Jesus Lopez

“Who Am I?”

I struggle still to this day with this question – language fails me All of the languages! Whenever someone asks me who I am all I want to do is answer: Rain, Noise, A Battle Cry, y al mismo tiempo silencio, un vasto silencio. ​But you can’t do that in interviews cause you freak people out. So I’m still struggling to answer that because I am in the process of unbecoming and furthering every single second that I breathe – I contract and expand and morph and regret and learn and sometimes I get stuck. Still. I struggle with definition every day.

So who am I? Am I what do? What I dedicate my time and energy doing? My actions. My career. People around me have always pressured themselves to define themselves – who they are – by what they do, and I am starting to realize how conflicted I feel by this. I am not just what I do I am not just what I am good at I am not just what I have done or what I will do. So no – I am not a director. Or an arts manager. And I am not an artist. I am not a storyteller or a photographer or a lighting designer. But am I?

So much of who we are is how people perceive us. And so I am stuck again. Am I maybe then where I come from. Porque yo vengo de México. Nací en Hermosillo, Sonora, un estado del norte de mi país. Aprendí a hablar español con ayuda de mi mamá y mi papá que hoy están aquí presentes – quizá ellos saben quien soy. Quizá ellos me pueden definir mejor que yo. Y si no él y ella – porque no mi tierra. Y que el término tierra no sea confundido con el término nación que no son lo mismo. Yo hablo de la tierra, el lodo y las raíces y sus huesos y su polvo. Quisa cuando regrese a ella, la tierra me podrá definir.

Or maybe I am defined by where I am going. Where is that? Well, I don’t really know – but, at least I am no longer scared.

So maybe – who I am – is no longer afraid. It feels good.