Aberjhani's Blog: Notes of a 21st Century Digital Scribe, page 6

Conversations with the World 108: Ben Okri’s Existential Call to Creative Arms

(Art detail from “Cities of Gold & Tears” No. 1 by Aberjhani ©2021) In his November 12, 2021, essay for England’s The Guardian newspaper, Booker Prize-winning author Ben Oki urged creative artists around the globe to dedicate their inspired labors to the production of works addressing the catastrophic crises of the current era. In his words:

“I propose existential creativity, to serve the unavoidable truth of our times, and a visionary existentialism, to serve the future that we must bring ...

Unexpected Encounters of the Angelic Kind

(“The Angelic Disposition” Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle artwork by Aberjhani ©2021) INTRO: Unexpected encounters with manifestations of the angelic kind tend to be recurring themes in some of my creative productions because of their repeated occurrences in my actual life. The following example is taken from the texts of two recent posts of artwork at Pixels.com and Fine Art America: 
Portrait of the Artist at Work An interesting funny thing happened after I delivered 3 pieces of artwork t...

The Art of Reversing Climate Change Denial (part 2 of 2)

(Artwork “From Global Warming to Global Compassion Study 2” by Aberjhani ©2021) On September 21, a TV meteorologist appeared practically giddy with excitement while confirming rainfall in the region had shattered long-standing records. In Savannah (Georgia, USA) that meant smashing one which had stood at 2.12 inches, since the 1880s, with a new reported total of almost 7 inches.

(To read part 1 of this post please click here)
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The reporter’s eyes glazed over with the kind of hypnotic intoxi...

The Art of Reversing Climate Change Denial (part 1 of 2)

(Artwork “From Global Warming to Global Compassion Study 1” by Aberjhani ©2021) On September 20, 2021, I was still trying to decide which artwork, representative of a visual “narrative,” I should submit for the latest Savannah Art Association airport exhibit when something occurred which would force the final decision for me. It started with a single drop of rain.
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For only the second or third time this year, I congratulated myself, on the date noted, for having been wise enough to use my ...

Reading Rumi after 9/11 and again at the end of the War in Afghanistan (part 1)

Artwork detail from “Study on Human Migrations and Children’s Tears” by Aberjhani ©2021)

“People cage parrots and nightingales to hear the sound of their sweet songs.
But how should they put crows and owls into cages?
Who indeed has heard tale of that? …
Know for certain that this is the reason
the believers suffer disappointment in good and evil.”
   ––Rumi (translation by William Chittick from The Sufi Path of Love, p. 243)
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The reasons people winced, cried, screamed, and prayed viewing imag...

Conversations with the World 107: 20th Anniversary of September 11

The meaning of the image on the TV screen was clear to me as I watched footage of giant aircraft explode against the twin towers of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. A ​war had been declared.

Much less clear, just last month in August 2021, was the meaning behind videos of people clinging to (and falling from) a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport aircraft flying out of Kabul, Afghanistan, after 20 years of roadside bombings, drone killings, and to-the-death firefights.
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From the moment terr...

Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance Turns 18!

Celebrating the 18th anniversary of the publication of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (Facts On File/Infobase Publishing) by Aberjhani and Sandra L. West with foreword by Clement Alexander Price. Original cover art painting by Jacob A. Lawrence.
The fact that Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance turns 18 in September makes me more than a little emotional. It was my second major book (after the birth of I Made My Boy Out of Poetry) and at this time I feel about it as many parents...

As Hurricane Ida pummels the Gulf Coast...

​Category 4 or 5 hurricanes like Hurricane Ida have a way of commanding your attention whether you want them to or not. Right now, Ida’s unforgiving fury is forcing me to recall the destruction wreaked upon the Gulf Coast area 16 years ago when hurricanes Katrina and Rita tore through the area. At that time, I was posting work regularly on Authors Den and the poem An Angel for New Orleans was written in response to the historic disaster. Poet and educator created the above video from my s...

Letter to James Baldwin (in lieu of a ‘Letter to Barack Obama’)

Editorial Note : This letter was first published in June 2010  as “Dear James Baldwin (in lieu of Dear Barack Obama)”  on the now defunct Red Room authors and books website. It is shared below on the eve of what would have been Baldwin’s 97th birthday.
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For many, letter-writing as a literary tool for expressing personal reflections on public and private matters has yet to be surpassed by modern conveniences like emails and texts. Letters somehow seem to emerge out of a deeper wellspring of ...

Poems Matter: Text and Meaning in Claude McKay’s ‘If We Must Die’ (part 2)

(Official Postered Chromatic Poetics for Aberjhani’s Bright Skylark Literary Productions ©2021) In the current era, a highly-publicized disproportionate threat to African Americans due to unnatural causes––specifically, violence inflicted upon unarmed African-American men and women by armed policemen–– has been acknowledged by the Black Lives Matter Movement, the United Nations, and numerous social justice organizations around the world. A similar threat in 1919 existed in the form of lyn...