- (sighs) Hi.

Okay, we're gonna make some beautiful music together and we're gonna start with little Chopin, okay?

All right.

(gentle piano music) (gentle piano music continues) (gentle piano music continues) Transition is a more black and white term.

For me, everything I do, there's a lot more grays, a lot more, you know, color.

(gentle piano music continues) You know, I'm not a filmmaker.

I'm a musician.

I look at myself more as a storyteller, and that's really why I did this movie.

I do have a very close connection with how to tell a story through music.

Every time I perform a piece, I see it in my mind's eye.

It's just a lot of overlap, with many, many, many layers.

As one fades away, the other one comes up to the surface.

It is like waves.

It's like waves.

(gentle piano music continues) I am so happy to be in Rhode Island to give my film one of the last screenings at the end of this incredible year, celebrating the one-year anniversary, and to be able to share this story with this community at the Jamestown Art Center.

(gentle piano music continues) My father's story, the story that you're about to see in "Never Fade Away," is about how he escaped his homeland, China, during the Japanese occupation to come here and build a new life, that second time around.

But we are all second-time-arounders.

Every single one of us has a story and these really are the stories that connect us.

(paper rustling) (Donna sighs) (gentle piano music) In early March, 2020, when rumors of the coronavirus were spreading like wildfire, I was walking my dog at 1:00 PM Central Park, and out of nowhere, this very large man lunges towards me and starts screaming and blaming me for the coronavirus.

I ran home, and I literally did not walk out of my apartment for seven months after that, and I didn't even go out to walk my dog.

But then all of a sudden, it kind of dawned on me that at least what happened to me might have actually been caused by ignorance and fear, fear of the unknown.

I decided that maybe the best thing to do would be to share our stories to bring people closer together.

I went home and I thought about it, and I said, okay, yeah, sure.

A four-minute film with a dance.

When I asked the great dancer, Chen Wai Chan, history-making dancer, the first ever Chinese principal dancer for the New York City Ballet, if he would dance the role of my father.

And he asked me to send him the script, which I did, and he called me and said, "This is my story too."

(birds chirping) (birds chirping continues) (gentle piano music) (gentle piano music continues) (gentle piano music continues) Last night, my brother, Steve, called me.

I guess I've been so busy that I didn't think about the date.

And it turns out it was the anniversary of my mom's passing, and for me to have the screening of my short film about their story on that weekend, just all of a sudden it opened up a whole new meaning for me.

But I feel so grateful and blessed to have had this opportunity to bring them home again with me.

And I know that they're with me always, and I will continue to talk to them and pray to them and connect with them, but it's going to be quite different (laughs) and I have to prepare myself for that.

(water splashing) (birds chirping) (gentle piano music) Looking back on all these years and how my life has taken different turns, I think it was all meant to be, whatever happened, if it was, you know, good or bad, and I'd have to pivot, I'd have to turn the corner, I found my way, somehow.

And I think life is never a straight line, and we have to embrace those turns.

(gentle piano music continues) (gentle piano music continues) Art is a universal language.

I can listen to a piece that was composed in the Ukraine and I could feel the pain, I could feel the emotion.

We don't have to be linguists, we don't have to know languages, we just have to share art.

(gentle piano music continues)