kids - that is to say, anyone in a generation past theirs - as their own.

My cousins and I all have fond memories of spending summers and weekends at their house, watching cartoons (theirs was the first house to get cable, and later, the first to have AOL back in the dial-up days), eating lots of candy and essentially having free reign over our days. They were the aunt and uncle who would say "yes" to extended bedtimes and "no" to homework, and we loved them for it.

What we didn't realize was that, along the way, they were building the kind of trust and bond between their generation and ours that would prove essential as we all began to grow up.

I got a phone call from my uncle on Thursday when he and my aunt landed in the City, and he insisted that I make the trek out to Staten Island with them yesterday, that it was important that I reacquaint myself with that side of the family. They all want to see you, he said. You've grown up a lot since they last saw you.

So I went. My aunt (recovering from some pretty intense physical therapy post-surgery), my uncle (exclaiming every two seconds about how much New York has changed), my cousin (just about to start his senior year at NYU) and I boarded a ferry in the early afternoon. Destination: memory lane, Staten Island.

A ferry and train ride later, we were in the heart of Staten Island, surrounded by trees and homes with dusty white picket fences and cars that hummed down small tarred roads. The aunt and uncle we were visiting were actually old college friends of Aunt Jane and Uncle Paul, a wonderful couple that might as well have been family, if not by blood.

I hadn't seen either of them in ages, and sure enough, they made comments about how tall I've gotten, how much I've changed, how glad they were that I've decided to move out to the east coast (But don't tell your mother I said that). It was eye-opening to see the age in their eyes, the wrinkles that crept up around their smiles, the grey that shone in their hair at certain angles.

Clearly, we had all changed.

It wasn't until their daughters, Susan and Linda (my adopted cousins of sorts), joined us, that I really felt the weight of the change. I finally met Susan's 5-year-old son Michael, autistic and so charismatic (half-Chinese and half-Irish is a beautiful mix, his dad Kevin pointed out), and Linda's fiancé Chris (she had had a different boyfriend last time we met).

Knowing that these cousins had built a life for themselves in the interim between now and when I had last visited was an unexpected shock. Usually, visiting relatives means seeing physical signs of aging, but not complete lifestyle restructuring.

From their perspective, they couldn't believe that I had already shorn my pigtails and glasses, let alone graduated from college. It boggled their minds that I was old enough to drink, when the last time they had seen me I was still disgusted by the bitter taste of coffee.

We all went out to dinner, and I just couldn't wrap my mind around the generational shift that had taken place. Michael was calling me Auntie. Aunt Jane and Uncle Paul were now Grandma Jane and Grandpa Paul. My cousins, one nearing 30 and the other nearing 40, weren't the young, flighty girls I had remembered them to be. They had something solid, something established. They were creating their own sense of home and family.

But though the change was startling, it wasn't scary. Because honestly, seeing all the interactions at the dinner table - Linda dumping grape leaves on Susan's plate, Kevin talking football with Chris, a long-lost uncle catching up with Aunt Jane - made me see just how important those initial bonds still were.

In the middle of all the craziness of moving to New York and trying to find a foothold in the journalism industry, I had forgotten what it felt like just to spend an afternoon with family. And just...be.

I've always contended that if you have your family and your health, then nothing else really matters. Things fall into place, problems work themselves out, and the world keeps turning. This weekend confirmed that. At the end of the day, what I decide to do in the coming years and where I ultimately end up will be more than fine no matter what. I've been blessed with a loving family (and an intricate network of extended family), and that support is immeasurable.

Having that knowledge is invigorating, inspiring. From a solid base like that you can really go anywhere. Like I'd been taught by the great Sumi back at USC, roots before branches.

Roots before branches.

Missing?

I don't tend to miss things or people much, but this is an exception. And I don't know quite what to think of it.