Only Connect
By Elizabeth Wong
The great Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara once told the world, “At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.”[1] Since first hearing this statement, it has become one of the defining truths of my life, and it has set me free. My passions have shown me that love is about connecting with people and truly understanding them. I have found this feeling of connectedness in creating beauty. The particular mediums of beauty which are the most significant to me are poetry, fashion, and graphic design. These forms utilize totally different approaches; some aim to connect with the heart through the brain, others use the eyes to connect to feelings and thoughts. However, I utilize them all to connect with people. Creating and appreciating beauty in a world that is often ugly is my passion. It is important to me as a way of expressing the “great feeling of love” that guides my revolutionary self. I call it my “revolutionary self” because, when I die, I want to have left a legacy in this world. I want to change the word for the better, if only in a small way.
Knowing
that you have created something beautiful – that you have seen beauty – is
amazing. When you experience something truly amazing and lovely, you are taken
away from your cares, and you 
experience
feelings of hope. I feel like the person who has created this beauty so
understood me that he could make this moment, this thing, completely perfect.
Sometimes things affect me in just the right way, and there is a connection for
a few seconds, no more, between the creator of the beautiful thing or moment
and me. Ram Dass and Paul Gorman say in their book that “there is more to the
mind than reason alone.” There is something else called “intuitive awareness”
that “links us most intimately to the universe and, in allegiance with the
heart, binds us together in generosity and compassion.”[2] My
passion for beauty is my own take on this intuitive awareness. It is my means
of linking to the universe and all of the people in it, and my method of
binding everyone together.
Silverstein’s Where the
Sidewalk Ends (A) 1 )
One of the
most important forms of beauty to me is the art of poetry. I have loved poetry
from a young age. I learned how to read while browsing through books of Shel Silverstein’s
poetry with my mother and giggling at his comic expressions (Image A). As I
grew more mature, I began to appreciate the work of Frost and Poe as beautiful
and meaningful. Then, my senior year of English, my love for poetry came to its
highest point. We began a poetry unit in class, and we were assigned a reading
from our Literature textbook. I became so engrossed in reading about the
different elements of poetry and being exposed to so many new poems that I
ended up reading the entire poetry textbook on my own, and even bought myself a
used copy. These few weeks spent analyzing poems were some of the happiest in
my high school career. My intuitive learning style spurred me to delve into the
complexities of words, and to discover the deeper implications of rhyme schemes
and meter. ‘Intuition’ is characterized by a thirst to know “why” or “what does
it mean,” and a desire to “explore subtleties and complexities.”[3] I
found room for this type of exploration in the verse of a poem.
My backpack (B)
I discovered some of my favorite
poets during high school. The ones that stood out to me seemed most capable of
capturing exactly what it is to be a thinking, breathing human being in our day
and age. Among these were Emily Dickinson, Charles Bukowski, and most
especially E.E. Cummings. Indeed, E.E. Cummings’s poems are quite distinct from
traditional poetry in that they find ways to make the text of the poem a visual
experience as well. They play with syntax, word placement, and punctuation,
using each in innovative ways to heighten the experience of the poem. For
example, in the poem, “l(a,” he describes the feelings implicit in watching a
leaf fall, using a tiny column of text two letters wide trailing down a large
empty page. The poem consists of only four words, “loneliness” chief among
them. This theme is reinforced by the huge amount of blank space he created
intentionally around the poem.Cummings also places the letters of the text so
that the pattern of alternating vowels is visually reminiscent of a falling
leaf twisting and turning.[4]
His poems create both visual and verbal beauty, harnessing the two halves of
the brain to experience a single feeling. One particular E.E. Cummings poem
illuminated an important truth for my pilgrimage. The poem “since feeling is
first” describes the importance of ignoring the context of emotions and letting
your heart guide you, no matter what. As you can see in the picture at left, I
had a 
backpack
made with the penultimate line of the poem on it, so that I could carry that
message around with me always. This poem is my favorite because it made me feel
like the author was speaking directly to me, and describing my own feelings and
actions. When I read the poem for the first time, I was overcome by the magic
that occurs when you connect with a poet’s power to create “experiences...in
which readers can participate and from which they may gain a greater awareness
and understanding of their world.”[5]
The power to create experiences is a way for my love of poetry to help me on my
pilgrimage: writing and reading poetry allows me to articulate feelings of love
and to connect with people on a deeper level than simple speech could ever do.
Model for YSL
(C)
I am also
passionate about beauty as expressed in fashion. It is yet another way to
create a connection with our fellow humans. When an exquisite dress comes down
the runway, or when I create an article of clothing or a purse, I feel a twinge
of exhilaration. The image above right illustrates the glamorous world of the fashion
runways: a model walks on an avant-garde catwalk wearing a dress that evokes
nature in the most romantic way, while still being attractive and innovative.
This particular dress has a strong appeal to me, though it isn’t altogether
clear as to why. It might be because its flowery structure brings to mind
images of springtime and nature. It might be because of some unconscious
Jungian archetype concerning the color purple. It might just be because it
gives the model a pleasing silhouette that I’d like for myself. For whatever
reason we like the clothes we do, fashion appeals to us on several levels, both
conscious and unconscious. The viewer uses the power of the mind to dream
themselves into the garment, imagining how it would feel, how it would look, and
how it would make them feel. There is something about that perfect outfit that
feels like it was made just for you.
You feel empowered and ready to take on the world. Making functional and
beautiful clothes that give the wearer a sense of ease and self-esteem is
something that I feel so strongly about, I am planning on adding a major in
Apparel Design this coming spring. Someday, I would like to learn how to create
clothing more skillfully, so that I can spread happiness and love by making
people everywhere feel beautiful.(D)
Poster for The
Merry Wives of Windsor (E) Poster for The
Innocents (D)
Another visual aspect of beauty that I am passionate about is
graphic design. I love to take photos and digitally manipulate them, and I have
expressed that love by creating posters for my high school plays and musicals.
This is another form of connection, to create a visual experience that draws
the viewer in and conveys the ideas
that
you want the viewer to absorb. In this way, poetry and visual art are similar.
In photography, you can capture an expression much like a poem captures a
feeling. You then share that expression with your audience, conveying the mood
and feeling that you choose. In creating the two posters shown here, I 
was
given the opportunity to express my own vision of beauty by directing the
actors and their facial expressions from behind the camera. Then, in the
“production” phase, I imported the digital images to my computer and composed
posters that had very different moods. The poster for “The Innocents” was dark
and frightening, fitting the mood of the play. On the other hand, the poster
for “The Merry Wives of Windsor” was cute and colorful, as the comedy was set
in the 1950’s. The posters have many
elements of traditional beauty: they are balanced and they use colors that
complement each other. The eye leaps immediately to the faces of the actors,
and this in turn carries the mind to thinking of what the play may be about. In
this manner, I created a visual representation of a mood as a way to connect
with my viewers and to get them interested in the plays. Every person who
noticed my poster was another imagination that I had successfully connected
with.
In the same way that beauty brings me a feeling of connection with people, I am also aware of the beauty inherent in those connections. I plan to make my future career something that involves serving people. Throughout my pilgrimage, I have attempted to live according to a certain set of truths; among these are that to be a real leader, you must be a servant. Most importantly, you must love everyone equally, no matter their attitude towards you. This truth in particular has set me free from stress and unnecessary bad feeling. I have taught myself to be more understanding of people, more loving towards my fellow man. Whether I enter politics or fashion, I plan on finding a way to not only connect with, but to help in some way all of the people that I meet. Encouraging creativity as well as critical thought is the best way to be open to all different kinds of people. Using my creativity to create beauty is my main goal. Creativity is “a heightened form of focus and energy, a condition of deep involvement with whatever you’re doing,” and the thought processes and habits I learn by being imaginative and creating beauty will last a lifetime.[6] For example, Dass and Gorman cite examples of professionals who draw upon their experiences as human beings in their jobs. For instance, a nurse might “sense those moments…in which all the nurturing [she’d] learned as a mother [was] needed.”[7] This is how my passions will help me in my career – they give me a way to connect with other humans. This link to human feeling will be useful in whatever career I choose.
The Beatles sang in their famous song, “The End,” that “in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”[8] This will be my legacy after I have died and left the world. I will have left behind poems or art or clothes that express my love for mankind and allow others to feel a connection with me. By making the lives of individuals better, I will have changed the world for the better in some way. I will connect with people and keep my personal truths in mind, and I will leave this life with enough love to last me an eternity.
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