I go between worlds, two-toned, colored by grief and glorious bodies throwing up their lives to the rhythm of la tambora, or the break beat, or the synthesizer.

I’m an 80’s kid. I grew up in New York City during the 1980s and 1990s, eras in which 42nd street Times Square was not Disneyland but peepshows and human souls clawing through addiction at freedom’s cliff edge. The only time Mami and Papi let us get anywhere near 42nd street was when passing underneath it on the A train down to Canal street. There was a lot of smashing of words. Words used to entice, to alleyway, to cry out the agonies of existence. They were glorious words now hiding under manholes.

I grew up with a dialect mash-up of Dominicanisms and hood refrains:

Dimelo loco!

What up kid!

Comprame en esprite y uno paquetitos de Sazon de Goya- con culantro y achiote!

Yo son- what you rockin’? Lemme see those kicks B…

Language was as mercantile as the vendors selling knock offs or knocked off the back of a truck or into a shopping bag/Goods. Language for me became transport. At home I flipped from Spanish for Mami, to English with my siblings, or lip syncing the current pop hits on Z-100. El espanol hummed all around me, off my mother’s tongue into phone receivers with tias and vecinas and hermanas from church. It hummed in the drywall of paper thin hallways, with neighbors cussing their kids out- mira degraciao! Muchacho de la mierda! (wait- that one may have came from inside our walls…) It vibrated over time through merengue’d boomboxes to over-teched car stereos/subwoofer locked in the trunk to club grade speakers mounted outside barbershops and bodegas. English reined supreme over me, however. I was American after all. My tongue wrapped around consonants on paper, voweled identity traversed over religion, sanctioned textbooks, and dominating the great equalizer- television. English-speaking animated characters made me laugh, wonder, sing. Real characters’ emotions and bravado vibrated my earlobes, finding home in my lengua franca. The more “american” I became, the more I twisted my home base linguistics with what the school sanctioned as proper speech. As sacrosanct. That Shakespeare. That Twain. That (maybe?) Hughes, but really you should focus on hitting those t’s and d’s at the end of your words because you don’t want to be mistaken for being un-educated?

I write poetry that carries a story of language. A personal journey. I do it intuitively. The intention is in the design; I am bi-lingual because I am bi-cultural. And more so, I am hybrid tongued. There is two known lenguas where the reader can say either I know this word, or I don’t know this word. Or, I know all of these words, and did he mean to use (ebonics? colloquials?) When I write poetry, but even prose, I am transcribing a dialectic of many tongues on a unifying self. See hydra.

When I was traveling throughout the DR, this dialectic was first a stumbling, and entanglement. Imagine the hydra’s heads knotted up in a cartoonish bow. I was witness to my tongues debating which word/tense/turn of phrase to use to respond to a simple request for dinner or how are you finding your accommodations. The struggle was real. I laugh now thinking of how I sounded. At times, I’m guessing more gringo than dominicano de alla. Eventually, the heads untangled themselves, the Spanish tongue besting the rest, holding court. The English was requested on several occasions, to teach ESL to tweens and teens, to instruct expats and snowbirds how to relax their hips into a bachata rhythm. To share my poetry at an open mic- an audience of mostly gringos, the Euro variety. Dominican Spanish, this lengua franca, hissed and shut down English when that tongue could not marinate the sazon of swaying hips to a salsa, or asking for la mujer que haces coconete on a road between towns. Or to negotiate the price of fresh produce with the street vendor- no, dame los dos pare 20. Or talk smack about other gringos. Or debate the quality of West Coast and East Coast strains with millenials while passing around both coasts in blunts.

Language is a house. Language is a cat. Language is a stray dog. Una vira lata. An urban dweller seeking solace in messy exchanges. A toothy smile. Crow’s feet resting on the edge of your gazing right underneath the sun. I am no expert linguist. I don’t pretend to be an authoritative grammarian. My tongue slips too much into wormholes of sounds quantum’d gibberish to want to bestow such a title. I am definitely interested in the study of language. And I’m happy to hear there are scholars researching the origins of as many languages that remain in use, or the ones that are dying with every assimilation or imperial suffocation by globalism. I need to apply what I am learning about language directly to my writing. I need to see if my poetry is teetering on gibberish or code. Being born to at least two known tongues, two houses of symbols and sense making, I am prone to drag sand out and in to either box.

Language is my mother. Language is my father. Language is power. To take and give. To claim and defend. To seduce or be seduced. I will find ways to sing about all the ways that I dance at understanding myself, understanding the world in which I was born into, and to create bridges or sandboxes or doors or game boards or a cozy fireplace from contrasted characters on a negative white space.

One says “lend me your ears.” Another “oye como va.” I say both. None. All. Some. Whatever is clever. Como you do. A cada uno su moda. Word.

Word.

Hey there reader: Are you are an American citizen, like me, who juggles the thoughts of living as a passport-yielding citizen of the United States, but only one bloodline removed from being born and raised on totally different soil? How have you existed between two states of ‘being?’

It’s strange to think about it. This feeling that I could have come here as someone who didn’t grow up speaking English, or grew up with The Cosby Show, and hip-hop my third language along with G.I. Joes, Transformers and Frosted Flakes. But I would be lying if I pretended to have a purely American upbringing. I would have to deny the immigrant part of me, a large part. Along with the Frosted Flakes and Saturday morning cartoons, I heard merengue blasting from the apartment down the hallway, and in our home, helped my mom make pastelitos by putting fork indents into the tightly packed semi-circle dough discs before they went into the pot full of boiling canola oil. And there’s my second language, my mother muchacho!ing me to turn down that music while Christian hymns (in English) blast from our home stereo system, and vecinas call up/down/sideways to each other about fulano and sugar and mija did you hear what happen con…

Even before I could go visit my mother and father’s land, I lived in its essence, and it rooted itself in me. I knew I would eventually make it to Santo Domingo, which folks called the entire Dominican Republic, though Santo Domingo was just the capital. My grandmother was always returning to visit her siblings, at least once a year. My sister when she was old enough, would go with her to visit. She was the first of me and my four siblings to go visit the motherland. My father has never been back since he left with his mother (this grandmother) when he was 13 years old. My mother went back only once to bury her father, back in the late 80s, after having left her homeland by herself when she was only 18. You could argue that my parents are just as much American as I am. And they kinda are. But then you have to really ask yourself what the hell does that mean, to be as American as your natural born child?

I am trying to begin a journey here that will lead you and I to the Dominican Republic, into the heart of a paradox that any person born in the U.S. to parents born somewhere else can immediately identify with. I am trying to begin a journey that will probably open up a can of worms that I can never close again. Oh well. Shit’s probably been said before. I get to put my spin on it.

I’m thinking about something an old professor/mentor once say during a workshop she lead that I took about ten years ago. She said that knowledge separates us. She actually said that it was someone else’s quote. I did a google search for it to find the original author, and instead, came up with another quote that I like:

In complete darkness, it is only knowledge and wisdom that separates us.

— Janet Jackson

Yes. Janet Jackson of the famed Jackson family. I believe she’s talking about humanity and seeing past the barriers of race. But I’d like to explore this quote from the perspective of diaspora. As an American born to Dominican immigrants, I was technically in the dark to how their lives in the D.R. I had no knowledge of where they lived, how they lived, how it was to live under the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo, or even how their parents lived under Trujillo. (In lieu of the explanatory comma on Trujillo, I’ll let you google him or ask your local friendly Dominican to give you the cliff notes on the Hitler of the Caribbean.) So for me, this darkness held much knowledge that I sought to uncover for myself. I knew what it was to be Dominican in New York, a totally different experience from being Dominican in, say, Wisconsin, or North Carolina, or shit, even Pennsylvania. But I knew very little of the goings-on of La Republica, though I’d hear men ranting island politics while playing dominoes on my block corner on long summer days. This darkness called me to know more about this origin place which nurtured the blood running through my veins. If I was to feel whole, I would have to shine light on this mystery called the Dominican Republic. I would read, I would ask, I would debate, I would beg for anything I could get from family, friends- the cultural artifacts of any people: music, food, language, story. Eventually, I knew all this was only primer to my final act: Going to the motherland and experiencing it for myself.

You know, I thought of something. Though my initial idea for this series was to chronicle my travels as a diaspora tourist traveling to the Dominican Republic, I started thinking: I was born and raised in Washington Heights, a majority Dominican community in Upper Manhattan, NY. And though New York in itself can be seen as a melting pot of cultures, the rest of the country is not. The moment I step out of the Heights, and New York City, I can quickly become the “only Dominican/Latinx/Afro-Caribbean here.” And isn’t that in itself, a diaspora?

diaspora: the movement, migration, or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland.

The root word of diaspora is diaspeirein (Greek) which means to scatter, spread about. To scatter. It’s a very human thing. Our species’ forebearers scattered and spread about from the African continent throughout the rest of the globe. It is in our nature to leave one place, and go to another. Only recently, within the last millenia, when western ideas of civilization began to ingrain itself into the psyche, being from somewhere else became a grave threat to the way of life. It’s one thing to fear an unknown sapien appearing over the bluff, or a group of neanderthals or denisovans arriving in your tiny desolate encampment. But where do you think you came from before they came? And what happens when it’s not about the stranger without, but the fear that comes from the ignorance of our own strange minds?

Washington Heights, New York City, the U.S. has become my parents’ home. I, born and raised in the U.S., could easily argue that it is my homeland. But I know that is not the full and unequivocal truth. Because the moment I did step out of New York City and went to a boarding school in Central Pennsylvania, I felt like a stranger in a strange land. This may have been my first diaspora as an American.

Everyone’s America is not the same.

This is a series. More to come. © Armando Batista, 2020 All Rights Reserved

The fool is

trickster, innocent, free, wild, loveable, optimism, failure, curious, flight. It is beginning, but not really the beginning. Zero (0) It circles around the start. Like the big bang, it is dancing around what will be; gives energy to purpose, to thought, to ideas.

Transparent; unattached to outcomes; always arrived and arriving; to dance naked in the wide open, to be embraced by the moment, this now whether buildings are burning to ash all around, or birthing industry.

The fool holds your hand, as if to say ‘Hi there. Come fly with me. Trust me, you’ll be fine.’ Even if you’re not.

Whitman, a fool. So was Chaplin.

Trickster. Rooted in ancient culture. It is mythic. Crow twists its beak up into the air looking for a rain drop to quench its thirst. Rabbit digs a hole right underneath the chain linked fence to make its way to the briar patch. Legba birthed himself to know what pain was. Hermes squashes epic beefs between Apollo and Zeus with his tongue twisting logic.

The fool was not made to be serious, I think. The fool fucks up ‘do not expect me to give you a straight answer.’ ‘My answers satisfy disruption and turns.’ When there is a way, there is will. There is tricks. There is air/flight. There is love. Carefree abandonment of reason. It requires heart and free thought. There is always a key. Doors will make themselves known.

Have you ever felt that smirk hiding on the side of your mouth, or your eyebrows raise on their own? That idea that hangs around long enough to convince you it’s not as preposterous as it first seemed?

Herein lies your fool. Trickster we all be.

© Armando Batista, 2020 All Rights Reserved

Armando Batista is a trickster spirit in human form, hailing from Washington Heights, NYC. He is the child of immigrants. A trained actor and performing artist, Armando has worked on stage, screen, and in multiple venues and spaces, transforming the everyday into a magical moment for curiosity and imagination. He holds a Masters in Creative Writing from Vermont College Fine Arts, and currently down the rabbit hole of a poetry book project which he envisions as a “gaming experience in poetics and wordplay” for the reader; think CYOA meets visual poetry and hybrid text at an underground house party… He currently resides in the DMV area.

fool’s gold was originally published in Contemplate on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

processing a poem-video

Hey ya. This is a series about the creative process. Here’s my first post. It’s about my thinking through a collage piece for my future poetry book, RoaDMaN.

dispatches from the [creative] field

In this dispatch, I’m sharing with you an experimental piece. The poem is called Rotten Fruit Philosophy.

Rotten Fruit Philosophy

At this point I won’t say too much about the poem and the video. I want you to experience it. If you feel like responding to the work, by all means drop me a line on here or in the video comments. I plan to break it down in the following edits of the video. But for now, all you need to know is that I recorded the poem on my smart phone (iPhone XR) and I composed the video on iMovie. So, without further delay, here’s the video. Hope you dig it:

© Armando Batista, 2020 All Rights Reserved

Armando Batista is a trickster spirit in human form, hailing from Washington Heights, NYC. He is the child of immigrants. A trained actor and performing artist, Armando has worked on stage, screen, and in multiple venues and spaces, transforming the everyday into a magical moment for curiosity and imagination. He holds a Masters in Creative Writing from Vermont College Fine Arts, and currently down the rabbit hole of a poetry book project which he envisions as a “gaming experience in poetics and wordplay” for the reader; think CYOA meets visual poetry and hybrid text at an underground house party… He currently resides in the DMV area.

dispatches from the [creative] field was originally published in Contemplate on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

processing my RoaDMaN collage

In grad school, one of the requirements for graduation was a creative thesis. I decided to use this as an opportunity to put together a manuscript for a book of poems. As of this writing, I am editing a chapbook version, seeing where that goes. But I digress. We’re here to talk about my working through a collage. I’m going to share images in a sequential order while sharing some thoughts as I was figuring out what the collage would become.

I decided to start with a self portrait. My poetry revolves around certain themes: identity, family, memory as time travel, language, mapping personal experience. I began thinking about a visual element to my work, and as I did, the idea of myself as a character within the narrative of the book came to me. What would the essentials of this character? One of those essentials was place. Where was he from? Was he even from this time period? And what is his name? Questions, questions, questions. These are really good when processing creative work. I feel like the questions- whether you answer them or don’t- can be a guide in creating the work.

I began searching on Google for “brain maps.” And one image was of an old drawing of a human’s face with this quirky theory on the thinking man’s brain. I cut out the word salad and inserted where my brain would go. I wanted abstract myself and I give this character more poetic value. The more I could use my face as a canvas but not the absolute painting, this would free me to play with the visuals of characterization. I felt the words were limiting, and if I’m honest too directed to a white European western perspective on intelligence.

So I started to think symbolically. What were the symbols or images that were essential to me? Just like I googled brain maps, I searched for labyrinths. A labyrinth is a maze, or a walking path to help with meditation and reflection. I like labyrinths because to me that symbolize the creative mind. As a creative, I am walking through the maze of my mind, looking for the center of the idea that has appeared seemingly out of no where. I am looking for clues, from my experiences, from my readings or influences, for answers or ways to understand the mysteries of creation, of how I came to be as a human being.

The subway map was low hanging fruit: I am a native New Yorker. I was raised on traveling via trains, a subterranean mode of transportation, and how this connects to the grind of living in a big urban environment. But for me, most important part of the MTA subway map is Manhattan. That was my main artery as a kid, particularly growing up in the predominantly Dominican neighborhood Washington Heights. What I also loved about the subway map is how the train lines can symbolize veins, or neural pathways. These carry biological information, or memory and personal experience as electric currents.

Some time you need to take a step back to move forward, or deeper into a work. Here, I removed the labyrinth, and cut down my portrait to an “essential” structure. I cleaned up the subway map, and in the spirit of maps and thinking of my cultural origins, I added the eastern part of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, Dominican Republic. I am the child of Dominican immigrants, un QuisqueYork. A hybrid-tongued, two-island Afro-Caribbean-Brown-Being. This informs my creative thinking from word choice to conceptual non-linear storytelling. And literally, these symbolic maps are “on” my mind all the time. As the saying goes: Ni de Aqui/Ni de Aya.

As I’m revolving this creative process around maps, I looked for poems that took on theme of maps. Two became very influential to this work: Map, by Wisława Szymborska. And A Map to the Next World, by current U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo. I recommend checking out both poems, but here are some excerpts:

I like maps, because they lie.
Because they give no access to the vicious truth.
Because great-heartedly, good naturedly
they spread before me a world
not of this world. -W. Szymborska

What I am telling you is real and is printed in a warning on the

map. Our forgetfulness stalks us, walks the earth behind us, leav-

ing a trail of paper diapers, needles, and wasted blood.

An imperfect map will have to do, little one.

-J. Harjo

These poets did genius work in transforming the utility of maps into a metaphor for a people’s cosmic journey, or the inherent deception of a map’s supposed truth telling of place. I began thinking about the collage and my poetry in this way. What can words/language stand for? What can a face be if it was more than an outer social mask? How can I wear my loves, curiosities, struggles with identity and place ON my face? I added the platano tree (also known as a rhizome) as a symbol for how my cultural roots sustains me. I had been sharing the process of this collage with my then grad school semester advisor, and she made the brilliant observation that the leaves acted as a crown. I was like “Oh shit!” She further mentioned that this was a beautiful thing to see because rarely in art do we get to see brown men as kings.

In reflecting on the themes and symbols that revolve around my work, something that I landed on (again, with the help of my dope ass advisor, poet Parneshia Jones) was the vital element of water. Again, I went back to searching on Google for images of water. But everything I saw was not quite what I wanted for the collage. Hanging by my bookshelf, was the larimar necklace that my boo gifted me. The gem stone larimar is native to the Dominican Republic, and found in the coastal area Barahona, my abuela’s childhood home. The moment I saw the stone, I knew this was my water.

Okay. Gotta talk about the red goggles. As I’m building up this character, I’m working on my poems. And I’m thinking a lot about time travel. Wha if this cat is a time traveler? And what if he time travels through the mind? Back to Google. I search “mental time travel,” and a funky word comes up: Chronesthesia. The ability to travel into the past and the future. I figured if our guy here is going to be doing all that, he needs some shades. I started thinking of the labyrinth- and the other elements- as a one unit. A helmet. This device allows him to travel between memories, and back to his (what I began calling) future-present.

Notice also how the larimar is not only background but has become a part of the character, like a shirt of body.

As I delve deeper into the collage, I felt like this character was becoming his own self, connected to me but in a fictional, philosophical way. I was writing a poem about my first name, Armando. I was exploring its etymology, some strange coincidences were happening. Like that my name means soldier in both German and Spanish, and that I had served in the military. I had begun playing with re-arranging words, using anagrams to re-mix poetic language. An anagram is a word made from rearranging the letters of the original word; god becomes dog. I found an anagram server that lets you enter a word, and then it anagrams the word into all these new word combinations. I put my name into the server. And there, I found the character’s name: Roadman. It was one of those mind-blowing feelings. Holy shit! I’ve discovered quantum physics (ha.)

But it did feel really good. A key had turned and unlocked a whole world possibilities. Poems began to flow with the title “Roadman.” I began exploring text within the collage. If Roadman were to say something, what would he say?

Reading unearths the king hidden inside

a time traveler, looking to return

home to Afro-Atlantis;

the map; this book

RDMN is. King.

The words you saw inserted in Roadman’s face in the previous image was a mantra I wrote. I kept thinking about this figure- what he symbolized, what was his driving force, his raison d’etre. But also how the making of this book was a map to a larger country of self, and the mysteries or questions that would be unearthed as the reader engages with the text. That’s kinda how I feel about all creative writing. There is a map that I the reader get to explore and lose myself in by choice. The erasure in the final image is a practice at uncovering those mysteries. Until I allowed myself to play with the text/mantra, I didn’t know that Roadman could be the king he is searching for. Which lead me to play with the relationship between an 8yr. old version of me and this time traveler. In a poem titled Mind Melding: A Conversation I have these two characters “talk” to each other (actually, RoaDMaN is IN the mind of the kid. Think Being John Malkovich). Roadman shares these thoughts with his mental host:

8 yr. old: “You talk alot. So, what are you?”

RDMN: “An interdimensional, neuro-transportal trafficker, bypassing your memories in search of a key which will unlock a door that opens into a hidden world in our continuum. It is what gamers in your time call an easter egg. This hidden world is the Afro-Atlantis of lore. Hidden in plain sight. It has always and still exists. This is where we- you and I and our other versions- all start as one.”

Strange, right? There are Twilight Zone influences in this poem, and throughout the manuscript. As a kid, I grew up watching reruns of the classic t.v. series and loved how it both frightened and excited me.

Well, that’s it folks. This is what I got for this sharing. Like any process, some questions can be answered through a show-and-tell approach, but others can be further unpacked through a Q&A approach. If you have any comments, questions or responses to the work you see, please feel free to leave a message and I’ll get back to you and answer the best way I can. Here’s to the journey being the destination.

© Armando Batista, 2020 All Rights Reserved

Armando Batista is a trickster spirit in human form, hailing from Washington Heights, NYC. He is the child of immigrants. A trained actor and performing artist, Armando has worked on stage, screen, and in multiple venues and spaces, transforming the everyday into a magical moment for curiosity and imagination. He holds a Masters in Creative Writing from Vermont College Fine Arts, and currently down the rabbit hole of a poetry book project which he envisions as a “gaming experience in poetics and wordplay” for the reader; think CYOA meets visual poetry and hybrid text at an underground house party… He currently resides in the DMV area.

For more readings about the journey.

• dispatches from the [creative] field
• Tales of an AirBnB Host

dispatches from the [creative] field was originally published in MuddyUm on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

sharing my process(ing)

Hi. I am being inspired by reading Austin Kleon’s Show Your Work. In it, he basically says

Don’t hoard your process. Show the mess. Talk people through it. They’ll listen. And you’ll do more work if you let go of the work.

Ok. So I’m listening. As I prepare to turn my poetry manuscript into a book, I’m going to share my process. I’m going to show the edges where things aren’t quite figured out, where the fringes can lead to failure, or a connection with another creative. I’m going to test out ideas. Like, can this poem work as an audio performance? What if I visualized it, or collaged the words INTO a visual piece? What if I let an illustrator interpret it?

Along with the manuscript, I’m going to share seedlings of projects that I’m working through. It might be dialogue from a play, or a flash fiction piece, or a theatrical adaptation. Or even a working theory on hybrid artists and their practice.

It’s all jazz to me. Let’s jam.

© Armando Batista, 2020 All Rights Reserved

Armando Batista is a trickster spirit in human form, hailing from Washington Heights, NYC. He is the child of immigrants. A trained actor and performing artist, Armando has worked on stage, screen, and in multiple venues and spaces, transforming the everyday into a magical moment for curiosity and imagination. He holds a Masters in Creative Writing from Vermont College Fine Arts, and currently down the rabbit hole of a poetry book project which he envisions as a “gaming experience in poetics and wordplay” for the reader; think CYOA meets visual poetry and hybrid text at an underground house party… He currently resides in the DMV area.

dispatches from the [creative] field was originally published in MuddyUm on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This is the transcript of my offering as commencement speaker for my MFA Writing program graduation. Hope you enjoy it and that it resonates with you or someone you know.

Bienvenidos. Welcome to the families, friends, partners and guardian angels of the graduating class of 2020. I am honored and humbled to be your commencement speaker. This morning, as I was going down the breakfast line at the cafeteria, I had the pleasure of speaking with a fellow writer as we both grabbed scrambled eggs. She congratulated me for my [poetry] reading the night before and then asked, “How do you feel now?”

I thanked her and said, “Nervous.” I explained about working on putting together this speech and how I didn’t want to fail, mostly because I wanted to do a good job. And she asked if she could offer me a word of advice. I said, “Please do.” And then she said something that made me drop my shoulders and breathe. She said, “Just offer them what you have.” Thank you Tavia.

Here’s what I have to offer: A story. Some words on the practical use of failure. And James Baldwin as a sounding board for an artist’s credo. This story starts with a preface. A timeless maxim, from one of my personal gurus:

“Do or Don’t, there is no try.”

And though I can see how Jedi Master Yoda’s simple yet deeply profound maxim was just what a young Skywalker needed while struggling to Jedi mind-lift an X-wing fighter plane out of a murky swamp on Dagobah, it may only serve as counter to what my story will hopefully help to illuminate when thinking about failure and the often conflated and just wrong ideas of success.

When I was 18 my definition of success was to become a Navy SEAL. I would train at my high school pool, swimming laps back and forth underwater, seeing how long I could hold my breath. I joined the Navy because, though I was a bright student, my ranking as #110 out 113 graduating seniors in my class, did not reflect this. I felt like I had failed in my high school career. I went off to boot camp. Did well. Came out with a higher rank than I entered. After boot camp, I trained for and applied for diving school, which also would qualify me later for Seals BUDS training. Out of 36 candidates, I was the only one who successfully passed the first phase of physical training.

However, when it came to my medical test, I passed everything except for one test- the light falant test. I failed it with flying colors! (pun intended)

I learned that day that I had a color deficiency. I would not be able to move forward with Seals training, because I would not be able to distinguish the colors between wires on an explosive, especially under water. I could still go on to diving school, become an underwater welder, once there was an opening at the school. Till then, I had to continue on to my next duty station which was an aircraft carrier called the U.S.S. Enterprise in Southern Virginia. I never went to dive school. I struggled a lot during my time in the military, some of that struggle due to bad decisions on my part. Others were out of my control and part of a larger problem within not just the military, but many of our institutions. Needless to say, I failed at fulfilling my dream of becoming a Navy SEAL.

Now, in this fertile ground of a decomposing dream, I found what would become my next true north: I wanted to study acting, and become a professional actor.

I’ll spare you another long winded Hero’s Journey of entering the special world of university, and the Theater Department and finding mentors, allies, and antagonists, some being all of the above. And how I found successes and near success and a compost of failures as a romantically nearly starving artist post-undergrad. I will fast forward to the moment I decided to call my well seasoned agent, who’d worked with the likes of Phillip Seymour Hoffman, to say that though we’ve had some good wins, I no longer have it in me to go on another audition. She of course said I was crazy, and I agreed. Another failure to add to the heap.

Which brings me to today. As I stand here, I am aware that one of my qualifications for being able to offer you whatever words of wisdom or perspective about being writers and artists and living a practiced life as one, is that I have a resume of not quite making this a sustainable lifestyle.

I have tried and I have failed.

Again, my guru Yoda would say “Talk much, you do. Doing nothing, you are. Do or don’t; there is no try.” And I’d turn to him and say,

“I feel you, my pointy eared sensei. But what if it’s all try?”

He might hmmm or just lift up the damn x-wing himself, to shut my lazy ass up. But I’d still be thinking about the try. Is there no try? Isn’t all try?

And that’s what I want to offer you all. That this degree that will be conferred on us, is not just this document to hang on a wall or make a copy of to show potential employers, or stare at while we try and finish that gnawing at our limitations beast of a vision for a story, an epic, a cry in the dark wilderness to be heard. That that rectangular object you will soon hold in your hands, can be a talisman that illuminates a truth that we’ve known and can say with shameless confidence: We are Master Tryers. We tried to get that amazing, crazy ass ephemeral idea for a creative work out of our heads to go through our hands and come out on the blank page whole and intact.

But nine times out of ten, it will undoubtedly change. Because we are changed by the work. We fail at glory, And still we try. We try to express ourselves — our feelings our mysteries, our loves and burning rages, our idiosyncrasies and Grand designs, and fail at every level at getting it just right.

Because that’s our vocation as Master Tryers — to fail your damnedest at the trying. And try again.

I know it doesn’t sound right. Is not the point of getting a Masters degree to say I won? I did it! Someone said that you got this, go out there now and prove to the world that it was worth it. Yeah! And now because you have succeeded at obtaining this Master’s degree, you can succeed at obtaining a book deal — you are a success. But if you are a success, does that not mean someone else has failed? Because the antonym of success is failure. You cannot have one without the other. The one is needed to define the other. But what if we decided that success and failure were not the measuring sticks of our work? What if the measuring stick was to write better than the person you were the moment you decided to pursue this work of being a writer?

And so the real measurement is the amount of fingers to the amount of times that you just say fuck it and continue to do the work.

I’ve continued to reset my definition of success. That, instead of placing all my bets on Fame and Fortune and these lofty and often layered ideas of success, I began a diet of pragmatic optimism- and here’s the recipe…

It’s one part no bullshit

Two parts the hell with it

And a spoonful of wishful thinking

Mix it together with a lot of plain old ‘roll up them sleeves’ emotional and physical labor, and you have yourself you’re very own brand of trying. So at 38, I decided that what I want to see for myself was that I would be an artist who chose his own path based on the work that obsessed me, work that made me try my damnedest to keep trying to make the thing that I wanted to make. And that I did not need anyone else telling me whether I was an artist or not. I learned something about myself as an artist and as a human being, and if I’m lucky — oh, someone was moved by the work, someone got something from it, and someone gave me the honor and the privilege of their time and energy and we made a connection.

As I near the end of my offering, I want to share some insights I gained from reading James Baldwin’s 1962 essay The Creative Process, which I recommend that not only writers, but anyone who consumes art and culture read. I actually wrote an essay in response to his essay, and used it as my critical piece for my application to VCFA. I ask that you indulge me for a moment in quoting myself:

The body of Mr. Baldwin’s essay speaks on two points that I find to be the most important. The artist’s responsibility to society, and the particularities of the American artist. In the first, Baldwin strongly states that “…the nature of the artist’s responsibility to [their] society is to…” “…never cease warring with it…” It is a powerful contradiction to the pop culture consumerism of today’s hyper-influential social media culture. The underlying slogans are ‘Get Fans!’ ‘A Million Likes!’ ‘Find your tribe and give them what they want.’ ‘Do something Funny/Weird/Cool/Sexy/Stupid/Big/Original/Mainstream.’

But do these actually help to push our society toward a better understanding of ourselves? Do they make us look in the mirror and face our individual insecurities and fears? Or are they part of the Great Escape, away from a higher consciousness and human community? Like Baldwin, I am not looking to make grandiloquent claims for a special breed of human called the artist. Do I want to entertain? Yes, of course I do, as I am entertained. Would I love to make people laugh, experience joy, and sensuality? Do I want to inspire them? Yes to all of the above. However, I am not willing to compromise my artistic integrity to get on the cover of GQ or The New York Times Bestseller List. The irony is, that if I dig deep, go personal, open myself up and be vulnerable, I will achieve both truth and joy in my work, and I will find audience.

Here’s a thought experiment:

What would happen if the walls of this institution [insert your own] fell today, and all our degrees were useless pieces of pretty velum, and the only person who knew about your writer’s journey gets a special case of amnesia which prevents them from remembering a single word you wrote to validate your Master’s degree? How can you prove that you actually did the work? In this twisted very blown-up B-movie Sci-Fi, you can’t prove it. Except for that, you know you did the work. You, and you alone, can go about re-building — not the institution, but the practice of artistic expression, and of forming community that supports, provokes, inspires, collaborates and rejoices in the power of creative expression. Do not fear your power to create. Do not fear your limitations.

Do not fear the truth of what is at the core of everything you write. And never fear the machines of industry. For they will undoubtedly fall apart with just the right dose of nuance and cultural change; value your ability to (re)create.

Before you come up and receive your well earned degrees, I want to confer unto you by the council of Master Tryers, know that as you walk, this life-long practice that you will never perfect, will never let you down, as long as you keep trying. It runs on your ‘want to’ and your trying, at making the thing that lives in your head a reality.

Know too that as you walk up here today, you are crossing the threshold into the embrace of labor, into the arms of universal craft-beings, and adding to the cosmic cannon of creation. Trust in your mistakes. There’s gold in them heads, and diamonds in those hearts. In the words of one of our fellow Master Tryers, writer and musician Samuel Barrantes Lopez:

Suck better next time!!!!!!

Gracias.

© Armando Batista, 2020 All Rights Reserved

Armando Batista is a trickster spirit in human form, hailing from Washington Heights, NYC. He is the child of immigrants. A trained actor and performing artist, Armando has worked on stage, screen, and in multiple venues and spaces, transforming the everyday into a magical moment for curiosity and imagination. He holds a Masters in Creative Writing from Vermont College Fine Arts, and is currently down the rabbit hole of a poetry book project which he envisions as a “gaming experience in poetics and wordplay” for the reader; think CYOA meets visual poetry and hybrid text at an underground house party… He currently resides in the DMV area.

On Becoming a Master Tryer was originally published in MuddyUm on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hold my innocence;

Spaceships and German shephards

Drawn on a fire escape.

© Armando Batista, 2019 All Rights Reserved

Armando Batista is a trickster spirit in human form, hailing from Washington Heights, NYC. He is the child of immigrants. A trained actor and performing artist, Armando has worked on stage, screen, and in multiple venues and spaces, transforming the everyday into a magical moment for curiosity and imagination. He holds a Masters in Creative Writing from Vermont College Fine Arts, and currently down the rabbit hole of a poetry book project which he envisions as a “gaming experience in poetics and wordplay” for the reader; think CYOA meets visual poetry and hybrid text at an underground house party… He currently resides in the DMV area.

Brown Paper Bag (a haiku series)

contents: Ramm∑llz∑∑’s

40; spray can; journal; I-

konoklast reborn!

© Armando Batista, 2019 All Rights Reserved

Armando Batista is a trickster spirit in human form, hailing from Washington Heights, NYC. He is the child of immigrants, making him American. A trained actor and performing artist, Armando has worked on stage, screen, and in multiple venues and spaces, transforming the everyday into a magical moment for curiosity and imagination. He is currently earning his Masters in Writing from Vermont College Fine Arts, and currently down the rabbit hole of a poetry book project which he envisions as a “gaming experience in poetics and wordplay” for the reader; think CYOA meets visual poetry and hybrid text at an underground house party… He currently resides in the DMV area.

“Bite that piece off. The rest is good to eat.”
Momma knows best.

To the worm who resided in that mushy sector
it was room and board.

I bit into the apple and spit out the “bad” part.

I didn’t ask the worm
I didn’t research property rights or make a bid on the apple estate
maybe the worm would’ve shared.

I took what I wanted, only hesitated when I saw the phylum annelida
burrowed in my apple. My apple. My apple.

If only the Native Americans could’ve spit out the founding èmigrès who came and took their land, though they never would’ve said it was theirs.
If asked, they probably would’ve shared...

Wish our apartment was really ours.
Wish my dad’s car was really his.
Wish my time was really mine.
Wish I didn’t feel like that earth-
worm:

waiting for eviction.

© Armando Batista, 2019 All Rights Reserved

Armando Batista is a trickster spirit in human form, hailing from Washington Heights, NYC. He is the child of immigrants, making him American. A trained actor and performing artist, Armando has worked on stage, screen, and in multiple venues and spaces, transforming the everyday into a magical moment for curiosity and imagination. He is currently earning his Masters in Writing from Vermont College Fine Arts, and currently down the rabbit hole of a poetry book project which he envisions as a “gaming experience in poetics and wordplay” for the reader; think CYOA meets visual poetry and hybrid text at an underground house party… He currently resides in the DMV area.

Rotten Fruit Philosophy was originally published in MuddyUm on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.