There & Back Again
What is Camp?
What is Camp? From Wikipedia:
Camp is an aesthetic style and sensibility that regards something as appealing because of its bad taste and ironic value. Camp aesthetics disrupt many of modernism's notions of what art is and what can be classified as high art by inverting aesthetic attributes such as beauty, value, and taste through an invitation of a different kind of apprehension and consumption.
Today marks the first day of jiu jitsu camp. The sun is rising over the Amtrak station horizon, and I’m reflecting heavily on how far I’ve come since last year. I was still training at a school that I had not yet realized was an ill-fit for me at best and toxic at worst. There was only inklings of a vaccine and I had settled nicely into my remote work routine after being furloughed for two months.
These are common tropes for people who train in jiu jitsu, and common tropes for people who train jiu jitsu in a pandemic. By some accounts, I shouldn’t even be training — whether for health safety or maybe because jiu jitsu is already a crazy sport even without an intensely devastating and highly transmissable disease. I had gone through this debate with myself internally last year as I decided whether or not I should stop training because the world was falling apart in many ways.
Whether through sheer grit, the vanity of wanting to get a new rank, or just the ineffable spirit of wanting to do martial arts, I found myself at a different school, Kogaion Academy, and started a new journey that has taken me to stranger and sublime places than if I had stayed at my old gym.
Of course, I had no way of knowing this when I decided to change schools.
At that point, I had no way of knowing much of anything.
When you train jiu jitsu, you go through intense periods of reflection in a month that most people do in a year. People always remark on how much I’ve changed and grown in just a short amount of time. I used to think that was of my own will — that I was somehow special and able to adapt quickly to changing circumstances — but part of that, too, is the environment that I’m in and the people I choose to surround myself with that affects the rate and type of growth that I experience. When you train jiu jitsu, you realize just so insignificant how you are, akin to the way that a middle schooler feels when they get to high school for the first time. You might have an advanced degree, work a pretty decent job, and have won awards in different areas, but when you’re doing jiu jitsu, humility is almost a requirement if you’re expected to survive to train another day.
The values in which I have held the last year have also broadly shifted as well, not in the sense that they are opposite, but more so that they’ve deepened and acquired more nuance around the edges.
I value first and foremost, authenticity in others and myself, when that authenticity serves to help elevate both the person who is showing that authenticity and others around them.
Second, comes independence and freedom of expression, tempered by the spirit of compassion, thoughtfulness, and intention.
Third, pursuing challenges in a measured, planned out and zen manner, instead of forsaking sanity for the myopic pursuit of a material award.
Something that I’ve realized is that no matter where I am, or who I am with, these are the values that I want to embody. In some ways, I’ve been playing mind games with myself all along. I overthink and rationalize. I logic my way out of emotional problems. These were the “quick adaptations” that I made for myself to stay safe, but after months of therapy, I understood that they no longer serve me in the same way.
But values go much deeper than the surface level understanding of how to please people and to get by. They go deeper than parental expectations, societal norms, and social media showboating. Values are not something you decide or declare with a hashtag; they are internally motivated while being externally informed.
Values are deep down and capture the essence of a person and where they need to be precisely at that moment in life.
What is Camp? From The Mental Arts:
Camp is a lifestyle that regards something as appealing because of its willingness to engage with all aspects of an experience. Camp aesthetics disrupt the every day notions of what growth can be and what can be classified as acceptable by allowing each person their own choice to pursue their passions in the way that honors their story. It inverts traditional notions of joy and learning through an invitation of a different kind of spirit and creation.
Thanks for reading and reflecting,
Tracy Huang
Creator of The Mental Arts