It was very strange. There we were, ThinkTank!, at Fashion Island in Newport Beach, Ca. We congregated there in order to focus our attentions and intentions on the community, which we then transferred our thoughts to Blogspot. We started our meeting that Saturday morning on comfy chairs below the mall’s HUGE Christmas tree while holiday shoppers sprung into action. Discussion abounded, thoughts transformed, and tangible evidence from our existing memories of past holiday traditions (or lack thereof) became the topic for further investigation.It seemed to me (and it still does) that this is where people have their community center, malls. Towns used to have a center, or if your town still does, is it comfortable? Are there places to sit, congregate without spending money? What does community MEAN in the modern sense anyway? We have created a Consume-ocracy, a society dependent on spending money in order to connect with each other. Communication becomes important only in the case of advertising, which can take countless forms nowadays. Holiday traditions in this environment have the unnerving ability to become shallow and frenzied as we become capable of inadvertently rushing through the maze of holiday “Cheer”. In some cases our loved ones become a gift-giving quota to satisfy.
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| "What Box" original artwork by ©Katlin Evans |
It’s difficult to think of another container besides the box. That structured armature of our current existence is dissolving before our unconscious. Yet to fathom a new container when the old one (the box) hasn’t fully dissolved and still clings to every fiber of our being, change becomes increasingly difficult. In the strong current that surrounds our daily habits of functioning, just getting by is hard enough! Now we have to adjust our way of thinking as well? This is all too much. But it seems that this (change) will happen with or without us!
So, needless to say, I have started a small quest to see what kinds of community spaces are out there. What are people doing differently from the usual mall, bar, coffee shop kinds of places? We all know in order to perfect something so innovative as “change” there must be many attempts before one or many ideas take off and become ingrained in our most basic perspective and culture.
For example when texting first became a reality for communication we could not see how it would change our lives on a daily basis. To “Text” is now an action, a verb. So instead of calling someone, we “Text” them and calling is saved for the exceptional few and rare situations; close friends, an emergency, a scheduled conference call are all good examples. But I regress. Lets get back to envisioning alternative community spaces.
In my small amount of research, I have found, expressive arts organizations, art bars, and small business type art groups all trying to change the world! It’s all very exciting. But these experimental attempts to change our community vision and function are kind of exclusive in my opinion. Lets say you don’t like art, have no propensity towards it and all around don’t understand it. Then were do you go in this ever changing community vision, seminars? Hmm, doesn’t sound like tons of fun? But then again, fun and community don’t always go hand in hand, do they? All I am saying is that it’s a good idea to start this conversation and spring some thoughts into action. So cheers to a Happy New Year, thanks to 2011, and Hello 2012!!!!
Katlin
For better or worse, I have time to contemplate what you’ve said. Forgive the lack of structure.
ReplyDeleteI want to first say that I want to try not to be deeply cynical. There is a fine line between making adept observations that represent a point in time and allowing observations to become sweeping general conclusions. I have experienced exceptions to every rule/ observation/ generalization, & I need to constantly check myself to be sure that I’m not constantly looking through the world with a cynical lens. This is especially true when I come home to Southern California. I love it here, and have many people I admire and love.
First of all, you alluded to the surreal nature that you were meeting at Fashion Island to speak of community, and the situation is dripping with irony. It’s kind of the elephant in the living room in south OC: the price of entry is prohibitive to the extent that the community by definition will be homogenous- upper class. There’s nothing wrong with successful people, but community without different perspectives tend to reinforce its own perspective- a viscous cycle. Laguna used to have the hippies (brotherhood of light) and the artists that had found a way to carve a space, and I hope they still can. This was always the ground of laguna’s perspective. When LBHS changed its name from the artists to the breakers, from afar I feared that the afore mentioned perspective had cashed-in cause the real estate prices were just too good to pass up, and the people who moved in couldn’t stomach the mascot of “artists”. I, for one, always thought the mascot was the funniest fucking thing, and appreciated the idiosyncratic nature of it. Additionally, the action was metaphorically ripe: the death of the artist (and rise of the cheesiest name ever. I also just read the arguments for and against changing the name back in the 2002 coastline). But I have not lived in the area for a long time, and I believe I don’t have a complete perspective about who’s here (case in point- people who started this blog!). ultimately, no one can blame anyone for wanting to live in Laguna; it’s so fucking beautiful and is basically the best play ground on earth! But did the incoming residents really have to change the name of the HS mascot? Embrace the funk, yo.
Couldn’t agree with “consume-acracy” more, same with the question of time and money; they will be the truest builder of community. I’d like you to flesh out the box analogy more. The image is awesome, and I get the analogy of old to new. I think you’re talking about how difficult it is to shift in life with all the basic shit that requires our attention, and that is true in my life for sure. And the texting allusion illustrates our ability these days to go through life without any meaningful interactions as we’re either going too fast, getting sucked into meaningless drama, or getting pulled in too many directions at once. (all of which in order to keep us distracted from the possibility that we’re lemmings headed for a cliff…?)
Hope I’m not mis-interpreting everything. I like what you wrote a lot.
Paul, thanks for your comment! First, I want to say that I really appreciate your efforts to avoid falling into cynicism. That's actually one of the reasons we started ThinkTank! Life is indeed moving in a ridiculously speedy fashion and it's hard to keep up and easy to just say "bah humbug" to the whole thing and fall into being cynical just to protect ourselves, if nothing else.
ReplyDeleteKeep posted for more on "The Box" and check out my post "Meaning" for a little more about it. "The Box" is our analogy for the world we've known till now, the container that sort of held us all together with common ideas, goals, beliefs, norms, etc., to give structure to our lives. People talk about "thinking outside the box" as a way of saying they're taking a more creative or individual look at things. It seems that folks got so obsessed with thinking outside the box that we've all been running around with nothing to connect us at all! As our ThinkTank! meetings progressed, we played with the motto "Destroy the Box" but then we realized that "The Box" has pretty much become obsolete on its own, so destroying the poor thing is just redundant, you know, cynical :). So we're operating on the assumption that the Good Ol' Box just reached its natural ending and the exciting time we're living in requires us to come up with a new container.
Hope that sheds some light, and thanks for being our first "follower."
Peace,
Laura