Joshua Orjih
Heart Racing Against the Moon
Artist Statement:
Anxiety is something that we all deal with at some point or another. It could be brought on by any number of triggers, sequences, or happenings. One of the most common stimuli to trigger anxiety is nighttime. This can make it hard to sleep, which often further increases anxiety. I struggle fairly often with nighttime anxiety, reaching a high point about a year ago, where the sound of my heartbeat was so loud and so frantic that it would drown out all sound and all distraction. Incorporating that oppressive sound into the main concept of the poem was an interesting way for me to retool my emotions into something easily accessible. My use of birdsong is both a representation of listening to another’s music to decrease anxiety, as well as nature’s presence and daytime itself easing that burden.
Muse
Artist Statement:
The notion of an artistic muse is always one that mystified me, and that notion is one I chose to entertain with this poem. While I personally do not consider any particular person or concept to be my muse, I have found myself in a similar position to the speaker, especially as of late, struggling with feeling trapped by unproductivity while your professional and personal obligations mount up.I ended up, ironically enough, having difficulty initially writing this poem. Every time a thought or concept would come to me, by the time I could write it down it had vanished from my mind. This pushed me to recording pieces of this poem in the Voice Memos app on my phone, which led to this piece becoming a spoken-word poem with a much freer structure than what I am used to writing. Considering the subject matter, this is also rather ironic.