charvey in Vietnam

Inspired by Talent

Last night I went with some friends to La Habana, a cool Cuban-themed bar in District 1. On weekends there's a live band playing rock 'n roll favorites.  Suddenly, the main singer's gravelly bass was replaced by a woman's smoky voice singing "You Give me Fever."  "Whoa, who's that?" I wondered. I looked over and it was Phuong Vy, of the girls in our group (pictured at right).  

I was riveted utterly by Phuong Vy's performance.  Not only did her voice vibrate with clarity and richness, but it was alive with trembling emotion.  Her pitch was perfect.  Her facial expressions and gestures radiated pure passion and joy like a brilliant searchlight piercing the darkness.  Rarely have I witnessed a live demonstration of such pure talent.  Later I found out she won the first season of "Vietnam Idol."  Wow.

Seeing Phuong Vy doing what she loves and doing it so beautifully lifted my heart.  It inspired me to be the best I can be at what I do.  Some of the truest joy comes from expression of great passion and excellence.

Food for Thought

I came to my blog today to write a new post and saw this quote:

"Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get." 
- Dale Carnegie

Kinda funny this appeared today, because it's very relevant to what I've been chewing over and over in my mind lately. 

An Interest in Life

Those of you who know me personally know that I am a fan of quotations.  Here's one that spoke to me recently.  It appeared in my "Daily Literary Quote" application on iGoogle.

"Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music -- the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people.  Forget yourself." 
- Henry Miller, American Novelist

Inspirational Story

I read this story today in the Wall Street Journal.   It moved and inspired me.   This man has an incredible passion for living and sharing.

Following a Stroke,
A Japanese Pianist
Reinvents Himself

Izumi Tateno Embraced
A One-Handed Repertoire;
Inspiration in Rehab

By YUKA HAYASHI
November 12, 2007; Page A1

TOKYO -- One evening in January 2002, 65-year-old Izumi Tateno was performing the last piece in his piano recital when his right hand began to wobble. The Japanese pianist, now 71, finished the Edvard Grieg piece with his left hand, and collapsed. He was having a stroke that paralyzed the right side of his body.

"In an instant, I lost all the music that I had accumulated inside me for over 60 years," he says.

See a performance by Izumi Tateno, who rebuilt his career as a one-handed piano player after a stroke that paralyzed the right side of his body.

Mr. Tateno still hasn't gained command of his right hand. But after a long, soul-searching journey, he is back on stage performing dozens of concerts a year. He plays music composed especially for the left hand, sitting on a custom-made bench that stretches across the length of the piano to give his left hand full sweep of the keyboard. He has appeared in several documentaries and has even played a duet with Empress Michiko.

"Many people have told me I should just take it easy," says the tall, soft-spoken Mr. Tateno. "But I am not interested in taking it easy. I don't even know how to. I want to perform as I have done in the past 50 years, so I can share my music with others."

Mr. Tateno's drive to rebuild his career after a late-life illness has resonated in Japan. In the rapidly aging nation, where 21% of the population is over 65, millions are eager to find ways to make their last decades of life meaningful. Thousands of seniors have applied to the Japan International Cooperation Agency, the local equivalent of the Peace Corps, in hopes of serving as volunteers in developing nations. Others are starting up new businesses or signing up to volunteer to help bedridden seniors and working mothers with young children.

TWO COMPOSERS

 

Alexander Scriabin's "Two pieces for Piano Left Hand Op. 9" were included in Mr. Tateno's 2004 album "Piano Works for the Left Hand." Listen: "Prelude" | "Nocturne"

Takashi Yoshimatsu, a Japanese composer, wrote a series called "Three Sacred Songs for Piano Left Hand" that included a variation on Jean Sibelius's "Finlandia Hymn." Mr. Tateno played it on his latest album, "Izumi Tateno Plays Takashi Yoshimatsu." Listen: "Finlandia Hymn"

Hideo Yasuhara, a 71-year-old retiree who had a stroke three years ago, attended one of Mr. Tateno's concerts in September and was inspired. Mr. Yasuhara, a former department-store worker, was already keeping busy taking computer and calligraphy courses at a community center near his house in western Japan. After the concert, he decided to step up his rehab for his left hand, signing up for an intensive, three-week session.

"Mr. Tateno made me think I could do so much more with my life," Mr. Yasuhara says.

Born in 1936 in Tokyo to a pianist mother and a cellist father, Mr. Tateno grew up in a home filled with music. He had his debut as a classical pianist in Tokyo and moved to Helsinki in 1964, lured by the literature and the "pure and slightly sad" atmosphere of Finland. He married Maria Holopainen, a Finnish singer, and they had two children.

Mr. Tateno lived in Finland but regularly performed in Japan, captivating Japanese fans with the romantic music of Grieg and Jean Sibelius. Over the years, he gave 3,000 concerts and made nearly 100 recordings. He had just celebrated his 40th anniversary as a professional pianist when he collapsed on stage in a town north of Helsinki.

During the first few months after his stroke, Mr. Tateno assumed he would be back performing in a matter of months. But once home, he grew frustrated with the lack of progress. He could move his fingers on his right hand, but it was impossible to hit the same key repeatedly.

Sympathetic friends suggested that he play the "Concerto for the Left Hand" by Maurice Ravel -- one of the few widely known piano pieces for the left hand. But the mere mention of Ravel upset him. He wanted to play with two hands. Playing that piece felt like an admission of defeat.

"I thought I would never play Ravel even if I were dead," Mr. Tateno wrote in a collection of essays called "The Sea of Sunflower" published in 2004. "I said, to hell with music for the left hand."

Mr. Tateno spent his time going to rehab sessions and trying different masseurs. In early 2003, Mr. Tateno's son, Janne, visited from Chicago where he was studying violin. Janne Tateno had found a few piano scores written for the left hand in a Chicago music store. But he didn't give them to his father right away, afraid that he might be offended. He left the scores on his father's piano.

Mr. Tateno didn't talk about the scores or attempt to play them while Janne was visiting. But one day, he picked up one called "Three Improvisations for the Left Hand," by British composer Frank Bridge, who had written the music for a friend who had lost his right arm during World War I. Mr. Tateno began to play and got so immersed, he says, that he forgot he was playing with just one hand.

"That's when I came to realize that music was music, whether you play it with one hand, or two hands or three," he says. "That realization changed me completely."

Izumi Tateno playing at a concert.

Actually, quite a few scores for the left hand existed. Many were composed for soldiers injured in wars. The largest collection was written for pianist Paul Wittgenstein, the son of a wealthy Austrian industrialist who lost his right arm during World War I. Mr. Wittgenstein, who later moved to the U.S., commissioned composers, including Ravel, to write music for the left hand. The Ravel piece has also been played by Leon Fleisher, an American pianist who temporarily lost the use of his right hand because of illness, and Gary Graffman, another American pianist performing with the left hand, who also plays several left-hand pieces commissioned for himself.

Still, many left-hand pieces were short and not fit for the concert hall. Mr. Tateno asked a few old friends to help. Among them was Takashi Yoshimatsu, a Japanese composer of contemporary music known for his romantic style. "When he first came to me, he had a lot of anxiety, not sure if he could go back to the stage with just one hand," says Mr. Yoshimatsu. Other composers, including music students, pitched in, creating a library of about 30 pieces.

In the fall of 2003, Mr. Tateno returned to performing with a series of small recitals in Japan. To give his left hand a rest and to make up for his short performance, he talked with the audience. At one event, a woman asked whether he was frustrated that he couldn't play most of the music he knew.

"How can I be dissatisfied when I can express myself fully through music?" Mr. Tateno replied.

Mr. Tateno recorded the first of several CDs of music for the left hand and, in Tokyo in the spring of 2005, he performed Ravel's "Concerto for the Left Hand," the piece he had shunned after his stroke.

During a performance last year, Mr. Tateno suddenly felt an urge to play a simple melody with his right hand. He tried it and it worked. Mr. Tateno saw his wife, Maria, sitting in the audience with tears in her eyes.

"When I play with the right hand, I get a gentle feeling similar to new leaves coming out in the spring," Mr. Tateno wrote in an introduction to his latest tour. "They are still delicate, but maybe in time, they will grow strong."

Write to Yuka Hayashi at yuka.hayashi@wsj.com

Great Quotes

Some of you many have noticed the "Quote of the Day" I put up a few months ago in the left column.  It's an automatic feed from some site I found.  Here are some particularly good ones:

"The harder I work, the luckier I get."
- Samuel Goldwyn

"You must do the things you think you cannot do."
- Eleanor Roosevelt

"If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right."
- Henry Ford

"Commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred." 
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

All Reality is Subjective

Last Friday I was waiting for some friends at an expat bar.  I struck up a conversation with a couple somewhat older, somewhat grizzled expats -- one from the US, one from Aussie.  Soon the conversation turned to the nature of the Vietnamese.  "Aww, they're arrogant" said one.  "They're impolite and rude" said another.  "I can't stand it when I hear people say how the Vietnamese are so polite and soft-spoken.  If only they knew the truth."  One of these guys spoke fluent Vietnamese, and told of how Vietnamese often make rude comments about him on the street because they think he cannot understand. 

I've heard similar sentiments from other long-time expats, although theirs is not a universal opinion.  You will find other long-time expats who have nothing but the nicest things to say about the Vietnamese -- warm, kind, generous, etc.  What accounts for the difference?

Thinking about this I had an epiphany -- all reality is subjective and dependent on the observer.  What you perceive around you, how you interpret events and interactions in your life, is completely subjective.  When you encounter one of the ubiquitous shoe-shine boys on the street, is it a positive or negative experience?  The encounter alone has no intrinsic positive or negative value -- it's how we interpret it and what we focus on that creates the experience.  I know expats who are always annoyed at the continual hawking by xe om drivers, gum-selling kids and shoe-shine boys.  Instead of being annoyed, I choose to look upon each of these as a positive encounter - I can practice some Vietnamese and maybe make a connection of some kind. 

I remember a high school physics textbook that explained how the wave property of light beams can interact with each other to produce a stronger beam or cancel out both beams entirely.  Our subjective reality interacts with the outer world in much the same way to create our sense of reality,the difference being that we can control the outcome.  In a very real sense, we actually CREATE our own reality.  That's why I have no patience when someone says "Let's be realistic" when talking about a goal or task.  What is realistic?  It's all in your mind.  Saying "it's not realistic" too often is the mark of a thinker without vision.

Sure, there are negative aspects to living in Vietnam.  Sure, sometimes they do bother me.  But I live in a reality populated by Hung the parking lot kid, who told me to keep my money today and gave me my spot for free, or the enthusiastic "Chao anh Lam!!" I get every morning when I get my coffee at the shop downstaire.  It's a bright and charming place filled with interesting people, not a dour and bitter one.

To be fair, I haven't experienced many negative events since I've been here.  Maybe I've been lucky.  And I've only been here six months.  Perhaps after a few years I'll have the same attitude the grizzled expats do.  Perhaps, but I doubt it.

Thoughts from other Vietnam expats?

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

I want to share with My Public a speech that Steve Jobs made at the Stanford University commencement ceremony in June, 2005.  It contains more wisdom per word than anything I've ever read.  Its eloquence and power helped to inspire me to make a bold move to Vietnam and "stay foolish" in my own way.  I haven't looked back.

You are more free than you believe.

- charvey

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

 When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation.  It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.    

Identity, Nationality & Ethnicity

As my fellow Americans know, the United States is a nation of immigrants. People have come from the four corners of the Earth to the USA. They’re still coming. It’s an important part of our national identity, and we’re proud of it.

My own ancestors came to the USA from a good chunk of Europe – England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Poland and Germany.  But I do not – emotionally or otherwise – identify with any of those countries. I am American.

America’s history and status as an immigrant nation means that being American has more to do with subscribing to a set of beliefs – freedom, democracy, the ideas contained in the Constitution – than belonging to a certain ethnicity. I call this “ideological nationality.” In my view, America’s ideological nationality makes the United States unique among nearly all nations of the world (exceptions might be Australia and New Zealand, themselves immigrant nations, but the USA is by far the largest and most diverse).  [Above right: A picture I took of new Americans of Central American origin on the National Mall in Washington, DC on April 11, 2006.  I love this picture because it captures clearly their pride and dignity.  Viva Estados Unidos!]

American ideas about ideological nationality contrast starkly with most other countries in the world. In many other countries, nationality and identity are utterly rooted in ethnicity. I call this “ethnic nationality.” This is natural and logical given that, historically, regional ethnic tribes gave rise to nations.

The ethnic nationality model predominates in Vietnam. My conversations with Vietnamese on the topic suggest that their concept of “being Vietnamese” means belonging to a certain ethnic group in addition to its history and culture. For example, they do not consider ethnic minorities here to be “really Vietnamese.” I was quite surprised to learn that it is standard practice for Vietnamese to list their ethnicity on their resumes. About 86% of the Vietnamese population are Kieu, the translation of which is “ethnic Vietnamese.” [charvey note: The proper word actually is "Kinh," not "Kieu."  Thanks to D for pointing out the error.]

Both models of nationality are valid and understandable. The challenge arises when worlds collide, and people on both sides try to interpret the nationality/identity of one individual who belongs to two different groups. Many Vietnamese I’ve met simply do not comprehend the “ideological nationality” concept and instead apply the "ethnic nationality" model to the USA. To them, a “real American” is of European descent, simple as that. I’ve had Vietnamese tell me as much quite bluntly. This statement offends my American sensibilities mightily – an American is an American regardless of origin. It’s our national creed. [charvey note: I speak for myself here. I am not making claims about what all other Americans think, although I do believe a majority of Americans are far closer to the “ideological nationality” concept than the “ethnic nationality” one.]

To be honest, I had a similar blind spot. To me, once someone is an American citizen and carries a blue passport they are American and all nationalities should recognize them as such.  But the Vietnamese don’t see it that way. Looking through their ethnic lens, just as a white person could *never* be considered Vietnamese, a Vietnamese-American is not considered entirely American. They might still “lay claim” to him or her, so to speak, as “Vietnamese.” At the same time, they don’t seem to consider a Vietnamese-American “entirely Vietnamese.” It’s strange. I’m still struggling to understand all the moving parts.

Ethnicity, identity and nationality are emotionally charged topics. I certainly do not consider myself an authority on the subject of Vietnamese nationality (although I do lay claim to that title on the ideals of American nationality). That doesn't keep me from expressing my evolving impressions and views, however.  To those who may consider this post offensive or insensitive – please bear in mind that I wanted to begin a conversation about ethnicity and identity. I welcome thoughtful and insightful responses from all corners.

Double your failure rate

I recently added a "Quote of the Day" module in the left column. 

Yesterday's quote was from Thomas Watson, the founder of IBM.  It was "If you want to increase your success, double your failure rate."

Think about that for a minute.  You gotta swing and miss a lot if you want to hit home runs.