Last Thoughts

When I first emailed Tony about joining this class, I knew I was in for something special. 

It might have been the first time meeting Tony that tipped me off, back in spring semester when my friend Reem was a student and invited me to come see their critiques and singing. Later on, Tony would refer back to this night as when he first caught a sense of my 'questioning aura' about the world-- which amazes me, because there's not a whole lot of people in the world who can meet a random person once and retrieve such an insightful and heartfelt understanding of her just like that.  

Well, that is Tony for you, and that is what convinced me immediately that I wanted--and even more, needed-- to take this class with him. Because I also immediately sensed the way his deep passion and care for this class and his students would spill over to leave an indelible impression on people forever. And that's what drove me here in the first place. I realized that being in a class with a teacher so authentic would teach me much, much more than just the course material alone. Needless to say, I don't think I'd ever been as ecstatic to enroll in a class as I had been when I got the OK for this one. 

Through a large chunk of this school year, I was struggling with taking care of my own mental and emotional health, picking up the broken pieces I had probably neglected from the year before. I wouldn’t call myself a moody person, but I did often feel my moods fluctuate in tandem over the year, and each Thursday night became a benchmark to my state of mind in that current week, and each week's theme of songs and project became unexpectedly intertwined with the particular sentiments and thoughts I was strongly experiencing at that time. When I look back on every project I've made, each one is like a visual diary entry to me, some pictorial transcription of the things running through my head while drawing this line, smudging that shadow, painting this background. In particular, my drawing from "You Are My Sunshine," is imbued with the most poignant and bittersweet emotions. I was feeling especially down that night, and I just had a heart to heart with my roommate about how sad I had been feeling for a while now. Then, listening to the song lyrics, it reminded me back to my time in high school where I sincerely believed that that would be the best time of my life. I was living within a tiny expat bubble in a country abroad, and everything felt safe and complete even though I knew much of it was temporary and built on false pretenses. Listening to this song reminded me of the longing I felt to go back to that time, back to the relationships I found so much solace in, the environment I felt protected by, but it also made me remember that it really was not as perfect as my memory paints it, so it’s time to stop relishing in the past and come back to reality now. That was also the first time I embarked on this "adventure" to make art that was "more open" to me. It's almost funny now to think about how seriously I took this challenge up, because it was literally a battle of me trying to let go of who I had worked myself up to be my whole life, and unravel that through folk songs and artwork. It was like my own form of art therapy, and it's no wonder I had a hard-- but very rewarding -- time with it. 

So I guess it's pretty typical of me to draw such dense meaning out a few simple verses. But it tends to happen more when I’m sad, and it’s weird for me to say it now, but I’m actually so glad I was going through these crises while taking this class, because I don’t know if I would have gotten as much out of it if I hadn’t been so sensitive and experienced the shit out of the emotions of these songs. I loved the weeks where I got to listen to gospel music and question myself about the power of religion, or when the work and spiritual songs got me to think about the existential “where do I come from” question, or learning about the lives of Doc Watson, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly… incredible musicians who really lived through the extreme ups and downs of life and created music to celebrate and preserve the essence of it. I endlessly appreciate the way this class challenged me to think about the folk culture and artistic pillars that this country is built upon, and it definitely made me realize that being a first generation American really means that my cultural upbringing has been a hybrid of two different cultures without an in depth grasp of either one. 

 I want to thank Tony and each of my classmate and friends of Fall 2015’s Visual Studies class for creating such an open, understanding, and diverse but collaborative space where everyone was allowed to form their own questions and develop their own voice. I loved seeing how my some of my classmates really blossomed from their first timid projects to completely breathtaking ones at the end. I admire each and every person for being who they are and coming from where they come from and having that all show through their amazingly unique pieces of art/poetry. I especially want to thank Tony for the outpouring of love, spirit, and quirkiness he unfailingly brought into every week’s class. Here is the place you want to be when you want to explore the country you live in, the person you are, and the wacky little corners of Berkeley where you can find cool classes like this.

So there you go, my 5 star rating J