I just want to be...wonderful (M.Monroe)

I just want to be...wonderful" (Marilyn Monroe)

WRITTEN 3 YEARS AGO, NOVEMBER 2016 AFTER THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION:

In the aftermath of the nation's "presidential crisis" type of election, I decided to google Huong Xua by Cung Tien...I found...myself listed as singing in the soprano range, and guess what...I found a new listener's comment, posted about 3 months ago. Calling him/herself Robeert Youngson (spelled with two e's in Robeert), the listener called me a "wonderful singer" and thanked me for bringing back his/her golden days, with the song. Surely the listener has to be Vietnamese to have his/her golden days tied to this piece of music.

There was a time when I, not yet 30 years old, left my mother and moved from Texas to Washington D.C. to work for the law firm of Wilmer Cutler, known in the legal community as "the lawyer's lawyer" -- a firm that has housed several presidential advisors: to Carter, Reagan, Bush (senior), Bush (junior), Clinton, and perhaps even to Obama (meaning now!). There, at Wilmer, I met the top of my profession. I then moved over to the SEC, an elite federal agency and the cops of Wall Street, credited for bringing about the downfall of very rich and powerful men like Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken. Before I resigned from my federal employment to return to Texas to be with Mom, I competed for the White House Fellowship competition and wrote an essay telling the perspective of a refugee girl looking at the White House from afar, having survived the end of the Vietnam War. With this essay, I was named regional finalist representing the Southwestern States (encompassing Texas). I ended up withdrawing from the competition, and accepted a municipal judgeship appointment in my "hometown" Houston. The White House Fellowship can wait, i reasoned. Well, I never reapplied.

While I was teaching law in Denver, I received emails from fellow Vietnamese telling me that i have under-performed their expectations...Why not the footsteps of Hillary, Condee, Justice O'Connor??? They complained. They expected this Viet girl who loved to sing and dance, who was first at this, first at that, to do better: she was to reach higher and go further, during a time when none of us had yet emerged as first this, first that, in all the "first places" in America -- the time when many of us were still crying SOS at sea, crowding Southeast Asian camps in despair, or barely sleeping a few hours after working convenient stores in low-income neighborhoods, or camping out in the Gulf of Mexico on shrimp boats (once burned by the KKK in the Seabrook tragedy that made headline news across America...Louis Mall also made a movie about the event).

Today, children of those Viet convenient store workers and shrimpers have gone to places where Trump went (Wharton University of Pennsylvania) and where the Clintons went (Yale Law School). The Ivy Leagues have Viet alums, not to mention other places, from Hollywood bylines to lists of political appointees. We can't run for president, but our children and grandchildren born here can, as they mature and learn from today's experience...

In 1920, American women earned the right to vote. Today, the country is yet to have a female president.

Tonight, listening to...my imperfect self singing Huong Xua in my pianist's living room (one can hear me turn the music sheets), I look back poignantly at my younger days and my time in Washington D.C.. I relive my naivete.

I realize now that the Viet girl who sang Huong Xua was the girl who did not want to follow footsteps of the ladies who seek the high (and visible) places in public service. In fact, once I did find an Attorney General's opinion in Texas, which stated that a female judge could not publicly sing opera while in office (what the heck!!!).

I would feel very sad if this election result was the punishment placed on Hillary Clinton because of her ambitions.

Well, thank you, Robeert Youngson, lover of Cung Tien's Huong Xua. Thanks for giving me the precious joy of knowing how, and why, ageless Marilyn Monroe must have felt at least once. She, the eternal symbol of femininity and also the tragedy of it, told the establishment of Hollywood studios, that all she ever wanted out of life was to be...WONDERFUL.

I am grateful to you, my fellow Vietnamese Robeert Youngson, for calling me...a WONDERFUL singer!


This version of Huong Xua is unique because it's bilingual (I wrote the English lyric and tried to sing it), AND, in the middle of the song was my pianist's playing of Chopin's Tristesse...Such as never done before, not even by Cung Tien.


I was 48 when this amateur tape was made...