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.

“How old are you?” This is the question that everyone asks best-selling historian Nell Painter when she returns to school at age 64. She retires from teaching at Princeton and pursues her lifelong dream of becoming an artist. Not a dabbler, not a retiree taking a few classes, but a “serious artist.” Art may be all about seeing, but artists are about being seen. Painter doesn’t just want to paint; she wants to get her MFA and be seen as a professional artist.