These pieces are precious food for all of us.
Beyond Syntax: An Editor’s Note
These three wildly varied projects by Aishia Lin Sampson, Ángel Suero, and Melia Chendo originated in my spring 2023 course, “Creating a Full length Recording or Performance.” The spring Gallatin class is informed by my fall course, “Beyond Syntax,” and all three of these surprising and beautiful pieces juxtapose words, sounds, and images in novel ways that take us beyond an accepted idea of “syntax” to tell complex, personal stories
Aishia’s film “teaches” us “how to laugh,” a lesson always worth studying. Aishia appears to borrow from Chaplin here, as she too creates her own soundtrack, acts, and directs in every shot of her brilliant short film. The sound limitations of his time forced Chaplin to create a personal language to guide us through the heartbreak at the root of great humor. It’s no stretch to see how Aishia’s wonderful film follows in Chaplin’s crooked footsteps here. Aishia’s original use of sound, movement, and image, and her soulful sense of invention, make Aisha a truly legendary young teacher of laughter.
Through Ángel’s powerful collection of word, sound, and image, we are able to palpably feel and even “see” his poignant pandemic experience as he struggles to make sense the challenge of being at NYU Gallatin, in the culture of downtown Manhattan, while living at home with his family in the heart of Newark, a world apart from NYU campus. Ángel creates a wholly original language to give us a deeply honest look at the cultural and personal disconnect he experiences as he navigates between these two completely different worlds in such a difficult time. And like Aishia and Melia, Ángel uses every creative tool at his disposal to find space amidst the chaos tell his very complex story.
“I only need five minutes to tell you to learn how to speak,” Melia says in her deeply internal, poetic, and sensual piece. Like Aishia’s How to Laugh, that first line references a “directions” prompt I gave to the class that was inspired by Julio Cortazar’s Instruction Manual. To explain to us “how to speak,” Melia taught herself a complicated digital program that manipulates sounds and words. Melia used this program to collage words and sounds into a very particular language, which she overlaps with video images to investigate intimacy on her own terms. Melia uses this new technology in such a careful way it deepens, rather than overwhelms her ability to her poetic story.
I’m so proud to see these wonderful students’ heartfelt, complex, and honest pieces featured on Confluence. These are beautiful, nuanced voices, reporting back to us from the painful pandemic period we all experienced. These pieces are precious food for all of us.
—Roy Nathanson
