Let's take a minute to talk about Community. Isn't Abed insightful? And Jeff's speeches! Annie's hair. The pure genius of that one episode where they rolled the dice a whole ton. Let's also talk about those communities where there are no magical (racist) trampolines. Just regular trampolines and soft undertones of racism that usually have nothing to do with trampolines.
I grew up with a community that made me the person I am today (and if you are wondering, the person I am today can be summed up in one word: awesome). This place was in Amarillo and the community was the local theatre, Amarillo Little Theater. This was the place where I learned what it was to accept and be accepted because you're unique and your ideas are crazy and potentially awesome. It was a place where I learned that there was such a thing as Beauty with a capital B and it could be shared and sought after by a group of people. It's also where I learned about love, the kind you give to people because they are desperate for it, because they'd do anything for you, because you've lived in empty spaces together dreaming things into the world that didn't exist before.
This is my first and most personal experience with community. We are everywhere now, LA, Chicago, New York, to name a few and we are still defined and driven by that small town in Texas that made our hearts and heads go BA-boom. Now the world is our community. I've been around the world and crossed continents and I've seen people all searching for the same things, I would call the search one for God while others might say Beauty, Truth, or Story but we all mean the same thing.
My own community was based in a small town but the world is much more open now. We can build a community from Texas to New York. From Utah to London. From Los Angeles to Eastern Europe. You might ask why even bother doing this? (and how can we do this?) And to you I would say, "Because it's stinking awesome! That's why." But also because I think we are all hungry for each other in some way and we all have a little piece of the puzzle in what we are searching for. I might call it joy and find it in jumping through the air but maybe in Cambodia they'd call it faith and find it through their feet hitting the floor. Let's blow the world up a little by making it a smaller place. We have the technology to do it, so why not give it a go already?
Now why art? Because the earth without art is just 'eh' (that's a popular poster I like to quote when I can feel the need to really rile up a crowd). I think we all want to create and we are all creative people. Think about your day- did you make something exist today that didn't exist yesterday? A piece of text, a thought in someone's head? Well hello fellow artist, nice to meet you. What are we supposed to do in the course of a day other than create? The end product might be different for "artists" but we are all guilty of the creative process. But what can artists do when they are able to bring their communities together from around the world? What kind of new community can we create? What stories, truth, and holiness can we find in this newly expanded and yet accessible space? Aren't you curious? Think of it like this: what do you get when you put an installation artist from LA in a digital space with a choreographer from Japan and a painter from Utah? Well, hell, I don't know but I'm dying to find out.
By: Sara Moncivais
Go here to make this crazy/awesome rant a reality.
**Sara would also like to mention the overuse of the word "awesome" in this post. She would like you to know that dictionary.com defines awesome as "very impressive." Now if you can think of a better word to use, Sara would like to know. Cause very impressive just doesn't cut it and her other alternative is "dynamo."
I grew up with a community that made me the person I am today (and if you are wondering, the person I am today can be summed up in one word: awesome). This place was in Amarillo and the community was the local theatre, Amarillo Little Theater. This was the place where I learned what it was to accept and be accepted because you're unique and your ideas are crazy and potentially awesome. It was a place where I learned that there was such a thing as Beauty with a capital B and it could be shared and sought after by a group of people. It's also where I learned about love, the kind you give to people because they are desperate for it, because they'd do anything for you, because you've lived in empty spaces together dreaming things into the world that didn't exist before.
This is my first and most personal experience with community. We are everywhere now, LA, Chicago, New York, to name a few and we are still defined and driven by that small town in Texas that made our hearts and heads go BA-boom. Now the world is our community. I've been around the world and crossed continents and I've seen people all searching for the same things, I would call the search one for God while others might say Beauty, Truth, or Story but we all mean the same thing.
My own community was based in a small town but the world is much more open now. We can build a community from Texas to New York. From Utah to London. From Los Angeles to Eastern Europe. You might ask why even bother doing this? (and how can we do this?) And to you I would say, "Because it's stinking awesome! That's why." But also because I think we are all hungry for each other in some way and we all have a little piece of the puzzle in what we are searching for. I might call it joy and find it in jumping through the air but maybe in Cambodia they'd call it faith and find it through their feet hitting the floor. Let's blow the world up a little by making it a smaller place. We have the technology to do it, so why not give it a go already?
Now why art? Because the earth without art is just 'eh' (that's a popular poster I like to quote when I can feel the need to really rile up a crowd). I think we all want to create and we are all creative people. Think about your day- did you make something exist today that didn't exist yesterday? A piece of text, a thought in someone's head? Well hello fellow artist, nice to meet you. What are we supposed to do in the course of a day other than create? The end product might be different for "artists" but we are all guilty of the creative process. But what can artists do when they are able to bring their communities together from around the world? What kind of new community can we create? What stories, truth, and holiness can we find in this newly expanded and yet accessible space? Aren't you curious? Think of it like this: what do you get when you put an installation artist from LA in a digital space with a choreographer from Japan and a painter from Utah? Well, hell, I don't know but I'm dying to find out.
By: Sara Moncivais
Go here to make this crazy/awesome rant a reality.
**Sara would also like to mention the overuse of the word "awesome" in this post. She would like you to know that dictionary.com defines awesome as "very impressive." Now if you can think of a better word to use, Sara would like to know. Cause very impressive just doesn't cut it and her other alternative is "dynamo."
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