Sabina Grogan

For our second post on the creative process, Enlight’ning turns the mike over to Harker alumna Antonia Wei Ling. Antonia, whose last name was Ipser during her Harker years, is currently studying English and Art at Williams College. Combining these two, this past summer Antonia wrote a short comic about Lori Ruff, a woman whose stolen identities were so convincing that she “took the secret of her real identity to the grave.”

Twelve Pages about Someone Real

So: this summer I made a comic about a real-life woman who died in 2010. Twelve pages about Lori Ruff, a woman who wasn’t who she said she was and took the secret of who she really was to the grave. You should look her up; it’s an interesting story.

She really existed, but the scenes I write her into – at least the details in them, what she’s thinking and feeling before she dies, what her family says about her after she’s gone – are all pretty fictional. In some ways it’s easier to try and write those scenes than to write a made-up character (which would maybe be a more creative enterprise, starting from scratch). But this is a different challenge: writing about Lori Ruff, or rather Jane Doe, means imagining what it must have felt like to lie to your partner about your name and your past. Or what it was like to care for an infant when you don’t trust your husband’s family. And ironically this also means imagining what it must feel like to try and take on a whole new identity.

Fiction is an empathetic exercise. Since “write what you know” often slumps into “write yourself, over and over again, without any disguising of that fact,” creative writing can begin to seem like a narcissistic activity. For me, starting with the constraints of someone’s real circumstances (and doing at least a little digging to find compelling details, before I start making them up) helped me get my bearings on the comic I wanted to make.

I don’t think I’m really in a position to be giving advice, but if you find yourself writing like emotionally empty stuff or overwrought self-reflexive things, try looking for a story that interests you and seeing what you can do with it. Your history teachers might be happy with you if you take an interest in real pirates.

(please click on image to enlarge)

– Antonia Wei Ling (Antonia Ipser, Harker ’12)

Welcome to the Enlight’ning Online Blog!

Here, current and former students of the Harker Middle School consider their lives as creative artists. For our first entry in this dawning journal, we’re turning the mike over to the multi-talented Harker alumnus, Ashvin Swaminathan. Ashvin has just finished his first year at Harvard, where he is pursuing the study of Music and Physics.

In the spring of 2012, our youth orchestra, the SFSYO, was gearing up for its European tour. After our Bon Voyage concert at Davies Symphony Hall, I was wandering backstage, trying hard to decipher the message hidden in Gustav Mahler’s complex First Symphony. But I felt dubious of my ability to understand the symphony in its entirety. Deep down, a nagging question that I had always tried to repress returned to haunt me: “Could someone with Indian heritage ever truly comprehend the myriad emotions expressed in western classical music?” It all began when my first violin teacher, while attempting to help me understand classical phrasing better, urged me to stop listening to Indian classical music. That such a thought could manifest itself in someone’s head was indeed jarring, but it left upon my supple mind the impression that eastern and western musical traditions were irreparably alienated. Indeed, my fear that a Cultural Wall was growing in the recesses of my mind became a reality.

There we were in Berlin, touring the city between rehearsals. Of all the historical sites, it was the Berlin Wall that moved me most. What was so great an evil, a physical roadblock that threatened to artificially divorce the east from the west, now stood meekly before me, broken up and splattered with the masterpieces of one-too-many graffiti artists. As we performed Mahler’s symphony on the hallowed stage of the Berlin Philharmonie, the emotions and life experiences evoked by the music combined with the knowledge that mankind can overcome obstacles as daunting as the Berlin Wall to form a voice that resounded through my mind, “Mr. Swaminathan, tear down this Cultural Wall!” But the gradual realization that despite my Indian heritage I was an equal part of Mahler’s symphonic euphoria is what finally brought my own Wall down. Just like the Berliners who came together two decades ago, I too have resolved my internal quandary and harmoniously assimilated into the world of western classical music.

~ Ashvin A. Swaminathan ’13