Stop! Look! Listen! Francis Chang's Reading and Watching Recommendation
Lost in Translation (film by Sofia Coppola) and Interior Chinatown (novel by Charles Yu) by Francis Chang
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle posits that it is impossible to know the exact location or nature of a particle at any particular moment because the act of observation itself causes a slight shift in position of the observed subject. The resulting alteration in trajectory from the present moment will magnify over time, until the next act of observation and reflection.
As someone in the thicket of middle age, I wonder how much my recollections of the past shift my understanding of the world. Even in this later stage of life, I still obsess over the questions “who am I” and “what is my place in this world”? It is with this mindset that I rewatched the movie Lost in Translation and read the novel Interior Chinatown.