Omnibus

By Karen Stahl

Faith Newsome’s heartbeat increased as she gazed at her family crammed around her. The bare, gray walls stared back at her.

“Tell him to get the IV out,” she told her mom. “I’m scared. I don’t want to do this.”

Her mom, Shannon Newsome, looked at Faith’s thin gown hanging on her body and the cap containing her thick, brown curls. She knew her 16-year-old daughter faced death if she did not undergo the surgery.

“Think about how hard you’ve worked to get to this moment,” Shannon said. “If you give up now, what was it for?”

Three hours later, the doctor made it to Faith’s room. Her mother, wracked with nerves, gave her a kiss. Within minutes, Faith was asleep.

She had always been larger than her peers. On her first birthday, she hit 30 pounds. When kindergarten came, she walked into school at 110 pounds with a smile on her face and her brown curls tied in a bow.

By the time she turned 15, Faith had reached 273 pounds.

Just a few months before her surgery, she sat in the Campbell University gymnasium, supporting her brother at the North Carolina Science Olympiad competition. The gymnasium was built in the 1950s, and the seats seemed smaller than average.

She shifted her weight as the side handles on the seat pressed uncomfortably into her thighs. Her mom had brought up weight-loss surgery a couple weeks before, but she resisted.

Now, unable to fit in the gymnasium seat, she knew what she had to do. She turned to her mom.

“Call Duke,” she said. “I’m going next week.”

Promising herself

Faith’s eyes fluttered open. Her family sat in the room, this one larger than the bare, gray one where she had fallen asleep.

“Did you text my friends that I’m okay?” she asked Shannon, who was hovering over her.

“That’s what you’re worried about right now?” she responded.

At the suggestion of the doctor, Faith decided to get up and walk around to avoid blood clots. She slowly lowered herself to the ground. Her abdomen felt heavier than before the surgery, despite the fact that the surgeon had reduced the size of her stomach.

A commercial for a Ruby Tuesday hamburger came on the TV while she walked around the room.

“I’m going to throw up,” she thought.

She knew her appetite would come back eventually, but minutes after the operation, waves of nausea washed over her. All she could think about was not rupturing her stomach.

It was June, which meant two months of recovery before returning for her junior year of high school. With newfound confidence in her body, she decided this was the year to try an organized sport.

Tennis tryouts were approaching, and she would make a full recovery before the season started.

For the first time, Faith promised herself she would be there.

Tumbling down

She hit the ground without warning.

Faith was goal-oriented, and the instructions were easy enough – run to the cone at the end of the relay track, put on the oversized adult clothes as quickly as possible, run back down the track and tag the next teammate.

She took a deep breath at the starting line, trying to release the pressure that came with being the slowest child in her class. Her weight made field days increasingly anxiety-inducing, and the other kindergartners had already made it clear that Faith was not their most valuable player.

And they were off. Sweat poured down her temples as she lunged forward with every step.

“Why does she have to be on our team?” one of the children shouted from the sideline.

Breathing heavily, Faith kept running. She made it to the cone. She quickly grabbed the oversized T-shirt and slid it over her damp curls then pulled the pants over her shorts and bolted for the end of the track.

Her determined panting underscored a sudden snag of her pants on her shoe. Before she knew it, she was tumbling into the grass in the middle of the track.

She got back up with determination and hiked the pants up. She felt the scrape on her knee as she crossed the finish line back with her teammates, putting them in last place.

Faith sat behind the line and placed her flushed face in her hands. Her mom quietly ran up.

“You just tripped,” she said. “If you wouldn’t have tripped, you would’ve done great.”

Faith fiddled with a piece of grass on her shoe.

“I know, Mom,” she responded. “If I wouldn’t have fallen, I’d made it. I really feel like I would’ve made it.”

Lunging forward

Sweat poured down her temples as she lunged forward with every step. She was determined to be faster than her 5K time from the day before.

“Show yourself what you can do now,” she thought.

It was nearly five years post-surgery, and her 190-pound frame propelled itself on the pavement. Her familiar panting filled the warm September air. This time, Faith’s brown curls were damp with sweat, but she was not in last place.

“She always tries to get me to run with her,” her friend, Olivia Manning, said. “I’m not a runner. So I let Faith handle that.”

Faith’s head was clear. The crippling anxiety that plagued her as child melted away. She was no longer faking sprained ankles in elementary school gym class to get out of physical activity.

Now, she listens to her body and its needs. She pushes herself beyond her boundaries.

“She is going to stick with it until she gets it,” said Jonathan Newsome, her dad. “No matter what it is.”

Faith is no longer the girl begging to rip the IV out of her arm in fear. Faith is no longer retreating.

Faith is lunging forward with every new task that comes her way.

“Surgery is what gave me my voice,” she said. “Make the most of your time here. Show yourself what you can do.”

Edited by Joseph Held

By Madeline Pennington

“Do you think spirit colors are a thing? Because I think mine is green.” Grammy-nominated musician Courtney Hartman calls to the crowd of the grungy Chapel Hill bar. In response, the audience of college kids, donning their wire-framed glasses and Doc Martens, whoop and holler in affirmation.

Hartman grins bashfully as she strums the intro to the next song on her set list. The energy is youthful, and electric. However, just two days ago, her show was much different.

February 3, 2019- while the rest of America gears up for the Super Bowl, Courtney Hartman taps her bare foot on the hardwood floor as she goes through the motions of her soundcheck. Her stage, a living room in Huntersville North Carolina,. her audience- about four rows of six chairs. In a room so small, Hartman contemplates whether she should even use a microphone. She croons part of a verse into the mic, and then does it again sans mic.

The scene begs the question- why would a Grammy-nominated artist choose to play a house show?

Founder of Passion House Concerts, Matthew Seneca, believes his concerts give artists a more intimate, low-stakes environment to play at in addition to their other tour dates. He adds that his shows attract artists because he keeps none of the profits.

Hartman feels similarly. Though house concerts come with their fair share of challenges, she enjoys experimenting with her set list and sound during these shows.

Low production, High quality

For both the artist and the audience, a Passion House concert is a unique experience that prioritizes music above all. Seneca seeks to strip away the bells and whistles of a traditional concert venue, put the audience as close as they can get to the performance, and give the artist creative freedom with their set.

As Hartman sound-checks, Seneca bustles about his kitchen setting out bowls of snacks and cases of seltzer. He finishes his spread with a basket of his mother’s homemade scones.

Though Seneca tries to refrain from putting out too much of a spread that could distract from the musician’s performance, part of him can’t get over the feeling that he’s just inviting friends over to his house to hang out.

He isn’t the only one supplying food either. Often, some of his more dedicated concertgoers offer to bring snacks as well. For the Hartman show, one concertgoer brings a platter of barbecue sliders and encourages the room to indulge.

A sense of community nurtures each guest as they enter Seneca’s home. Seneca greets each person with a handshake or a hug and thanks them for coming. He then directs them to the Donations basket in his foyer, reminding each guest that all profits go directly to Hartman.

Seneca and Hartman look like yin and yang, chaos and calm. While Seneca bounces from person to person, chatting amiably, Hartman is a still image. In the same way Seneca seems to energize people with his presence, Hartman calms.

Seneca recalls how it has always been this sort of dynamic with Hartman. They met two years ago at the Swannanoa Gathering in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Swannanoa is a folk arts summer workshop where musicians of all ages and skill levels go to take varied guitar and songwriting classes.

In the Summer of 2017, Hartman is an instructor at the gathering. After Seneca sees her perform, he becomes mesmerized with her skill. He describes her as a “quadruple- threat,” noting how her songwriting, singing, guitar playing and composing skills are unmatched with most other performers her age.

During their lunch break at the camp, Seneca sits with Hartman and approaches her with the idea of playing a house concert. He hands her his business card and they part ways, losing touch over the next two years, until Hartman finally reaches out wondering whether Seneca’s offer still stands.

Washing away the Past

In the two years in which Hartman and Seneca lose touch, Hartman pilgrimages to “The End of the Earth,” the northernmost peninsula in Spain. It is during this pilgrimage where she writes almost every song she plays during her Passion House Concert set.

She notes how this pilgrimage began as a way to force herself to write, but ended up as a way to find her way back to herself. She arrives at the Camino Finisterre, bathes naked in the river as is tradition, burns her old clothes and immediately goes to write what is the first song in her set list for her 2019 tour.

She tells this story to the crowd of twenty-something people in Seneca’s living room as she softly picks an  acoustic melody on her guitar. The audience is enraptured in the performance, in Hartman’s skill, her demeanor, her energy.   The beauty of the Passion House concert is how intimate the performance feels. Every twitch of the musician’s hand, every dimple- revealing smile- the audience catches it all.

These minute details keep audiences coming back to Seneca’s house in the suburbs. The appreciation from the audience and ability to really connect keeps Hartman playing house shows, while love of the music keeps Seneca opening his doors every few months.

Small Venue, Big Impact

After each show ends Seneca wonders if he’ll be able to do it again. Can he convince people to take a chance on mostly lesser-known artists and drive out to his house? Sometimes the answer is no.

Before the Hartman concert, Seneca was devastated because a good amount of his audience who had reserved tickets could no longer come.

That’s all just a part of the process though. Despite lower attendance than expected, Seneca’s love for music fuels him to continue his concert series.

While packing up her equipment, Hartman peers at the electric green walls in Seneca’s living room. “I’ve always loved the color green. It’s so hopeful. It’s my hope color.” she muses.

The concert catches Hartman at a turning point in her career. She’s just left her Grammy-nominated band Della Mae, and is venturing into the unknowns of a solo career. House concerts like her show at Passion House make her hopeful for the trajectory of her career.

No matter how many people come to see her play, what matters to Hartman most is the way she makes each individual feel. Whether she’s playing a bar or a living room, Hartman spreads hope with her music.

Seneca wonders where she may perform on her next tour. Hopefully, the walls of the venue will be green.

Edited by Nick Thompson

By Mary Glen Hatcher

The night before seven-year-old Lufan Huang left China, she stuffed a small backpack with her sweater, some playing cards, a few snacks and a dictionary of English names.

She needed to choose a new identity. 

With her mother by her side, she pored over the book on the plane, tracking each syllable with a tiny finger.

Elizabeth, she thought, might be nice – after all the blonde, blue-eyed girls she’d seen on TV.

“No,” her mother hesitated. “You’ll be like everyone else in America.”

Her mother suggested Jessica, but Lufan wanted something a bit edgier, more androgynous. She wanted to be cool.

So on a chilly, November morning in 2004, Jessie Huang walked off the plane into New York City.

Finding a new you

The practice of adopting a new name is not foreign to American immigrants.

For centuries, people have immigrated to the United States for a fresh start. A vast majority of them come to find new jobs that lead to better lives and more opportunities for their families.

But starting a new life is tough, and starting a new life in America as a non-English speaking minority is tougher. For many, choosing a westernized name is a head start – if you can assimilate quickly, you can deter suspicion and possibly some discrimination.

Your transition in this new country might be a little easier.

“My parents weren’t of the educated class, so for us, coming into a new country, we tried really hard to hide ourselves and not be as noticed,” Jessie Huang, now a senior at UNC-Chapel Hill, said.

“Knowing now what it would have been like if I hadn’t chosen an American name, seeing other people get teased, I think it was a form of survival. I think, even then, my parents knew it was a form of survival,” Jessie said. 

Accommodating peers

For others, the choice to take an American name might come out of embarrassment or under the small burden of feeling pressure to accommodate others.

Irene Zhou, also a senior at UNC, emigrated from China with her family when she was less than a year old. She remembers being overwhelmingly flustered in grade school when teachers and peers couldn’t pronounce her legal name, Si Yang.

“As a kid, you feel like everything is a bigger deal than it is, but it really did feel like the worst thing that ever happened to me,” Irene said.

A shy girl by nature, Irene was uncomfortable with confronting people or speaking up to correct their pronunciation. “I just remember thinking, ‘I don’t want this to happen again,’ and it was bound to happen again unless I did something.”

She would later steal the name Irene from a girl in her third-grade art class. It’s been with her ever since.

Embracing origins

But the trend that has imprinted itself on the lives, name tags and coffee cups of first- and second-generation immigrants across the country might be disappearing.

According to a 2010 New York Times report, the number of formal immigration name changes has been declining over the past few decades.

Some researchers cite the decrease as evidence the United States is becoming a more multicultural society. Other explanations point to the complexity involved with changing multiple official documents or that the motivations to change one’s name – blending in, assimilating with American culture – are not as potent as they once were.

For Hoi Ning Ngai, whose family left Hong Kong for Brooklyn in 1978, having an additional American name never really stuck for her, but she doesn’t regret not having one. After several failed attempts to become a Nancy, a Victoria and a Samantha during her childhood, Hoi Ning decided to embrace her birth name.

“I felt most places I was the minority,” Hoi Ning said. “So if I’m already in that category, what’s the difference if I’m a bit more of a minority in terms of the name?”

While she admits her choice has left her frustrated at times, Hoi Ning said keeping her name has allowed her to reflect on the opportunities it provides for bridging cultural understanding.

“I think the name itself does open the door for conversation in some ways,” Hoi Ning said. “It’s been a nice turn for me to acknowledge whatever awkwardness there is surrounding me being different and turn it into an opportunity to educate on the meaning and background. I feel like that’s given me a little more control over the situation.”

Finding individualism in heritage 

A new generation of Asian-Americans might also agree.

A few years ago, after their parents gained U.S. citizenship, both Jessie and Irene had the opportunity to legalize their American names.

Both decided against it.

Irene said her decision was inspired by her parents, who chose not to take English names when they immigrated.

“They always told me I should never change myself to make others’ lives easier – it’s not an accommodation that anyone should have to make,” Irene said.

“I think throughout the years as I’ve become closer to my Chinese heritage, as opposed to trying to fit in to the American community, my English name Irene has lost meaning, and my sense of individualism has gotten stronger,” Irene said.

Although both of Jessie’s parents legally changed their names, she felt confident in her decision to keep hers, especially after immersing herself in a supportive Asian-American community at UNC.

“I’ve always felt a really strong tie to my name, so I didn’t want to legally erase it,” Jessie said.

“Even though I’m applying to jobs right now, and printing out my name on a resume can feel foreign, I still would never want to change it. It’s like this silent reminder to myself of where I came from.”

Edited by Sara Hall

By Savannah Morgan

Bullet lifts his hind legs off the flyball box in anticipation. A human teammate holds and steadies him, keeping him from sprinting forward. His front paws press firmly on the mat-covered ground. His dark eyes focus on his owner, Gary Gundacker, who waits beyond the jumps at the end of the 51-foot lane. It’s just a practice drill on a laid-back Saturday afternoon, but Bullet loves this game and is raring to go. He barks, perks his ears and braces his hind legs back against the box. Finally, the human and dog teammates are in place.

“BULLET!” Gundacker calls.

The steadying hands release their grip, and Bullet sprints forward like a horse on Derby Day. He flies over one, two, three, four jumps and past the cones marking the start/finish line, where a treat and a head pat reward him for his good work. Bullet has just completed half of a flyball run, an exercise that helps young dogs learn the relay process of the game.

What is flyball?

Flyball is a dog sport involving two teams of four dogs and two parallel, 51-foot lanes. Each dog is required to sprint down its lane, jumping over four hurdles as it goes. When the dog reaches the end of the lane, it jumps onto an inclined ramp attached to a spring-loaded box, triggering the release of a tennis ball. The dog must catch and carry the ball, turn while jumping off the box and make its way back down the lane and over the hurdles to the start/finish line, where it can drop the ball. Upon the first dog’s return, the second dog is released, and the process continues until all four dogs have returned to the finish line. In a tournament, the first team of dogs to finish wins the heat.

‘Hillbilly Flyball’

Three flyball clubs — DogGone Fast, New River Rapids Flyball and TurboPaws — practice together in an old industrial-sized chicken coop located in Holly Springs, North Carolina. The flyball teams that practice there lovingly call it “Hillbilly Flyball.” The chickens are all gone, and flyball equipment fills the space instead. Black rubber mats cover the red dust ground to prevent the dogs from slipping as they speed up and down the lanes. The white jumps are spaced 10 feet apart along the mats. They are scarred by years of dirt, scratches and accidental run-ins. Collapsible gates, tennis balls and L-shaped pieces of wood with bright green and blue pool noodles duct-taped on the edges are scattered around. Black boxes covered with black sandpaper sit at the end of the lanes. The dogs alternate as they practice, getting to complete runs or work on trouble spots.

“Flyball is like the kegger of dog sports,” laughs Laura Kroeger, who organizes the chicken coop practices. “I love the friends and team aspect of it. It’s like a big party.”

From across the chicken coop, Cris Lane adds, “It’s also sort of like being in the National Guard because you just get so committed to your club.”

Continuing the legacy

Bullet’s owners and handlers, Gary Gundacker and Barbara Klag, are flyball veterans. They started two dogs, Sally and Jesse, in the sport about 20 years ago. Jesse went on to win the highest flyball honor, the Hobbes, which is awarded for accumulating 100,000 points. Gundacker and Klag are so dedicated to the sport that they moved to North Carolina from New Jersey about 12 years ago for North Carolina’s many flyball clubs and tournaments. They joined the DogGone Fast club, and their dogs have been running and having fun ever since.

Bullet has been playing flyball for seven years. Gundacker and Klag brought him home from a sports dog breeder in Las Vegas. He is a mix of Malinois, Border Collie, Border Terrier, Jack Russell and Staffordshire Bull Terrier. His shoulders reach about 15 inches off the ground when he’s standing, making him average-sized compared to the dogs he practices with. Bullet’s chestnut-colored fur is short and, in some places, wiry. Black fur mingles with the brown on his back and through his long, thick tail — growing darkest and most wiry at his shoulders, lightest and softest on his toned hind legs. Soft, dark hair grows along his nose and is fused with white patches.

“I liked the name Bullet,” Gundacker said. “It’s the name of the dog on the Roy Rogers Show, which I liked to watch growing up.” He pauses and then adds with a wink, “And you know, I look a little like Roy.”

Bullet started flyball training early, when he was just about a year old. Now dogs have to wait until they are 15 months old to start training. The North American Flyball Association (NAFA) determines the rules for flyball training and tournaments. Training a dog for flyball usually takes about two years. Trainers break down the game into digestible portions, teaching the dog one obstacle at a time.

Teaching the game

“First you have to teach the dog to have fun with you before you can introduce jumps or other obstacles,” Kroeger said. “The next step is to teach recall — getting the dog to run back to you as fast as possible.”

Then the dog can begin learning jumps. Getting the dog to jump over all four jumps without going around them or hitting them is a crucial part of the game. The handler must also determine what the dog will run for. Some dogs want to be rewarded with treats, while others prefer a toy or game of tug with the handler. Bullet likes to be rewarded with treats and balls when he completes a run. Once the dog can run up and down the lane, return to the owner and complete all four jumps, he or she is introduced to the box.

Competition

After a dog learns to complete a full run with little to no mistakes, the handler can begin entering it in tournaments. The club puts together as many teams of four as possible. The smallest dog on each team is called the “height dog” because its jump height determines its team’s jump height. Jump heights range from 7 inches to 14 inches.

Tournaments usually take two days, and the winning team of the tournament is the team that wins the most races by being the fastest. On average, a single dog will run the course in four to seven seconds. Bullet usually runs a time of 5.4 seconds. A good time for a team run is 18 to 20 seconds, but the record is 14.433.

“Bullet isn’t the speediest dog, but he does the job that needs to be done,” Gundacker said.

Teams are also given points for the runs they complete, but the points are for dogs’ individual flyball records and don’t impact which team wins the tournament. If a team completes its run in less than 24 seconds, the dogs are each awarded 25 points. Flyball dogs accumulate points over time and win awards for high point totals. In 2016, Bullet received an ONYX award for garnering 20,000 points over his career. He competes in one or two tournaments every month.

“It’s a game for him,” Gundacker said. “He likes working with us and pleasing us. And it doesn’t hurt that he gets some treats here and there.”

Edited by Paige Colpo. 

By Jessica Snouwaert

Linkin Park blared through his headphones as he paced the gym floor. His hands, clammy with sweat, fiddled with the black belt wrapped tight across his waist. He took a deep breath, his white cotton uniform hanging loosely on his slender frame. This was Brandon Kelly’s ritual before every judo match, but this wasn’t any judo match. This was his chance to compete in the 2016 Summer Olympics. This was the U.S. Olympic Trials.

Beyond his headphones, the training center swelled with the sounds of competitors grappling. Kelly tried to block out everything around him. He needed to be clear-headed when it was his turn to step on the mat, ready to outwit his opponent. One point is all he needed to win his first match of the trial.

When it was time for Kelly’s match, he stepped onto the thick foam mat, face-to-face with his opponent: a young 20-year-old man slightly taller but not much heavier than himself. As they walked toward each other and bowed, a thought flickered in Kelly’s head: Would his elbow last the match?

‘Decisive for once’

Kelly, 22, started studying martial arts as an 8-year-old. By 14, he earned his first black belt. By the time he was 17, he had earned two more. What began as a way to stand up to his older brother became a dedication to a sport of physical self-expression and mental discipline.

“I’m a very indecisive person, but it seemed that whenever it came to competing and being on the mats with other judokas, I was very decisive,” Kelly said. “It was a split-second decision you had to make. I love that ability to be decisive for once.”

Kelly started out by taking weekly karate classes in his hometown of Pittsboro, N.C., and quickly realized that he not only enjoyed martial arts but was particularly apt for it. His low center of gravity gave him an upper hand in sparring matches; he could think on his feet. But most importantly, he practiced and his instructors noticed.

“Brandon, without even having to tell him, ‘Hey, you need to practice,’ would go off and do it on his own,” his former instructor, Chuck Longenecker, said. “And he would come back every week hungry for another lesson and willing to show what he’s been working on.”

Before long, Kelly was earning trophies, medals and plaques in competitions across North Carolina. His older remembers him coming home from matches with as many as six trophies at a time to add to his room, one already full of past awards. As he improved, Kelly evolved from student to teacher, helping other classmates and teaching classes of his own.

Kelly expanded his martial arts repertoire from karate to other forms, including taekwondo, Jeet Kune Do, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu. But among the many forms of martial arts, Kelly gravitated towards judo. He wanted to study it and become a judoka, a term for someone with expertise in the sport. The style came naturally to him because judo is what he calls “smart man’s wrestling,” a physical game of chess, with opponents trying to pin each other to score a single winning point. For Kelly, the movements, balance and pace of judo felt right.

“I love that whenever we were in the thick of it, there was almost a cohesion – even within the friction, the pushes and pulls of trying to get an upper hand,” Kelly said. “There is a cohesion that flowed so much like water.”

Traditional sports never interested Kelly until he reached high school and he started using judo for high school wrestling. The hours of judo practice, in which he learned how to sweep an opponent on their back with one decisive movement, proved advantageous in wrestling. By his sophomore year, Kelly was as much of an avid wrestler as he was a martial artist, with daily practices at the high school and weekly competitions around the county.

During that season, Kelly found himself in a daunting wrestling match. Trapped face-down beneath his opponent, he fought to sit up. Kelly tried to swing his weight and escape the hold, but his opponent anticipated the movement with a forceful block, dislocating Kelly’s elbow. He continued to struggle against the opponent thanks to an adrenaline high that dulled the pain. Kelly managed to break free, unaware of his damaged elbow. He won the match but missed the rest of the season.

The injury cut Kelly off from wrestling and sparring. During the recovery his motivation to fight dwindled. Without weekly practices and competitions, he decided to invest his time into a different passion: Boy Scouts of America. Kelly, now the organization’s international mobilization and emergency management specialist, was on his way to becoming an Eagle Scout after his injury. One day while working on his Eagle Scout project, he heard his home phone ring and answered.

“Hello … this is he …uh huh. Well, I’m not sure that I’ll be at that competition,” Kelly said. “I’m currently recovering from a dislocated elbow …who’s we?”

The U.S. Olympic Committee was calling, and they wanted to see Kelly compete in an upcoming judo competition. Giddy with disbelief, Kelly knew what to do – he had to keep fighting. Even if he couldn’t make it to the upcoming match, Kelly knew he had to recover, train and compete.

But years passed with silence from the USOC, and Kelly was beginning the second semester of his first year at UNC-Chapel Hill. But that spring he received another call from the USOC. This time there was an invitation to attend trials for judo at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado. Wanting to seize what might be his only opportunity to compete in the Summer Olympics, Kelly boarded a plane to Colorado Springs that summer.

Overcoming a ‘mental roadblock’

One minute and 15 seconds is all it took. One minute and 15 seconds into his first match of the trials, Kelly’s elbow became dislocated for a second time. Unlike the last time this happened, Kelly did not win the match. He bowed to his opponent, the loose cotton uniform he wore concealing his disfigured elbow. He headed toward the bathroom, holding back tears of disappointment and pain.

Alone, he screamed and cursed as he popped his joint back into place. This was his chance to go to the Summer Olympics – and it was gone. Kelly rode the plane home in silence.

The next year was spent avoiding the gym or talking about martial arts. Kelly stopped competing and wouldn’t even watch movies of his martial arts idol, Bruce Lee.

“I just had this mental roadblock,” Kelly said. “I had no energy, I had no motivation. Like, ‘Now what?’ I felt a lot like the donkey with a carrot strapped in front of it; you’re pursuing, but you’ll never catch it.”

The role of judo waned in Kelly’s life but other passions developed. He took on a prominent leadership role in the Boy Scouts, organizing national events and statewide projects. While his involvement with the Boy Scouts flourished, he still felt estranged from judo. It took a trip halfway around the world to jolt Kelly from the painful memories of his last competition.

While traveling abroad in Israel during the spring of 2018, Kelly went out to visit the local bars in Jerusalem. He was enjoying a night out with friends when he saw a man forcibly kissing his friend. Kelly leaped to his feet and grabbed the man, telling him to leave his friend alone. The man turned and swung at Kelly. Kelly deflected the blow as four other men jumped toward him in a drunken rage. The next few seconds were a blur as Kelly subdued the five men.

Afterwards, his friends rushed over to him with a flurry of questions. How did he know how to fight? The answer was clear to Kelly.

He was a judoka.

Edited by Brennan Doherty

By Brandon Callender

To Paakweisi Krentsil, who is better known as “PK,” life is a series of performances. He reacts to the situations that happen to appear in his life. He refuses to let situations tie him up and prevent him from doing what he desires. Instead, Krentsil adapts. He understands how he needs to change himself to succeed, but that comes with its own sacrifices.

Krentsil is Ghanian-American; both of his parents were born and raised in Ghana, while he was born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina. He adopted the moniker PK primarily because it’s what his parents call him, but also because all of his white teachers and classmates in grade school simply could not pronounce his name.

Krentsil, 21, remembers his childhood and adolescent years as being part of what he describes as an “identity crisis.” He grew up in a home where it was always about African culture – he was reminded of his roots and Ghanaian homeland constantly by his parents. But when he left home, he was exposed to African-American culture. He was torn between two separate identities. Krentsil said he struggled in being a minority within a minority – he wanted to be closer to the default. Because of that, he embraced African-American culture more. That is, until he was an upperclassman in high school, when he met another Ghanaian student. Krentsil could not recall a time where he felt more at home.

“It was the first moment where I was like, ‘Okay, this is fine,’” Krentsil said. “I don’t have to do all these things I was doing, like letting people say my name wrong, or being okay with stupid nicknames. People would call me ‘Parcheesi,’ stuff like that. It was that moment where he was like, ‘Say your name the way it’s meant to be said.’”

Now, Krentsil grins when he says his name, exposing all his teeth. He said it to himself for emphasis: “Pah-Kweh-Si.” To him, learning to embrace his culture was just part of growing up. He’s content with the improvements and changes he chose to make. The biggest challenge he’s facing now is discovering his voice as a songwriter. Krentsil, a senior, joined The UNC Cypher during his first year, first as an observer, but later as a participant.

Cypher’s impact

“I think [Cypher] helped me realize what I wanted to actually do musically,” Krentsil said. “I hated freestyling. Didn’t enjoy it because I’m a perfectionist. If I’m going to perform or be in front of people, I want it to be as good as possible.”

Joshua “Rowdy” Rowsey, founder of The UNC Cypher, emphasized the freestyle aspect of rap. Rowsey wanted to see every member of Cypher come up with verses off the top of their head. Krentsil realized that others would end up using similar rhyme schemes or even reuse lines verbatim. That simply wasn’t enough for him. He credited Cypher for helping him get over his performance anxiety – but stressed that it still exists. He said he did not get the chance to develop his voice as a writer there.

During his sophomore and junior years, Krentsil struggled with mental health issues. He remembers periods where he couldn’t leave his bed for days at a time. But he said that these issues existed even before college. He remembers being bullied and having to deal with his dad’s anger issues at the age of five. Krentsil compares the relationship he has with his dad to Earl Sweatshirt’s. He said that Sweatshirt’s second studio album, “I Don’t Like S–, I Don’t Go Outside,” is what allowed him to make it through his sophomore year of college. When asked for a single favorite song by Sweatshirt, Krentsil couldn’t answer. He gave a list of songs, stopping at “Veins,” a song off Sweatshirt’s most recent album. Krentsil repeated Sweatshirt’s words a few times before nodding his head in approval.

“Earl’s so young,” Krentsil said. “He was wilding very young, so he has to be 25 and to have been through all the things that he’s been through. You know, getting sent away [to a boarding school in Samoa], all the addiction stuff he talks about. And now, getting to a point where he has to reconcile with the death of his father. Going through things like that so young, it will age you. You can hear the age in his raps because it’s coming from a place of clarity after having been through all of that.”

Krentsil is fascinated with Sweatshirt, describing him as “lightyears ahead” of his peers. Krentsil desires that quality. He wants to show how he’s aged in his writing too. Krentsil said most of the pieces that he has written have “heavy” tones. However, he’s concerned that currently his voice as a writer sounds too similar to that of Sweatshirt’s.

“As I’ve gotten back to writing raps, I find that like, from me listening to [IDLSIDGO] over and over again and sending it out to friends, they keep saying, ‘Yo, you sound like Earl,’” Krentsil said. “And that’s cool, but I’m not Earl Sweatshirt. I don’t want to be Earl Sweatshirt. I want to be me. I think Mac Miller said this in an interview, but there’s more to life than being sad. It’s about finding ways to write happier things. Giving the entire human experience, or at least my human experience, through the things I say.”

Figuring out his own identity

Krentsil wants to become the same type of honest, personal songwriter as the people he most enjoys listening to. He wants to make people feel something with his words.

“PK calls himself a producer,” Mu’aath Fullenweider said. “People will sometimes take ‘beat maker’ and that equals producer to them. I think a producer is someone who brings a song into fruition. Like a doula. If a baby is being born, the doula is there to help a baby be born. That’s a producer. They make sure the baby is healthy from the inception. I put out a record in January, but I ran it by him several times before mixing it. I’d ask him about [art] direction, what he thought about the sequencing of songs.”

His experiences have allowed him to become the individual he is now – one that does not allow the nihilistic zeitgeist of the decade to get to him. That sentiment bleeds into his own writing, as he has now gotten the chance to write pieces he considers to be happier. He pointed to a spoken word piece he performed last year titled “ILY,” about the journey he had to take for him to begin loving himself.

“It’s cool to be happy,” Krentsil said. “I feel like we wear being jaded and nihilistic as a personality trait and it’s not always like that. It’s okay to smile. To express positive emotion. There’s so much beauty in life. … People should write about these things.”

Edited by Caroline Metzler