Digging deeper, I thought about where this bent toward having to represent everyone well came from. And I located a semi-sordid memory whose time has possibly come to air:
I used to work in a harsh museum in the Bay Area. One day, maybe four years into my tenure, I was summoned into the director’s office. He swiftly locked the door behind us and said there was a series of complaints filed against me by members of management. I told him my blood had just turned cold.
Two weeks later, I was made to sit in a closed room with said members of management, many of whom I had done years of support work for. One by one they leveled vitriol, saying they were fed up and frustrated by my mistakes and misbehavior. I listened, wrote down every complaint verbatim. At the end I told them I believed there was a perception issue. Beneath my veneer of calm, I was terrified. I did not recognize myself in their words.
The following week, I took a day off and walked into a municipal mental clinic on San Francisco’s Gough Street. After watching TV in the waiting room for an interminable amount of time, I met with a psychiatrist. He prescribed something called Klonopin. Our session lasted not quite five minutes. I looked up Klonopin; it’s commonly used as a horse tranquilizer. I filled the prescription but didn’t take the pills.
To me granular means grit. It means texture and stuff have been retained. And with it, a hope for the truth.
A month later, in yet another meeting at the museum, I was given a chance to respond. I really didn’t want to be there, but then something kicked in. I looked around the room at everyone’s face, thinking “diamond”— to affirm the diamond in everyone — before we began. It was something my yoga training had taught me. I was surprised it kicked in at this moment. A parasympathetic thought.
The director thanked me for “taking the hot seat” and we began. I served evidence and emails, calmly but firmly refuting the statements of error leveled against me. Ally McBeal would have been proud. “You’re saying you did absolutely nothing wrong?” the director said.
I looked at him blankly and said nothing.
“Well, at least we got this process over with. Hopefully Jan {name changed} will not quit,” he said, giving Jan’s arm a shake as if to console her. Jan was my interim manager. I had confronted her a few months ago at a department meeting on excessive, unpaid overtime. It was causing strain in our department. She had apparently gone to the director immediately afterwards and told him I had bullied her.
She probably didn’t know how scared I was, airing the overtime concern, the bane of our department and possibly that museum. She probably didn’t know the exhaustion and stress I was taking home to my partner, how it was affecting my health. In my perception, she treated her department mates poorly and worthlessly. It was a complete war zone, devoid of empathy. But in that state of war, perhaps I had failed to empathize with her?
Soon after that incident, I booked a ticket to Miami to go see my folks and another ticket to go see my grandma in Seoul. I went as far East as I could. I was done with the duplicity and psychic violence of the West.
Jan resigned shortly thereafter. She told the director another job had landed in her lap. My department remained without a manager for a year and a half. My other co-worker and I picked up the slack. We negotiated a pay raise, developed budgets and forecasts, built bridges with communities with autism and more. We helped develop a strategic plan. We stayed late, often exiting with the custodial staff, among them: Sun, Jesus, Shannon. I still remember their smiles and faces.
One of the statements made against me was that I was a poor listener.
Some time later, I decided that I couldn’t afford to be that, had it any truth. Those closed-door meetings reaffirmed for me the importance of representing other people’s words, behaviors, and truths accurately. I had always believed that as a journalist and documentarian. Others’ humanity had always been important to me. But being stripped of my own with such a shattering put me in shock about this last point.
My brother told me that some scars define us. This was one of those scars.
This scar, a decade later, has made me a “granular” storyteller. Maybe Thomas means detailed, but to me granular means grit. It means the texture and stuff have been retained. And with it, a hope for truth.
I share this, not just to release and process, but because I wonder if my disillusioning six-year stint at the museum is not a microcosm for a polarized America we find ourselves in. Most of my life, I haven’t had the luxury of avoiding people I find uncomfortable.
Other than my immigrant family, whose lives I hold close to my heart, America is my other family. I source my tribe, my community, my sense of purpose and belonging from its sons and daughters. I would like to see it healthy, able to prosper and heal, able to take care of its shit and hold space for its people falling through the cracks. Last not least, have compassion and face all it is going through.
On Feb 20, in our circle around a table among strangers, I feel like we had a small victory.
Hanul Bahm is a filmmaker and digital content producer based in Atlanta, GA. She has shot, directed and produced on numerous independent shorts, feature documentaries, transmedia storytelling and video projects for media organizations, clients, community and self. Hanul is producing a video series on faith, healing and friendship and writing Drift and Return, a narrative feature. Along with fellow creatives in multiple geographies, she is launching DECIDED, a visual content storytelling agency. DECIDED specializes in noncommercial works, as well as branded, editorial and commissioned content. Its goal is to spread expressions that elevate people, further culture
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