The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Wednesday, March 3, 2021 — 7

Indigo Sparke has a way of 

gathering the stars and keeping them 
in her pocket, handing them out on 
her guitar strings as she sees fit. The 
Australian singer-songwriter’s debut 
album, Echo, surrounds you, yet never 
leaves you feeling claustrophobic. It is 
as wide open as the deserts she drew 
inspiration from in the making of this 
album.

This openness is reflected in 

the way the album seeks the right 
questions, rather than the correct 
answers. The songs often embark 
on mini philosophical quests, each 
anchored 
by 
Sparke’s 
languid, 

melancholy tones and simple guitar 
backings. Her sound evokes the 
centering gravity of Bedouine, or 
perhaps Angel Olsen at her most 
simple and haunting. Although the 
album is mostly Sparke and her guitar, 
with the barest touches of piano, 
percussion and bass here and there, 
these all come together to make a sum 
that is greater than its parts.

In “Colourblind,” the guitar and 

tambourine slowly gather their things 
and enter the album. There is a patience 
to her voice, the pace at which she 
moves through the piece. How do those 
we surround ourselves with affect the 
way we see the world? This becomes 
the first of the many self-reflective 
inquiries the album inspires. Sparke 
continues to question and explore in 
tracks like “Everything, Everything” 
and “Baby.” The lyrics in “Everything 
Everything” surrounding death make 
it a fitting closer to the album. Her 
whispered tones enhance the song’s 
mystery and magic. As she affirms 
that “Everything, everything is dying” 
and “Everything is simple,” there is 
no dread involved. It doesn’t even feel 
like a resolute stamp marked “END.” 
It asks of the listener what it means to 

die and what it means to live. There is a 
peaceful transformation of something 
often viewed as a spectre of fear 
and suffering into a straightforward 
communal experience. 

“Baby” is the lead single off of the 

album, in which Sparke submerges 
you in a lake of melancholy and pulls 
you out by the grace of her love. Echo 
evokes strong visuals; in this one, 
Sparke is surrounded by glowing 
balls of light, as she sings of “energy 
balls all around us” in an exploration 
of universal energy fields. Through 
the music, she asks us and herself: 
What brings someone comfort? What 
pushes someone? Can it ever be the 
same thing?

Comfort and unease coexist in a 

strange balancing act on this record. 
In tracks like “Golden Age,” it is 
difficult to say if the warm grain of 
the guitar pulls you to a more familiar, 
tangible reality, or if its swooping 
chords shoot you off into space again. 
Even while singing of old, long-
term loves, there is always a feeling 
of everything changing, of new 
things arising; your skin gives way to 
goosebumps.

Sparke’s struggles with her own 

eroticism are delicately approached. 
“The witch of desire” greets her in 
“Undone,” while in “Carnival” she 
asks “Will you be mine?”, struggling 
to connect with something so she 
doesn’t lose herself. 

With “Wolf” comes Sparke’s 

deepest approach to her sexuality. 
As her female lover beckons her, 
“Come upstairs, let me show you all 
the parts you haven’t seen / There’s 
a hell, there’s a heaven, there’s a 
universe exploding,” the impact of 
these experiences is hard to deny. Her 
grand lyrics and ghostly vocals make 
you pause every so often to catch up to 
what you are feeling. 

The funny thing about love is 

no matter who you are, how many 
relationships you’ve had or how close 
you are to your family, there’s always 
more you can learn. Love is a never-
ending lesson. In this spirit I write 
to you, as a 19-year-old girl who has 
watched a lot of television, to share what 
I’ve learned — amateur to amateur. 
While, in my opinion, love languages 
don’t fully capture the boundlessness 
of what intimacy with another person 
can mean, I do think they’re a good 
place to start the conversation. They’ve 
certainly expanded how I interpret the 
different ways that caring for someone 
can manifest, so I thought I’d go 
language by language, show by show, 
to describe how my ideas about love 
have grown over the years.

Physical 
Touch 
— 
“The 

Handmaid’s Tale”

Physical touch has always easily 

fit into my understanding of love, as 
there often aren’t words to describe the 
feeling of wanting to comfort someone 
or show them you’re there for them. 
Yet what I didn’t understand until I 
watched “The Handmaid’s Tale” was 
the extent to which physical touch can 
palpably define the way our lives feel.

“The Handmaid’s Tale,” based on 

Margaret Atwood’s novel, is the story 
of a fundamentalist Christian society 
dictated by strict rules — particularly 
for women — and the notion that 
someone is always watching you, 
should you slip up. Handmaids are 
under constant surveillance and in 
an environment that seems to be the 
furthest thing from love. Bearing 
children 
is 
methodically 
done, 

and any sort of love or kindness is 
something that sneaks through the 
system, not caused by it. Interestingly, 
it was precisely the way the system 
stripped away the protagonist June’s 
ability to be close to others — and be 
touched outside of a sexual context 
— that made me realize how physical 
closeness fosters emotional intimacy 
even outside of a relationship. The 
lack of physical touch heightens 
June’s isolation, and I couldn’t help 
but feel touch-starved with her. 
Without physical connection, life 
seems robotic, cold and dreary. After 
watching the show, I felt newfound 
gratitude for the ability to hold 
people close and how it can serve as a 
reminder that you are not alone. 

Words of Affirmation — “Sense8”
I’ve seen “Sense8” multiple times 

since I first watched it when I was 15. 
With every watch, I’ve noticed new 
lines in the show where characters 

have said the right words when other 
characters needed them, and it made 
all the difference. 

In “Sense8,” humans known as 

“sensates” are psychically linked with 
seven other individuals spread across 
the world. Sensates are able to take 
in the senses of the other people they 
are connected to and communicate 
with them, even appearing to be 
in the same room as their fellow 
sensates. Over time, the main group of 
sensates in the show grows closer and 
closer, understanding each other’s 
personalities, feelings and stories at 
the deepest level. I think it’s because of 
the deep bonds the show establishes 
that it is able to depict words of 
affirmation that hit profoundly. 

I mean, in what other show can you 

get quotes like “The real violence, the 
violence I realized was unforgivable, 
is the violence that we do to ourselves, 
when we’re too afraid to be who we 
really are,” and “your life is either 
defined by the system or how you defy 
the system,” as advice?

Quality Time — “Avatar: The 

Last Airbender”

“Avatar: The Last Airbender” was 

a phenomenal show for a multitude 
of reasons, but while the show’s 
compelling 
character 
arcs 
may 

include many important lessons about 
love, I realized that I couldn’t help 

but feel the love present in even the 
most filler of episodes in the series. 
I loved all the episodes of “Avatar” 
in which the gang simply stops at a 
village or town on their journey and 
spends time together, learning how 
to do what’s right. “Avatar” was a 
great series because of the chemistry 
between the characters, which comes 
through even in the more dramatic 
episodes. I learned that, when it comes 
to love, the smallest moments can feel 
the most meaningful.

Acts of Service — “Gilmore Girls”
When I think of characters that 

remind me of acts of service, Luke 
from “Gilmore Girls” is the first 
person who comes to mind. Luke 
wasn’t one for expressing his feelings 
in words, sometimes to a fault, but 
there’s no one I can think of who 
has more consistently shown up for 
the people in his life by offering care 
through his time and skills. Luke 
loves cooking, fixing things and 
making sure Rory and Lorelai are fed 
and safe. Yes, Luke’s a good partner 
to Lorelai and good father figure to 
Rory, but he’s also the sort of guy I’d 
love to have as a neighbor. Despite 
his grouchiness, we all know he 
cares. I may not be as handy as Luke, 
but I still channel my inner Luke 
when I refill the Brita pitcher for my 
roommates, or bake cake pops for 

my friends when they’re stressed or 
even just check in with them to see if 
there are ways I can help, rather than 
simply telling them I’m thinking 
about them.

Receiving Gifts — “New Girl”
Ah, gifts. The forgotten love 

language. To be quite honest, I still 
feel a little hesitation whenever I 
hear that someone’s primary love 
language is gifts, but at the same time 
I’ve realized it also doesn’t get enough 
hype. There’s no moment in television 
that has shown me the power of giving 
gifts more than Season 3, Episode 13 of 
“New Girl” in which Nick, a character 

who can only be described as a hot 
mess, puts together an extremely 
thoughtful gift for Jess, who has 
always wanted a great birthday. I don’t 
know why, but watching someone 
who never has it together spend a lot 
of time to show how much he cares 
makes me feel incredibly soft. I’ll just 
say Jess was not the only one crying 
by the end of the episode. The episode 
taught me that amid the hustle and 
bustle of life, even when everything 
seems like a mess, just taking a little bit 
of time to show someone you’ve been 
thinking about them can remind our 
loved ones that we care.

Minari has a lot of names. I’m not 

talking about the film, but its namesake, 
Oenanthe javanica. For the uninitiated, 
it’s an herb used in a variety of cuisines, 
prepared by itself or added to elevate 
an existing dish. In Korea it’s called 
minari; in Japan, it’s called seri. Here 
we call it Japanese parsley, or Chinese 
celery, or Indian pennywort, or Java 
water dropwort or just plain water 
celery sans any national distinction. 
As one character remarks, “It grows 
anywhere, like weeds … rich or poor, 
anyone can enjoy it and be healthy.” So, 
it’s got a lot of names.

This weed of 10,000 names and 

10,000 homes neatly sets up the 
enduring metaphor of “Minari.” The 
film is Americana in celluloid but also 
a prototypical immigrant tale, for isn’t 
America supposed to be the monarch 
of immigrant tales, in lip service if not 
in unvarnished truth? The movie’s 
also one of those classic fish-out-of-
water, family-seen-through-the-eyes-
of-a-child stories that are practically a 
genre of their own. “Minari” fits in as 

a faithful example that will no doubt 
resonate with many an immigrant or 
displaced person. But none of that is 
to say “Minari” is a formulaic stock 
film — it’s imbued with an incredible, 
enchanting specificity that can only be 
spun off the vagaries and vicissitudes 
of lived experience. 

Shaped by writer-director Lee 

Isaac Chung’s (“I Have Seen My Last 
Born”) early childhood, it follows 
a Korean husband-wife duo and 
their Korean American children as 
they try to navigate the turns and 
bends of agrarian life in rural 1980s 
Arkansas. The child observer is young 
David Yi (Alan Kim, in his debut), 
a sweet, chubby-faced kid with a 
heart condition. David is, of course, a 
fictionalized, de-aged Chung. David 
spends his days trouncing around 
the Arkansan backcountry with his 
sister Anne (Noel Cho, in her debut), 
a dutiful older sibling that weathers 
microaggressions like a champ and 
his grandmother Soonja — a crass 
crone with a jovial nature played with 
incredible charm by Yuh-Jung Youn 
(“The Bacchus Lady”).

If David is the beating, slightly 

arrhythmic heart of the film, it’s 

his parents and the assimilation 
anxieties they represent that provide 
the catalyzing force and anima of 
the film. Steve Yeun (“Burning”) 
and Han Ye-ri (“Champion”) give 
quiet yet full-bodied, heart-grasping 
performances as Jacob and Monica. 
They’re professional chicken sexers, 
an oh-so-unglamorous line of work 
involving adorable little chickens that 
you condemn to either be tossed in a 
furnace or raised, fattened, squeezed of 
all their eggs and eventually McNugget-
ified (depending on the parts between 
their legs). Monica is a city-bred 
woman who misses Korea with ardor, 
but whose only focus is bringing in the 
dough to support her children. Jacob, 
on the other hand, has big, American 
dream-inflected ambitions that extend 
beyond being an arbiter of the fate of 
poultry. After arriving in their new 
pastoral, podunk life in Arkansas, he 
explains to Monica that it’s the soil that 
brought them there: “The best dirt in 
America,” he excitedly claims. Jacob 
sees the opportunity to feed thousands 
of Koreans with a little taste of home. 
Monica sees dirt.

Dirt is something of a focus in 

“Minari.” The film carefully considers 

the natural beauty of the land: rolling 
fields, babbling brooks, winding roads 
hemmed in by trees and trees and 
trees. The idyllic scenes are contrasted 
by family tensions and the looming 
specter of financial catastrophe, both 
aspects accompanied bewitchingly by 
the film’s light, languid soundtrack.

But Monica’s not wrong, either. Dirt 

is dirt, and people seldom imagine 
their future in dirt, whether or not a 
few pretty things grow out of it. It’s a 
lonely, uncertain life for immigrant 
Koreans in the homogenous alabaster 
expanse of rural Arkansas. Culture 
shock runs rampant and goes both 
ways: Just as kids make fun of Anne 
and David’s language and faces, the 
Yis are endlessly put off by the locals’ 
Bible-thumping and reliance on things 
like dowsing wands — “Koreans use 
their minds,” Jacob reminds his son. 

This mélange of identities and the 

category crises that ensue are the 
film’s quarry. What does it mean to 
be Korean when you’re no longer 
in Korea? What does it mean to be 
American when you’re not from 
America? Can Grandma smell like 
Korea, even if you yourself have 
never smelled Korea? (That last one 

is courtesy of David.) It approaches 
these topics with a tender and earnest 
touch, never failing to inspire a laugh, 
a tear or poignant pause with each 
carefully framed slice-of-life moment.

“Minari” the film experienced 

a bit of a category crisis as well. Is it 
“Minari” the American movie, or 
“Minari” the Korean movie? At the 
Sundance Film Festival, it snagged 
both the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury 
Prize and the U.S. Dramatic Audience 
Award, a rare confluence of accolades. 

But, at the Golden Globes, it was 

relegated to the Foreign Language 
Film category. It won the top prize 
among foreign language films but 
was disallowed from competing in 

the Best Drama category due to its 
Korean-bent language. It’s true, the 
film is mostly in Korean, so subtitles 
are a must for the non-fluent. But let’s 
be clear: It’s all a load of malarkey. The 
original question was not meant to be 
profound, for it was no question at all. 
“Minari” is as American as apple pie, 
not in spite but because of its Korean 
furnishings. 

But these categories, as crisis-

inducing as they can be, are 
ephemeral. Like all the great fish-out-
of-water family stories, it’s less about 
being a fish-out-of-water and more 
about being a family. Korea, Arkansas 
— dirt is dirt, and a family can grow 
anywhere.

‘Minari’ serves up a soul-touching slice of Americana

Indigo Sparke leaves questions, 

not answers on ‘Echo’

What television has taught me about love

SARAH RAHMAN

Daily Arts Writer

ROSA SOFIA KAMINSKI

Daily Arts Writer

A24

Design by Caitlin Martens

JACOB LUSK
Daily Arts Writer

YOUR WEEKLY

ARIES

Be careful with privacy issues this 
week, Aries. What you think is yours 
to share may well not be. This is 
particularly true if you think you are 
helping a friend or a colleague – be 

very careful not to jump 
the gun.

AQUARIUS

GEMINI

Mars’ arrival in your sign is big news 
this week and you’ll be feeling 
energized, optimistic, ambitious and 
capable. This translates into 
increased vigor in all areas of your 
life, but perhaps especially in your 

personal life.

SAGITTARIUS

CAPRICORN

SCORPIO

CANCER

Something is hidden from you, 
Cancer, and you can’t stand that. The 
urge to dig deep and to ferret out the 
truth is exceptionally strong this 
week, not least because Mars begins 

to transit your secrecy zone.

TAURUS

With Mars arriving in your money zone 
this week, Taurus, you may feel driven 
to increase your income in whatever 
way is currently possible. Obviously, 
this is a helpful and very motivating 

influence in some ways, 
but you may also start to 
feel very materialistic.

VIRGO

PISCES

LIBRA
LEO

The arrival of Mars in your 
humanitarian zone brings out the 
best in your zodiac sign's 
warm-hearted nature, Leo. You’ll feel 
driven to help others, whether that’s 

in a practical sense, or 
through donating money, 
or through raising 
awareness. 

Read your weekly horoscopes from astrology.tv

Ready to shine, Virgo? Mars arrives in 
your career zone this week, pushing 
you into the spotlight and 
demanding that you showcase your 
talents. It’s a brilliant week for job 

seeking, interviews, 

promotions and long 
overdue recognition for 
your hard work.

Studying is highlighted this week, and 
with Mars arriving in your higher 
education zone, it’s a brilliant time to 
start a new course or start working 
towards a qualification.

Mars’ arrival in your passion zone sets 
the tone for the week – you can expect 
a lot of memorable moments in a 
relationship, but there is also intense 
jealousy here, and even anger. Check 

your motives very carefully 

and be scrupulously 

honorable in your actions 
towards your partner.

Mars, the planet of passion, arrives in 
your zodiac sign's love zone this week 
– that has to be good news, right? 
And it is, especially for a tired or 
flagging relationship, where Mars can 

help you rediscover why 

you fell in love.

Mars arrives in your vitality zone, 
Capricorn, making this an incredible 
week to set new health and fitness 
goals. You’ll be motivated and full of 
positivity, which you can use to set up 

a new regime or lifestyle.

Are you ready to party, Aquarius? Mars 
arrives in your joy zone, urging you to 
do more – much more – of whatever 
makes you happy this week. From 
creative hobbies, dance, art and music 
to more time spent with your loved 

ones, it’s all about whatever 
makes you smile.

A family impasse could finally be 
resolved this week as Mars shifts into 
your family zone. This energy enables 
you to take the lead and to force 
matters to a conclusion, but not 
necessarily quietly – there is anger 

here, and frustration too.

WHISPER

“I’ve been thinking a lot about 
the big bang.”

“Do you ever wonder why are 
we alive?” 

“Go outside and get some 
fresh air!”

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

