TSENGWICH

As I mentioned earlier in the term, I like to collect art in the form of T-shirts. I was walking by the Metropolitan Museum of Art when I saw a man advertising T-shirts that showed a particular silhouette. “Is that Wynton Marsalis?” I asked him. He answered, “you bet.” I saw the familiar pose of Wynton standing playing trumpet and I remembered all the days I spent idolizing him, back when I played the instrument, too.
The T-shirt evoked in me strong feelings as all art should, but that wasn’t the only art in the encounter. I feel like dialogue is an artform too: my conversation with Bill Peaks evoked in me the same strong feelings.

One of the first discussion we had was about where we were from. He told me that he was from Brooklyn, and I told him that I was raised for the 18 years of my life in Queens. He said that he could tell from my lack of accent.

Conversation is an art, because it connects we humans together. It reminds us of our common humanity. It is the soup that connects the ingredients of the New York Melting Pot.

I then analyzed his accent and said it was from Brooklyn. He said, “Well I just told you that.” We laughed, and looked at the beautiful space around us at the plaza of the Met. And for a moment, I felt as if we were meant for something bigger than where we were and where we came from. We felt like small humans huddling together in the cold big world.

Just one more example. The conversation then shifted to a story. Bill told me about how one of Wynton’s agents saw him in the crowd wearing the shirt, and how the agent hooked up him and Marsalis to meet. Bill told me of how he went up to Wynton’s Marsalis, how he climbed the stairs and stood in front of the door, and how Wynton came out to sign one of the shirts; and my mouth dropped. I didn’t feel jealous for him, but glad. His being had become an artwork. I listened to his words, saw the smile on his face, and I was able to communicate with it. I gave him a high five and we smiled together. It was like seeing a work of joyful art without the canvas standing in the way of maker and audience. And the joy flowed freely, channeled straight through the air without any hindering mediums.

In my opinion, I feel like no art can beat conversation in establishing that we’re all humans, in getting us to understand each other.

So, what is the point of other art forms if we can just talk? I believe that other arts are better for bringing us closer to heaven or hell, closer to the ethereal, which our souls long for in addition to being human.

I met this band one night at the 42nd st. Times Square stop and I had to stop and take a picture. They are called the Meetles and their musical style is very reminiscent of the Beatles, as is their name. A huge crowd of people were surrounding them. So, I could only see the band play from behind the shoulders of others. I didn’t want to bother people and try to squeeze myself to the front. However, I slowly liked the view back there. The crowd becomes part of the performance. It’s exhilarating to see things from behind, watching heads bobs in unison, watching a baby smile, watching a cantankerous old man walk right across the face of the performers.

Now that I think of it, at almost every performance the class went to together, other people’s shoulders blocked my view of the main performance. At the Metropolitan Opera, rows and rows of people separated us from Gandhi. At Carnegie Hall, we were again at the uppermost seats. Even off-Broadway, many people separated us from Freud and C.S. Lewis. However, we got an experience that others didn’t. We saw people mesmerized by the Sanskrit lyrics of Satygraha. We saw the whole hall erupt in audience when the piano solo ended. We saw people lean back on their seats and laugh when Freud made a joke. At the backside of an audience, we got to see the whole surroundings. We got to see the emotions of people.

Sometimes, the sight of thousands of people watching a performance is more breath-taking than the performance itself. At each of the performances we went to, the greatest emotion I took home was that I was part of a huge whole enjoying a performance together. My mind was in the collective experience rather than just on the experience. I think the beauties of the shared experience is why live performances are always better than the recorded ones. The music may be better in the studio, but then you won’t be able to share the experience with the people in the concert.

Humans need to look at art together more. I am often perturbed by how many people wear headphones in the subway. They think that they’re enjoying good art alone, but from personal experience, even a mundane song heard with a group of people is better than the best song heard alone. The duty of art is to bring humanity together, and how will it ever achieve its goal if there are so many electronic venues for art that keep the people apart? I know that I stopped plugging my earbuds into my Ipod.

I liked them so much that I bought their CD. Here is a song from their album. I admit that I was hesitant at first to buy this album. I read their description and it said: “Gypsy funk. Zen inspired, Asia music from America.” Or something of the sort. And I was thinking, “yo, I’m Christian. God won’t like it if I heard some Buddhist or Gypsy stuff. I don’t wanna taint my mind.” And I thought about the whole situation in my mind for a long time before I bought it.

During the whole contemplation, I definitely felt a conviction that I was one of those closed narrow-minded people that New Yorkers hate. However, I also felt a betrayal to God, to whom I promised that I would keep pure. I was afraid that this music – this deeply intimate artform – would enter into my ears and make me Zen Buddhist or something. I didn’t want to return back to being Buddhist and go through the whole Christian journey again. However, as I heard the lyrics more, I realized that there was nothing bad them. The songs were pure. They were human. They talked of normal things, and the beats were like the other funk music I listened to. It was like a breath of fresh air listening to them, so much so that I took off my Ipod blasting Christian music.

I admit that some Christian music focuses so much on ideals that it loses touch with humanity. Likewise, I often get so caught up with being pious that I forget life’s most important thing, which is the interaction between different personalities. Sometimes, I forget that art is conversation between people. Sometimes, I get so caught up in ideals that I automatically dismiss some artists and their artworks. However, this time I decided to do otherwise. This time, I decided to look deeper than the music and the ideals and at the personality of the artist beneath the art.

I believe that being open-minded is a good thing. Even if the piece of artwork is racy or totally different from the beliefs I hold to be true, I consider the interaction between artist and viewer to be worth it, because when I look at a piece of art, I’m not looking at the surface. I’m looking at something more beautiful, which is the soul that created the art. And it’s totally worth it if all that I have to go through is some dark lyrics.

I bought the SisterMonk CD with a smile. The guitarist smiled back and even gave me a discount.

I met the most amazing artist on one of my walks through Central Park this year. I don’t think I ever got to ask him for his name. But I did give him two dollars. Then, I asked him for amazing song that he was playing. It was the prelude to Bach’s first Cello Suite, which has since become my favorite classical song. The acoustics of that tunnel made for the richest cello tone I had ever heard since. His whole posture in the middle of the tunnel made for a beautiful scene. So, I asked him if I could take a photo of him. He said, “of course.”

I normally get nervous when asking people to be the subjects of my photos, and this incident was no different. I bungled so many shots. I went from corner to corner looking for the right angle to capture the musical beauty that I had just heard, and nothing was right, until I took this shot. The body of the cello and the artist’s body seems to fade together in the black silhouette. The musician and the instrument became one. I then went up to him and thanked him. He said, “no problem.” I stayed for another song, and then I walked away. I learned from this encounter that artists should never be alone. The best art comes from sharing, and even the artist is a product of sharing. He can play music because of the music that others played before him, and I can only take photographs because of the photos I’ve studied before, because of the people I ask.

Sometimes, I get sad because I think of my prospective artist’s life. I take photos, but what I really want to be is a novelist. And I have great fears of where this life-road will take me, the greatest being the long hours I will have to spend alone. Will I be sane when I come out of the journey? Sometimes, I feel forsaken by the world, quarantined in my room writing the pitiful novels that I have in my mind. Then, I remember that I do have a community. All of my good friends know that I want to be a writer. And they check up on me. Heck, even my Asian parents check up on me and how my writing is going. I have a community backing me up. And I get to tell them how much I appreciate them. Thank you, Macaulay Arts Seminar class, and Professor Kingsley. You guys keep me sane, keep me working, keep me dreaming.

means National Novel Writing Month. Participants have to complete a 50,000 word novel by the end of November, and if they do, they get a certificate. It’s not really a big prize: no publishing rights, just a pdf file people can print out and stick to their dorm walls. But I feel strangely compelled to complete the project this year. I’m around 8,000 words behind the recommended work count for today. I’m at around 14,000 words. But I like my story. And this whole NaNoWriMo is getting me writing, which is pretty important, considering I want to be a novelist.

Here’s a snippet of the novel!

“We’re gonna dam the rivers of grease running through America. We’re gonna redirect its current towards those greasy corporate bulls and release the dam on them, drown them in the fat they created. We’re going to take up all the innocent children in our arms, away from their abusive parents sticking poison grease in their mouths daily, and then we’re going to feed them. Teach them the things their father’s couldn’t. Show them what real tomatoes and potatoes are. We’re going to run the race with the poor obese kids at the forefront, because we’re not dictators. We are the servants of a dying human race, not starving, but burgeoning threatening to explode. We can not fail.”

And as Kevin rambled on, Alexander could only smile in admiration.  Kevin’s childhood scorn, the deaths of his parents, his unexpected optimism to keep forging on to fight against a monopoly of fast food restaurant chains, and his childish ardor and stupid blind belief in himself and Alexander that they, as a team, would be able to eradicate the unctuous evils of the UCA, all made Alexander believe without a doubt, that his friend was truly a superhero worth following and fighting for.

“…Ronald McDonald’s is going to fear what I have in store for him.  I think I still have those martial arts skills from the old days, even though I’m a bit rusty.”  Exhausted from speaking, Kevin sat down at the laboratory table with a bowl of salad in front of his face.  It was an incongruous salad, with green leaves grown by McDonald’s and a vinaigrette smuggled from the United States.  The olives were acquired from the Olive Garden District in southern UCA and the tomatoes were home-grown by Alexander.

It was a salad of America.  It demonstrated the sham of the McDonald’s claim to be healthy and green, the paradox of supposedly organic olives cultivated in a fast food district with soil tainted with industrial grease, the degenerated industry of the old United States of America shown by its resort to smuggling out lowly salad dressing, and the tomato red hearts of a few Americans who believed in purging the UCA of its governors.  Kevin took a bite of the salad and inside his body began the digestion process.  And as the various ingredients of the body were absorbed into his bloodstream and purified by his iron heart, Tofuman began to cleanse America.