In Our Own Spaces #11: "Alternate Perspectives"
Intentions for a community hosted artist salon series
The following writing was created for and spoken at the eleventh edition of the community-lead and hosted artist salon series “In Our Own Spaces” on June 21st, 2025. My partner and I founded this salon series as a space for communal gathering, radical conversation, and redefining uses of art in our current society.
The following poem was inspired by many writers, thinkers and friends. Rolling the credits: Byung Chul Han “The Expulsion of the Other,” Samuel Arbesman “The Half Life of Facts,” Eugene Thacker “In the Dust of this Planet,” John Vervake “Awakening from the Meaning Crisis,” Krishnamurti “Think On These Things,” The Barbie Movie, Andrew Cohen’s Instagram Story, Faiq Chong on Medium, and Baudrillard’s theory of Hyperreality
I don’t know if there’s such thing as the TRUTH
But if there is an objective reality
It would be my reality
This carefully constructed universe I’ve been working on since birth—
You could say it’s my life’s work
Because from before I could open my eyes, before I was an independent being
I was taking in the information from my surroundings to synthesize what I needed to understand who I’m supposed to be
How everything should be
So that one day I could move around the world independently
And one day I stood on my own two feet and thought
This world is mine to conquer
And then I fell
Realizing that maybe this world was actually built to conquer me
How I handle that depends on how quickly someone came to comfort me
Pull me back on my feet and hold my hand as we walk forward showing me see, it’s not so bad
I look around and think, how overwhelming
I’m confusing hyper-vigilance with presence
Because I can’t understand an un-understandable state of “just being”
Neglecting the importance of what’s important to me
The salience network that steadies my foundation
A self-organizing network of communications
Because as all of my cells regenerate there’s something that’s still “me”
Maybe I need to create that image to be stronger, better, bigger
Show how authentically “me” I can be
The entrepreneur of myself, for you, a commodity
Isn’t that diversity?
Comparing our differences so that you know I’m a unique product
A shape that can’t be replicated, a one of a kind
An exclusive drop
So line up
There won’t be another one like me…
So much to take in and see, and the rules just keep changing
The truth is just whatever we’re constantly making
The half life of a fact is half of a lifetime but all of that just looks like randomness to me
Death defines life but I’m trying to live forever
Because the thought of death causes me anxiety
When there’s one bug in my apartment I can view it as a being
Maybe catch and release
But 100? 200? That’s an infestation and its personal to me
Their existence questions if I belong where I am
How am I supposed to know if I’m the weed getting choked out by blooming squash leaves
Or the native ground cover getting overrun by invasive species
In the end, it's the Other that saves us from the hell of the same
Life is computationally explosive and we need more space to breath
Caught up in what is real or simulation as we drown in hyperreality
A return to context is needed for consciousness clarity
There are 8 billion people on this planet
And as our knowledge base gets wider, the less each person knows
If you’re not looking for something you’re going to miss it
I wanted to talk about alternate perspectives
That’s not really possible, is it?
Because seeing outside of my own perspective is a fallacy
But the way we expand it is simple listening
“If you are listening to find out, then your mind is free”
That’s not me that’s Krishnamurti
But I agree that with some effort we’re capable of discovery
You with me?
In the spirit of gaining alternate perspectives, this poem was followed by the following activity:
Partner with someone and practice absorbed listening paired with stream of consciousness monologuing (2 min)
Share back moments where your own stream would have continued in a different direction, and what you learned from the difference in their thought process (2 min)
Switch roles
I encourage you to engage in this practice with others and share this writing as inspiration if you feel called to it.
