JACK PENTO: Who Are You?
A conversation between Splash & Jack Pento, a roommate and ‘brother’ of Splash. This was supposed to be an assignment for class where we took on any publication or subject, I choose one of my favorite magazines, I-D magazine. I wanted to interview him too.
Songs that played throughout:
ARE YOU OKAY? By Daniel Caesar | CYANIDE by Daniel Caesar | UNSTOPPABLE by Daniel Caesar | VINCE VAN GOGH by Daniel Caesar
Locations:
Evergreen Thrift (Ithaca, NY) | Park Lighting Studio (Ithaca College) | Jack Pento’s Home (Ithaca, NY)
At the Roy H.Park school lighting studio at Ithaca College. Splash & Jack listen to some Daniel Caesar.
S: Um, stay right there.. So who are you? Who do you think you are?
JP: I don't know. I think I've been trying to figure out who I am to be honest. That is a lot of what college has been umm I mean I feel like you'd know better than anyone else. The person that I came in as, it's very different in comparison to now, I think largely in good ways. I'm very happy with who I am now. You know, I enjoy myself. I like myself. I feel a lot more free. So there were a lot of things we had to do to get there.
S: Oh, yeah.
JP: We're still not fully there. You know, we still have things we struggle with but that's always going to be the case. There's always going to be ways to improve so I think I could say I'm happy I've gotten to, how I got there. Everything happens for a reason, I guess.
S: Do you think I guess in terms of that do you think you'll ever find who you are? or is that just ever changing?
JP: I think it's always like who you are changes day by day. I think we choose to be- I think who we choose to be can, can be a different thing every morning and just depends on like, what you want to get out of that time. Out of that, I don’t know, period of your life.
S: Stare this way.
JP: I think that I think I don't think I'm ever going to be truly satisfied with who I am. If that makes sense. Just because I don't think you ever should be satisfied. So it's like an ever changing process. Like, life doesn't stop so I should be growing and changing size. That doesn't mean that I guess I won't be satisfied. I think I will be satisfied with who I am. As long as I am still doing that. Cause if I stopped doing that I feel like I'm not being true to life itself.
S: And I guess my question is, could you tell the people what your major is, what your name is?
JP: My name is Jack Pento. I’m a math major, one of the very few math majors at Ithaca College. Haha.
SP: My question to you is, I feel like you're alway- you've been involved in a lot of creative things and a lot of creative things that people do and you're into music, you're into thrifting, You’re into all this shit. So do you ever think- why’d you stop? MUSIC? It's still going, oh, I'm buggin right?
JP: Yeah, that's like 10 Seconds. It's a 10 second switch.
S: I’m playing Cyanide after this. Um.. have you ever wanted to be-
JP: Yes.
S: Ever thought about doing creative-
JP: Yes
️S: stuff?
JP: Yes.
S: And if so, what would.. What interests you?
JP: Oh, God. I mean, people people ask me like-
S: Turn towards the camera
JP: People ask me what my dream job would be like, it would be like performing,I guess you know. Like I can get to a place where I can write my own songs or I can make my own music. That also takes a lot of dedication, a lot of hard work, a lot of creative flow that sometimes I feel like I don’t have so I think the feasible way for me to achieve that would be like joining a band or something or put myself out here trying to do more but it's hard to do during college, I guess where I feel like a lot of my time taken up by trying to get my degree and stuff like that, but I'm also worried that I use that as an excuse to not pursue that. For me, as busy as I am, I can always find time. Like there’s always-
S: There's always time.
JP: There’s always time right? I think part of it is definitely I feel like I can't do it and I think part of it is definitely a feeling of just like fear that if I tried to do it that I won't be able to… Yeah I have always been interested in music. I’ve always you know when I was younger my parents got me into music. It always changes over time. I hate the country. Country, it's not great. You know, I've tried country but it’s not for me. Metal’s not for me like anything else, I’m in, I’m in deep you know. Yeah, I mean, I'm surrounded by creative people. I mean you were my roommate for for three years in college. I’m surrounded by a bunch of Whalen kids, dilli (Dillingham) kids, like being at this kind of school, I think has fostered a lot of creativity within me to some degree you know, I wasn't playing guitar until I got here and I think I'm decent at it so. I-
S: I’d say you’re pretty good.
JP: Yeah and I appreciate it obviously. I've only taught myself. I've tried to take some courses here but they didn’t let me haha.
S: They’re always limiting our creativity.
JP: Yeah, but I mean, I can always just keep going with it. I mean, the dream is to get into a place where I could be you know, someone's playing me on fucking iTunes, right? But I wouldn't want it to just be like someone's playing me on iTunes but I want it to be like someone playing me on iTunes because they want to listen. Right? not because “oh this was like my homie I want to I want to support the homie” I want them to be like, this is good like this like, “I want to listen” I want people to like, listen to it without knowing that it’s me, and then realize that's me and be like, “Oh that's fucking sick. This is really good”. You know, that's uh, if that's down the road. That's a ways down. So.
S: And have you ever thought about mixing art and math? I've seen some art projects that have actually been math correlated.
JP: Yeah. I mean, I was trying to do a project for a data science coding class I was taking this semester. And I wanted to do something with the spot- There’s this thing called the Spotify API, which basically just like all the data that Spotify gets from like, the listening and everything. And I want it to go into like my own listening, and see if I could match up like listening patterns with I don’t know things that's going on in my life like why am I listening to this more during those times? Is it simply just because I'm going through this phase of music or is it going to phase with like my mindset and stuff like that. I wanted to see if I could compare that um but, it kinda fell because I couldn’t figure out the code haha but yeah, we do a lot with math stuff. We get like, I don't know we've worked with like, symmet- it's gonna sound dumb, I shouldn’t say it sounds dumb but it's like, working with symmetry and shapes and how I don’t know we're always working with stuff like that and my geometry class right now like we're just going through like proofs the whole semester, basically. It's weird because I do feel like I have like the afinity to be able to recognize art when I see art and geometry. I feel like I am working with art in a weird way just because I'm like, taking this answer that I've been given right and I have to like find how to get to that answer through different theorems, proofs, whatever the fuck. But it's always like, we draw diagrams of it and we draw, it’s with very much weirdly artistic form of something that I mean when you hear someone say that they're a math major. I don't think you really think of this has anything to do with art, right? Which I'd say is valid because from the perspective of someone who doesn't really interact with math like that makes sense, because all you got to remember is oh, two plus two and the multiplication table. Where's the art? But higher level math? We don't, we don't do that. It's, it's very much you're, you're working with general stuff.. You're not given like a problem with a second answer. It's like you're trying to prove it for- to apply to everything in the universe or whatever, which is like just a different art form that I enjoy that as a part of my life. It's very different from you. It's very different from photography. It's very different from the place that I go to school, like it's all different yet interconnected at the same time.
S: I’ve always been interested in math like numbers, trying to figure shit out. I think it's problem solving that’s always been like-
JP: Yeah, it's hard.
S: It's the same way with photography. That's why I like the creative field because it’s like “do I like this look?” “Do I like this portrait?” so I can let you know-
JP: There is math in all of this, like the way- the way that I see it, like right now I've got these two lights around me. You got me and you that's making like a triangle. Like I- dude, I went up to my geometry Professor earlier this semester, and I was like, I was like I can’t get triangles out of my head. I was like, I lay I want to look at the stars and all I see are fucking-
JP & S: Triangles
JP: between the stars and like proofs like I'm doing proofs in the fucking sky. Right?
S: Look down towards the end of that sandbag.
JP: It’s so dumb, but it's weirdly, it gives me like a joy, I guess for the first time which is nice. It’s nice when you actually enjoy what you have to do. And I also know that that was definitely a part of me not applying myself prior.
S: Look down towards the sandbag again cause I really like this lighting. Last few questions. Who do you look to for styling, how did you start styling yourself? Is it just your intuition?
JP: It is very much just this thing like when I put something on I either love it or I hate it. I know right away if I don’t know it just gives me a feeling of “I feel confident”. I feel like more powerful when I'm wearing something that I like versus you know when I get like, I get nervous, I get anxious, I get subconscious, that I don't like, so I'm not gonna enjoy wearing something I don't like. I don't really look anywhere for my inspiration. I just look to what I put on my body or what catches my eye that I enjoy. I definitely, I enjoy a statement piece. In every outfit I like to have some sort of statement piece because I feel like I want something to catch someone's attention. I enjoy that. I'd rather stand out than just blend in.
S: Intuition baby. last photo and then let's do the magazine cover. Let's do something like.. backup. We're back at it! I don't think I'll use it but I just want.. Look more like straight, let's do like actually, let's just do a simple wink like yeah, try not to like.. (hand gesture) try to open your eyes more. Uhhh if you could do like a uhh. Oh! like like, the bandana thing and put it over your eye a bit. Yeah like looking like yeah yeah. ‘The psilocybin is hitting!” (quoting Daniel Caesar in Vince Van Gogh) Try it again.. like yeahhh pulling it over, perfect… Well thank you, I appreciate it.
JP: I enjoyed it.
S: Yeah that’s it hahah (jimmy laugh)
