Enthroned in my Unfeigned Fret
February 19-March 1 2024
Jo Farb Hernandez Gallery
San Jose State University
I took Voice and Movement here at SJSU during the Spring of 2022. I stood and delivered my first and final sonnet the semester before officially changing my major to spatial art.Barely committed to memory I stumbled through Vile, sportive, reckon, and Reign to arrive at my C on my transcript.
There were days I stood outside this class struggling to miss class or drag in my anxiety with me. My neither friend nor intentional foe.
We were grouped together through circumstance, engendered maybe from the same source. I always seeked to separate myself from it. I was a person and it was my monster.
One day I did go to class even as the anxiety inflated with each breath. I contained it all the way up until it contained me, It was too late to leave.
One day I did go to class even as the anxiety inflated with each breath. I contained it all the way up until it contained me, It was too late to leave.
I stood in the middle of the room encircled by the class. Usually anxiety feels as though all eyes are on you and here I found myself in the reality of it.
For a moment I did not feel real anymore, it felt as though I was now the embodied creature. My cruor contaminated and congealed by fret, this vampire had won. But the professor gave me that space. They did not chase me away or make it feel like an intrusion to the course of class. I was real and I was present and it was okay to have anxiety.
It is not my villian, we sit quietly making ceramics together. That moment in TA 48 changed how I viewed my mental health. I may no longer be a theater major but I am grateful for that class and that professor.
My art is a way to continue understanding myself as a person, even on days when the creeping creature notion crawls back. Creating small things helps to appease my mind.