art:
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English eart;
akin to Old Norse est, ert (thou) art, Old English is is;
archaic present second singular of BE
Art means to be.
So the nine day retreat/training/camp in the Santa Cruz mountains was
essentially about learning how to be in action.
I enjoyed learning to
- construct giant puppets (like San Diego's Justicia) out of wood, cardboard, and paper mach� using creature staplers (like a super staple gun - very fun)
- make beats on a beat machine, work a mixer and record tracks
- eat delicious vegetarian/vegan food
- drum on djimbe and congas
- walk a labyrinth and release baggage from my past
- play big booty big booty big booty, pass balls of energy around circles, practice flocking and other theater activities
- discuss on globalizations, gender, race, queer identity, etc. and various causes of systemic injustice in anti-oppression workshops
- spray paint, stencil, paint murals, sculpt with stacks of cardboard bike boxes
- discuss history of hip hop, griots, spoken word
- and perform street theater for a community in Santa Cruz
I co-coordinated an outreach program, stuffed all my junk into storage, rode a train bus train to the Bay, went to my parents' house for the night, then went off the next morning to this program without really knowing what we would be doing. I just trusted that I needed to be there and hoped to find some clue about what to be do with my life...
I definitely want to work with conscious creative types, make time for art because it makes me feel alive and not just surviving, and connect everything to activism.