Visionary Vibes: A Blog by Aberjhani

Why Genocide in Ukraine Matters to A Black Poet in America (pt. 1 of 2)

4/7/2022

The dream, for a Black man living in the U.S. southeast, was a strange one to have during Thanksgiving week in 1991. Within it, I was standing in front of a large map of Europe. On the map, what was then called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) stood out prominently, as if the printed surface had been embossed. Images of its fabled neighboring nations–– Poland, Turkey, Germany, France, Sweden, and others––remained colorful but flat.

Then, as I stared, thin lines of flame started spreading throughout the map. They grew larger and a loud rumbling like thunder growled from inside it as large burning chunks tore away like fiery boulders exploding out of a volcano.

Although the dream-explosion forced my eyes open, I could still see chunks of burning earth exploding out of the map. My hand automatically reached for the pen and notebook on the nightstand and I wrote down everything I could remember about what I had seen. Typing up such intriguing night-time visions and sharing them with a small dream study group was a favorite interest at the time (as acknowledged in Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah). So later, type and share I did.

Group members came up with different interpretations of what it might mean. Maybe it was about me wanting to go back to Europe, now that I was out of the Air Force, and write a novel there. Or: might it have something to do with the WWII memorials to Russians and Germans I had seen while attending a military editors’ conference in Berlin, Germany, some years earlier (when the infamous Berlin Wall was still standing)? Or maybe, just maybe, it was something as simple as my subconscious suggesting I study more deeply great Russian authors like Leo Tolstoy, Anna Akhmatova, Maxim Gorky, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

An Unexpected Development

About a month later, on Christmas Day, then President George H. W. Bush (1924-2018) delivered a televised statement which gave my dream yet another potential meaning. He announced the end of the USSR and the birth of a cluster of newly-independent nations. The senior President Bush informed the world:

“…This is a day of great hope for all Americans. Our enemies have become our partners, committed to building democratic and civil societies. They ask for our support, and we will give it to them. We will do it because as Americans we can do no less.”

Following the departure of Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, and a dozen more from the USSR, combined with the resignation of Nobel Peace Prize winner and Russian President (1990-1991) Mikhail S. Gorbachev, an era of frozen diplomatic relations began thawing. It had taken decades for the Soviet Bloc and the U.S. to reach a point where Bush could make such an extraordinarily hopeful proclamation in 1991.

Weathering Putrid Storms

History is rarely short on various antagonistic events unkind to notions of lasting world peace. That being the case, a quick glance at any comprehensive timeline of manmade catastrophes around the world reveal more than a few have occurred since the USSR’s depressing suffocating empire dissolved. The event which prompted me to take a more active nonviolent role addressing matters of war and peace on a global scale was 9/11 and its hysteria-inducing aftermath. Within the span of half a century, humanity had gone from punctuating the language of diplomacy with hydrogen bombs to concluding them by crashing passenger aircraft into the World Trade Centers.

The collective international trauma resulting from 9/11 lead me to establish the online Creative Thinkers International community in 2007 and keep it afloat for almost a decade. Members from countries on nearly every continent shared their stories, videos, photography, music, artwork, poetry, and lives to demonstrate the advantages of harmonious coexistence.

For those of us in my corner of the world, the prolonged angst of: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, COVID-19, revelations of the extent of systemic racism in the U.S., and the strange drama that was January 6, seemed the worst history might dump on us en masse. We may have weathered those putrid storms less gracefully than preferred but weather them we did with sufficient measures of dignity and hope remaining intact. Then along came February 24, 2022.

Sanity Be Damned

From the beginning of Russia’s bare-fanged attacks upon Ukraine this time around, the sheer monstrous brutality of assaults stirred quaking terror in some even as they ignited excited awe in others. In a world where entering realms of virtual warfare is a daily pastime for many, a lot of people likely had problems believing they were not immersed in an AI-generated dystopian landscape. How, millions have wondered, could they/we possibly be watching, in this 21st century, authentic-rather-than-artificial human beings bombing a nation of people out of their homes, occupations, bodies, and countries.

Most incredibly, so far as anyone has yet been able to tell, all that death and obliteration came raining down solely because one man could not relinquish fantasies of rebuilding a past he considered too irresistibly glorious. Unlike those who have no choice except to make peace with various losses or changes in our lives, here was someone with the wealth, political power, and military might to indulge his megalomania at will. The lives of pregnant women, elderly men, and school children be damned. Sanity: be damned.

NEXT: Why Genocide in Ukraine Matters to A Black Poet in America (pt. 2 of 2)

By Aberjhani
(© National Poetry Month 2022)
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
and Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Creator of Original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

For more from Aberjhani on War in Ukraine 2022 please check out:
Holiday Letter for a Poet Gone to War Poem with Video
Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Angel of Peace 2022
Ukraine, Russia, and the Art of Being Human
Angel of War and the Year 2022
Voices of Poets on War and Peace

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Seeker with the Inkhorn Number 1: Notes on Compassion in the Summer of a Life

7/8/2021

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"Seeker with the Inkhorn" title art graphic by Aberjhani.

A couple of years before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, I published on the Charter for Compassion website a blog series titled Notes on Compassion in the Summer of a Life Infused with Democratic Vistas and Creative Resistance. A long title, yes, but also an accurate one. It was an extended reflection on the state of our world as one writer approached a milestone birthday.

With the USA economy cautiously reopening even as worldwide deaths from coronavirus surpass 4 million, it is worth reposting a shorter version of one series installment titled “Seeker with the Inkhorn.” Why? Because our species learns some things, like the priceless value of peace or love, more slowly than others. Consider reports this first week of July 2021 regarding the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise. Think about the controversies over whether to get vaccinated against COVID or not, and the painful necessity of pulling U.S. troops out of Afghanistan.

The need for a collective commitment to coexistence has never been greater and yet somehow remains stubbornly elusive. Therefore, what follows is about making the best use of what life continues to teach us as we struggle to move forward with greater knowledge, wisdom, and hopefully, reinforced resilience.

Identifying Our Best Options

When studying activities of human advancement as they take shape throughout history, we find a lot of attention given to the areas of military domination, economic schemes, scientific discoveries, political showmanship, and emerging patterns of social interaction.

The cultural arts, spiritual concerns, and developments in education often appear to be acknowledged less frequently. They are usually somewhere in the background of officially-recorded history functioning like unseen digital code that drives more ostensible programming. Individual lives can also be that way. They/we get lost or displaced in the dynamically-charged cross-currents of opposing priorities and agendas.

As a species, human beings may not be able to collectively shift from one history-shaping mindset to another in a single instant. But we can, collectively, take time to identify our best options for a sustainable shared future––be they ethical, political, economic, spiritual, or educational in nature––and make them our common goals.

Seeker with the Inkhorn

In the course of composing one life story, my individual character has gone from that of impoverished youth and scuffling student to military veteran, family man, bookseller, caregiver, author, social justice advocate, and artist. Each transformation required exchanges of compassion wherein I was both a recipient and a contributor.

Once, when living in San Francisco, after an emergency situation left me short of funds to pay rent for my downtown studio apartment, an older Black man gave me a lesson in practicing and extending compassion without attempting to compromise my physical or psychological well-being in any way. He insisted on giving me the capital needed and asked that I do one thing in return: “Don’t pay me back no money. The next time somebody come to you for help, just give them whatever you can the same as I did for you. Understand?”

I did. And when possible, I have.

Bright Skylark LP quotation art with image of Author-Poet-Artist Aberjhani holding book of history on African Americans. C2021)

Later still, as an equal opportunity enforcement counselor for the U.S. Air Force Reserves, I saw up-close-and-personal the way private traumas centered around issues like spouse abuse and alcoholism damage people’s lives. And I saw also how we sometimes so effectively shield ourselves with masks of pretense that we fail daily to recognize the life-preserving need to study and practice that simple, yet so powerful, practice I was taught in San Francisco: the art of compassion.

At the core of all my functional personas has been the seeker with the inkhorn constantly transcribing autobiography into diverse forms of literature and journalism. However, that fundamental anchor at times has also undergone the kind of scrutiny which prompted biographer Annie Cohen-Solal to note the following about Jean-Paul Sartre during a powerful transformational period in his life:

“The writer has to die to give birth to the intellectual in the service of the wretched of the earth.” (Cohen-Solal, Sartre, A Life, 2005 Centennial Edition, p. 359.)

Put less dramatically, the statement means acting beyond the need to express individual creative artistry with a conscious intent to render tangible humanitarian service. Some of our best creative thinkers manage, when possible, to combine the two.

NEXT: Seeker with the Inkhorn Number 2: Compassionate Comic Relief

Aberjhani
Co-Author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Author of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Creator of Original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

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Poetry and the Pain of Elijah McClain’s Unjust Killing

7/6/2020

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Visions of a Skylark Dressed in Black poetry collection by Aberjhani .

Geographically, the killing of Ahmaud Arbery was closer than that of Elijah McClain because it occurred only an hour’s drive from where I grew up and where people who mean a great deal to me have family members. But for some reason McClain’s death, although it occurred all of 1,600 miles away in Aurora, Colorado, felt closer. I did not understand why until recalling two poems written more than a decade ago. The memory of both forced me to sit down and wonder how it was something written so far in the past was having such a powerful impact on my life in 2020.

The first composition is a song lyric titled “ELI-JAH” originally published in the first edition of the novel Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player (sung by a character named Ruzahn), and later in the poetry collection titled Visions of a Skylark Dressed in Black. It is about a man who refuses to accept reports his brother has been killed so he keeps singing his name, Eli-Jah, to let him know he’s committed to finding him. The complete lyric is too lengthy for the purposes of this post but these are the last 2 verses:

Eli-jah!
My handsome, my twin
I long to see you again.
Is your heart
safe in love?
Did your war
ever end?
There’s a storm
in the mountains.
Here’s a cross
painted blue.
Lots of holes
in my shoes
but I’m still looking
boy for you,
yes I’m looking
brother for you.

Did I tell you
your son
keeps calling me dad?
Anything less
spins his mind
cold and sad.
In his eyes
shine pictures
of a long-ago you.
In my head
this cruel
unspeakable truth:
that we battled
and we cursed
and we spilled
each other’s blood,
we relished
our taste of hell
and strangled
heaven’s love.
People said all the time
we were strange that way.
Gave our smiles
to the moon
and our tears
to the day.
(Aberjhani ©2006)

The second text which surprised me with an unexpected emotional connection to McClain is 2 lines at the end of the poem “Vampire Song: The Last Bloodfeast,” also from Visions of a Skylark Dressed in Black. I recalled when writing the lines that they sounded strange and I changed them several times but always switched back because somehow they felt honest. Reading them, now, I’m stunned at how close they come to an image combination frequently associated with Elijah McClain: the violin and kittens, for his compassionate practice of playing for them on his lunch breaks. This is the quote from “Vampire Song”:

“Soft upon my right thigh, an oddly-colored kitten
meowed the melodies of angels playing violins.”

There is a possibility I’m making more of these parallels than I should and some might even argue I am forcing them where there are none. They would have a right to that belief.

Before identifying the subconscious links stirring within me such a strong response to the shooting death of McClain, I considered writing a blog titled Music for a Black Skylark in Mourning to express the lingering grief. So I looked for a music video with the words “Black Skylark” in the title and found two. Either one, I felt, could serve as a worthy tribute to McClain and believe he would have appreciated either. The one with which I’ve chosen to close is from volume 5 of the China Meditation Ethno Music Project and titled “A Black Skylark.”

Aberjhani

Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah and co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance.

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Springing Forward with Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah

3/23/2019

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"Simply by allowing its darker-hued brothers and sisters to openly discuss ideas without having to constantly justify, defend, or survive the color of their skin, whether in classrooms of the great Sorbonne or while walking un-hunted down a boulevard, Paris [France] made a crucial contribution to what would become known as the Harlem Renaissance and to the legacy of African-American intellectual traditions in general." from Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah quote, art graphic, & new 2019 book by Aberjhani. Click image to pre-order.

The basic image in this quotation art graphic was derived from visual studies prepared for the works of art which have become known as Harlem Renaissance Deja Vu Numbers 1 and 2 canvases. The work seen above was modeled after a famous photo (photographer unknown at this point) of a young James Baldwin holding a copy of his essay collection, No Name in the Street. In the poster graphic viewed here, this author is seen holding a copy of the forthcoming title, Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah (ISBN 978-9388125956) currently slated for release May 1, 2019. It is also now the focus of a new blog-site you can check out by clicking either the art graphic or this link: Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah

With actress Regina King having won Golden Globe and Academy Awards for her portrayal of Sharon Rivers in the film adaptation of Baldwin's classic novel, If Beale Street Could Talk, plus the critical acclaim garnered by the 2016 biopic, I Am Not Your Negro, the iconic Baldwin is possibly more famous now than ever before. And No Name In Street, of course, has gone on to become an American literary classic.

The personal essay style utilized in Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah may or may not reflect some of Baldwin's influence. He is referenced in the stories "Cities of Lights and Shadows and Dreams," and "Trees Down Everywhere" but any stylistic similarity is not intentional. Contemporary authors who grew up reading Baldwin, as I did, are more likely than not to have been influenced by him to one degree or another on one level or another.

Connecting and Disconnecting

The observation noted in the above quote about the city of Paris's connection to the cultural arts revolution known as the Harlem Renaissance might seem out of place in a book titled Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah. In fact it is not. One reason is because the book is being published during the 100th anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance.

Another is because Savannah, like Paris, also has strong ties to the event which is generally recognized as having lasted throughout the 1920s going into the 1930s, but which endured to a lesser degree well into the 1940s. That such an unlikely connection can be identified between the Harlem Renaissance, Paris (France), and Savannah (Georgia, USA) is one more example of how the phenomenal movement transcended geographical boundaries and strengthened the case for harmonious interactions between multicultural communities.

I first explored that three-way connection in an essay titled The Harlem Renaissance Way Down South, and now revisit it in the aforementioned story, "Cities of Lights and Shadows and Dreams." The narrative stands as a good metaphor for one of the primary concerns highlighted in Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah: how we connect and why we sometimes disconnect during disruptive, or stagnant, moments in our personal lives and shared public histories. Measuring, determining, and applying the value of such awareness holds possible advantages for many more than the denizens of just one city or region.

Aberjhani
100th Anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance

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Elemental's 10th anniversary inspires mindful reflections & renewed hopes (part 2 of 2): illumination

5/4/2018

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That Elemental, the Power of Illuminated Love, would prove a challenge to get published had always been known. Potential traditional publishers had no problems admiring its bold creativity and uninhibited spiritual intensity. What most could not accept was something traditionally troublesome when it comes to artists and the marketplace: the financial risks involved.

With all respect to healthy doubts and sensible reservations, so far as Luther and I were concerned the years of energy, labor, and determination already invested in Elemental by the time 2006 rolled around equated to something more than a calculated transactional value. From the perspectives of our deepest meditations and intentions, the completion of Elemental meant contributing to the cultural legacies established by creative artists like those who made possible such movements as Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, and the Harlem Renaissance. This last, especially, was one which had already stamped our destinies as Luther had studied with artists of the Harlem Renaissance and I had already co-authored Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance.

The center image for this art graphic features the first two stanzas of a poem by Aberjhani from ELEMENTAL (p. 22) titled "Past, Present & Future Are One" based on a Luther E. Vann painting of the same title. The third-eye illustration seen above was drawn by Jason Maurer when the poem was published in the former SCAD newspaper The Georgia Guardian in 1993, 15 years prior to the publication of ELEMENTAL. The combined creative synergy demonstrates how ELEMENTAL has helped to inspire and empower others from the beginning.

But once creative passion and committed partners empowered us to finally produce a physical book, we reached two important conclusions. First: we recognized the need to articulate, both for potential buyers and booksellers, as definitively as we could, the goals and values inherent in Elemental. Secondly: it seemed obvious the work could be adapted for different mediums. These considerations resulted in the following statements:

ILLUMINATED LOVE

1) The vision behind ILLUMINATED LOVE is that human beings and the environments we inhabit are inherently multidimensional in ways that are typically ignored but which can make our lives richer and more fulfilling than generally recognized or consciously experienced.

2) The mission of ILLUMINATED LOVE is to express through visual art, poetry, and music the creative and spiritual harmony that connects shared public spaces with individual need and existence; and, to demonstrate the multidimensional nature of the same.

3) The objective and/or goal of ILLUMINATED LOVE is to provide a product that functions as a source of entertainment, as inspiration, and as an enhanced tool for the study of employing complementary creative genres within an appealing multi-media format.

When envisioning Elemental as a staged musical or as a video production, I described it thus:

...An exploration and documentation of the way human beings occupy public spaces in interpretative contrast to how they experience inner spaces... It illustrates the way collective intention makes communal interaction possible while individual need and impulse maintain the integrity of a person's separate being.

For example, the Luther E. Vann painting "Christ Listening to Stereo" (p. 27) is of a youth on a bus in New York City (please see image below). The image reveals how the youth is at once physically part of a larger setting while remaining, via his personal stereo, completely apart from it. Immersed in his music, he claims a connection to the artist who made the music and who allows him to not only share in the expressed creative passion, but to utilize the same as a kind of soundtrack for his own anticipations, memories, desires, needs, or fears of the moment. Very similar and yet very different scenes are enacted in such public spaces as parks, malls, back yards, office buildings, clubs, and street corners. They all make the individual part of a larger whole even while many individuals continue to exist primarily as isolated fragments of that whole.

The image used for the cover of the novel Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player is from a section of Vann's painting "Christ Listening to Stereo."

From One President and Generation to the Next

Some might consider the timelessness of the project a good thing in regard to aesthetics but then questionable for the way Elemental's implied commentaries on social and political conditions of a decade ago remain relevant today. In this sense, it continues to illuminate how our least and most desirable practices impact humanity's quest for mutually-advantageous coexistence.

Another example: the ebb and flow of dismay and inspiration from the time of publication until now might be seen in criticisms of former President George Bush's administration as the book was heading to the printer in early 2008. Likewise: less that a year later, after its publication, came Barack H. Obama's unprecedented election to the White House followed by eight years of spectacular innovations and shifts in public consensus regarding everything from race relations and gender equality to environmentalism and economic reforms. And now: current POTUS Donald Trump continues to implement policies resulting in a tug of war between the Oval Office and American citizens committed to resistance.

From one president to the next and one generation the next, Elemental has always proposed for leaders and followers alike a path of informed awareness built on common ground:

The states of interaction with one another and estrangement from each other represent states of being, or levels of reality, that the artist seeks to capture and identify in order to understand their possible implications and consequences in the modern world. Social conditions and activities indicate different outcomes. Some appear to thrive in powerful socially rewarding ways—such as economic advancement or political prestige––while others seem to quietly wither away, turning into the infamous "damned souls" of the world existing in states of perpetual despair leading to the destruction of self and others.

In its essence, Elemental, the Power of Illuminated Love, maintains we are all on a quest to experience qualities of compassion and acceptance capable of helping to sustain both the individual and the larger society. Because such a journey tends to take place even more within than without, the visual imagery, words, and music of ILLUMINATED LOVE incorporates both levels of that reality.

Admittedly, those words might sound a bit more grandiloquent than intended. That does not mean they are any less sincere or applicable.

Powerful and Cherished Allie

This celebration of the 10th anniversary of a book of art and poetry is not to suggest that such a volume holds the key to solving all the world's very serious problems. It is, however, to suggest that humanity for too long has remained too comfortable investing faith in fear and violence. Student walk-outs in protest against gun violence in their schools, calls for police policy and training reform, the #MeToo movement, and resistance to government policies which threaten to widen even further the gap between "haves and have-nots" prove the need and desire for something more healing and beneficial than relentlessly suffocating trauma.

We celebrate Elemental because it identifies not just a potential but a capability already within our reach. It helps take the edge off the impulse to destroy what we fear to understand and allows sufficient time to remind ourselves of this: Love, Knowledge, and Beauty are not our enemies. Whether dressed up as art, poetry, or a simple smile, they have always been among our most powerful life-sustaining allies.

Aberjhani
© May 2018

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<<Previous

Why Genocide in Ukraine Matters to A Black Poet in America (pt. 1 of 2)

An Unexpected Development

Weathering Putrid Storms

Sanity Be Damned

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Seeker with the Inkhorn Number 1: Notes on Compassion in the Summer of a Life

Identifying Our Best Options

Seeker with the Inkhorn

Aberjhani
Co-Author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Author of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Creator of Original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Poetry and the Pain of Elijah McClain’s Unjust Killing

Aberjhani

Contact the Author

Springing Forward with Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah

Connecting and Disconnecting

Aberjhani
100th Anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance

Contact the Author

Elemental's 10th anniversary inspires mindful reflections & renewed hopes (part 2 of 2): illumination

From One President and Generation to the Next

Powerful and Cherished Allie

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

Why Genocide in Ukraine Matters to A Black Poet in America (pt. 1 of 2)

​An Unexpected Development

Weathering Putrid Storms

Sanity Be Damned

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Seeker with the Inkhorn Number 1: Notes on Compassion in the Summer of a Life

Identifying Our Best Options

​Seeker with the Inkhorn

AberjhaniCo-Author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem RenaissanceAuthor of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My MindCreator of Original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Poetry and the Pain of Elijah McClain’s Unjust Killing

Aberjhani

Contact the Author

Springing Forward with Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah

Connecting and Disconnecting

Aberjhani 100th Anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance

Contact the Author

Elemental's 10th anniversary inspires mindful reflections & renewed hopes (part 2 of 2): illumination

​From One President and Generation to the Next

Powerful and Cherished Allie

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

An Unexpected Development

Seeker with the Inkhorn

Aberjhani
Co-Author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Author of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Creator of Original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Aberjhani
100th Anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance

From One President and Generation to the Next