A WRITER'S REFLECTION ON WORDS - Malia Mendez
With movie ticket prices rising far above my budget and Costco movie passes becoming harder to come by, I don’t find myself in theaters often. However, whenever any film borders on emotional, every sense I have of myself and the universal framework becomes heightened with the darkness of the room, the intensity of the sound, and the gravity of the music designed to fade to the background but inevitably taking center stage. It is as though the movie theater is engineered to fuel emotion.
And as I sat in the theater with my parents this past summer watching Yesterday for the first time, it was doing an impeccable job.
*minor spoiler warning*
Nearing the end of the film, the main character Jack ventures to John Lennon’s house within the universe in which the Beatles never existed and John lives to be 78. It is a quaint place by the British seaside, seemingly removed from the chaos of the alternate timeline, and John is positively average.
Jack prods John for some sort of profound wisdom, wondering what he possibly could have done if not music. Within seconds, John says the most powerfully simple thing about living in truth and giving love a fair chance, and Jack is struck with agency to tie back together the most crucial but misplaced pieces of his life. He asks John for a hug, and although the man is confused more than anything else, he obliges.
Critics have ripped this scene to shreds, Ringo Starr surprisingly approved, and some are plain lost—I, however, sat in my plush seat trying to avoid the uncontrollable sobbing that leaves those around you confused and helpless against your insanity. In my 18-year-old timeline, this very universe, the Beatles are a generational memory. I have streamed recordings and stories told through others’ reminiscence, but the Beatles absolutely do not belong to me (though I was once the youngest person at a Beatles tribute concert by a margin of about 30 years in 2015).
I’ve never truly been a part of this British rock band’s story, but as I sat in a cold theater watching an actor hug a pretend-John-Lennon, I was overcome with the realization that I would give the world to take his place. Beatles music has touched my life in these seemingly minute ways—“Here Comes the Sun” my parents’ wedding song, “Hey Jude” the only song my brother and I could agree to sing in my dad’s car for months, and “Good Day Sunshine” the first song in the queue to get people dancing in my friend’s freshman fall dorm room. Four people genuinely shifted our entire universe, and it seems as though ripples of that shift will echo in my grandchildren’s ears too.
It is undoubtedly naive to say that music and writing are the same shape and operate under the same blueprint, but I have no choice but to confront the commonalities. Words have a potency that surpasses the writer’s capacity to control them, and more often than we think, the scribbles on this scrap page become a safe haven for someone you don’t even know. Marilynne Robinson has no clue that her book sits coated in highlighter atop my bookcase, and Amy Hempel will never see the copy of her short story I have in a notes file, but these writers have quite literally altered my life in irreversible ways.
Although we as a society tend to rave about the same books and the same authors because humans tend to echo each other in the hopes of feeling like a part of something, there will always be a sentence that grounds one person more than anyone else in the world. There will always be a specific phrase that tattoos itself on the brain incessantly until the person who holds it makes the choice that it is directing them to make. There will always be magic in the fact that you have no idea what this thing you write is going to be to someone, and that is worth writing for.
Pick up the napkin the second you encounter a poem; open the computer the moment you reach the beginning of a thought; record the thought process you are convinced is aimless. There are too many timelines waiting for your words to let apprehension get in their way.
Malia is a talented writer and a creator for Asio Creative. You can follow Malia on Instagram @maliajmendez.
