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We Get Through: A Pandemy Cookbook

We Get Through: A Pandemy Cookbook

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Navigating Visas in Creative Fields - Artist Talk By Guanyu Xu

Navigating Visas in Creative Fields – Artist Talk By Guanyu Xu

On Friday, March 25th at 6 pm CST , LATITUDE January Artist in Residence, Guanyu Xu hosted a conversation with art critic Darshita Jain, Attorney Linda Ge Lei, and Case Manager Aurora Chou who will also share their experiences navigating the immigration visa process. Guanyu is a Chicago artist who has gone through the process of attaining an art degree as an international student and an artist…

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The Art of Staying Still

The Art of Staying Still

This is so beautifully written .. The Art of Staying Still – Tessa Love

There is something to silence, something to solitude and the sustainment of a state of being that lulls a mind into its quiet nooks and rifts, cocooning thoughts into circuitous notions and immovable meditations. To be fixed, fastened and pinned to one place can make a body move slow and make the wandering heart crave……

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Spoken word poetry: A new venture

Spoken word poetry: A new venture

Often when i was young, i tried writing poems,only the poetry i wrote felt different. I struggled to make words rhyme. In my head, I’d wonder, why should i look for a rhyming word whenthe perfect word to describe the emotion, is right there!

I got frustrated. Result: Stopped writing poetry.

But recently i was selected to perform at a spoken word poetry event. As skeptical as i was, i decided what…

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Video work

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Meet your heroes - they turn out to be humans

Meet your heroes – they turn out to be humans

The first time I met poet Sarah Kay, I fell flat on my face. Literally. The second time we met(one year later) she asked me if I was okay while fellow poet Phil Kaye (they are not married, not siblings, and not together) took pictures of me and my friend and the handmade Rabindranath Tagore book I had gotten them on his phone. Up until that moment, I had only seen these two on Youtube, which was…

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Breathing easy while dancing: The Green Mill, Chicago

Breathing easy while dancing: The Green Mill, Chicago

Lists have been promoted from a guest star to a plot-regular in my life lately. There was always someplace to go, somewhere to be and something to get done. My world looks like a dizzying blur. Consuming one thing after another, without waiting to swallow. No wonder my body is nauseated more often than not. And this isn’t even alcohol. Just me — in a state of constant flux. I barely begin to look…

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Beautiful Boy : Tragedy without Catharsis

Beautiful Boy : Tragedy without Catharsis

No man is an island, John Donne said. To be human is to bond, and to bond is to share — happiness and the plenty, but also pain and exhaustion and desperation. We are all at the mercy of the people we love, whatever misfortunes they meet or bring upon themselves.

Nothing about being an addict is easy. Absolutely nothing about being with an addict is easy by a long shot. How do parents who try so…

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Monumentalism and Representation of Women across monuments : Erasure and the Subliminal Impact

Monumentalism and Representation of Women across monuments : Erasure and the Subliminal Impact

An ‘imagined identity’ which had the opportunity to make humans out of us all, chose to ‘stand erect’, literally. Declaring openly in 1890, Germany’s Otto Bismarck himself said the following while considering the figure of Germania as the monumental symbol for the United Germany. “I don’t find the figure of Germania appropriate. A female being with a sword in such a defiant pose is some-what…

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Art Institute of Chicago

Drawn to the inherent need to freeze an image in time, leave traces to document what was happening when it was happening, Charles White, a native Chicagoan who began his formal art education at The Art Institute of Chicago, brings forth a literal representation of lives of the African-Americans through a lens where it is difficult to fathom where he stood in context. A lot of it feels like a robust statement of solidarity, wanting to be one with the subject while a lot of it looks like it is captured through the eyes of a photographer holding a microscopic lens to reality.

Using a highly realistic way to approach the desire to engage with mainstream art discourses while embracing the specifics and nuances of Black identity and experience, Charles White’s art manages to form a language around unexplored dimensions of black lives from 1918 through 1979. He deals with emotions delicately, almost with a carving knife, careful of what to not scrap off from the canvas to create a narrative in every image in itself. Charles white’s black humans, done in charcoal and pencils and lithography shine and shimmer. Walking through the retrospective is an uneven, unsettling glimpse into the reality on a life and culture that is known and familiar, but uncomfortable to behold and acknowledge; Or maybe does not have to vocabulary to. What words describe a man’s process of walking into a life, building a society in a space where he has no inherent place in?

James Baldwin in his book, In The Fire Next Time says “there has been almost no language” to describe the black life. “Neither its horrors nor the pleasures,” adds bell hooks in Black Looks. And then comes Charles White, who was possibly in search of one himself. Using everything within his eyesight and his grasp, Charles White’s challenge to find artistic language to express difference almost requires no words. The narrative, spoken of black lives through black eyes adds dimensions to lives and culture and society; correcting the record on the African-American experience in this country.

While the cross-hatching is unlike anything I have seen before, it is the eyes, that he has so eloquently concentrated on, chosen to super-impose context and figures to just document, before making a statement. Very fluid, very graceful lines speak in a blocky narrative and extra-ordinary detail about the lives, the grief and the loss experienced in the African American lives in and around the world war two to the civil rights movement. There is a distinct cubism in the way he approaches portraits while keeping the emotions, as human as possible, not twisted into grotesque and undesirable. There is an eloquent despondency which flows through the curving lines and bodies which are twisted to fit into bolder frames; the language speaking of an unrequited desire, of wanting to curve gracefully and being forced to take a turn due to segregation.

Charles white stands tall in solidarity of the aliens. Of the dreamers, the language-less, the rebels, musicians and artists and workers and laborer’s who have been given no space to be but have been used mercilessly, squirmed and squished till there was nothing left but a sense of feeling empty.

There is no sense of mockery. No accusations. His art speaks without instructing the viewer as to what to feel. But when the body contorts itself to try to find a place in a painting and does not; there is a distinct sense of unease, almost voyeuristic; To try to find a place in an already lacking space.

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There are also no heroes, just human beings who get tired, who need comfort, who feel, who wait, sleep and dance and sing in times of tragedies. Emotions that explore the turbulent life of an outcast culture who was never given the grace and dignity of appearing human. The people in Charles White’s art radiate substance, presence, and agency. They act as deliberate correctives to the rampant misrepresentation of blacks in white-controlled mainstream history and art. Giving names and faces and actual human traits through the eyes of someone who was right there; Without a filter.

  We Are In Depression But We Are Not Depressed: Charles White, A Retrospective Art Institute of Chicago Drawn to the inherent need to freeze an image in time, leave traces to document what was happening when it was happening, Charles White, a native Chicagoan who began his formal art education at The Art Institute of Chicago, brings forth a literal representation of lives of the African-Americans through a lens where it is difficult to fathom where he stood in context.

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Exhale ...

Exhale …

It has been two years since my journey with Spoken word Poetry began. More than 7 years since my recognition of my declining mental health did. Speaking about it, did not begin in the first 5 years. Neither did acknowledging it exists, so any prospects of help or medication was certainly out of question. I belong to a family of well-read, really aware human beings who somehow have failed to…

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I have to admit, I havn’t explored director Luca Guadagnino’s work before. But I have read the book Call me By your Name, so watching the movie was something I was dreading. But imagine my surprise when I came across a movie that made me forget to actually compare it to the book. (that, never happens!)

Set ‘somewhere in Italy’ in 1983, for the initial first hour of the movie, I kept wondering what language the movie was in, and it made me realize how the first pre-conceived notion we have about any movie begins with the language. Italian means scenic yet European in its sensibilities, French might be sensual and American, brash.  But Call me By your Name walks right past those barriers with its seamless navigation between Italian/English/French languages. Luca Guadagnino blends the sensibilities of North American and European independent cinema. The result is lyrical, accessible and one of 2017’s finest films.

To briefly sum it up, the movie is a story of a once-in-a-lifetime love between the 17-year-old Italian Elio and 20-something cocky American academic Oliver, played out over a brief six week period but recalled over and over for a lifetime. Love, being the keyword. Because there is nothing brash about this romance. Infact it is incredibly passionate yet equally tender in its nature, like most relationships are. Elio is the intelligent, charming son of archeology professor Samuel Perlman (Michael Stuhlbarg), with whom Oliver, a graduate student, is interning for the summer. Guadagnino’s film, based on the 2007 novel by André Aciman, takes us through Elio and Oliver’s relationship, which develops haltingly at first but then burns and seeps into every pore of your skin.

    Elio is someone desperate to take the growing-up process in his stride despite how scary it may be. Though he’s a teenager desperate for the approval of everyone around him, he has this vulnerability that he displays only occasionally. Timothy Chalamet portrays Elio who is genuinely aloof and cold at times. He is a teenager struggling to fit into the so called molds of the society by appearing cool and nonchalant when he really is not. It is so endearing to see his relationship with his mother, which has no barriers. It is sweet and raw and tender. He can cry in front of his mother and laugh and fall in love and hug her out of nowhere.

Armie Hammer, who could so easily be reduced to the part of a typically handsome Hollywood stand-in, is enthralling; he shifts between Oliver’s public brashness and private tenderness with ease, making his character far more than a simple object of desire. Oliver is the blazing embodiment of cocky self-confidence, and yet, there’s an endearing vulnerability in the way he needs for Elio to make the first move — setting the tempo for the deliciously tentative courtship dance between them.He’s flirty but tender—the couple’s love scenes are heartbreaking and intensely erotic all at once—and even though he’s the more experienced of the two, he can’t help but diving in headlong.

And lurking in the background is Stuhlbarg, wonderful as a knowing father who is content to mostly let his son figure things out by himself, but who steps in with a guiding hand when things get a little tougher.

Both intensely erotic and intensely contained, the movie acknowledges the very private lives gay men were forced to lead in the early 1980s, when the film is set. As a result, in Call Me by Your Name,virtually every bit of physical contact is crucial and electrifying. The way Elio and Oliver peel away each other’s layers has both a sweetness and a giddy thrill to it. The romance is complete with silent, unspoken understandings and messages that bounce around public space and crowded rooms full of oblivious straights. It’s about tension, desire, longing, rather than big events.

Guadagnino’s sensual attention to the textures and smells and intimate noises of Italian life builds out a cinematic world that encompasses his characters but is much greater than them.

Call Me by Your Name is a opulent, intoxicating experience for the body, but it’s also an arousal for the soul.The lazy European summer glows with nostalgic warmth, as the textured stock captures the haze of the beating sun and the azure blues of water and sky. Frames if you pause them can turn into paintings and the symbolism that remains heady yet firmly in the background, the aesthetics put a huge smile on my face.

I admire how the movie is not anything about the politics or the social aspect of gay romance. This isn’t a film about wrongdoing and punishment; it is about love, loss, and piercing joy in the context of a gay romance. We know (and Oliver and Elio and Elio’s parents know) that this gorgeous intoxicating generous romance can’t last forever, but in capturing the burn, Guadagnino makes us feel Elio’s desire, and thus his devastation. Every image practically drips with longing: a live fish someone’s trapped in the river, pages flapping in the hot breeze, water pouring from a tap into a stone pool, a table spread with breakfast arrangements, the smouldering end of a cigarette.

One of my favourite scenes is when Oliver pleading in a whisper to Elio, after they’ve finally slept together, for him to “call me by your name, and I’ll call you by mine.”. though a strange request it might seem, it is a direct reference to Plato’s Symposium and the theory of humans split in half, which we now call the origin story for Soulmates.

Another scene is one of the most beautiful monologues I have witnessed recently; in a surprisingly heart-warming conversation between Elio and his Father,the film offers this conversation as a gift to audiences who might have desperately needed to hear it in their own lives.

Note, You’ll want to stay all the way through the closing credits—that long, last image is so transfixing. I seriously don’t know how Chalamet pulled it off, but there is serious craft on display here.

Call my By Your Name is a swooning tale about the seismic power of first love—one that doesn’t dismiss Elio’s experience as a folly of youth, but instead digs into the unmistakable trace it leaves, for better or worse.

  The Unabashed Endearing Vulnerability of Call me By your Name I have to admit, I havn't explored director Luca Guadagnino's work before. But I have read the book Call me By your Name, so watching the movie was something I was dreading.

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Chaos

It has been a while since I got my bearings back. I mean yes, I have been posting and yes I have been very active on my social media but we all know the facade that social media can be. With almost every aspect of my life in shambles, I stopped talking, writing and immersed myself in binge-watching and binge-reading. Afterall, isn’t peeping into someone else’s life always better than examining…

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I once got a meme saying ” If you think you have made bad choices in life, remember there were 13 publishers who rejected the manuscript for Harry Potter.”

13 publishers rejected the Harry Potter series before JK Rowling landed a deal with Bloomsbury. Approximately 15 networks also, rejected Stranger thing before it landed a Netflix deal. Lets just take this moment to consider, the last time people in positions of power rejected art because the protagonists were children, or the heroes were nerds and underdogs, they lost on Harry Potter. And now Stranger Things.

|Spoiler Alert|

There’s no better way to say it. If you thought the first season was crazy, this one will blow you away. Let me just say this. Stranger things 2, is a thing of pure beauty. It’s bigger, better, weirder and more amazing than any of us imagined.  And so much better than season 1.

The Duffer brothers know how to play their cards right. From casting Winona Ryder to discovering Millie Bobby Brown to making all of us nerds look good, they have built a solid foundation in the first season. The second season, build upon the story and oh, the way they build it up! Also can you believe how grown up the kids look, suddenly?

It’s rare for a TV series to come out of the gate as self-assured and as well-received as Stranger Things did, and even rarer for it to be able to maintain that into a second season. But somehow, The Duffer Brothers have again managed to wield their particular alchemy and create a follow-up worthy of the hype created by its predecessor.

Building the story arc much better and much stronger than it was in the first season, this time, the story is much comfortable with letting all the characters explore their own lives and their own pursuits.

Let’s begin with the Music. Oh my god. The soundtrack for the second season is so integral to the storytelling. The makes have used songs and music to emotionally manipulate us. There are moments where you are on the edge of your seat, biting your nails or just sitting aghast as to what just happened. And that was just the music.

We finally have Will as the center of the story this season. Noah Schnapp is a revelation. After being barely more than a prop last year, he does a ton of heavy-lifting here. Some truly horrifying things happen to Will this season, and Schnapp takes a huge step forward with his performance, just like Bobby Brown did last year with Eleven.

Mike who was the lead last season is on more of a back seat. He talks to Eleven every day over the walkie-talkie, counting off how many days it’s been since he last saw her. He’s bitter over losing her and misses her more than the other boys do. One of the things I wish they would have done was give Mike more to do. He spends a lot of his time at Will’s side, and although he makes some important discoveries here and there throughout the season, he’s far from playing the central role he had in season 1, which is unfortunate given Finn Wolfhard’s amazing acting chops. There are definitely some emotional peaks for Mike, but he’s in the background far too often.

The emotional quotient has certainly gone up with the second season. The kids have aged, they have gone through an ordeal most 11 year old don’t think of. They are not only grown up but also matured. A Harry Potter parellel again. You see these kids grow up. Every character shares a bond with will make your heart melt; Will and Jonathan, Hopper and Eleven, Mike and Eleven, Lucas and Max, Dustin with Dárt and the most unexpected of them all, Steve and Dustin. In addition to finding five kid actors who can nail every emotional beat, the show’s taken cast members who are just chameleons aging into their parts like it is the easiest thing they have done; effortless.

Is there a better cast role than David Harbor as Hopper? Every single expression and movement he makes has weight to it. The scenes with him and Eleven are so heartbreaking and emotionally charged. Those two play off each other better than anyone could have hoped.

Also can we talk about just how awesome Steve was in this season? He and Dustin are a pair I never thought would happen but What A Team. Also, he finally revealed the secret to his superb hair. 

I can’t help but draw parallels to Harry Potter’s leglimency and the connection between Will and the Shadow Monster. The monster can read through Will. It goes all the way from spying to a hint of exorcism. Will’s character goes through so much horror in this season but its Joyce who shines brighter than before. Very early on we know it’s not only Will who’s going through what can be called PTSD. Everyone is paranoid. Joyce, all the more so. She won’t let WIll out of her sight. She needs him in front of her eyes to know she’s safe and as usual, she does that with all the tact and grace of an over-concerned parent. She is the badass mother who will not sit quiet and let anything hurt her children. And if needed she wont hesitate to kill.

Many would disagree here but I personally loved the seventh episode. An arc from the Hawkins storyline, this episode has none of the original cast. Eleven spent all her life looking for a home, first trying to understand what home was and then looking for a place to call home. Let’s just say, its absolutely beautiful to see how she goals all around, follows all the hints and clues,  listens to anyone who would help on what their take on a home was. She tried them all. But the beauty lies in how after all that she chooses to come back again to realise home is exactly where she was.

    The arc is an a whole new insight into Eleven’s character development. It was a risk and Im so glad they took it. But more importantly, the Duffers��know when to bring their many splintered storylines and characters back together. The season’s final two episodes are a long process of reweaving everything that’s been frayed, and when the season’s coda (which takes place during a Christmas season that seems to exist in the middle of summer) unfurls at a school dance, there’s a distinct sense of time having passed, lessons having been learned, and kids growing up.

That scene where Joyce, Jonathan and Mike all recount intimate stories with Will to break through the Smoke Monster’s hold on him? Perfection. Mike and Eleven’s reunion was beautiful and the “Should I Stay or Should I Go” montage is a standout sequence. Watch Will’s family perform a space heater-assisted exorcism on him and tell me you don’t get the heebie-jeebies (people still use that term, right?). Watch our heroes split up into three teams to beat back the Upside Down and tell me you don’t think that’s just plain cool.

This season is way more fast paced than the previous one. While the makers hit the ground running, they are very careful not to go too fast and leave a stone unturned. They know what got them here: strong characters and detailed storytelling. By the end of the season, all the storylines converge in a realistic and satisfying way. The new characters make sense, and and and THEY GOT ONE OF THE ORIGINAL GOONIES! The writing is stronger than season one as well. While there are plenty of 80’s references and callbacks, they are all natural and welcome.

What wouldn’t I give to live in a time when Dolly Parton and Duran Duran were the in thing!

Stranger Things 2 lives up to the hype. It delivers, in spades. There are moments of pure enthrallment. It never gets stale. It’s never boring. Trust me when I say you’ll binge it, it will keep you on your toes, it will keep you waiting, excited, it will make you laugh and cry and fall in love and just like that, when it’s over, it will also make you hate yourself for binging it.

One last thing.

They really don’t like characters whose names begin with B do they?

  Stranger Things 2 : What A Beauty I once got a meme saying " If you think you have made bad choices in life, remember there were 13 publishers who rejected the manuscript for Harry Potter…

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I generally don’t share TED talks but this one, is so so so very important. It gave me hope, and answers to questions I keep asking myself when it comes to the mental health of people around me. Sue Klebold is honest, and raw and completely uninhibited in her story.  She nowhere defends Dylan Klebold’sacts but rather looks at it from the underside of a microscope to understand where he would…

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#MeToo : What it does NOT mean

#MeToo : What it does NOT mean

The first thing I saw yesterday morning was Andrea Gibson’s Me too status. It left me a little bit puzzled. But the minute I delved into it, the whole thing got pretty clear.

By the end of the day, I opened my Facebook timeline to see almost every girl write a #MeToo status. It had spread across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. A huge number of sexual assault and harassment survivors are sharing…

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It’s been so long since I made an entry here, I have been in and out of it, be it depression, losing someone I love and just the sheer amount of stress when it comes to life. Something in me has been breaking down till I finally wrote this which was published on The Mighty.

I used to think Chris Cornell was the survivor of the grunge deaths, the “living legacy” taken forward in ways beyond grunge. His voice perhaps is the most truthful voice I have heard, and his liquid tone made me fall in love, every single time.

At the age of 17, I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder. And since then, there have been few things that have helped me hold on. Words are my refuge. Poetry, literature and lyrics. Cornell became one of the few people whose voice cut through the fog of dark I’d get in, and his songs were some of the few things I could always lean on. They were always there for me. His voice always spoke truth to me. He always spoke of pain as if he felt it as much as I did, as if my truth was his truth.

News of his suicide have haunted me for 24 hours now, and makes me wonder if these people who give us reasons to hold on to life, who build a solid foundation upon which we rest our lives and thoughts and beliefs — it makes me wonder if they really exist. If their art was a way to communicate, to reach out to tell us they are suffering. Were we too indulgent in our own grief, own problems, own coping mechanisms that we used their art to build ourselves a ladder out of the pit, but never really saw what they were saying all along?

Chris’ songs talk about death repeatedly. Cries about self-expression, self-worth, grief and the deep dark pit he lived in, repeatedly. And I never paid attention to the fact that they came from him, his suffering, and instead used them to resonate with my own.

Maybe we should stop using art to say “me too” and listen, really pay attention, to what the words mean, see what the artist is really telling. Not miss the signs, not only use the signs.

Maybe we should stop only responding to art, but really look at it. Maybe we ought to not only see what art is making us feel, but explore the places it comes from. Maybe we will see a pattern, the hints are always there. Art is the truest form of expression, only it’s easier to critique than to understand what places it comes from.

Maybe then, we can try and understand these suicides. Maybe then, we can help. Maybe then, we can hope to prevent them.

You can read it here :

https://themighty.com/2017/05/chris-cornell-music-suicide-death/

It's been so long since I made an entry here, I have been in and out of it, be it depression, losing someone I love and just the sheer amount of stress when it comes to life.