Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Author-artist Aberjhani. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Author-Artist , appreciate you joining us today. So, let’s start with trends – what are some of the largest or more impactful trends you are seeing in the industry?
The biggest trend I’m seeing in the creative cultural arts industry is an over-reliance on artificial intelligence and a decrease in human-to-human interactions. It concerns me that generative AI and other forms of the technology have been rolled out too rapidly upon a world population that’s not prepared to balance the possible benefits or potential harm of its widespread unchecked implementation. Potential benefits when it comes to enhancing efficiency are unquestionable, but factors like the reduction of self-reliance and loss of empathy and jobs are too quickly overlooked.
Just a few years ago, I was anticipating a gradual roll-out of different AI applications that would give individuals and organizations time to educate themselves about its likely double impact. Then we entered 2023 with one announcement after another talking about its increasing real-time use in different industries like education, print-on-demand, the military, and medicine. Longshoremen port workers who went on strike around the country, largely in protest against job insecurity caused by AI-operated machinery, carried signed that read “Machines don’t have families to feed.” Plus everybody saw how SAG-AFTRA actors and writers shut down the film industry for four months over the threat of AI-generated, or scanned, likenesses replacing actual performances. Then pretty much the entire world was hypnotized throughout 2023-2024 by the charms of ChatGPT.
To close the gap between my own lack of experience with and knowledge of AI, I began participating in group dialogues on the subject on LinkedIn. AI literacy books like Jerry Washington’s “Simulated Realities” increased my understanding of what we’re dealing with. I particularly appreciated gaining insights into the philosophical underpinnings of artificial intelligence attributed to French philosopher Jean Baudrillard.
Probably the most ambitious and eye-opening action I took myself was to launch the AI Literary Chat Salon on my Bright Skylark Literary Productions website. The Chat Salon utilizes ChatGPT to augment articles and interviews about “marginalized” creatives and their work. One totally unexpected discovery was learning how useful it could be when it came to providing critical assessments and contexts for some of my own writings and artwork. My background as an editor helped when it came to correcting errors made by the program, but end results provided useful content that site visitors enjoyed and which allowed me to share the kind of unbiased(?) analyses which my work was not getting in mainstream corporate media. That being said, I’m inclined to quote ChatGPT when queried about itself: “Striking a balance between leveraging AI’s capabilities and fostering intrinsic human qualities ensures technology serves as a tool, not a replacement for humanity.”
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I would have to say my quest to become a poet and versatile author of some notable consequence really began attempting to follow Langston Hughes’ advice that no writer’s education could be complete without traveling as much as possible. For me, that meant going to different colleges and universities before joining the U.S. Air Force. While working as an editorial assistant at Temple University Press in Philadelphia, I was charged with standardizing manuscript texts for certain academics, who later became pretty famous in their fields, before passing manuscripts on to a senior editor. My work as a journalist, publication editor, and documentarian for the USAF came some years afterwards during two stints overseas (in Alaska and England).
Even later still, with all that groundwork having been laid, I encountered the same hurdles of doubt and financial insecurity many beginning creatives do. But I managed to apply those earlier invaluable experiences to work on my own books and that of others, as well as to publications like the Savannah Literary Journal, Connect Savannah, and AXS Entertainment online. Books like my “Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance” and “The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois” have been used in various academic settings while others like “Greeting Flannery at the Back Door of My Mind,” “Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah,” and “The American Poet Who Went Home Again” have become popular travel books for people visiting or moving to my hometown.
In addition, a part of me has always been passionate about creating visual art but did not really emerge until the death of artist Luther E. Vann, my creative partner on the artbook “ELEMENTAL, the Power of Illuminated Love,” in 2016. I started “playing with art,” as he once encouraged me to do, to help deal with the depression which came following his death. I eventually established artist profiles on Fine Art America and Pixels.com. I was amazed when my fine art digital paintings and photography started to sell. Most recently, I noticed the number of visitors to my art shops approaching half a million and that kind of blows my mind. Somehow, I now find myself working with different amazing artists on plans for a group exhibition and working on a very serious biographical book at the same time.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
When Bright Skylark Literary Productions first launched in July 2012, the goal/mission driving my creative journey could be defined by these two statements currently on the website: 1) “To help inspire creative responses to the challenges and joys of twenty-first century life through the cultural arts, social sciences, spiritual awareness, and philosophical inquiry.” And 2) With a focus “dedicated to the production, promotion, and preservation of fine literary craftsmanship as an essential component of the cultural arts.” Both of those commitments remain true with some distinct 2020s tweaks and additions.
The first part was a carry-over from my days as Lead Administrator for the former Creative Thinkers International online community established to help ease the collective trauma people suffered from for years following 9/11. Since then, we’ve seen emerge during the pandemic a generation of activists who acknowledge the significance of 9/11 but who are also deeply concerned about the climate crisis and ecological sustainability. Likewise when it comes to the persistence of gender inequality, and racism as dramatized so painfully by the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tyre Nichols, and far too many others.
People in my hometown are currently grappling with the question of the degree to which the city of Savannah, Georgia, should be held accountable for a policeman’s shooting of 31-year-old Saudi Lee in 2022. Available body-cam video showed Lee appearing to offer his wallet and peacefully surrender before losing his life 11 seconds later. For people like me who have lost loved ones to the violence of excessive force employed by some police officers, such occurrences bring up painful memories and anxieties. Throw in concerns like mass school shootings and social injustice in general, and it’s easy to see why the workflow of creative artists intent on addressing social instability hasn’t slowed down.
The second stated part of the goals and missions, writing and publishing quality literary works, is a major component of the lens through which I view our evolving humanity and share what I see with the world. At first that meant concentrating solely on the composition of traditional narratives in the form of stories, essays, journalism, poems, and books like “I Made My Boy Out of Poetry,” or the more recent “These Black and Blue Red Zone Days.” That initial strategic approach has expanded to include scripts for podcasts and documentary projects as well as fine art digital paintings and photography on my Fine Art America and Pixels.com profiles.
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
I’ve actually been very fortunate to team up with a number of partners and organizations on various projects rather than just a single agency. For example, I first met the founding editors of Artvilla’s Poetry Life and Times magazine (Sara Russell and Robin Ouzman Hislop), based in England, through comments shared on writing posted on the AuthorsDen website. They later contributed substantial content to my Creative Thinkers International community, and when that was no longer sustainable, showcased works by me in Poetry Life and Times.
I connected with the Charter for Compassion organization while writing my national African-American Cultural Arts column for AXS Entertainment. Members expressed a strong appreciation for my innovative (at the time) approaches to literary journalism. Like including original poems as editorial interpretations of major events. Or coining terms like Guerrilla Decontextualization to identify what is now most commonly referred to as misinformation and disinformation.
For stories of how I met some of my earlier creative partners, like Luther E. Vann, author Sandra L. West, or my Savannah Literary Journal co-editors, it’s best to read about them in the books “ELEMENTAL The Power of Illuminated Love,” and “Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah.”
Along the same lines, I share the story of how I first met novelist George Dawes Green in the book “Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind.” In more recent years, I’ve enjoyed the honor of working with Green on two very different projects. The first was a dual celebration of his MOTH Storytelling organization’s 20th anniversary, and the release of his most recent novel, “Kingdoms of Savannah” (currently being adapted by Dynamic Television into a TV series). I participated in the MOTH event as a raconteur, performing the story of how the shooting death of my brother Robert Lee impacted me first as a child, and then later as an adult. I worked with Green again on the 100 Miles Georgia Coast video doc project, this time contributing a story about the contrasting legacies between former white supremacist governor Eugene Talmadge and founder of Savannah’s African-American Family Monument, Dr. Abigail H. Jordan.
I spent a lot of 2024 working on a museum exhibition proposal featuring my curatorial texts combined with the paintings and sculptures of a group of amazing artists. I’ve known most of them for quite some time. But the story of how I met one of them exhibiting his art in a backstreet lane in downtown Savannah, during the pandemic, is something CanvasRebel readers might find interesting. It’s called “An Encounter with Artist Paul Cezanne in Downtown Savannah” and can be found on my Bright Skylark Literary Productions website.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.author-poet-aberjhani.info/ and https://posteredchromatic-poetics.pixels.com/https://posteredchromatic-poetics.pixels.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/1official_aberjhani/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aberjhani
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Heartsong700 and https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD0A11118CCE1C59D and
- Other: https://www.authorsden.com/visit/author.asp?authorid=25279
and https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/237360.Aberjhani
Image Credits
Bright Skylark Literary Productions Archives
Bobby Battle Jr.
Rocky Bettis