Life Lessons: Don’t Disqualify Yourself

By Cameron Price

In March I will be graduating from Goddard's BFA in Creative Writing Program. It feels spectacular to thumb through the 88 page manuscript of poetry and critical writing that I labored over and revised more times than I can count. In fact I printed it out just so I could hold it in my hands (I'll reuse and then recycle the paper, don't worry.) I'm very proud of the work that I've done at Goddard and grateful for the invaluable lessons and friendships I've gained.

At this point, many people know I'm pretty much DONE with my undergraduate degree. It’s an amazing feeling, don't get me wrong. I like being congratulated as much as the next guy. However there's that question. You know which one. It's the question that keeps (or did keep) you up at night as a young 20-something on the verge of beginning a new life chapter: "So what's next?" And, of course, this question may keep you up at night regardless of your age. We seem to hear it everywhere when we're about to finish a milestone. What's next, what's next, what's next....

It's an enchanting notion right? Life’s endless possibilities. The sky is the limit. Actually, as we all know, it's much messier than that. In the past when faced with the inevitable unknown, my emotions more closely resemble a tight and vicious knot of nerves and ecstatic excitement than a clichéd white-winged eagle soaring easily up to the lofty heights of aspiration. It's a terrifying question. And often it just feels easier to make something up. We are kind of making it up as we go along anyway.....right? Instead of worrying incessantly about the unknowable future, I've sought ways to approach the end of my degree differently. There must be a better way to look at all of this, I've thought to myself many times.

By far the advice that keeps coming back to comfort me are the words of Chicana author and activist Stephanie Elizondo Griest. She was Goddard's visiting writer last Fall. Griest is a colorful speaker who has lived an even more colorful life. Her stories of beautiful, terrifying, and transformational experiences from living everywhere from Russia, to China, to Cuba enthralled us all. However, one idea stood out to me: Don't be the one to disqualify yourself from an opportunity. Let that be someone else's job. Don't you be the one who tells you you don't have what it takes.

She figured, someone had to win that fellowship, write that book, get that job, receive that grant, tell that story. So why not her? Why not me? Why not you? The trick was not to NOT get rejected. The trick is not to be the one to tell yourself not to bother, that you wouldn't get it anyway. Stephanie Elizondo Griest’s advice: Give it your best shot and don’t get in your own way.

This means a great deal to me as a poet. My poetry easily gets rejected more often than it gets accepted. But I know now that if I had let just one of those rejection letters shut me down and hold me back, I may not have gotten my work accepted at the places I have. A good example of this is when I made an experimental video piece based on a poem I wrote. I wanted to try something different in an unfamiliar medium so I had fun with it and made something I was proud of. A little thought came to me that I should submit it somewhere. It was as simple as Googling "video art submissions" to find an avenue to potentially share my work. One of the first opportunities that came up was for the 6th Cairo Video Festival in Egypt. I browsed their website, marveling at the quality of the work I was seeing. A little thought came again that I should submit my little film to them. I scoffed. Um, helloooo, I shot this 2:45 second video on my iPhone 4. No way. But I did it anyway because there was no submission fee....

I totally forgot about the submission until months later when I received an email from Egypt telling me that my video piece had been selected to be screened in their upcoming festival! I was in shock. How did my iPhone movie make it into this international video festival!? The only thing I did know was that it wouldn't have been accepted at all if I had never submitted it. Though I had my doubts, I didn't disqualify myself from the opportunity. Well, maybe more accurately, I followed my gut before I could talk myself out of it and lo and behold, something great came of it. On November 17, 2014, my film played on loop in a gallery somewhere in Cairo. I've never been to Cairo—I may never go to Cairo, but my iPhone video did!

I am remembering this now as I am about to graduate. I am trying to imprint it in my mind, make it my mantra: I will not be the one to disqualify myself. That's someone else's job. I just have to go for it. And I share that with you now, dear supporters of Duende. May it light your path as it has illumined mine. Remember that you are your best advocate! Don't be the first one to tell you that you, your writing, your craft, your dreams, are not good enough, not attainable, not realistic, not "reasonable." Let that be someone else's job. Your job is just to kick ass and go for it (and of course, to submit your brilliant creative work to Duende Issue 3 starting March 1st…).

No Silent Night

By Jørn Earl Otte

The holidays, however you may define them, will soon be upon us, and for too many in America, they will be spending those holidays in the shadows of grief and loss. Where I live, in the heart of Appalachia, while the tree-covered mountains have long since lost the robust colors of autumn, the houses throughout my neighborhood are covered in glittering lights, and as the old song says, “in the air, there’s a feeling of Christmas.”

Like many writers that I respect and admire, for me, there is a feeling in the air that has very little to do with the so-called joy of the season. Depression encroaches upon the heart of the melancholic writer as much as the eggnog, and turkey, and gift-giving seem to do. For those who suffer through this dark time, the anxiety, sadness, and grief they must deal with comes from a variety of places – memories of loved ones who died too soon, struggles with illnesses, divorce, financial difficulty, or a myriad of other issues. I have experienced depression through the holidays for many of those reasons, and in other years I have celebrated, and enjoyed the positive feelings synonymous with this time of year.

This year, however, I am faced with a depression that comes from a different place. It comes from a growing anger, sadness, frustration, and bewilderment I have at the way my country is treating its own citizens of color. As a white male who is perfectly aware that I come from a place of privilege, I feel the need to speak up, and acknowledge that my country is sick, and I am sick with it, and I don’t know the cure.

The written word is what I know, and it is all that I know, and it has brought me comfort before during the darkest times. So what to do? Some of the people who are near and dear to my heart don’t have the same kinds of conversations with their children as I have with mine. I have a 15-year-old daughter and a nearly 10-year-old son. Never once have I had to tell them how to behave if confronted by an armed police officer. But people I love have to coach their children in ways that I can’t imagine, and then they have to pray every single day that their child will make it home alive.  

So again I ask, what to do? At times, I feel helpless, but I also know that I am privileged to have the opportunity to make a choice – I can either speak up, or I can be silent. Thankfully, I am both a writer, and an editor on the staff of a progressive literary magazine so I can speak up in multiple ways.

Writer and blogger Nancy Arroyo Ruffin wrote on her website recently that “Everyone agrees that there is injustice going on, and while some protest or burn down businesses to release their rage— as an artist, as a writer, I do the only thing I know how. I write. I read. I try and educate myself and others and then I write some more. My art is the only weapon I have. My words are how I fight back because in the end my words are all I have.”

I have suffered some of the worst that depression can bring – I have drowned the thoughts in alcohol, I have laughed in the eye of the storm, I have wrestled with the Almighty, and I have stared down the demons who wished me to end it all. In the end, I have found the most solace in the written word – both my own, and the works of others. Ruffin is spot-on. I can only use words to fight this battle. Whether they are the words of others (William Styron’s Darkness Visible, which chronicles his descent into the darkest worlds of depression, helped me come to a greater understanding of my own battle) or my own words, words are all I have.

Being a part of the staff of Duende during this time of year, I have found another weapon in this battle, and that is the wonderful opportunity to read amazing works from writers spanning the globe and representing such beauty and diversity that I can scarcely take it all in. But I will take it in, and then I will share it with the world in the virtual pages of Duende. For I have taken a solemn vow around a table of my peers in a small building in a remote college campus – to help make a literary magazine that reflects “the true beauty and diversity of the U.S. literary ecosystem.”

I am reminded of the words of the German Protestant pastor and anti-Nazi activist Martin Niemöller, who wrote, “In Germany, they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist; And then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist; And then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew; And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up.”

So as an editor and writer, I speak. I hope that my words and my choices can make some small millimeter of awareness and change in this violent American landscape. I hope that my fellow privileged white brothers and sisters will take a moment to reflect upon what is happening to our black and brown countrymen, and then, on the Holy Silent Night, lift up a silent prayer to whomever they believe hears such things, and then raise a loud voice to the people in power who can enact meaningful change.

Despite my growing frustration and anger at the country I live in, despite my sadness and fear for my brothers and sisters who have more melanin in their skin than I do, and despite the depression that has constantly and consistently for multiple reasons afflicted me each and every winter – dammit, I still love Christmas. And perhaps what I love about it most of all is the fact that it reminds me, at the most basic level, that we are to love one another. As a father, I love my children and can help them to be better members of society by raising them to love people of all colors, creeds, sexual orientations, religions, and so forth. As a writer, I can speak out about atrocities that are a disease in my country. As an editor, I can make a conscious effort to showcase the talents of people who are otherwise marginalized in the literary landscape. As a human being, I can give hugs, I can share food, and I can shout for joy and shout in protest. What I cannot do, what I must never do, is be silent, no matter how holy the occasion.