How do we become what we become

There are so many levels in everything. Layers peeling off of layers. A coming together at times, at others, a dismantling.
This class, Songs and Places, attempts to arrive at the birth place of culture and custom. As humans, we have roamed around the world trying to make connections. Forming tribes, forming dogmas, forming stories around the stars, around the moon, around this existence that we live.
Life. Life. What is it? How can we contain it? Does it exist in a melody, perhaps in the complexities of a hot bowl of Borscht on a cold winter day in Russia. Everyday we experience. We hear things, we see people, we pay the bus driver, we say bless you when someone sneezes. Just now, lying in my bed, I hear the sirens of North Oakland, I hear the birds chirping in the conifer tree outside my window, I hear the slight jingle jangle of the wind chimes by the lemon tree. All of these things meld into our consciousness and to what we form and shape as our everyday culture. This class, more than anything, taught me to slow down and observe and listen. To pay attention to the small details. To form connections and to constantly seek connections.

As far as Russian-ness goes, what caught my eye was the fabrics. The folkloric tapestries. The bright and contrasting patterns of flowers and paisley, what a beautiful sight. Head scarves, blues, reds, yellows, symmetric designs. I saw Russia in these colors, which is funny, because before, Russia brought images of snow and winter to my mind. Therefore, for one of my pieces, I decided to incorporate a display of different patterned fabrics. I added flowers, a little plant of chives, and a beautiful cream colored bowl, making the most beautiful table setting. I served Borscht, which added even more color with its rich red coloring from the beets. Adding the soup was an important element for me. I have this belief that you can tell a lot about a culture from the taste of their broths. Japanese have their udon, Mexicans have their caldos, Vietnamese have their Pho. And broth, broth holds the flavor and the comfort of tradition and culture. When I am sick, I will go to a little Mexican restaurant and order a Chicken soup, or Caldo de Pollo. It has a pretty specific taste, and always hits that spot, right between my belly and chest. Warms it up, flushes my cheeks. This presentation was my interpretation of the Russian soul. After all, red is the color of passion, and the Russian songs and readings emoted such passion. The red beet soup, in small cream colored bowl, that to me is the Russian soul.

For my final presentation, for the end of the semester exhibit, I decided to incorporate a display of many scarves. Some were green, others orange with flowers. I included a painting of a woman with long flowing hair as the centerpiece. On either side, I brought framed pictures of my mother and my father. Both pictures are small and black and white. My mother's and my father's face look very serious in these small photos. I think it is due to the fact that many poor people in Mexico hardly had their picture taken at this time and perhaps did not know the proper way of posing for the camera. But these two pictures mean so much to me. They are my two halves, they are where I come from. I am their lineage. And that is what I have been thinking about all semester. How do we become what we are. We are the mixture of two people. We are the mixture of two worlds. We are the mixture of complicated histories, of war, of love, of diaspora,  of mixing. We are what we eat, what we see, what we listen to, what the birds chirp outside my window. The more I learn, the more I see there are no origins, there is nothing completely authentic. Only snapshots, small fragments of culture, of life, represented through song, through food, through art, through all of these amazing medias that humans create in order to express the questions within. The passion within. Passion the color of beet soup.

Cafrune's No quiero ver el sol

No me quedo de otra.

La cancion, con su lirica delicada, tan nostalgica, me mando a escribir.

His eyes are so tranparent, it's as though I can see through them to the back of his head. That place where the dreams come to him. Where the pulses of his fingers on guitar strings are born. With his eyes, he invites me in. He sits me down. Raises his shirt so I can see the scars that run along his tall lean body. "Here, this one here, this is where at three she left me." "This other one, this one with the bruised flesh, this one came from knowing my true self at the age of eight."

In the amphitheater of his soul I sit. It is lush green with benches of supple birch wood. The air smells of burnt cedar. The light is soft.

Suddenly he has recognized what he has done.

He has let an invader in. A peculiar being with a soul made of bird and skin the color of milk and coffee.

I sit and wait by the entrance of his door. I look up to see if the orange glow of his room signals me to return.

Because I wait I know I love.

I found a piece of eucalyptus bark at golden gate park this weekend as I roamed looking for inspiration. I sat by a tree near a swampy creek, and thought only about "the boy" of course. I am twenty-three years old and still absolutely captivated by romance. I am a romantic. Perhaps because I grew up listening to Lola Beltran and Pedro Infante. I have a huge affinity for bittersweet romance, the kind that lingers in your heart because you let it. You allow for the suffering of unrequited love to rest inside you, even though it tears you apart. See, I told you I was a romantic. This love song by Cafrune took me there. To that special place I like to go to marvel at the emotion of love. To honor it and to feel it and to let it play out fully, with all its agony and beauty. I believe that is the quality that these folk songs from Argentina evoke. They evoke celebration for all the seasons of love, the season of incredible bliss, and the season of incredible sadness. These feelings are woven into the strums of the guitar, the syncopated, swaggering milonga rhythms. The push and pull tension of the metric slide in the songs. The wobble in the voices of Cafrune and Atuhualpa, that sadness that is lodged in their throats. Only the zamba can alleviate, through melody, through wind pushed from the lungs, to unite with vocal chords, to create songs. Songs born of the throat of love.

I painted a woman figure and a man figure. There arms reach to each other, in between they create a landscape. In this landscape the moon shines and the mountains remain in peace. The one I love is from an opposite world. But we meet in the middle and marvel at our extremities. That landscape is our bridge and our love. However, he is afraid, so he rapidly shuts the door and leaves me outside. Yes, I am a romantic. And all I can do is marvel at this feeling in my own throat. I smile because I know what it is.

Week Seven: Athualpa

I have told you about Jose Barrios, my father. Better known as Pepe to his family, or "la polvora" to his friends back in Mexico. "La polvora" means gun powder. My Apa tells me he has always been a nice man, cordial and respectful to all. But, when he was young, people did not dare cross him, for if they did, my father would not hesitate to whip out his pistol. He carried one since he was eight years old. He also started drinking and smoking at this age.

Such stories seem impossible to believe. At times I do not know when he is fibbing or telling the absolute truth. In a way, I don't care. It's the way in which he tells it, the shape his words take, like birds made of smoke, as they leave his mouth. These stories were drawn out with Athualpa, as I said in a previous post. Therefore, I decided to sketch my father sleeping, curled up. Wrinkles rake his face. He is wise and old and my friend.

He enjoyed the part where Athualpa shares his favorite description of the pampas, "...como un cielo al revez." My father stopped me at that point and asked me, "Que crees que significa?" "Pues maybe the man thinks that the pampas are so flat that you can't tell where the sky begins and where the land starts." "Alamejor," my papa said. "Or maybe, the man is so in love with the Pampas that he believes it to be heaven. So that the sky does not hold that sacred holy place, the land that he loves is that sacred place."

I drew my father in a landscape of mountains and sky. My father is my heaven, my sacred place. His stories, full of mountains and colors are my Pampas.

Week Six: Hudson Part 2

The return to childhood. Everyone's desire. It was so safe then. It was so warm. It was simple. It was dreamy. Hudson describes his childhood as a playground of wonder. The Argentinian landscape giving him trees and rats to play with.

Reading these passages made me think of my childhood. It was not safe, and it was not that happy. It was rough, and blurry. I never felt happy as a child. A lot of traumatic events that I do not care to talk to caused me to grow up fast, experience raw reality too soon. However, I always managed to push, to strive, to seek happiness.

The drawing I made is small, looks like the page out of a journal. I write in a journal a lot. It keeps my head on straight. In this small picture, I draw my small little home. A yellow house with three small rooms that was always inhabited by at least fifteen family members. People sleeping on the floor. People sleeping on couches. Fast showers, overstuffed refrigerator. My house would get so hot during the summer. Sometimes it would be unbearable to sleep indoors. I remember sleeping outside on my lawn sometimes.

My childhood house is next to a self portrait. A cartoon of me looking a bit sad, a bit distraught. A headdress of shapes shoot from my brain. For me, depression has always been by my side. I try my best to use if for the good. To create. Those shapes sprouting from my head came to me at a moment of great depression. Focusing on the patterns was a form of meditation, it helped distract me. So, that is how I began to draw, to focus on the pleasure of creating a curvaceous line, of cross-hatching. My childhood constructs my headdress.

Week Five: Hudson

Although we were to read Hudson for this week, I had an unexpected surprise.

My father called early on the Tuesday of that week and told me, "Hija, voy pa ya. Te veo en seis horas." Typical of my father. Always spontaneous. Even at his ripe age of 65. The open road, driving for hours, he is no stranger to these things. He was a truck driver for many years. He would sometimes drive fifteen hours straight. "Los Barrios son buen choferes," he would proudly say with a slight tilt of his head. Then a hearty laugh would rise from his belly and his beautiful smile would send stars into the universe.

My father is my friend. I would even vouch to say he is my soul mate. So, naturally, we stayed in bed that afternoon and I read to him. I read to him Athualpa. He loved it. Was inspired, just as I was. We would pause at a line and marvel at it. He then proceeded to tell me many stories. One in particular will stay with me forever. He said that once, he was driving through the Mexican Sierras, and as he descended from a high ridge in his truck, he saw a vast canyon. The most beautiful landscape he has ever seen. He told me that at that moment, the landscape penetrated his eyes, consumed him, and became part of his soul.

I decided to make a lantern depicting Athualpa's wind. The curious gift-giver, leaving traces of magic and stories scattered throughout the Pampas. The medium is paper, burnt with a wood burner and decorated with soft pastels. It gives off a magical, ethereal light. I think if looks as my soul did, imagining my father as a young boy, praising the earth and God.

Argentina Week 4: Rastrillada y Tierra Adentro

The inside. Of you. Of a fruit. Of a land.

A feeling. A pride. A tenderness.

Roots. Deep in soil.

Tierra Caliente.

What is familiar?

What is communal?

What is nation?

How do we arrive at a culture?

This week, I have been thinking about consciousness. The buzzing awareness of now, of reality, of existence. The way we create our landscape is our own personal story, are very own tierra adentro. However, culture does scrape its mark on us, sculpts, or rather, decorates us a bit. In Argentina, and in many other Latin American countries, the colliding of cultures, in the contact zone of colonization, affects the people and the land. The indigenous becomes mestizos, the white becomes off-white, a knew hue of beige, of mocha, of leathery brown.

I wanted to capture this exact notion, the marking of culture on our tierra adentro, on our roots. I found a very gnarly piece of wood, similar to the fiberous shape of a root. I decided to burn and etch markings on the wood. The wood, or root, symbolizes the interior, what lies beneath the surface, what stays close to the warm earth. The markings, symbolize culture, symbolize the inevitable sculpting and shaping of roots, of heritage, of life. I was perhaps going to use a specific indigenous pattern from an Argentine tribe, but I thought, what better than to let my insides, my interior loose on this root.

Furthermore, I began thinking about the rastriada. The rake scraping. La guella, the footprint, the animal track. The lines on the wood symbolize this scraping, this inevitable trace of being human around other humans. The constant dismemberment and reassembledge of our identities, or our consciousness.

Kory