Untitled Document
StrangeTango.com is a multilayered art installation in cyberspace…the documentation of a life in three iterations: as a film treatment, a book, a blog.
“What remains as documentation of a life?”
Strange Tango haunts the boundaries of digital streams and visceral storytelling, where pixels and dreams flow together.
Video, reportage, and nonlinear narrative meld in captured moments from the life of A. D. Tejada, artist - traveler - citizen of the world.
Life is a strange tango...
|
In commemoration of President Barack Obama’s Proclamation of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, I am honored to reproduce, with permission, a moving speech on diversity by a proud Filipino American, physician, and officer. Colonel Rodrigo Mariano, M.D., is Board Certified as a Diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine Physicians and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians.
As of late, the term diversity has been bandied about as if it were a new idea, based on future census demographics. However, the idea of diversity is long steeped in the history of the American identity, as people left their homelands in search of freedom: religious freedom, economic freedom, political freedom. This country has been the beneficiary of many migrations of people from different lands at different times, from the pilgrims seeking religious freedom, to the mass immigrations from Europe at the turn of the 20th century, refugees from war-torn countries from around the world, and those coming to seek a better life for their families. This country builds its strength on its most valuable asset: the diversity of its people, their ideas, their innovations, their energy, and their common vision as Americans. As the world becomes more competitive, smaller, and fast paced in the 21st century, it is that same diversity of ideas, innovation, and consensus built upon diverse ideas that will prove to be an advantage for American leadership in the 21st century.
Since the Census of 2000, the demographics of the United States shifted from the uniformity of the Great American Melting Pot to the real complexities of a nation whose population is reflective of the world at large. Continue reading Leadership of a Diverse Workforce
 Michael Pang, Cornell '11
As a former Cornell University Trustee—and part of an alumni network of 7,000 volunteers—I have connected possibly hundreds of Cornellians on my personal Facebook page. Guest columnist Michael Pang, Cornell ’11, came to my attention when we friended each other on Facebook through a post about the Cornell Asian Alumni Association reunion, co-chaired by two of my longtime friends, Kent Sheng and Eugenie Shen.
A government major, Michael was an Organizing Fellow with the Obama for America campaign in 2008; he is an active member of the Hong Kong Student Association and serves as a committee director for the University’s first collegiate Model United Nations conference. Michael is a second generation Chinese American from Brooklyn, New York, and is the first person in his family to attend college. He graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School, or Brooklyn Tech, which together with Stuyvesant High School and Bronx High School of Science is one of the top specialized high schools in the New York City public school system. Continue reading The Issue of Asian American Representation
 The salon at our operatic home in Windham, New Hampshire, an exurb of Boston.
StrangeTango.com’s literary/artistic aesthetic is at the nexus of art, modern culture, and politics. As a global platform for emerging voices, innovation, and creativity, guest columnists write about what they’re passionate about—that celebrates and commemorates their life, voice, or purpose.
An organic and evolving art installation in cyberspace, our work-in-progress installation is the “Millennium Muse” webpage, using an innovative, nonlinear music matrix set to Daniel Brunelle’s music and my memoirs.
Since StrangeTango.com was launched 7 months ago, out of almost 2 million results, we’re #1 in search for our keywords on Google and Bing; the website has been submitted for a Webby Award and was featured in a presentation on innovation in a university honors business curriculum; and we’ve been downloaded around the world, largely through my more than 2,000 Facebook Friends added in the past 5 months. Continue reading Intriguing Interviews and Guest Columnists in 2010
 Steven Spriggs, Texas A&M '13
I first met Steven Spriggs a year ago when he was a senior at Eisenhower High School in Lawton, Oklahoma, applying for admission to Cornell University. As an alumna involved with the Cornell Alumni Admissions Ambassadors Network (CAAAN), I am privileged to meet and to recruit many promising young men and women for my alma mater.
Steven and I met at Starbucks, and my immediate impression was that he is a young Barack Obama: earnest, responsible, and highly intelligent. He was a National Merit Finalist, an Eagle Scout, and he was also selected to participate in the Leadership Education and Development Program in Business (LEAD) at the University of Virginia’s top-ranked Darden School of Business. A partnership of some of the top corporations and business schools in the country, LEAD’s mission is to build “a talented and diverse workforce ready for the global business environment.” Each summer, a highly diverse group of academically gifted and multi-talented high school juniors is selected for the program.
Despite his leadership roles and state and national awards, Steven is a humble young man from a former military family with a preternatural awareness of the world around him. He described to me how he helped organize a fundraiser to draw attention to the increasing number of people left homeless―students spent the night in the high school auditorium, confined to the living space of a cardboard box. This was a vivid portrayal of destitution, but one that I would have expected from a student attending an urban high school, not in America’s heartland where overt neediness is often invisible.
Given the questions he asked, the interview lasted an hour and a half.
When I next heard from Steven, it was to let me know he had been accepted to Cornell and the University of Chicago, but that Texas A&M had offered him a financial aid package that paid for all his college expenses. He would be able to graduate debt-free and to attend college closer to home. He asked if he could stay in touch with me, and I agreed to be his mentor. Continue reading Steven Spriggs, Role Model Millennial
Traditionally, I am incommunicado during the month of December. This is my time for rituals of reflection and spiritual rejuvenation. The last week of the year aligns Christmas, birthdays, and New Year’s: the sequence punctuates the finality and passing of time, which inspires me to make my surroundings comfortable and cocoon myself from the exterior world. In my sanctuary, I meditate and prepare for what may come.
The year 2010 heralds America’s decennial population count. A decade ago, I created the itinerary and served as a press advance for the National Director of the U.S. Census Bureau, Dr. Kenneth Prewitt, during his New England swing tour. I was also a census spokesperson as a member of the New England media team on the staff of Boston Regional Director Arthur Dukakis. Yes, Arthur was the cousin of Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis and Oscar winner Olympia Dukakis.
What I appreciated most about my work with Census 2000 was the opportunity to immerse myself in the diversity and multiculturalism that is America. The individual stories and snapshots across the country, of natives and immigrants alike, create a rich and varied tapestry encompassing the range of human emotion and experience. To honor what is unique about America—her people—much of what I curate for StrangeTango.com: Life as Art includes emerging and underrepresented ethnic communities, nascent ideas, and fresh voices and perspectives: content that is authentic, relevant, and intriguing.
Depending on the schedules of gifted collaborators—Hasan Diwan, Daniel Brunelle, Marlee O’Neal, Chris Barros, Brian Saffold, and Raphael Seligmann—we hope to add a new installation to the continuously evolving website later in the year: a nonlinear music matrix as part of an experiment in interactive storytelling. ”Millennium Muse” is the experimental space reserved for such installations, that are added as new technologies become available and as we discover new collaborators who can help bring the vision to life. Continue reading Happy New Year and Decade
 Me, at the time I began writing Strange Tango.
The destinies of a pantheon of gifted Cornell graduates unfold through the internet.
After my niece had graduated from pre-kindergarten several years back, she started summer classes at vacation bible school where she saw Luke, a former classmate who had left the class to be home-schooled in anticipation of his father’s deployment to Iraq.
“Do you remember me?” she asked him.
“Yes,” he shyly replied. “I do.”
The weeklong pattern of rainy and gray New England weather inspired me to remain in my cocoon and to revisit my early adulthood. Once a person has entered my orbit and been a significant part of an era in my life, a bond of shared experiences is created. There is history between us. I carefully choose the people I invite into my space, so relationships have been of long duration. I can recall only one significant disappointment.
Prompted by a vivid dream, I sought to reconnect with someone who once mattered to me. “We don’t want any contact with you at all,” he replied. Still, I persisted. How could someone with whom you have had a symbiotic bond—a karmic connection—change, or age, so much? He had such love of beauty, how could charm and grace be replaced by fear and inflexibility?
Or had he simply forgotten me?
For the next nine months, I sought openings that would reveal the answer to me until, finally, I released the beautiful memory of a dear friend to the stranger he had become. My dream was indeed prophetic: his heart was dead inside.
Other reconnections have had far happier endings. Continue reading Speak, Memory
Jerome Tse is a student in the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration. Originally from Boston, Jerome plans to obtain a degree in hospitality. He is also a Cornell ambassador and enjoys working at the front office of the university-run Statler Hotel. I have known Jerome’s father professionally for several years and recall the photographs of [...]
“The next step is sharing her vision of cyberspace as the next frontier in the literary arts. Says Tejada, “For my collaborators and me, Strange Tango is a labor of love and a global platform for original and passionate creativity.’” ~Raphael Seligmann
Welcome to the world of Strange Tango. Conceptually speaking, the blog before you is an illustration of my thought processes─multilayered and cross-referenced, in a matrix pattern─that places the visitor in the navigational cockpit. Content is layered throughout the website: hover and click on images, text, and links. Continue reading The Key to the Strange Tango Kingdom
My transformation from glamorous to spiritual was years in the making. When I worked for other people and had my own source of income, I purchased heirloom quality items to leave as a legacy for my niece. My curatorial sensibility was developed by taking courses in the liberal, literary, and fine arts at the largest university in the Ivy League and by being mentored by a professor of Japanese culture and comparative literature who is the director of the Society for the Humanities at Cornell. As a result, over time, my senses became sharply honed and more finely focused until I developed a distinctive voice, style, and sensibility that I call neo-Zen.
Friends and strangers call me psychic, or highly perceptive, but I say it’s a matter of cultivated attunement. Continue reading The Neo-Zen Sensibility
Bianco’s Italian Restaurant is a landmark in Lawton, Oklahoma. The restaurant still makes the same spaghetti sauce that Tony Bennett enjoyed when he performed at the local auditorium decades ago. Each Friday afternoon before heading off for a game, the 63 members of nearby Lawton High School’s football team gather together to share fellowship and a meal of spaghetti, salad, bread, and blue Gatorade.
I was waiting for a take-out order of lasagna and spaghetti when three busloads of young athletes filtered in. They knew the drill and seemed very organized and disciplined. I graduated from LHS decades ago, although physically I am often mistaken for a college student. Before the meal, a student stood up and said grace. This was an eloquent prayer giving thanks for the food and fellowship. His earnest words were inspirational to me, so I asked the young black male sitting closest to me if the team captain gives the prayer.
“No, ma’am,” he politely replied. Anyone could say grace. I looked at the 12 tables in the small restaurant, completely filled with courteous young men who addressed their elders as “ma’am” or “sir.” Black or white, or any other color, ethnicity made no difference in how the team members arranged themselves. Continue reading Millennial Spirit
|
|
Life as Art
Showcase
Edgy and Ethereal
Connectors
Millennials
Multicultural
Neo-Zen
Art
Nest
Food
Travel
Green
Home
Follow Strange Tango