howdoyoudoitall

[howdoyoudoitall]

I can’t remember the last time I told someone I was in college and they hadn’t asked me, “So what are you majoring in?” or, “What are your plans after?” Which makes sense, because the act of going to college has always been in the pursuit of a high paying career, at least that’s how I had always perceived it between the ages of 5 and 18. Yet when I think about college within the thick of it, it is the time for learning, and seeing the world for what it is, as it is, beyond what is represented in the media, beyond, what I had previously been taught. Since I’ve been at Evergreen, I have expanded my, “Worldly Mind”, explored my options, and developed an understanding for the importance of counter narratives, and experiential learning. All things that continue to grow with everything I read, and every moment I share, listening to a story other than my own. I don’t know what my plan is still, because I have found so many new passions since I have been here, and expanded on ones that I already had. Mostly I can boil it all down to art, and cultural identity, but I don’t know what career encompasses all of that, not yet at least. Within this paper, I am asking a simple question, which is, how do you do it all? I will explore this with auto-ethnographic and qualitative research methods, using myself as a subject, as well as artists working alternative careers in education.

The point of this project, is to be able to look back on my journey, all 23 years of it leading to this point and analyze it through the scope of a research lense. What follows is a form of performance auto-ethnography described as,

“The merger of critical pedagogy, performance ethnography, and cultural politics; the creation of texts that move from epiphanies to the sting of memory, the personal to the political, the autobiographical to the cultural, the local to the historical. A response to the successive crises of democracy and capitalism that shape daily life; showing how these formations repressively enter into and shape the stories and performances persons share with one another. It shows how persons bring dignity and meaning to their lives in and through these performances; it offers kernels of utopian hope of how things might be different, better”(Denzin, 2014 p. 25, citing Denzin, 2003; Pelias, 2001).

Within this form of data collection, and for contextual background, I feel it is important to share my story chronologically, placing my interview research in the middle. As you will see, my findings are influenced by all of it.

My blood will tell you that I am Mexican American. Mexican first because you may think it is the label that will tell you the most about who I am, but the truth is, I am el puente entre mundos. As Gloria Anzaldua says in “La Prieta”, “I am a wind-swayed bridge, a crossroads inhabited by whirlwinds.” My dad comes from a small town called Mexicali, about 100 miles east of Tijuana, kissing the line between the United States and Mexico. Of his 5 brothers and sisters, he is the only one that got out, joining the United States Army at the impressionable age of 17. He got stationed at Fort Lewis, and later met my mom at a club in her hometown of Tacoma. My mom grew up very poor, raised by a single mother, on a public school teacher’s salary. She was pushed into an apprenticeship with the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard at 16 as a pipefitter, and worked there, moving her way up the latter until this day. Within a year of dating they married, and later had me, and only me.

Because of the hard work my parents endured, I grew up not having to worry about money. The neighborhood I lived in was almost entirely white, and every kid in that neighborhood except me went to private Catholic school. I myself had a bautizo cuando era bebé, but I was not raised to believe in any sort of deity. I feel it is important to note these things because they inform the way I interact with the world. In Autoethnography: Process, Product, and Possibility For Critical Social Research by Sherick A Hughes and Julie L. Pennington, this is referred to as problematizing:

“One way to reveal social power, privilege, and penalty in our cultural contexts is by problematizing how we live our daily lives. It is in the cultural contexts of our teaching and learning communities that our perceptions of common sense are formed, and these in turn affect how we live our lives”(59).

When you’re the only brown kid amongst white kids, you lose a little bit of yourself. And I knew I was missing something, I felt it every time a racial slur was thrown at me, or my life was compared to a stereotype. The truth is, however, I always loved being different. I always thought my dad was more powerful because of his ability to move his tongue between Spanish and English, but to assume I have faced any struggle because of my ethnicity within the class I was brought up in is not fair to my ancestors. What I can say, is that I was raised with a beautiful culture that taught me to look at brown people with love, and not to be afraid to educate those who have been less fortunate.

 Somewhere around 15 years old I decided I wanted to start taking piano lessons. My great grandma on my mom’s side had passed away years prior, and we had an old upright just sitting in the house. It was pretty, but nothing more than a dust collector. Our neighbors had been receiving lessons from a young entrepreneur, who ended up being my teacher for a few years. Rather than teaching me how to read music, he taught me how to play by ear, like Louis Armstrong and many other famous musicians who became famous ever before they knew how to read notes. It is said that,

“Wherever Armstrong was heard, people were learning something: What is written on paper is not all there is to [jazz] music. A man must feel it deep down inside. The curlicues and bars are only the beginning”(Giants of Jazz, p. 26).

So from scales, I learned chords, and from there I could play nearly any song I wanted. I think he could sense I was starting to get bored, so one day he asked me to sing along to the song I was learning at the time. It was, “Hey Jude” by The Beatles. It took about the whole hour of the lesson for him to convince me before I finally gave it a shot. I was shocked that he even let me finish, and even more shocked when he told me I could actually sing, which was the start of a whole new passion, I would carry on throughout my future.

By this time, I was in high school. I went to the regular one I was assigned to within my district. It was pretty, well, average as far as high schools go. Freshman hazing, sports were of the utmost importance, and classes were just boring. The only thing I really looked forward to in going there was getting to see my friends for 30 minutes at lunch. There was, and had been however, talk of this new high school for artists, called SOTA which stood for The School of The Arts. A new school, established in 2001 with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. At this point in time, it was 2009, and it still didn’t have a very good representation. Even my piano teacher told me it was just for stoners and kids who didn’t care. But a good friend of mine said she was going to the orientation, and I thought, “I’m kind of an artist now, right?” and I went with her. I was pleasantly surprised to learn the complete opposite from what everyone else had told me. This school was a place for kids who learned in a, “Different way” with a huge range of artist electives, and core classes that were taught interdisciplinarily. There were no bells, no cafeteria, teachers got called by their first names, and classes were scattered between buildings throughout downtown Tacoma. When I look back now, SOTA has many characteristics of a private school, except there was no tuition at all, it was part of Tacoma Public Schools. Each kid simply prepared a portfolio of their academic work thus far, a piece of art, and got interviewed by multiple faculty and previous student body to determine their acceptance.

I shouldn’t say the process was simple, but it was possible, and most importantly, it was free. Becoming a part of a school like this, allowed me access into a whole new way of perceiving myself within an educational system that up until that point only lead me to believe my values were measured by test scores, and seniority. SOTA’s mission consists of 4 pillars, community, thinking, empathy and balance, all of which are actually reflected throughout its model. Community is learned through being a part of it. Not only in walking from building to building throughout downtown to get to class, each year 200 juniors and seniors participate in three week internships with community partners, all over Tacoma. That shows that SOTA is creating respectful and responsible young adults, that companies and businesses have continued to trust year after year. Thinking is reflected in the interdisciplinary educational style, where dialogue between students is welcomed and encouraged. Its success is reflected in the standardized test scores which 94.5% of students exceeded in geometry, 95.4% met in writing, and 95.9% exceeded in reading. All of which are higher than both the district and state average. Empathy can be exhibited in SOTA’s inclusionary classes, 10% of which are made up of students who are, “special ed”, and 100% of the non-special ed students serve in teaching  as a graduation requirement. Every special ed student that has attended SOTA, has also graduated with a standard diploma, compared to the 67.7% who do in the district. Finally, balance can be exemplified in SOTA’s class system. Students take 8 classes per quarter, 4 every other day, and each class goes for an hour and a half versus the normal hour in typical high school. Taking 8 classes at a time allows students to take more electives that interest them, and give them more time for homework. On Fridays, all students first meet with their grade to work on state standards, or senior projects for half of the day, and for the other half join their, “Mentor Project Group” to work on community projects, or attend SOTA showcase, which is held once a month at a local venue, for students to present their talents, and hold a sense of comradery for the school.

The reason I want to share so much detail about SOTA, is because as I near my graduation, I have to think about what I want to be a part of once I enter the world of careers and jobs. SOTA’s existence as a public school, is radical and what we need to give kids a better chance of not just surviving, but thriving. It is something that transcends the basic notions of what is possible, and provides a real education, one that teaches kids how to learn, not what to learn. I think the most change can only be accomplished within the system, SOTA is literally a catalyst, for change that disrupts the status quo, producing quantitative data to back it up. As far as future careers go, I have continuously come back to the idea of being a teacher. The boxes to check in order to become one in Washington however, are somewhat rigorous, and require certain classes to be taken that I didn’t take, not to mention a Masters degree. I knew if it was something I really wanted, I would have sought out what requirements I needed to meet from the beginning, but something told me not to. I’ve become interested in learning about alternatives, that still involve teaching, but with a little more freedom and flexibility. SOTA offers one of those alternatives, by housing a number of different adjunct artist teachers, who are really just artists who already exist in the community, who are really good at what they do. I was interested in learning more about a job like this, so I set up an interview with a current adjunct artist faculty at SOTA, Tor Caspersen.

[howdoyoudoitall]

[howdoyoudoitall]

Tor is a SOTA alumni and now the digital music composition teacher at The Tacoma School of The Arts, and iDEA, which is a new sister school of SOTA specializing in Industrial Design, Engineering and Art. His classes marry the technology of music production with the creative side of music creation, teaching students to find the middle ground of what’s coming out of the speaker, and what you are hearing in your head. Tor has always been interested in music growing up, and as a musician, says he never thought he would end up teaching it. He admits, “I always viewed people who teach music as someone who was not able to do it as a career. I kind of found that synonymous with failure, at your first attempt at being a musician.”  Despite that, he finds that teaching music, while still being a musician, actively composing and performing, has pushed him to think differently about that thought all together. He says, “I’ve realized that the two things are actually symbiotic. Through teaching music I have actually been able to go back through the fundamentals, and strengthen my own abilities as a songwriter and a producer. Furthermore, I’ve been able to view my career path in a new way, by going back to the beginning, and learning some of the managerial skills as well. And the creation and performance side has improved a ton by being an educator, that was a big surprise to me.”

[howdoyoudoitall]

[howdoyoudoitall]

What interests me the most, is the balance Tor has been able to find between teaching and making art, and how that may be particularly inspiring to his students. He is not the teacher as he described before that had failed as a musician, he is doing it, just with an alternative narrative. A couple of his audio recording students at SOTA, Mimi and Nancy, both seniors, say, “I have more respect for him because I know that he’s out there doing it, road tripping, going to festivals, doing what he loves, and coming back here to teach us. It is honestly super inspiring to know that you can do both those things at once.” Nancy even says she herself has interest in becoming an adjunct at some point, and asked faculty how they go about the hiring process. She says, “You just have to know what you’re doing, like their just another dude in the city I can vibe with, another artist”. The role an adjunct artist plays in the classroom allows the students to feel they are able to have a more honest relationship, and be more openly themselves, compared to the way they feel they are supposed to present themselves in front of their regular teachers. Even shadowing Tor’s class I was able to see how different it was from any other high school class. Students were comfortable joking around with him like a friend, but produced work that was serious, creative, and inspiring. I think that is a reflection not necessarily of his teaching style, but his ability to create an alternative space that holds a sense of collaboration, and resonance within that exists because of his role outside of the classroom, in the community.

Besides teaching, Tor works a number of odd jobs within the music industry to sustain his lifestyle which include, DJing in nightclubs, working in his at home studio, doing audio engineering at some of the premier venues in Seattle, and occasionally some composition for other artists, creating beats, or instrumental backing tracks for vocalists. Tor even misses classes on occasion to play festivals, but his students and the rest of the SOTA faculty don’t see that as a set back, it’s just what comes along with the territory. The school wants adjuncts who are active in their art, and students think it is, “Cool”. They want to know how to sustain a life like that too. Since Tor has become an educator, musicians and friends that he interface with regularly have even started coming to him for help when facing walls creatively or technically. His status as a musician has actually improved because of his teaching job, saying, “Again it comes back to the thing that symbiotically, me teaching makes me a better artist as well.”

There comes a time however, when you turn your passion into a career, when with like any other job, burnout can begin to instill. Even famous jazz musicians throughout history like Joe Oliver, Louis Armstrong, and Bessie Smith who have, “made it” all worked multiple jobs in the beginning to sustain themselves. It is also true, that once these musicians made it, and worked solely as musicians, the lavish lifestyles, competitiveness to be the best and most current, built their egos into something that most of them could only sustain with heavy amounts of alcohol and drugs, and in turn, faced a young death. In Giants of Jazz by Studs Terkel, he writes about Bessie Smith’s career downfall with,

“More and more she became a problem for theater and nightclub managers. Packed houses often waited in vain for the star who never appeared. Either a backstage brawl or a drinking bout elsewhere caused the cancellation”(42).

So often the public isn’t able to see behind the veil of the music industry, and the anxiety to keep up that goes along with it for many musicians. Fame so easily clouds the reality of what is really going on, and kids who aspire to do what they love as a career, are not exposed to the more healthy and sustainable alternatives that exist. Maybe the option of working multiple jobs shouldn’t be viewed so much as a means of survival and getting somewhere, but more as a means of keeping sane within an incredibly cut throat trade. Diversifying yourself, or spreading yourself out amongst multiple facets shouldn’t mean you aren’t making it. This counter narrative that is introduced to SOTA students receiving classes from an adjunct artist, open up a whole new world of career pathways that don’t present themselves in popular culture.

Creating the space for students to think differently about  what a career is cable of looking like, produces people entering society who are more intune to question what is being fed to them on a continuous basis through art and the media in general. With technology we have been given more transparency, but that still doesn’t mean you are always getting the facts.  Tor says when teaching his students he thinks it is principally important to instill a type of knowledge that encourages kids to be open to questioning everything they are being fed through their phones. He says you have to ask yourself, “A: Do you agree with that? If it is real or not, do you agree with that and feel it still represents you? And B: Do you want that to be a reality? If not, kids can kind of start to develop their tastes and understand the cultural impact of that stuff.” In high school, it is so easy to become absorbed in whatever the majority migrates towards, or whatever their day to day influences them towards (i.e. the radio, older siblings) but Tor, and SOTA faculty as a whole make it a point of teaching students that they are a part of society, and they have a say in what does and what does not continue to prosper. What is popular only exists because those at the top of the music industry say it is. Yet with the power of social media, there are now multiple outlets and platforms artists are using to tell a different story, and the millennial generation has the highest influence over that. Mimi says, “I feel I was put on this earth to educate people about what I have learned here, that it is not ok to be racist, that they need to conform to me.” This, coming from a student who endured extreme racism as one of the few black kids at her middle school, and was placed in special ed, because of the anxiety she developed facing it, in a broken institutional system that, “Didn’t know how to handle it.” As Tor says, it is all symbiotic.

For so long, our society, our friends, our families, have been telling us we need to fit into a clean, compact box. We go to college to smooth out the edges, file the corners, and sand the rough spots, so that we can ultimately, fit into a whole, or maybe hole of something much larger. Oftentimes a company, or institution much bigger than what can be seen on the ground level. When I came to Evergreen, I thought my box was “Kindergarten Teacher”. I wanted to fit somewhere, to feel accepted I guess, more like do what I thought I was supposed to do. At the time, I had no idea what the institution surrounding that job looked like, who was in charge of the policies implemented, or how little control I might have, to actually be the change I thought I could be. But truthfully, I just thought I could be happy in that box, I felt some sense of security in being able to say I had decided on one. Of course I was quickly smacked in the face with all the things I didn’t want to know. The overall structure I was trying to become a part of was broken, and held together by tired teachers that weren’t receiving the recognition, not to mention the pay that they deserved, or even the ability to teach what they felt was important for children to learn. I had the privilege to learn these things, and decide I wanted to explore other options.

From education, media and cultural studies, I went back to my love; which is music. I studied music composition, and performance,  where I learned how to be honest, and how to share my vulnerability to the world as a means of true power. I was really happy on that path, but I felt myself becoming too comfortable. Topics such as race, gender and class, were just not as much a part of that world, although they are, but not with what was offered at Evergreen. I wanted to be uncomfortable, to learn things that made me question my role in society, and others’ as well. So I decided to study linguistics, and systems of power, where I learned that languages are societal constructs, that shouldn’t dictate how I write or talk. After this I ended up going back to art, but not the same art, I experimented with painting, and writing. I studied artists I had never heard of, read books written by philosophers who are highly regarded throughout time, and I learned many things, but especially that the creation of an idea doesn’t come without a load of work in the process. Or that artists aren’t necessarily born with a gift, they work their asses off like everyone else. I created, through writing, pieces of art, that made me think, and others as well. I took the time to learn about my Mexican ancestry, and the history of the U.S.-Mexico border, as it was beginning to be something I needed to understand in order to continue claiming my culture, and as it was also something that was withheld from me throughout my 15 years of schooling prior.

By this time I was nearing my last year, and I felt like I needed time to work in the field and gain experience. My heart was beginning to feel more whole from all that I had learned and worked through the year before, and I wanted to be at a place to practice my Spanish, and learn first hand from real people. So I interned with a non-profit called, “Cielo”, providing a number of free resources to the Latino community. I needed to do this work, as I had been trying to learn about the Latin part of my identity since I have been at Evergreen. As I said,  it was something that was never given to me in k-12 schooling, but also something that I often had to still shove into my time at Evergreen with force. I learned about community, failure, growth, and more about the unappealing structures I had been running from for years, but I simultaneously found love, safety and solidarity from those I was working closest with.  

I have approached learning, and gained knowledge from a number of different lenses that all fall under the blanket of, “Liberal Arts”. I feel smarter, I feel wiser, I feel more aware, but I still get so afraid or embarrassed when I have to answer those dreaded questions like, “So what are you going to do now?” or, “So what is your career going to look like?” And I don’t think it is my fault for having taken a route that didn’t lead up to one particular destination. I am proud of the education I have received, I am proud of the adversities I have worked through, and I think now I am realizing it is the society I am entering that needs to change to conform to my cross and counter narrative way of thinking, because it is not bad, in fact it is more realistic and adaptable than what the average schooling or college education prepares you for. I think society is afraid of that; afraid because it is a disruption, it is a question thrown back at a question, it is someone saying, “No”. I don’t see why I should have to fit into any one place forever. I want to be a part of something that everyday  says to me:

“Be a thunder clap

and rouse me.

Be an earthquake

make me tremble

Be a river raging rampant

in my veins.

Shock me shitless.”

-Gloria Anzaldua, “I Want To Be Shocked Shitless” 1974

History shows, that history repeats itself, but we are living in an era that is finally disrupting that with all the voices that are now able to come forward, and come together, to say no all at once, and actually be heard all over the world. It scares those who have had the privilege to live without thinking about it, and it excites those who have been so goddamn tired all this time. In order for history to stop repeating itself, we have to reevaluate the structures surrounding us, and change the ways we think we are supposed to be living within it.

Something Tor said to me about the music industry is, “The best way to vote is with our dollar” but that holds so much truth for so many things within a capitalist society, because we, the workers, are the ones funding it. Having alternative schools like SOTA and Evergreen that promote and encourage ideas of counter culture are just the beginning, because as soon as you leave the school, you are thrown into a world that still rejects all the injustices you were taught to look for, and new ideologies so dependent on dialogue in order to thrive. I think the discourse is starting to shift however, because the counter culture is not counter to a lot of people who have been marginalized for years,

“The new mestizas have a connection with particular places, a connection to new notions of ethnicity, to a new tribalism that is devoid of any kind of romantic illusions. The new mestiza is a liminal subject who lives in borderlands between cultures, races, languages, and genders. In this state of in-betweenness the mestiza can mediate, translate, negotiate, and navigate these different locations. As mestizas, we are negotiating these worlds everyday, understanding that multiculturalism is a way of seeing and interpreting the world, a methodology of resistance”(The Gloria Anzaldua Reader, pg. 209)

When we see the world for what it is, which is a place of constant intersection and interplay, it no longer has to be a choice between this career or that path. We can contribute to society, and survive, while simultaneously rattling its cages. I think that it is not only possible to do it all, but itsactually a form of radically complying. You are setting the table, turning it, then flipping it upside down, and everyone is still eating off of it like nothing happened. Working multiple jobs, and diversifying your skills, might just be the best way to keep the spark in your heart alive, and keep your mind from becoming docile.

References:

Elements of Education. “SOTA and SAMI By The Numbers”. Youtube, Standard

Youtube License, Elements of Education, Sep. 29th, 2014,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXhTl5u--Zw.

Caspersen, Tor. In person interview. 18 Apr. 2018.

Atonassov, Nancy Jo and Duncan, Mykaila. In person interview. 15 May, 2018.

Anzaldúa Gloria E., and AnaLouise Keating. The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader. Duke

University Press, 2009.

Terkel, Studs, and Milly Hawk. Daniel. Giants of Jazz. New York. New Press, 2006.

Hughes, Sherick A., and Julie L. Pennington. Autoethnography Process, Product, and

[howdoyoudoitall]

'Bruja' is a song I wrote based off of a weird dream I had a few weeks ago. In the dream I don't remember too much, but some of it stuck with me for days to come. I was at some bar that was outdoors with my parents, when out of nowhere this disheveled Bruja approached me. She just grabbed my neck, and whispered in my ear. I remember and the dream thinking, "I should be scared, but I'm not". I didn't know what she was saying, but I knew. My body just began to submit, relax into the fear. And my parents were still there, but were oblivious to what was going on. I took the time to really brew over what meaning this dream might of held, and I began writing lyrics for songs for the first time in years that didn't feel forced. At the beginning of this quarter, I was told that my parents are getting divorced, and my mom who had moved to DC for work, informed me that she would not be returning as she had originally planned. I have been trying to cope with this, determine the role I am supposed to play in this, on top of the sorrows that were already inside of me. My partner was diagnosed with MS a year ago, and I re-diagnosed with epilepsy around the same time. We have had to adjust to a new lifestyle that is not easy, and I have lost a lot of friends in the process who are growing up, but not in the same way I am. I was feeling more confused than ever during a time where the pieces were supposed to be coming together, at least I thought. I ghost wrote most of this song, meaning, I let it happen unconsciously. Now hearing it done, I realize that the lyrics hold a lot of pain in them, juxtaposed with an upbeat bossa nova, which for me, holds relevance to my Latin culture, that always seems to cover pain with either humor or fiestas.  The lyrics in the chorus, "I hurt myself, for fear of staying alive" Which in the last version change to, "She hurt herself for fear she would not survive" I think mostly relate to this capstone of graduating, an end a beginning, and the uncertainty, self-doubt, and internal sabotage that has gone along with it when it means entering a world that feels broken beyond repair. While lyrics in the verses, "I knew what I feared", "I succumb to the fear" and, "I had slept through my fears" speak to all of this distress I had been suppressing with the hope of looking strong, and together so as not to worry the ones that I love. At its very basis this is a song that has allowed me to express my vulnerability, while pushing the envelop on ideas that make people uncomfortable, and in turn think. I hope it comes across accordingly.