NAKEDJEN

Category: Sundance

  • Badump. Badump.

    Tomorrow is my birthday.


    I’ll be 62.


    And yes, it is also my father’s birthday.


    Ironically.
    Not ironically.
    Kismet.
    Habit.


    A cosmic joke we’ve both been in on since the first day I opened my lungs and learned the sound of his name.


    It is all I’ve ever known, sharing a birthday with a man like him.
    And this year, as we all know, the birthday came with teeth.This year was very difficult for both of us.
    Me and my father.
    Two birthdays. One weather system. Climate change is absolutely real.


    He almost died while I was sitting in Bali, on the other side of the world. I was waking up to roosters and temple smoke and offerings arranged like tiny prayers in palm-leaf trays. He was intubated in a hospital outside Baltimore, tethered to machines, his breath being borrowed. I was on the phone with my sisters doing the sacred arithmetic of panic: the shoulds and coulds and woulds.


    Then I made a decision that still feels like the only one I could make.


    I decided to live my life way out loud.


    I decided to wake each morning and bow and pray to the Bali gods and goddesses in the best way I have been taught. I decided to place my hands on my own chest and hold my father’s heart in mine like it was an instrument I could keep tuned through devotion.


    Because his heart is my own.
    Let’s be honest.


    I am not being poetic. I am being literal in the only language my body trusts.
    Isn’t that what we do, ultimately?


    We keep each other’s hearts beating. No matter where we are.
    Isn’t that what love is?
    One beat here. One beat there.
    One beat in this chest answering a beat in that chest.
    Call and response.
    A long-distance holy communion. Take this beat. I’ll give you mine.

    I can feel it even now.


    His heart has a way of announcing itself.
    Sometimes it wakes me up in the middle of the night like a knock at the door. Sometimes I stop short in the middle of a busy intersection and forget the world has cars. Sometimes I stop dancing and just stare off into space because the beating gets so loud I have to listen.
    Sometimes I have to just stop.
    Because the beat is bigger than the moment I’m in.

    Badump. Badump. Badump. Wait for it….Badump.
    One beat here.
    One beat there.
    Way over there.
    Wherever he is.


    It isn’t easy sharing a birthday with a man who lives his life so loudly, so gregariously, so unapologetically. A man who has always taken up space as if space was created specifically to be taken up. A man who can turn a room into a story just by walking into it with that half-cocked grin.


    The encyclopedia could probably use his photograph, worn and tattered and sepia toned, under the definition of: life lived beyond the edges. Full of hell. Full of laughter. Full of trouble. Full of impossible charm.

    Close-up selfie of an older man in glasses smiling beside a woman smiling, both leaning into the frame.

    This little nut did not fall far from that tree.


    This is the part where I refuse to make myself small.
    Because tomorrow is not just my father’s birthday.
    It is mine, too.


    I made it to 62.


    I made it here with my own two feet and my off-key singing and my insistence on showing up again and again and again. I made it here with love in my fists. I made it here with my heart out where people can see it, which is a dangerous way to live, but it is the only way I know. I walk into the fire, never away from it.


    I have marched.
    I have fussed.
    I have fought for what’s right.
    I have loved people so hard it felt like my ribs were going to crack open and let the light out.
    I am still here.


    So, Albert. Happy birthday to you, you CRAZY (all caps) beautiful human.
    I mean it with all the love. With all the heartbeats. Every single one. Mine, too. Badump!

    Here we are again, for another spin around the sun.

    I can’t even believe it.
    I really am so grateful.

    Two birthdays.
    One world.
    Two wild hearts.
    One echo.

    Tomorrow, if you’re reading this, pause for a second.
    Put your hand on your chest.
    Feel your own drum.
    Notice the beat that has carried you through every single thing you thought might take you out.

    Then go live your life out loud.
    Keep someone’s heart beating, if you can.
    Let them keep yours.
    One beat here. One beat there.
    Badump.


    xo
    Nakedjen

    P.S. Why today? Because Sundance. It’s basically my birthday party, my church, and my annual emotional car wash. I’m volunteering (!!!) and will be in Park City for the duration starting today, so I’m kicking the celebration off early and holding the bittersweet right alongside the glitter.

  • Come See Me In The Good Light

    Come See Me In The Good Light

    Before Sundance officially cracked open this year, those of us who volunteer were ushered into a whisper-level pre-festival screening. A special showing. A quiet gathering in the dark. The kind that makes you feel like the universe nudged you in early on purpose.

    The film was Come See Me In the Good Light, directed with exquisite tenderness by Ryan White, anchored by Andrea Gibson and their life partner, Megan Falley.

    From the very first moments, something inside my ribcage shifted. I held my breath through the entire film. Even while simultaneously laughing and crying. When the lights came up, I turned to my sister—still stunned and breathless—and said,
    “This is the most transformative documentary I’ve ever experienced. A gift. Ten stars. This film will change people.”

    A few days later, at the official Sundance premiere, the room rose in a standing ovation that felt like a wave with no shoreline. The entire film team was there, filling the theatre with a kind of love and presence usually reserved for sacred spaces. It was electric and gentle all at once—poetry in the shape of applause. Andrea sharing a poem right off the of their head. Pure light and magic.

    Then they came to my green room.

    All of them.

    Andrea. Meg. Ryan. Tig. The whole magnificent constellation that shaped this film.

    I tried to be my usual Sundance faerie self, the one who’s seen it all for 25 years and floats around like it’s no big deal. But let’s be honest:
    I was NOT cool.
    Not for one second.
    I was a happy, messy, overjoyed fangirl puddle.
    I hugged everyone twice.
    I spoke too many feelings and used way too many words.
    I told them the truth:
    “I’ve been at Sundance for 25 years. I have seen hundreds of first screenings. This film changed the shape of my heart. You need to know that.
    You also need to believe me when I tell you, right now, that it will also save lives and win all the awards. Thank you for sharing every bit of both of you with all of us.”

    They were kind. Gentle. Human. We laughed. We shared. We breathed the same gratitude-filled air.

    And then—my favorite Sundance moment of all—
    they all came back.

    Later in the week, the whole team quietly returned to my theatre to sneak into another film together. Not their own. Someone else’s. Not for applause. Not for press. Not for spotlight.

    Just to be people again.
    To sit in the dark with strangers.
    To watch a movie like regular festival-goers, shoulder-to-shoulder, no fanfare required.

    And I helped them do it.

    I tucked them into that anonymity.
    Found them a path in the chaos.
    Gave them the dignity of being unseen, while knowing—
    they were deeply, reverently SEEN.
    Not by cameras.
    Not by crowds.
    But by community.
    By Sundance itself, which always saves a quiet corner for the artists who give us so much of their hearts.

    That—right there—is the heartbeat and essence of Come See Me In The Good Light.
    The sacred act of being witnessed.
    The tenderness of being ordinary.
    The courage of showing up exactly as you are.
    And the miracle of having someone love you through it.

    Ryan White’s direction allows Andrea’s language to land where it always lands—inside you—and Meg’s love to hold the shape of the whole film. It is a portrait of devotion, mortality, artistry, partnership, and the radical act of telling the truth beautifully.

    If you do nothing else this week, please:
    watch this film on Apple TV.
    Let it remind you that love is brave, art is necessary, and being human together is still the point.

    Ten stars.
    Every single one glowing.

    xo,
    nakedjen