Course:Southern California
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| Advanced Writing of Poetry |
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I’m from Southern California–OK, fine, I’m from Orange County. Even more specifically, I’m from San Clemente, which isn’t the most embarrassing town in Orange County to be from. It’s the southernmost town in the county, and mostly known for being beautiful and having lots of surfers and skaters. Even then, though, it can’t escape the gravitational pull of the conservatism that permeates Southern California–it’s right next to Camp Pendleton, and it’s home to Richard Nixon’s Western White House. To which I can only say: LOL.
I have thought a lot about the influence that growing up in this place exerted on me, particularly as a kid. In the early 2000s, the United States, or at least the part I lived in, was riding a paranoid, unhinged nationalistic high: we were at war in Afghanistan, and nothing less than the soul of our nation was at stake, apparently. This was what I heard at school–I attended private elementary and middle schools where I was often one of the only non-white kids in class, and certainly one of the least wealthy. At home, my mom watched the news with me: terrifying footage of cities collapsing in the desert. She explained to me what war was, what imperialism was, and why these things weren’t worth it.
Our own family wasn’t so removed from the consequences of American imperialism. My Lolo immigrated to the US by joining the Navy, part of a program made possible by the American colonial presence in the Philippines; upon arrival, he learned that, because the armed forces were segregated, he would never be allowed to rise above the rank of steward. When I was a kid, we lived so close to Camp Pendleton that their artillery drills made our windows shake.
On the other hand, it’s beautiful down there. My dad took my brother and me hiking almost every weekend, teaching us about the plants and animals native to the area. Chaparral only looks dead if you don’t know what you’re looking for. I got to see both the oceans and the mountain almost every day for the first eighteen years of my life. I was really lucky.
Southern California is an endlessly rich text. I could talk about it forever. A quarter of my mind always feels stuck there, no matter where I go, even though I would never want to live there again. The first album I made, Modjeska, is named after one of the peaks of Saddleback Mountain, which I grew up looking at from my backyard. I wanted to make an album about colonialism and its consequences–including my own life, the life I lived while becoming an adult in the 21st century. Here’s an excerpt from an essay I wrote about the album (it’s included in the CD liner notes & with the digital album, but just get in touch with me on Canvas if you want to read the whole thing!):
The money is new money, brought in with venture capital and real estate. Everything is so glossy and smooth, it becomes trashy, the way too-shiny skin starts looking taut with disease. Or it just starts to feel blank: strip malls forever and ever, winding labyrinths of box houses with identical interiors and grass-laden yards.
The consequence of this blankness is the assumption that Orange County is what it is innately. In fact, the place is the product of so many elements of American colonialism…Colonialism and its consequences are part of the context that shapes me and my work. I want people to see this part of the world in context, so they might better understand Orange County for what it is: one tiny flourish in the vast concatenated pattern of the West. I want this because, when the past feels real, the future starts to feel real too.
Whenever I go back home, I get excited to lock eyes with the mountain again. In a time and place shot through with the belief that the earth belongs to us, it is the center reminding me that we belong to the earth.