“Any water entity is… already constituting and constituted by overlapping and interconnected
Astrida Neimanis, Thinking With Water p. 74
cycles of repetition. The finite quantity of water on our earth has given rise, and will continue to
give rise, to an unfathomable plurality of life forms.”
If I had to narrow down the elements of this course that I know I’ll carry with me long
after my time at Brown is done, it’s probably our class discussions from the weeks we spent
analyzing critical race theory’s position in academia. Our readings for these weeks shared hope
for the day that Africana, Ethnic, and various Area Studies can exist namelessly in academia,
rather than their current state as named yet perpetually marginal disciplines, and this wasn’t new
to me. Yet our course materials encouraged me to think more closely about the divisions that
have structured my learning in the university setting thus far, and the repercussions that they hold
on artmaking within an institutional setting.
This semester marked the end of my ‘soul-searching’ across Brown’s various academic
departments, and was the first time I entered the school year with an independently constructed
project to occupy the forefront of my mind: my thesis which treats water as a scaffold for
exploring imperial memory in poetry. It’s a project that is saturated with unwieldy but
undeniably there energetic connections: water as a historical substance, water as a poetic
substance, water as a set of metaphorical constraints through which to contour my writing, water
as the physical conduit which enabled naval empires to alter lives. As the theories that are
integral to my project pull me deeper into a watery understanding of the world, I find myself
asking: What are the watery intersection grounds of our university, and what to make of them?
My final project tries to exist at the watery intersections of literary arts, history, and the
anti-imperial nature of Ethnic Studies—places where I have always felt at home, but never
thought I could synthesize into a single playing ground. “contamination” is an excerpt of a poem
embedded with audio soundscapes informed by my Literary Arts course on hydropoetics, my
independent study of water scholars such as Astrida Neimanis, my History class on ‘Third
World’ Cinema narratives concerning urban and environmental decay, and undoubtedly, the
critical patience that this English class has brought out in all of us. My poem tries to map sound
as a porous substance, while my two audio soundscapes respectively respond to the prompts “Let
a body of water’s material properties guide only form, not content,” and “Research one waterway
outside of Providence that you feel connected to. Spend some time with this water, then write its
biography.” It’s always been a dream of mine to code interactive poetry, and I’m really happy I
experimented with coding as the watery grounds where my artmaking can come together.
Highly aware of all the cross-pollinating ideas at work here, I find myself walking away
from this semester so happily contaminated by the intellectual pursuit of an idea that I simply
cannot stop thinking about. I recognize that this is what learning is meant to be: never the
isolation of ideas into the vacuum of controlled discussion, but always their invocation into the
places that we go once the discussion is over, always their resurfacing.
A guide to reading “contamination”
- Download the html file and run it on your browser of choice!
- There is audio embedded into the sections “like dust of Sahara traveling far as Pacific” and “thinking of a contaminated sky.” It takes anywhere from 0 to 30 seconds for the audio to start playing, so I’m also linking each piece here! (1, 2) Listen to as much or as little as you like.
- The dialogue and singing is mainly in Tagalog, so a translated English transcript is included at the end of my final portfolio.
Translated audio transcript of “contamination”
like dust of Sahara traveling far as Pacific
“Oh?”
“What now?”
“Um…”
“Sing!”
“Are you recording this?”
“No!”
“Are you recording this?!”
“No, go on!”
“Okay, game: my toes, my knees, my shoulders, my head. My toes, my knees, my shoulders,
my head. My mmm, my knees, my shoulders, my head. My mmm, my mmm, my mmm, my
head, and then, I don’t know anymore.”
“That’s it, you’re already done?”
“After that, there’s a line I forget.”
“Ah, I don’t know it either.”
“You don’t know it either?!”
“I thought you just didn’t know the tone.”
“I don’t know the whole thing!”
When did I begin to cry?
This river of my tears,
where will it go?
“…that means it’s temporary.”
“Every time the ECQ (Extended Community Quarantine) is extended, their relationship is
extended too.”
“Yeah!”
“Their relationship depends on the ECQ.”
“So when ECQ is over, that means—”
“Their relationship is over too…”
“That’s just called a kausap.1”
“Why are you so bitter?”
“So wait, wait. If that’s its definition… then are we each other’s quaranflings—”
“So if the ECQ is extended, let’s call again OK? If not… then forget it.”
thinking of a contaminated sky
“Pushing through to the British Isles?”
“Anywhere, as long as it isn’t here.”
“The coast we have will be engulfed by the gulf in a span of fifteen years. If the increase in
heat by the Pacific water temperatures is as consistent as its 1o rise annually, when you return
by 2030, you might return to a water world where this town may not even be part of the
Philippine map anymore.”
“You’ll be alright too, huh? You’ll be alright”
Supposedly a lifetime,
supposedly until the end.
The road is still so long,
are we really getting off here?
If this is the way we’ll speak,
if this is the end,
maybe we should avoid asking one another “How are you?”
Forget the things we’re used to
so that we don’t end up hurting each other.
This is the end.
This is the end.
1 Ka = prefix to denote a shared situation, usap = talk. Kausap = a straightforward word for someone you talk to, nothing more special than that.
