Passion Towards Art
Q: Do you think the music that you write is influenced at all by the Vietnam war or the experiences your parents faced? How about your art?
In high school, in my art class, we had to do a theme. And at that time, I was really experiencing the weight of my parents’ immigration. I was applying to college and that has to do a lot with money. And I felt all the weight of generations behind me. And I felt like I was responsible for all of them. How do I make their journey worth it, all of the pain and struggle? It was really heavy on me. I got a horrible SAT score and I was crying. “That’s it! I’m not going to end the cycle of poverty, I can’t do anything,” and because I was feeling that weight, and at the time our family moved 5 times within 3 years because our money situation was so difficult.
That struggle comes from the lack of opportunity. So I did a lot of pieces about freedom and my mom being a manicurist, how that’s a huge thing in the Vietnamese community, and my dad being a construction worker. That’s where they fall into. And I did a piece with my mom in it. Where there’s a piece of tape over her mouth and there’s the Vietnamese communist flag. On the other side, there’s the American flag and she’s free and there’s chains on the other side.
It’s just like really crazy, as I got older I began to understand it a lot more, when I was a kid I didn’t. I really wanted to understand after my art and I did a piece on my grandfather too. Honoring him as a veteran. He was going through all the war and now he’s here. He’s just living his life which is crazy. How do you get back to your normal state in your life? I think that’s why I do art and music, it’s to understand the human experience. Even though we are different there is this want to understand yourself and how that relates to other people and understanding other people. Q: What does your parents think about your career choice?
My dad, it’s a struggle, it’s truly a struggle for my dad because he thinks that I’m “playing around,” he thinks I’m misbehaving. Even though I am at the best school out of my gigantic family. My dad thinks that I’m almost wasting my education. As much as it hurts, I really have to put it into perspective. It’s really hard for Vietnamese parents to express their support because they grew up in such a different time. There’s just a huge generation gap. I don’t live with my dad, so it’s harder for him to understand my lifestyle but he’s slowly getting around to it. I tell him, “This is what god wants from me and he is really proud of me and I hope you are too,” and he actually bought me a PA. Even though he’s never seen one show, ever heard of one song that I’ve ever written. That was his weird way of saying, “I don’t really support you but I’m going to do what I can do best as a dad.”
My mom came around because I came home with a lot of money. I played for tips, came home and dumped it all, counting my money. And she was like “Wow, you can do that?” I’m like, “wow, thanks mom” she started driving me to my shows. She started seeing that people were coming. One time they filled up the whole venue and all these things were happening. She got to witness my life, experience my life. One time she shadowed my whole day. She got so exhausted, she’s like, “I don’t know how you do this.” She really appreciated my hard work. I just think it’s amazing that someone who grew up in such a different context could understand where I’m coming from. She supports it although it gives her absolute anxiety because she’s a mom. No one’s excused from that anxiety who cares about it, because I’m anxious about it.
Q: Why do you feel inspired to express this specific type of art? I write a lot about really following the impossible. To my parents that was freedom. To me it’s being able to do what I love, even though Me being Vietnamese American, that’s very difficult. I write a lot about that and even financial struggle. Where you begin does not define where you end.