So a Guy Walks Into a Bar...

That one night I lied about art school and stumbled into advertising... and why I miss drunk destiny.

It started on a rainy fall night in Tokyo.

You know the kind the rain isn't falling so much as hovering in the air, drifting sideways, soaking you from every direction at once. The streets were slick and glowing, every surface reflecting vending machines and neon, the city humming like an old film projector.

I ducked into a bar one of those places you stumble into without a name, just a low door, a curtain, and the promise of light and warmth on the other side. I wasn’t there for fun. I was technically on the clock, scouting for a hostess club. We were told to come here when working as a scout to get off the streets. But mostly I was trying to not feel like I’d taken a wrong turn with my life. Again.

I thought I was going to be a filmmaker. Indie films. Gritty, poetic, probably black and white. I had no plan, but I had ambition.

And then they walked in.

A group of foreigners confident, stylish, relaxed in a way that told me they weren’t tourists. They belonged here. One of them was wearing a Palomar Productions T-shirt, and that snagged my attention. Palomar was familiar only because of KL my Australian ex, the one who worked in production and had once opened a window to a world I didn’t yet understand.

I stared at that T-shirt for a long time, nursing my drink and trying to grow the courage to say something. I was shy. Terminally cool in my own head but allergic to actual risk. Eventually, two drinks in, I got up, walked over, and mumbled something about Palomar.

The guy laughed, said he’d worked on a shoot with them. Said he was with an ad agency.

“Advertising?” I asked, dumbly. “Like… commercials?”

He nodded.

I didn’t know people actually did that. Not real people. Not people in Tokyo bars who looked like they listened to Sonic Youth and read Wired. I don’t remember everything I said next I know I mentioned Marshall McLuhan because I thought that made me sound smart. I told him I’d gone to Art Center (which was only slightly true), and that I loved the way images and words could move people. That I wanted to make things that felt like lightning in your chest.

He looked at me for a beat and said, “Our creative director went to Art Center. You should come by the office. Meet the team.”

Two weeks later, I was standing in the Tokyo office of Wieden+Kennedy, one of the most respected ad agencies in the world. I didn’t even know what that meant when I shook his hand in the bar. But that one conversation, that five minute sliver of a rainy night, changed the direction of my life.

I didn’t become an indie filmmaker. I became a director, a creative. I made commercials. Beautiful, strange, emotional, funny, cinematic things. The medium changed, but the impulse didn’t. That night didn’t feel big at the time. But it was.

And now, here in this Saigon flat, I’m thinking about all of it how one rainy night in Tokyo led to Wieden+Kennedy, how that meeting shifted everything. Not with a job offer or a clear path, but with an invitation. A suggestion. A stranger holding open a door I didn’t even know existed.

But here’s the part I keep circling back to:

Back then, I had something I don’t have anymore. Not talent though, sure, I had some of that. Not luck, although maybe I had that too. No, I had permission. I gave myself permission to sit in bars for hours, to sip courage from a glass, to talk to strangers like the night belonged to all of us. It was messy, sure. Awkward. Sometimes a disaster. But sometimes just enough to keep the myth alive there was a spark. A moment. A turning point disguised as a casual hello.

And now? I don’t drink anymore. I don’t have those socially sanctioned, softly lit nights where a few fingers of whiskey make you feel interesting and interested. The edges are sharper now. The silences longer. Sobriety gives you clarity, yes. But it also leaves you raw and wondering: Where do those conversations live now? Where do you go to meet someone who might change your life when you’re not hiding behind a glass or a bar stool?

That’s the in-between I’m sitting in now.

I don’t have an answer. But I know this much: those nights, those encounters they weren’t about alcohol. Not really. They were about openness. Curiosity. Saying yes when you could’ve just stayed quiet. They were about showing up. And maybe that’s still possible. Maybe it always is.

So I’m trying to stay open. Even sober. Even here. Even now.

Because who knows maybe the next life changing conversation doesn’t need a bar or a buzz. Maybe it just needs me to look up. Say hi. Ask a stranger about their T-shirt.

And see what door opens next.

I remind myself to show up.

LOVE & LIGHT

MM

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