Visionary Vibes: A Blog by Aberjhani

Reflecting on the Year 2016 and stepping not-too-boldly into 2017 (part 1 of 2)

12/5/2016

Sharing some perspective on outgoing year 2016 and incoming New Year 2017 with essay and Postered Poetics by Aberjhani.

Somehow I developed an unkind tendency to underestimate at the end of each year the amount of work accomplished during the previous 12 months. I used to like the feeling of being surprised to discover how much really got done, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing at all. It’s just not as fair to the truth, and some of my best go-for-the-gold efforts, as such an assessment should be.

But my New Year 2017 resolutions include a commitment to breaking the self-negation habit. As a practice, it’s just not a helpful one when it comes to planning future projects or establishing once-and-for-all final deadlines for current endeavors. In addition, miscalculating earnestly-applied efforts is unfair to the integrity of the work itself, as well as to those who helped make it happen and give it increased value. Therefore, in honor of the difficult, to paraphrase author Alice Walker, below is a list of links to tributes, essays, and reviews that I managed to share while continuing to work on my current nonfiction book. These are followed by further reflections on the year that was and the year to come.

Year 2016 Bright Skylark Table of Contents

Giving Hope and Compassion a Chance in 2016 (1/1/2016)
Dancing with David Bowie 'under the Serious Moonlight' (1/12/2016)
Harlem Renaissance Notebook for National History Day and Black History Month (2/1/2016)
Christmas Gets a Valentine's Day Weekend Reboot (2/13/2016)
Painting Poems and Living History at the Jepson Center for the Arts (3/9/2016)
Sustaining the Sweet Joyful Howl of Poetry in the 21st Century (4/3/2016)
Presenting a Poem for the Earth and Al Gore’s Unwavering Optimism (Part 1 of 2) (4/22/2016)
Presenting a Poem for the Earth and Al Gore's Unwavering Optimism (part 2 of 2)
4/24/2016
Something More Dynamic than Tear-flooded Woe (5/10/2016)
Muhammad Ali: 10 Ways to Interpret One Man's Radiant Heart (6/5/2016)
Taking Time to Think, and Love, Again (7/2/2016)
Author Miriam Center Honored with Congressional Birthday Wish (8/9/2016)
Remembering Acclaimed Author James Alan McPherson (9/4/2016)
Dodging Curve Balls and Bullets in the Year 2016 (9/25/2016)
The Birth of Elemental, the Power of Illuminated Love (11/15/2016)

Ripples of Political Pandemonium

One of the most challenging aspects of accomplishing anything of significance in the year 2016 was remaining focused on priorities. That can be difficult throughout the course of any election year but it was exceptionally so during the 2016 battle for the White House.

The various low-points and dubious tactics that resulted in the United States’ new President-Elect have been chronicled sufficiently enough that they do not need to be repeated here. What does bear re-emphasizing is that not only did the American people elect a new president whose worldwide business empire practically guarantees compromising conflicts of interest. They also chose to endorse standards of conduct likely to create ripples of political pandemonium for years to come (though hopefully and prayerfully––not).

So why is that? Because we cannot sanction free-for-all lawlessness when it suits the purposes of one class or race within a society while constructing billion-dollar prison complexes in which to enslave those for whom such lawlessness has not been deemed appropriate. This is more than a matter of practicing double standards. The issue is recognizing the chaos that can stem from specific choices and, for better or worse, proclaiming ownership to correct the damage incurred.

Video Notes on Barack Obama: Giving an American President His Proper Due

Remembrance and Gratitude

If nonstop political mayhem was not enough to distract many of from reaching targeted goals, other factors played their parts as well. We cannot engage life without periodically, appropriately, pausing to honor those who have passed on before us. Among those who passed in 2016 and prompted me to reflect upon their impact on the world overall and on my life in particular, to name only a few in no special order, were these:

The Great Muhammad Ali
Luther E. Vann (visual artist)
James Alan McPherson (author)
Natalie Cole (Performing Artist)
George Michael (Singer-Songwriter)
Gloria Naylor (author)
David Bowie (musician and actor)
The Beloved Artist Known as Prince (Creative Genius)
Leonard Cohen (singer-songwriter-poet)
Billy Paul (musician/social advocate)
Cuban Revolutionary and President Fidel Castro
Debbie Reynolds & Carrie Fisher (Hollywood icons, Mother & Daughter)
Zsa Zsa Gabor (actress, socialite)
Ron Glass (actor)
Florence Henderson (actress)
Bernie Worrell (musician/keyboardist)
Anton Yelchin (actor)
Gwen Ifill (television journalist)
Maurice White (musician/Earth Wind and Fire)

They are remembered not to mourn the loss of their lives, but to express gratitude for whatever gifts of knowledge, love, and empowerment their existences bestowed upon humanity.

NEXT: Reflecting on the Year 2016 & stepping not-too-boldly into 2017 (part 2)

Aberjhani
Bright Skylark Literary Productions
©Dec 2016/January 2017

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The Birth of Elemental, the Power of Illuminated Love

11/15/2016

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"The universe said, 'Let me show your soul something beautiful." quote by Aberjhani from ELEMENTAL, the Power of Illuminated Love. (Postered Poets Art Graphics)

The edits on my current book in progress were close to complete when Hurricane Matthew came to town and rearranged my priorities. President-Elect Donald Trump, at the time still a presidential candidate, contributed his fair share of distractions as well but that’s another blog for another time.

Along with its unexpected destructiveness in my hometown, Hurricane Matthew also delivered a few gifts. One of the most important of those gifts for me was the rediscovery of research materials in the form of notebooks from the 1990s long thought lost in the shuffle of previous relocations. The material turned up while storing and salvaging valuable to keep them safe from the hurricane.

The discovery of the notebooks themselves became part of my account––now included in the previously-noted book-in-progress–– of surviving Matthew. One of those notebooks contains an unvarnished story of the birth of ELEMENTAL, the Power of Illuminated Love. Because of the death of Luther E. Vann, my co-creator on the project, earlier this year, the notebook was a startling find.

Discussing the Possibility

Had he lived, Luther would have turned 79 on December 2, 2016, so it seems appropriate that notebooks and early recorded recitals of poems from ELEMENTAL should have started popping up at this time. The excerpt below is taken from notes dated September 11, 1992, more than a year after I first met the painter and sculptor.

At this point, I had been experimenting with writing poems based on his art but this was our first time discussing the possibility of working on a book together. Also during this period, comparing our developing friendship to the meeting between Jalal al-Din Rumi and Shams Tabrizi helped me visualize the possibility of working with an artist who had been practicing his craft much longer than I had been plying mine.

Detail from "For the Love of the Poet" painting by Luther E. Vann featured in Elemental the Power of Illuminated Love.)

Called Luther around 8 tonight to make an appointment for our interview next week. As with the week before, I found myself extremely nervous about calling but then realized I was allowing silliness to impede our mutual progress. When I did call, he greeted me with uninhibited enthusiasm and all of my reservations vanished in the sudden light of his pleasure.

He took the opportunity to thank me for the poem [“For the Love of the Poet” based on painting with same name] I left him and Sandra last week.

“Man,” he said, “that was really beautiful. I don’t know if Sandra told you or not, but the idea we came up with—because your words seem so spontaneous, from a gut level––was to do a book together. If you can do something that spontaneously for all the pictures in the book, that would be just great.”

I repeated my tired line about my genius not matching his.

“I don’t know about that. Like I said, the poem has a strong spontaneousness and it has that same multidimensional quality as the picture.”

“Well, it really is an extension of the portrait because when I saw it, the words started writing themselves. In fact, all of the pictures and sculpture inspired me so strongly that I just started composing poetry right then and there.” [At an exhibition of his work]

Could it be we were really having this conversation? How many times had I sat or walked or worked while imagining the possibility of the very thing we were now discussing. The first time I saw his work, it seemed the most natural thing in the world that I should compose a poetic commentary to match the images. What astonishes me more than anything else is that he seems to view my work the same way. How can that be?

Whereas in the recent past I’ve allowed myself to indulge in comparisons between my meeting Luther and great historical personalities meeting with the same, lately I’ve tried to refrain from doing that. But there seems to be in it some appropriateness independent of my own speculations. Shem Friedlander wrote of my two favorite Sufis that theirs “was a friendship based on the discovery of God through each other at a time when both beings had a lesson to impart to one another.” I think possibly it would have been more accurate to say that an overwhelming affirmation of God is what Shams and Rumi experienced through their friendship…

Luther has made a psychospiritual transition which I have, in a way, only casually reached for, while I as yet possess a sense of focus and drive (a bit weakened thought it may be) which seems to have atrophied within himself (quite understandably so give his spiritual disposition). Ours is, I believe, meant to be a true and good partnership. [end of excerpt]

Concluding and Beginning Anew

This post concludes with Carol Phelan Aebby’s poem, The Young Poet and the Painter, which is a rare kind of homage to my work with Luther written in the bibliographic profile acrostic form originated by Andre Emmanuel Bendavi ben-YEHU. The poet’s voice captures a lot of the mystery and wonder that many artists experience when striving to honor a difficult but ultimately rewarding task.

Aberjhani
© November 2016
Bright Skylark Literary Productions

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Something More Dynamic than Tear-flooded Woe

5/10/2016

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"History & Erasure: Chronicling Legacies of Black Artists in Savannah (part 1 of 3)" 2016 essay series by Aberjhani. (Postered Poetics image of artist Luther E. Vann by Aberjhani)

It took a while for me to think about writing anything in reference to the death of my friend Luther E. Vann last month because when it occurred I was already working on a different kind of essay about his life and art. Slamming the breaks on that project, going into a tailspin of grief, and then finally regaining focus took some work.

These days a lot of people––maybe too many people––know that feeling of sanity-shattering loss. Surely, even as I type these words, the tens of thousands fleeing the inferno in Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada, can feel the pain of it.

So can others around the globe who find their attention directed toward the news of a toddler killed while fleeing a war zone with siblings not yet in their teens, a mother or father lost to yet another mass shooting, or a pestilential outbreak that suddenly changed with no warning whatsoever the spiraling course of human history.

Psychic Interiors, Cityscapes, and Multiverses

It is because of examples parallel to the ones just given that I could not write a simple mournful remembrance of Luther. Like the psychic interiors, cityscapes, and multiverses painted in his work, he would have preferred words that reached beyond sorrow centered on him to communicate something beneficial to others.

Consequently, I had to wait. But soon enough it became apparent that, more than anything else, he would have wanted an article (or two or three or more) that extended our conversations on the pitfalls and triumphs of living lives immersed in pursuits of inspired creative visions.

Chronicling Legacies of Black Artists in Savannah-Georgia

Considered a classic of feminist literature, The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing significantly influenced aesthetic theories employed by artist Luther E. Vann.

The thought of extending previous conversations in the form of an essay was enough to stimulate the beginning of a paragraph. It soon developed into an outline for a new three-part series based on highly-accomplished creatives who, owing to one reason or another, are often excluded from official forms of recognition. The three installments currently scheduled, barring any technological issues forcing title edits, are as follows:

The scope is expansive and inclusive because Luther’s work was the same. In my attempt to communicate something more dynamic than tear-flooded woe, the essay presents a view of the artist’s life and work through multiple lenses. They place in context issues like the erasure of history (a.k.a. erasures of history), and the cultivation of different creative influences.

Counted among the latter are the late novelist and Nobel Prize for Literature winner Doris Lessing, especially where the impact of her novel The Golden Notebook is concerned.

The essay also examines the role that the music of iconic masters of jazz like piano virtuoso Thelonious Monk played in Luther’s creative processes.

Background Color Schemes

Finally: I did feel it important to at least try to incorporate within the three-part series a visual component other than the videos posted with each installment. Toward that end, I created a set of original images to employ as art graphic title panels. The series is called Savannah Silhouettes and the taller human figure within each panel is Luther E. Vann.

The different background color schemes of yellow-gold (seen in the art graphic for this blog post), purple (presented with the second installment), and black (the third) are not arbitrary. In addition to being important to his uniquely-applied craftsmanship, they were also important to what he called his “particular language of painting,” the one that made it possible for him to say what he needed to say about humanity, about the mysteries of the cosmos, and, about himself.

Aberjhani
© Bright Skylark Literary Productions
May 2016

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Reflecting on the Year 2016 and stepping not-too-boldly into 2017 (part 1 of 2)

Year 2016 Bright Skylark Table of Contents

Ripples of Political Pandemonium

Video Notes on Barack Obama: Giving an American President His Proper Due

Remembrance and Gratitude

The Birth of Elemental, the Power of Illuminated Love

Discussing the Possibility

Concluding and Beginning Anew

Something More Dynamic than Tear-flooded Woe

Psychic Interiors, Cityscapes, and Multiverses

Chronicling Legacies of Black Artists in Savannah-Georgia

Background Color Schemes

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

Reflecting on the Year 2016 and stepping not-too-boldly into 2017 (part 1 of 2)

Year 2016 Bright Skylark Table of Contents

Ripples of Political Pandemonium

Video Notes on Barack Obama: Giving an American President His Proper Due

Remembrance and Gratitude

The Birth of Elemental, the Power of Illuminated Love

Discussing the Possibility

Concluding and Beginning Anew

Something More Dynamic than Tear-flooded Woe

Psychic Interiors, Cityscapes, and Multiverses

Chronicling Legacies of Black Artists in Savannah-Georgia​

Background Color Schemes

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

Chronicling Legacies of Black Artists in Savannah-Georgia