Epiphany as Performance Art

[At some point, I might write about actual “art” as described by society or by textbooks, but until then I will write about art in its many manifestations in my life. And I will make sweeping generalizations, per usual, to, possibly, further talk about “art” as this new form so that everyone can see art in ways that are completely self-taught and self-learned through lived experience. I see everyday as art, aesthetically, call me A (as created by Kierkegaard), call me what you may…]

Epiphany. Realization. The light bulb turns on. Things start to click. Anyway one could say it, this is the moment where everything stops and one learns something that could actually, maybe (without sounding terribly WRONG or misdirected or too entrenched in the enlightenment or western thought), be “objectively” true.

This week, magically, had two moments of Epiphany. TWO.  Thus, this week was a success. Even if I continuously paper-cut myself, if I had a head cold, if I stayed up late working over logical derivations, it doesn’t matter. This week I had moments that changed my life. This week was worth living.

First. I love to go to the Edgar Reading Series that the MFA in Creative Writing program puts on. It’s usually in a cool space (e.g. Work Gallery, Potbelly’s) and is filled with writers, which are some of the best type of people. I thought I had almost seen this event in a cute Independent film because the plot of the night almost aligned to any cute movie (where cute, yes, is banal and cliché but nonetheless like cups of coffee—you can’t help but to keep them coming): After waiting in the cold because Work Gallery closed early (#unprofessional, where the event was supposed to be) we eventually went to Potbelly’s to the top floor. With smells of sandwiches, and Ann Arborites, and failed plan A and a successful plan B, we all got seated and chatted. Some recounted past parties, others wrote notes, and others (me) read The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1 by Foucault.

The space was dripping in what most would call hipster creativism, but what I would call nothing of the sort. It was a space where I thrived and felt at home.

Epiphany, begin!

After listening to a fiction writer whose resume was beyond imagination at the age of 24, a poet went to the stand. He happened to be in my Foucault seminar but we’d never talked, never really made eye contact. Then he started and I swooned for his word. There is nothing more personal, nothing that can connect you more to a human than to listen to their poetry.

This moment wasn’t just an epiphany of the space or of an unrealized friendship, but of poetry as form. While poetry is to be read, more so it is to be heard, listened, took in. For many weeks this semester, I had thought, “what is the purpose of my own poetry?” Will my copies my poems be trapped in shelf, in hard drive? Most likely yes. But this event inspired me to get my word out—even if it is yet to be at the smooth register of Ginsberg reciting “Howl.” My epiphany was one of action. Take my poetry and bring it to the streets. Recite it to people and form these connections. Poetry is to be sung and to be engaged with.

Second. My future necessitates Academia. My degrees are in writing nicely and thinking pretty. I love theory. So: graduate school is calling. In my attempts to situate myself in any discipline or in any type of study (post-colonialism, feminist theory, queer theory) I found myself clinging to issues of race and feeling unsatisfied.

Last night, in the midst of a great debriefing session, my friend introduced me to Frank B. Wilderson III and to Afro-Pessimism. “Afro-Pessimists are framed as such…because they theorize an antagonism, rather than a conflict—ie. they perform a kind of ‘work of understanding’ rather than that of liberation, refusing to posit seemingly untenable solutions to the problems they raise” (http://www.incognegro.org/afro_pessimism.html). Because I cannot describe the theory in one post and do it justice, read what they think. Although this, in and of itself is problematic in tabling the view, it is also in attempts so one does not misinterpret them (or I).

Blackness is theory in its most unapologetic form, in its most objective form. Wilderson’s ideas are not ideas, they are truth. My yearning to work with race is growing at an exponential rate after being exposed to this and I’ve yet to feel like an area of theory has ever been completely spot on. Until now.

Epiphany inspires performance art. It changes the way in which one acts and thinks about life. Thus, this art makes one produce things that one loves. Be it actions, thoughts, words, theories. Epiphany necessitates change of self, and this change is the most beautiful of forms.