south (from cardinal directions)

In response to the question, “How do you define home?”, I turned to the poetry of my good friend and multidisciplinary artist, Rūta Kuzmickas: a Lithuanian-born pianist, poet, and visual artist who has lived in many different parts of the world and has a unique interpretation of what home means to her. Rūta’s way of making sense of her world was to devise a multi-movement poem, organized as a compass with each cardinal direction depicting a place she has lived: Houston (south), Lithuania (east), and Las Vegas (west). north speaks globally of North America. As the poem circulates through each direction, a stronger sense of self-identity emerges. Each movement begins with the physical elements of the location:

“one nation, fatherland…”
“the sea resumed its melancholy drone…”
“sleepless birds amassing on the powerlines…”
“golden spines of sandstone…”

And ends with both a personal and universal sentiment:

“…for all”
“…my hyperborean blue heart”
“…to allocate us temporary shores”
“…a home within the knuckles of my hands”

Like all of us, Rūta’s sense of self-identity and home is shaped by the collection of environments and experiences with which she grew up. Each location holds a different piece of home within her. Each ecosystem carries with it a different emotional emblem. A house is not always home, but do the physical elements of our environment elucidate part of us? Does how we define home define who we are?

-Alex Berko