#i should do this but convert letters to numbers and make them scavengers

[zmwisethepoet]

Eradicating Chaos, Inviting Duende

Published as the Cover Letter in Harbinger Asylum: Fall 2020 Issue

           It is no secret that we have entered another dark chapter of earthly hell this year. I have yet to meet a soul who claims that 2020 was not that terrible. I thank goodness that this conversation has not transpired, because if it did, I would be rendered speechless and walk as far away as my feet could carry me. Sheer optimism alone will not cloak the prominence of our two main invisible enemies: COVID-19 and racial injustice, the latter of which has been occurring since time immemorial. While we as humans try with every fiber of our being to do what is necessary to protect our species, it does not always pan out in our favor. As history shows, it rarely seems to bode well that way. One too many have fallen at the hands of others. To this day, why we willingly degrade, exile, inflict physical and mental trauma, corrupt, and kill our own kind based on what we deem as inferior, whether it be gender, race, orientation, religion, or other factors still baffles me beyond all belief. It pains my heart to see certain peaceful protests and demonstrations of equality turn riotous because of the ‘authority strike of fire’ on an innocent. It makes me question the very nature of our collective existence. Perhaps this makes me ignorant or unmindful. Perhaps it leads me to believe that there is no hope for humanity whatsoever. As much of a neutralist [or cynical realist] as I am, I refuse to believe that we are headed straight for oblivion. While we are infants in comparison to other species on this planet, we have much to learn and we are still attempting to do so.

          The late comedian George Carlin once said that our species had our chance and we squandered it. I agree with him to an extent. This is part of the reason why I am neutral on the prospect of our species colonizing on Mars. Why is it, however, that the many groups of people who attempt to preserve our sapphire and emerald home, as well as its inhabitants, are overshadowed by the amount of parasites that form into one gargantuan maelstrom? It is fascinating how a great deal of us choose to focus on the negative and leave the positive to be feasted on by mental scavengers. Let us not forget the alarming amount of natural disasters, a gory political battle, and a certain species of hornet with a menacing moniker.

          The aforementioned virus has been the cruelest teacher that this planet could ask for, save certain actions that should have been taken in its preliminary stages. It has taught us what we can accomplish as a collective as long as we cooperate with the necessary precautions. It has tested our mental limits and patience, provoking us to lose our craniums and step out into the warzone as if our lives are still perfectly normal. It has separated us into two categories: the paranoid and the reckless. The tragically hilarious part is that both sides believe that their actions are correct and the other side is being moronic in some form or fashion. I do my absolute best to remain in the middle. I am not going to subject myself to any small or large variations of a high-risk environment with high-risk individuals while protecting myself and the people I love, but I am by no means going to board myself in my home until this umpteenth wave of chaos has ceased to be. It has attempted to rewire our thinking and survival tactics. I am torn between shaking my head at those who freely choose to remove their masks in public and congregate in larger crowds, save a few noble causes, and feeling a massive amount of pity for those who have lost the willpower to remain isolated from those they love and the social activities that were suddenly stripped from them. Our species was not wired for prolonged isolation and quarantine. Many introverts have converted to extroverts who wish to splurge their social juices. Nevertheless, such actions have caused medical staff members and frontline workers around the globe to put themselves at higher risk than anyone else. They are more heroic than people seem to realize. I lost my mind within the first couple of months of this pandemic and I have yet to reclaim it, but I am not going to risk everything and everyone I hold dear to me just for the possibility of losing health as well. John Lydon once said, “Life is precious and not a thing to be destroyed,” though he was speaking on the subject of Kurt Cobain’s sudden passing. Such a statement relates to our present situation.

          If you have read this far in the ink words of such unintentional vitriol, I salute you. After all, as author Madeleine D’Engle once said, “Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.” Where does chaos end and where does duende begin? For those of you who do not know the latter word’s definition, that is quite all right. I am not speaking of the Latin American mythological creature of the same name. Duende is one of many ‘incredamazing’ words that cannot be translated into English, but contains a powerful definition. Duende is described as ‘a work of art’s mysterious power to deeply move someone’. For centuries, many creators and their chosen crafts (or the crafts that chose them) have spread a trillion and eight possibilities, unless they carried a sole intention. During a fraction of this time, the element of self-expression came into play through the creation itself. Most of the time, it has been used to evoke thoughts from the masses. It is also during this time that the arts have placed our minds at ease amidst the chaos, whether through aural pleasures, the written word, the visual and suspended, the visual and in motion, or kinetic and tangible. We have relied on the arts to keep us relatively sane, centered, and balanced. A personal philosophy of mine, especially during the accursed year of 2020, is that as long as you do not inflict harm upon others or yourself, sanity is overrated. At this point, if you are not at least a tad bit cuckoo or peculiar, I may not trust you. For me as an individual, the arts, whether appreciating or creating, is a lustful craving, akin to fitness, meditation, and other various pleasures. What is more relevant is that it contains the power to grant us hope and to aid us in not losing that hope, even if at this point, hope is a thin, sliver-shaped shrapnel piece. Despite the number of life-threatening cases that seem to continue piling on, we cannot lose this shrapnel of hope. Many of the word wielders in this issue of Harbinger Asylum exhibit this intention through their poetry and prose, as well as the captors of photographic serenity. I am thankful to have played a major role in the development of this journal and Transcendent Zero Press in this manner, as well as the manner of diversity in our pages. Each issue and each manuscript we release is like a basket of potpourri delights, some containing mysterious elements and the other with raucous neon gods.

          We are not out of the woods quite yet, my dearest fellow peoploids. However, we will make it through this seemingly apocalyptic Tartarus. We must make it through, for the sake of our health and the universal love we cling to day in and day out. I would personally like to dedicate the Fall Edition of Harbinger Asylum to the fallen victims of 2020, whether through the violent brutalities of racial injustice, those whose bodies succumbed to the virus, and those we have lost due to Madre Terra’s disasters, as well as the disasters we created ourselves. To your families, every medical staff member, frontline worker, and to everyone reading this journal, I say, “Pax vobiscum. Poetry lives. Long live the arts.” …and dare I add, “Long live love.”

[joegcpsarts-blog]

Final Arts Scholars Synthesis

• Thinking back to your first semester in the program, describe your personal growth and any correlations you can draw to your experiences in the program.

Along with my acceptance letter to attend UMD in the fall of 2015, I received acceptance into the Scholars Program. From that point, it felt good being in a tighter community of people that I didn’t even know yet. I had actually emailed Brent Hernandez asking to be considered for the program on the basis that both of my older brothers were also in the scholars program and had only good things to say about it. So I’m glad I got accepted solely based off that email I sent.

Our service field trips the very first week of school were a great impression of the program for me. I went to Paint Branch elementary and was painting murals on their new portable classrooms. I made some new friends through the silly ice breaking activities, and got to spend the day collaborating on paintings and hanging out with a few of the elementary school kids. I got paint on my shorts that still won’t come off, but it was worth it. I also enjoyed the DC scavenger hunt because it let me get to know some of the mentors form last year like Graham and Micheal, two very cool guys. I thought we would be doing a lot more of that stuff over the course of my two years in the program, so in hindsight I might suggest those as things we could do more often. I realize it wouldn’t be easy to do for free like it usually is, but those were things I really wouldn’t mind paying $5-10 to do maybe once a month.

• What were your expectations coming into the Arts program?  What did you learn and experience as an Arts Scholar?

Other expectations I had…well I really didn’t know what to expect. I thought of it initially as a group of people here at UMD with which I would share common interests, and we would be involved in art related classes and activities. The workshop section of the program was the most relevant to this vision I had of what arts scholars should be. Last spring, I took miniature 3d clay modeling, and I thought that was a really cool opportunity to have as a creative outlet.

Having lived with my friends from high school in Hagerstown Hall, removed from the “living” part of the living and learning program is something I may have reconsidered looking back on it. I didn’t think that living apart from my scholarly peers would have as much of an impact as it seems it did. Coming into colloquium, I wasn’t feeling the sense of community that I likely would have felt if I lived with and saw all my scholarly peers on a daily basis.

Once we got into the actual semester, with the themes over the last two years being trash and power, I thought that those overarching themes would have more relevance to the things we did in colloquium than it ended up having. Like, I only remember power being mentioned in colloquium like 4-5 times throughout this entire year. Trash was much the same way last year, but instead of it being understated, it was just uninteresting overall. Like I remember an activity where we had to make a ridiculous invention out of trash, and like that’s great and all but what’s the point really

• In what ways did your capstone project draw upon what you have learned throughout your two years in the program (including supporting courses and co-curricular activities)? 

The idea for my project came from the English 101 class I was in during my spring 2016 semester. The basis of my research, exploring and analyzing the music industry through economic and social lenses to explain the growing creative opportunities for artists, came from a research paper I did in that English class. I researched how digital advancements in music (and media as a whole, really) affected record labels, artists, and consumers in a negative way. I had been wanting to expand on that topic for a while and I saw the capstone project as an opportunity to do that, so I began looking at more creative, artist-based avenues of research and eventually decided to learn about creative control. I had a lot of fun being able to develop the thoughts and opinions I had made before; revisiting and reevaluating different aspects of the industry was very interesting to me. Seeing how far I’ve come since then, culminating into the capstone project I completed, was a satisfying experience for me.

I wouldn’t say my capstone drew very much from my experiences as an arts scholar. Maybe in a broader scope it just sort of related to my interests and thoughts as an artist, but didn’t really stem directly from what we did in an arts scholars capacity.

 • How has your understanding of art--including the role of art in your own life—been impacted by your experiences in the Arts program?  What changes have you observed in how you think about art?

Art is huge in my life. I’m a kinesiology and dance double major, and dance takes up the majority of my time. I prioritize my time in the dance studio every other day very highly and rely on that creative outlet to essentially stay sane. I took my first dance class freshman year as an elective requirement for arts scholars, and form there it’s snowballed a lot to become a major part of my life. My kinesiology advisor still remembers me as the student she managed to convert into a dance major since she made the initial suggestion that I take dance200 instead of an architecture class. So right there, arts scholars has had a huge impact on my academic career and my life overall.

A significant number of arts scholars are also dance majors (like 5? So awesome), so I got to be better friends with them because of that connection. I already see them all the time for dance, but seeing them at scholars events makes the events all the more enjoyable. Plus just seeing people more often will usually lead to more bonding and friendship, so the 2 more hours per week I can see all of them is a good time.

• How has the program influenced you as an artist and/or advocate for the arts?

Arts are so important in everything we do. Now that’s easy to say, I realize, but being in an arts major I’ve gained a greater appreciation for all the creativity and art in my daily life. I go to a dance concert roughly every week performed by all my undergraduate peers and they are the greatest people I could ever ask to interact and create with. The messages and ideas being expressed, complicated social issues or personal experiences, in these pieces are special in that they can be interpreted through this universal language of dance. I go to dance classes every other day and learn about this art and how to better myself and those around me through art. The fact that the national endowment for the arts is getting completely cut is a horrible decision; Earth without Art is just Eh.

As an artist, yea I’ve definitely grown from being in the arts scholars’ atmosphere with all my creative peers surrounding me. It’s hard to accurately define where all my inspiration came from, but again being able to collaborate with all these people that share my passion for their own sorts of artistic expression has to have some sort of residual impact on my own creative process.

• Looking forward, in what ways do you foresee your experience as a Scholars student will have the most significant impact on your career and/or personal ambitions?

I came to UMD with the intention of going to medical school when I graduated and becoming a medical doctor. Since then, I have changed from a kinesiology major with a pre-med track to a kinesiology and dance double major with a pre-PT track. Now I hope to one day become a physical therapist specializing in dancers. I can only credit arts scholars with being the first door to open towards where I am now.

Because all my ambitions for dance were indirectly introduced by arts scholars, I feel I can say that my experiences as an arts scholar will be a part of my daily life in the future. What I do will be a combination of artistic expression and scientific knowledge used to help others in a positive way. The activities we did specifically in workshops, meditation and 3d clay modeling specifically, will likely not be very useful in my career, but the occasional meditation in dance is pretty relaxing.

Thank you to Harold, Jess, Kenna, all the TA’s, workshop leaders, and peer mentors that helped make this final year of arts scholars run smoothly for everyone. I’m sad to see it end after what did not feel like two whole years. So sad, in fact, that I might apply to be a TA so I can see all of you and stay immersed in the artistic atmosphere for another little while.