<-----The current me performing at Walt Disney Concert Hall & REDCAT Theater (Thesis Reading 2015)
What Have I Done Lately?
As of May 2015, I've completed my MFA in Creative Writing (with a minor in Documentary Strategies) at California's Institute of the Arts via the Critical Studies department. At the moment I'm quite busy right now, editing the second draft of a coming of age and mental illness related memoir, a poetry collection, a number of screenplays and several essays.
<-An old 90s Alterna/punk/weirdo version of me. And yes I'm old now, but I'm quite active within many music, art, activism scenes and I even have a radio show on Kchung Los Angeles (3rd Mondays 9-10am) my show is called: "Carmelo's Cellar Door."
My subjects of creative expertise range from:
Music, Film History, Literary journalism to fiction, to creative non-fiction, abstract art, street art, documentary films, to screenwriting and poetry. In keeping my mind busy, it has saved me in more ways than one.
What else do you like?
Lots of stuff, even if I do consider myself a writer; never could I just confine myself to just one particular role, label, and or thing as I think there are enough labels on this planet as it is.
I'm also in love with so many other topics including: Erasing the Stigma of Mental Illness, Animal Rights, stopping Islamaphobia, Mental Illness Awareness, Promoting Peace in Palestine and Israel, The Real Sea, Human Rights, LGBTA rights, Trans rights & equal gender awareness for all, digital art, acrylics, street art, graffiti art, modern art, tattoo design, Italian language, political resistance through art, film, video, and photography.
I also DJ on Los Angeles's own KChung radio via my own indie show: "Carmelo's Cellar Door" every 3rd Monday of the month at 9am PST.
Now What?
I'm currently a part time assistant researcher at the The Saks Institute for Mental Health Law, Policy, and Ethics. I'm helping the wonderful team that is Elyn Saks and Christopher help put together some amazing policy reports and helping her with so many other innovative and life changing issues that revolve around mental health and the issues that the mentally ill deal with on a daily basis via topics ranging from:
The stigma of outing one's self as having mental illness, to police violence against those with mental illness, to the rights of the mentally ill while hospitalized, to the use and or misuse of hospital restraints, and many more topics.
I do other stuff too, when I have the free time, like watching Zombies, studying my father issues via Shameless, or studying poetry and or feeding my own never-ending desire to learn and or appreciating art.
My Current School Program:
I am currently studying social work, trauma, psychology and narrative forms of therapy at USC's School of Social Work MSW program (Class of 2018). I'm quite interested in the healing properties of creativity, creative writing, and it's relationship to trauma, self-empowerment, and dealing with life's difficulties.
Sylvia Plath?
I'm also considered to be a bit of scholar of Sylvia Plath's life and body of work. I just finished a collection of elegy poems inspired by her life, investigating her former Boston home, McLean hospital, and her family and love life via a body of work I've called: The Gospels According to Plath.
At the Real Sea with a Corgi named Happy.