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Showing posts from December, 2025

The Art of Disappointment

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Before I start this blog, let me tell you a story. Back in the good old days of 21', my family and I decided to visit The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Of course, I was excited at the time to see the various works of arts from many different artists. When I walked into the museum however, ALL my dreams of watching majestic art completely shriveled away. Instead of seeing majestic pieces, I saw complete paint splatters to just empty canvases. From the absolute dumpster fire in front of my oculars, I only had one lingering thought in my head: "What on God's green earth am I looking at right now??" Sure, some modern art is cool, but you can imagine the disappointment I felt when I thought I would be looking at magnificent landscape paintings, but ended up looking at complete crap. At one of the exhibits, there was LITERALLY just a red square. What could that even possibly mean???? I know art is subjective and all, but I feel like there is a fine line between art hold...

The Best We Could Do and the best I could draw

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This is how I felt that night (muscles are accurate btw)    It was 2 am, which meant that I had reached the stage of night where everything starts to become either funny or like a hallucination to me. For some reason however, I didn't feel high - I was feeling philosophical. As I read through the required chapter of The Best We Could Do, I felt like an absolute genius, analzying every word and every stroke of paint on the pages. And then, out of nowhere, a bright, metaphorical lightbulb appeared over my head.  Thats when it hit me: the title,  The Best We Could Do,  brings a comletely different meaning and perspective when viewed through an artistic lens. Bui's entire memoir is essentially an act of doing her best: utilizing art, empathy, and research to connect with her audience at a deeper level. In fact, she even admits to this in the preface, acknowledging that she didn't feel like she had "solved the storytelling problem of how to present history in a ...