The Community Part of Community Art

For a long time I didn't have very good friends. There were people I was close with, people I spent time with, people I saw everyday, even people that I thought I would know for the rest of my life, but it wasn't until college that I truly began to build my community.

My college years created the two closest friendships that I have, that I have ever had. Through the past four or so years with these two wonderful women, and with the many other incredible people who have helped to shape who I am, I've learned what it means to be close to someone. For me, the closest form of intimacy doesn't come from sharing secrets, sex, or history. It comes from the exchange of ideas.

There comes a point when I'm so deeply wrapped in a conversation that I lose track of where my thoughts end and my companion's begin; when the idea forming in my mind comes out of their mouth. It is through these discourses that I discovered my passion for human connection, through whatever means available to me, and then came up with a way to channel that passion into an actual life.

I've lost count of the number of times that a new idea has formed while my mouth is moving, butting its way into whatever conversation that inspired its birth. That's how I first came up with my plan to start a community art center, one month into the fall semester of my junior year of college. I pulled out my notebook just now and flipped to September 9th, 2009, the day the idea was formed. A single page of notebook paper is covered in messy pencil with The Salon (the original title of my center) scrawled across the stop. I can still remember my hand moving across the now familiar page as I sat in the dining hall of my college campus, waiting for my closest friend to get out of her art history class so I could explode my new idea, that I got from talking to my own art history professor, onto her.

I do indeed tend to explode when I have an idea. My sister calls it "bubbly Miranda" which, despite not carrying the gravity I would like, is the most accurate description of the state I enter when a new idea is forming. Words and phrases bubble out of me, bursting into the world through the conversation of whoever I am talking with at the moment. My eyes become cartoonishly wide and my hands, or rather my entire arms, swing from place to place as if I am preforming as a storyteller.

Since the birth of The Salon, I have talked with what must be over a hundred people about it, always expanding and developing both myself, my idea, and the person with whom I am talking. Through these conversations, which increased dramatically when I moved to Boston and began my master's degree at Lesley University, The Salon has evolved into Creative Spaces and, most recently, CATCH Art: the Creative Haven. (Get it? It's a self-retaining acronym! Eek!)

I've spoken with friends, family members, mentors, strangers, even people I don't like all that much, and they have each added their own flavor to my idea, if only by listening as I talked to them. I've read books and articles, started writing this blog, filled up countless notebooks, and created endless files on my computer as I continue my external thought development. Currently, I have a ten year plan for my art center. I have no idea what it will look like in the end because I have no idea who I will talk to in the time between now and then. All I know is that every conversation I have continues to build the community of people who have heard and helped with my idea and with the development of myself.

For the past few weeks I've been thinking about writing this post, drawing attention to the people part of community art. I spend a lot of time writing and thinking about the children I teach and the teachers I learn from, but just as important, if not more important, are the people who I teach and learn with. The people who listen to me, who talk to me, who dream with me.

There was quote at the beginning of one of my classes this semester which I have not been able to get out of my mind; "I write so I can find out what I am thinking" by Jerome Bruner. Obviously, just glance down the page, this is true for me. But I would have to say, more accurately, I converse so I can find out what I am thinking, and once I know what I think, I know what I am going to do.

Basement Music

When I was young(er), I used to see the videos of 20-something year olds fervently playing music in their livings rooms and basements late at nights, getting off day long shifts to come home just to make music. I always found it a little funny, these people who played late at night not to get famous or to go anywhere, but just... because. It seemed to me like they were adults holding on to childish dreams when they should be doing adult-things (whatever that's supposed to mean).

It wasn't until recently, when I truly began my adult life living on my own, supporting myself, working, etc. that I began to truly appreciate these secret gatherings. Music has always been a deeply personal art for me. I took classical piano for twelve or so years, sitting by myself in the practice room for hours. During those hours I began to fiddle with writing my own compositions, first classically and then folk-ily. I would sing my heart out while banging away on the piano, momentarily blanking out the rest of the world that was only separated from me by thin, white walls and the sound of my own music.

Those thin walls were the first thing that let other people hear my music, whether they wanted to or not. Sometimes music major friends of mine would come in to see who it was, or would say hello when I came out. Slowly, I began to bashfully invite people in while I played. At first it was just my family, but then I took a deep breath and moved on to close friends.

My breakthrough came when I brought my guitar to the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival for the first time, after my entire life spent going to listen to other people play music. That was where I got my first taste of the music community. I had performed before, in camp talents shows and music recitals, but there's something different about sitting in a group of people, none of whom are professional musicians, and just seeing what comes out.

I've finally come to a point where my hands don't shake every time I try to play in front of people, and I can finally listen to recordings of myself while only cringing instead of running out of the room. As I settle into my new life in Boston, I've become part of a jam group that meets after work in living-rooms and basements as we all hold onto the childish glee that comes with simply making music. I continue to write my songs, which have slowly but surely gotten better, and for now, that's enough.

My Stunt as a Storyteller

At this very moment I am absolutely elated, sky-high on performance energy that hasn't gone away even though I finished telling stories over an hour ago. That's right, my performance wasn't some theatrical debut it was my debut as a true storyteller.

In my recent class on storytelling I'd been exposed to what was about to happen today. I read articles about how storytelling can capture any audience because the human mind is intrinsically organized to understand stories, I told stories to my classmates and heard them tell their own, and I even went to story-telling events and felt myself captured by the storytellers in front of me. But until today, I remained skeptical.

I was skeptical of my own power. Here I was, listening to and reading about storytellers at all different levels of all different ages. It was easy to tell who the masters were, the ones who made you actually see what they were telling so much so that you couldn't look away. It was also easy to tell the people who weren't born into storytelling, for whatever reason. And not everyone is. Everyone can learn, surely, but there are some people who, for whatever reason, take naturally to the art form of storytelling.

I wasn't sure if I could be one of those. Sure, I've always told long winded stories (that's basically what this blog is, stories about my experiences with art). Theatrics have also always been a part of my repertoire, earning my the family nickname of Tallulah after Talluluah Bankhead. From years of singing and acting my diaphragm is strong enough that I can make myself heard in a gymnasium full of summer campers without completely ruining my voice. I've always known that I come alive when I'm in front of people; I thrive of off human interaction.

But could I tell stories?

As of now I can comfortably say that I can. At Story Stomp, a festival dedicated to "connect[ing] the imaginative worlds of reading and art" at Springstep in Medford that took place today, I performed in a section called "Storytelling with Miranda." I told three stories, The Enormous Carrot, The Gold in the Chimeny, and Stone Soup. After a day of dancing, cupcakes, and theater-movement activities I wasn't sure how the children would react to being asked to sit and listen.

The room was a wonderful chaos when I stepped in, with children playing tag, parents talking, and arts and crafts all over the floor. While we were gathering the children together I had them all do a little movement exercise that I used to do in choir so that they would realize something was starting again and then they all sat down.

For at least half an hour 35-50 (I'm horrible at guessing numbers) pairs of eyes were trained on me as I exaggerated all my usual antics, turning what are normally huge hand gestures into leaping body gestures. Both the children and their parents moved along with me, sometimes as volunteers, sometimes supplying information, and sometimes because a child just wanted to get a little closer.

Unlike when I play music or act in a play, I wasn't nervous. Beforehand, yes. But once the stories started all I had to do was relinquish control and let them happen. And oh man, did they happen. I'm not sure who had more fun, the children, the parents, or me.

At the end of the last story Allie Fiske, the wonderful woman who asked me to tell my stories, and I did a little configuration so as soon as I said "...and then music started to play and they all began to dance!" there was indeed music and the children and their parents did indeed get up to dance with me. Once the music was over and the last line of the song was done, one little girl who couldn't have been more than three years old came straight up to me and said "But that was only two stories!"

"It actually was three," I told her.

"But it was so short! I wanted to hear more!"

Can you imagine? A three year old who wanted to sit still and listen to stories after over half an hour of already doing so! Her and multiple other children and their parents came up to me saying thank you and giving me compliments that at the beginning of the day I wasn't sure if I would deserve. But none of their compliments felt as wonderful as hearing everyone saying "Stooooone Soup!" along with me, or dancing as characters in a story, or hearing some children ask to hear more stories.

As I left, a woman who had been watching through one of the many windows in the room said "You have a lot of energy!"

"I just never grew up," I replied.

"Don't ever," she told me with a grin.

I responded that I didn't plan to, and indeed I don't. As I bounced home, swinging my arms like one of the characters in my stories, I thought with my own ear-to-ear grin, this is something I could do for the rest of my life.