READ NOTE
I’ve been asked to write my memoirs, and I’ve always said no. No time. But really, no courage. What I do have are recurring flashbacks to moments that feel like emotional milestones. An image, a word, a color, something as trivial as inhaling the steam from a bowl of rice. Memoiries is my attempt to capture those moments, not as memoir, but as song.
These songs trace two journeys: one across oceans, away from a Singapore childhood and centuries of tradition; the other a quieter interior passage from a girl shaped by obedience and silence into a woman still finding her voice, still in the process of becoming.
Mezzo-soprano María Dominique López gives voice to all of it, with animations by my students at Lesley Art + Design and music by Jorge Sosa.
It is my hope that these songs will touch memories in you too.
"An Inauspicious Birth"
Description
“OMG, she looks like a Pekingese!” So she cultivated her mind, and learned to inhabit a rich, inner world.
Credits
Animation
Mackenzie Reynolds
Backgrounds
Bethany Slivka
"The Great Escape"
Description
Three years old and furious, she took her little sister by the hand and marched off in their click-clack clogs. They were caught of course. She lay rigid in her crib, already plotting. . .
Credits
Animation/Cleanup/ Backgrounds
Emily Vergne-Berolo
Jennifer Hanley
Angharad Paul
Rachel Mckelvey
Cleanup Support
Ben Yentz
"Breakfast Bite"
Description
At sixteen, primly presented to a potential suitor over pineapple tarts, she leans in and tells him – she will have him for breakfast! She means it.
Credits
Animators
William Hannah
Sofie Guide
Sharon Rodriguez
Emily Vergne
"Jewels Sewn Into My Panties"
Description
When Charles asks when it will finally be his time, she walks away from twenty years of career and independence. He promised to never let anything bad happen to her. He never did.
Credits
Animators
Jennifer Figueroa Goncalves
Jon Fitzgerald
Kelsey Bellavance
Emily Vergne-Berolo
"Red Stripes"
Description
She wore her cane marks proudly, proof she was unbroken. Hatred of her mother evolved into something more complicated, as she began to understand generational abuse.
Credits
Lead Animator, Storyboarder & Concept Artist
Abbie Ashegh
Animator and Storyboard Artist
Lidi Vidal
"Kintsugi"
Description
The Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold, a profound metaphor for embracing one’s own cracks and imperfections.
Credits
Animator
Marco Cao