Ecuador

Kichwa

Indigenous

I wonder if in the future the Kichwa Otavalo community will still be known for being “Mindalaes” traveling merchants, will we travel across galaxies or planets?

ñawpa

A woman walking across a starlit path towards a city on the horizon

A collage of a woman sitting cross-legged with her hands on her knees, alongside an image of her lying facedown on a yoga mat with her hands upturned and stretched towards the camera.

An autumn landscape with vibrant trees with leaves in oranges, yellows, and reds

Campfire beside a boulder at night in front of a starry sky

Film poster for 90s Disney Film "Honey I Blew Up the Kid". Depicts actor Rick Moranis standing in the middle of a white background with a giant red and white toddler's sneaker ominously hanging over him about to stomp on him. Poor man!

A photo of a woman wearing Philippine cultural attire with illustrations and typography overlaid.

A man wearing a golden headless, holding a staff, sitting on a rock; a sword is stuck into his chest and he is bleeding, yet looks proud

Whoopi Goldberg as her character Guinan from Star Trek: The Next Generation with a caption "There'll be others. But every time you feel love, it'll be different. Every time it's different."

It is shortly after the celebration of Thanksgiving holiday here in the United States. It's a holiday that was founded on a false idea of togetherness that sought to erase some really bad things in US history, but what's been so reassuring is that I see a lot of friends are able to see some good come out of the holiday: a goal of merriment with friends of all beliefs and backgrounds in the coldest part of Winter. Perhaps, for many of my cosmopolitan friends in New York City especially, we've remixed Thanksgiving into our own holiday to represent the values of camaraderie that we so desperately need in these times, just as we are surfacing our understanding the new Omicron variant of COVID as we go into December.

I had some thoughts I wanted to visit for some time, and have only gotten the time to settle them down into some recognizable shape. Like you say, it feels like we're in times where thoughts and ideas and revelations seem to pour out of every conversation and interaction, digital and in-person, but for the sake of posterity, I want to capture at least some of the ones I've had over the past month before I write my next letter to you.

My first set of thoughts center around young people. My next set of thoughts center around Asian American-ness. My last set of thoughts center around doing good.

(Be warned, we're going to have quotes being thrown left and right.)

"Best Day Ever!" image from Nickelodeon's Spongebob Squarepants, which echoes my cousin once-removed's declaration during Thanksgiving

This last month marks my shift in working life to education. As someone who admired the work of people like Mr. Rogers and Jim Henson, who placed such an emphasis on reaching and influencing young people, it seemed only proper for me to actually work with young people firsthand to see what they're like rather than read books about it.

And simply being around young people for a few weeks, I've already felt stirring in my soul to the memories, sounds, and textures of the mental landscape of being a young person again. What a wonder it is to view the world as so fresh and new! During Thanksgiving, my 5 year old cousin once-removed (my cousin's daughter) kept saying "This is the best day ever!" I can't be certain if it's something that kids just say because it's fun to say, or they saw it on a TV show like Spongebob. But part of me tries to remember what it was like to form memories as a 5 year old, and there were probably days where in maybe 2-3 years of conscious living, a simple Thanksgiving can truly be one of the best days of one's short life.

Another thought I've been delighting in pondering: are they 'young people'? Are they 'children'? Are they 'adults of the future'? 'Future thinkers and creators and doers' feels like it's already creating pressure. What vocabulary should we be using to describe people who are so new to this world? I see that young people themselves are whole people in their own right, even if adults can instinctively view them as lesser. But often, while they lack in developmental milestones and life experiences, they can often exhibit whole personalities that are unique and whole in their own right from a young age. We've often internalized the right for a person or entity to exist based on their utility to society, but I think maybe to reclaim young people's rights to exist for their own sake, I like to refer to them as 'young people.'

On another note, young people simultaneously give us hope, yet we are also the ones who must model for them and give them hope that there can be a better future. I hope I learn something new every day to be a good model for young people in the future, and create practices and expectations that encourage them to be clever, emotionally intelligent, and brave.

I like the quote "We do not inherit the land from our ancestors, but we borrow it from our children." I had first seen the quote in an exercise at an old job where we had to choose a quote from a selection of quotes set up on a vast array of tables, almost like how the Dalai Lama is said to be found when as a child, choosing his favorite toys from a vast selection of toys, presumably able to because he has memories from his past life. Apparently this particular quote is unclear in origin, as per Quote Investigator, but I still appreciate the elegance and sentiment of it, especially in times where we as a collection of generations are so consciously thinking about the future state we are leaving the planet in.

Another thing I've noticed, which might sound like it goes without saying, is that young people are all completely different each time. I believe I heard a marine biologist on a podcast once say she couldn't eat meat after she saw that the face of every fish was individual and different, just like the face of every human was unique and personal.

Likewise, each child is born to a different family, and you can't reduce them to simplistic terms. And when I look at them, I can't help but be in amazement that every one of them is singular, individual, and special. There's also a meme I saw of Star Trek: The Next Generation that said love with someone is different every time.

And of course, there's the Mr. Rogers quote,

"You make each day a special day by just your being you. Everything you do is just a little bit different from everybody else. In that way, you've already won."

And of course, that's true for adults too, because every adult was once a child. There's no need to be perfect or some platonic ideal of human accomplishment, because there's no one way to be, each person is already perfect, like every fish, every animal, every plant, every leaf, every snowflake, and every blade of grass.

Additionally, on the topic of young people, as hopeful and kindhearted I try to be, I wrestle with all these cynical feelings around the world, how there's many days where it seems very difficult to have high hopes. But I see the students bright faces and think of their futures, and I can't face them with cynicism. I think of this quote by Hayao Miyazaki:

“Personally I am very pessimistic. But when, for instance, one of my staff has a baby you can't help but bless them for a good future. Because I can't tell that child, 'Oh, you shouldn't have come into this life.' And yet I know the world is heading in a bad direction. So with those conflicting thoughts in mind, I think about what kind of films I should be making.”

Another feeling that I'm unsure of how to address, but I feel I must talk about is a feeling of unmoored-ness around my Asian American identity. I've been wrestling with it quite a bit in the past several years, having an awakening moment in grad school, but I also am able to find myself forgetting what that means to me. And in my letters with you, Art, when I see you embrace your Andean heritage, I stand in admiration. You seem to embrace your cultural identity so warmly, whereas I am confronted with my own touch starvation from my Asian American identity. Do I know it's there? Is it set aside unless I pick it up? When I call to it, will it say it loves me back? Where is it situated in my body? (If I were to place a bet, I think it'd probably be in my stomach.)

As a result, my ambivalent feelings towards my cultural identity has confounded my efforts to feel comfortable in any artistic expression of these feelings. Whatever efforts would be made in the immediate future would be messy, and lack full awareness, and I worry might be insulting to myself and others for reasons I can't articulate easily. So if you're wondering why I couldn't participate more in your Alt Salt celebration of Andean and Asian American heritage, that apprehension is a large part of that answer.

One thing that gives me comfort in my apprehension, is that I understand a lot of my feelings of my Asian American identity are relatable to others in the diaspora as well. And I think through living through this foggy haze of unknown territory, I will gradually live my way into the answers I seek, and I hope that will guide others in their journeys as well. I suppose what I want to say is, where I walk, I know I do not walk alone.

For Asian Americans, it feels as if we each exist as separate islands, unmoored to a continent or culture, either of Asia or America... We don't know what we look like. We see ourselves as we are seen by others in media. Sometimes we can spend most of our lives not even seeing ourselves as Asian. (My cousin's daughter told her that she thought they spoke Spanish at home... Oof.) Asian Americans float around, half blending into our assimilated identities in our new world, half losing our place in a homeland, lost in a foggy mirror. We can seem like foreigners to each other or even ourselves.

And it's strange, even though I feel it's more pronounced in Asian Americans in some ways, I think that's the state of affairs for all Americans to some degree. To note, not Asian Americans, but Americans. Part of the process of coming to America, as a nation of immigrants, is that one has to lose that attachment to a homeland and become unmoored in one's identity, to fit in with the others in our new collective homeland. We each must strike out a new place for ourselves, and carve ourselves a home out of whatever shelter we can, with our own bare hands if necessary. Through coming here, we all have gone through the trauma of losing part of our ancestry and cultural identity, whether in our immediate families or our ancestors. And that's true whether we're people of color, or if we're white. On some level, we're all a bunch of kids with insecure identities trying to fit in at a lunch table which wants to displace us.

We think of the United States as a large country on a single body of land, but really, America is an archipelago nation of 300 million islands. A nation of nations. A collection of people who look at themselves with foggy mirrors.

And now, I sense it in the air, there are cultural forces are at work tectonically shifting underneath Asian Americans, and we find ourselves looking to see where our feet are rooted.

But I think the richness of American identity can be found in our collective understanding that we can all share a place at the table. Like my friends who shared their Thanksgiving tables with other friends in New York City. America is a nation that can gain something from each of us and share it with each other and the rest of the world. That's one of the places I see a wealth of hope in America. I already quoted it last letter, but I realize it's resonating once again, that these words by the poet Maya Angelou speak to a deeper understanding that all people have in America:

“You only are free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place — no place at all.” - Maya Angelou

Lastly, I have recently been mulling over doing good after some prompts this month.

The definition of what good is is not a concern to me. I spent a lot of time in undergrad learning about ethics and moral philosophy (and being in my professors' office hours!) and my general conclusions were straightforward: We all must encourage each other's pleasure, limit each other's pain, and do so as sustainably as possible. So that's easy. But when I think about how to do good, I get discouraged since it's felt recently that live in a world where hope, truth, and justice have been in recession for some time.

My therapist gave me an assignment to mull over what I enjoyed in life that was something I enjoyed for its own sake rather than something I am doing for explicit or implicit external validation. A huge assignment! We acquire so many layers of rationality and ego and societal expectation to protect ourselves that I think any adult barely understands why they do half the things they do. Understanding why we act the way we act is a challenge for maybe two or more lifetimes!

That being said, I still took the assignment seriously and have been mulling over the idea of being good and being perfect. In 15.15 of the Analects, Confucius says "If a person is not in the habit of asking, 'What is this? What is this?' then I cannot do anything for him."

Basically, Confucius can't teach anyone who isn't willing to ask questions, so it's kind of a good place to be. You can't expect yourself to improve if you aren't always asking yourself how you can do better. There's definitely insufferable people we all meet who instantly know the answer to all questions without thinking things through! And oftentimes, the most learned people in a field are much less certain about the validity of truth than people who have a rudimentary understanding of the field. That's the Dunning Kruger Effect at work, after all. If anything, believing you know 100% what the right thing to do is as an individual, is the voice of one's inner tyrant, who demands to be listened to. That is all to say, that short of thinking ourselves into a dangerous maddening loop, asking ourselves how to do better and better is part of a healthy orientation towards good and just living. And it often gets better in concert with our peers and their own guidance and stories.

There is also the saying "Perfect is the enemy of the good". This has served me well to quell the anxious paralyzing part of my mind that tries to anticipate every single possible future and try to prepare for all the catastrophic events that seem to be right around every corner. It cuts through and reassures me that, "hey, just do something good, not perfect, and leave the rest up to fate."

However, maybe there is one most resonant take on doing good that does the best job cutting through all the rational mind and practical aspects of creating solutions that's been helping me recently. It comes from the poem Wild Geese by Mary Oliver, which goes:

“You do not have to be good...You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves."

I've also been exploring a lot of vocabulary around being an artist, and I think that doing good in the world seems to have a lot of similar vocabulary.

As an artist, you need to let your work live and breathe and be released from you. I will be one of the first people to tell you, in games I've made, spending one, two, or three years, there's a half life in which the game will eat at your insides, telling you to get it made. Reflections at Sunset demanded I get released by one October and after two years of development, it was released. 'Released' is a great word for that sensation. It wasn't perfect, after being 'released' from the weight of the game, my spirit felt lighter, and the game probably felt relieved as well. A similar thing happened for Confessions of an NPC. Art will be like that. And as Elizabeth Gilbert says in Big Magic, if you don't answer the call, then the art will stop knocking at your door, and perhaps fly to someone else in the world.

Ultimately, I've been working to attune myself to the quiet voice inside me that knows what it wants after I'm able to settle down all the other noise in my spirit. Improving one's life is being able to constantly peel away all the factors that create noise in our spirit, like feeding our stomach when it distracts us, feeding our mind when we need thoughts, feeding our social animal when we feel lonely, being in a peaceful environment when things have been noisy, and hopefully eventually being able to ask ourselves the questions that have been rapping at our soul for years and answering the call. Part of the work of being an artist and being a human being is knowing how to listen to when the quiet parts of your spirit are pulling at you to go one way in life, to see what lies on the horizon, and not stop walking til you get where you know you were meant to be getting to, tending to the restless inner fire. If we are unable to do so, then there will be dire consequences in our internal worlds and eventually our physical being.

However, if we are able to consistently answer the call from within, attune ourselves to its needs more and more over time, like soothing a frustrated fearful child, eventually we might be able to practice our way into a state of being where our actions are mostly in line with our desires. One of my Eastern Philosophy professor's favorite lines from the Analects (that he probably told me during his office hours) goes:

"At fifteen, I had my mind bent on learning. "At thirty, I stood firm. "At forty, I had no doubts. "At fifty, I knew the decrees of Heaven. "At sixty, my ear was an obedient organ for the reception of truth. "At seventy, I could follow what my heart desired, without transgressing what was right."

I do feel I'm starting to see that progress in my life now. And I hope that I can help others in their journey, no matter their age or race or background. We are all valid and special and I hope to continue my work in reminding myself and others of essential truths like these.

I hope to hear from you soon during this winter season. Stay warm and many blessings.

Letter to Art #3 - Young People, Unmoored Asian Americans, and Doing Good

Envisioning the Future

A piece about the conflicting experience of being disconnected from cultures that have faced so much adversity and colonization. It is about feeling intrinsically connected to these cultures and yet being so displaced from them.

i am a temple forged from sun
an army of iron shimmers from its
golden rays off a white cross
lodged into the beating heart of an empire

i am a dying kingdom
the bleeding sun’s old toy
its bloated bodies born from rotten pride
cast shadows on its land of pawns
like a mushroom cloud travelling by plane

i am of oceans apart
a dead culture, a dying language
a history clinging to its threads
starved of its power, forever writhing

i am empty water bottles
squeezed of worth and tossed aside
white plastic creases
curled over and aching

i am dust in rays of the sun
forever going and gone
yearning a time of no questions
kissing the relics of childhood

i am a temple forged from sun
an army of iron shimmers from its
golden rays off a white cross
lodged into the beating heart of an empire

displacement.

Heritage, music, and creative freedom

This is the first in a series of posts to highlight members of the AltSalt community. First up we have Shirley Man-Kin Leung, a community organizer and yoga teacher based on traditional homelands of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Ute nations (Northern Colorado), as well as organizer behind the Asian American collection for Alternative Worlds.

In this series, we hope to showcase and celebrate the diverse perspectives and creative work of our communities, to learn, find inspiration, and share resonance with one another.

Tell us about yourself! How did you get involved with AltSalt?

I am a sister, a daughter, an auntie, an immigrant, a lover, a gardener, an artist and lover of life.

I got involved with AltSalt through my friendship with Artemio, although we haven’t (yet!) met IRL, we participated in this amazing 6-month long virtual course called Global Reciprocity at the Ayni Institute a few years ago, and have stayed connected ever since then. In that course, one of the things we did was work together to map our entire lineage and legacy of life as humans, to understand where we are, who we are, from 5 billion years ago to today… it transformed my life and that is where the seeds of a lot of my work today was born, and where AltSalt also was born!

What does Alternative Worlds mean to you, and why did you decide to organize an Asian American collection?

Alternative Worlds is about giving us the opportunity for "otra forma de ver" — other ways of seeing. We’re in this liminal space, between the ways things had been and an unknown future. I think it's our role, as artists, to be stewards of this in-between space, to be able to hold and see multiple worldviews and swirl them together and breathe into a reality another way of being. The only way to be with all of the contradictions and transitions we’re in right now, is through art and activism. I think that this is how we will be guided through a transformation process towards a collective awakening, moving us towards global reciprocity.

I wanted to organize the Asian American collection because, as a mixed race, Chinese, Filipino immigrant, who was adopted and raised by white American parents, my own healing journey has been about finding community to heal my own wounds and connect with my ancestors lessons for these times we find ourselves in.

Having a collection is about building community for artists, where we can look to each other in our different but common struggles for liberation, and say I see you, I know myself through your struggle, we are done appealing to the dominant white culture, instead we are prioritizing each other, first and foremost.

The silos we find ourselves in are designed by the empire, and it's exhausting constantly appealing to dominant culture or resisting the world coming at us hard, seemingly alone in our struggle, finding ourselves asking for crumbs... the alternative is, you create a community where you can look around and see our power and creativity and strength is immense, we can learn from each other, we can create a vision together, we can show up and show our strength in ways that are impossible to do alone, it's immensely hopeful!

The racist, colonial regimes are very clear about the world they want, they want the status quo. We’re less ready (in part by design I think) to declare the world we want, our imaginations are atrophied in part because of always being in a reactive / traumatic state of resistance. We must collectively put forth the world we want, that we deserve, that is our inheritance from these freedom fighters, our ancestors, we have everything we need to not only articulate that world but to build it, the constant affirmation that we are enough, we have what we need to be in relationship with one another in deep and meaningful ways to build that world.

What’s your own creative practice like?

My creative practice is hard to define because it takes so many different forms. Poetry has definitely been a guide for me though, and there is this quote by Nayira Wahid speaking to my own feelings and intentions around my creative practice right now:

“You do not have to be a fire for every mountain blocking you, you can be a water and soft river your way to freedom too”

I exercise my creative muscle as a daily practice, as a way of taking time to slow down and be intentional with where I’m putting my energy. I also consider my creative practices to be part of a larger whole of resilience practices, which our ancestors and communities have been cultivating to survive and thrive. I really do believe that we need to be just as rigorous in our play, pleasure and our joy, as other forms of work. When we are in a reactive state, we aren’t able to respond creatively, and that's by design.

Lastly, my creative practice is both playful and oftentimes silly, but it also serves a larger purpose and has been critical for me in my own healing journey. For example, I recently shared a piece of poetry I wrote about my mother’s mental illness and what it’s taught me about honoring joy and healing intergenerational trauma. Speaking about things directly is such a big shift from how I articulate through poetry, and it’s powerful to see different gifts each form has.

What do you think the role of art is in our culture?

I spend a lot of my energy and time thinking about cultural change. Changing our hearts, minds, body and spirits. Policy and social change can move really slow. What can make change happen is the people, and there are many instances of this happening in history (take the Mexican Revolution for one example). I believe that art plays a critical role in this aspect. I also think art has a role in spreading and sharing wisdom and knowledge. Sharing knowledge is about building power, not increasing paranoia. We need to understand what is the system we are up against, but the same way we want to study what we don’t want, we need to study, imagine, and create what we do want to see!

Artists are the stewards of our collective imagination. We need both imagination and memories. Artists can remember, reclaim and reframe; to find things that were lost and hidden on purpose and own and reclaim them through our creative practices.

When it comes to re-building, creating alternative worlds, I think the role of artists is to take the time to slow down to dream and be intentional around the world we want to see. How do we start to put those dreams and strategies into play and then practice? It’s not enough to just think about if we aren’t doing them, practicing! And remember that creating and sharing art is collective! The role of artists is about bringing people along with you, we can't do it alone, where are your homies at?

What do you hope participants get out of being a part of this?

A sense of community, some budding friendships, fresh ideas, support for your own creative practices, and just to have fun and be challenged in some new and exciting ways!

You can find out about Shirley's yoga practice here, and find the Call for Submissions for the Asian American and Andean Collections here. We also invite you to join us for our workshop weekend from July 17-18 th, 2021!

This is the first in a series of posts to highlight members of the AltSalt community. First up we have Shirley Man-Kin Leung, organizer behind the Asian American collection for Alternative Worlds.

"To Dream and Be Intentional" — Interview with Shirley Man-Kin Leung

So I’ve been playing around with creating my own tocapu, or pattern based on Andean sacred geometry. I’ve been inspired by the Andean Futurist Manifesto, and also this idea of fractality, shapes and ideas repeating, reflecting, and refracting on themselves, ad infinitum.

Something I learned from Zadir Milla Euribe, an educator from Peru from who I first began learning about Andean design and cosmovision, is how to begin reading the patterns of the earth and sky.

Tocapus like this one, designed with inspiration from Andean sacred geometry, are intrinsically connected with Andean cosmovision and dialogue with the planet

In the way one can see patterns repeated in nature, from the similarity of the branches of a tree to the bronchi of the lungs, to the spirals in a seashell and the spiral arms of a galaxy, in the tocapus one can see the patterns in small segments repeated in the larger segments.

This is because life itself is dynamic, a spiral — and you can see this play out even in history. Everything is always changing yet circling back on itself, evolving with similarities but transformed — what has happened will come again, and everything is similar yet nothing is the same.

When you walk up to the peak of a mountain, or stand beside a lake, if you look closely and choose to see it, you may see the patterns of clouds represented also in the treeline, and repeated again in the shape of a stone on the ground, and repeated against the horizon — everything always speaking, always dialoguing — this is how the world, how the universe speaks.

The ancestors of the Andes understood this, which is why their architecture takes on natural forms that, in the same way they saw the world speaking to them, attempts to speak with the world. That’s the reason the Nazca lines take on the massive shapes of animals. That’s the reason tocapus have that same characteristic of circling, repeating, the whole contained within the parts.

I’ve come to understand that perhaps this is beyond reason, and when you look at the clouds and see the shapes of animals and objects, perhaps it is all in our imaginations, or perhaps it is also the world thinking, dreaming, and imagining, and trying to speak to us.

In the practice of working with the tocapus, it’s another way of seeing, that’s for sure. It’s not a vision that sees the natural world as a resource to be analyzed, broken down, exploited. And yet maybe it’s this very way of seeing that will allow us to imagine another reality, to speak and create — in contrast to what we know — in reciprocity with the earth.

This is because life itself is dynamic, a spiral — and you can see this play out even in history. Everything is always changing yet circling back on itself, evolving with similarities but transformed.

Andean Sacred Geometry

Offering resonance is an intentional practice used to cultivate deep listening and connection.

Typically done in person, participants take turns sharing and listening to one another's stories, practicing both telling stories earnestly and listening deeply (or in our case, reading).

After the speaker has finished, listeners share the specific moments in which they felt emotionally connected to the story, for example saying, "I resonated with you when you said [insert moment]." Storytellers can then in turn express their gratitude by saying, "Thank you for listening."

Every story we receive is a gift. Offering resonance is a way to reciprocate with the receiving of that gift, to let each other know that we've been heard.

We believe that receiving and offering resonance is a human right. Our aim is to cultivate more sharing, more resonance, more connection, both here and beyond.

Example prompts when resonating:
- I resonated with you when...
- I was right there with you when...
- I really felt when...
- I really appreciated...

Resonating is not:
- Telling your own story
- Offering advice
- Reviewing a piece's quality

If you'd like, we'd love for you to try cultivating this reciprocity muscle and offer resonance to storytellers as a way of practicing deep listening. And in turn, we hope you'll consider sharing your story as well!

You can find more information about resonance in this PDF. 

Our deepest gratitude to the Marshall Ganz of Harvard University; Mark Fairfield, Cedar Landsman, and Lucien Demaris via the Relational Center; and Relational Uprising for devising this framework, and to the Ayni Institute  for sharing it with us, which we have adapted.

in this PDF.

Relational Center

Relational Uprising

Ayni Institute

Offering resonance is an intentional practice used to cultivate deep listening and connection; we've adapted it for AltSalt.

What is Resonance?

Untitled

Dear Art,

I'm happy to be writing to you in this new format, in these times. I think it feels like taking a coat of fresh paint to refresh my perspective on things and what better way to do it than in a new platform like Zonelets? [Note: This is now on AltSalt, which is a fine platform as well, ha]

This platform invokes a lot of technology, but as I approach my 31st birthday this Friday, I'm feeling many layers of emotions that are hard to parse through (Charlie Brown style).

Here's a list of things that have got me down on my birthday:

It definitely feels hard to be celebrating anything during these times! But ultimately even when I think of all these things I still try to find hope, and I would like to articulate some of those things that I look to that give me that hope.

Somehow, I think a lot of things really come down to the things that I'm learning as I'm being around my family. I've been back with them for the past several months to recover after grad school, but ultimately they bring forth a lot of deep memories and feelings within me. Pains, for all the mistakes they've made, but also hope at the same time, since ultimately many people are just like them, all trying their best to make the best lives for their families and children, but getting mixed up in the world.

Despite what platforms like social media might have us believe, I truly believe that only a very small percentage of the population does not have any empathy for other people. We, as any New Yorker knows, tend to go into our own worlds and walk as if we don't even see each other, but as soon as we see someone fall down in the street, you'll see people flock over to help, as if we're broken from our spell. And then, we all just move on. People are like that on a macro level too I think. Most of us would never truly wish harm on other people especially if we see that affect right in front of us, it's only when we are confused or angry or frustrated or misled that we end up losing empathy for others... Ultimately, the majority of people wish each other peace and goodwill, and it's only when our lines of communication break that we feel we can become cruel to each other...

That's my hope anyway!

I've talked a little about technology with you, so I won't dwell on that too much, and socioeconomic upheaval is way too big a conversation for me to talk about. But something that I think connects these things has been something I haven't brought up, neither in our past conversations nor in this writing so far, and it's that I've been taking an interest in the principles of child development, parenting, and psychology. Maybe the easiest entry point I can think of for all this is the idea that children need to live as children first. This might sound funny, but have you seen "Honey I Blew up the Kid?"

"Honey I Blew Up the Kid" if you don't know, is a sequel to the hit 80s live action Disney film "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids." In "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" a goofy scientist father Wayne Szalinski, played by Rick Moranis, accidentally leaves his experimental shrink ray on and his children end up getting shrunk to ant size and must find their way home from their backyard. It's a technical marvel and became the basis for a Disney theme parks attraction. "Honey I Blew Up the Kid" is the sequel to this movie with a reversal, where a toddler is blown up to 50 feet high and begins to walk towards downtown Las Vegas, filled with product placement for the Hard Rock Cafe amongst other things. I actually consider it the better movie, but that's besides the point.

My point that I want to get to is that I love how this movie uses this sci-fi analogy for what happens when a child grows up too fast. The baby is still psychologically a toddler, so he thinks a truck is a toy truck, and he thinks a giant guitar sign at the Hard Rock Cafe is a guitar. But ultimately, he's still a child, so when he gets inevitably gets injured, he cries, and the audience feels sorry for him, because even though he's really big, he's not capable of being responsible. At that point, they realize the solution to stopping the baby is to send in mama, because that's the only thing the baby will respond to.

My point is a little on the nose here, but I think that lots of things in society are in this constant balancing act to rush children to become mature and responsible adults who can fend for themselves. This dysfunction is not only present in something like a sci fi contraption like a shrink ray, but also in how we push kids to think about college or careers from a young age, or how we punish them for being creative because we want them to have a stable career, or how we punish boys for being sensitive because men don't show their emotions ("man up" and all that).

I think this kind of problem in society has been a tricky balancing act in different eras, the problem of wanting our children to have a childhood, but also want them to be ready for adulthood. I do think with our current era, however, technology takes things to a whole new dimension, where parents are unable to keep up with the young crowd, with rapid change within a single generation. If a younger cousin or a niece or nephew were having struggles with something like cyberbullying or social media, I don't think most parents would even know how to begin to approach dealing with those things, whether from an emotional perspective or a technological perspective, and I think a lot of young people have to look to half a generation above them. I sense that now with many Gen Z friends looking to their Millennial friends for advice.

Anyway, the hope that I get is that young people are able to learn quicker and more capably than their predecessors with faster technology, dialogs, and better toolsets to converse. It's really remarkable, like you said last week in our chat about the students nowadays. It's also a bit terrifying as a slightly older person! But I think we, as any older generation, can only hope to shepherd the younger generation as best we can and have faith they'll make the right decisions. We can guide them, but ultimately our responsibility is to leave the future in the hands of young people (whose hands it was always in the whole time). We just have to be ready to show up like their mama or papa when the babies are in danger of getting themselves hurt.

I also think that this kind of balancing problem of allowing things to mature before they become adults is also prevalent in how we approach creating technology, and I think there's a thesis to be made that a lot of our problems in technology are as fundamental as the issues that a child faces psychologically... but I think that's a whole point to discuss for another piece entirely. I wanted to keep this first piece of writing short.

I also sense your perspective on going back to basics and getting away from the bloat of modern living, beyond just technology, is also going to be insightful in our conversations. I've already sensed that in our talks about growing gardens and such.

Anyway, like I said, I don't want to keep too long, so I'll eagerly await your response.

In his first letter to Art, Charles writes on human nature, technology, and the 90s Disney film "Honey I Blew Up the Baby"

First Letter to Art - Human Nature, Technology, and Blown Up Babies

Initially, I wanted to start this project under the idea of being a “perpetual foreigner,” or the concept that regardless of me being an American citizen and having the tokens of what makes up an American (whatever that means… since the U.S. is a mix of cultures after all), I will always be perceived as “the other''.

As I was working on the project, I was led to a different and more general idea of the modernization of culture; sometimes it feels like culture is conflated with history (in that it is old and static) and we view it as a separate entity all together. I feel like knowledge of culture is often treated as a novelty or a parlor trick, like knowing how to dance tinikling or speak Tagalog, or even something as simple as eating a Filipino dish.

For some Filipino Americans, and for many other second generation immigrants, they aren’t given a choice of being able to celebrate their culture or not. And for many first generation immigrants, they leave behind a culture that continues to change even while they are away: there’s new slang, new pop culture trends, and maybe even a different political climate.

The debate between mainlanders versus the diaspora has been prevalent on social media but has been the worst on TikTok, I’ve found. The word “toxic” is commonly thrown around nowadays but that’s the best way to describe the lack of critical thinking, the apathy, and the refusal to take responsibility for and acknowledge mistakes. It’s difficult for me who sits on the fence of these two identities to be invalidated and for discussions to be halted because the desire to be correct outweighs the desire to learn… well that and the fact that I’ve seen arguments turn into ad hominem attacks. Thankfully I haven’t personally experienced any of this yet, but this is something I keep in the back of my mind that sometimes keeps me from putting my work out there (I’m slowly getting over it though).

To the main point of this work: culture is now. Thanks to the internet (as corny as it sounds), I can be 8,757 miles away from my hometown in the Philippines and still be caught up on the news, pop culture, and memes. But that can’t replace me physically being there and experiencing everything myself. Of course, I acknowledge that this comes from a place of privilege because I have the financial means to live comfortably. However, in a way, I feel lost. After taking a year off of my art and taking a step back, it would seem as though I was looking through my culture through that historical lens I mentioned earlier.

This work is a baby step for me. I think I’m moving in the direction I want my work to go in, both in terms of media and focus. I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to create work. Is it because I lack guidance? Or creativity? Materials? I know that I am an impulsive artist that creates work when the spark happens, but I wonder if there is a way for me to nurture that better…

Anyway, let’s talk about the process and ideas that come into this work. This is a continuation of my photo collaboration project that I did for my senior thesis. I decided to get rid of the square dimensions and go for an 8x10 inches size.

I knew I wanted to wear the barong, so that was an easy choice.

I decided to tuck my hair to mimic choking or the feeling of being overwhelmed or drowning (I think I’ll make another project for this).

I love my hair. It used to be down to butt. But I would use it as a femininity marker to compare myself to other women. I knew I did this and I knew it was wrong. I cut it to my chin when I was a sophomore in college. I can’t tell you enough how disgusted I am with myself that I was like that. And doing that did help.

The typography stickers are slang that’s commonly used today (and some even I use). I had to ask my boyfriend any other terms he knew since I felt like the ones I knew were pretty outdated.

If you’re familiar with Japan’s purikura, or photo sticker booth, I’m sure you can see the inspiration. Culture was formed hundreds of years ago, but we insert ourselves into it and shape it today.

I honestly didn’t know how to tastefully illustrate on top of this, not that it needed to be aesthetically pleasing, I just didn’t know how to combine the background and the foreground to make it look like a complete piece. I didn’t want to edit the original photo too much but I also didn’t want it to look like it was just a photo.

I’m satisfied with how this piece turned out. I will keep this written piece as raw as possible for genuity purposes (and it would be nice to see where my head was when I look back later). 

AVDLR is an artist that creates works based on her exploration through her Filipino American identity. Acceptance is the first piece she created post graduation where she continues that exploration.

Acceptance

Love your post, Art. "Repeating, the whole contained within the parts." In chinese water color art and patterns, my teacher taught me how, the whole is a mirror of the parts. And in traditional chinese medicince they say that the health of the cell is the health of the species and the planet. There are so many different ways of seeing, thinking, dreaming &lt;3&nbsp;

<a href="/shirley" target="_self">@Shirley Man-Kin Leung</a> Thanks so much! it’s so cool to hearing about that similarity. It’s making me think of how the little things matter, of ways to potentially create harmony when making and designing in lots of different fields of practice thinking of how the components relate to the whole

I appreciated every second of reading this and the observations throughout. I really felt The Last Maven's piece about reading the room, and the situational awareness they have in so many situations and how every moment requires so many decisions to be "free." I resonated with the observations from everyone in the interview excerpts, in particular Buddhika Bellana talking about the constraints you're given in life, working within those limitations, and recombining things in interesting ways to learn from them.There were so many moments throughout that I connected with and I really appreciate everyone putting this publication together. Thanks for sharing it!

<a href="/artemiosans" target="_self">@Artemio Morales</a> Thanks very much, Art! Many, though not all, of the contributions were developed in other contexts as part of the broader Life is a Freestyle project. The Last Maven's piece started as a blog post. Buddhika Bellana's insights were shared in an interview that was done on IG Live. So not only is the zine a collaboration, it's also a gathering from these and other contexts.And, as you may have guessed, the contributors are not mainly zine writers. It's the first experience for most to contribute to a zine. What unites Full Circle is being rappers.

Envisioning an alternative world

Bum Lee

Artist, tabletop creator, translator

@bum

Links

Details

Pronouns

Location

Background

Date Joined

Publications

Posts