N.L. bat Miri: Celeste Roche
By Charles Fort | Professor and Poet at May 15, 2024 | 8:00 am | Print
N.L. bat Miri (Celeste Roche) has a B.A. in Economics from C.C.S.U. , and she is doing postgraduate studies in Urbanism and Real estate Development. She is also studying for her M.F.A. in Fiction. N.L. has lived in the co-op for 10 months. She is a freelance writer, web designer, database manager, fiction writer, and painter. She would one day like to become a home-schooling Mom.
If N.L. were not living at the co-op, she would reside in New Britain or Jerusalem. Dignity is her highest value in life.
She sees her fiction writing as a problem-solving activity for her personal and social vision, and she wants to change things for the better through the power of art as a change for good.
At one point in her life, she felt it was easier to be a hobo than an artist. “I got over that,” she said. She continues to see social justice informing her work.
N.L. has become more tolerant of herself and less tolerant of people being treated poorly and their human dignity being taken away. She says her greatest artistic achievement has been learning her own value as an artist. Others may not know that she is highly religious and follows Kabbala and Jewish mysticism as a way of looking at the world she inhabits acknowledges in her art.
N.L. is tentative to share her life with Matchmakers and Jewish dating sites where there is a lack of exploration—only a Yes or No. N.L. is trying to get married.
She wants to share her art with people who think they cannot make a difference, and wants to help them know that they can. N.L., with confidence, says she has found her “voice” as a writer and is still discovering it s a painter. She has been influenced by Nathan Englander, writer, Hodier, musician, and Brit Marling, actress, screenwriter, and director. She states emphatically that artist do not have a monopoly on anything, and artists are a cross-section of society. Artists should not take themselves too seriously—unless you are willing to criticize and praise your own work.
N.L. thinks the co-op should find a way to establish autonomy as it becomes a business. She would like to see it become a profit and non-profit organization. She finds the legal awkwardness impeding the growth of the co-op. The co-op, at this time, needs to find other opportunities in the community, and it needs to head in the right business direction.
Her advice to prospective tenants is to treat the co-op as you would working toward a Master of Fine Arts. The co-op has given her time and space for work and mentorship with its older and more experienced members.
One member of the co-op sees N.L. as a fine leader who speaks freely about her convictions and understands how the excellent changes started by Brandy, former president, need to be sustained. At the same time, they also see how some members of the co-op, who claim her alliance and friendship, have no idea that she sees through their race, class, gender, religious biases, and personal turbulence too.
She came to New Britain to study and earn her degree at C.C.S.U., and she liked the community and potential. She says New Britain needs a complete Art Facelift, and believes art assists as a tool to improve social maladies. She wants to show average citizens that they matter, and they should be allowed to participate in its promise. Some citizens do value art, and those in power are afraid of art,
N.L. bat Miri says, “I love this city, and most people here. More people should be willing to voice it is their city too.”
