32. Take My Breath Away
The year of my birth, Take My Breath Away by Berlin hit the top of the charts. It became an auspicious song, in my mind. Often, at key moments in my life, it would come on randomly, and I would interpret in it whatever expediency demanded.
One time, getting a haircut in Manhattan’s Chinatown, where I often found myself aimlessly wandering in my college days at New York University, the Cantonese version of Take My Breath Away by Hong Kong pop star Sandy Lam came on over the radio. My stylist, an older Hong Kongnese American woman with a shock of purple hair, told me to watch a film with that song — Wong Kar-wai’s 1988 classic As Tears Go By. That began my love affair with Wong’s movies, one auspicious event. And then there was another: Based on that song and its fi
