Spatially representing voice...It's hard to spatially represent a voice when you have to create a space from the ground up for a voice to hold.
It's easy for some because their forefathers are the canons that paved ways and created spaces for their voices to fill, not mine.
When you're grow up and looking up to people who don't really look like you or come from the same background you're never really explicitly told that what they're doing is something you can also do.
Artists who don't adhere to normative standards have to go through tedious filters of being asked "what is it like being a ______ artist/poet/performer/etc.?" Like it's some qualifier as to why you're a poet or that it's some kind of privilege you have that makes you "stand out" from your colleagues.
It's challenging to create a space when you're not sure how you're voice will be heard.
Through Cárdenas and Williams, two poets who differently explore and represent their voice I resonated with the sentiments even though I can interpret, "your mojado butt from the fontera to the fields," I will surely never know how to create space to correctly define mojado butt like Cárdenas does.
Williams' House Party had physical representations of space and measurement juxtaposed with the nuance subtleties of the theme and his not so subtle lines.
He juxtaposes the Eurocentric paradigm and not being afraid to say he's into a sista's attitude amongst many other attributes.
"ain't waiting no return from vogue or cosmopolitan
to emaciate her self-esteem
or mold her into a european model of beauty with bilemic backhands
cause serena she thick
thick like sistas sposed to be
thick lips, thick thighs
mostly a thick attitude
(and I like it)"
Williams also immediately made me think of the conversation we had in the previous class where Llesenia was saying how much she appreciated black flirting because it's often things one doesn't see in the mainstream media, arts, etc.
Brenda Cárdenas' Cartoon Coyote Goes Po-Mo explored culture clash and illustrated a very weird visual take on postmodern musings. The constant of the Coyote and the variable of the characters take on creating imagery of cyberpunks, Ginsberg, and Lucky Charms.
"Coyote, he don't quite get it,
applies queer theory to his reading
of Burroughs riding freight train."
Talks of queer theory, deconstruction, performance art provocateurs, post-sturcturalist world, auto-deconstruct all created vivid points of imagery but it was the attitude of "How's that for signification theory?" that left me going boom shaka laka Cárdenas you are all kinds of crazy and amazing.
"It's challenging to create a space when you're not sure how you're voice will be heard." So SO true. Funny because I was just having a conversation about this with a friend of mine who is extremely concerned with the foundation she is laying with her writing, and the subsequent reputation she is building through her performances of poetry. She's afraid of this same thing, creating spaces that feel safe for her. I feel like as writers, we all struggle with wanting to be heard but dreading being misrepresented or misunderstood. The problem doesnt truly settle in though until we allow this fear to cripple our writing through self-censorhip. So interesting, and scary.
ReplyDeleteJoann thanks for being unafraid to speak your voice and be heard and Chanel you know I love your voice too! Write on!
ReplyDeleteyes, great post Joann, the greatest -- the position of language is so basic and complicated at the same time and if you are silenced or if you perceive there is not room for your voice, it's a tragedy that censors many.
ReplyDeletemore on this, yay.
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"Artists who don't adhere to normative standards have to go through tedious filters of being asked "what is it like being a ______ artist/poet/performer/etc.?" Like it's some qualifier as to why you're a poet or that it's some kind of privilege you have that makes you "stand out" from your colleagues."
ReplyDeleteThis comment caught my eye because it describes the human need to qualify by group, whether it is profession, race, gender or other. The very word "normative" suggests that there is a such thing as normal, an undefined standard by which each poet is defined. I wonder if the space each writer creates through their personal voice is defined as distinct by its specific methods of deviation from what is "normative".